Keep Me Steady
Prompt: Forehead Kiss - “Hey is there we send in the ideas for the prompts? They're all so cute but I love the forehead kiss one!! And thought it would be angsty and fluffy if it was Peter kissing Tony's forehead in medbay because he got hurt and isnt waking up? Perhaps because he took a hit meant for his spiderson? Anyway love all that u guys do and thanks for tagging me! ♡♡“ @ironfamjam
Warnings: CPR
A/N: ....... this is a prompt for our 1k followers celebration.... not sure you remember it........
FF.net I ao3
“Peter.”
He shook his head, never looking up from where his hands were clutching his mask so tightly that it cut off the blood supply to his fingers. The chairs in the waiting area of the compound’s med bay weren’t the usual cheap plastic ones he remembered from the last time he had sat in a hospital waiting for news.
Shaking his head again he squeezed his eyes shut to make the voices in his head go away. They were too loud, too many and he was too afraid that they were right.
No.
He wouldn’t let himself go there. If he did all the tiny pieces that made up his soul that he had held together for the past three hours would finally break and crumble and he couldn’t – he didn’t have the energy to pick them back up again. There were more important things to focus on, like the heartbeat he could hear through closed doors ever so faintly. As long as it kept beating Peter would be strong he vowed.
A heavy hand settled on his shoulder making him flinch.
The motion was familiar but not the person it had come from. The feeling of the hand on his skin was all wrong, the fingers not calloused enough to belong to the person he wanted – needed – right now. The wrong man settled down in one of the cushioned chairs and kept looking at him with a worried frown. It was a wrong sigh he let out and the voice was wrong, too.
Wrongwrongwrong.
“You’re still in your suit.”
The teenager heard the silent suggestion that swung in the statement but the mere thought of leaving left a bitter taste in his mouth and made his heart clench painfully in his chest, so he simply nodded and continued fidgeting with the mask in his hands and shuffling his upper body until his shoulder was free of the man’s touch.
Wrong.
Rhodey let his hand slid down his arms, leaving goosebumps in its wake that were covered by the red and blue suit. He didn’t move it, though, simply let it drop down into his own lap again. “Have you called your aunt?”
He gave a sharp nod. “I told her I’ll be staying here,” he felt compelled to add, his tone challenging the other superhero to object, to tell him off. He was surprised when the older man simply cocked his head to the side and continued to watch him intently. “I just –“ He crumbled a little under the patient gaze. “I just can’t leave him, you know?”
“I know.”
Peter met his gaze again and for the first time he realized just how tired Rhodey looked. Almost as tired as Peter felt himself.
His entire body was tense and the worry seemed permanently etched into the wrinkles on his face. He recognized the look, knew exactly what it felt like. Rhodey really did understand. He figured he must have spent most of his life worrying about Tony and the thought made the young vigilante feel nauseous.
“But we can’t really do anything for him right now,” Rhodey told him matter-of-factly, voice calm and collected and gentle. “And I know for a fact that they won’t let you into his room looking as filthy as you do. Something about open wounds and dirt, hygiene they call it, I think.” He cracked a smile but it seemed forced at best. Still, Peter appreciated it.
He just really didn’t want to go.
Rhodey sensed that and with a motion too quickly for his tired brain to keep up with, he pulled something out from – from where exactly? Behind his back? The chair beside him? Did it matter?
A pile of clothes landed in his arms and instinctively he grabbed to hold them. His favorite pajama pants and one of his science pun t-shirts and a dark red hoodie he had never seen before. It was soft. He frowned but before he could open his mouth to ask, Rhodey explained.
“It’s Tony’s. Was his favorite back in the day. He’s rarely wearing it outside anymore but I’m pretty sure he still wears it at home. I thought you would appreciate it.”
He did. Curling his hand around the soft fabric, he felt gratitude spread in his chest, fuzzy and slowly melting the fear that had taken his heart hostage.
“He’s gonna be okay, right?” he croaked. Of course he’d already asked that and the doctor had reassured him but he needed to hear it from someone who was just as scared as he was, just as shaken because they knew what was at stake.
“Of course he is,” Rhodey scoffed fondly, and his wet eyes almost didn’t betray his light tone, “You know how it is, bad weeds grow tall.”
Something similar to a laugh slipped passed his dry lips before he conceded with a huff. “Fine,” he said, “But F.R.I.D.A.Y. is gonna call me the second there are any news whatsoever.”
When he pushed himself up from the chair he felt a lot older than sixteen with all his joints creaking and cracking from having been curled up in one position for too long. His heart, too, felt older than it had just this morning.
As much as he hated being away from the action, if you could call the deserted waiting room that, he had to admit that the shower did wonders on his tense shoulders. The dried tear tracks on his cheeks were slowly fading when he let the hot water pour over his face. He just had to keep his mind busy because the second he didn’t, he was back there and he was holding on to Tony’s lifeless body and he couldn’t stand picturing the man like that.
Tony was vibrant. Always with a sarcastic quip on his lips and a twinkle in his eyes when they met Peter’s. He was strong and smart and alive. He was a god damn superhero.
Peter blinked the tears away that burned in his eyes and mixed with the water until he couldn’t tell which was which anymore.
“Great job, underoos. One down, one to go,” Tony’s voice sounded through the comm and he grinned at the praise as he shot out a web at the Ironman suit that was flying past him. As soon as the web attached itself to the armor he felt the strain on his shoulder when his self-designed material stretched and then he already took off, tagging along on the flight.
He loved flying. Loved the exhilarating feeling of his heart dropping to his stomach. He knew without the shadow of a doubt that he was safe here. He was with Tony after all.
“Kids these days,” he heard his mentor mutter in mock annoyance, “Too lazy to web their own way down to the fight.”
“Gotta keep you on your toes, don’t I?” he quipped back before shooting out another web and leaving the billionaire’s side to land on the side of a nearby building gracefully. “What’s the plan, Mister Stark?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at the huge thing (honestly, he wasn’t sure as what to classify the weird metallic body that was currently out for their blood).
That’s the moment War Machine joined them, flying up in to hover next to Iron-Man, blasters out and ready to, well, blast. “We’re gonna kick some ass is what we’re gonna do.”
The last thing he heard before Rhodey started firing was Tony’s carefree laughter in his ear.
He had just stepped out of the shower when F.R.I.D.A.Y. informed him that Tony was out of surgery. It didn’t take him more than three minutes until he was back in the med bay, pants on the wrong way around and hoodie barely pulled over his head.
Looking like the mess he felt, wet curls hanging in his face and almost tripping over his feet, he barreled into the room and – stopped and stared.
The sight that greeted him felt like a punch to the stomach and knocked the air out of his lungs, making him stumble.
Tony seemed to be swallowed up by the big bed, tubes sticking out of various parts of his body. He took a tentative step closer but not too close, too scared to accidentally touch some of the wires and mess something important up.
“He’s –“ he stammered, “Is he –?“
“He’s fine.” Rhodey’s voice was gentle but firm, demanding attention that Peter didn’t have to spare. His gaze seemed permanently stuck on the slight rise and fall of his mentor’s chest.
Breathing meant alive. They could work with alive. An alive Tony would fight his way back to them.
Rhodey stood up from the chair next to the bed, slowly approaching Peter until he was right beside him. Again, the hand settled on his shoulder, pulling him back from the spiraling thoughts in his mind, grounding him in the moment.
Peter looked up, Rhodey’s face blurry through the veil of tears that he couldn’t force back. “I should’ve – I should’ve done something.”
“You know as well as I do that there was nothing you could’ve done.”
Deep down he knew that he should have found a way.
“He knew what he was doing and he knew the consequences but, most importantly, he knew what would happen if he didn’t act.”
“Well, this is very not good.”
“You don’t say, platypus.” Tony’s eye roll was audible over the comms and if Peter hadn’t been so focused on the thing they were fighting getting ready to fire a blast of something very not good into a nearby skyscraper he might have even cracked a smile. As it was, he was otherwise preoccupied.
He was so far out of his wheel house right now, he realized, when he swung to another building closer to the two other heroes. “What are we gonna do, Mister Stark?” Because surely his mentor knew what to do. He always knew what to do.
“About that –“
It all happened so fast that Peter barely had time to process Rhodey’s scream in his ear before Tony had flown in the way of the monster, putting himself between the monster and its target and –
When the green blast hit the arc reactor Peter’s heart plummeted.
Hope flared in his chest when Iron- Man somehow reversed the fire power, hitting the alien being that burst into a million pieces. But then he didn’t reply and simply fell.
He fell and fell and fell and then he stopped.
Once Rhodey had left it took him a while until he dared to move closer to the bed.
Tony looked so fragile, broken, and as much as he couldn’t bear to see him like that, Peter found that he was incapable of averting his eyes. Underneath all the ugly bruises he was still so undeniably alive and that was all that mattered, all he let himself focus on to keep his mind from spiraling.
Eventually he settled into the seat Rhodey had vacated and gingerly took hold of his mentor’s hand, careful to avoid any and all wires he was attached to but especially the perfusion pump supplying him with a steady stream of pain meds. He seemed to need it.
The older man’s face was calm, the anesthesia working its magic in relaxing his muscles and keeping the pain at bay. It seemed wrong, though, to see the expressive face of Tony Stark so devoid of any emotion and tension. Only a few wrinkles remained, especially the frowny ones but Peter could make out the crow’s feet and lines around his mouth, too, that told a story of an easier time with laughter and movie nights instead of bloody hands and hospital beds.
The monitor was showing him the ECG recording and he let the steady beeping lull his unsettled thoughts until he was calm enough to really take in the injuries of the man that made up half of his small make-shift family.
The oxygen mask on the billionaire’s face was fogged with his breaths (he was breathing) but it seemed to be working because the pulse oximeter on his left hand recorded an oxygen saturation of 100 percent.
Peter let out a small breath.
His blood pressure was steady, albeit a little low with 110 to 60 but so much better than when –
The stiff neck Tony was wearing looked uncomfortable but he didn’t seem to mind so Peter tried to be okay with how weirdly rigid and unmovable it made the man look.
His eyes flickered over the case report on the nightstand.
Fracture of both anterior and posterior arch of C1
Type III fracture of C2, stable, no indication for surgical treatment.
Stable. He held onto that when he skimmed over the rest of the text.
Type II spleen rupture
Fractured 4th, 5th left and 2nd right rib; 3rd rib broken bilaterally after CPR by first responder –
Peter reached him as soon as he could but it was still too late. Tony wasn’t moving, wasn’t responding, wasn’t –
“Karen,” he choked out, crawling to the lifeless armor on hands and knees, “Can you get F.R.I.D.A.Y. to open the suit?”
Not a second later the pieces of the suit retracted, revealing his mentor’s beaten form. “F.R.I.D.A.Y. detected fractures of the upper cervical spine. It is recommend to move the patient’s neck as little as possible to not risk severing the spinal cord.”
“Then why didn’t she just keep the armor on?” he spit out, thoughts racing and suited hand pressed against his masked mouth. He couldn’t look at this, he couldn’t breathe through this. He couldn’t –
“Mister Stark is in immediate need of CPR.”
No.
He couldn’t do that.
“Mister Rhodes!” he managed to call out to the superhero still flying through the air to keep the collateral damage as low as possible, “You need to –“
The commanding voice that replied was tense and not at all reminiscent of the playful teasing just minutes earlier. “I can’t, Pete. You gotta do it. You know how to do CPR, right?”
Of course he knew CPR. He knew the steps, knew the moves but –
“I’m – I’m too strong,” he whispered even as he pulled up his mask halfway and started kneeling at his mentor’s head to get a better angle, “I can’t control my strength – I’m gonna – I could kill him!”
Still, he started pressing down.
When he heard the first rib crack, Peter cried out in pain but didn’t stop. He bent down, tilting the man’s head as carefully as he could and breathed for him twice before continuing to press down on his ribcage.
Another crack. A broken rib. And Peter couldn’t see through the tears that were running down his cheeks and he couldn’t breathe but he struggled through the panic sealing his lungs because Tony needed him to breathe for him.
“Heartbeat detected.”
Beep, beep, beep, beep.
His heart was still beating. It was still pumping blood into his circulation, was still supplying his cells with oxygen and was still keeping him alive. It was a steady heartbeat and it felt strong when it pulsated against Peter’s fingers that were pressed to his mentor’s wrist.
Thud, thud, thud, thud.
He could hear it, too. If he concentrated hard enough he could make out not only the thud but also the blood streaming through ventricle and atrium. He heard the valves open and close and the soft swoosh when the blood fell back against closed valves.
Still, he couldn’t forget the utter silence that had greeted him earlier. The memory of holding the lifeless man seemed to have been permanently etched into his brain. An image so horribly familiar that it made him feel sick and scared as if he was the small little boy again, begging for help.
Please don’t leave me.
Peter was moving before he had consciously formed the thought and it made him stop in his tracks. Was he allowed to? The doctor had said to watch out for the wires and to be careful with his ribs and neck. But maybe if he was extra cautious it would be okay?
Almost in slow motion he pushed the cables and tubes aside carefully and moved to sit on the bed. Tony was laying a little more to the left side of the bed and so the teenager very deliberately draped himself on his mentor’s right side until he was curled around the man without jostling him too much.
He wound his arm around his head gingerly and dropped his face to rest in the sweaty mob of hair. He breathed in the familiar scent that he could make out beneath all the dust and dirt and blood and sweat. He breathed in Tony and, ever so slowly, he started to relax.
“ETA 3 minutes.”
Three more minutes of Peter holding on to his mentor’s head, too scared to move, too scared to do much of anything but let his body shake with silent sobs and keep listening for that heartbeat that was still fluttering in his chest much too weakly for his taste.
“It’s gonna be okay.” For a lack of better option he started talking to the unresponsive man whose head was resting on his thighs and who didn’t look like he was ever going to wake up again. But his heart was beating so he was going to wake up. He had to wake up.
“F.R.I.D.A.Y. could probably fly you home in the suit but we don’t wanna risk –“ severing your spinal cord “ – it, so we’re waiting for the ambulance. It should be here any minute now. You’re gonna be fine, right? I mean, you always said you’d probably die of something stupid like tripping over Dum-E not on the battlefield. You promised not to die before my wedding.”
It was stupid and childish yet he couldn’t help but beg.
“You can’t die. You were gonna teach me how to build an arch reactor and you promised to watch the new Star Wars movie with me the second it comes out. We already planned our costumes, remember?”
Suddenly the Kylo Ren and Han Solo dress up they had planned seemed so inconsequential and trivial. He could’ve spend the time arguing about Kylo’s true feelings telling his mentor how much he appreciated him. He should’ve told him he loved him instead of disagreeing over his breakfast choices. He should’ve held on to him more when he had the chance. He should’ve –
He would, he vowed silently, he would tell him.
“I love you,” he whispered, the words he had never directed at him before oddly familiar on his tongue. “Just, please wake up so I can tell you in person.” Before he thought better of it he leaned forward, pressed a gentle kiss to Tony’s forehead and rested his own against it.
Now that he was surrounded by the warmth of his – his person and could feel his chest moving with every breath and could hear his heart beating steadily he realized just how tired he was. He could rest for a bit, right? Tony surely wouldn’t mind and he would tell the nurse where to shove it should she jostle Peter… yeah… he’d just rest his eyes a little. Just for a few minutes.
His eyes slowly started to drop close, succumbing to the exhaustion that seemed to have settled deep into his bones.
Of course Tony took that moment to blink blearily, almost making Peter jolt in surprise.
“Love ya, too, kiddo,” he slurred, not really focusing on anything in particular, “Should know that.”
And, without another word, the older man wrapped his right arm more firmly around his protégé and fell right back asleep with a soft snore.
Tony spent almost a week in his bed in med bay until the doctors were certain he would be able to move his neck without danger of becoming paraplegic and Peter came to see him every day, spending most of his time in the small, barren room. He would bring his homework after school and once he was done with it they would watch another movie or start on another TV show. Sometimes Rhodey or Pepper or May would join them and bring them a home cooked dinner. Sometimes they just munched on the pizzas F.R.I.D.A.Y. ordered.
Sometimes Peter would fall asleep curled around Tony and sometimes May would threaten him with grounding if he didn’t come back home to sleep in his own bed at some point but every time, before he left, Peter would lean down to Tony and press a kiss to his forehead gently. He would tell him he loved him and his mentor would say it back.
He never would have to be scared of not having said enough when he still had the time ever again.
