Spider-Son & Iron Dad two shots

something you cannot replace

title from the coldplay song 'Fix You' which takes it's refuge on my absolutely heartbreaking irondad spotify playlist

⚠️ tw: canon death of parental figures, lots of angst, panic attacks, tony stark's martyr complex⚠️

"Don't say that," Pepper warned, her tone low.

Peter couldn't breathe. He sat in the corner of the room and stared blankly at a spot on a decorative pillow that he held under his arms.

Tony crossed his arms. "It's true. What, you want me to say it's not true? If it comes between me and the kids, or me and you, there isn't a question about it."

Peter flinched his eyes closed. (Tony was shaking, his face dull of colour, his words coming out in stuttered breaths.) He couldn't lose him. He couldn't lose him. He couldn't lose him. He couldn't lose him.

"Anthony."

Tony scoffed. "Don't pull that card, Pepper. I'm just stating a fact."

Peter was going to die. Tony couldn't do this. It was a hypothetical, but it wasn't. He was being serious, it was evident from the way his eyebrows raised to the way his tone was plain.

"Mr. Stark," Peter tried.

"You kids mean more to me than anything I could ever put into words," Tony interrupted. He flexed his cybernetic hand, and Peter watched the fake muscles move in his upper arm. "We're talking future scenarios, Pete. And I'm being honest. If it came to another scenario where I gotta go to save you, then—"

Peter's throat hurt. He could feel the acid bubbling in stomach. His ears burned. His fingers were ice cold. He sucked a breath in through his numb lips and held it there.

There was a part of him that needed to think of Morgan. He was fiercely protective of the girl, understanding a new responsibility had taken refuge in his brain now that she looked up to him as something of a big brother. She deserved the world. She deserved the world, and their respective mutual world was Tony Stark.

What would Morgan do if Tony died? She was only five. Five years old. Five Januarys. Five New Years. Five birthdays. The same amount Peter had when his own first parents died, he recalled from the cold gravestone sitting in his heart.

Peter blinked and let the sharpness of his tears disappear. He couldn't cry. He was strong. He needed to be strong for Morgan, if this was really a possibility. He needed to prove to himself that he could be strong for her if something ever...

But what about him?

Selfishness is a word most commonly digested in cursive letters, the loopy kind that you have to squint and break apart to properly read. Peter was no stranger to the kind of maze the word provided. He knew the cost of selfishness, and yet he still had this nagging feeling in the back of his mind telling him he deserved to have security.

Everybody deserves security, it seems. Something stable that they can hold on to and depend on. A routine. A home. Friends. Family. It's trickier when you're sixteen and you've fought in a damn war—Stability no longer existed when you've spontaneously broken apart in a million pieces and come back with an unexplainable loss of time.

It was too much to ask to count on Tony Stark to just simply be there for him. The man's personal responsibilities distended out furthest to just making sure that if he fell asleep at night, his kids would also be resting peacefully in their respective bedrooms.

There was a kind of rage in that, something deeply untamed and righteous and overwhelming. Peter clenched his jaw. He wanted to make his teeth crack under the pressure, he needed something to crush in his hands, he needed to scream at the top of his lungs, he needed to run a marathon, a million marathons, he needed to jump so high the sun burned his skin from the inside out.