strangetrip | [Backdated August 15th - Closed to Peter] It Won't Be Like This For Long

Entry tags:

[Backdated August 15th - Closed to Peter] It Won't Be Like This For Long

Tony was no less busy than he usually was, and with the advent of working facilities that he kept in the research building, he managed to keep himself busier than ever. However, the building boasted perhaps the most important function of all that his humble room ("Lab Edition .00001") did not--social amenities. The residents could come, linger, and contribute while Tony tinkered with his latest project or worked to expand the growing facility. Egalitarianism, thy name is Stark.

Today wasn't one of those days. It was a party of one in the wide open lab, and Tony distracted himself from the quiet with Aerosmith, which was fine until he began feverishly nitpicking the sound mixing. When FRIDAY adopted her customer service voice he elected to make do with the sounds of nature and a cup of decaf.

Loki and The Lieutenant are getting married--what was the date? Did they pick a date? What gift do I even get? If I get Loki a knife and The Lieutenant a bunch of mead that'll just be gauche. I should ask Thor. What's Thor doing? What is everyone doing? God, it's quiet. When Tony pulled his palm from his cheek, it stuck for a moment. He frowned and rolled his shoulders back and his back pinched in protest. Yep, feeling his age. Time to move those bones some.

He rose from the window-side table and paced the halls, judging the interior and making small mental notes on what to update or adjust. At some point, he was outside, and the large sheets of wood that laid in various states of process stared back at him. Right. The cars. A work space by the building for two.

Tony looked away and his armor spread out from his chest, and he took flight. If he couldn't think straight, he could at least fly straight.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Desert. All there was was desert.

Peter Parker spins where he stands, garbed in the all-black suit gifted to him by Agent Fury. The mask he wears suddenly feels suffocating, and he struggles with it for a moment before he finally tears it off his face.

He breathes in and then out and then in again.

Where is he? Where is Mysterio? Peter's mind scrambles for answers, but he finds none. Had he actually been hit by that train? It felt like it, but every part of him hurt even before it had or hadn't slammed into him. Maybe it hadn't been the train. Maybe it had been something else. Peter doesn't know.

All he knows is this place is a desert and that a moment before he hadn't been here and now he was and that there were no deserts near Berlin, so this can't be real. It can't.

He spins around, eyes scanning for some sign of life, some indication that Mysterio is there and watching; he braces, his body tense, waiting for a blow that doesn't come but he's sure will land true the moment he lets his guard down for an instant.

And then Peter sees it. He looks up at the otherwise empty sky to see a familiar flash of metallic red overhead and Peter knows with absolute certainty that Mysterio's next blow is finally coming.

"Boss!" The urgency of FRIDAY's voice made Tony flinch out of his comfortably numb daze.

"I leave the oven on?" Not a joke, he'd built a microwave oven from scrap and had biscuits cooling.

"New arrival below. Facial scans running...Peter Parker, 99% match."

Tony swung out his legs in front of him to halt so suddenly his nerves pinched. The pain was filtered out for his shock at FRIDAY's claim. He turned his head down to assess the claim for himself, the HUD zeroing in on the roaming figure.

He was bloody, holding himself like a cornered animal. He was staring right back at him. Peter.

Overcome, Tony made for earth.

As Tony descends, Peter scrambles backwards with a stumble. Everything hurts -- everything -- but he knows if he's going to live through this, he's got to get away. And if he's going to get away, he has to stay up and on his two feet, no matter how painful it is to keep standing.

"Stay away," Peter shouts, and he fires off a warning shot with his web-shooters.

Tony's body reacted before his mind, angling away from the clumsy shot as it shot past his arm. Regardless of the circumstances or the questions swarming in his mind, the fact that this was Peter--his Peter--overrode all else. His helmet stripped itself away, baring an expression he could barely control.

"Peter."

Peter's head is spinning as he holds out a hand at Tony to stop.

"Your tricks," he huffs, "They're not going to work on me anymore!"

"You're at the inn. Madonna Inn." It was all he could think to say to de-escalate the situation. "It's me. It's--it's dad."

None of what Tony is saying is making sense. The second he snaps a puzzle piece into place, the puzzle is abruptly knocked over, leaving Peter scrambling to make sense of the picture in front of him.

"No --" Peter shakes his head as he stumbles backwards and away. Why was he doing this? Peter can't understand. "No, you're not. You're not."

The rest of his armor retreated, leaving only Tony. Whatever happened to Peter in the time he'd been gone didn't matter in that moment. Only the fact he was here and in need of help did. "Tell me how I can prove it. I'll do whatever you say."

Peter stops, his only movement the rise and fall of his chest.

What can he do to prove it? Peter wets his lips and then says it:

"Tell me something only Tony Stark would know."

Tony swallowed. Something only Tony Stark would know--and something that only Peter was privy to.

"When I was seventeen, my dad and I began refurbishing a classic 1932 Ford. He died before we could complete the job." Would Peter remember? "It's sitting in my workshop in Manhattan. I've never finished it."

For a few long seconds, Peter doesn't move and then the first puzzle piece snaps into place without disruption, and then the second and the third and Peter realizes that none of this is anything Mysterio could know...

Because until this moment, he didn't remember it, either.

"...Dad?"

That was all he needed. He closed the distance between him, kicking up sand and rock. His hands found Peter’s arms and then his face, feeling the heat and weight of him. Solid. Real.

“Pete.”

Tony feels real, but even with all the pieces back in place, his mind still struggles to fully grasp this information. One part of him is insisting that this can still be one of Mysterio's illusions (all of that felt real to him, too); another insists that he, like Tony, might actually be dead (did people still feel pain in whatever afterlife might exist? Peter can't remember anything from the first time).

All he knows is that he wants whatever's in front of him to be real right now.

Peter abruptly clamps his arms around Tony and presses his against Tony's shoulder. The pressure ramps up the sting of the cuts on his face, but right now, Peter doesn't care. He can ignore all of it.

Peter’s strength was as feeble as it was desperate. Tony wound his arms around Peter’s battered body like armor, kissing his matted hair, saying his name over and over like a mantra.

“I’m here.”

He is -- at least it feels like he is. And as Peter clings to Tony, he releases his hold on the last dregs of his consciousness.

--

Peter wakes with a start. He had no dreams and the segue from conscious to unconscious to conscious again felt like it all happened in an instant.

It obviously hadn't. His Night Monkey suit was gone, replaced with a pair of pajama pants and the Iron Dad t-shirt he had made for Tony for Father's Day.

That wasn't the only thing that had changed; the cut on his cheek was properly bandaged, and he could feel a strip of white gauze held in place over a cut on his back by several thin strips of medical tape.

It takes a moment for his vision to fully clear. Tony is there. There is Tony's lab. Tony's lab is in the Madonna Inn. Beck didn't know about the Inn.

So why couldn't believe he was really here? Why couldn't he believe this was all real?

"I need you to tell me what you told me before," he says hoarsely to Tony. "The thing you told me that only you know."

Glancing over from his station at the cot where Peter had been recuperating, Tony didn't miss a beat, "When I was seventeen, my dad and I began refurbishing a classic 1932 Ford. He died before we could complete the job. It's sitting in my workshop in Manhattan. I've never finished it."

The answer is enough to satisfy Peter, who uses the better of his two arms to push himself upright. He groans; though his body heals faster than most humans, it's not healing fast enough.

"Thank you." He's not sure what Tony thinks about all of this; Peter's not even sure what he thinks. Saying thank you seems like the normal thing to say to that, if there was anything normal about asking someone repeatedly to tell them something only they know.

"How long -- how long have I been out?"

"Twelve hours." The soft natural light filtering into the lab through the slanted windows marked early morning. Tony spared Peter a small smile as he tinkered with an angular diode device sitting front and center of his work station. "Shirt off, buddy."

Peter raises an eyebrow, but takes the shirt off without argument. When he looks down, he realizes that he looks even worse than he feels.

"How long have I been gone?" he asks, setting the shirt down in his lap.

"Two weeks." He shut the top panel, testing the little display mounted on it. He lifted a long and blue wire with a stylus-shaped implement at the end, connecting it to one of the diodes.

"Let me guess that time dilation is strong, here." Tony's glasses sharpened into darkened safety goggles and he pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves, lifting the device and rolling to Peter's bedside.

Peter watches Tony work, his eyes narrowed slightly in confusion. He's not sure what to make of what Tony just said or what he's doing now.

Two weeks, he thinks. For him, it had been two years.

Tony rolls over and Peter's pulled away from his thoughts. "What are you doing?"

"Got my surgical license while you were away." Tony motioned for him to turn around as the lights around them dimmed and red-shifted.

He observed the wounds on his back--the gashes spreading across his back weren't infected, but even sleep and Peter's healing abilities hadn't made much of a dent in closing them up. Tony finished staging his tools on the bedside table and peeled off the tape slowly, discarding them in a metal tray and dabbing the skin with a sanitizing cloth. A closed bottle of red dye sat on the table and Tony took his time applying it to wounds. He was glad it was on flesh Peter couldn't see--the results created an even more visceral image.

"This'll feel warm and tingly. That's a good thing," Tony said as he raised the flat-headed stylus to Peter's skin. It emitted flashes of light as it moved over Peter's skin and reacted with the dye, sealing the skin.

Peter twitches slightly as Tony presses the tool to his skin. Peter tenses in response; it's far easier for him to stay motionless while he is tensed than it is while he's relaxed.

"Where's my suit?" he asks as Tony continues to work.

"Dry-cleaning." The biggest wound was halfway sealed. "Hit your goth phase this late in the game?"

"Nick Fury made it for me," Peter answers. "I mean, he had it made for me. He didn't actually make it himself."

Peter's last few few words come out just above a whisper. His thoughts start to wander back to what he was doing before he arrived here. How he'd given EDITH to Beck of his own accord, how Buck had tricked him --

But before he can sink too deeply into that line of thinking, Peter lets out a yelp at a sudden sting from one of the wound on his back. True to Tony's word, the sensation so far has been mostly warm and tingly, but there are moments where he feels a sudden jolt of pain run up his spine and he can't help but react to it, even despite his best efforts not to.

An image of Nick Fury hand-stitching Peter an outfit in an old-fashioned rocker came to mind and Tony snorted.

"So you met the One-Eyed Wonder himself, eh..."

"Yeah, I was kinda on mission for him," Peter says. Could he call it that? He wasn't sure.

Another question to add to the for-later pile.

Sealing up the worst of it across his back, Tony gave Peter's shoulder a pat to prompt him to turn back around so he could attend to his front. "Can't say I was spoiled for excitement on our end."

Peter turns around to face Tony. It's then that it dawns on him.

"I'm sorry that I interrupted your honeymoon," he says. Peter wets his lips. He doesn't know why he's apologizing; it's not as though he had any control over the situation. But it still feels like the right thing to do.

"Forgiven," Tony replied with a faint smirk as he dabbed the wounds across Peter's face, chest, and arms with the dye.

Peter looks down at himself, at the red dye that's on his chest and arms. "It looks worse than it feels," he assures him. He doesn't know how bad it looked from behind, but he can't imagine it looked good back there, either.

"Soon it won't." Tony gave the tool a little shake and pressed it to a cut beneath Peter's eye, to his cheek, clearing away the wounds one by one. Save some faint redness and pale scar, the laser suturing did the trick. As he finished, the lighting returned to normal and the goggles returned to his usual frames as he assessed the work with a satisfied tilt of the head.

"How does it feel now?"

Peter can't takes his eyes off Tony's glasses. EDITH, he thinks. He's not sure she's even in there yet, but..

"Better," he manages, though his voice comes close to cracking. He breathes in and out in a desperate attempt to stay calm. It surprises him he's managed to stay calm this long.

Being back here. Seeing Tony again. And then the glasses. The glasses he gave to Beck.

How could he be so stupid?

Peter sniffs audibly and this time, when he speaks again, his voice does actually crack.

"Is it okay if I hug you?"

The moment Tony gave himself permission to relax about Peter's health, the weight of Peter's absence hit him. His jaw worked with the effort of keeping himself from crying out, wetness gathering and clumping his eyelashes. The stylus dropped and clattered against the side of the table and Tony pulled Peter against him.

Peter buries his face into Tony's shoulder, clinging to him like a kid half his age. The second-to-last time he saw Tony up close, he held him just like this. And the last time...

Peter pulls Tony even tighter, tears wetting Tony's shirt.

I missed you. He wants to tell Tony that, but he knows that the second he hears it that he'll probably assume the worst... and he probably won't be wrong. Peter thought that after seeing Ben die that this go-around it might be easier.

It wasn't. And being here now, all he can think about is when he goes back again and Tony won't be there and how if Tony knew what he did, he'd be disappointed in him and how maybe what Beck said was true.

Maybe it was his fault.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Backdated August 15th - Closed to Peter] It Won't Be Like This For Long

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject