Work Text:
Peter Parker is five years old when he learns about death. His uncle and his aunt sit him down in the living room where he is living, breathing, alive. They start talking about books and movies. Peter likes books, and he especially likes movies, so he listens.
They talk about how movies end eventually, even the best ones. They say that his life is like a movie, and their lives are like a movie, and his parents’ lives were like a movie. Eventually it ends.
Then they start saying things like “gone” and “died” and “can’t come back” and Peter asks, “Why did their movies end and not ours?”
There’s a pause. Ben tells him there’s a plan for everyone. Somehow, that answer seems unsatisfactory.
Peter Parker is seven years old and his idol, his favourite celebrity and genius has been kidnapped. Peter has read his work and has obsessed over his inventions time and time again.
It’s been almost three months and everyone is saying he’s dead but Peter doesn’t think so. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking but Peter knows Tony Stark isn’t dead. He can’t be dead.
Tony Stark doesn’t deserve to be dead. Nobody deserves to be dead, not even really evil people, thinks Peter, naive and only seven years old. After all, who is Peter to decide who should die and who shouldn’t?
Peter Parker is thirteen years old, a month away from fourteen and he thinks he’s going to die before ever gets there. May has taken him to the hospital, but they checked his temperature and he seems to just have a normal fever. This would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that he’s sleeping nineteen hours a day and the other five hours, he feels like his skin is on fire.
Ben says it’s just puberty. Peter has decided he hates puberty and does not want a deeper voice any more if it means this.
After a week, he’s perfectly fine, and the only changes to his body are a comprehensive eyesight, a new set of abs, and a peculiar stickiness. Still no deep voice. His life feels like a movie now more than ever.
Peter Parker is sixteen years old and he wishes, for the first time, that he was dead again.
Peter feels like he should still be dead and he thinks he should be dead but it’s been a month and with every beat of his heart, he feels the steady thrum of a song singing alive but why should he be alive when everyone else isn’t? Richard and Mary are dead. Ben is dead. May is sick.
He can’t shake off the feeling of being an intruder when Tony invites him over, so he hangs out with him less. He pushes Ned and MJ away because sometimes there’s a little voice in his head telling him that he’s cursed and he may be Spider-Man, but the only way he can save them is by staying away from them.
And maybe the best way—the only way—to stay away from them is to die. He pretends he’s doesn’t think about things like this and he pretends he’s busy with a life that he isn’t actually living and he pretends it doesn’t hurt every time he cancels with Tony or Ned or MJ.
Tony sends him a message a month or so later; he’s been messaging him incessantly, trying to corner him, trying to spend more time with him, trying to reconnect a bond. Peter still has him saved as ‘mr iron man’. He ignores the messages he had sent Tony before the snap. Walls and walls of blue text messages. Now the grey and the white threaten to eliminate the blue completely.
mr iron man
hey kiddo
pepper was wondering if you wanted to come to dinner tonight
peter
its ok
mr iron man
you sure? i haven’t seen you in a while
Peter leaves him on read.
He doesn’t feel like the person he was two months (five years) ago. He feels like a souvenir of life before the snap and, eventually, Tony will forget about him, shove him away in a drawer somewhere. Peter’s just waiting for it to happen.
Queens will never forget Spider-Man, though, so he goes patrolling again. Nowadays, he spends more time in the suit than out of it.
He sticks to the normal, friendly things he always does. Helps a teenager around his age fix a tyre. Hands out flyers for a cafe that opened recently. Finds a missing cat and returns it.
When he’s swinging through the city, he nearly hits a sign that wasn’t there before the blip. He ungracefully manoeuvres over it, a flush colouring his cheeks, hoping nobody saw that. A few people did. It’ll be one more clip for the Spider-Man fail compilations on YouTube and one more memory to look back on when he pushes himself to do better and one more mistake to the mountains he’s already made.
He walks across the wall of a building, parallel to the ground, pulling out his phone when he receives a notification. He wonders who could be texting him this late.
mr iron man
brace yourself parker
i’m coming over to your apartment
tell your aunt not to prepare anything in the kitchen
This has to be a cover for something. It’s one in the morning.
peter
actually im at neds sorry
mr iron man
peter
you know i can track your suit, right?
peter
well yeah
mr iron man
you are not at ned’s
peter
im going to neds
mr iron man
you’re nowhere near ned’s
peter
are you checking up on me how do you know where ned lives
and may is having a late shift shes not at home don’t go there
mr iron man
seems like you are as well
its way too late for you to be out right now
its like one in the morning
no way may parker has approved this ive faced your aunt’s wrath before peter
peter
don’t tell her
mr iron man
i won’t tell her if you come back to the apartment and show me where you keep your mugs
i’m on your sofa right now
did you buy new cushions? i like them
peter
how did you get into my apartment
Tony leaves him on read. Sighing, he pockets his phone and swings back home, entering his apartment through his window, hearing the sound of rattling and clanging in the kitchen before even entering. He changes into a pair of jeans and a hoodie. Green. He thinks it’s May’s. It smells like burnt cookies, a smell Peter is unfortunately very familiar with.
Tentatively, Peter steps out into the corridor. He watches Tony muck about in his kitchen, not noticing him. His lips quirk up as Tony searches for, most likely, the coffee.
Finally, Tony turns around and sees him, hand flying to his chest. “Jesus Christ, Parker. I have heart problems. How long have you been standing there?”
“Just, like, thirty seconds or so,” Peter says, grinning at him despite himself. “May hid all the coffee. She’s on this ‘wellbeing’ journey and even I can’t find it.”
“You’re fucking with me. Why did I come here then if you don’t have coffee? What a sin. I’m going to find it if it’s the last thing I do.”
“I can help,” Peter offers eagerly. So maybe he had a big fuss about not wanting Tony in his apartment, but now that he was actually here, well, there was no point in complaining anymore, right?
May Parker walks into her apartment at five in the morning, exhausted out of her mind. She walks right past the kitchen, heading to Peter’s room to check on him. Pause. Rewind.
Tony Stark is sitting on her kitchen tiles, asleep, back against the cabinet under the sink. Peter’s head is on his lap, his body half on the floor, half on top of him. Tony’s hugging a jar of ground of coffee to his chest, smushed against Peter’s cheek. It was cute.
Disregarding the fact the entire contents of her kitchen had been taken out from cabinets and drawers and dumped on the floor and counters. There was a saucepan on Tony’s head and a spatula clutched in Peter’s hand.
Sighing, May takes a pink post it note and writes a note on it, sticking it to Tony’s forehead. They were going to clean this up when they woke up. She was going to go to bed.
She did take a picture first though, a fond smile playing on her lips.
Peter sits on top of yet another building, evading Tony’s texts and calls yet again. He gets this sense of déjà vu and he realises it’s because all he’s been doing after the Snap is going through the same motions, over and over. Ghosting people. Avoiding people. Apologising to people. Ghosting them again. It’ll only be a matter of time before they stop reaching out all together.
Peter quit Acadeca, much to MJ’s disapproval. He feels a prickling of guilt that he had become quite accustomed to every time they brought it up, but he really didn’t care much for MJ’s opinions anymore. Or Ned’s.
He really didn’t care what they had to say about anything anymore and he’s pretty sure they all knew it. And he’s pretty sure they didn’t have use for a friend who didn’t care about them.
Nothing is the same as before the snap, that’s for sure. Every time his eyes close, he’s overwhelmed with nightmares and cold sweat and every time he wakes up, he feels a harrowing regret and a dulled thought in the back of mind that maybe, just maybe, teenagers aren’t meant to regret being alive?
Peter gets that familiar feeling of déjà vu once again and almost laughs out loud, because even his thoughts are becoming predictable now. Nothing surprises him anymore.
So when he closes his eyes and lets himself fall off the building from where he was sitting, he doesn’t expect anyone to catch him. Spider-Man always catches himself. But maybe not this time.
Peter wonders if this is the end of his movie. He wonders if the end credits are about to start rolling. And he wonders if he'll get a sequel.