Chapter Text
The apartment was smaller than the word apartment deserved.
Calling it a box would have been more honest. Four walls, a ceiling low enough that Peter felt like he’d bang his head trying to stand up from unpacking, and a window that technically opened but jammed half the time. The place smelled faintly of mildew, maybe because of the carpet - or maybe because this whole building had given up on life a few decades ago and was just waiting for someone merciful to bulldoze it.
He told himself it was fine. He told himself worse things had happened. Which, technically, was true.
That didn’t make him feel any better.
The shoebox sat on the floor beside him, the only thing that counted as his moving boxes. He hadn’t even needed a backpack this time. A whole new life, apparently, could be summed up in one shoebox with the lid caving in and duct tape on the corners. Temporary, he thought. It had to be temporary.
Peter lowered himself to the floor, and he rubbed his face with both hands before peeling the lid back.
He pulled the lid off and started unpacking, even though there wasn’t really anywhere to put things. There was no dresser. No desk. Not even a shelf. Just a mattress on an old bedframe, a tiny kitchenette, and the box. But maybe if he spread things out, the place would feel less like a cell and more like… something. Something survivable.
The first thing he saw was the photo album. He had debated whether to bring it at all. What was the point? May wasn’t around anymore, and nobody remembered him anyway. He’d been burned out of all the photos like he’d never been there at all. Still, his hands lingered on the worn cover. The corners were bent and frayed from years of being shoved into drawers or packed in backpacks, and the clear plastic sleeve had gone a little cloudy with age. His fingers hovered over it, and for a second, he considered putting it back. Looking through it would only end one way.
He set it aside carefully, like it might break if he breathed too hard, and went to the next thing. His old suit, folded into the bottom of the box. Not the upgraded one Tony had made him - not the nanotech, not the red-and-gold gleam - but the first one.
(Karen had locked him out because she didn't recognise his face. That had hurt, too.)
The one that smelled faintly of sweat and duct tape, the one with seams that were uneven if you looked too closely. He had patched the underarm once after he’d ripped it. He could still see the crooked line of thread.
Peter pulled it out and laid it across his knees. It looked impossibly small. Like it belonged to someone else entirely.
Temporary, he told himself again. This was just… the layover. He could fix it. It wasn’t a big deal.
Except it was a big deal, and he knew it. His chest felt tight, and he folded the suit back into a crumpled mess before he could think too hard.
There were a couple books under it - paperbacks that had been on May’s shelf. She’d given them to him when he was still in high school - half because she wanted him to read more, half because she couldn’t bear to throw anything away. The spines were cracked, the corners curled, the pages soft and yellowed. They smelled like her apartment had smelled: faint coffee, detergent, and that brand of candles she always bought on clearance.
His old camera, from years ago. Ben's camera. Peter swallowed, and set it aside.
The last thing was his sketchbook. A sketchbook he’d half-filled back in middle school, back when he thought maybe he’d have time for hobbies. Drawings of suits, webs, half-invented ideas. Doodles in the corners of helmets and shields and arc reactors. Middle school Peter had filled half of it with scribbles and plans and doodles of webs and masks. There were designs for gadgets he never got around to building, rough sketches of Avengers logos, and messy caricatures of classmates he hadn’t thought about in years. He flipped a page, then another, and then closed it.
And then… that was it. That was all he had. His whole existence boiled down to one beat-up shoebox on the floor of an apartment that smelled like wet drywall.
Peter leaned back against the wall and stared at the ceiling, trying to ignore the sound of his upstairs neighbor stomping around. His body ached, not just in the muscles but down in the bones.
He told himself this was the start of something. A fresh page. He’d done this before, right? Reinventing himself. He’d remade himself when he became Spider-Man. He’d remade himself when he lost Ben. When he lost May. When he lost everyone. Reinventing himself was practically a hobby at this point. Only this time, there was no Ned calling him up to make stupid Lego jokes, no MJ to roll her eyes and push him to be less self-destructive, no May standing in the kitchen with tea and exhaustion and love in her eyes.
But Tony was still alive.
That was the one piece he clung to.
Somewhere across the world, in Wakanda, Mr. Stark was asleep. In a coma, technically, but whatever. Not dead. Not gone. Asleep. His body had given out after the stones, but he was still breathing. Machines kept him stable, scientists kept watch, Shuri kept tinkering with solutions. People smarter than Peter were on the case. And that meant - eventually - he would wake up.
And when Tony woke up, Peter wouldn’t be alone anymore.
Peter pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes until stars sparked behind them. He tried to imagine the look on Tony’s face when he woke up - Tony with that skeptical raised eyebrow, Tony with the smirk that wasn’t really a smirk, Tony with too much coffee in his veins and too much sarcasm in his bloodstream. Tony telling him he was an idiot, but in a way that made it sound like maybe he wasn’t hopeless.
If Tony woke up and Peter could just… explain, then maybe it wouldn’t be so unbearable.
He wanted to believe that. He needed to believe that.
Because the alternative was thinking about May, and if he thought about May too long he’d fall apart. The radiator hissed louder, like it was mocking him. Peter gave it the finger.
“This is fine,” he said to the empty room, voice echoing too much.
The word rang hollow, but it brought him comfort anyway.
Glancing around again, the apartment wasn’t so much depressing as it was aggressively uninspiring. Every surface was some shade of beige that probably hadn’t been touched by a paintbrush since the seventies, and the floor groaned every time he walked across it. The radiator hissed in the corner, the single overhead bulb flickered, and the window was coated with enough grime to make the sunlight look permanently filtered.
Peter sat cross-legged on the carpet, staring down at his shoebox. His life was just… stuff. A handful of objects with the weight of memories, most of which hurt more than they helped.
Without thinking too hard about it, he slid it under the bed.
Peter leaned back against the wall, the plaster rough and cold against his shoulders. He stared at the ceiling, listening to his upstairs neighbor stomp around and shout into a phone. His body felt heavy in that way exhaustion settled in - deeper than muscle, all the way into the bones. He could’ve closed his eyes right then and not woken up for a week.
But he forced himself upright. No sleeping yet. He needed to at least pretend he was building a life here. Pretend that this was a stopgap, a waiting room, not the final destination.
Because it had to be temporary.
Because Tony was still alive, and that was the one thing he had.
If he just held on long enough, if he just waited… Tony would wake up, and Peter could explain everything. He could tell him about the spell, about the way the world forgot him, about how May was gone and he didn’t know how to do this on his own. He could unload all of it, and Tony would chuckle and say something smart and Peter would collapse from the normalcy and relief of it all.
That was the plan. That was the lifeline.
The radiator hissed louder, like it was mocking him. Peter flipped it off with two fingers this time. This is fine, he told the room again. His voice echoed weirdly, like the walls didn’t believe him. It’s fine. I’m fine. Temporary.
The words sat heavy in his head. He repeated them anyway.
—
The first night in the apartment was the kind of lonely that ached.
Peter lay on the mattress staring at the ceiling, listening to the radiator and the distant wail of sirens and the muffled voices of strangers. He thought about how May used to knock on his door at night, just to check if he was okay. She’d say she needed to borrow tape or scissors or a flashlight - always some flimsy excuse - but he knew she was just making sure he was still breathing after Mysterio had leaked his identity and it had become harder to sleep anymore.
Now, there was no knock. Just the empty hum of a city that didn’t know he existed.
He tried to remind himself he was Spider-Man. He’d lived through worse nights. He’d slept in worse places, probably. He could do this.
But when he closed his eyes, he saw May’s face, pale and still, and his throat closed up.
He rolled onto his side, clutching the pillow. He thought about Tony instead. About Wakanda, about Princess Shuri and the machines keeping him stable, about the possibility of waking up. He imagined Tony in a hospital bed, wires and monitors around him, eyes fluttering open. Kid, you look terrible. What happened to your face? That was the line Peter imagined, over and over.
He let himself believe it.
It wasn’t all hopeless. Maybe this was his chance to start fresh. Nobody knew Peter Parker. Nobody expected him to be anything. He could be anyone he wanted. He could build something new.
But the guilt was always there.
Guilt for May. Guilt for Tony, for not being able to help him when the stones burned through his arm and nearly killed him. Guilt for everyone who had ever counted on him, guilt for being too much of a coward to go back to the coffee shop and read through the dumb little sheet he’d written down. It sat in his chest like lead, heavy and immovable, despite how he tried not too feel so pathetic.
When the radiator hissed, he called it his new roommate. When the upstairs neighbor stomped, he called it free cardio training. When the window screamed on its hinges, he said it was singing him to sleep.
It didn’t fix anything, but it made the silence less unbearable.
—
Days slipped by. The shoebox stayed under his bed. The photo album stayed unopened. The suit stayed buried beneath the books. Peter told himself he was waiting. That all of this - the apartment, the loneliness, the hunger, the exhaustion - was temporary.
Because Tony was still alive.
And when Tony woke up, everything would change.
It had to.
—
When he was at work, Peter had gotten pretty good at pretending the bodega was the center of the universe.
He had three jobs, technically; the bodega, the cafe, and the freelance photography for the Bugle, which was only technically a job since most of the time they paid him late, underpaid him, or yelled at him about the framing of his shots. Triple employment sounded impressive if you said it fast, but really it just meant he was tired all the time and couldn’t remember what it felt like to sleep without setting an alarm.
This afternoon it was the bodega, which meant fluorescent lights that hummed like mosquitoes, sticky linoleum tiles, and shelves that leaned. It was easy just to focus on this moment, because if he thought about what his life had been before - what it was supposed to be - he’d probably just fold in on himself like an empty paper bag and never get up again.
So, instead of doing that, he kept his head down and stacked shelves, lining up cans in neat little rows, and told himself this was fine.
Then, the TV behind the counter switched from a soap opera rerun to breaking news.
He almost didn’t look. It was usually just noise - traffic reports, sports scores, an occasional game show. But then, “…Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries, released a statement today confirming that Tony Stark has regained consciousness after more than a year in a coma…”
Peter froze.
The can in his hand slipped and clattered onto the floor, and his chest tightened. He whipped around and stared up at the TV.
Pepper appeared on the screen, standing behind a podium. Her hair was pulled back neat, and her voice was steady. “Tony Stark is awake. He’s still recovering in Wakanda and taking some time out of the public eye, but he’s making progress every day. He’s doing well, and we’re hopeful.”
Alive. Awake.
Peter’s throat closed around the word.
For a second - longer than a second, really - it felt like the whole world tilted. Like the humming fluorescents cut out, the traffic noise outside stopped, and the only sound left was the rush of blood in his ears.
Tony was awake.
After a year. After everything.
Peter’s brain stuttered. He saw himself ripping off the ugly bodega apron, walking out the door, leaving his shitty little apartment and catching the first plane or ship or portal or anything to Wakanda. He saw himself running down sterile hallways, bursting through some hidden room where Tony lay propped against pillows, wires still connected but eyes open. He saw himself launching into Tony’s arms and crying into his shoulder. He saw Tony telling him he was an idiot, but with that crooked smile that made the insult feel like love.
He had missed him so much.
It had been a year without Tony and everything had gone wrong. May was gone. Strange had cast the spell. His friends had forgotten him. He’d shrunk down to a ghost version of himself, surviving on corner jobs and a shoebox of memories and only really living for Spider-Man at this point. Everything good had slipped through his fingers, but Tony had been the one constant he told himself might come back.
And now he had.
Peter’s knees wanted to give out. The anchor’s voice cut in again, talking about something and speculating about recovery times, about what Mr. Stark’s return might mean for international tech sectors and global defense. But Peter didn’t hear any of that.
Tony was back. Tony was alive. Tony was awake-
-and what would change?
The question slid in quiet, uninvited, and sat heavy.
Peter blinked, the image of Tony’s arms around him dissolving.
Tony didn’t remember him. He couldn’t. Nobody did. Not MJ, not Ned, not Happy. Not even Strange, who had cast the spell. Peter Parker had been erased. If Tony woke up and saw him, it would just be… some kid.
Peter’s chest went tight again, this time with something sour. He bent down, picked up the soup can, and placed it back on the shelf with mechanical precision. His hands shook a little, but he forced them still.
He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. He wanted to throw the whole shelf of soup across the aisle. Instead, he kept stacking.
The world hadn’t stopped. The fridges still hummed, the fluorescent lights still buzzed, the door still chimed as someone walked in to buy a lottery ticket. The news on the TV kept rolling replacing footage of Pepper’s face, and Peter kept working.
He wanted to cry so badly his eyes stung, but he blinked it back. He picked up another can. Lined it up. Picked up another. Lined it up.
The image of Tony awake burned in his head like sunlight.
And Peter stood there, heart in his throat, remembering. Remembering that rooftop in Queens, when Tony had taken the suit away. Remembering the ride in the Audi, Tony telling him he wasn’t ready. Remembering the hug that wasn’t a hug. Remembering Titan. Remembering dust. Remembering everything that had broken and everything that had been stitched back together wrong.
He missed him so much it felt like a hole in his chest.
For a heartbeat, it was like the bodega dissolved, like he was already gone, already on his way to Wakanda. He could almost feel Tony’s hand clapping his shoulder, hear the sharp, fond edge in his voice. You’re still here, kid? You don’t quit, do you?
But then the spell slammed back into him, and Peter’s eyes blurred. Customers came and went. He finished stacking the cans. The TV went back to weather.
Life went on.
—
Peter told himself he was happy. He told himself it was enough that Tony was alive, even if nothing changed for him personally. He told himself he could live with this - that it was enough to know Tony was breathing, talking, awake.
He wanted to believe it. He tried to believe it.
But that night, back in his apartment, the shoebox sat under his bed like an accusation. The photo album pressed against the suit, the sketchbook shoved on top. He sat on the mattress and stared at it, chest aching, and whispered to the empty room:
“He’s back.”
The radiator hissed. The city outside honked and wailed.
And Peter stacked his hope next to his guilt, neat as soup cans on a leaning shelf, and tried to survive another day.
—
The skyline of New York looked like it had been waiting for him, but Tony knew better.
The city didn’t wait for anyone. It ground forward on fumes and fury, same as always, eating and spitting out anyone dumb enough to think they mattered to it. Still - when the car crested over the bridge and Manhattan unrolled in front of him, something in his chest loosened.
It was good to be back.
Good in the sense that he hadn’t set foot on American soil in well over a year. Good in the sense that the last time he’d been conscious, he’d been burning himself alive on the inside to save the universe, and everything after that had been blank. Then Wakanda’s Medbay, sterile and humming, weeks of machines chirping at him. Pepper’s face carved with lines of exhaustion. Shuri’s relentless tinkering and explanations he only half-listened to. His body still felt like someone had wrung it out like a dishcloth, but at least he was vertical again. Breathing, talking, snarking.
And hungry. God, was he hungry.
“Hap,” he said from the back seat, his voice still a little rough from too many days of disuse. “Change of course. Pull over at the first burger joint you see. Doesn’t have to be five stars. Doesn’t even have to be one star. I’ll take half a star. Something that bleeds grease.”
From the driver’s seat, Happy glanced into the rearview mirror. His face did that thing it always did when he wanted to argue but also didn’t want to be fired. “Pepper said-"
“I don’t care what Pepper said.”
“Unfortunately, I do,” Pepper cut in smoothly from beside him. She didn’t even look up from the tablet balanced on her knees. “Happy, keep driving. We have food waiting at the Tower.”
Tony leaned forward against the seat like a kid trying to get the driver’s attention. “Food waiting at the Tower is code for kale, quinoa, and something that tastes like dirt but allegedly cleanses my colon.”
Pepper’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “It’s called healthy. You should try it sometime.”
“I’ve been unconscious for a year. I think that was enough cleansing for one lifetime. I want a burger. American classic. Grease dripping onto the wrapper. A side of fries that clogs arteries on sight. Coffee so strong it peels the enamel off my teeth.”
Happy coughed, which was probably his attempt not to laugh. Pepper shot him a look.
“You’re not even cleared for caffeine yet,” she reminded him.
“Cleared by who?” Tony asked. “Shuri? She’s not my mom. And if she was, she’d be a terrible one. Too smart, too competent, and she’d never let me get away with anything.”
Pepper finally looked up from her tablet, fixing him with that stare. “You’re supposed to be easing back into solid food. Controlled portions. Balanced meals. Low sodium.”
“I just came back from the dead, Pep. You think a little sodium is what’s gonna finish me off?”
Her mouth opened, then shut again. He’d scored a point there, and he knew it. He leaned back against the seat with a smug little hum, like victory tasted almost as good as the burger he wasn’t getting yet.
The car slowed at a red light. Tony drummed his fingers on the door impatiently, eyes flicking to the sidewalk. Pedestrians surged across the street in a wave of coats and bags, and he scanned the storefronts, not really looking - until a flash of a neon sign snagged his gaze.
Coffee.
A dingy little cafe sat on the corner, tucked between a laundromat and a tax office. The windows were fogged, but the inside looked blessedly uncrowded. Just one or two people scattered at tables, the glow of the counter, and a chalkboard sign boasting COFFEE in cursive, swirling letters that leaned sideways like they’d been written by someone in a hurry.
Perfect.
His heart did a little leap it had no business doing. For months in Wakanda he’d been hand-fed carefully measured portions of things that tasted like plant matter and medicine. Even the coffee - when he’d managed to steal a sip from Rhodey - was some sophisticated Wakandan blend that was technically delicious but nowhere near the burnt, bitter swill of an American diner cup. That was what he wanted. Something normal. Something familiar. Something his.
The light turned green. The car rolled forward.
Tony reached for the door handle.
“Tony,” Pepper said sharply.
But he was already moving. The door swung open, the cool New York air rushing in. He slid out onto the sidewalk before Happy could even react, shoes hitting the pavement with a little more wobble than he wanted to admit.
“Tony!” Pepper’s voice went up an octave, alarmed.
“Relax,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m getting coffee. What’s the worst that could happen?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. The bell over the cafe door chimed as he pushed it open and stepped inside, and the first thing he noticed was how small it was. The ceilings were low, the lighting soft, the tables close together. The air smelled of espresso, sugar, and something fried. Not Wakandan labs, not antiseptic hospital wards. Just… a cafe. A real, ordinary cafe.
The second thing he noticed was how not-crowded it was. Only a couple of people at tables, heads bent over laptops, one old man reading a newspaper. A woman near the window stirred sugar into her cup. The exhausted barista didn't look up from where he was wiping down the counter, and one of the probably-students by the tables glanced up, then immediately back down at whatever she was doing, unimpressed by his entrance. She probably didn’t even recognise him, because of how terrible and bedraggled he’d looked.
Perfect. Exactly what he wanted.
He moved to the counter, hands sliding into his pockets, heart doing that jittery thing it did when he was being stupid. He just wanted a coffee. A stupid, ordinary, overcooked coffee in a paper cup.
Pepper was probably still in the car fuming, Happy torn between following him in and obeying orders. Tony didn’t care. For the first time in a long time, he felt like he was making a choice for himself, however small.
The bell over the door chimed shut behind him, and he grinned.
—
The fluorescent lights were buzzing again.
Peter had been pretending not to notice for the past hour, pretending it was just white noise, pretending it wasn’t another thing digging into the back of his brain like nails on glass. The buzzing, the squeak of his sneakers on tile, the soft clatter of dishes somewhere in the back kitchen - none of it was unbearable, really. But it was the kind of sound that layered over everything else, stacked on top of the soreness in his ribs from last night’s patrol, the dull ache in his knuckles, and the fact that his stomach was basically eating itself while he stared down a display case full of muffins he couldn’t afford.
He was at the counter again. Always at a counter. Some days it was the bodega, some days the Bugle, some days this cafe that smelled like burnt espresso and bleach. The cheap wooden countertop was smooth in places, chipped in others, and Peter was scrubbing at it with more determination than it probably needed, his rag squeaking across the surface.
He told himself he wasn’t staring at the food. He wasn’t. But his eyes had a way of sliding, of catching on the crumbly tops of blueberry muffins, the flaky crust of a croissant, the chocolate chip cookie sitting on its little plate like a dare. His stomach twisted. He told himself it was fine. He could grab something later - cheap ramen, maybe. Or nothing. He was good at nothing.
The bell over the door chimed.
Peter scrubbed a little harder, ready with his autopilot greeting. “Welcome in,” he muttered, voice flat. It wasn’t personal; it was just muscle memory at this point. People came in, people went out. None of them were here for him.
Except-
“Well, don’t sound so excited to see me, kid.”
Peter’s head snapped up so fast his neck cracked.
The rag slipped in his hand. For a second - just a second - his brain short-circuited, like someone had yanked the plug out of the wall. Because Tony Stark was standing there. In his cafe. In his apron-and-grease-stained-shirt reality.
Tony Stark. Awake. Talking. Breathing.
It was like the world tilted under Peter’s feet.
He thought - God, for a second he thought Tony was there for him. That Tony had walked through that door because he knew, because he remembered, because he’d come back and somehow, impossibly, Peter wasn’t alone anymore.
Then Tony said, “Hey, just get me literally anything with caffeine, okay? Seventeen shots, whatever, I’m not picky,” and the fantasy snapped like a rubber band.
Peter’s throat was dry. His fingers clenched the rag until his knuckles ached. He couldn’t get a word out - he couldn’t even move - because Tony was there, real and solid and demanding coffee, and Peter’s heart was trying to crawl out of his chest.
The bell chimed again.
Pepper stormed in behind him a few seconds later, calm but sharp and very much pissed off. “Tony,” she said, and it wasn’t a greeting so much as a warning.
Tony turned half toward her, already bristling. “What? I just want a coffee. Is that suddenly illegal in this great nation I saved - twice? I saved the universe, Pep. I deserve a goddamn coffee.”
They started bickering, and Peter just… stared. He couldn’t not. His chest hurt, tight and hot, and his eyes stung before he even realized tears were there.
He told himself not to react like some star-struck idiot. Tony hated that. He’d always hated that - people seeing the suit and the fame and money and power instead of the man. And Peter had worked so hard to be different, to be better, to be someone Tony could actually trust - but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t stop the way the tears welled up, blurring the edges of Tony’s face. He couldn’t stop the way his body betrayed him like it always did.
And Tony noticed.
He must have, because in the middle of rolling his eyes at Pepper, he glanced back at the counter. His gaze snagged on Peter’s face, just for a second, and something shifted in his expression. Not much - Tony was good at hiding the important stuff - but enough.
“What’s wrong, kid?” Tony asked, voice lighter than it should’ve been, pitched like a joke. “They not paying you enough here or something?”
It was supposed to be a quip. Peter knew that. He’d heard enough of Tony’s fake casual tones to recognize one a mile away. But hearing it now, directed at him, after everything was like being hit with a wrecking ball because Peter wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. He wanted to throw himself over the counter and into Tony’s arms and just… not let go.
He thought of all the things he’d imagined saying if - when - Tony woke up. I’m sorry. I tried. I miss you. Everything went to hell without you, please don’t leave me again. He’d built entire conversations in his head during long nights alone in that shoebox apartment, patched together from the scraps of memory he kept close like treasures. He’d pictured this moment, over and over, Tony’s crooked grin and the way everything was supposed to be better now that Tony was back.
But this was confirmation, wasn’t it? The thing Peter had been avoiding looking at directly since the spell, since the apartment, since the shoebox with his whole life crammed into it.
He didn’t exist. Not really. Not to Tony.
And God, he’d missed him. He’d missed him so much it was like missing a limb, like phantom pain in a place that wasn’t supposed to hurt anymore. He’d held on to the idea of Tony - out there, alive in Wakanda, just sleeping, just waiting - as his last thread of hope. Because if Tony came back, then maybe everything could be okay again. Maybe Peter could be okay again.
But Tony had come back. And he was standing here, right here, asking for coffee. And he didn’t know Peter. Didn’t see him. Didn’t recognize the kid who’d followed him halfway across the galaxy, who’d fought beside him, who’d held his hand while the universe collapsed. It was like Tony had died after all. That version of him, at least. Like the man Peter knew - the one who’d reached for him, believed in him, made him feel like maybe he wasn’t just some dumb kid in a suit - was gone.
And the grief slammed into him so hard it made his head spin.
“My dad died today,” Peter choked instead, eyes burning.
The words were out before he could stop them, raw and ugly, and it wasn’t true in the literal sense but god, it felt like it was. May had been gone for months. And Ben - well, Ben had been gone forever. His parents even longer. No, nobody had actually died today.
It had been months ago. Years ago. It had been on a battlefield when Tony had snapped his fingers, and Peter had watched the light go out of his eyes, and it had carved a hollow so deep inside him it would never fill again. But right now, with Tony asking what was wrong like they were strangers, like Peter was nobody, it felt fresh. Like losing him all over again. It felt like it. It felt exactly like that. The same hollow, crushing, earth-tilted-off-its-axis wrongness. The same sick, gnawing realization that something important, something vital, was just… gone.
The words sat there, heavy and awkward, and Peter wished he could shove them back into his throat - but it was too late. It felt true. Not when it felt like Tony had died all over again the second he looked right through Peter.
And Tony’s face-
God.
Tony’s face dropped.
It wasn’t dramatic. Just - something in him froze. The quip died in his mouth. His eyes sharpened, flicked over Peter’s face like he was actually seeing him for the first time; sort of like he was measuring the grief there and all the desperation that Peter couldn’t stuff back down fast enough.
For a second - a heartbeat - Peter almost believed it. Almost believed Tony recognized him.
And then, just as quickly, Tony looked away.
His mouth opened, like he might say something, then closed again. He cleared his throat, glanced toward Pepper like he wasn’t sure how to react, and Peter burned. He stood frozen behind the counter, rag still clenched in his hand. His pulse hammered in his ears. His throat burned. The counter wobbled under his hands as he gripped it. He tried to steady his breathing. In, out. In, out. His eyes burned, but he couldn’t cry here. He wouldn’t.
Then a voice cut through.
“Holy crap,” someone said next to him.
Peter jumped. He hadn’t even noticed Evan sliding up to the counter. His coworker leaned halfway over the display case, practically buzzing out of his skin.
“Woah! Tony Stark?” He was suddenly right at his shoulder, leaning across the counter with his grin wide, his phone already half out of his pocket. “No freaking way. Can I get a picture? Man, I didn’t think I’d ever actually see you in person!”
Peter’s throat closed. He stepped back automatically.
“Excuse me,” He said, voice thin, barely holding as he stepped backwards.
Evan didn’t even blink as he ducked his head and all but fled toward the back. He pushed through the swinging door into the staff room, closed it behind him. He kept going until he was outside by the little loading dock behind the store, and leaned hard against the brickwork, chest heaving. And then the tears came hot and fast, spilling over before he could fight them back. His hands shook as he pressed them to his face, trying to stifle the sound, but it didn’t matter.
He slid down the door until he was sitting on the concrete, knees pulled up, shoulders shaking.
He’d held it together for so long. Through May, through the spell, through the shoebox apartment and the three jobs and the nights he came home bleeding and alone. He’d told himself he was fine, he could keep moving, he could survive this. But seeing Tony - hearing him talk to him without even knowing who Peter was - it ripped everything open again. It was like losing him all over, like watching him fade to dust, like watching him collapse after the snap.
And Peter couldn’t take it. Not again.
The rag was still in his hand, crumpled and damp.
The worst part was that that was it. That had been his chance. His one chance.
And he’d blown it.
It was his chance to stand in front of Mr. Stark again, to maybe find a way back to something like family. He could’ve said something else. He could’ve pushed, could’ve begged, could’ve told Tony everything - about the spell, about May, about how much it had hurt to lose him, about how much Peter had wanted him back. He could’ve even just asked for a picture, something, anything, proof that this moment had happened.
Instead, he’d told him his dad died.
And maybe that was true in its own way, but it wasn’t what Tony needed to hear. It wasn’t what would keep him here or make anything better. And now he was gone, and Peter had just lost the only shot he might ever get at… at what?
At having Tony back? At being remembered? At not being invisible anymore?
It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair.
He pressed his forehead to his knees and tried to breathe, tried to pull himself back together, but it was so difficult. Tony was alive. Tony was back. And Peter was still invisible, because instead of asking for help or saying anything meaningful, he’d lied, stammered about dead dads, and run away.
And now Evan would have a picture. Fucking Evan, who had never met Tony before, who didn’t know what it meant to lose him, who didn’t know what it felt like to carry around the memory of someone who wasn’t supposed to remember you. Evan would have a photo on his phone, proof of the encounter. And Peter, who would’ve given anything, anything, for one more photo of them together - would have nothing.
He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. His chest was tight, burning, like something had cracked wide open inside him.
It wasn’t fair. He hated thinking that, hated sounding like a kid, but it wasn’t. He’d done everything - sacrificed everything - and still, somehow, he was the one left with empty hands. He wanted to scream. He wanted to go back out there, grab Tony by the sleeve, shake him until the memories fell out. It’s me. I’m right here. You said you were in my corner. You said we were a team. Please.
But he didn’t. Because Tony didn’t remember. Because Peter Parker didn’t exist.
And if he pushed, if he begged - they’d just look at him like a stranger. Like a fanboy. Like a nobody.
So he stood there, breathing like he’d just run five miles, waiting for his pulse to slow down. Eventually, he scrubbed at his eyes, forced his shoulders back, and went to wash his hands. Then he slipped behind the counter again, head ducked. Evan was waiting for him, and so was the counter, and so was the rest of his shift.
Life went on, despite the fact that sometimes Peter wished it didn't.