Chapter Text
It wasn’t the life that Peter had imagined before the snap.
He’d had it all mapped out then. He’d graduate Midtown and go to MIT. He was fuzzy on how Spiderman would fit into his life in Boston, but he thought he’d figure it out. Might be too obvious to have Spiderman suddenly change cities like that, and he was kind of synonymous with Queens anyway, so Peter thought he might give it a rest. Maybe pull out the suit on winter break and during the summer.
BA in bioengineering, then on to the PhD. He figured he could probably get that done by the time he was twenty-three or twenty-four. He wouldn’t have two in hand by the time he was twenty-two, like Tony, but Tony himself had said that if he’d had it to do over again, he wouldn’t have pushed himself like that. You only get to be young and dumb and in college once, so you might as well enjoy it.
And then, once he’d had time to learn something and live a little, he’d reveal his identity to the world and become an Avenger. He’d imagined himself working side-by-side with Bruce and Tony––always Tony––on R&D and research, imagined himself becoming one of the team’s Big Guns, eventually acquiring a protegé he could train up to take over when he wanted to stop fighting bad guys. He guessed that day might come. The stopping part was hazy.
And then the snap and Quentin Beck combined blew a giant hole in Peter’s plans, and Peter found himself falling, endlessly, and his web shooters weren’t working.
He knew now what it was, thanks to the therapist he saw once a week. Depression. Anxiety. On the really bad days, some light suicidal ideation. Peter knew that Tony and May still kicked themselves for not catching it sooner, but Peter didn’t hold it against them. He’d hidden it well, even from himself.
On the other side of all of that, the life that Peter had mapped out for himself wasn’t possible. But he also didn’t want it anymore, not really. He didn’t want to live in a strange city where he didn’t know anyone, where Tony and May were hundreds of miles away, where there was no one to catch him if he started to fall again.
***
Peter’s room at the lake house was set apart from everyone else’s. Morgan’s was on the second floor under the eaves, and Tony and Pepper’s was down the hall from hers. Right after the snap, Peter had stayed in a guest room on the second floor, but when he started at Cornell and came to live with the Starks, Tony gave him a room on the first floor. It had its own bathroom and the backdoor was right next to it, so there was some semblance of privacy and independence.
“You’re an adult, Pete,” Tony’d said on Peter’s first day as an official resident of the lake house. They were sitting side-by-side on the porch, watching the sun sink below the treetops. “I’m not here to get on your case about the hours you’re keeping, or whether you’re studying enough, or what you’re up to when you’re not here. If you’re not going to make it home by midnight, I ask you to text me so I don’t worry, but you’re in college. You should stay out all night sometimes. I trust you.”
Considering how much Tony had harped on Peter keeping to his curfew when he’d been in high school, Peter was kind of surprised by how lenient Tony was now. For the first couple of weeks, Peter had waited for the other shoe to drop. But it never did.
The semester was half over before Peter really took the no-curfew arrangement out for a spin. A friend from his engineering intro sequence, Mike, was throwing a party with his roommates in their dorm room and asked Peter if he wanted to go. Peter––to his own surprise––decided that he did want to go. It was the first time he’d wanted to do anything like that since... well, since before his identity had been revealed.
He texted Tony to let him know that he’d be home late, and he texted May, because he knew she was worried he wasn’t making any friends, and he texted Ned––who was at MIT––and got back a string of excited emojis.
His thumb hovered uncertainly over MJ’s number. They hadn’t talked much since they’d both left for school. She’d forgiven him, sort of, for dumping her during the whole identity reveal fiasco, but things weren’t the same between them. It’d taken Peter a while to realize that he’d hurt her very badly. MJ didn’t trust easily, and once that trust was broken, it was hard to win it back. He’d seen her a few times over the summer, always in a group. Now she was out in California and he was here, and Peter had no idea where they were––if they were anywhere at all.
Peter sighed. As much as he wanted to share bits of his new life with MJ and hear about hers, it probably wasn’t a good idea. If he was ever going to fix things with her, it wasn’t going to happen over text.
In the time he’d spent dithering about MJ, May and Tony had both written back to him. Make good choices, May had said, predictably. Tony’d written, Have fun, be smart, and keep your biometrics tracker on––Bruce wants to see what your metabolism does with alcohol.
Peter rolled his eyes. “Weirdo,” he muttered, and went off to the library to study for a few hours before the party.
The party was way more fun than Peter had thought it would be when he’d agreed to go. He knew a lot of the people there from his engineering sequence. It wasn’t too crowded, and they mostly kept the music at a level that didn’t feel like a physical assault to Peter’s sensitive ears. Six weeks into the semester, most people were finally starting to chill out about the fact that Peter was Spiderman, and Peter was adjusting to the inescapable fact that a lot of people were going to be kind of strange about it until they got used to the idea.
He hadn’t been sure whether he would drink or not. He hadn’t done a lot of it so far; living an hour’s drive away meant that there just wasn’t that much opportunity. But someone handed him a beer as he walked in the door, and when that was done he had a rum and Coke, and then there were tequila shots.
That was when he started to feel it. He glanced at his BAC on his biometrics tracker and saw that he’d left the legal limit for driving in the dust. His metabolism would take care of it soon, but at the moment, it was kind of freeing. No way to get home, so no reason to think about leaving.
“Hey Spiderman!” someone yelled. “You any good at beer pong?”
“Probably,” Peter said with a shrug, and let himself get talked into taking on the dorm’s beer pong champion, a sophomore physics major. She was pretty cute in an unfussy, no-makeup kind of way that reminded Peter of MJ, if MJ had been a red-head with a French braid.
Peter was pretty good at beer pong. If he hadn’t already had three or four drinks, he probably would’ve been better. Angie––sophomore physics beer pong champ––was very good at it, and she was also either dead sober or just freakishly unaffected by alcohol.
TL;DR: she kicked his ass. That was when Peter realized that he had a type––slightly scary brainiacs who were better than him at something.
“Better luck next time,” she told him cheerfully when the game was over.
“Um, yeah.” Peter blinked at her, wondering if he should ask her if she wanted to get coffee sometime. It was on the tip of his tongue. MJ was definitely not letting him hold her back in California, he was sure.
He took too long to decide. She turned away to talk to a friend. Peter let out a breath, unsure whether he was relieved or disappointed. Maybe it was for the best. It was only a couple months till winter break, when MJ would be home, and Peter was hoping that maybe then, they could talk.
If nothing had changed by then––well, Peter wasn’t an idiot. But he had to give it one last shot.
The party didn't start to wind down until after two in the morning. Peter had switched to soda about midnight, so he was sober, but he’d been up since six and he was too tired to drive home safely. He helped Mike and his roommates and their girlfriends shove red solo cups into trash bags until the room was no longer a total health hazard and then crashed on the dorm room floor with a spare pillow and blanket. They turned off the lights, leaving the room awash in gray from the street lights filtered through the thin curtains.
A dorm room floor was the worst for sleeping, Peter discovered. It was hard as a rock and it leeched all the warmth from his body. He catnapped for a bit, but before dawn he found himself awake––tired and headachey, but awake. Enough to drive home, where a nice, soft bed with an excellent mattress and a plethora of pillows awaited him. Probably a home-cooked breakfast, too, since it was a Saturday.
Peter sent Mike a text to let him know he’d taken off and slipped out the door. It was just after six. No one was around, except a raccoon in a trash can that he startled on the way to his car. The raccoon glared at him, annoyed at being thrown off its foraging game, and Peter hurried along before it decided to retaliate. Everyone joked about the raccoons having escaped one of the labs, but Peter wasn’t sure it was all that funny. Cornell raccoons were freakishly smart and had a massive chip on their collective shoulder.
The sky was getting lighter as Peter left campus. Upstate New York was full of state highways and tiny backroads, large swathes of land with nothing but cows, white farm houses and even the occasional red barn. The towns were small and the cities were run-down; most of them were former company towns with one or two huge factories––manufacturing towns that didn’t manufacture anything anymore.
It was nothing like Queens. It felt slower, quieter. The sky was bigger, but there was nothing for him to swing from. On mornings like this, when there was hardly anyone else on the road, it seemed like a different world altogether.
In some ways, Peter still felt like he’d given up by choosing Cornell. If he wasn’t going to MIT, then he should have stayed in the city, where he could have done some good as Spiderman. The long drive to and from campus created space for self-doubt to creep in. But then he’d turn off the main road and onto the long, meandering drive that led to the lake house, and he’d know he’d made the right decision.
Home.
It was silent and still at this hour. The lake was like glass. Peter parked his Prius beside Tony’s Audi and tried to shut the door quietly when he got out. He started to go around the back, where he could get in through the door by his bedroom.
“Hey, kid.”
Peter startled. He hadn’t seen Tony sitting on the porch, wearing a Cornell hoodie and old jeans. He had a steaming cup of coffee next to him.
“Hey,” Peter said quietly, climbing the stairs to the porch. “You’re up early.”
Tony shrugged. “Turns out I’ve gotten used to having both my kids under one roof. I had trouble sleeping. You have fun?”
“Yeah,” Peter admitted. “Don’t know if I’d stay over like that again. I didn’t sleep much either. I might take a nap after breakfast.”
Tony hummed. “If the day is nice, maybe we could pull out the hammock. Probably won’t have the chance to do it again until spring.”
“That sounds nice.” Napping with Tony in the two-person hammock down by the lake was one of Peter’s favorite things ever. They’d done it two or three times a week all summer. He always felt better afterward.
“Want some coffee?”
“Yes, please. I’m just gonna go take a quick shower and change my clothes. I smell like I lost at beer pong. Because I did.”
Tony wiped away an imaginary tear from the corner of his eye. “They grow up so fast.”
“Yeah, yeah...” Peter rolled his eyes and trudged inside.
Showering helped him feel slightly more human, though he knew he’d be pretty useless until he’d had a couple hours of decent sleep. He changed into pajama pants and his favorite hoodie, and on his way through the living room, he grabbed a couple of fluffy throw blankets off the backs of the couches.
Tony was waiting for him back on the porch. He’d moved over to the wicker loveseat, leaving room for Peter next to him. Peter gratefully accepted the cup of coffee he offered, and they sorted out the blankets. The fall morning was chilly, but the porch had a built-in heater, and the throws were warm. Tony put his vibranium arm around Peter’s shoulders, and Peter sank into Tony’s side. He wrapped his hands around his mug of coffee and inhaled.
Last night was fun, but he was almost overwhelmed by gratitude that he had this to come home to.
“So. Beer pong?” Tony asked after a couple of minutes.
Peter laughed quietly. “Yeah. Got my ass kicked by a sophomore named Angie.”
“Angie, huh?”
“Don’t start.”
“Was she cute?”
“She was,” Peter admitted. “I thought about asking her if she wanted to go out sometime. But I just...”
“What, kid?”
Peter swallowed. “I’m not ready to let go of the idea of me and MJ. I know I really screwed things up. I know I don’t deserve a second chance—”
“Hey, hey, Pete, stop.” Tony squeezed Peter’s shoulder. “Cut yourself some slack. You were going through something really tough.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t change the fact that I hurt her.” To his annoyance, Peter felt his throat get tight. “I apologized and she said we were okay, but we’re not.”
Tony was silent for a few seconds, as though thinking something over. “Sometimes,” he finally said, slowly, “as much as you like someone, your baggage just... isn’t compatible.”
Peter frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean... okay. You’re really afraid of anyone you love getting hurt, especially because of you, right? You’d rather leave someone than put them at risk because of who you are.”
“I guess so,” Peter said, a little reluctantly.
“Well—it seems like MJ is really afraid of being left.”
Peter sighed. “Yeah. Her, um. Her dad left when she was nine. Just kind of walked out one day and didn’t come back.”
“Yeah, that explains it.” Tony pressed a kiss to the side of Peter’s head. “It’s not your fault, Pete. And it’s not MJ’s fault, either. But right now, I’m not sure your baggage fits.”
Peter frowned. “So I should just give up?”
“I’m not saying you should do anything,” Tony said, rubbing a hand up and down Peter’s arm. “I just don’t want you beating yourself up over it.”
Peter knew he was right. That was the hell of it. But he liked MJ. Really, really liked her. The idea of just letting her go stung. “People can change.”
“They can,” Tony agreed. “You’re seeing Dr. Malin and doing a hell of a lot of hard work. But you two are also really young, and you don’t know where life is going to take you. Sometimes it leads you full circle and sometimes you end up places you never thought you’d be.”
“Yeah.” Peter snuggled closer. “So you think I should ask out the cute girl who kicked my ass at beer pong?”
“I think you should be open to possibilities.”
“Hmm. Okay.” It was too much to think about on basically no sleep. Peter yawned. Now that he was clean, warm, and comfortable, it was catching up with him. “What time is it?”
“Almost eight. Morgan will be up soon.”
“Mmm.”
“I thought I’d cook breakfast. I told Pepper she could sleep in, since she put up with me tossing and turning.”
“Mmm. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. That’s my baggage. You did exactly what you should’ve done.” Tony buried the fingers of his vibranium hand into Peter’s hair. Peter made a noise that could definitely not be described as purring. “I’m just spoiled now, that’s all, from knowing exactly where both of you are every night. It can’t last forever, so it’s better for me not to get used to it.”
“Wish it could,” Peter mumbled, half asleep.
“Wish what could?”
“Last forever.”
Tony’s hand stilled, then flattened to gently press Peter’s head to his shoulder. “It’ll last as long as you need it to, Pete. But I promise you that someday—maybe sooner than you think—you’re going to want to fly the nest. But me and May, we’ll always be here for you. Pepper and Happy, too.”
“Not always,” Peter murmured, because he’d lost three parents already, and his anxiety brain couldn’t let that slide.
“For a long time, then,” Tony amended. “And you and Morgan will be looking after each other your whole lives, I hope.”
“Me too.” Peter drew a deep breath and snuggled closer. “This is nice.”
“Yeah,” Tony said, tightening his arm around Peter’s shoulders, “it is.”