a/n: this isn't even that long but mannn i don't even want to discuss how hard this was to write,, anyways how r u guys lemme know what you've all been up to!! for me personally i played the last of us again twice in preparation for pedro's new show, read tons of mdzs fics, got diagnosed with severe anemia, and have been working on 💛finals💛

Spooktober 31: Stillness

The wind was rattling against the windows hard enough that Tony could have been afraid they'd shatter.

They wouldn't, of course. He'd invested enough funds into the structural integrity of the compound where the only way it'd so much as crack would be some extinction-level attack. That's the sort of thing someone thought about when developing some off-hand militant group of misfits like The Avengers.

Speaking of—

Peter. Peter Parker, the wannabe superhero, the teenager with bandaids stickily pasted on his forehead, bruises on his chin— was currently in a slumber that was unlike Tony'd ever seen from him before.

Which he hadn't. Seen him sleep, that is.

The kid was always bursting with energy, y'know? He was just like that, had been since Tony met him; a winding baby jackrabbit that hopped from room to room and chewed on whatever he could find his hands on, usually granola bars or fruitsnacks, or whatever Tony now kept stocked at the bar in his lab, and he just— he never really got tired.

(And a voice in Tony's head said: well, that's not really true, is it? You've seen him tired. He gets tired when he's angry— really tuckers him out.

The only two-sided argument they've had, stood at the top of the building and overlooking the remains of the Staten Island Ferry, and Tony had watched in real-time how fast the energy drained from him once the fight left his voice. The exhaustion that it left behind, for him to be angry.

For a hero, the kid really wasn't built for fighting.)

Anyway, he was sleeping now. Curled up with his cheek pressed against his hoodie sleeve and the zipper of his jacket, which no doubt was going to leave a pressured print against his cheek when he got up. Every so often he would furrow his brows and make a distressed murmur before going quiet again.

Tony was, admittedly, beside himself.

When Peter came in today, he seemed fine. Didn't look as though he had slept great, but he was a teenager, and he was also a teenager with the part time night job of fighting crime, so, he never saw Peter without eyebags to begin with. The point being, nothing was out of the ordinary. He sat down, they worked on repairing bugs in the suit's code, and Peter told him about his suggestions for upgrades they could make.

By the time he was going to head home, they realized quickly that the rain and the storm hit pretty hard, too much October ice on the roads for it to be safe to drive him home. So, May was given a quick call, and she said he could stay over until the weather lightened up.

That was two hours ago. Maybe the kid just wanted to take a nap. Totally no need to worry.

Tony pulled his eyes away from Peter as he went quiet again, and resumed his digital schematics testing on the tech he'd been lingeringly tinkering with.

The wind rattled again— the windows creaking against their frames. Trees on the property sweeped against each other, loud enough to hear from inside.

Peter shivered from his spot against the window, mumbling something incoherent and anxious.

Tony glanced up again from his work. A terse frown flattened his lips. Finally, he said quietly, "FRIDAY, turn the temp up, please. How about an even 70? Little high, but I think the itsy bitsy spider is chilly."

"Sure, Boss."

"Thanks, honey."

The tinkering resumed. He tried pointedly not to pay attention to the sleeping teenager in his space, or to think about silly cliches like how much younger Peter looked in his sleep, or how he almost looked sad. Or to remember the amount of times he felt safe enough to do that in his old man's workshop— which, for general reference, was a whopping count of zero.

Yeah. He definitely avoided all those thoughts. He was lucky Peter wasn't the type to hold grudges, and that he was happy enough to be working with Tony again and to get his suit back rather than drag their huge blow-up argument up from the depths of the murky waters where it drowned.

They were even, supposedly— Peter got his suit back, Tony's jet didn't get stolen. All square and fair, or whatever the youth said these days.

That did not mean that Tony could continue to project his ideas about fatherhood on him, though. That was staying locked up where it belonged. He wasn't Peter's dad. Peter wasn't his kid. Etcetera etcetera, the world moved on, and so did T—

"No," Peter mumbled, twisting with a whimper. He pushed his weight against the creaking windows as another hefty gust of wind blew by. "No..." his speech simmered back down to incoherency, Tony didn't catch much, only something about crushing.

Tony, his hands, his breath, his expression, went still. He slowly moved the hologram he was working with to the side, then began to weigh his options.

The one his moral compass was currently hating was to just... ignore him. Let whatever nightmare Peter was in, if it really was one, continue. Tony wasn't a hundred-percent on the lines of his place here, and he wasn't going to risk his very fragile reputation of being the cool and aloof billionaire for what could be nothing.

Also, he didn't— he didn't even—

"FRIDAY?" Tony voiced awkwardly, his voice coming out stunted and dry. He shrugged it off. Sniffed casually. "Is it normal to wake up someone else's kid from a nightmare?"

"..."

A long pause from FRIDAY was always a good start to an answer. There's definitely some mutual understanding between them right now that very blatantly stated the ridiculousness of... everything Tony was. Tony scrubbed a hand over his eyes, but held his ground.

"... It is not advised to wake someone from a night terror," FRIDAY said instead. She sounded smug for an AI and Tony, quite frankly, didn't like that one bit. "Instead it is recommended to let them wake naturally and provide reassurances when they do, if needed."

Tony clenched his fingers and relaxed them. He glanced back over at Peter. "Great. Cool."

His moral compass eased only slightly with the knowledge that the best thing he could do for the kid was to just be an asshole. He was good at that. It was hard to screw up the bare basics of his fundamental structure, after all.

He watched as the kid made another painful noise, something choked between breaths, a stifled inhale. Peter's hands made a white-knuckled fist into the fabric of his sweater, just over his chest. Like he was clutching at his heart, but in the lethargy and desperation that nightmares usually gave.

The wind rocked against the walls, and Peter shivered harder despite the temperature that was making Tony break a sweat in his greasy t-shirt. To top it off, he started hearing the continued muffled noises of the teenager taking pitiful half-gasps of air, suddenly he found that being an asshole was a lot harder than usual. He's on the verge of just (accidentally) dropping a book, a wrench, something on the floor and (accidentally) startling the kid awake. (On accident.)

Then it happened— a growling roll of thunder, booming loudly enough to shake Peter out of his sleep. The kid leapt up as if he'd been victim to the following lightning bolt's electric shock, yelping and then immediately shoving his arms up to shield his face from the window.

Time stood still like that for a moment: Peter, shaking with braced arms, his eyes clenched tight and teeth in a grimace, breath held in his throat with a desperate chokehold as if he was trying to hold onto it, as if he was expecting it to be knocked out of him at any moment.

Tony hesitated. It was a weird feeling. Like the world was crumbling in pieces in front of him in slow motion, and this was the few seconds of clarity where he could decide what to do about it.

He could run from the devastation, because that was always the easiest option, but it wasn't really an option for him, was it? He's a Stark. Known for taking the harder option, making it easier, making it bend and give way like hot iron in a careful welder's hands. Known for fixing things. Making them right.

So, Peter's shaky exhale through his nose as his eyes flicker hesitantly up towards the window, and Tony's made up his mind.

"Hey," Tony cleared his throat, leaned forward in his chair. "You were sleeping pretty heavy there, huh?"

Peter quickly looked over, eyebrows creasing in surprise. It must have been a pretty damn bad nightmare. He had a fuzzy look in his eyes, like he hadn't quite confirmed to himself where he was or why he was there— the kid swallowed thickly, his mouth opening and closing around his unsettled breaths.

"You're alright," Tony supplied, as helpful as he could.  "Just a dream. Take a breather."

Peter blinked a few times, glanced over his surroundings. He then let out a suffering sigh as he scrubbed a hand over his eyes. "Geez."

"You with me?"

"Yeah," Peter muttered. He didn't look up from where he had hidden his face in his hands. "Sorry."

"It's—"

The thunder rolled again, and the flinch that Peter gave did not go unnoticed.

"It's okay, kiddo," Tony finished softly, a frown set on his face. "Take your time. I'm not going anywhere— unless you want me to. Then, you know, I'll get lost, and—"

"No," Peter said immediately. He sniffed. "No, you should stay. It's your lab, I'm not gonna kick you out."

"Um," Peter tried. He pulled his head up— his cheeks red, his eyes watery and blinking quickly as if it would fix it, his nose runny. "What time is it?"

Tony flicked his wrist up. "A little after six. Storm kept you from getting home earlier, sorry about that."

Peter huffed a dry laugh. "Well, I forgive you. It's not like you could control the weather."

Tony hummed.

They fell into a quiet lull. Tony leaned back in his chair, thoughtfully watching as Peter collected himself. It was an entire process, the way the kid slowly took over his regulating breaths, the way the full-body flinches from every bout of thunder slowly dwindled to minuscule twitches.

"Not a fan of storms?" Tony finally said. He tried to keep his voice patient and light, hopefully an approachable invitation to an open-ended conversation.

Peter shrugged, making a grimacing noise. "I guess not."

He looked like he wanted to say more, so for once Tony kept quiet, urging him to go on with a slight nod.

"It's just," Peter shrugged again, all fidgety. He tilted his head back, scratched his jaw. "I don't know. Loud noises. Makes me think the building will collapse. Or...  or something."

And there it was again— that complicated weight settling on his chest. He wanted Peter to know he could say anything to him. He wanted Peter to know that he'd be safe with him; that a million buildings could collapse and Tony would still claw through the rubble and concrete till his fingers were bleeding and scraped raw if it meant that Peter'd come crawling out the other side.

He didn't say that, though. He actually thought if he had said that he would die of a pulmonary. A stroke. Whatever. Something would happen, his body would go into shock and then it would be over in a matter of minutes, he just knew it.

Instead he got up and wandered over to the bar. Grabbed an apple juice box from the mini-fridge.

"Well, I know it probably won't do much," he said, ripping the plastic from the straw and sticking it into the top of the box. He passed the juice to Peter. "But if this building ever collapses, it won't be from a storm. I'm a better engineer than that."

(There he goes again, making it about him, because it was easier— it was what he knew how to do.)

Peter took the apple juice box gratefully, and had something so serious on his face that Tony nearly faltered. But, then the kid nodded, looking down and sipping on the juice.

"I know," he said quietly. "I trust you."

At the gift of those words, that carefully wrapped sentiment, warmth bloomed in his chest like his mother's purple hydrangea bushes in the spring. Like mutual understanding, like deep appreciation, like gratitude.

Thank you, kiddo.

"Thank you," Peter added. A beat passed. He lifted the juice. "For this, by the way."

A smile quirked at Tony's lip. He nodded, turning in his chair and saddling up closer to his desk. "It's nothing."

He sniffed and waved Peter closer. "Now come on, I think we've got some time to spare before the storm slows down. Come help me with this."

The wind was rattling against the windows hard enough that Tony could have been afraid they'd shatter.

But he wasn't.

(And neither was Peter.)