Archive of Our Own

Tony doesn’t realize anything is wrong, at first. 

To give himself a little credit, he’s slightly distracted by the fact that he’s, you know, alive. 

“I’m alive,” he informs Rhodey, blankly, from his hospital bed.  

“You are,” Rhodey agrees, his smile edged with disbelief. “We still don’t know what the fuck you did, but you’re alive. You’re a hard man to kill, Tony.” 

Tony also doesn’t know what the fuck Tony did. The last thing he remembers is dying, slowly and in excruciating, agonizing pain, knowing he had at least managed to defeat Thanos once and for all - then he had blinked, and everything went black and dark and empty- 

–and then he had blinked again, and now he’s here. Here, in a bed in the Avengers Compound, apparently dragged in from where they’d found his miraculously breathing body in the backyard, with Rhodey sitting next to him looking shell shocked, like someone just killed and revived his puppy in quick succession.  

(That, Tony supposes, makes him the puppy.) 

(He thinks maybe he should be having an existential freak out at some point. He puts it on the to-do list.) 

“I hear it’s my best quality,” Tony says. He tries to sit up and immediately decides it’s a bad idea when his vision goes double. “Aww, are those tears in your eyes?” 

“You know, the public doesn’t know you’re alive yet,” Rhodey says. “Not too late to put you back in the ground.” 

It’s good to be back. 

Halfway through the world’s most half-assed game of poker - Tony’s pretty sure that he’s being babysat to make sure he doesn’t fall out of bed and crack his head open  - Strange comes in, waves his hands around, does some bullshit, and confirms to Tony - in an unnecessarily long and extremely roundabout way - that he also has no idea what the fuck happened, but Tony does seem to be a) Tony and b) alive. He hazards a vague guess about something something Infinity Stones something.  

“Good enough for me,” Tony says. 

Then it’s just him and Rhodey again. Rhodey’s the only one here. Pepper’s been out in California for the past few years, apparently, running SI from the old headquarters, and her plane back into New York hasn’t landed yet.  

“Heartbroken, couldn’t bear to be in the city without me, of course,” Tony remarks, as if she hadn’t been the one to break up with him what is now, no matter which timeline you reckon by, many years ago. 

Happy’s driving up. Caught in traffic. There’s a handful of Avengers in the Compound, but they all wanted to let Rhodey talk to him first. Ease him back into things. 

The right move, obviously. All good, all great, except- 

“Two pair. Hey, where’s the kid? Has anyone told him yet?”  

Peter’s - he must be in college, now, and that’s a weird thought. Probably down at MIT (or, hell, who knows? Maybe he’s halfway across the country studying equine science in Iowa, far be it from Tony to force him into the box he was interested in at age sixteen) (but hopefully he’s at MIT), so even if they told him as soon as they knew Tony was going to pull through he still wouldn’t have had time to make it up here yet. Maybe he’s on his way right now. Maybe he’ll burst through the door in just a minute, eyes lit up- 

“Who?” Rhodey asks. He lays his cards out. “Three of a kind.” 

Tony blinks. 

“Uh, the kid? Peter?” he says. Rhodey shrugs as he collects the pot of pennies and paperclips, clearly not recognizing the name. Something cold and tight starts to build in the pit of Tony’s stomach. “Peter Parker? Spider-Man?” 

“Oh, right, yeah, Spider-Man,” Rhodey says, sweeping up the cards from the bed and casually reshuffling the deck. “New York’s biggest celebrity now, huh? Sorry, Tones, I didn’t know you knew him. He’s been keeping to himself - I didn’t think anyone knew his identity. I don’t think we’re really his type of crowd.” 

As if Rhodey hadn’t been there, when Tony had gotten back from Titan. Half dead and out of his mind and seeing his failure playing out behind his eyelids again, again, again. As if the name means nothing to him. Means nothing to Tony. 

“Rhodey,” Tony says, panic creeping up his throat, “if this is a joke I’m not laughing. Where’s Peter?”  

“Tony,” Rhodey says, slowly, pausing the shuffle, dead serious and like he’s concerned for Tony’s sanity, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

Tony spends the rest of the day trying to a) finagle some of his personal effects from where they’ve apparently been kept in storage and b) not lose his goddamn mind. Finally he gets obnoxious enough that a nurse hands him a dusty old tablet and phone. 

“Good to see you again, boss,” FRIDAY says, as she’s powered up and he links back into his old systems. He might have programmed her to say that, but it’s still nice to hear.  

That night, alone in his hospital room, he asks her about Peter, and she tells him she doesn’t know who he is referring to. She pulls up every Peter Parker in the continental United States, all seven hundred and seventy of them, and he looks through every single one. 

His Peter Parker does not exist. There are no school records, no social media profiles, no family photos. No hospital records or birth certificate or social security number. 

May Parker exists. Existed. Peter’s friends Ned and MJ exist. There are pictures of them online, laughing together, hugging at high school graduation, awkward family photos at MIT move-in. And nowhere, nowhere in the digital records of any of these people is a single sign of Peter Parker.  

Spider-Man exists. 

Spider-Man exists, but his suit is different - Tony’s never seen it before. His suit is different, he’s a street-level hero who seems more like that demon-themed weirdo in Hell’s Kitchen than an Avenger, and no one on Earth seems to know who he is. Tony’s systems don’t know who he is. He looks through his files and there are blueprints and notes and diagrams for Spidey, sure, right next to designs for Steve’s shield and Clint’s arrows - and none of it, anywhere, gives the slightest indication that Tony has ever actually met Spider-Man in his life, much less knows who’s under the mask. 

Tony realizes, with an abrupt start, that he’s clutching the railing of the bed so hard his knuckles are bone white. He grabs the glass of water beside the bed and chugs it.  

He closes his eyes. He swallows. He tries not to feel sick. 

He could dispatch an army of drones tomorrow to blanket the city of New York and learn everything there possibly is to know about Spider-Man. But he doesn’t need to, doesn’t want to, because the answer is spelled out in front of his face, and he doesn’t think he could stand being confronted with proof.  

Spider-Man exists, but Peter Parker does not -  

Therefore, ipso facto, Spider-Man is not Peter Parker.  

And isn’t that all there is to it? 

So. 

Tony’s somehow woken up in the wrong universe. 

It’s the only explanation that makes sense, or at least more sense than everyone in the world collectively deciding to gaslight Tony over the existence of one specific person as a welcome back prank. He’s somewhere just slightly to the left, nearly identical to his own world but missing the small yet crucial existence of the seven hundred and seventy-first Peter Parker.  

It’s fine.  

It’s fixable.  

Tony can fix this. 

Or, well - he can swallow his pride, make his first stop when he’s back in the city Doctor Strange’s Magical Mystery Tour, and ask him to fix it.  

“I’m not going to ‘fix it’ because there’s nothing to fix. You’re not in the wrong universe, Stark,” Strange says. Behind him, a minion is scrubbing something sticky looking and fluorescent green off of the floor of his foyer.  

“Except clearly I am,” Tony says. “And how would you even know?” 

“Trust me, the multiverse does not like it when people are in the wrong place,” Strange says. “If you weren’t meant to be here, it would be obvious by now. I’m not going to upset the delicate balance of the multiverse to satisfy your curiosity.” 

“Then how exactly do you explain the fact that I remember a different reality than anybody else?” 

Strange hesitates. His expression turns… almost sympathetic. “You know that I used to be a neurosurgeon. The brain is a… complex organ. There are cases of coma patients having such vivid dreams that-” 

“Yeah,” Tony interrupts. “Thanks, Doctor Oz.” 

So, Strange is useless. 

It doesn’t matter.  

Tony’s alive, and he has his suit, and his lab, and his bots, and his AI, and his friends, and the Avengers (except somehow he doesn’t actually have any of those things, since clearly they are not his, because he is in the wrong place) - so there is nothing standing in between him and upsetting the delicate balance of the multiverse except time and effort, two things he currently happens to have unlimited amounts of.  

He moves back into the Tower and gets a truckload of obscenely expensive furniture delivered to his empty penthouse, smiles and nods during everyone’s congrats-on-not-being-dead-I-guess visits, and none of it matters because he’s planning on getting the fuck out of Dodge as soon as he knows how.  

(He does, eventually, have the existential freak out.) 

“Boss, there’s someone outside on the helipad,” FRIDAY says. 

“What? Who is it? Vanguard for another alien invasion?” he asks around a yawn, filling up his mug with coffee and not overly concerned. He may be in the wrong universe, but he’s pretty sure that Bizarro Tony’s security protocols for actual supervillains trying to break into his penthouse are slightly more intense than ‘FRIDAY politely informing him he has an unwanted visitor.’ 

It’s seven in the morning and Tony has spent the past thirty six hours getting his lab back into working order. He is really hoping it’s not a supervillain trying to break into his penthouse.  

“It’s Spider-Man.” He knows, he knows they’re not the same, but the name is still a shock to his system. “He’s not in my systems,” she adds, dubiously. Not designated as either friend or foe, she means. Weird. 

“That’s fine, I’ll talk to him myself,” Tony manages. 

There’s a brief flicker of hope in his chest as he walks over in measured steps, even though he knows there shouldn’t be. FRIDAY pulls up the footage from outside, of Spider-Man perched on the railing, mask on, staring up at Tony’s windows. 

It confirms: his suit is different. Not just different, but distinctly not anything Tony’s made. It’s not at all like the high tech suits Tony built for Peter, certainly not made of nanites like the Iron Spider was. In fact, if Tony can tell in a glance, there’s not a single piece of Stark technology, of anything he ever made for Peter or even helped work on, on his body. It’s got a homemade feel to it, but far more sophisticated than the red and blue pajamas and goggles Peter had been swinging around Queens in, back in the day. 

Not mine. Not mine, not mine, not mine.  

It’s on the tip of Tony’s tongue - who are you? What the fuck is going on? And have you ever happened to meet a kid from Queens, about yea high? Brightest mind you’ll ever see?  

But he can’t bring himself to hear what the answer might be. 

“Spidey, you’re blocking my view,” he says instead as he walks outside, casual. He puts one hand in his pocket and takes a drink out of his mug. “To what do I owe the pleasure? You know I still charge for autographs.” 

Spidey looks at him. He cocks his head to the side. He’s as still as a statue - or, more aptly, a particularly colorful gargoyle - staring at Tony with the blank white eyes of his mask. 

Then, without a word, he turns and jumps off the building, swinging away into the distance. 

So that’s that, then. 

“Would you like me to whitelist him, Boss?” 

For a moment, Tony’s eyes track the rapidly disappearing blur in the distance, wondering yet again who this Spider-Man is, if it’s not Peter. 

“No,” he says. “It’s fine.” 

Then he turns around and goes back to his lab. 

He makes Happy give him back DUM-E and sets him up in his old charging station. (This might not be his DUM-E, exactly, but it’s the principle of the thing, and the lab is too quiet without him.) Happy, who was dating May Parker (which, by the way, what?) and yet categorically denies ever meeting or even hearing of a Peter Parker in his life, and seems slightly concerned that Tony has a few screws loose for asking. 

“Spider-Man? Yeah, didn’t he, uh - he helped you all out with Thanos, right? That’s how I met- how I met May, actually. He was working with SI on some local fundraisers after the blip and we did one for FEAST. Nice guy. Didn’t talk to him much.” 

It unsettles Tony, more than any of the others did. Happy might have grumbled, but- Tony had seen the look on his face, when he had learned Peter hadn’t survived the Snap.  

(Tony thinks, once or twice, that if he didn’t have something to fix he doesn’t know what the fuck he’d be doing with himself right now, in a world that no longer needs him. A world capable of rebuilding itself from the Blip without him. Superheroes popping up so fast they don’t have enough room to store them all. 

He thinks, once or twice, that he’s just insane.  

But he can’t- he remembers- he remembers - he remembers Peter turning to ash in his hands - he remembers a picture frame above his sink and five long, long years- 

Is this the tradeoff? He wonders at one point, staring at the holograms surrounding his desk, dead end after dead end. The universe’s idea of playing fair? One life for another, he gets to come back but they take someone away for balance?  

He nearly killed himself bending spacetime until it snapped in half and then did kill himself against Thanos, and this is what he gets in return? 

I never would have taken that deal. Never. Never.  

He rejects the idea. He must have- he screwed something up, messing around with the timelines like that to defeat Thanos, and whatever higher power spat him back out from the garbage bin of dead souls must have gotten a little - confused. Sent him to the wrong place.  

He just needs to figure it out.) 

They get him, somehow, to do an interview. Apparently when Tony stays away from the cameras too long it makes people concerned.   

“But only so you’ll stop looking at me like I’m about to pull a Howard Hughes, honeybear,” Tony says. He’ll do a solid for Bizarro Tony.  

“And, finally, Mr. Stark - what’s your opinion on Spider-Man?” 

“What, our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man? Big fan, A plus. Love his work.” 

“Really? What about the incident involving Mysterio and stolen Stark Industries technology?” 

Mysterio, Jesus, what a name. The guy probably wears a cape, too.  

“No idea. If you’ll recall I was dead at the time, but I’ll look him up. But as for Spidey-”  

He pauses.  

“You know, someone- someone I deeply respect once turned down a spot on the Avengers, because he told me that somebody’s gotta look out for the little guy instead. And despite what any of these jackals are saying, I think Spider-Man is doing that.” 

“Boss.” 

“Mmmm?” Tony says, idly. He takes his glasses off and rubs his temple with the palm of his hand. He minimizes his browser, dismissing the article he’d just finished, and sees that it’s nearly midnight. For the past few days now he’s been in the weeds of the truly wacky shit that’s been published on multiverse theory, and he can’t tell if any of it at all is helpful.  

“There’s an intruder outside on the helipad. Again.” 

Tony sits up. 

“Spidey again?” 

“Yes - no. I… don’t know,” FRIDAY says, sounding confused. “My protocols… I don’t know.”  

She shouldn’t be able to be confused. She shouldn’t be able to not know who someone is.   

“Bring up the camera feed,” Tony says, jamming his glasses back on, and before he’s even finished the sentence she’s brought up the feed, and- 

It’s Peter.   

Tony feels the shock of it in his spine, his fingertips, straight into his heart. 

Peter is wearing the same suit as before - the same suit he was wearing before, Jesus fucking Christ - but the mask is off, crumpled in one hand, and he’s staring at Tony’s penthouse with a lost, forlorn, yearning expression.  

Tony’s a fucking idiot.  

He flat out sprints to the helipad, ignoring the stitch in his side, only half an eye trained on where he’s going and the rest fixated on the camera feed in the corner of his glasses, on Peter just standing there, still and silent, seemingly not even noticing the pouring rain, and Tony has the sudden fear that if he takes his eyes off Peter for even a second he’ll disappear back into the ether, and Tony will have missed his only chance. 

It’s dark, outside, and the rain hits him all at once like a sheet of ice as he runs out the doors, soaking him through immediately. It takes a second for his eyes to adjust as he squints out into the distance, and another second for him to identify the thing FRIDAY zeroes in on as a person, standing at the other end of the platform. No identification pops up. Because, after all, why would it? 

It crosses his mind, briefly, that this might be a trick. He decides that he doesn’t care. 

“Lights on, Boss?” 

“No,” he says, low. There’s not actually much he can do to stop Peter from leaving, if he wants to leave, and Tony doesn’t want to spook him. There’s something wrong about the fact that he’s treating this like a hunter coaxing a deer out into the open, but there’s something wrong with this entire fucked up world. 

He starts walking closer. 

“Kid,” he says, at a normal volume, more than enough for Peter to hear him, even over the rain. “What are you doing?” 

The figure stiffens, and takes a few steps back. Tony slows down, but doesn’t stop. He puts his hands in his pockets.  

“Spider got your tongue?” he asks, light. He’s close enough now that he doesn’t need FRIDAY’s help to see him. The suit is soaked through, clinging to every slim line of his body. No built in heater on this one.  

Peter takes a step back, and then another, like he’s on the verge of bolting.  

“Peter Parker,” Tony says, quietly. “I know that’s you.” 

Peter - because, yes, it is, it is Peter - freezes. His head comes up, and he finally makes eye contact, eyes dark and scared, face pale. 

“Mr. Stark?” Peter says, in a raw, punched out voice, and Tony feels the relief like a physical blow. He was only about ninety-five percent sure.  

“Peter,” Tony says. “Thank God.” 

“You… remember me,” Peter says. He looks pained in that way Tony knows so well, when you’ve just been hit by a hope so acute and unreal it hurts to look at it.  

“Well, you’re pretty memorable,” Tony says, faintly. “Though no one else seems to agree with me.” He reaches out his hand, but drops it, not quite able to bring himself to touch Peter, just in case he’s going crazy. “You are real, right?” 

“I think so,” Peter says, shaky. “Are you?” 

“That’s what they’re telling me. Kid-” His brain stalls out. He doesn’t even know where to start. What finally comes out of his mouth is: “You’re wearing a new suit.” 

Peter blinks, looks down at himself, and says, in a faint voice: “Oh. Yeah. I can’t use the old ones anymore. Karen doesn’t remember who I am.” 

Tony absorbs that. Then he reaches out and clutches Peter’s shoulders. 

“Kid,” Tony says. “Pete. What the fuck is going on?” 

For a moment, Peter doesn’t respond. His mouth works, like he’s trying to answer. He blinks hard.  

Then his entire body crumples forward, collapsing onto Tony. He clutches at the back of Tony’s shirt, fingers clawing into his back, buries his face against Tony’s shoulder, and starts to cry.  

Tony’s arms come up automatically, wrapping around him and pulling him closer. He stands there and lets Peter cling to him, ignoring the sharp prickling in his own eyes and the chill seeping in. He just breathes, lightheaded with relief, with the fact that Peter is here with him in one piece for the first time in- 

Well. For the first time in five years, give or take a week or two, really. Even after the Snap had been reversed, they’d had about twenty seconds together on that battlefield before Tony died.  

He hugs Peter a little harder. Peter doesn’t seem to mind. 

“Good news, I think this means we’re officially there yet with the hugging,” Tony says, and gets a wet, shaking laugh against his neck in return.  

Then Peter’s just shaking, and Tony pulls back, realizing with a start that Peter is soaked to the bone, lips nearly blue, curls matted against his forehead.  

“We should probably get you inside, huh,” Tony says. He flicks Peter under the chin. “Really had to pick today for your stalker routine? Needed the rain for dramatic effect?” He’s aiming for levity and doesn’t quite get there.  

“I just-” Peter presses his lips together, trying to control himself. “I just had to be sure.” 

“And? Are you sure?” 

“Yeah,” he says, quiet. “I’m sure.” 
 

By the time they get inside, Peter’s determinedly wiping at his eyes with his wrist and obviously embarrassed by his brief breakdown, and since the tears blend in with the whole waterlogged kitten thing he has going on it’s easy enough to ignore. 

Tony doesn’t really have any spare clothes for guests. He barely has clothes for himself, right now. He has to dig around in one of the boxes in his living room, full of his old things and hastily dug out of storage, until he finds a pair of sweatpants and an old, worn MIT sweatshirt. 

Peter’s mouth twitches when he sees it, not exactly happily, and he takes the pile and grips it with white knuckles. 

“Not a fan? Your other option is the Spring Break 1986 t-shirt, but I didn’t think you’d want that one.” 

“No, this is-” Peter stops to clear his throat. “This is fine. Thank you.” 

“Great.” 

There’s a pause. Tony bites his tongue. He bites it harder. He’s at least going to wait until Peter’s no longer dripping rainwater on his hardwood floor before he asks again what the fuck happened.  

“I’m just going to…” He waves a hand vaguely in the direction of his bedroom. “Go change.” 

“Okay.” 

“Are you going to disappear on me if I take my eyes off of you?” Tony asks.  

Peter makes a noise that could almost be a laugh. 

“No.”  

“Okay,” Tony says.  

When he gets into his bedroom and closes his door, he pauses, shutting his eyes, and listens to the sounds of Peter moving around in the other room.  
 

When Tony comes back out, Peter’s curled up on the couch buried under a blanket he must’ve dug out from another box. He’s taking deep, shaking, shuddering breaths. He looks exhausted, and like he needs a warming cup of tea, but all Tony has for him is reheated black coffee. Peter still takes the mug gratefully, curling around it with his entire body. He’s quiet. 

“I don’t even know where to start,” he says eventually, barely audible. He twists the mug in his hands. “Well. No. I do know where to start. I just don’t want to say it.” 

“I’ve got all night,” Tony says. He sits down next to him on the couch.  

Eventually, Peter tells him. 

“I’m sorry,” Peter says. 

And: “I didn’t know what else to do.” 

Afterwards, Peter trails off, quiet again. He rubs his thumb around the rim of the mug. Tony, for possibly the first time in his life, has no idea what to say. 

“And I guess the spell didn’t affect you, since you were. You know. Dead,” Peter adds, after a moment. 

“Jesus Christ, kid,” Tony says, instinctively. Peter flinches. “No, shit, I didn’t-” 

“No. It’s okay,” Peter says, looking like it’s very much not okay. “I know. I fucked up. I fucked up so hard. I. I fractally fucked up, I-” 

“You didn’t. A discrete, non-iterative fuck up, maybe.” 

He shouldn’t have given EDITH to Peter to start with. It’s not Peter’s fault. Tony probably shouldn’t have built her at all, at least not that iteration of her, but he just- hadn’t been thinking straight. After Thanos. And neither, apparently, was Peter.  

“I nearly destroyed the multiverse!” Peter argues, sitting up straight and letting his blanket cocoon fall apart.  

“Mmm, kind of seems like that wasn’t a solo effort,” Tony says.  

“Why aren’t you mad?” Peter asks, baffled looking.  

“Why aren’t I mad?” Tony repeats, equally baffled. “I thought you didn’t exist, kid. Give me at least twenty four hours of relief before I start critiquing how you handle college application rejections.” 

“You thought I- but you remembered me. And - you knew about Spider-Man. So…” 

“Yeah, exactly. I remembered Peter Parker. And Peter Parker didn’t seem to exist. So clearly I got lost in the multiverse and some other guy was going around calling himself Spider-Man. It’s just a name. Just a suit. I didn’t care who was under it.” 

This makes Peter look worse, if anything. 

“It’s not just a suit,” he says, looking almost angry. “It’s- it’s the only thing I have left.” 

Fuck. 

“Peter,” he says, soft, raw, dragged out of him, feeling so, so unbearably sad for this kid - this young man - in front of him. “You know that’s not what I meant. Fuck. You don’t deserve this.”  

Peter’s anger deflates as rapidly as it came on. He slumps. 

“It’s not about deserving,” he says to a spot halfway between them on the couch. “I screwed up. I screwed up, and when I tried to fix it, I screwed up again. And now I’m paying the price. But at least I made it so it’s just me, and no one else is getting hurt anymore. And - like this, I can still protect people. I can still do good.”  

Brave, good-hearted Peter, crushed under the weight of his own mistakes.  

“So that’s your plan, then? Web slinging and crime fighting as Spidey, and no more Peter Parker? No one knows you?” 

Peter shrugs. “It’s been a few months. I’m figuring it out. Picking up some odd jobs.” He looks over at Tony, expression daring him to argue. “I’ve been helping people.” 

Tony lets out a long, slow breath. 

“My welcome back present isn’t going to be arguing about your life choices,” he says. At least not until tomorrow. “I yield.” 

It’s quiet. 

“It’s not no one,” Peter says, low, sudden, looking down at his lap and picking at a loose thread on the blanket. His eyelashes are dark against the pale line of his cheek. “Not now.” 

“Yeah,” Tony says, hoarse. “Not no one.” For whatever that’s worth. 

He looks at the drawn lines of Peter’s face, the miserably determined set of his jaw, the resigned look in his eyes. He remembers the first time he ever met this kid, so many years ago now - remembers how, during one of the worst parts of Tony’s life (and isn’t that saying something?), out on that tarmac in Germany, he could hear the delight in Peter’s voice as he swung himself around the rooftops, playing with the big boys for the first time - but more than that, just gleeful to push himself as hard as he could, to pull off a crazy trick he saw in a movie. 

If Tony reaches back far enough he even, maybe, possibly, remembers what it was like to experience that feeling himself, in the skies above Malibu, shooting up into the stars in the Mark II, higher - higher - higher - higher - not because the fate of the world depended on it, not because anyone’s lives hung in the balance, but just because he could. 

And look at them both now, huh. 

“Can I, um. Can I stay tonight?” Peter asks, breaking the silence. “It’s just, uh, I think the rain’s getting even worse.” 

Tony- 

Tony doesn’t even know where he’s been sleeping at night.  

“Yeah,” he says. “Of course. Anytime. Hell, stay as long as you want. I have a spare bedroom or three.” Peter’s face does something funny at that, his expression breaking open. 

“I don’t need you to feel sorry for me,” he says, but his mouth is wobbling as he says it. 

“Then let me feel sorry for me, okay,” Tony says, because he knows it’s his best chance. “I thought - Peter, I thought I was losing my goddamn mind, it’ll help me sleep tonight if I know you’re still around, okay?” 

“I’m sorry,” Peter says again, miserably, blinking hard. Tony watches as his own hand reaches out, entirely of its own volition, watches as his thumb catches the tear at the corner of his eye before it can fall.  

“Please stop apologizing,” he says, soft, so soft. He smooths Peter’s hair back, tucking it behind his ear. 

Peter grabs Tony’s wrist with one hand before he can draw back, holding it in a death grip, not letting him move away from Peter’s face. His breath is shaking, his eyes big and pleading. Tony feels his thumb run over the shell of Peter’s ear. 

It’s somehow both surprising and yet the most obvious thing in the world, when Peter leans in to kiss him, clumsy and overbalanced.  

“Please,” Peter says, against Tony’s lips, when he doesn’t move, “I’m sorry- I just-” 

It’s not that he’s not - attractive. 

Startlingly, unnervingly attractive. 

He’s older. His shoulders are broader, his jaw more defined. He’s still got those dark, soft eyes and that particular quirk to his mouth. 

And- and Tony can feel the faint outline of his ribs through the sweatshirt. Can see the bone-deep exhaustion on his face, the too-sharp points of his collarbone.   

“Please," Peter repeats. “I missed you.”   

It makes something in Tony’s chest collapse in on itself, unnamed and overwhelming.  

Tony shouldn’t. He shouldn’t, he shouldn’t, he can’t, not for a thousand different reasons and especially not when it’s only happening because Peter is so goddamn alone that he thinks Tony is a good option. He shouldn’t even be tempted, not when the last time he saw the kid he was a bright eyed sixteen year old. (Not when that really wasn’t very long ago at all.) 

But it sounds like Peter hasn’t had a single good thing in his life in far, far too long. 

Before he can change his mind, he catches Peter’s head and kisses back softly, gently. Peter shivers and melts into it, lets Tony cradle his head, touch his hair, press love and affection and relief against his lips.  

When Tony pulls back- 

Peter still has that same sad, lost look in his eyes. 

And that’s why Tony shouldn’t have done it in the first place. 

“Kid-” Peter flinches back at that, and he hastily amends, “Peter. Look.” He knows what he’s supposed to say here. Peter knows what he’s supposed to say here. Is already bracing for it. 

Tony says: “Try me again tomorrow, huh?” 

Peter exhales, looking tired. 

“Sure. Tomorrow,” he says, blankly, as he draws back, and Tony is almost weak enough to change his mind. “Can I still- stay?”  

“Of course,” Tony says. “You never have to ask.” 

Tony stops at the entrance to the only furnished guest bedroom and pushes the door open. The inside is black and uninviting, and he knows with the lights on it’s sterile, un-lived-in. Peter hesitates. His eyes dart to Tony’s. Standing there in the hallway in Tony’s too-big sweatshirt, damp hair curling into his eyes, he looks young and sad and impossibly lonely. 

“I,” he says. He curls his arms around his middle. “I just.” 

And this time Tony is weak enough.  

When Peter slides into bed after him, he’s hesitant, awkward, looking like he doesn’t know where to position himself.   

He burrows under the covers and says, so softly that Tony can barely make it out, “Thank you.” 

“Least I could do,” Tony says, low, looking over at him, barely making out the shape of his silhouette.  

There’s silence, and then: 

“I keep thinking it’s going to get easier. That I’ll- get used to it.” 

“I wish I could tell you it will,” Tony says. He wishes he had anything at all for Peter besides his own bitter experience that nothing ever really goes away.  

“Yeah,” Peter says, flat. “It’s okay.” There’s something dull and resigned - cynical, even - there, and Tony can’t help himself - he moves closer and curls one arm around Peter’s back, settling on the back of his neck, pulling him in tight. He presses his lips against Peter’s hair. Peter melts into it as quickly as he did before, and Tony feels an arm press under his shirt, the palm wide and flat against his back, a bright shock of skin-on-skin. 

Then, suddenly, somehow, the last barrier between them dissolves, and Peter is clinging to him, hard enough to bruise. 

“I really, really, really missed you, Tony,” Peter whispers, almost more a vibration against his shoulder than a sound. 

“Feeling’s mutual, kid,” Tony says, ignoring how his eyes sting.  

Peter falls asleep in between sentences, halfway through mumbling out an explanation on how he was able to replicate suit functionality without a master AI controlling it. With someone else in bed with him for the first time in years, Tony gets the best sleep of his life. 

…is what would happen, if he were anyone other than Tony Stark, professional insomniac. Instead his brain buzzes so furiously that he can barely lay still, thoughts turning over and over in endless circles, as he memorizes the unreal, impossible shape of Peter’s sleeping profile, curled around his chest and legs like an octopus.  

Tony faces facts - he can’t protect Peter. He can’t teach him anything he hasn’t already learned from painful experience, can’t shield him from even a fraction of the horror of the world’s weight on his shoulders, sure as hell can’t save him - he’s cashed in that chip so hard already he knows he won’t get a second one - can’t do much of anything at all. 

Except. 

Except, except, except.  

Peter’s still doing his best impression of a limpet, but he doesn’t wake up when Tony slowly untangles himself and stands up.  

He’s halfway across the room when he stops, turns back, looks at how Peter has curled in on himself in his sleep, nearly in a ball, taking up the tiniest possible amount of space in the huge California king. He goes and fumbles around in the nightstand until he finds a piece of paper and a pen, and writes Down in the lab - TS. He feels a little absurd as he does it - if Peter wakes up and wonders where he is, FRIDAY is more than capable of telling him - but - maybe it’s silly, but he doesn’t want Peter to think he’s alone.  

He takes one last look at Peter. Then he goes downstairs and gets to work.  

“Tony,” Pepper says cautiously. “Who is the very polite young man in your living room.”  

“Oh, good, you saw Peter,” Tony says, bent over blueprints of some preliminary, experimental quantum tunnel modifications. He does not say ‘met’, because they’ve met before, multiple times, and Pepper thought he was a very polite young man every other time she met him, too, even if she doesn’t remember at the moment. “Is he awake already?”  

“It’s twelve thirty in the afternoon, boss,” FRIDAY chimes in helpfully.  

“Huh,” Tony says. Last time he checked it was five in the morning. He looks around at the holograms of his notes from the past few hours. “I’m a genius, you’d really think I’d have made more progress by now.” Or maybe not, since he’d had to trash almost all of his previous work due to the tiny detail that he is in fact already in the right universe. He waves away the projections, pushing himself away from the lab bench and swiveling his chair around. “Peter’s crashing here for a while.” 

“Right,” Pepper says. She’s holding a tablet that almost certainly contains more of the endless paperwork that springs into existence when the majority shareholder of a publicly traded company comes back from the dead (he doesn’t feel bad - the world’s used to it by now. They have forms for this shit.) She is ignoring said tablet to give Tony a slightly alarmed look. “Peter. Tony, I talked to Rhodey-” 

Tony winces. 

“Look, Pep, I know what you’re going to say. I was just- I mean, I had just gotten back from the dead, okay, I was a little confused as to who was in on what secret identities. You’ll keep this whole Spidey thing under wraps, right? He’s shy.” 

She frowns, looking between him and the ceiling with a skeptical look, like she can see into Tony’s living room. 

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she says eventually. 

“When do I not?” 

She doesn’t dignify him with an answer. 

Peter is indeed in his living room. He’s got a carton of leftover chicken lo mein from Tony’s fridge in his hands and is in the process of shoving so much of it into his mouth that he looks vaguely like a chipmunk. When Tony walks in his head pops up, guilty looking.  

Tony feels a soft, delicate fondness curl through him, familiar like dipping into a warm bath yet edged with something new and bright and shocking.  

It catches him off guard, and he spins and goes into the kitchen instead, aimlessly opening and shutting cabinets.  

“Coffee?” Tony offers, before noticing that Peter had already made a new pot. “Or- nevermind.” He hears Peter walking over, and turns to see him taking a seat at the counter, head propped up in his hand. 

“I’m sorry,” Peter says. 

“For eating my lo mein? I think I can take the financial hit.” 

“For-” Peter cuts himself off, like he doesn’t even know where to start. “For last night. For being such a mess. And for- everything.” 

“Okay, first off, if anyone deserves a night of being a mess, it’s you, okay?” 

“It’s still embarrassing,” Peter says. 

“Second off,” Tony continues, leaning against the counter from the other side, “I feel like we already went over the ‘everything’ bit, yeah?” 

The stubborn, set jaw is back. 

“Yeah, but-” 

“Oh for - you want me to tell you that you fucked up? Okay. You fucked up. It’s not the end of the world. God knows I’ve been fucking up since before you were born.” Tony can feel his right hand twitching.  

Peter blinks, like he wasn’t expecting Tony to actually say it.  

“I mean, it kind of almost was the-” 

“Nuh-uh, nope, I’m talking now. Yeah, you fucked up. You made some bad calls, and- and no one was around to help you with it. Then you fixed it. And you’ve more than paid for your mistake.” 

Peter bristles, almost angry again. Fuck. Tony doesn’t mean to keep turning this into an argument. 

“It’s not about me paying for it. It’s about my friends. Everyone around me. Every time I screw up they’re the ones who get hurt. …Who got hurt.”  

Ah. So that’s where it’s all coming from. Of course it would be.  

“No one should be around me. It’s dangerous,” Peter says, working himself up. “In fact, you shouldn’t-” 

“Okay, I appreciate it but I’m gonna stop you right there,” Tony interrupts. He waves a hand at himself. “I mean, seriously?” 

Peter deflates. He looks down at the counter and traces an idle pattern on the top. 

“And isn’t that their decision to make, not yours?” Tony asks, gentle. “Because I’m pretty sure if you let them have the choice, they wouldn’t agree with you.” 

Peter flushes. 

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a giant hypocrite?” he mutters.  

“Do as I say, not as I do?” Tony tries, and Peter shoots him a disgruntled look. “You sure did take the wrong moral from It’s A Wonderful Life , didn’t you.” 

“That movie’s boring,” Peter mumbles. He sighs and slumps back in his chair. “It’s just- ” He takes a shaky breath. “After May- I just can’t-” 

“Pete- do you think she’d want this for you?” 

Peter doesn’t answer, doesn’t look at him. He swallows. 

“Of course not,” he says. “You’re right, I know you’re right. But I can’t- I can’t talk about May. Not yet.” 

“Okay,” Tony says. “I know. It’s okay.” Peter nods and sighs with relief.  

The silence stretches and stretches. Tony pours himself a cup of coffee. He walks around the counter, leans his back next to where Peter is sitting.  

Finally, Peter says: “And I’m sorry for- you know.” His tone is different. His eyes dart over to Tony’s, quick and fluttering, and he flushes slightly.  

Oh. Right. That. 

Tony’s done some thinking on that, during the past seven and a half hours of quantum tunnel modifications. Let it not be said that Tony Stark can’t multitask.  

“You don’t need to apologize for that either,” Tony says.  

“You don’t-” Peter visibly steels himself. “You don’t need to let me down easy.” 

Tony wants to object and say that, actually, more than anyone else Peter needs, deserves, something easy for once in his goddamn life, and to never be let down again.  

“I’m not letting you down easy,” he says instead. “Maybe I’m just not that type of girl.” He waggles his eyebrows, for good measure. It doesn’t seem to help.   

“Tony-” 

Peter cuts off with a startled breath as Tony reaches out and runs his knuckles down the side of Peter’s face, very, very gentle. Peter deserves something gentle, too. He sneaks a glance and sees Peter’s eyes, big and startled and fixated on him. “I just- look. I’ve only been back in the land of the living for, what, two weeks? We have time.” 

If, god help him, he’s actually doing this, then he’s actually doing this, and he’s going to do it right. He’s got a running list, of all the things Peter deserves. He deserves the world, deserves the white glove treatment, not a fumbled handjob on the couch. 

Peter swallows. 

“Okay,” he says. “I can take it slow. Not like I have much else going on.”  

“Perfect,” Tony says, leaning over and dropping a kiss on his temple. “And on that note-” Here goes nothing. “I think we can get started on fixing that.” 

Peter frowns, stiffens, and draws back. Whoops. Moment ruined. 

“What?” 

“Exactly what I said. We can fix this. We can undo it. Not the part where the entire world knows who you are, sure, but - you deserve your friends. You deserve your identity. I don’t care what you’ve done. You’re a hell of a better person than I’ve ever been, Peter.” 

Peter’s shaking his head before Tony’s even finished. “Mr. St- Tony. Even if I did want- want my friends to remember,” and he does want it, Tony can see the pained yearning naked on his face, “we literally can’t mess with the spell. It’s there for a reason. If we undo it, the multiverse will start collapsing in on itself. It has to be this way.” 

“Nah.” 

Peter blinks. 

“What?” 

“I don’t buy it,” Tony says. “The fate of the multiverse doesn’t hinge on you being miserable for the rest of your life. Nope. There’s another solution, we just haven’t figured it out yet.” 

“I’m not-” 

Tony raises his eyebrows. Peter snaps his mouth shut, a flush high on his cheeks. 

“Sorry, but this is just how it has to be,” Peter says. 

“I don’t accept that,” Tony says. 

“You know that’s what got me into this trouble in the first place,” Peter says, with a bitter huff of a laugh. 

“Well, you know what they say. Second time’s the charm.” Tony says. He claps Peter on the shoulder, but when he sees the way his entire body instinctively melts into it, hungry, he moves closer, running his hand up his neck, cupping his head. “Look, I’m not saying we should try the whole magic genie wish thing again. I’m saying we have a few brain cells between us, why don’t we use them to figure out the science of this thing. This multiverse bullshit. You’re telling me the only way to stabilize the multiverse is happy thoughts and pixie dust? If there’s nothing else, then there’s nothing else, but at least you’ll know.” 

It might not be the most convincing speech, but it’s what Tony’s got.  

There’s a pause. 

“Wow, that whole inventing time travel thing really made your ego impossible to live with, huh?” Peter says dryly. 

It startles a laugh out of Tony. Yeah, Peter’s snarky now. 

Tony’s fucked.   

“You bet it did,” Tony says. “You’re stuck with it. We’re in this together. You and me, kid. We’ll figure it out. Besides, I know you - don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it.” 

 Peter’s eyes cut to the side, guilty. Ha.  

“It’s just geometry,” he murmurs to himself, nonsensically. And then: “So, Thanos is gone. Once you’ve fixed this, what’s your next crusade gonna be?” 

“I don’t know, I hear the whales still need saving,” Tony says. “And the bees. Purses in Queens to be un-snatched. Or maybe I’ll retire again. We can figure it out.” 

Peter’s face goes soft and open at the word ‘we.’ 

“Yeah,” he says, after a long, long pause, blinking hard. “Okay.” 

And - for the first time Tony’s seen since he woke up in this awful, altered world, like the sun breaking through the clouds after the storm - Peter smiles.