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On Friday, Peter is sitting at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, eyes fixed on the river, when a little girl on the pedestal beneath him points up and says, “Mommy, who's that?”
This is how it goes, lately: a storm on the horizon, words thrown carelessly, irreverent. Peter scoots backward out of sight and leans against Liberty's toes.
“Tough crowd,” he mutters, but he can't blame the girl for not recognizing him. She looks young – three or four, maybe. Somewhere near Morgan’s age. She wasn't born when Peter disappeared, so there's no reason she should know him now.
Him, Spider-Man, the friendly neighborhood hero the neighborhood forgot. Go figure.
He blows out a breath. From below, excited murmurs float through the air, and when he peeks over the ledge, he sees people standing on tiptoes, hands shielding eyes from the sun, everyone looking in one direction. He follows their gazes toward the water.
“Karen?” he asks. “Did I miss a whale?”
“No,” Karen says. “I'm still not detecting movement. The whales don’t appear to be here right now.”
“Right now. Ever.” Peter sighs. “Are we sure they're even real? Like, how am I supposed to believe whales would want to be in a river? I don't even want to be in that river.”
“There's been significantly less pollution in the past five years because of the lowered number of boats in the harbor. The river is better suited for marine life than the last time you were here.”
Peter can’t help the sting in his chest at Karen’s words. He smooths his gloved palms over his thighs. “Then where are they?” he asks, because it's easier than reminding Karen to be more subtle about how good life was while he was gone.
“I'm not sure,” Karen says. “Would you like me to broaden my search?”
Peter considers the sky for a moment like he has a choice. It will be dark soon, and the last ferry back to the city is already getting ready to board. He can't risk getting stuck here.
“No,” he says, pushing his feet under him. “I should get going. We'll try again tomorrow.”
“Don't forget your aunt would like you to get milk.”
Back in Manhattan, two guys in NYU sweatshirts squint up at him swinging by and one says, “Dude, what the hell is that?” Peter barely hears the other's response over the wind rushing through his ears.
“That's Spider-Man. Remember? We'd always see him on our way home from school.”
“Spider-Man? Thought that guy was dead.”
He is getting used to being forgotten. He finds the alley where he webbed his backpack and changes into normal clothes. Across the street, a woman paints a mural of Iron Man on the backside of a restaurant. Happy sends a text to see where he is.
This is how it goes, lately; a storm on the horizon, words thrown carelessly, irreverent.
There are whales in the Hudson and the universe thinks Tony Stark is dead.
And it's strange, Peter knows. It's wonderful, and sad too, considering the state of things, how no one seems to care about anything else.
- - -
Here's how it happens in the beginning. Peter blips back on Titan and steps through a portal and goes to war, but May blips back into their apartment and finds a new family living there. So after it's all over, while churches and shelters and schools open their doors for everyone who has been displaced, the Starks opens their doors for the Parkers and welcome them back.
It's there, now, that Peter wakes to the feeling of static crawling across his skin. It takes him a disorientating moment to remember where he is – the wooden ceiling above him, the crackling of the dying fire – and takes another to recognize the voice that says, “Up the percentage to twenty. Let's expand the velocity too.”
He blinks a few times and shifts under his pile of blankets.
Tony pauses and says, “I did it again, didn't I?” and when Peter pushes himself up to peer at him over the back of the couch, he hums to himself. “Oops.”
He is standing near the table in the dining room, a holographic model of a suit glowing blue in front of him, turning his eyes almost neon in its reflection. For his part, he manages to look apologetic as he pops a grape into his mouth.
“Sorry,” he says. “Didn't mean to wake you.”
Peter rubs at his face. “'s all right.”
“Go back to sleep,” Tony says. “I'll pack this away.”
Peter is already untangling himself from his covers, stumbling over to him. The rest of the house is quiet and dark, and he doesn't know what time it is. He steps up next to Tony and stifles a yawn behind his hand. “What're you working on?”
“Anniversary gift for Pepper,” Tony says, holding out the bowl of grapes. Peter takes a few.
“Oh,” he says. “Is your anniversary soon?”
“There's a chance I may have already missed it. Looking in the high range of yes. I figure it's never too soon to start an apology gift.”
Tony sits down in a chair and motions for Peter to do the same. In his memory, Peter only has a vague outline of the way Pepper's suit looked on the battlefield. He'd seen it in a flash when she'd come to his rescue, and he hadn't been paying much attention, hadn't even processed it was her until they were kneeling in front of Tony later, the entire world quiet, victory sharp and tangy like copper.
For five minutes, Peter thought Tony was dead. While he sat in a little waiting room in the hospital, someone leaked the news of Tony's death to reporters outside, and Peter saw it on the TV, cried into May's shoulder until Happy finally found him and told him Tony was alive. Then he'd cried again, because the last time he felt minutes like that was when Ben died, and the relief was too strong to be embarrassed about.
“You all right?” Tony asks.
Peter looks at Tony's red and gold prosthetic arm, the one that officially makes him part Iron Man now, and looks away. He says, “Shouldn't I be asking you that?”
Tony shrugs. “I'm fine if you're fine.”
“Okay.”
“Good deal.”
“The best,” Peter says. “Like a two-for-one special.”
Tony's lips twitch in amusement. He inhales through his nose, slowly, the way he does when he's tired, and waves his hand over the hologram, shutting it down.
“Well,” he says, standing and pushing his chair in. “As long as you're awake, how about some food?”
Peter might not know the time, but he knows it's accurate enough when he says, “Mr. Stark, it's the middle of the night.”
“Yeah,” Tony says. “When's the last time you ate something?”
Peter twists his mouth, thinking. He can't remember, and that alone makes him cave. “Yeah, okay.”
“Pancakes?”
“Pancakes."
- - -
“I can't believe you're living with Tony Stark,” Ned says on the other end of the line and laughs in awe. “Iron Man!”
Peter cradles his phone to his ear and rummages through the rack of plaid shirts in front of him. A few rows over, May holds up a black sweater bedazzled with the words 'bad to the bone' on the back. Peter scrunches his nose and shakes his head. May grins at him, a little too mischievous for his liking.
“It's just temporary,” Peter says. “May's been looking at apartments. Everything's just kind of crazy.”
“Yeah, I've heard,” Ned says. He'd been lucky. He and his mom had blipped away, but his grandma hadn't, so they'd both had a place to come back to. “At least you're best friends with Iron Man. Wait, if you're best friends with him, and I'm best friends with you, am I also best friends with Iron Man?”
“Pretty sure that's not how it works,” Peter says.
“No, I think that's exactly how it works.” Ned laughs again, and Peter smiles at the sound, and he's glad he told Ned the truth about Tony, he is, but there's a lump in his throat and pain behind his eyes and he can't explain the welling sensation of guilt in his stomach.
He clears his throat and says, “I gotta go. I'm pretty sure May is plotting something evil. I'll see you later.”
“See you,” Ned says. “Tell Iron Man I said hi!”
Peter hangs up and May circles back to him to shift the pile of clothes from her arms to his. There's a splash of too bright colors, reds and yellows Peter will never wear.
“May,” he complains. “I don't need new clothes. I told you my old ones are fine.”
May knows the city kept all their possessions locked up in storage units while they were gone. She's wearing an outfit Peter has seen her in before. Still, she says, “New world, new us," like it's the only explanation she needs.
“No,” says Peter. “New world, same us. That's kind of the point.”
May pulls him through the store, grabs a pair of jeans and throws them on the pile. She pushes him toward the fitting room and claps her hands. “We might as well have a little fun with it, right? Reinvent ourselves.”
“I don't see you reinventing yourself,” Peter says.
A wicked grin spreads across May's face. Peter scrambles for the fitting room door.
“Never mind, never mind. I take it back,” he says.
In the end, he gets three new button-downs and a rain jacket, and May takes an hour dragging him to different stores in the mall, trying on skirts and shorts and pants for Peter to judge. They buy pretzels in the food court. They buy blankets and coats and take them to the Red Cross building near Hell's Kitchen where May has been volunteering.
“We're having a big fundraiser soon,” she says as they shift through boxes in a storage room on the second floor. “You should come visit. I mean, you-know-who you. The crime fighting you. Red and blue –”
“I got it, May,” Peter says.
“I think you could help bring in a lot of donations,” May says. “People love Spider-Man.”
Peter huffs, a little bitter, a little annoyed. “People don't remember Spider-Man.”
“Well," May says cheerfully, "What better way to bring him back into the spotlight than a charity fundraiser?” She takes in the sour expression on his face and smiles – her calming, placating smile meant to disarm him. “Don't say no yet. Just think about it.”
“I'll think about it,” Peter says. And he will. Just not now.
- - -
It goes like this some nights: Pepper makes lasagna and they sit around the table, the dining room lit in warm waves of orange. There are shadows under Tony's eyes, a pallor to his skin, but he smiles along as Pepper and May laugh, as Morgan balances a piece of lasagna on her fork long enough to reach her mouth. He passes Peter the basket of rolls and brushes him with his prosthetic arm.
And Peter jumps. He regrets it immediately, opens his mouth to apologize, but Tony has already rejoined the conversation and no one else has noticed his reaction. Peter's fingers tremble where he picks up a roll. The next time Tony passes him something, he uses his normal hand.
- - -
“You know,” Peter says to Lady Liberty, “Maybe it's me. Maybe I smell bad or something and that's why the whales hate me.”
He looks over the railing and terror spikes through his body. He's up farther this time, perched on Liberty's torch. It's not as high as the Washington Monument, but it's still higher than Peter normally finds himself, and it's much higher than he is comfortable with.
“Hey, Karen?” he says. “This thing can hold me, right? Because people aren't allowed up here and I'm really hoping it's not like a structural thing.”
“According to the National Park Service, the torch is structurally sound,” Karen says. “Workers are able to climb up to preserve the floodlights that keep it lit. You used their maintenance ladder.”
“Huh.” Peter clicks his tongue. “Hey, you're a language learning program, right? You learn new things the more people talk to you?”
“That is correct.”
“Okay,” says Peter. “Cause that was kind of passive-aggressive. Have you been talking to Mr. Stark lately?”
“Just you, Peter,” Karen says.
“Ouch. Harsh.”
Peter inches away from the railing and glances at the shiny flame at the center of the torch. Up here, he has a clear view of the Hudson, the gentle ripples of water as boats and kayaks cruise by. Six months, Tony had said. He figured the whales would be here for six months before the pollution drove them away. Peter doubts they'll be here that long. It seems the city is filling with more people every time he looks. He loses the whales a little more each day.
“Peter,” Karen says, “There is a robbery in progress at Battery Park.”
Right. Peter almost forgot about the police scanner he has Karen tapped into. More people means more crime.
“Find me a boat to hop on, would you?” he asks.
“Searching now.”
Fifteen minutes later, Peter is in the city and has tracked the robber to a back alley, has him webbed him to a brick wall by an arm and a leg. He borrows a pen and piece of paper from a wide-eyed lady and leaves a note stuck to the robber's chest for the police.
“Listen,” he says. “If you made me miss the whales, I'm gonna be – just, very disappointed in you.”
“Oh, boo hoo,” the guy says. “Does wittle Spider-Man want to see the whales? Grow up, kid.”
Peter flicks his wrist and sends a web over the guy's mouth. Muffled complaints fill the alley.
“Sorry, sorry,” Peter says, holding up his hands. “That was mean of me. But in my defense, you started it.”
The man glares. Nearby, people are gasping, cheering. “Look!” someone shouts. “So cool!”
“Karen, let the cops know where they can find our robber friend,” Peter says, and follows the sound out to the shoreline where everyone is gathered. He perches on the edge of a convenience store roof. He stares hard at the settling water.
He misses the whales again.
- - -
“It's not fair,” he says, swinging down 22nd, past a one-story painting of Iron Man littered with pink and purple hearts. “I'm never gonna see them.”
“Perhaps we can look at their patterns,” Karen suggests. “We can use a sample of data to see what circumstances draw them out.”
“Do we have enough reliable sources for that?”
“I'll do a scan of social media posts where the location is visible and highlight all images related to whales.”
“Match keywords and phrases too,” Peter says. “Some people might not have gotten a pic in time.” All along the outer edges of the painting are sticky notes with handwriting on them. We'll never forget you, Iron Man. Always in our hearts. One loses the last of its stickiness and flutters to the ground. “Or I'll just live here. I'll become one of those hobos by the river. La vie Boheme.”
“Did someone say Boheme?” Tony asks, his voice startlingly loud in Peter's ear. “I'm all about the Bohemian lifestyle.”
Peter fumbles midswing. The Iron Man on the wall seems to laugh at him. “Mr. Stark? Uh, what're you doing?”
“Practicing my ventriloquy,” says Tony. “Why? Not impressed?”
Peter heaves out a sigh. “Karen, you're supposed to tell me when there's a call,” he says, switching between hands. He shoots another web that lands steadier, solid. “I'm pretty sure Pepper said you're supposed to be resting, Mr. Stark.”
“Wow.” Tony snorts. “Tag team nag control. I am resting, thanks.”
“No,” says Peter. He freefalls for a second before his next web catches. “You're spying on me.”
“It's not really spying when you're all over the internet.”
“I – wait, I am?”
“You are,” Tony says. “Just curious, but did you know the Statue of Liberty has webcams now?”
Peter swings right into the side of a skyrise.
- - -
“Could be worse,” is all Tony says later when they comb through the posts about Spider-Man on Peter's laptop. Those who don't recognize Peter accuse him of attempting to sabotage Liberty's torch. There are some who do recognize him and say the same. Mostly no one cares, a few are even jealous, and Peter tries not to fixate. On the posts, on the whales, on the way Tony stands on Peter's right, where his real arm will be closest to him, where Peter won't have to see the metal one.
Peter feels awful.
He feels awful and he doesn't know why.
- - -
See, sometimes it goes like this too: he wakes up on the living room couch and stares through the darkness and says to himself, May is upstairs in the guest room, Morgan is upstairs in her room, Tony and Pepper are upstairs in their room. He says this over and over, but he sees the dead look in Tony's eyes, he sees the bright flash of the gauntlet snapping to life, and then he's not sure if Tony is actually upstairs, if they ever got him off the battlefield at all.
He sits up and props his elbows on his knees, presses his hands over his face.
“Get it together,” he says out loud, and nearly has a heart attack when a small voice says, “Get what together?”
He turns on the lamp on the side table. Morgan, dressed in the light purple pajamas she went to bed in, is sitting three stairs up from the bottom landing, watching him. He laughs a little, shaky and relieved.
“You scared me,” he says. “Why're you up?”
“Why are you up?” Morgan counters.
“I asked you first.”
“I asked you second.”
Peter smiles and lays his arms on the back of the couch to rest his chin against. “I'm up because I felt someone staring at me like a creeper. Thought maybe it was the monster under the couch.”
Morgan pulls a face. “There's no monster under the couch,” she says. “He lives in the attic now.”
“What?”
Before Peter can get an answer, a switch flicks on in the upstairs hallway, spilling light down the stairs. The floorboards creak. Peter hears Tony before he sees him, but even his voice washes away those trickles of doubt, makes Peter feel like he can breathe again.
“That's right,” Tony says. “And that's where he'll live as long as you do everything I say and never ever question me." He ruffles Morgan's hair as he slips past her and she bats his hands away, pushing her bangs out of her eyes.
“Mommy says that's not true.”
“Well Mommy is a liar,” Tony says. He has his back toward Peter, but Peter notices how he weighs the action of bringing a finger to his lips, how he drops his metal arm in favor of his real one. “Don't tell her I said that.”
“Will you tell me a story?” Morgan asks.
“Again with the extortion. Where do you learn it? Don't grow up to be a politician, okay?” Tony makes a shooing motion with his hand. “Go back to bed, Morguna. It's Peter's turn for a story.”
Morgan picks herself up. “You should tell him the bear one. He'd like it.”
“I will add it to the suggestions. Goodnight.”
Tony waits where he is until they hear Morgan's door shut, and then he turns and leans against the banister, locks his arms behind his back. He stares at Peter for a silent moment and Peter finds he can't meet his gaze. He still sees that look in Tony's eyes. Five minutes to Tony's five years. Where does he draw the line? Tony mourned half the universe far longer than Peter mourned him.
And maybe that's why Peter feels guilty. He looks at Tony and Pepper and Morgan and he aches. It's not like Peter ever belonged in Tony's life that way. He's okay with that. It's not the problem. The problem is he doesn't know what's wrong.
Tony moves away from the banister and settles down in the armchair by the couch.
Peter is only sure of this: those nights when he wakes for no reason, those nights when he wakes from dreams filled with spaceships and monsters, Tony is always there.
Sometimes he forgets.
- - -
May gets an official offer for a job at the Red Cross two days after Peter starts school again. She has to leave before Peter does, because Midtown has decided the best way to handle the overload of students is to filter them back in groups at different times during the day and week, and Peter is still in the group that goes late, so Happy comes to pick him up instead.
It's nearly ten by the time they leave and Tony is still asleep. As Peter packs up his backpack, Pepper says, “You sure you don't want to take any food with you? I don't want you to hit that mid-afternoon slump. I know how hard it can be.”
Happy chokes. Peter looks between them, confused. “What?”
“Nothing,” says Happy. “Let's go.”
“What was that about?” Peter asks, but Happy doesn't answer. He waits until they're driving in the city and motions toward the window and says, “You see the new bus design? I heard it's nice.”
“Huh?” Peter catches a glimpse of the bus beside them and freezes. “What the hell?”
There, on the side of the bus, is a picture of Spider-Man in the exact moment he smacked into the building after finding out about Liberty's webcams. Written across the perfectly timed photo are the words, “Tired of hitting that mid-afternoon slump?” It's for a protein bar or some kind of energy drink, Peter thinks, but Happy has already sped too far past it for him to process that part.
“This sucks,” he says, sliding down in the backseat. “Don't they have to, like, get my permission or something to use my picture?”
“Yeah,” says Happy, eyeing him in the rearview. “Or they just have to talk to someone with enough money to make them forget that part.”
Peter purses his lips. “Mr. Stark?”
“Mr. Stark,” Happy says.
Peter shakes his head and slides further down the seat.
- - -
Ned won't stop laughing.
“It's not funny,” Peter says, but Ned opens the image on his screen and dissolves again into hysterics. Peter snatches his phone away. “Come on, man. I'm trying to get people to think of Spider-Man as a real hero. They're just gonna see me as a joke.”
“At least they'll see you?” Ned offers.
“Not exactly what I had in mind.” Peter closes his locker. He hands Ned his phone back.
“You have to admit it's kind of funny,” Ned says.
“I'm gonna unfriend you.”
“You wouldn't!”
They have art after lunch. In the back of the room pinned to the corkboard are drawings of Iron Man that Mr. Flannigan had everyone make on the first day back. “I want you to draw something that inspires you,” he said. “Draw something from the heart.” Peter and MJ were the only ones who drew something else.
Today, Mr. Flannigan is at his desk, talking to a blond-haired boy Peter doesn't recognize.
“Who's that?” he asks Ned.
Ned glances up from his phone where he'd editing Spider-Man into memes. “Uh, Jonathan something. I don't know his last name.”
“Did he get blipped with us?”
“Nah, they're just trying to make room in Ms. Wittiker's class so they're moving all the normal students around.”
Normal. Peter frowns at his choice of descriptors, but Ned is right. They stopped being normal the moment they blipped back – in the middle of the gym, in the middle of the street, in the middle of lives that moved on without them.
The blond boy takes the seat in front of Peter just as Mr. Flannigan calls their attention and announces a new project. “You'll work in groups of two,” he says. “And you can make anything you want, as long as you believe in it and it doesn't get me in trouble with the school board. Now, let's see.” He scans through his list of names and pairs people off. MJ and Teddy. Ned and Emma. Megan and Susan.
“Peter,” Mr. Flannigan says. “You'll be with Jonathan. I want you to catch him up, show him the ropes.”
The blond boy, Jonathan, tips his head back so he's level with Peter, upside down. He grins, all teeth and bright eyes, and spins around in his chair after Ned leaves to sit by his partner.
“Hey,” he says, offering Peter his hand. “I'm Johnny. I don't know why teachers here keep doing the full name thing.”
Peter takes his hand. “Probably not paid enough to care,” he says. “I'm Peter.”
Johnny releases his grip. The slide of his mouth when he smiles again screams of delighted amusement. Peter figures he must be easily entertained. “So,” he says, tipping his chair on two legs. “What do you want to do for our project?”
“Doesn't matter to me,” Peter says. “Just literally anything but Iron Man.”
“Not a fan?”
“Kind of the opposite.”
“Ah.” Johnny tracks the pictures behind Peter, his expression softening. “Too much of a fan. I get that.”
Peter tightens his hold on his pencil. The lump is back in his throat, and he swallows hard against it, hoping Johnny won't decide to start a conversation about Tony.
He doesn't. He shifts his focus back to Peter and says, “How about Spider-Man? You like him?”
Peter laughs. “Yeah. I like him.”
Johnny lights up again.
- - -
Of all the people in Midtown, of all the people in the world, the last one Peter ever expects to confront him about Tony is Flash. But there is, between classes, coming up to Peter at his locker and stopping a few feet away like he doesn't know how close he should be.
He says, “Parker, you got a second?” and there's something dark in his eyes, something ashamed. He saw the picture of Peter and Tony at the end of the year, knew the internship had been real, for what it was, and the look on his face now clicks in Peter's mind all at once.
“Look, I – uh.” Flash smooths the skin above his eyebrows. He fiddles with his collar. “I'm sorry. About what happened to Tony. Just – I'm sorry.”
And Peter thinks about this boy in front of him who beats him down whenever he can, and he thinks about Tony back at the cabin with his red and gold arm, about those terrifying minutes before Happy found him and told him he was alive, and he says, “Yeah, t-thanks.”
“Yeah,” Flash says, and that's that. He never brings it up again.
- - -
It builds from there, because of course it does. Peter sees Tony everywhere, and anxiety curls in his stomach, hard and painful and reminding. The subways are packed. The streets are busy. May spends more and more time in the city, helping the homeless as their numbers grow.
Peter searches for the whales again. The mayor has set up sanctioned spots to watch for them, these little waist-high barricades to keep people from falling into the river, and behind one he finds a familiar mess of curly, dark hair.
MJ.
“Hey,” she says before he's even made it to her. He stops at her side behind the barricade.
“How'd you know it was me?”
“Intuition.” She looks over at him, smiling a little. “Also I saw you walking down the street.”
“Oh,” he says. The water laps against the shore. MJ rests her arms on the rail.
Peter hasn't asked her much about her life after coming back from the blip. He knows she still lives in the same apartment, just like Ned does, but he doesn't know who stayed behind to keep it that way. It's not his place to pry. If she wants to tell him, she will. Peter hopes one day she does.
“So you like whales?” he says, and winces. Stupid, he thinks.
MJ just nods. “I heard they eat people.”
“They – they do?”
“No. I'm just messing with you,” she says, the corners of her mouth turning up. She shifts on her feet like she feels as awkward as Peter does. Warmth blossoms in his chest. MJ says, “These kinds of whales don't really eat people. Not on purpose anyway.”
“So you don't think they're real either, do you?” Peter says.
“Nope. I'm pretty sure they're a government ploy to bring people together after tragedy. That's why they're all over the news. How many people really happen to have their cameras out when the whales surface? And all those angles too? It's a sham.”
Peter leans against the railing too, and the fabric of his sleeve slides against hers. For a moment he's caught up in that exhilarating rush of freefall, those few seconds before his web connects to the next surface and there's nothing but the sound of his heart.
They both pull away quickly. Peter glances at her, feels her glance at him when he's already turned back. He bites the inside of his cheek. Lately they're both looking at each other more. He thinks he likes it.
They stay for a while, a calm kind of silence between them, but MJ has to get home for dinner. She bids him farewell with a “Good luck seeing the whales,” and she sounds like she means it too.
”I'll let you know if anyone gets eaten,” Peter says.
”That's all I ask.”
He hangs out long after she's gone, until the sky turns pink and the rest of the people watching begin to filter out. A man and a lady stroll by him, and the lady says, “I haven't seen the whales in a while.”
She says, “Maybe it wasn't so bad, when everyone was gone.”
And Peter is in freefall again, without any webs to catch him.
- - -
“I'm gonna be there for a couple days,” May says, setting her bag by the door. “Are you sure you're gonna be okay?”
“May, I'm not a baby,” Peter says.
“I know. But you know.”
“I know,” Peter says. “I'll be fine, I promise.”
She hugs him tight. “Sara Ann is gonna show me the apartments tomorrow before the campaign. You remember Sara Ann, right? She used to work at that bakery. Had a son around your age.”
“I remember.”
“Anyway, I think we'll be able to start moving in in a few days once we pick one. I'll send you pictures. Tell me which one you like.”
She hugs him again. She has to go into work so early tomorrow that she's leaving today to cut the drive time down, but she's acting like she won't see Peter for a week. He understands her hesitation. Though she spends most days in the city, this is the first night they'll be spending apart.
“Find us the best apartment,” Peter says.
“Challenge accepted.”
Pepper walks with her out to the car, and Peter waves her goodbye from the porch. On his way back inside, he catches the picture on the mantelpiece that used to be a snapshot of Tony and Peter at their wedding. Behind the glass frame is now the picture of Spider-Man colliding into the wall.
Tony emerges from the dining room holding a mug and follows Peter's stare. He takes a sip. When he turns away, Peter sees the bedazzled phrase on the back of his sweater. Bad to the bone.
“May,” he groans.
- - -
The guest room smells like linen and air freshener and May's perfume. Peter wakes the next morning, alone, and his head hurts. Light blue seeps through the cracks in the blinds. It's early. Probably too early. He rolls out of bed and opens his door as quietly as he can, closing it the same. Downstairs, he wanders into the kitchen and blinks hastily at the sight of Pepper standing near the sink reading the paper.
“Good morning,” she says. “Did I wake you?”
“No, you're fine.” Peter runs a hand through his hair, trying to flatten it. “Uh, my head hurts. I just came to get some water.”
“Oh.” Pepper sets the paper down and fetches a glass from the cupboard. She sticks it under the faucet and passes it his way once it's full. “Do you want something for it? I've got ibuprofen and tylenol.”
“No, thanks,” Peter says. “I think the water is good for now. I'm just, uh, gonna try to get some more sleep.”
“Okay. Let me know if you need anything.”
Peter goes to leave, but something stops him then, some invisible force too strong to walk through. His pajama pants are too long. There are whales in the Hudson. The entire world is wrong, and he is wrong, and he needs something to be right.
“Actually,” he says, slowly, and tastes the words in his mouth. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” Pepper says.
“Why does – how is he doing it? How is Tony just – okay with all this? With – yeah.” He rubs at his temples. Now that it's out there, it's not what he means. “Sorry. I shouldn't –”
“It's okay,” Pepper says. Peter thinks she'll leave it at that, she'll let him pretend he never said anything, but she's opening her mouth again before he can escape. “Tony's just … he picked the lesser of two evils. This is easier, everyone being back. It was hard on him after what Thanos did. He never moved on. I guess none of them did.”
Them, the Avengers, she means. Peter tries to imagine those five years. Tony doesn't talk about them unless he's bringing up stories about Morgan. Peter only knows what he's seen on TV, in the short documentaries put together, in the way the people who stayed look at the people who left, and how sometimes it's not all good.
“They didn't?” Peter asks.
“No,” Pepper says. She takes him in with a kind expression, her eyes silky with understanding. “Peter, I think you're forgetting Tony lost something very important to him that day.”
“What?” he asks.
“You.”
But in all the versions of Tony in those five years, this isn't one Peter ever thought about. Five years to five minutes. Where is the line?
Guilt presses behind his eyes. The water doesn't help. Nothing helps. Pepper tells him he should talk to Tony about it, but Peter goes back to bed and he tosses and turns, and somewhere he sleeps, he thinks, but it's all faded and too loud.
He pulls his covers over his head.
He wishes he never asked at all.
- - -
Here's the thing. When Peter was a kid, he went to a birthday party at Red Lobster and ate his weight in food. That was the day he came home and wheezed in the bathroom while Ben held a stethoscope to his back and listened to his lungs and determined he was allergic to shellfish. Just a mild allergy, he'd said, since Peter wasn't swelling up. He drank too much Benadryl and slept for ten hours straight.
When Peter peels open his eyes, he is sure he's nine again. He waits for Ben to come into his room and then he remembers Ben's not here, and Peter's not at home, he's at Tony's, and if he's having an allergic reaction, he has to do something about it himself.
So he forces himself out of bed. He checks the upstairs bathroom for medicine and finds toothbrushes and floss and makeup. It's late now, sometime afternoon. The sun is bright in the hallway. Peter shields his eyes and pants his way down the staircase.
In the kitchen, he hears Pepper laughing. “Absolutely not,” she says. “You paid for that alpaca with your own money. I take no responsibility.”
“I paid for this house too,” says Tony. “So ...”
“We paid for this house with our money.”
“Did we though? Did your mom ever say you could bunk over?”
Peter steps around the corner into their sight. They're behind the counter and Pepper is slicing tomatoes while Tony cracks eggs. Their laughter fades at Peter's entrance.
“Hi,” Peter says weakly. “Um, sorry to interrupt. I was just wondering if you have any Benadryl? I think I might be having an allergic reaction to something I ate.”
For a suspended moment, Tony and Pepper just stare at him, quiet and unmoving, and then Pepper sets her knife on the cutting board and says, “We should have some. Let me check.”
A line forms between Tony's eyebrows. He has Peter sit on a stool across the counter from him. “When's the last time you ate anything?” he asks. His eyes narrow, sharp and calculating.
Peter tries to think, but his chest hurts. He can't pull in air. “Um.”
“Hey, Pep,” Tony says. “Why don't you check upstairs? Maybe we have some there.”
"Sure, okay. I'll look," Pepper says.
Fear washes through Peter like the waves rippling against the shore. He bows his head, gripping the stool beneath him so hard he feels it crack, and a warm hand lands on the back of his neck and squeezes.
“You're okay,” Tony says. “Breathe.”
Peter chokes on the mounting panic, his words catching in his throat. “I'm – I –”
“I know,” Tony says, and his grip stays firm, grounding. “I got you, kid. Just breathe. Nice and easy. You're not having an allergic reaction. You're having a panic attack. You're okay. You're safe. Breathe.”
The point of contact anchors Peter. He focuses on one breath after another, feels a smaller, thinner hand on his back he's sure belongs to Pepper and lets it anchor him too. Tony guides him through the worst of it.
“You're okay,” he says, until Peter can breathe again, until Peter believes it's true. “You're okay.”
And he is.
- - -
Here's how it happens that night. Tony knocks on the guest bedroom door and peeks his head in and says, “Come on. I want snacks.”
The alarm clock on the nightstand reads 11:36 pm. Peter slept through lunch and dinner. He grabs his coat and follows Tony outside.
“Are you supposed to be driving?” he asks as Tony unlocks the doors to a car Peter doesn't even want to know the price of.
“Are you supposed to be my mom?” Tony says. “Get in or I'm leaving without you.”
Peter slides into the passenger seat. “And you wonder where Morgan gets it from.”
A ghost of a smirk passes across Tony's face. He shifts the car into reverse and backs out slowly, and Peter thinks he might be getting docile in his age, but once they're a good distance from the house, Tony steps on the gas and sends Peter slamming back into his seat.
“Ah,” he says. “The open road.”
Peter double checks his seatbelt. “Mr. Stark, I'm only sixteen. Please don't kill us.”
“Death before snacks? I don't think so.”
Tony drives them into the city and parks outside a Target. He's wearing a dark sweatshirt and he flips the hood over his head, drags the sleeves over his hands, and he gets out of the car. With the added sunglasses, especially this late at night, he looks like he's going to rob the place.
Peter jogs to catch up to him. “Are you sure you should be out here, Mr. Stark?” he says. “What if someone sees you?”
“No one's gonna see me,” Tony says easily.
“How do you know?”
“Because no one's looking for me.”
Peter doesn't know which hurts worse: that Tony said it, or that it's true. The decision to keep Tony dead to the public was made without Peter, so he doesn't always understand it. He aches because of it though. Because he was, and is, a fan of Iron Man just like everyone else.
“Candy, yes,” Tony says, changing paths so fast Peter almost loses him. “Grab what you want.”
“Mr. Stark –”
“Grab something or I'm buying it all,” he threatens. They get Milky Ways, Snickers, Skittles, M&Ms. They stand in that aisle of brightly colored packages, the smell of chocolate and sweets soft and nostalgic all at once. It feels like five years ago. It feels like nothing ever changed.
Eventually, they make it through the self-checkout before the suspicious glances they're getting can turn into something else. It doesn't help that Tony can't find his wallet at first and has to pat through all his pockets, earning a glare from an older man that Tony ignores.
“Jeez,” Peter says. “Pepper needs to let you out of the house more often.”
“I'm going a little stir crazy,” Tony admits. He swipes his card through the machine and thrusts the bag of candy into Peter's arms. “When I say run.”
“Mr. Stark, I swear –”
“I'm just kidding. Relax.”
“I would, except I'm not sure you're actually kidding.”
“I'm ninety percent kidding. Best be prepared for that other ten.”
They walk, in the end, and no one gets arrested, much to Peter's relief. Tony doesn't tell him where they're going. He drives further into the city and the radio plays old songs, the ones Ben used to sing to him as a kid, the ballads May used to hum to herself sometimes while she read.
After twenty minutes, Tony pulls up to the curb in front of a block of darkened buildings. To their left, the river glows white under the full moon.
“What're we doing here?” Peter finally asks.
“Whale watching,” Tony says.
“It's too late for whales.”
“It's never too late for whales.”
He shuts the car off. Peter wants to object, but he can't. He just joins Tony in front of the barricade where they sit facing the water, their knees touching, the plastic bag between them.
Peter is shivering. Tony reaches for a piece of candy with his normal hand.
“You don't have to do that,” Peter whispers, afraid he'll shatter whatever this is.
Tony quirks an eyebrow. “Do what?”
Peter motions to his arm. His heart is caught in his throat. He licks his lips and looks up at the sky. “I don't hate your prosthetic.”
“Uh huh.” Tony takes a bite of chocolate. “Then what do you hate?”
Peter doesn't answer. Tony nudges his shoe.
“Hey, it's not that bad,” he says, gently. Peter pulls his lips between his teeth, resists the urge to voice his petulant, “It's your arm,” but Tony already knows what he won't speak out loud.
“My arm for the universe,” he says, shrugging. “I'll take that any day.”
“Sure,” Peter says, unable to stop the laughter from bubbling in his chest. Nothing is funny. Peter feels like he's in a vice, squeezed from all sides, hysteria edging closer.
Tony nudges him again. “Kid, really. It's not a big deal.”
“Yes, it is,” Peter says, sobering. “It is.”
Tony sighs. “What do you want me to say, Pete?”
“I want –” Peter digs his nails into his palms, feels heat in his cheeks and his ears and his chest. Peter doesn't know what he wants. That's the problem.
“I just. I feel ...”
“Lost?” Tony offers.
That's it, partly. Peter feels lost. He's felt lost since the moment he came back.
“I get it,” Tony says. “Everything's different but you're the same. It was barely even a second for you. I can't imagine what kind of shock that must have been.”
“It wasn't just that,” Peter says. “When you – at the hospital – when they said –”
“When they said I was dead?”
Peter nods. He pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes. “You were gone for five minutes, but everyone was gone for you for five years. I don't feel like I have the right to be upset. About any of this.” And there it is, the admission of guilt scorching his tongue. Peter is watching the world move on without him and he doesn't know where he belongs.
“Listen,” Tony says, pulling Peter's hands away. “You have every right to be upset. We all handle grief differently. Hell, I spent five years trying to figure out time travel instead of dealing with my emotions."
"But you did it."
"The time travel, sure," Tony says. "The emotions part? Eh, I'm working on it." He flexes the fingers of his metal hand, staring at them. "You've been through a lot, kid. We all have.”
Peter hears Pepper's words in his mind. The lesser of two evils. Tony's arm for the half the universe, Tony's arm to bring everyone back, to ease his mourning.
I think you're forgetting Tony lost something very important to him that day.
“I thought if I saw them, maybe it would fix something,” Peter says, gesturing toward the Hudson, toward where he's sure the whales are sleeping, waiting. “Fix me. Like maybe I could be like everyone else again.”
“But you're not like everyone else.”
“I know.”
“Kid,” Tony says, and exhales, not a sigh but not a breath either, something verging on the kind of understanding that burns too hot to hold for long. “Peter,” he amends. “You've overcome too much for this to be the thing that ends you.”
Peter racks his fingers through his hair. “I know,” he says again.
Tony squeezes his knee. “It's okay to feel lost.”
“Is it?”
“It is,” Tony says. “Because I know exactly where you are. And whenever you're ready, I'll help you find it again. Until then, we have whales and enough candy to send us into a sugar-induced coma. We can wait as long as you want.”
Peter's vision blurs with tears and he scrubs his arms across his eyes. “Thanks, Mr. Stark. And … I'm sorry.”
“You don't ever have to apologize for this,” Tony says. “Now eat some of these M&M's before I give them to a seagull.” He digs his phone out of his pocket to check the time and angles it just right so Peter can see his background is the picture of Spider-Man hitting the wall.
Peter laughs until he cries.
And this is how it goes, lately; a storm on the horizon, words thrown carelessly, irreverent.
Except when the sun rises and Peter and Tony are still there at the shoreline, the sky is clear. When the sun rises, something breaches the surface of the water, calls out into the early morning air, here we are, we're home.
And finally, Peter sees the whales.