Spider-Son & Iron Dad two shots

Even Now, Even Still

The faucet in Mr. Stark's kitchen is leaking. A steady plink, plink, plink of water hitting loudly drop by drop into the metal sink is keeping Peter up— He's sure that's the reason. Adamant that it's the damn faucet, sending cataclysmic sound waves past the walls of the house right to Peter's pillow in the guest bedroom and keeping him wide-eyed awake one droplet of water at a time.

It's not the fact that he's staring at the ceiling and is painfully aware of how rustic the wooden cabin is compared to the guest room of Mr. Stark's last place of residence, where the ceiling was a sleek white and matched a very modern high-tech high-security compound. It isn't the fact that nostalgia has a painful vice grip on his throat and it's causing his thoughts to run laps. It isn't the fact that he's realizing for not the first time how he can't remember the last time he wasn't worried.

Not at all. The reason he's awake is most definitely the faucet.

There's a sense of insanity to it all. 2,629,800 minutes of his life disappeared, and he's lying on a bed that doesn't feel like his under a thick quilted comforter in a cabin that belongs to the Stark family, and he's angry about the faucet he can hear from across the damn house.

Peter sits up in the bed and tries listening to the frogs and crickets outside, closing his eyes tightly and scrunching up his nose in frustration.

Plink. Plink. Plink. Plink.

He exhales stiffly through his nose and tosses the comforter off his legs, swinging himself off the bed and quietly landing on the floor. He opens the bedroom door slowly, drawing out each creak to minimize the noise, then sneaking down the hallway, and finally down the stairs.

The kitchen faucet, as expected, is steadily dripping into the sink. Peter frowns with all his contempt, his face contorted in a squashed little glare-ish pout of disdain.

"Drip, drip, drip," Peter mocks in a whisper, stepping toward the sink. "You're so noisy. Why are you so noisy?"

"I need to replace the washers," a voice murmurs from behind. "She's an old girl."

Peter jumps, pulling his hands up in surprise. He whips around to the voice and blinks wildly at Tony, who sits on the living room couch watching him across the room.

Tony smiles tiredly at him.

"You're supposed to be resting," Peter points out. "I'm pretty sure your doctor said that."

The smile fades. Tony looks off to the side and sighs, rolling his eyes up. "God, I'm so tired of resting, Pete. I just want to see my kid."

A dollhouse castle sits on the floor in the living room beside Tony's feet, with princesses and superheroes and stuffed animals lying limp in an abandoned game, ready to be picked up by a sparky little girl with brown eyes and brown hair and a smirk that causes trouble like her dad's.

"Morgan's asleep," Peter says obviously. He feels just a little bit numb inside.

"Not that kid," Tony shrugs him off. "She sees me all the time. You on the other hand, never seem to show up."

A pang of guilt strikes him in the ribs, numbness dissolving into a wave of more nostalgic grief. Peter doesn't know what to do, standing aimlessly in the kitchen silently because he doesn't know what to say or where to go anymore. He doesn't know where he belongs. He feels like a ghost.

"Sorry," Peter finally says, the words hoarse and crackly in the back of his throat.

Tony's expression softens. It's a weird thing to watch, even now. Even still. How fatherly he is, even just from the crinkle of his eyes when he smiles, because there's something painted with grief in it, and it feels an awful lot like love. Sometimes Peter swears that it's like watching Tony try to remember him while he's standing right there. Maybe that's what he was doing right now; trying to remember.