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Threading a needle always makes Tony feel like he’s on the verge of going cross-eyed. He likes to do his sewing in the penthouse, more natural light, but it still takes him ages. “I should invent something that makes this easier,” he says out loud, mutters a curse under his breath when the thread folds into a pretzel again instead of poking through the eye.
“Something has been invented,” FRIDAY says. “Needle threader. Hopper & Howe just put a brand-new version on the market. Enhance your sewing experience with the delightful blend of form and function provided by—"
“Put that on my wish list. All right, there ya go, sucker.” It’s through, the little bastard thread. Tony rearranges the mock-up of Peter’s new suit in his lap. “FRIDAY, play something appropriate, some roaring twenties jazz, Bye Bye Blackbird.”
Gentle piano chords fill the penthouse. Tony hums as he starts on a ladder stitch. Peter’s suits are his favorite to work on, more soothing than ocean waves.
Which is funny, considering being around Peter is a guaranteed three-ring-circus.
The music automatically cuts out when his phone buzzes on the table next to him. Tony swipes with a pinky to put it on speaker. “Morning, bestie.”
“Morning, buttercup,” May says. There is a faint background rumble of traffic.
“Before you ask, no, I didn’t forget. I am totally on top of it.”
“On top of what?”
“Fine, you got me. What did I miss? Parent teacher conference? Our monthly dinner? Was I supposed to drive the kid to school this morning?”
“You didn’t miss anything, Tony. I’m not calling to tell you off. Since when is that our dynamic? You called me last week to lecture me about vegetables!”
Peter had taken a bite of butternut squash and said, smiling wide, ‘I love carrots!’, which was even more concerning than the time he confused AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. “I listened to this podcast about the importance of a varied diet—”
“No teenager knows what a fucking butternut squash is, Tony, that doesn't mean I only feed him potatoes.”
“I hope you don’t swear like that in front of our kid, he’s very impressionable.”
“Can we talk about my problem now?” May asks. “Because I’m freaking out and I need someone to talk me down.” He notices it, suddenly; there is something brittle in her voice.
“You need—Are you sure?” Tony pushes the needle partway through the cloth and then lays the suit to one side. “I’m the opposite of the person you should be calling for something like that.”
“Well, I have no social life, so you’re my only friend. After you, my closest relationship is with the woman who delivers my sushi.”
“Okay,” Tony says. “Shoot.”
May pauses a moment. “You know. I had a lady come into the clinic this week asking if it was possible for us to microchip people. She was very serious about it, too.”
“Zero judgement.” Tony leans back and puts his feet up on the coffee table, ankles crossed. “I mean — let’s be honest, we’ve both considered it with the kid. He gets stuck in weird places, May, I had to free him from his own sweater the other day when he tried to push his head through the sleeve hole.”
“Tony,” May says, and then pauses. Tony gets a feeling this might be bad.
“To be clear,” May says. “I just need you to listen, you don’t have to solve this for me, because you can’t.”
“I’m offended. I can solve anything, I know everything.”
“How do you replace a vacuum bag?”
“All right, you got me there.”
Another pause.
“I’m guessing this isn’t about microchips or vacuum cleaners, May,” Tony says gently.
“I found a lump in my armpit this morning,” May says brusquely. “The bad kind. I called the doctor and they can’t squeeze me in until tomorrow. Which is helpful, because I love marinating in dread for 24 hours. How am I supposed to get through my day? And I can’t tell Peter because then he freaks out, and when he freaks out, I freak out. Last time I had a cold, Peter diagnosed me with about seventeen different tropical diseases.”
“May... Okay, that’s scary. How do you know it’s the bad kind?”
“I just have a feeling about it. I’m a doctor, I think I’m qualified to make that call.”
“You’re a veterinarian.”
“It’s my own fault. I mean. I do eat vegetables, despite what you might think. And I don’t smoke. But I never exercise, I can’t even lift a pencil.”
“Let’s wait for what the doctor has to say. What can I do?”
May heaves a sigh. “Could you take Peter after school, invite him for a sleepover? He’ll be so thrilled about it he won’t even question it. I just can’t—I’m worried he’ll notice something off about me.”
“You really don’t want to tell him?”
“Hard no.”
Tony lets out a little sound of disbelief. “So I’m supposed to pretend everything is fine? I… That feels weird.”
“You two are trying to keep Spider-Man hidden from me, but this is where you draw the line?”
“Uhhh,” Tony says, his brain stalling into gridlock.
“Uh-huh,” May says, sounding pretty damn proud of herself.
Tony stays quiet a moment, breathing into the silence. Then he sighs and wipes a hand down his face. “We should probably… have some coffee soon.”
“Pick me up tomorrow after my doctor’s appointment.”
“Will do. Good luck in there.” Tony plucks at the fabric of Peter’s suit. “May. Thanks for confiding in me. Even if it means you skipped at least twelve more logical options first. It’s… Whatever is coming, I got you.”
-
Peter is thrilled. “Is it because you finished my suit?” he asks, balancing a whole stack of books in his arms as he slides into the passenger seat. “That’s so quick, Tony! Can we order Ethiopian food for dinner? Because May tried to cook some last night and it was the worst thing I ever put in my mouth, and I just want to give it a fair shot. Whoops.” His protractor tumbles to the floor.
Tony surveys him over the rim of his glasses. “Where is your backpack?”
Peter smiles widely, as if he is about the deliver great news, and says: “I lost it.”
“Lord have mercy. We’ll swing by Loom & Leather. And then we’re gonna ask your aunt to microchip it.”
“Like a cat,” Peter says, nodding, “like my backpack would be my cat, I did always want a cat, but whenever I ask May she just starts listing all the worst diseases cats can get.”
“Aren’t dogs better anyways?”
“Cats are better. I like when they headbutt you.” Peter leans over and bumps his forehead against Tony’s shoulder.
“Buckle up, Garfield.”
They swing by the store and get Peter his new backpack. Peter picks one that is red and blue.
“What have I told you about being subtle?” Tony says, once back in the car.
“Nothing,” Peter says as he starts cramming the books into the backpack. “There’s no way you ever told me anything about being subtle, that word barely exists to you.”
“You are horrible.”
“Don’t call me horrible. That’s very damaging, you know how much I look up to you.”
“All right, you’re great.” Tony starts the car. “You’re a nutella waffel, you’re a Madagascar rainbow butterfly.”
“Can we get ice cream?” Peter asks.
-
Peter does his homework. They have the ice cream first and the Ethiopian food after. Tony asks Peter what he did at school and gets an answer as vague as ever. He shows Peter the actually-not-yet-finished suit. They head down to the workshop where they work on Peter’s latest brainchild: a remote-controlled snack butler for May. Because the kid does worry about her, worries about making her life easier, all the time.
Tony sits on his brown leather sofa in the corner and watches as the kid compares cupholder designs with his usual concentrated frown. He sneaks a picture to send to May. May responds with a big pink heart.
Tony follows up with a: How is the marinating in stress going?
May sends a picture of the pizza in her lap and behind it, some show playing on her laptop. Distracting my thoughts.
Try breaking some stuff. Tony advises.
May is going to go to the doctor tomorrow and everything is going to turn out fine, it has to. People get health scares all the time.
People also get sick all the time, a little voice whispers from the back of his mind. People get sick and die, way too young.
“Hey,” Peter says, and Tony wonders how long he has been staring into space. He looks up at the kid who is peering at him across the desk. “Are you bored?” Peter asks. “Is my snackz-periment boring you?”
“Never. It is a marvel of gastronomy. When will we see it in action?”
Peter hums and shrugs. “I’m kinda thinking I might save it for when May inevitably finds out about Spider-Man. To soften the blow, you know.”
“Good thinking,” Tony says. “Good thinking.”
May doesn’t tell Peter about the doctor, because she doesn’t want him to worry. Peter doesn’t tell May about Spider-Man because he doesn’t want her to worry. May doesn’t tell Peter she actually does know about Spider-Man because…
God, that family needs help.
He shoos Peter up to bed at a very appropriate time — he heard all about it on a podcast — and then pours himself a glass of wine. He sinks into the couch, pulls the mock-up back into his lap and looks for the needle he stuck into a seam somewhere.
He has sewn another two feet of fabric when Peter sends him a message. Just looked it up the madagascar rainbow bfly doesnt exist you liar.
Go to sleep hooligan. Tony types.
Yes ma’am. Peter sends back, along with a GIF of Stanley from The Office, snoring behind his desk.
Tony wishes he could hold these two Parkers in his cupped hands and protect them from everything forever.
-
It has been a tradition for almost half a year now, that he takes the Parkers out to dinner once a month. They always go to the same place, a lovely little Vietnamese restaurant whose owner used to be on Tony’s security detail. He can rent a backroom there and trust that she won’t leak a word to the papz.
Going out for coffee together is a different story. But there, too, they have built a rhythm. Tony swings by wherever they meet, two cups already sitting in the cupholders, and then they drive aimlessly until they find a place to stop. They sit there with the windows cracked or the radio playing on a low volume as they compare notes about—Peter, usually.
So on Wednesday afternoon, he waits outside the doctor’s office until May pushes through the revolving door. “Medium iced latte, oat milk,” he says as she climbs into the car.
She pulls away her scarf. “Should have made them Irish,” she says, smacking her lips as she picks up her cup with both hands.
Tony starts the car. “That bad, huh?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know. She said it could be many things, and most are not dangerous, but additional tests are needed. They’re sending me to some specialist. So.” She shrugs. “It could still be nothing, but it feels a bit less likely that it’s nothing. Right?” She sips.
Tony says nothing as he pulls out of the spot, into traffic. “If it is something,” he starts, strangely unwilling to say the words, get them past his teeth.
“I know,” May says, her voice unusually gentle. “You’ll be our knight in shining armor.”
Tony isn’t good with problems he can’t fix. Especially something like this. The headaches of parenting a teenager are one thing, but curing cancer — that feels like something right in his wheelhouse, something he should have checked off his list ages ago. A personal failure. “How are you?” he asks. “Other than all this.”
“My job’s a joke, I’m broke, my love life’s DOA.”
“Work not hitting the same anymore?”
She waves a hand. “It’s fine. I’m just in the mood for complaining.”
“What about your date with that—the guy with the ears?”
“Oh, he was nice,” May says. She sighs and puts her coffee down, starts folding her scarf in her lap. “Ben ruined me for other men, you know.”
Tony snorts.
“Kind and generous and hilarious, even when he was grumpy he was loveable. He hated vacations, and the dentist, and pigeons. He slept with socks on. His lucky number was two thousand. He was a fucking weirdo, Tony, I miss him.”
It’s not something Tony can say he is wholly familiar with, grieving someone you love so dearly. He has only learned to really love people later in his life, people who are still around. “Peter rarely talks about him,” he says. “Sometimes he mentions Ben, almost as if by accident. And then he gets quiet and changes the subject. It’s been bugging me, I don’t know if I should bring it up, reassure him that it’s…”
“Podcasts didn’t have any advice?”
“Boo.”
She giggles, shakes her head. “It’s not because of you. When I talk about Ben he changes the subject, too. Thinks he’s subtle about it. There’s a lot that boy thinks he’s subtle about.”
Right. Spider-Man.
Tony turns the car into one of their usual spots, a gravel lot beside a modest sports field. The bleachers are empty. A couple of teenagers are practicing passes back and forth.
They pick up their coffee and settle back in their seats.
“You know, this is the sort of thing I’d have in mind when I think about my boy blowing off steam,” she says, lifting her cup of coffee to indicate the teens. “Not… tightrope walking from the Empire State to the One Vanderbilt, or tailgating fire trucks, or whatever it is Spider-Man does all day.”
“How long have you known?”
“A good while since I’ve been wondering. About a month since I’ve been sure.”
“Am I in trouble? Is this going to end with me stuffed and mounted on your wall?”
“Do you think all veterinarians do taxidermy?”
“Oh, no, I assume it’s just an occasional weekend hobby for you.”
She looks out the window a while, Tony can’t read her face from this angle. “I’m tremendously proud of him,” she says eventually.
“Why didn’t you tell him you cottoned on? What is it with you two. What do you and Peter even talk about when you’re at home together?”
“Plenty of stuff!” May insists. “Team Edward or Jacob. Whether toffee is better than nougat. What we think computer keyboards looked like before letters were invented. Who should be the next Dr. Who. Peter’s firm stance is that it should be a cat. He can get pretty keyed up arguing his point, in fact.”
“So, about nonsense.”
“Nonsense can be very compelling.”
“Are you going to tell him that they’re sending you to see a specialist?”
Her mouth flattens. She says nothing.
“You know something’s wrong in your family dynamic when I’m the one telling you to communicate better.”
“I’ll talk to him,” she says, lifting one finger, “about Spider-Man.”
“Fab.”
Baby steps.
-
Tony wakes up to someone poking his shoulder and sees Peter hovering over him, barely visible in the low pale light cast from the bathroom. He is in his suit, but the mask is off.
Tony is instantly wide awake. “Kid — what are you doing here?”
“Well. I just thought you should know,” Peter says, “that there’s blood on your kitchen floor.”
“Cheesey Christ.” Tony kicks the blankets away, rolling out of bed. “Why were you patrolling at fucking—freaking—” his swimming attention finds the alarm clock on his nightstand blinking back at him, 02:17, in bright red numbers.
“Oh,” Peter says. “Yeah. That’s definitely not common practice or anything.”
Tony takes him by both wrists, turning him more fully towards the dim light, and quickly spots the tea towel clumsily wrapped around his upper arm. He knows how fast Peter heals. For the wound to still be bleeding, it must have been…
“I got shish-kebabbed,” Peter confirms, nodding.
“Ugh.” Tony’s stomach contracts at the mere thought. “Righty-ho. Med bay.”
He moves to put a hand on Peter’s shoulder, but Peter leans away, and says as his blood is soaking through the damn tea towel: “Put on some socks first, your feet will get cold.”
“March,” Tony says in his most threatening tone.
“Yes ma’am.”
He steers Peter out of the room. His door slides shut behind him, the light strips along the edges of the ceiling ease awake, gradients of blue and green. Peter makes the little alien noises he always makes when they walk down this hallway. “Your house is like a spaceship.”
“Kid, I thought your aunt talked to you about Spider-Man.”
Peter’s head bobs up and down. “That doesn’t mean she needs to know every time I get injured. Especially when I get stabbed, that’s how Ben died. And I’m not going to bleed all over her kitchen, excuse me, that’s where we eat.”
“Invalid argument. You eat in my kitchen too. More than I do, in fact.”
“Invalid argument. You don’t eat at all, you survive on coffee. Anything I eat is gonna seem like a buttload in comparison.”
A buttload is about right. While it certainly isn’t true that Tony survives on coffee, he did use to source all his meals from one of the tower’s many restaurants, meaning his fridge and kitchen cabinets used to be largely unstocked. But now, he can count the months Peter has been in his life by the steadily increasing variety of food filling his shelves. He can recognize the phases, even: it’s practically archaeological. The oldest strata had generic chips and candy bars. Next, when Tony got to know Peter, a layer of the specific snacks that the kid favored: red vines, yogurt pops, rice cakes. Phase three, when Tony embraced a semblance of responsibility and bought healthier stuff: dried mango, trail mix, baby carrots. And finally, when Peter started staying the night: cereal, eggs, bananas.
FRIDAY opens the elevator doors for them as they approach. “Beam me up, scotty,” Peter says. He leans back against the wall elevator, supporting his injured arm with his other one. “You know that is actually a misquotation. Like Luke I’m your father or Houston we have a problem. It should be ‘no’ and ‘we’ve had’.”
“Listening to you is the narrative equivalent of having a seizure.”
“I love you, Tony,” Peter says easily. “You’re the bestest.”
Tony leans in and pulls one of his eyelids up. “Did you hit your head as well?”
Peter tilts his head out of Tony’s grip. “No. Stabbings just make me mushy.”
“Because of Ben?” It wasn’t lost on Tony, how fast Peter changed the subject again after dropping that name.
Peter shakes his head, his gaze skittering away. “I shouldn’t have brought that up.”
“You can, you know. And you should consider including your aunt in all of this, not just the successes but the injuries. She’ll want to know what her bambino fourteen-year-old baby nephew—”
“I’m fifteen.”
That gives Tony pause. “I could have sworn you were fourteen.”
The elevator doors slide open to the pristine white floors of their medical wing. Peter fiddles with the knot he tied in his tea towel, his grin slanted. “I was fourteen, yes. My age is subject to change.”
“Did I miss your birthday?”
“Excuse me, bleeding out,” Peter says.
Tony huffs and steers him out of the elevator and towards room C. Peter walks past the first two beds and takes the third, because he's been in here so many times that he has tried every bed twice and deemed that one the most comfy, ‘so comfy, Tony, you're gonna wish you'd get shot every once in a while’.
Peter pulls the tea towel away and taps his chest twice, the fabric of his suit sags down. Peter shrugs out of the top part, leaving the fabric bunched up around his waist. “Huh,” he says as he twists his arm left then right. There is a thin cut in the skin on both sides, scabbed over, no longer bleeding. “I guess I won’t bleed out.”
“You woke me up for that?”
“If you'll remember, I in fact woke you up to tell you there's blood on your kitchen floor.”
“My feet are cold,” Tony complains.
“Warned you.”
Tony takes Peter’s arm in both hands and studies the cut closely. “All of this is in jest, by the way. I don't care if you have a papercut, always wake me up if you feel like you need to.”
“Can I at least have a kiddie band-aid?” Peter asks, before making his eyes wide and poking out his bottom lip.
Tony bought those in an attempt to shame the kid out of his more reckless behaviors. It seems to have had the opposite effect. He finds the box of kiddie band aids and hands them over, sits on the edge of Peter's bed as the kid sorts through them with earnest determination. “Kid. Seriously, you can wake me up whenever you feel like you need to. But why won't you go to May for something like this? I'm sure she could stitch you up just fine.”
“She stitched up a pigeon this week.”
“My point. So talk to her.”
Peter’s shoulders hunch. “I’m not good at talking.”
“You’re joking, right? You’re fabulous at talking, you rarely shut up!”
Peter glares. “Not good at talking about serious stuff.”
Tony pokes the kid’s knee. “Don’t you think,” he says, very aware of the irony of what he is about to say, “if something bad happened to May you would want her to tell you about it?”
“May is not allowed to worry about me,” Peter says, bending his head down low over the box of band-aids. “Ever.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Peter says. “Because… because… She loves me, so my pain is her pain. And then I’ll see her in pain over my pain, and I love her, so her pain is my pain. So then I just end up with double pain!”
Tony presses his fingers against his eyelids. “The word ‘pain’ has just become meaningless to me.” Somewhere in that garbled explanation, though, he thinks he found a sentiment he can understand.
Peter found a Pikachu band-aid to his liking and slaps it across the cut, rubbing the edges. “Just... Don't tell her, okay?”
Tony sighs. “Fine.”
Peter stretches out on the bed and grins happily.
“Anything else I need to know about this midnight patrol of yours?”
Peter rolls over. “I lost my cat,” he says into his pillow.
-
“You do this one.” May drops one of the many forms into his lap. “You know my address.”
The waiting room is quiet, the only sound the hum of the water cooler. It has a built-in UV ring that illuminates the water whenever someone approaches. Tony plans to steal it and put it in his workshop.
He digs a chewed-up pencil out of his inside pocket and gets to work. He surprises himself by realizing he knows May’s birthday, he just has to check the year. “Emergency contact?” he asks as his pencil drifts further down the page.
“Do you mind if it’s you?”
“I don’t mind,” Tony says, feeling actually—embarrassingly moved by the request. He scribbles down his contact details. “When was Peter’s birthday?”
“August.”
Huh. That was pre-ferry incident, even. He vaguely remembers it now, Peter mumbling something about not being fourteen anymore while Tony was too angry to listen. “I missed it.”
“Well, same time next year.” She glances at him. “You don’t seem like the type who eats pencils.”
“I wasn’t until I met your kid.”
She grins like that is something to be proud of. “He does have a knack for getting in trouble, doesn’t he. And trying to keep it quiet.”
Tony looks at the white door labelled Diagnostic Mammography and says nothing.
“Dr. Munchetty,” May says, pointing her pencil at the ‘Referring doctor’s name’-section on Tony’s form.
“If it turns out to be nothing,” Tony says. “Are you just going to… never tell Peter this was ever a thing?”
She purses her lips and starts doodling in the margin of her own form about her medical history. “Peter lost two parents and then his uncle.”
“So he’s not allowed to worry about you,” Tony says. “Ever.”
“When his parents died he stopped speaking for over a month, did he ever tell you that?”
Tony shakes his head.
“Their plane crashed over the ocean. He kept having nightmares about them drowning, and them him drowning. He had a real thing about going into the water for a while, still doesn’t love it. He was so small, Tony. And Ben was so good with him. Told Peter a million stories about him and Richard as children, and meeting Mary in college. Stories that made Peter laugh, even when he wasn’t talking yet. It’s rare to see Peter laugh, you know. He smiles a lot, but he rarely laughs. And I don’t know jack shit about raising kids. I’ve been winging it from day one.”
“Oh, please.”
“Don’t act like you don’t think I’m… I’m neurotic or dramatic or—”
“May, I am in awe of you.”
May gapes at him, then sniffs. "Well, now you tell me."
“Did he stop talking after Ben?”
She sighs, tracing her own doodles with her fingers. “Maybe he should have. To be honest, when Ben died, we each tried so hard to be strong for the other that I sometimes think neither of us properly grieved.”
Tony taps the pencil against his knee. “Can I make an observation about all this?”
“If you must.”
“I think you’re both still stuck in that M.O., just being strong for the other.”
She covers her entire face with the form. “Something about how bad our family dynamic is when you’re the one telling us to communicate better, right?”
“Oh, you actually listen to me, do you?”
“Yeah, they’re pearls of wisdom, do you have a podcast?”
She is sidetracking the conversation, but Tony decides to let her.
Baby steps.
-
Peter is the kind of kid who finds it impossible to just sit up straight.
Dinner in the backroom of their Vietnamese place is that weekend. A rectangular room with wide floorboards and a window with a matte finish so they can’t see the— probably just a back alley with a clutter of garbage cans against a blind wall, something romantic like that.
The first thing Peter does upon entering is kick off his shoes and climb on a chair, perching on the seat, takes a mint from the little bowl in the center of the table and starts picking at the wrapper. Like a Gibraltar monkey.
“Why do you always ruin your palate by eating those things first?” Tony complains.
Peter shrugs. “I see food, I eat food.”
“This restaurant has a Michelin star.”
“No one cares.”
“You don’t care. Cultured people will care. Maybe I should start my own podcast.”
“Slay, girl,” Peter says with a smile. “Get that coin.”
They order some of everything and rotate the plates around. Peter eats for two, and at a pace that continues to amaze Tony. “I love carrots,” he says happily as he spears a piece of sweet potato with his fork.
Tony frowns at May. She rolls her eyes.
Her phone starts buzzing as they’re waiting for dessert. “Oh—I have to take this.” She disappears into the corridor. She returns after only a minute or two, clutching the phone to her chest. “That was my doctor,” she says. “And I’m fine.”
She says it casually, but Tony loses all the air in his body.
“You’re… You’re fine?” He repeats. Of course she’s fine, he totally knew she’d be fine. This isn’t relief he’s feeling, this is just how he always feels when he’s proven right.
“You doctor calls you,” Peter says slowly, frozen halfway through cutting a giant spring roll in half. “On a Friday evening. To tell you you’re fine. My doctor never does that.”
“One hundred percent false alarm,” May says.
Tony gets up and hugs her. “I wasn’t worried for a moment.”
They turn and Peter is still sitting there. “What the hell?” he says, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “Excuse me, what the hell? Were you… Have you been…” The kid is clever enough to put the puzzle pieces together, Tony can see it slowly dawning on his face.
“Okay, honey,” May pushes her chair closer to him before sitting back down, and lays one hand on Peter’s wrist, the one holding his knife. “Before I explain anything, let me preface it by saying it is benign.”
“CANCER?” Peter yells in her face, voice shooting up the register.
“The entire point is that it’s not.”
Peter has gone white. “But you thought it might be! And you told him and not me?”
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Okay. Well fine. That’s fine, that’s fine, that’s fine.”
“Sweetheart,” May says gently.
“Nope. Totally fine. No problem.” But what Peter says is no problem and what he actually thinks is no problem doesn’t always line up. “I’m not worried. I wouldn’t have worried, you can tell me stuff. I always tell you everything.”
“Do you?”
“No, not at all,” Peter backpedals. “So. Fine. You didn’t want me to worry. I get that. I really do get that, May. Great plan, well executed.”
And he refuses to say another word about it for the rest of the meal.
-
Tony gets behind the wheel, Peter crawls into the back seat. May dashed back inside to grab her scarf, so Tony takes his chance. “Pete,” he says, turning in his chair.
Peter picks at his nails and doesn’t look up at him. “Yeah.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah.”
“You need to get better at lying.”
“Yeah-hah,” Peter says in a much deeper voice. “How was that?”
“A little better.” He reaches out and pokes Peter’s knee with one finger. “Peter. You’re safe.”
Peter looks up and meets his eyes. “I know.”
“You’re safe. Your aunt is safe. She’s not going anywhere.”
“I know,” Peter says, but there is a waver in his voice.
“And I got both of you. You hear me?”
“Yes ma’am,” Peter says. He turns away and buries his face against the upholstery.
Tony sighs and rubs what little of Peter’s knee he can reach. Oh, this stupid-ass family.
May is approaching the car and Tony nods his head to the side to signal that she should get in the back. She does. “All set,” she says. “All set to go home.” She scoots closer to Peter and drops a kiss into his hair, rubbing his back. “All right, honey?”
Peter’s breath hitches and he slumps forward, sinking into her embrace. “You can’t die,” he blubbers, tears suddenly spilling everywhere. “You can’t, you can’t, you can’t. Everyone else is dead already.”
May tucks his head under her chin and wraps him into a tight hug. “This is why I didn’t tell you,” she murmurs.
“But you have to,” Peter says in a rough voice. “Because if we d-don’t tell each other the truth, we’re just going to be — be wondering all the time if the other person is really okay, or if they’re hiding something. So we have to be honest, even if it makes the other person worried, May, we have to, we have to.”
May sighs. “You’re already so clever,” she says. “Why do you have to be so wise, too?”
Peter sniffles and turns to wipe his face. “I’ll tell you every time I get hurt,” he says. “I’ll let you stitch me up or yank my shoulder back in its socket.”
“Aren’t you sweet,” May says, and drops a hundred more kisses all over his head.
They roll back into traffic. The streets are dark, head- and taillights drift by. Peter leans his cheek against May’s scarf and murmurs that he misses Ben, misses his snort-laugh and his scratchy beard and the way he always fell asleep during the news and his lucky number two thousand.
Tony makes sure to take the scenic route home.
-
“Can we order pizza? With olives?”
“Yeah kid. You know my credit card number.”
Peter kicks off his shoes and slumps down on Tony's couch, grinning happily. “With olives and red onions.”
Peter does his homework. They have pizza on the couch. Tony asks Peter what he did at school and gets an answer as vague as ever. Peter tries on the finished suit. They head down to the workshop where Peter works on his remote-controlled snack butler.
Tony watches him. His nutella waffel, his Madagascar rainbow butterfly. “When will we see it in action?”
“I’ll bring it home tomorrow,” Peter says. “I’ll program it to bring May snacks whenever I’m about to crash through the kitchen window with an injury. Soften the blow.”
“Good thinking,” Tony says. “Good thinking.”
-
A little advice, he sends May that evening, buy some kiddie band-aids.