a/n: just some classic peter parker hurt comfort, title from the song by half-alive!

Peter slipped in through his window and pulled his mask off with a tired exhale. He cricked his neck and stretched his hands up, stretching out his aching spine, then fell back on his bed with a sigh.

Across the house, a glass clinked on a hard surface. Peter's eyes shot open and he slowly sat up.

Someone was in the apartment. He's a hundred percent positive May told him earlier today that she had errands, that she'd be home late around eleven, so it couldn't be her.

He pulled his mask back on and carefully opened the door, slow enough that every creak was low and drawn out. He took one step out the door, into the hallway between the bedrooms and the kitchen, and waited. Listened.

Five heartbeats. Someone sniffed, there was the sound of fabric against fabric. Whoever these people were, they had just been sitting there... Waiting.

Peter gritted his teeth, slowly turned the corner into the kitchen.

Immediately his shoulders relaxed as he saw the people sitting in the living room. Michelle, Ned, Tony, May— Even Happy. After the relief came a very sudden sense of confusion and concern. Peter pulled the mask off his head and furrowed his eyebrows.

"Guys?" Peter smiled nervously. "Everything... okay?"

"Peter," May said first, smiling at him with something almost made of pity. "Hey, baby. How was patrol?"

Peter slowly stepped into the living room, looking between everybody with a reasonable suspicion.

"Um, yeah," Peter nodded. "It was, uh— It was alright. May, I thought you wouldn't be home til eleven?"

"Pete," Tony grimaced. Suit and dark shades covering his eyes. He was packed like a sardine beside Happy and MJ on the old turquoise couch, which was a weird thing to comprehend much less witness. "It's three in the morning."

"Almost four," MJ added. She and Ned looked at each other with matching looks of concern before looking back over at Peter.

"What? No, that's—" Peter frowned deeply and turned to look at the clock above the oven. 3:48AM. Peter turned back over to all of them. He hesitated. "Oh, I— I didn't realize."

"Hey, do you wanna sit next to me, Peter?" Ned asked. He sat on the carpet, holding an empty water glass in his hand. Peter watched the condensation drip down onto his fingers.

Peter narrowed his eyes. He tried to keep his tone light. "Sorry. What uh, what is this? Someone having a birthday party?"

"We just," May started, nodding with expectant eyes to the rest of the group in the living room. (At the prompt, they nodded in agreement with her.) "wanted to come together, you know, as— as— Spider-Man's support system, and talk. Really talk about how we can best support you."

Peter looked at MJ. She only looked back, with something mixed of worry and sympathy. She didn't say a word. He singled in on Ned, who was looking at him like a scared dog. "Ned, is this an intervention?"

Ned stuttered.

"Yeah," Tony answered for him. "It is. Baby's first intervention. I should take a picture."

"I don't need an intervention," Peter smiled ridiculously. "Are you serious? What do I need an intervention for?"

"Peter, we haven't seen you outside of school in four weeks," MJ continued. "You barely answer your texts. You're having nightmares when you sleep in class—"

"That's not—"

"Please don't argue," MJ pleaded, leaning forward in her seat on the couch and looking at Peter with such desperation. Peter saw tears in her eyes, and his heart thudded loudly in his chest. "We're just worried, Peter. We want to know what's going on."

"Nothing is going on," Peter said with a breathless, hopeless laugh. "Really. Everything is fine, I'm sorry you all stayed up for nothing."

"Kid," Tony sighed. He pulled his glasses off, and he just looked so tired. "I have access to your suit's statistics. You've logged over three-hundred hours the past month. That's nearly nine hours a day."

"You stopped leaving your little messages," Happy spoke up, looking uncomfortable. "Your voicemail ones after every patrol. Nobody knows what you're doing out there now, cuz you're not talking to anyone, Pete."

"What are you trying to say right now?" Peter shifted on his feet. He looked back over at May.

May looked down at the floor.

"May?" Peter asked quietly.

"Honey," May sighed deeply. "Can you just... talk with us?"

"I don't want to worry you," Peter said genuinely. He walked forward and slowly sat down on the floor beside Ned, and began picking at the threads of the carpet. "I didn't mean to. I'm sorry."

(Despite the thoughts always running through his head at full speed, that was one thing that always remained louder than anything else: Peter doesn't want to worry anybody. He just wants to be okay.)

"What have you been doing on patrol?" MJ prompted.

Peter blinked a few times, keeping his eyes on the carpet. He licked his lips and shrugged. "I dunno. Just normal patrol stuff, I guess."

Ned quietly leaned against Peter's shoulder.

The corner of Peter's mouth twitched downward. A lump was growing steadily in his throat.

"Normal stuff?" May reiterated. Her voice was gentle. Patient. Kind. "What does that mean, Peter?"

Peter shrugged again. His face was getting hot as he felt everybody's eyes on him. He suddenly wished he could pull his mask back on and never take it off.

It was quiet for a long while in the room. It became very clear that Peter wasn't getting out of being the center of attention, much to his discomfort and dismay.

"Fighting crime," Peter mumbled. "Bad guys. Normal stuff."

"Anyone as bad as Beck?" Tony asked.

Peter flinched minutely. He quickly covered it up by moving his hand up and scratching his nose. "Uh— No. Nope. All good there."

"What are your nightmares about, honey?" May asked softly.

Peter's eyes flashed up to her in surprise.

May Parker in all her confidence was a blunt woman. Never afraid to say the things that needed to be said or to ask the questions needed to be asked. Still, she respected boundaries, and this seemed to be the grey area between those two things. She gracefully asked a question that needed to be asked, and it crossed a wall Peter had worked hard to build up.

He opened his mouth, staring wordlessly at May. He swallowed, his throat dry. "Sorry— what?"

"Your nightmares," May repeated. "MJ said you had nightmares. What are they about?"

Unwilling to let it go, it seemed, which meant Peter will have to do the bending.

He looked around nervously around the living room. He trusted everyone beside him more than anything. He would stop the world turning for them if they asked. But he had some kind of reputation to maintain, didn't he?

Happy Hogan knew a Peter Parker who chattered aimlessly in the backseat of his Audi, a scrawny teenager who left a professional voicemail every night about the highlights of patrol and who left not-so-professional Spidey-doodled notes behind at crime scenes.

(He'd never seen a Peter Parker who crawled back home fighting back tears, clutching his bloody side and nursing a sprained ankle, curling up on his twin bed and letting his whole chest shudder from sobs after a patrol gone wrong. He'd never seen a Peter Parker who dealt with the things not mentioned in the voicemails.)

MJ knew a Peter Parker who slept curled into his sweaters in Spanish class and then made a web-sticky mess of his desk drawers in Chemistry class. She knew a boy who came over during the week to watch Netflix documentaries with her and she knew a boy who covered himself in scars, stitches, and bandaids on the weekends. She knew a boy who got himself into trouble every night; and who came out the other end with a tired smile and a tardy slip every morning without fail.

Ned knew a Peter Parker who built LEGO Star Wars battleships in the band room, who snuck in gummi worms to the movie theatre, who climbed in through his window with a grin and a backpack of history homework from Mr. Dell's class, still wearing his suit and borrowing a baggy sweatshirt to bundle himself in while they watched old sitcoms on Ned's laptop. He knew an unbreakable hero-type who made sure his friends didn't get hurt.

(The two of them had never seen a Peter Parker who coughed up blood behind Harlem alleyways, and who got punched so hard some nights he saw stars for the next three hours afterward, and who stayed up staring at the ceiling and debating whether or not having friends was worth it if he could get them in the same kind of danger he'd never get used to. He made sure his friends didn't get hurt, all right— and it cost him everything sometimes.)

Tony Stark knew a Peter Parker who stayed up late in the labs and was smart, stubborn, dependable, impressionable, innocent. A kid, really, with his whole life ahead of him and brightness in his eyes. A better hero ready to be molded like clay, a smarter hero, a stronger hero. Better than even Iron Man.

(He'd never seen a Peter Parker who looked uneasily at the crown, late at nights staring at the Spider-Man suit's gloves while perched on a construction crane, wondering how he could ever improve. He'd never seen all the doubt Peter had, spiraled and woven into every dna-strand. He'd never see Peter hesitating to call him, second-guessing his text messages, trying to push down his guilty longing for a connection he thought he'd lost. Because Tony Stark wasn't Ben Parker. Because Tony Stark would never be, and Peter wouldn't let himself hope for it.)

And May... May was the most complicated of all. She's known Peter Parker since he was just a little thing up to her thigh in height, brown curly hair fluffed messily around his head and big doe eyes, still new to the household and anxious to ask for something simple like syrup on his wheatcakes but young enough to cry out for her and Ben after a nightmare.

She'd seen a Peter Parker who let himself get wrapped up in his anger at the age of thirteen when he punched the wall and got splinters in his knuckles from the wood. She'd seen a Peter Parker lose friends, make friends, and lose friends again. She'd seen a Peter Parker who cried until he couldn't breathe, and who sat on the kitchen floor at early hours of the morning after a nightmare.

She'd seen him through everything, really. Until he got bit by that spider; and secret identities built a wall of responsibility and dependability between Peter and being taken care of.

But she was still here, and so was everyone else. Begging to take care of him. Reputation or not. They all deserved the truth, and Peter knew that the truth was they deserved better.

"My nightmares?" Peter asked in a quiet breath.

Hard to get nightmares if he doesn't sleep.

But when he does...

Peter blinked back the sudden onslaught of tears.

"Kiddo," Tony said softly. "It's okay. We're all here for you."

Peter looked down at the carpet and tried to keep his face from scrunching up with the rush of emotion. He held his breath from the effort, bit his bottom lip. His eyebrows creased against his will. His throat was burning.

"No, I know," he croaked out. "I know you all are. I'm so sorry. I treated you all like shit the last few weeks. I just— I didn't— I didn't realize it had gotten so bad, I didn't know."

"What had gotten bad, sweetie?" May coaxed. "It's not all your fault."

Peter put a hand over his eyes, shielding everyone else from seeing the stream of tears that had finally decided to fall down his face. "Everything. I just— There's so much to do, every night."

Peter took a shaky breath through his nose. "Everybody is— is counting on me, and I'm— what if there's another Beck out there? And nobody is looking, or, or paying attention?"

"There's not another Mysterio," Happy said firmly. "You got him."

"No," Peter sighed in frustration. "But there could be another bad guy out there who's ten times worse, okay? There's always somebody worse."

A beat of silence. Peter looked up to see if anyone was understanding him— Tony was the only one not looking back. His eyes were trained on the coffee table, looking almost haunted. Peter knew then that he understood, if nobody else.

"Are your nightmares about him?" May asked knowingly. "Mysterio?"

Peter opened his mouth, then sighed. "Yeah," he huffed. "They are. Sometimes."

"What did he do?" MJ asked this time. "You never talk about it."

Peter chewed on the inside of his cheek.

"You said he made you see things," MJ pressed gently. "Like nothing was real."

("I don't think you know what's real, Parker."

There was so much smoke. Thick green fog distorting his view, walls and concrete shrinking or expanding in size, ghostly whispers beside his ear that shriveled to screams as the ground fell out beneath him and he was falling down, down, down—)

"That's all he told me, too," Ned said with a frown. "That he played him the whole time. Tricked him."

(—and his world is spinning, his heart pounding out of his chest as the guilt eats away at his flesh like a million little parasites crawling through his insides, and Tony is shaking his head and yelling questions, it's so loud and Peter is so scared thinking he's done something inexcusable—)

"He made me convince him I was actually me," Happy spoke up, something sad with concern on his face. "In the Netherlands when I picked him up. You looked real bad, Pete."

("You... are so dumb," Tony chuckled.

Peter gasped for breath, his mind running along a track. "What?"

"I mean, you're smart as a whip," Tony continued, he took a step forward. It was all wrong. This wasn't the way it was supposed to happen. Peter was having a hard time keeping a grip on reality.)

"It'll make you feel better if you talk about it," May said, smiling encouragingly at him. "We're here to listen."

("Just a..." Tony's voice changed. His face changed. Beck. A shiver ran down Peter's spine and he stumbled backward, not wanting to be hurt again. "...sucker. And now? All of your friends have to die."

And suddenly, the whole side of his body buzzed. He jerked his head to the right and didn't even have the time to brace his body before—)

"He hit me with a train," Peter murmured, his ears ringing from just the memory of the screeching wheels. The blaring horn, bursting his eardrums and letting blood ooze down the side of his face. He reached up with his sleeve and wiped away at it as if it were still there. "More or less."

It took exactly ten seconds for the ringing to fade. In its place left absolute silence.

Peter blinked a few times, wiping the tears off his face and looking up again.

"Kid, what?" Tony spluttered.

"I don't know," Peter shrugged. "I was distracted, because of all the... mind-warp illusion-y stuff, and he told me he'd kill all my friends, because I— I gave him the names thinking he was— well, you."

Tony's face crumbled in horror.

"Um. Then I clocked in that I was standing on tracks. I looked to the side, and a train hit me." Peter sniffled. "Didn't have time to react or anything. It happened too quick. I wasn't— wasn't fast enough. Seems to be a common theme for me."

Somewhere, far away in Peter's mind, he's still stuck under the rubble of a warehouse. Somewhere, he never made it out. That version of himself haunted him by never learning. All this time he was still being tricked. He still wasn't fast enough. A hero's failure is a little death, and he dies, over and over and over again.

Peter heard the sound of electricity humming through the fridge, in the light fixture above them in living room, the lamp in his room across the hall— nobody said a word for a long moment.

"Beck did that?" May asked, her tone firm. Dangerous, like the time in fourth grade when a teacher gave him a bad grade on a family tree assignment that he refused to complete.

"He's dead," Happy reminded her, but his eyebrows were drawn tight. He wasn't pleased either.

"Maybe he is," Peter mumbled bitterly. "But his friends aren't. Maybe that was a trick too, and his team is just out there planning his next big show."

( "Is he..." A quick exhale, a sharp inhale. Sweat and blood dripped down the back of his neck. Peter hesitated. "Is this real?"

He stared blinkingly at the limp form in a blank suit. Quietly, the AI replied. "All illusions are down, Peter.")

MJ chewed on her bottom lip. "Is that... what your nightmares are about? Him coming back to life?"

"It's not like that," Peter sighed. "The nightmares aren't even why I've been patrolling nonstop. It isn't like before."

Before all felt like small potatoes compared to what he dealt with on a month-by-month basis. Vulture was just scraping the tip of the iceberg. Peter's fought in a war. He's been the victim of universal time-bending homicide. He's the future of heroes, he's the next generation of Avengers, people look up to him, they count on him to protect their entire world.

"I have bigger responsibilities now," he explained. "I mean, Tony, you're retired. The original Avengers are more or less disbanded, and small-time crime nowadays doesn't really go looking for 'big-time' Spider-Man. I can't afford to play pretend and just let really awful people spiral out of control when I stay home and worry about a normal seventeen year old schedule. I'm not a normal seventeen year old."

"Kid," Tony sighed.

"I really tried," Peter continued, huffing a morose laugh. "I tried to go on a summer vacation, and hang out with my friends, and just like, have a cool trip to Europe. Instead I was framed for murder in the ruins pretty much of the London Tower Bridge. So, you know."

"That wasn't your fault," MJ frowned.

Her eyebrows were creased with something so sad, and her eyes were rimmed watery red with unshed tears. Peter never wanted to see her like that, and certainly never wanted to be the reason. His whole bitterness fell away, and he reached forward to comfort her in an instant.

MJ took his outreached hand and pressed her lips to his knuckles. She gave him a small, watery smile. "It wasn't your fault, Peter. It won't always be like that."

"It could be worse," he whispered hoarsely. "It's only ever gotten worse. You guys don't get it. Except maybe Tony, but—"

"I do," Tony said quietly. "I get it, kid. It used to tear me apart inside."

Peter sniffled. "How did it get better?"

"I took breaks," Tony insisted. "The moment I finally let myself step away once in a while, and focused on the people who loved me, the people who were willing to call me out on my bullshit— that's when it got better."

"If you're always looking for the next big bad thing, you're never gonna see the opportunities for you to breathe," Happy spoke up sincerely. He tilted his head and worried his eyebrows with a rare amount of concern, the kind usually reserved for emergencies.

May nodded. "Happy's right. You're still human, Peter. All humans need help, even if they're sixteen with superpowers or fifty two with heart problems."

"Thanks, May," Tony said, eyeing her playfully.

May smiled at him. "Of course."

Peter made a soft noise of amusement. He shifted closer into Ned's side, nestling their heads together so their hair messily intertwined. "I don't think I know how to ask for help. I don't even know what would help."

"What do you mean?" MJ pursed her lips.

"I dunno," Peter huffed. "Sometimes I feel like it can't be helped. I can't change the fact I have superpowers, I can't just stop being Spider-Man. I can't go back in time to where I didn't have as much to worry about. I just gotta push through to the end of the tunnel, right?"

"That's a good metaphor," Tony said. He scratched his chin, mulling the words over, and hummed thoughtfully. "In this hypothetical tunnel situation you've created, right? The no-good baddies of New York are what's keeping you from getting to the end of it?"

Peter felt childish and silly about his rough half-formed thoughts being explained in the logical voice of Tony Stark, but he nodded anyways, as it was the closest he was going to get.

"There are too many of them, though," Tony reasoned, raising his eyebrows pointedly. "You can try to push through all you want, but everyday criminal families grow and they're pushing back at you, so you'll never make a step forward."

Peter opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "...Yeah, that's my— That's what I've been saying. That's my big problem. Because those are really bad guys and—"

"But if your goal is to get to the end of this tunnel," Tony pressed on. "And you're trying to push through this whole sea of mob bosses and fish-bowl-helmets and aliens all alone, not able to make a step forward, how are you gonna get there?"

Peter silently chewed on his bottom lip, not finding a good excuse to argue, or rather, being too tired to do so in the first place.

"For now, though," May took over. She softened her expression, smiling gently at him. "How about you go and take your suit off for the night, and maybe try not to patrol the rest of the weekend?"

Peter tensed instinctively, a siege of protectiveness in his body at the thought of relinquishing something as personal as Spider-Man for even a weekend... it was like a second skin; a whole half of his identity.

He looked back over at his best friends in the entire world, and saw the hope in their eyes of getting back the person they loved, the person that Peter believed he couldn't be anymore... and he relented.

"How about we..." Peter trailed off. MJ and Ned were looking at him with their full, undivided attention. He smiled nervously. "...have a movie night, or something? If you guys aren't busy, or—"

"Yes," Ned cut in immediately. "Absolutely. I'm never busy."

(An unsaid, "not for you.")

"I'd love a movie night," MJ said. She had a small smile on her face, but she looked proud, as if Peter had just done something remarkable, like created the fabric of a supernova in just his hands, or painted each wave and ripple of that in the Pacific Ocean.

Happy cleared his throat. "I guess we'll just get going then."

"Thank you," Peter said first, rushing the words out. He stood up and rubbed the palms of his hands over his thighs. "I know I'm not the easiest to deal with, and I stress you all out, but I— I really am grateful to know you have my back when I... don't."

Tony stood up from the couch and reached out for him. He brought Peter in with a tight hug, cradling his neck with one fatherly hand and running his thumb over the loose curls at the nape.

"We're here for you, kid," he murmured in Peter's ear, and then gave him one last tight squeeze before letting go. "Let us know if you ever need to just breathe for a moment, alright?"

Peter nodded.

He exhaled, began the process of relearning how to breathe.