Spider-Son & Iron Dad two shots

Toss and Turn

Spooktober 17: Forget

Tony considered himself an "above-average" light sleeper. He never really stopped to consider how long he'd been like that. It was more of a gradual understanding that he came to, that if there was any kind of sound, even if it was one that his unconscious body made, he would rise up like a feral cat and start planning his defense.

Maybe it started after he was kidnapped, which was well over fifteen years ago now, but sometimes still seemed like yesterday, as most of his mistakes often did.

Maybe it started even younger, with shattered glass bottles and yelling that rattled through walls, or the smell of that damn cologne nearing, the sound of expensive shoes echoing on wooden tile, on asphalt, on carpet—

Nevertheless, he is a light sleeper. It's gotten better over the years, with less unfamiliar noises that would echo throughout the night. Owls yearlong, frogs in the spring, cicadas in the summer, the gentle creaks and groans of a house settling in its space, that had all become natural to him by about the first year they moved in.

Now he woke up to nightmares, first and foremost. His, of course, which dredge up acid from his stomach and tears from his eyes, and a cold sweat that sticks to his clothes and hair— but also Morgan's.

His daughter, who had nightmares about as often as any other kid (Tony researches religiously about anything that could possibly be out of the ordinary, anything he may have done wrong) sometimes woke from her nightmares with quiet tears— and Tony would subsequently wake to furniture being gently knocked around by a sleepy girl trying to get to mom and dad.

That's what he assumed to be happening tonight, when he gets woken up by a soft thud in the hallway.

Tony pushed himself out of bed, wincing at the pull it gave on his 'arm', all synthetic, but the connecting joint still in the long process healing. He glanced at Pepper, still fast asleep beside him, and let himself feel in love for a moment longer before he left the room.

He stepped quietly on the wooden panels of the floor, opening the door slowly as to not startle Morgan who would be on the other side. There's a darkness he has to squint through in the hallway, all shadows and grey splotchy objects of space where furniture should lay— but immediately he could tell that it was indeed not his daughter who had woken him up tonight.

Tony flicked the hallway lamp on. A dim, orange light cast over the scene. Peter's lanky figure is swaying silently on his feet, his head tilted downwards as he looked intensely at the floor.

"You alright?" Tony asked immediately, his voice groggy. He's already scanning the kid for injuries— a limp, maybe, or some kind of twisted limb— but nothing is sticking out in any odd places or swollen.

"Mh," Peter grunted. "Fixing it."

Tony blinked the sleep out of his eyes and made a face of displeasure as he looked over at Peter's late-night workings.

Peter didn't stay over at the cabin all the time. Maybe once or twice every few weeks, which is still far more than Tony imagined he could have had before, but still wasn't enough to settle that old, parental spark in his chest that cried out, as it had for so, so long, about missing him.

He was... adjusting still, to everything. Tony understood. The whole scenario in of itself was impossibly difficult from any end of it. Losing someone like that for five years, it drove Tony to an emptiness that he wouldn't wish on anyone except those who caused it. (And Thanos was gone. Killed twice over. It still never feels like enough.)

But for Peter, it was a different breed of horror. Different beast. He couldn't imagine how it would feel, thinking you've died, only to wake up missing a chunk of something as valuable as time. A chunk from everyone else's life gone, with you left to try and understand the pieces. Like a coma designed personally by Hell.