“Mister Stark?”

Tony’s head snaps up at the voice. The voice that belongs to a boy who was supposed to be asleep.

“Peter? What are you doing up?”

“I, uh…”

The first thing Tony notices is that the kid’s entire body is trembling. His hair is sticking up awkwardly and the billionaire can see where tear tracks have stained his cheeks. He’s off of the piano bench in an instant, moving to comb his fingers through Peter’s curls and tug at his shirt until it sits properly on his shoulders again.

He drops his voice into the soothing tone that never fails with the kid as he cups the side of his neck, tracing a thumb over the underside of his chin. “What’s wrong, buddy?”

Peter’s words are barely a mumble. There is shame there, and Tony wants nothing more than to snuff it out. “Nightmare.”

Oh, Peter.

The kid hadn’t been sleeping, well, at all, since Thanos. Tony knew that it would be sort of hypocritical to blame him. After all, every time he closed his eyes, Peter’s death danced in front of him like some kind of sick puppetshow. He couldn’t outrun it. He couldn’t repress it. It was as if even the deepest, darkest corners of his psyche kept vomiting the memories back up.

And Peter remembered. He remembered how it felt to have his body crumble into ash. He remembered how his spider senses had clawed at his lungs and how his accelerated healing had tried futilely to piece him back together. He remembered the after, too. The all-consuming darkness. The silence. The absence of anything at all.

These were the things he’d told Tony in between the nightmares. These were the things he couldn’t talk about when the sun was up.

Tony and May had been working vigorously on different methods to coax Peter into a much-needed full night of sleep. They’d learned that the teenager could usually get some rest if one of them stayed up with him, so they were trading the kid back and forth so both of them (mainly May, since Tony didn’t really sleep anyway) could get some rest in between their “Peter shifts.”

(“It’s co-parenting,” May had said, a tint of a laugh on her lips, “next thing you know, we’ll be going to PTA meetings together. I hope you’ve got an outfit picked out for his graduation, Stark.”

He did, by the way. Complete with a custom tie in Midtown colors.)

Tonight, Tony had slipped out of Peter’s room a couple of hours after the kid had finally passed out.

He’d really hoped that the poor teenager might actually get a dreamless, uninterrupted sleep for once.Evidently not.

“I-I was there, again. And-and you were trying to hold me together but you couldn’t and I just-”

The kid chokes off on a sob, wiping his nose on the sleeve of one of Tony’s SI sweatshirts that he’s taken to stealing. The older man shushes him gently and rubs the pads of his fingers against the nape of his neck.

“It’s over. I put you back together, remember? You’re okay.” Peter gives a half-hearted nod, eyes still stormy with the imprint of the memories, and Tony makes a split-second decision. “C’mere, kiddo. I wanna show you something.”

Curiosity lights up like lightning amidst the clouds in Peter’s eyes as his mentor leads him towards the piano. “What is it?”

Tony sits at the bench and tugs the teenager down beside him. “This was my mom’s.”

Peter starts. Tony doesn’t talk much about his parents, so it’s always momentous when he does. “Oh.”

The billionaire runs his fingers over the keys reverently. They feel right under his touch. If he really listens, he can almost hear his mother’s quiet hum. “She taught me how to play.”

“She did?”

“Yep.” He grips Peter’s shoulder and guides him down until he’s sprawled across the bench with his head pillowed in his mentor’s lap. “She used to play for me when I was sad or sick.”

Peter shifts so he can gaze up at Tony with a lazy smile. “Are you gonna play for me?”

“I am.” He brushes his fingertips over the kid’s forehead before moving both hands into the proper position on the keys. “And this is a special, secret performance just for you. So don’t tell anyone I can play, alright?”

The kid muffles a yawn against Tony’s stomach, and the older man can’t stop the fond expression that falls over his face. “Sure.”

“Good.” He starts off with a few scales to warm up before melting into one of the lullabies his mother used to play for him during really bad thunderstorms. He hums along gently, half focusing on the song and half focusing on the head resting against his thighs.

His plan was working. It only takes five minutes for Peter’s eyes to droop and the tension to melt away from his muscles. He’s gazing up at Tony, pupils shifting drowsily between his mentor’s face and hands.

The first song finishes, and the kid blinks slowly. “Mmm. Liked that one.”

Tony reaches down to retrieve Peter’s arm, which had slipped off the bench and was hanging with the knuckles scraping the floor, and drape it carefully over his stomach. “Yeah? Want another?”

The kid’s eyes slip shut. “Please.”

Tony lets his fingers play the next tune that’s in his muscle memory. Peter’s lips part and his head lolls slightly as he finally drifts off. The billionaire’s stomach swoops with pure affection as the kid unconsciously tangles his fingers into the hem of his t-shirt and nuzzles into his jeans.

I’m dedicating every day to you…

The lyric pops into his head unbidden. Before Thanos, Peter had been beyond obsessed with Hamilton, and Tony had ended up learning most of the songs simply through exposure. The only one he’d ever listened to by choice was Dear Theodosia.

That admission would have been impossible to acknowledge, even internally, before. But after having nearly lost Peter forever, Tony found it a lot easier to accept his love for the kid as a fact rather than push it away.

He’d printed off the sheet music and taught himself the song while Peter was… gone. He could still remember the way his hands fumbled on every other note as silent sobs tore through his chest.

His fingers found the keys again easily, and he took a brief second to be thankful for his eidetic memory as the lyrics and sheet music settled comfortable at the forefront of his mind.

He sang along softly, hoping that his voice might help soothe Peter into a peaceful, Thanos-free sleep.

Please, he thought, please just let him sleep.

He glances down at Peter. He suddenly hates the fact that the song requires both his hands, because something inside him itches to tuck that errant curl back behind the kid’s ear.

“We’ll bleed and fight for you, we’ll make it right for you.”

I bled for him. I fought for him. I made it right again. I made it all right again.

“Oh Peter, when you smile I am undone, my son.” He swallows hard as the kid’s mouth twitches at the sound of his name. His next words come out so choked that it can barely even count as singing. “Look at my son…”

My kid. My son.

Peter.

He stops for a second, hands poised over the keys and eyes trained Peter’s peaceful face. He looks at the kid. Really, really looks at him. It’s a kind of scrutiny that would make the teenager blush and squirm if he were awake, but Tony can’t help it. His eyelashes are dark against his cheeks and there is something so overwhelmingly youthful about the kid that it steals his breath straight out of his lungs.

He would kill for this kid. He has killed for this kid. And he would do it over and over and over again without even a single ounce of regret.

When he starts the song again, his hands shake slightly with the vastness of it all. The emotions are swelling up in his stomach, a tangle of feeling that he cannot pull apart. Love, protectiveness, attachment, fear. They collide and crash and fill his body with so much weight that he wonders if he will be crushed by it. Can someone truly feel this much without being swept away?

“Pride is not the word I’m looking for… there is so much more inside me now.” The melody falters as he clenches his hands into fists before plowing forward. “Peter, you outshine the morning sun… my son.”

He wonders, suddenly, if Peter knows. Has Tony ever told him that he loved him? He doesn’t think so. Even when he’d come back from the literal dead, the billionaire hadn’t actually given voice to why he had torn apart the universe just for him.

I should tell him, he thinks, when he wakes up, I need to tell him.

“I’ll do whatever it takes.” I tore the universare apart to bring you home, and I’d do it again if that’s what it took. ““I’ll make a million mistakes.” I let you die. I let you die and I didn’t even comfort you. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. “I’ll make the world safe and sound for you.”

I promise, Peter. I’ll leave something better for you. I would take this shitty world and turn it into gold if I could.

Hell, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

“And you’ll blow us all away, someday, someday,” Tony watches the kid’s eyelids flutter and feels a tender warmth swell up from his chest and fuzz through his hands, “yeah, you’ll blow us all away.”

Tony takes a deep breath as the notes fade into oblivion. One hand settles in Peter’s soft curls while the other checks his pulse, which is thudding strong with life but slow with sleep. The kid’s fidgeting has stilled, which usually means that he’s well and truly out.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.?” His voice is barely a whisper. “How’s he looking?”

His AI matches his volume. In fact, her answer is spoken so softly that he has to strain to hear it. “Mister Parker’s vitals are all normal. His brain waves indicate that he is in Stage 4 sleep. If you plan to move him to a more comfortable location, I suggest you do so in the next ten minutes before he reaches REM sleep.”

Tony wipes a bit of drool from Peter’s open mouth with the hem of his shirt. The kid sleeps soundly.

He knows that this is just one of many sleepless nights ahead. He knows that what Peter went through, what they all went through, cannot be healed by a Hamilton song and his mom’s old piano.

But, hell, it’s a start.

And, for now, that’s all they need.