one shot // nights like these (so separated from my sense of self)
SYNOPSIS: a sick, delirious peter calls tony ādad.ā
CONTENT: sickness/fever, worried tony, some good parental hurt/comfort. good ending. a nice short read before bed.
SONG IN MY HEAD:
ā full fic below the cut ā
peter got really sick one day. high fever of 103, dizziness, the works. he hadnāt said anything to may, so he still went to school and to lab day at tonyās. everything was fine and good until peter passed out.
tony carried him to the medbay and stayed beside him the rest of the day. when peter woke up, his stoic demeanor quickly gave way to a shaky, tear-filled delirium, crying and talking nonsense about missing assignments and falling buildings and people coming to hurt him, holding onto tonyās forearm and begging him not to go, not to leave him alone with it all.
so tony, feeling a little out of his depth, sits there in the dark and listens and offers whatever relief he can.
around 11pm, he goes out in the hall and calls may to tell her about the situation. it would be too much to move peter to the car to get him home, and if anything happened thereās no medical equipment at the apartment to stabilize him. heās in the middle of his sentence whenā
ādad?ā a hoarse voice calls from the other room. at first tony thinks heās hearing things. it sounds like itās coming from another lifeā
ādad, why did you leave me?ā peter calls again, between sobs. ācome ba-ack. ple-ea-ase. i need youā¦ā
tonyās frantic pacing stops dead in its tracks. heās calling for him.
ācome back. ple-ea-ase. it hurts so badā iām scared,ā it comes out in fractured gasps, āiām scaredāā
tony finds his feet taking him back towards the medbay. somethingās been triggered inside him, some instinct he didnāt know he hadā
ātony? are you there?ā mayās voice through the phone snaps tony back to reality. he stops walking.
āiā yeah. yeah, iām here.ā
āiāll swing by tomorrow morning to see him.ā she pauses. āheāsā heās gonna be okay, right?ā
peter cries out again, and tony turns his head back towards the panicked whimpering down the hall. he replies, with a strange new sense of duty, āheāll be okay. iām gonna take care of him.ā
he ends the call with may and speedwalks back to the medbay. peter is wide-eyed, curled up on his side and shaking like a leaf.
āhey, buddy,ā tony says softly, brushing locks of hair away from his eyes. peter flinches when he touches him. āhey, itās okay. itās me. itās mr. stark.ā
peterās face squeezes in exhausted confusion. he knows he should know what that means, but he isnāt processing itā¦
tony takes a deep breath. āitāsā¦ itās dad.ā
peterās eyes trace his face, then light up in some kind of blurry recognition. he wraps his arms around tony and grabs onto his shirt for dear life, as if he were drowning, and buries his face in it, sobbing. he sounds ten years youngerā
peterās words fade to indiscernible whimpers and gasps. tony wraps his arms around his head and shoulders and holds him to his chest, rocking the upper half of his body ever so slightly back and forthā¦ āshhā¦ iām not going anywhere, kiddo. iāve got you. iāve got you.ā
peterās tears and snot and sweat are on his shirt. itās sloppy and itās messy and itās visceral and real, but in the moment, sitting where his own parents never sat, tony canāt find it in himself to care.
peter seemed so grown up all the time. tony assumed that was just how he wasā and to a degree, that was true. but there was another side to peter, the little kid he buried for years and years as a way of getting by, of rising to his responsibilities. in this lapse of consciousness, that kid resurfaced, and tony got the chance to care for himā to be what would have saved him when he was that kid, if only for a little while.
so he holds him until he falls asleep in his arms, and he stays with him through the night, and he takes him onā not as a burdenā but as a duty, as something heās earned and is proud of. that night, in the dark medbay, he makes a promise to himself; heāll look after his boy. heāll stay beside him, and when they lose each other, he will always come back for him, no matter what.
[AN: and then he KEEPS HIS PROMISE. tony invents time travel for peter. sooooo infinity gap is canon
also, peter may be sick due to radiation poisoning in his system, inspired by this post from @gracieparkerrā¦ just sayināā¦]
SYNOPSIS: Peter has escaped from being kidnappedā just barely.
CONTENT: hurt/comfort. a heavy irondad-spiderson rescue fic. Warning for language, ptsd, abandonment issues, and graphic descriptions of violence, medical trauma, and torture.
SONG IN MY HEAD:
ā 1st chapter below the cut ā
Peter had been kidnapped twelve days ago. He managed to escape, just barely, with a stolen rifle (now out of bullets) slung across his back and a large navy blue overcoat that he stole off some guardās corpse.
He didnāt know who his captors were or what they wanted, but whatever it was they wanted it bad. He had been starved and drowned and stuck with needles. He had been pulled apart and stitched back together.
He felt that parts of him were missing. He felt used up. He felt dirty.
But he trudged on, his feet bleeding through the makeshift bandages heād haphazardly wrapped around them, leaving a trail of scarlet red in the snow. The January wind is stinging his face, searing through his thin hospital gown and whipping his cheeks a bright pink. Keep walking. Keep walking. That was the only plan he had in his head. Keep walking. They could be following you.
And so he carried on, one foot after the other. It was just like his aunt had said to him after his uncle died; I would love to take a break. But, sometimes, no one is coming for you, Pete. Sometimes you have to be the thing that saves you.
He coughs hard into the palm of his hand. When he pulls it away, itās stained with blood. He wipes it hurriedly on his sleeve.
Keep walking.
He scans his surroundings. The place is desolate. There are roads, but no buildings for miles around. A car had passed by and he tried to wave it down, but it blew past him. That wasā¦ hours ago. It mustāve been, because it was before the sun had gone down. He could hardly remember anymore.
The end of the road heās walking alongside converges at an intersectionā a four way stop. He comes to the edge and looks around at each potential path. Nothing but pristine, snow-covered fields and trees in every direction.
Shit. He starts to hyperventilate. He has no idea where to go, or where he is, and thereās no one around for miles to help him. He is completely lost.
No one was ever gonna find him.
He feels his legs give out, and he falls to his knees right there in the snow.
Get up.
But he just sits, and breathes in the freezing air, and stares at the snow, watching all the little flakes fall one by one, perfect and pure and untouched.
He catches one and watches as it melts in the palm of his blood-smeared hand.
When Peter was young, his family would go to church on Christmas. He never really got much out of it, but there was one thing he latched onto.
He loved the idea of angels. He used to believe that he had his own guardian angel, someone who would find him no matter how far away he wandered or how deep he sank.
He traces the bruised needle scar on his inner wrist with his finger, his hands shivering. His vision blurs with tears.
That was stupid thing to believe. And he didnāt believe that anymore.
And chances are, he would never see another Christmas.
He could die here. That was starting to feel like a very real possibility, even after everything, even after he had come so close.
He might never go to school again. He might never watch TV again, or stay up too late, or sit on the floor of his room with Ned and drink too much root beer and build Legos. He might never finish the Lego Millennium Falcon they had just started working on.
Shit. He might never even see his best friend again.
His head started reeling with all the things he would never get the chance to do. He was going to ask MJ out after Christmas break. Christmas. He wouldnāt make it to Christmas. And he even had a gift for Mr. Stark. Mr. Starkā
Mr. Stark. His mind latches onto his mentor. The memory of the last glimpse of his face was burned into his brainā¦
āIām gonna find you, kid!ā It was the last thing he said as they pulled Peter away from himā there was an arm around his throat, pressing hardā he couldnāt breatheā
He said he would come back. Peter canāt help but feel betrayed.
Mr. Stark was screaming from the doorway as it closed, his face twisted in horror and anger. There was blood on his teeth and on his shirt; that, Peter remembered vividly. The red against the white, the things that donāt wash outā āIām gonna come get you, I promise! Just keep breathing!ā
He said he would come back for me.
But he hadnāt. And maybe that was on purpose. Maybe Mr. Stark was tired of him. Maybe, even if by some miracle, he made it back, Mr. Stark wouldnāt want him, because the Peter he knew so well had died when the doors closed. The Peter he knew had been broken down and replaced by a different Peterā a Peter that was bruised and scarred up and missing pieces. A Peter that had been irreversibly changed. And there was no place for this Peter.
The horror of that notion overcomes him, and a wave of nausea rises in his gut. He swallows hard and leans forward on his hands, his arms shaking.
He doesnāt want me anymore. He abandoned me.
In his right mind, he knows it makes no sense, but the thought is just horrifying enough for his stomach to sink and churn inside of him, and he chokes up bile and blood onto the fresh snow in front of him. It isnāt muchā heās had nothing but random sedative drugs and just enough water to keep him alive for the past twelve daysā but itās enough.
He reels back and stares in horror at the blood in the once-perfect snow, and it finally starts to dawn on him just how badly heās losing.
His head is spinning now. Heās so dizzy and so cold, he can hardly feel his fingers as they claw at the snow in a desperate attempt to ground himself.
He hinges onto one thought to keep him saneā Mr. Stark left him here.
I hate you, Mr. Stark. In his heart, he doesnāt mean it, but he has all this anger burning inside of him and nowhere for it to go. He brings his fists to his face and digs his fingernails into his skin. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you for leaving me, I hate you for saying you would come, for saying you gave a shitā
He screams into the emptiness. It doesnāt sound like itās coming from him, but instead from some person somewhere deep inside him, and this person screams and screams, and he pounds his fists into the freezing snow and the asphalt until they go numb, until he canāt feel the pain anymoreā I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, to the world, over and over, until his knuckles are bruised and the stitches break, until his shoulders go slack and the screaming turns to sobbing.
He holds his bloody hands in his lap. The skin is broken. Heās broken. Itās all broken, and he canāt fix any of it.
Mr. Stark knew how to fix things. Mr. Stark always had all the answers. He had calloused but gentle hands, and he smelled like engine grease and coffee, and he never blamed Peter for anything. He would never ever leave him behind. How could he ever think that?
Peter curls his head down to his knees and wraps his arms around his torso, rocking ever so slightly back and forthā¦
Iām so sorry. I didnāt mean it. Come back, pleaseā¦ I need youā¦
He isnāt sure how long it takes, but eventually he falls into some state of apathy, of numb acceptance.
He falls back, lying splayed out in the snow, and sinks into it, letting the exhaustion and the cold take over his body.
Get up. He urged himself. Sometimes no one is coming for you, Pete. Sometimes you have to be the thing that saves you.
But his limbs are aching, and his throat is raw, and the cold air makes every breath burn. He feels light-headedā¦
He coughs hard again. He can taste the metallic tang of blood in his mouth, and feel it dripping down the side of his faceā¦
Just keep breathing!
He never thought that he would die alone. But here, at the end, it wasnāt as bad as he imagined it might be. The chilly breeze stroked his cheeks and ran through his hair. The snowflakes fell gently on his face, like a million little pinprick kisses, burying him, carrying him away. Bleary eyed, he stares up at the dark blue-gray sky as his tears freeze in tracks down his face. The clouds shuttered the stars away from him. The heavens were closed.
He truly had done everything he could.
Just keep breathing!
āIām so sorry,ā he breathes, āI tried. I tried my best.ā
So he closes his heavy eyes. With his last moments of consciousness, he wonders if death is warm. He wonders if death feels like being held as you fell asleep, carried away to somewhere peaceful, away from the laughter of your parentās friends as they talk about things youāre too young to understand.
His sore limbs felt lighter. He didnāt feel afraid anymore.
BOOM. A sonic crack, like the sound of thunder. Thereās a sharp blue light and a low mechanical humming that gets louder the closer it gets. On the edge of consciousness, Peter looks up to the sky, his eyes narrow and glassy. There above him, in his blurred vision, is a figure descending down beside him. Peter looks up at it as though it were the sunrise.
And in delirious hope, he finds himself thinking; It must be an angel.
The angel kneels down and lifts him in its arms, and he lets it.
āShhā¦ youāre okay, kiddo,ā a familiar voice whispers, tinged with anxiety, āYouāre safe. Iāve got you now.ā
The wave of numbing senselessness returns, and Peter slips under.
[AN: The full fic is gonna be updated over on my Ao3, because I have some ideas. If you wanna read it, check it out here.]
