Spooktober 17: Forget

Tony considered himself an "above-average" light sleeper. He never really stopped to consider how long he'd been like that. It was more of a gradual understanding that he came to, that if there was any kind of sound, even if it was one that his unconscious body made, he would rise up like a feral cat and start planning his defense.

Maybe it started after he was kidnapped, which was well over fifteen years ago now, but sometimes still seemed like yesterday, as most of his mistakes often did.

Maybe it started even younger, with shattered glass bottles and yelling that rattled through walls, or the smell of that damn cologne nearing, the sound of expensive shoes echoing on wooden tile, on asphalt, on carpet—

Nevertheless, he is a light sleeper. It's gotten better over the years, with less unfamiliar noises that would echo throughout the night. Owls yearlong, frogs in the spring, cicadas in the summer, the gentle creaks and groans of a house settling in its space, that had all become natural to him by about the first year they moved in.

Now he woke up to nightmares, first and foremost. His, of course, which dredge up acid from his stomach and tears from his eyes, and a cold sweat that sticks to his clothes and hair— but also Morgan's.

His daughter, who had nightmares about as often as any other kid (Tony researches religiously about anything that could possibly be out of the ordinary, anything he may have done wrong) sometimes woke from her nightmares with quiet tears— and Tony would subsequently wake to furniture being gently knocked around by a sleepy girl trying to get to mom and dad.

That's what he assumed to be happening tonight, when he gets woken up by a soft thud in the hallway.

Tony pushed himself out of bed, wincing at the pull it gave on his 'arm', all synthetic, but the connecting joint still in the long process healing. He glanced at Pepper, still fast asleep beside him, and let himself feel in love for a moment longer before he left the room.

He stepped quietly on the wooden panels of the floor, opening the door slowly as to not startle Morgan who would be on the other side. There's a darkness he has to squint through in the hallway, all shadows and grey splotchy objects of space where furniture should lay— but immediately he could tell that it was indeed not his daughter who had woken him up tonight.

Tony flicked the hallway lamp on. A dim, orange light cast over the scene. Peter's lanky figure is swaying silently on his feet, his head tilted downwards as he looked intensely at the floor.

"You alright?" Tony asked immediately, his voice groggy. He's already scanning the kid for injuries— a limp, maybe, or some kind of twisted limb— but nothing is sticking out in any odd places or swollen.

"Mh," Peter grunted. "Fixing it."

Tony blinked the sleep out of his eyes and made a face of displeasure as he looked over at Peter's late-night workings.

Peter didn't stay over at the cabin all the time. Maybe once or twice every few weeks, which is still far more than Tony imagined he could have had before, but still wasn't enough to settle that old, parental spark in his chest that cried out, as it had for so, so long, about missing him.

He was... adjusting still, to everything. Tony understood. The whole scenario in of itself was impossibly difficult from any end of it. Losing someone like that for five years, it drove Tony to an emptiness that he wouldn't wish on anyone except those who caused it. (And Thanos was gone. Killed twice over. It still never feels like enough.)

But for Peter, it was a different breed of horror. Different beast. He couldn't imagine how it would feel, thinking you've died, only to wake up missing a chunk of something as valuable as time. A chunk from everyone else's life gone, with you left to try and understand the pieces. Like a coma designed personally by Hell.

Simply put, it was difficult for him to be over here. Tony wasn't stupid, he knew that. He would look at the kid, sometimes, and just see something strayed. Lost, like he didn't know where he fit in. Pepper said it would take time before the teenager would feel like he belonged in the world again, and as much as Tony hated the honesty in it, Pepper was always right. He knew patience was the only medicine for this.

Being patient didn't stop him from worrying. Which is what he was doing now, of course: worrying if Peter had a nightmare, or if he couldn't sleep and was trying to distract himself with meaningless tasks around the house.

"Well, whatever you did worked wonders, I think it's fixed," Tony said gently, looking over the completely unchanged vase. "Mind telling me what you're doing out of bed? Whatever prompted this midnight excursion, huh?"

"It's," Peter started, his speech stilted. He frowned deeply with concentration, then looked up at Tony. "You're not leaving without me."

Tony paused. Carefully, he put one hand on Peter's shoulder, another staying at his chin to keep him from moving around. His mind full of concern as he took stock of Peter's dazed, distant, glassy-eyed expression, the way his eyelashes fluttered slowly, the sleepy turning of his cheeks. His pupils weren't crazy dilated, they weren't red or bloodshot any more than they usually were with Peter's unpredictable sleep schedule. Tony mentally crossed off drugs or alcohol, to an embarrassing bout of relief.

"No," he answered, tilting his head to the side. "I'm not leaving without you, kiddo. Why would you think that?"

Peter swayed again on his feet, tilting forward and looking a second away from swan diving. Tony's other arm shot up to steady him, immediately wincing from the pain that resulted from such a sharp movement.

"Mgh," Peter muttered. He dropped his head into Tony's chest with a thud, sweaty curls of hair pressed against a faded MIT shirt. He didn't answer the question, instead deciding to snuggle himself closer, lean his full weight against Tony's side until he was slumped over and making muffled sleepy sounds into Tony's shoulder.

Tony's hand came up to cradle the kid's head instinctively. He frowned, running his fingers through his hair and untangling the locks with a distracted diligence. A thought came to him. "Peter, are you awake right now?"

Peter pulled away from Tony and stumbled away with movements that weren't so different from a marionette on strings— clumsy, up-and-down steps, with the illusion that something as thin and slight as a string was all that held his weight.

He stopped at the end of the hallway, fully turned around, and stared at Tony with wide, expectant eyes.

Tony confirmed in his head that, yes, Peter was sleep-walking. He also confirmed that yes, he would be going on whatever adventure the sleeping teenager wanted him to apparently go on. He followed him down the hallway.

'Down the hallway' turned into 'down the stairs', which Peter was surprisingly graceful at navigating. Peter had stopped again, next to the fridge, and just stood there without making a sound.

Tony quietly took a seat at the counter as he watched, making sure Peter wouldn't be getting himself into any kind of danger, and smiled with amusement as Peter's eyes drifted closed, then opened again a few moments later.

Peter opened the fridge.

"Hm," Tony hummed. "You hungry?"

"Gotta." Peter reached in, then pulled out a bottle of yellow mustard, turning it over in his hands, and then walking back to the counter to drop it there. He went back to the open fridge, reached his hand in again. Pulled out a vanilla pudding cup, the ones Pep bought for the kids' snack times, and dropped it in the same place.

"Mustard and pudding, huh? That one of May's recipes?"

Peter ignored him  in favor of walking back to the fridge. He retrieved the entire jar of mayonnaise, then trudged over to the silverware jar. Tony hid a smile in the crook of his fingers.

Imagine his surprise when the kid dawdled back over to very solemnly hand him said mayonnaise jar, as well as a comically large spoon that Tony didn't even remember they had.

"Oh, for me?" Tony asked. He took the mayonnaise, setting it on the counter. "Thank you so much. How did you know this was my favourite?"

"Best," Peter responded. "Best at the job. I won. And... And taxes."

Tony put up a valiant effort not to chuckle. "You'll have to tell me all about that when you wake up, then."

Peter nodded seriously, his eyes half-lidded as he sat down next to Tony at the counter. He opened the bottle of mustard and turned it over, for some mysterious and unknown reason began to shake it, and then put it back down on its side.

He honestly should be studied in a lab, Tony thought. Nobody else's kid was as interesting as this. And if they were, then no they weren't. Tony just simply refused to believe it.

"I have to buy alligators," Peter mumbled, picking up the cup of vanilla pudding and fumbling clumsily with the wrapper.

Tony carefully plucked the pudding cup away from him and set it farther away. He didn't know too much about sleepwalking, so he figured it was better safe than sorry on whether or not Peter would or should even be able to eat it while still... asleep.

"Oh, really?" He asked. "Alligators?"

Peter stared offensively at his empty hands, and looked up at Tony with his mouth wide open and his nose screwed up in irritation.

"Oh, ok. Didn't like that," Tony noted. "Well, how about I promise you, when you wake up you can have all the pudding you want."

Peter's eyebrows furrowed and he turned to his hands, still looking wildly offended at the apparent theft. His frown deepened. "No..."

Tony stared uselessly. After a moment, he patted Peter on the hand. "Sorry."

Peter grunted. Then he gasped. He stood abruptly, the chair squeaking against the tile. "Uh oh."

"Uh oh?" Tony's heart skipped a beat. He scans over the kid again, thinking maybe he missed something—

"I'm late," Peter said cryptically. "Gonna... got to go."

With that, he started at an alarmingly fast pace for the front door. Tony swore and slid as quickly out of the chair as he could, wincing as he did so.

He followed Peter down the hallway, and then Peter just— he was pacing back and forth, it seemed, whispering under his breath in a sleep-addled panic. He had grabbed a photo frame from the shelf set up at the entrance and was holding it in his hands.

Tony put a gentle hand on his elbow. "Hey, buddy," he tried. "How 'bout we get you back to bed?"

Peter jerked away from him, and Tony moved like he had hurt the kid by accident, his hands lurching back in alarm. Then Peter stalled, and swayed again on his feet. All that could be heard for a moment was the kid's quiet breathing.

Then, so quietly, he spoke. "Wait for me?"

Tony blinked rapidly as he processed the words. When he realized he was being asked a question directly, Peter's glassy eyes boring into his, he frowned. "Wait for what?"

Regardless, the answer was yes. Yes, always yes. Should anything happen, he would wait. Until both of their bodies have been reclaimed by the earth, Tony would still be there, waiting for his kid to come home to him. It's been proven, written in the stars with the destruction of alien ships and engine exhaust, that he would wait. Five years. Ten years. Ten hundred years. Forever.

Still, Peter's sleeping face looked so heartbroken now, and he whispered his next words just loud enough for Tony's old ears to catch them.

"For me to catch up."

It's so painfully innocent. He's pleading, he's desperate, even in his sleep.

Tony glanced down at the photo frame Peter still held in his hands— catching the glimpse of the two of them, five years younger, five years closer.

"Kid," Tony choked out.

Peter pressed the photo frame to his own chest, hugging it tight. He pulled away from Tony, slipping around him and trudging back up the stairs.

Tony's hand lay cold in the air, but after a brief moment of reining his tears back in, he followed Peter to the cabin's second floor.

The hallway was empty, but Peter's bedroom door was cracked open. Tony quietly pushed it open, and Peter was standing dazedly in the middle of it.

"Something new on the itinerary?" Tony asked hoarsely, his throat tight, his heart hurting.

Peter seemed to jump out of his skin, whipping his head around in alarm, and oh. This wasn't how asleep-Peter acted. He would know, as they've just been introduced fairly recently.

"Well, hello there. Good morning," Tony said, leaning against the doorframe. He made himself sound amused as possible.

"What is happening," Peter whispered loudly, his eyes wide. He still was hugging the damn photo to his chest. "Was I asleep standing up? Like a... like a horse?"

"Oh, you weren't just standing," Tony informed. Knowing now that Peter didn't seem to remember any of the events that happened while he slept, he gave him an easy smile. "You went on a whole rodeo, cowboy."

Peter's face went red, and he looked momentarily horrified. "What?"

"Yep. House-round trip, I'm afraid." Tony casually took the photo from him, and Peter, who was still dazed, let it go without hardly noticing. "You should get some actual rem sleep now. Maybe I'll invest in some bells around your door handle."

Peter hid his face in his hands and groaned. "That's so embarrassing. Please tell me you didn't get photos."

Tony smiled, running a hand through Peter's hair. "Hm, no, not this time. Next time for sure though. It's about time I started a new album, I think."

Peter leaned into the touch like moldable dough, which Tony took as his cue to gently guide him back to bed. They scuttled across the room, Peter noticeably more clumsily than him, and Tony lifted the covers.

(It seemed asleep-Peter either had the courtesy to make the bed after he got out of it, or, the more depressing possibility, awake-Peter had fallen asleep without getting into the bed at all.)

"Can we just—" Peter shook his head miserably. "—forget this? Ever happened? Like, all of it?"

"Hmm, let me think about it." Tony tapped his chin thoughtfully. "No."

He played it up like a joke, because that's what they're used to, the two of them. Banter, the back-and-forth, the easiness of it all. The photo frame burned in Tony's hand.

No, he wouldn't forget tonight. And tomorrow morning, once his kid has gotten a good eight hours, and a good meal, they'll talk about it. They'll keep talking about it until Tony is 100% sure that he gets it, the lengths he'd go for him, the hardships he'd endure to keep him safe— the time he'd lose for Peter to be safe and sound and himself, just the way he is.

That, he would wait for him.

But, he didn't have anything to wait for.