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Chapter Text

October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!

- Rainbow Rowell, Attachments  

One: Mischief Night

In retrospect, it was probably a mistake to put the Soviet witch with legendary high tolerance in charge of drinks for the annual Avengers Halloween party.

All Peter can say for himself is that it seemed like a good idea at the time. Wanda always seems to know where the good vodka can be found. And besides, it’s better than asking her to bring food. A series of team birthday parties have revealed that Wanda’s idea of celebratory food consists mostly of things boiled, pickled, or boiled and then pickled. Also, Peter had been a little scared of what she’d come up with if put in charge of decorations. Giving her that much free range with illusions seemed ill-advised.

But he begins to rethink his call when she presents him with a literal cauldron filled with gently-bubbling green liquid while he’s trying to finish setting up for the party. He doesn’t know what to say. She looks so pleased with herself under the freaky clown make-up that one of his teammates has talked her into. 

“Um, Wanda …” Peter starts to question her, but he hesitates.

The thing is, Peter suspects Wanda’s still in a delicate headspace post the whole Thanos debacle. He recognizes it because he sees the same signs in himself – sudden unexplained silences when she’s clearly sinking down, down into her own mind, the way she goes out of her way to talk around certain words or phrases, the haunted look behind her eyes that’s eerily similar to what he sees in the mirror every morning. They should be over it. Peter knows that. It’s been three years. But moving on has proved … difficult. It’s difficult for all of them, but sometimes Peter feels like he’s miles behind almost everyone else in the healing process.

Besides, Peter thinks stubbornly, it shouldn’t be his problem to deal with anyway. Technically, Hope’s the team leader. Most of the time, Peter doesn’t envy her this distinction. The Wasp does good work. She’s calm in a crisis. Decisive. Maybe a little cold, but whatever. 

It’s Peter, however, who’s taken on a lot of the team-building aspects of leadership. Hope’s not interested in that sort of thing, and Peter knows it’s what Tony would have wanted. He’d built the tower, and then the compound, with the vision of the whole tem living together under one roof. He’d wanted them to be a family. And that’s what Peter wants too.

But he’s not thinking about any of that tonight. Because tonight is a party, and no one wants a sad sack at a Halloween party. 

Peter gives himself a little internal lecture about responsibility and schools his face into something more pleasant. He’s about to ask Wanda if she wants him to run out to grab some beer or something for the less adventurous guests when Clint pops his head out of one of the HVAC vents in the ceiling. It always makes Peter jump when he does that. Never sets off his senses because obviously Clint’s no danger to him. The archer finds this blatantly hilarious.

“Ooh, spooky punch,” he exclaims, flipping himself down from the vent and landing neatly on his feet.

He’s dressed in a ridiculous costume, all bright purple with a weird wing-tipped mask. It looks like something out of a golden-age comic book. Or the circus. He compliments Wanda on her costume and pours himself a red solo cup full of the cauldron brew. 

“That doesn’t taste like lime sherbet,” Clint says, mostly to himself. The he shrugs, and knocks the rest of it back.

“I’m gonna put on some tunes, Pete,” he says, clapping Peter on the shoulder.

“Play something other than Skynyrd!” Peter calls after him.

“What’s sherbet?” Wanda asks him, mouth pursed in distaste.

“It’s um … What exactly is in this, Wanda?” 

“Absinthe and vodka,” she replies, as though it’s obvious.

“Right,” Peter says. “And why is it all … Bubbly?”

“It’s a party,” Wanda says, giving him a frankly disturbing wink when taken in conjunction with her painted on smile and red nose. “I added something special. I think you call it secret ingredient?” 

He does not, because he has never uttered the words ‘secret ingredient’ in his life. Peter’s culinary skills are pretty firmly stuck on ramen and takeaway. He really is about to propose a liquor store run, but the chime at the compound’s front gate goes off, and the room starts to fill up with guests. Clint is playing Free Bird for the third time, Doreen has invited a whole squirrel contingent, and Wade is getting far too close to Hope for comfort. Peter really doesn’t want to see him get kicked off the team. Again.

So he kind of has to just go with it even though his spidey senses are low-key tingling, and he’s got a bad, bad feeling about this.

All things considered, the party goes a lot better than Peter expected. Almost every Avenger not currently off-world shows up. Rhodey takes a break from Army missions. Sam and Bucky drop by even though they have to head out early in the morning to go somewhere undisclosed. Kate lures Clint away from the stereo system by challenging him to a game of darts. 

Even Hope seems to be having fun, or her equivalent. She’s dressed in the same pirate costume she’d worn to the last two Halloween parties, clutching a beer she must have brought from home in one hand and swaying awkwardly on the dance floor while Scott, decked out in a very impressive pirate wench costume complete with a floppy red wig, flails wildly to a Smashing Pumpkins song. That right there is an odd couple, but somehow it works. When he waves at Hope, she even gives him a nod and a quarter of a smile. For her, it’s effusive. 

Peter breathes a sigh of relief, and pours himself a drink. It actually isn’t all that unpleasant. It’s warming, with a licorice aftertaste that reminds him of the cheap bags of off-brand candy that May would get to hand out to trick-or-treaters in their apartment complex every year. He drinks deeply, closing his eyes and thinking about crisp New York nights, the crunch of leaves underfoot, the sugar-fueled laughter of little kids dressed up as witches and mummies and goblins.

He refills his cup and goes to chat with Wade. He hadn’t had much time to put together a costume this year, what with planning the party. In lieu of that, he and Wade have switched suits. Peter’s in red leader, trying not to trip over the hem of the pants that are several sizes too big for him. Meanwhile, the fabric of the spidey suit is stretched tight over Wade’s chest and thighs. He seems more than happy to show off his build. And play around with the built-in web shooters. 

“Petey, these things are so badass,” the man says says, sending yet another net of webbing up onto the ceiling. It’s a good thing that stuff dissolves in a couple hours, or clean-up would be a bitch. “I’m not kidding. I’ve got so many ideas for how to use them. If you get my drift.”

Wade has the mask pushed up onto his forehead, and he waggles his non-existent eyebrows suggestively at Peter.

“Ew,” Peter says. “Do not use my web shooters for sex stuff, Wade. Remember the rules. You are not allowed to have sex in my suit. If you do, you better be prepared to buy me another one, because that one’s getting incinerated.”

“Spoilsport!” Wade shouts at him as he walks away.

Peter gets another refill, and ensconces himself on a sofa in front of the roaring fireplace in a corner of the main room. He leans back and lets the rumble of his friends talking and the bass from the stereo wash over him in a warm wave. 

He should really stop drinking. He didn’t have dinner, and his high metabolism means alcohol hits him faster than most people. Already, the world is starting to feel fuzzy around the edges. 

That didn’t used to be a problem. Peter had been the life of the party before. Well, not the life of a normal party. In high school he had been useless at most social interactions. But Avengers parties had been different. After the initial nerves of trying to impress his childhood heroes had faded, he’d felt that these were some of the few people he could really be himself around.

Add a little alcohol-infused inhibition to the mix, and he had become gregarious, prone to telling everyone how much he loved them and holding court telling all his most embarrassing Spider-Man stories. 

And if ever he felt unsure of himself, he could always find Tony – over by the bar pouring himself a whiskey, leaning over the sofa to rub at Peter’s shoulder or ruffle his hair, in a corner shooting the shit with Rhodey. But no matter where he was, when Peter sought him out with a look, Tony’s eyes would go soft and warm, and it had always been the perfect reassurance that Peter needed. He had been there in Peter’s corner. Always.

That right there is why Peter shouldn’t keep drinking. He doesn’t go warm and gregarious anymore after a couple drinks. Instead he goes quiet. Contemplative. Maudlin.

He can already feel that tell-tale ache in the muscles of his throat. He isn’t going to cry in a corner at the team Halloween party. He isn’t.

Maybe he should have gone to that therapist like May suggested. Or the support group that Sam had recommended. Or done literally anything to make peace with Tony’s death. To put it behind him. The only problem is, that’s the last thing he wants to do.

Logically, there’s nothing that should provide more complete closure than a death. So why does everything feel so … Unfinished?

He knows why. He knows why.

It’s because it is unfinished.

Peter finds it hard to put a finger on the exact moment he fell in love with Tony Stark, when hero worship and respect melted into something more genuine and tender.

After he’d turned down Tony’s offer to join the Avengers, he’d figured he wouldn’t see the man again unless there was some sort of world-ending emergency. But that hadn’t been what had happened.

When Peter had called Happy the next week for his usual debrief, he’d expected to just leave a voicemail as per usual. Instead, Happy had picked up on the first ring and had barely let Peter get in a word before he’d interrupted with “Hang on, kid. I’ve gotta patch you through.” 

Peter had heard muffled curses and button mashing as Happy apparently struggled to do this. And then –

“Underoos!”

Tony’s rumbling voice in his ear had made Peter’s heartbeat ratchet up several beats per minute. 

“Uh, hey. Hi. Mr. Stark?” Peter had fumbled.

“Yeah, change of protocol, Spiderling.” Tony had said. “Happy’s got a lot of stuff on his plate right now, so you’re gonna report directly to me from now on. Sound ok?” 

“Um …” 

“Kid?"

“Yeah,” Peter had said, unbelieving. “Yes, sir. Mr. Stark, sir.”

“Easy on the honorifics, kid. My head’s big enough. Just tell me what you’ve been up to this week.”

For a short, horrifying moment, Peter’s mind had gone utterly blank.

“Uh …”

“Deep breath, Spider-Man,” Tony had said, voice pitched low, and Peter had almost thought he could feel those words vibrating through his bones.

He did take a deep breath, and then another, feeling calm settle over him like a weighted blanket. 

“So, on Monday, I rescued Mrs. Morales’ cat from a tree, but he scratched my hands up just getting him down. Cats really are evil, Mr. Stark.”

“Fucking ungrateful,” Tony had chuckled. “What else?” 

Weekly check-ins had turned into occasional evenings in Mr. Stark’s personal lab making tweaks to the suit, had lead to weekly lab time where the two of them would work on their own projects, each calling on the other when they ran into a roadblock.

It didn’t take long for it to feel much more like a friendship than a mentorship to Peter. And then, well, more. Peter was probably slow to realize that the reason he liked to watch Tony work – digging his hands into the guts of an engine or delicately adjusting a circuit – was not just that he wanted to learn everything the man knew, but because he just enjoyed looking at him. The forearms strong with wiry muscle, the hands callused and capable. It took at least another year after that personal bombshell to notice that Tony was looking right back.

Peter was 18 by that point. He and Tony had been working together in the lab for nearly two years. He was slipping out of his suit post-patrol one night when he first saw it. Peter was used to regularly changing in alleys. He was long past being body shy. So he had come in and started shucking the thing off, turning to ask Tony to run some diagnostics to figure out why Karen started glitching when he tried to change his web settings. 

“Huh?” Tony had said, gaze flicking up from where Peter’s ass had been when he’d bent over to pull the suit off. 

The man’s eyes had been glazed over, but beneath that haze of distraction Peter had seen it. That spark of hunger. Lust.

Tony Stark wanted him. The thought sent a jolt of lightning down Peter’s spine. His brain had been momentarily filled with white-hot blankness. When he’d finally managed to shake himself out of it, he had been certain that all of his feelings were plastered plain as day across his face.

Luckily, Tony had still seemed distracted, gaze fixed on Peter’s stomach, where a trickle of sweat was working its way down his abdominals. Peter swiped it away self-consciously, rubbing the moisture off on his boxers.

“Sorry,” Tony said, blinking rapidly and moving his eyes back up to Peter’s face. “What’s up, Pete?”

“Karen’s been acting up,” Peter said. “With my web settings.” 

“Well, hand her over to daddy. I’ll give her a talking to.”

Peter had nearly choked on his own tongue.

A part of him, a big part, had wanted to take whatever advantage he had right then and there. He could have pressed himself up against Tony, felt the rough strength of him, and begged for just one kiss. But a more reasonable part of his brain stopped him. Peter was 18, and Tony was a master of self-flagellation. If he were to make a move, he knew Tony would run so far away that Peter might never catch up with him. 

There had been no choice, really. Peter had to keep his feeling tamped down. He had to keep control of himself. Bide his time until he’s old enough for Tony to take him seriously, give him a chance. It never crossed his mind that it might not be worth it to wait.

Peter had pulled on his clothes from out of his backpack, and he and Tony had spent the evening going through Karen’s coding in search of the glitch.

It had been a test of his self-control. Tony had always been tactile, but Peter had never been so aware of each and every toch. He had to grit his teeth and try not lean in too much when Tony put a big palm over the back of Peter’s neck to calm him after a fight, or placed hands on his hips to move him out of the way in the lab, or ruffled his fingers through Peter’s hair when one of their experiments is a success.

He decided to wait until he turned 21. Tony’s dated younger. Surely in a few years he won’t object, won’t be able to blame himself for anything. It’s a long stretch of time, but Peter can be very determined when he knows what he wants.

Then four months later all his carefully laid plans had gone to shit. They couldn’t beat Thanos, watched him leave Titan with the gauntlet and the Time Stone. 

Peter felt it before it happened, spidey senses screaming at him seconds before all the atoms in his body vibrate apart and turn to ash. The pain seared through him, a complete unmaking. He had just enough time to clutch at Tony, to regret all the things he held back.

He had looked up into kind, dark eyes filled with pain. So much pain. Pain that Peter put there.

“I don’t want to go,” he said. And then. “I’m sorry.” 

Having all his atoms knit back together had hurt almost as much as the opposite. But it was a better type of pain. Like growing pains, that deep ache in your bones. It had been a reminder that he’s still alive, still moving forward.

So Peter kept doing that, moving forward through a magical portal, into a raging battle, carrying a gauntlet full of infinity stones through a hoard of murderous alien soldiers. 

He only stopped when he realized Tony was right there, tugging Peter into his arms, holding him close. Peter buried his nose in the other man’s neck, breathing the scent of him in deep – sweat and motor oil and hot metal. Perfect. For a moment, it had been perfect. 

“I love you,” is what he meant to say, but his brain was still scrambled. He felt like all the pieces hadn’t rattled back into place yet. So it came out as “This is nice.”

It’s just one more thing to regret what felt like milliseconds later while he clung to Tony’s mangled hand, watching the life fade out of his eyes and unable to say anything except “We won, Mr. Stark. We won.”

Tony breathed wetly, let his head sink back, squeezed Peter’s hand even though it must hurt.

In his mind, Peter has examined those final seconds countless times. Gone back to the drag of Tony’s fingers against his palm, the warmth in his gaze despite the cold creeping in. He had to have known, Peter thinks sometimes. Then others he’s certain he failed, failed so miserably. In a thousand ways, and … 

“You look like I feel.” 

Peter’s eyes are stinging, and his throat is dry. He is definitely going to cry in the middle of this party if he doesn’t get his shit together. 

Wanda’s standing above him, her make-up mostly melted off and smudged where she’s rubbed at it under her eyes. 

“M’sorry,” he mutters, pressing his palms preemptively against his eyes, holding the tears back by force.

She shrugs, dangling a fresh cup in front of his face, curling her legs under her gracefully and settling beside him on the sofa when he takes it. Peter sways a little as he sticks his nose into the drink to sniff appreciatively. Then he takes a long glug, holding it in his mouth and closing his eyes. It’s like he can hear the leaves crunching underfoot and smell the faint smoke of distant bonfires.

Peter opens his eyes and wavers forward into Wanda’s space, petting a hand down her arm and leaning in to look her in the eye. 

“What,” he says, struggling for focus. “What’d you put in this?”

A lazy smile stretches across her face.

“You won’t tell?” she asks, accent more pronounced now that she’s had a few drinks herself.

Peter shakes his head a little too hard, making himself dizzy as his brain rattles around. Wanda reaches out helpfully to steady him.

“I added just a pinch of nostalgia,” she whispers, conspiratorially.

For some reason, Peter finds this hilarious. He tilts his head back to laugh, swiping tears away from his eyes.

“You should really warn people before you pull shit like that, Wands,” he says, taking another swig of his drink to help ease the ache in his still-constricted throat. “A good drink is supposed to help you not remember.”

“Sometimes,” Wanda says, reaching out to squeeze Peter’s leather-clad thigh with a squeak. “Sometimes you need to remember even if you don’t want to.”

Peter lets his hand fall over hers. His eyes prickle dangerously, and he’s past the point where he can shrug it off as laughing so hard he’s crying. 

“Remembering isn’t my problem,” he says. 

Softly, Wanda tugs on his arm, encouraging him to sit up properly. She blinks slowly a couple times, focusing up. Then she’s studying his eyes, looking for an answer to a question Peter doesn’t think she even asked. He could be wrong, though. Things are getting increasingly hazy. The whole conversation seems to be happening in slow motion.

“What would you do,” she finally says. “To bring him back? What would you do?” 

Peter closes his eyes against her scrutiny. He doesn’t ask how she knows. She lost someone too. She knows how it looks on someone. 

“Anything,” he whispers, ashamed at the truth of his desperation. 

He maybe grays out a little, loses a few minutes of time just floating in the darkness. The next thing he knows, Wanda’s tugging at his arm again to get his attention, and talking like he’s missed a step in their conversation.

“Lissen,” she slurs, tugging harder even though he’s looking at her now. “Lissen, lissen, lissen.” 

Her eyes are bright, fevered. Something has her very excited.

“Always listen t’you,” he says, petting gently at the side of her face, and smearing her white make-up further. “You’re very wise.”

“But listen,” she says, latching onto his wrist and taking more care to enunciate her words. “I can’t do it for me. But I can do it for you. It needs a pure heart.” 

Peter grumbles at her. He wants to tell her that his heart isn’t very pure, but his tongue gets tangled around the words. He shakes his head instead, scrunching his face up in distaste at this unmoored feeling.

“It’s a good night,” Wanda says, decisively. “It’s Halloween.”

And Peter doesn’t know if that’s true or not, that it’s a good night. But he’s fairly certain that it’s Halloween. So when his head slumps forward onto Wanda’s shoulder, he nods. 

“Yeah,” Peter says. “Yeah, you’re right.”

*

I’ve got you, kid. I’ve got you.  

*

When Peter wakes up the next morning, his head is throbbing, and his mouth feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton balls. Attempting to sit up makes his stomach give a little lurch of protest. 

Ok, he thinks. Ok, so getting up bad. He’s an idiot. He’s the biggest idiot for drinking the way he did last night. The whole evening is a little blurry, and even when he concentrates really hard – ouch – he has no memory of anything that happened after that weird conversation with Wanda. Damn her and her witchy punch. 

Peter reaches blindly for where he hopes his phone is on the nightstand, but he hisses in pain and pulls back as soon as he stretches out his fingers. Blearily, he opens his eyes to look at his left hand. The sight makes his stomach flip and the bile rise that little bit higher in his throat.

There’s blood on his pillow, blood on the sheet. It’s dried to a dirty brown, and there’s a gash running diagonally down his palm. Whatever made it cut deep through skin and muscle, because the pale flesh of his hand sags away from the incision, blood welling up from it in a dark merlot red. What the fuck?

Peter’s never seen this much of his own blood up close, fresh from the source. He’s sustained plenty of injuries. He’s been shot. He’s been stabbed. He’s had people attempt to blow him to kingdom come. But he heals. He heals so quickly that usually by the time he gets home and pulls his suit off, his skin has already started to close up.

The sun is slanting in through his blinds. It’s morning. He has to have been asleep for at least a couple hours. This should have healed by now, but it’s still looks fresh. It’s still oozing. 

Just looking at it makes him feel shaky. Peter’s not usually squeamish. He’s helped Wade treat dozens of worse injuries, literally picked up the man’s limbs out of piles of rubble. Apparently, it’s different when it’s his own blood.

On trembling legs, Peter makes his way to the bathroom, where he promptly empties his guts into the toilet bowl. Neon green. So much green. Fucking absinthe.

After he thinks he’s finished retching, Peter pushes himself up, tile digging into his bare knees, and fumbles one-handed through the medicine cabinet. There’s a first-aid kit there. Not that he usually needs it, but it’s standard in all of the rooms at the compound.

Hands still tremoring slightly, Peter holds his hand out over the the sink and pours a long stream of rubbing alcohol over the cut. He bites his lip at the burn, but keeps pouring until it runs clear instead of pale pink. Then he carefully pinches the skin together and applies liquid stitches and then butterfly bandages. Finally, he wraps gauze around it, tying it tight. 

He can still feel it throbbing, his heartbeat pounding along the gash. Holing his left hand against his bare chest and gripping the cold porcelain of the sink with his right, Peter closes his eyes and tries again to remember what happened last night. But there’s just nothing. He remembers talking with Wanda, and after that all he has are flashes of a deeply satisfying dream – a rough hand on his face, warm lips against his, the scratch of a beard along the line of his jaw.

Careful of both his hand and his head, Peter goes to retrieve his phone and texts Wade “Dude, what happened last night?” followed by a glass of wine emoji and a green face. 

A few minutes later, he gets back a long string of question marks. Then: “U were cuddling with the witchy woman when I left, BB. Shiklah called.”

Well, so much for that. Peter struggles to slip a t-shirt over his head, and when he looks back down at his screen, now filled with a block of eggplant emojis. Peter feels his stomach protest again.

“R U still wearing my suit?” he taps out.

Then he watches the three dots appear and disappear a few times without receiving any reply. 

“Burn it,” he writes, finally.

He probably shouldn’t be too hard on Wade, really. He’s spied the discarded Deadpool suit in the corner of his room, and it’s caked in mud. Jesus, what did he do last night? Did he try mud wrestling? It was raining last night. Did they wander around outside?

Maybe he tripped over something and cut his hand? And probably something Wanda put in the drinks last night is slowing his healing abilities down. Magic always done weird things to his system. Whatever. It should start healing up soon enough. In the meantime, he needs coffee.

When Peter manages to drag himself into the kitchen, Clint’s already there drinking directly from the coffee pot.

“Ugh.” 

Peter doesn’t really intend to say that out loud, but his filter seems to have gone by the wayside. Luckily, Clint doesn’t seem to mind.

“You about packed up and ready to go, Pete?” he asks, cheerily after Peter has spent at least five minutes staring as he drains the dregs from the pot.

“Huh?” Peter replies, because he’s very sharp and on his game.

“Wheels up in 20. Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind. Lila can’t wait to see you.” 

Right. Right. Clint’s family hosts a sort of harvest festival every year, and this time he’s invited the team to come along.

“No,” Peter says. “I’m – I’m coming. Just … Coffee.”

Full sentences are definitely not his forte right now.

“Oh,” Clint says, looking guiltily down at the carafe in his hand. “I’ll just start a new pot, yeah?”

Peter nods, feeling deeply sorry for himself, and lays his head down on the cool granite countertop of the breakfast bar. That feels nice. He only lifts back up when he hears the soft clink of ceramic being placed next to his ear. 

Clint’s wearing a sheepish smile as he nudges the brimming cup closer to Peter’s hands.

“Thanks, man,” Peter sighs, burying his face in the cup. Sweet, sweet nectar of life.

“Sure thing, Pete,” Clint says, patting him apologetically on the back. “See you on the quinjet.”

Chapter Text

I’ll come to you tonight, dear, when it’s late,
You will not see me; you may feel a chill.
I’ll wait until you sleep, then take my fill,
And that will be your future on a plate.
They’ll call it chance, or luck, or call it Fate.

-Reading the Entrails: A Rondel, Neil Gaiman

Two: The Hanged Man and the Fool

Peter’s knuckles are white and aching as he grips the wheel of Clint’s old pick-up truck. He has his license. Tony had made sure he learned how to drive even though he lives in New York City, where he literally never has to get behind he wheel of a car if he doesn’t want to.

Still, it’s been years since he’s driven, and it’s nerve-wracking to say the least. Especially on unfamiliar roads when it’s already black as pitch out. But he couldn’t resist volunteering when Laura had mentioned she still needed to pick up the main course for the party tonight. All he’d wanted was to remove himself from the crowded farmhouse for a little while.

Peter loves Clint’s family. Really he does. And he thinks the feeling is mutual. Lila had practically bowled him over in her rush to hug him as soon as he’d disembarked from the quinjet, and Laura had ruffled his hair with a motherly affection when he’d followed his teammates into the house with Nate clinging to his back. 

The farmhouse always feels warm and safe. The Avengers have had to use it on more than one occasion to lie low. It’s the kind of home that Peter thought only existed in movies until he’d actually visited. It always smells of baking bread and bubbling homemade soup. And it’s always filled with familial noises – Nate pretending to have a dogfight with his toy airplanes, Cooper muttering to himself on the couch while he attempts to catch Pokemon on his phone, Clint hammering at something, completely incapable of resisting renovating anytime he’s home.

But this afternoon it had been stuffed full of a dozen assorted Avengers along with practically an army of Laura’s relations traipsing in and out as they set up for the big party. 

And Peter? Peter was still hung over. His head ached and his palm throbbed, and his stomach grumbled uneasily. 

So when Laura had told Clint that he still needed to pick up the pork, Peter had volunteered.

“I’ll come too,” Wanda had said, quickly.

She looked almost as bad as Peter, skin a pale gray, a sheen of sweat upon her forehead. He’d felt a twinge of commiseration as he’d taken the keys from Laura and listened to her directions.

The truck jostled them along twisting roads, the hazy shadows of the Blue Ridge mountains hulking over them on either side. Wanda’s skin had shifted minutely from gray to green, and Peter pulled over. 

She had shot him a grateful look as she leaned out of the window and emptied her guts. 

Despite them both being sick as dogs, the drive was undeniably beautiful. The trees curled their branches over the road, resplendent in bright oranges, reds and yellows, leaves floating down on them like autumnal snowflakes.

Peter had been surprised to find, when they reached their destination, that the Castle Hill Butchery isn’t a shop, but a farm.

He’d told the man who looked to be in charge that he was there to pick up Mrs. Barton’s order, and been presented not with a slab of meat, but with the end of a rope. The other end was tied around the neck of an enormous pig. It had brown and white spots, a curlicue of a tail, and a wrinkled snout that it used to snuffle at the hem of Peter’s jeans.

“What?” Peter had asked. “No. We’re just here to pick up some pork? It’s for a barbecue.” 

“Yep,” the man had agreed, working his jaw languidly around a wad of chewing tobacco. “That’d be the pork. Same thing Laura gets every year. They do a roast pig for that big shindig in the holler.”

Peter’s already delicate stomach had flipped, but he hadn’t known what else to do.

So now they’re driving down swiftly-darkening roads with the back window thrown open so the pig in the truck bed can stick its head into the cab. Wanda scratches underneath its chin while it snuffles into Peter’s hair.

“He’s so ugly that he’s cute,” she says, and Peter sees her smile for the first time all day.

“We can’t possibly let them …” 

Peter glances back to the adorably scrunched-up face. He’s unwilling to actually say it in front of the pig. 

“No,” Wanda agrees. “We can’t.” 

They’re distracted by what to do about the pig, so much so that Peter misses a turn somewhere along the way. They have to double back, but phone service in the mountains isn’t the best, and they both struggle to remember where exactly they went wrong. 

The thing is, it’s never really dark in the city. There are always lights – storefronts, streetlights, light flooding out of the windows of strangers’ homes. The perfect darkness that settles over them now makes Peter uneasy. The headlights reveal only as far as the next bend in the road.

The hairs on Peter’s arms stand at attention, all his senses on high alert. There’s a place between his shoulder blades that’s been itching since he woke up this morning, and it makes him feel uneasy. He stretches and then relaxes his injured hand, feeling it twinge. Then the road dips down unexpectedly, and his stomach goes with it. 

“What happened to you?” Wanda asks. 

Peter glances down at the bandage, and then back up to the empty road. 

“Not sure,” he says. “Wanda, do you have any idea what happened last night?” 

He sees her shake her head in the reflection on the windshield. 

“I remember us telling sad stories,” she says. “And then I woke up with the worst hangover I’ve ever had.” 

“Yeah,” Peter nods. “That’s about what I got, too. And whatever I did to myself, your magic potion is slowing down my healing. Fuck, my system hates magic.”

Wanda’s pale face flushes in her reflection.

“Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t think.” 

Peter shrugs. 

“Just a cut,” he says. “I should’ve stopped after I realized the punch was spiked with magic.”

She reaches out and places her cold hand over his bandaged one.

“I could fix it,” she says.

Her skin goes a shade grayer even making the offer.

“No, Wands,” he says. “I don’t want you keeling over just because I’m being a baby.”

They lapse into silence while they both search out the right turn to get back to Clint’s place. The radio plays faintly in the background, fuzzy from poor reception. It’s something with banjos that Peter couldn’t even begin to recognize. Their choices are very, very limited.

“I think that’s it,” Wanda says, with an excited gasp. 

She points ahead on the left, to a road flanked by a skeletal oak on one side and a fiery red maple on the other. Peter breathes a sigh of relief. Now that looks familiar. 

They turn down the road, bumping as it transitions from asphalt to gravel. And Peter feels the tension he’s been holding in his shoulders finally release. He lets his grip on the wheel loosen. It’s a straight shot down this road to the farm. He allows himself to close his eyes and breathe in deep.

When he opens them, just a fraction of a second later, the headlights are flashing on obsidian eyes set in a white face.

Wanda screams, and the pig lets out a squeal, and Peter slams his foot on the break, sending up a spray of gravel as the truck groans in protest. They’re jerked to a stop, and Wanda grips at Peter’s arm. 

The face is abnormally large, accentuated with blue swirls underneath the eyes and on the forehead in a vaguely tribal pattern. The figure is inhumanely tall, nearly seven foot, dressed in rough burlap and standing in the middle of the road.

It takes a teetering step forward, then another. 

Then the mask – it’s a mask, of course it’s a mask – is lifted, revealing the face of a man with a shock of orange hair and a spray of freckles across his nose.

“Sorry!” he calls out, walking toward the passengers’ side of the car on what must be stilts. “Sorry, man!”

Wand and Peter exchange a wide-eyed look, then Wanda rolls the window down. The truck is so old that it has a crank rather than a button. 

“Hey,” the guy says, giving a little wave as he comes up to the window. “Didn’t mean to startle you. I’m supposed to be greeting people. Setting the mood a little. Showing guest where to park and stuff. I’m Laura’s cousin, Jake.” 

“We’re, uh, friends of Clint’s,” Peter says. He still feels shaky. Peter has literally faced down alien hordes and lizard men, but he fucking hates jump scares. 

“We brought dinner,” Wanda deadpans, reaching up to scratch under the pig’s neck again.

“Hey, heroes of the hour,” Jake grins. “Ya’ll go on up. You know the way. And sorry again.”

“No problem,” Peter says, a little ashamed at how much this guy in a stupid mask had gotten to him. It all seems silly now that he’s grinning at them through slightly crooked teeth. 

The property looks like a fairyland when they finally approach the farmhouse. Patchwork tents are set up in a horseshoe shape in the front lawn, strung with lights and glowing in rich colors. In the center of it all is a giant bonfire stretching fingers of flames up into the night sky. 

Peter parks the truck behind the house, and he and Wanda lead the pig around front. He snuffles the ground, happily unaware they are leading him to his doom. Clint waves them down from the front porch.

“Pete!” he calls. “What the hell happened to you, man?”

“Got turned around,” Peter says, apologetically, worrying the lead rope between his fingers. “All the roads look alike in the dark.” 

It feels impossibly late, after the day he’s had, but really it’s just gone six. 

“Sorry,” Clint says. “I knew I shoulda gone. Welp, let’s get this fella trussed up, or we’ll never get dinner …”

“Clint,” Wanda starts to protest, placing her body between man and pig.

“You can’t eat Jeff,” Peter blurts. 

“Uh, Jeff?” Clint asks, hand still extended for the rope clutched tight in Peter’s hands.

“I think he looks like a Jeff,” Peter says, crouching down so he can look into the pig’s face while he scratches the top of its head. Jeff snorts appreciatively at the touch. “We can’t seriously eat him.”

He makes his eyes go as wide as possible and looks up at Clint appealingly.

“Peter,” Clint says. “I know you’ve eaten bacon before. This is the exact same thing.”

“I’m aware I’m being a hypocrite,” Peter allows. “But I’ve never had to look my bacon in the eye before.”

He takes Jeff’s face in his hand and turns it up to Clint.

“Look at his adorable little face, Clint.”

“You will not eat Jeff,” Wanda declares, fingertips sparking red in warning.

Clint looks between the two of them, lips pursed together unhappily.

“I know Laura’s already made enough food to feed an army regiment,” Peter says, encouragingly. “You won’t even miss the pig.”

Clint sputters, then finally throws his arms up in the air in defeat.

“Fine,” he says, exasperatedly. “Fine. But the pig stays with you. In the barn. He doesn’t get a guest room.”

Then he stalks away, muttering about telling Laura.

Being banished to the barn isn’t exactly as dramatic as Clint is making out. After it had become clear that the farm was going to become a retreat for the Avengers, Clint and Laura renovated half of the bottom floor to accommodate guests. There’s a central room with squishy chairs and two worn leather couches, and four guest bedrooms and a bathroom leading off from that in what used to be horse stalls, now tastefully white washed and furnished for human inhabitants. 

Peter settles Jeff with some feed and water in an empty stall in the half of the barn still meant for animal inhabitants. There are a couple horses, and a small herd of goats in the other stalls. 

“I’ll be back to check on you later,” Peter promises Jeff, giving him one more scratch under the chin for good measure.

Peter’s bags have been laid out in one of the barn rooms, and he pulls on a sweater over his flannel before joining Wanda outside to walk up to the festivities. The temperature took a nosedive when the sun dropped, and they send white puffs of breath ahead of them on the trail up to the house.

Warm light and music trickle down to them. It’s about half a mile between the barn and the main house, up a trail cut through a field of high grass. The music reminds Peter a little of klezmer music and a little of bluegrass. There’s an accordion and a fiddle and a few other instruments he doesn’t recognize at all.

A crowd has gathered on the front lawn by the time they reach the house, milling about the fire or congregating around a table laden with food. Peter accepts a bowl of rich vegetable stew and a piece of crusty bread, and walks around the tents. He’s still feeling off, but he figures eating something might help with that. 

Wanda stops to talk shop with Dr. Strange, who’s looking sort of disturbingly chipper this evening. Is he smiling? Weird. 

Scott’s pulled Hope over near the fire and is brandishing a flaming marshmallow in her direction. Kamala is supervising bobbing for apples with a group of children in front of one of the tents. By another, Clint is graciously tipping something clear from a large Mason jar into guest cups. 

And all around them, there are performers mingling in with the other guest – stilt walkers and tumbling acrobats in paint and masks, a fire eater standing on the outskirts dipping a flaming torch into his mouth. It feels a bit like walking through the inside of a jewel box. Everything is a riot of color with a fire at the heart of it, glittering.

Laura’s family are circus people. It’s where she and Clint met when he was just a guy who did trick shots for audiences instead of an infamous assassin or a bona fide super hero. Apparently, they met when Laura was 16, and Clint 15, and neither of them have really looked at anyone else ever since. Peter’s never been clear on whether Laura herself had an act she did for the crowd. He’ll have to ask. 

He pokes his head into tents as he makes his way along the curving line outside of the fire. It’s warmer now, with so many people around, but he can still see his breath as it hits the air. In one tent, a young woman in a pink sari is drawing out elaborate henna tattoos on the hands of squirming children. In another, he finds the clowns performing in a small ring with a smattering of people watching. Creepy, Peter thinks. Why are clowns always so creepy?

Then he spies one tent set a little bit back from the others. It’s small, really only big enough to fit a few people, and made of a red and gold brocade that glints in the firelight. Intrigued, Peter approaches slowly, pushing the flap aside and poking his head in.

“Hello?” he calls.

A sharp eyed woman at a table in the center of the room looks up from a battered paperback, raising an eyebrow at him. She’s dressed in jeans and a Pogues t-shirt, her artificially red hair tied up in a messy bun. The paperback, he notices, is The Call of Cthulhu.

At first he’s not sure what her deal is. Then he spots the stack of cards sitting on the scarf-covered table.

The woman tilts her head to the side, still studying Peter intently with pale blue eyes. Peter fidgets, pulling at the sleeves of his sweater. It’s beginning to feel itchy even over the flannel.

“Um,” he says, jerking his thumb behind him. “Should I?” 

“There’s something behind you,” the woman says, her voice hushed, curious. 

And she’s obviously the fortune teller, so Peter figures she’s speaking figuratively. Like there’s a lot of baggage in his past. Which, well …

“Lady, you are not wrong,” he says.

But she’s still staring at him. Or, not at him. Just over his shoulder. He watches as her eyes widen, and it makes his arms pop out in goose bumps. The itch between his shoulder blades is intense right now, and he remembers what Aunt May says about that sensation. Someone’s watching you.

There isn’t anyone behind Peter. He’s on his own. He’s going to look, though. Just to make sure. But he knows there’s nothing there. He knows.

Peter’s about to turn around when something barrels directly into his back. He very nearly jumps directly onto the ceiling. Which would have ended poorly, seeing as it’s a tent.

“Oh good, there you are,” Wanda says, giving Peter a puzzled look. Probably because he’s crouched on the ground, clutching at his chest where his heart is beating in a frenetic pattern. 

“Oh my God,” Peter says. “Do not sneak up on me.” 

“I didn’t sneak,” Wanda protests. “You can’t leave me alone with Stephen anymore. He always looks at me like he’d like to slice me open and see how I tick. It’s unsettling.”

“Just like, announce your presence or something …”

“Seriously, Peter, he collects all these magical things in that weird old house, and I’m not positive he knows he can’t also collect people?” 

“Oh, cool,” Peter says. “So we’re talking about your problems. I’ll just put my impending heart attack on hold, then.”

“You’re really bitchy when you’re hung over,” Kate says, ducking into the tent. “See, I told you Parker was here.”

Peter stands, brushing dirt off his knees.

“I’m not hung over,” he says. “How do you know I’m hung over?”

Kate rolls her eyes dramatically. 

“Oh, I had to hear the whole saga from Wade this morning. I know so much more about Shiklah’s kinks than I ever wanted to. You really don’t remember last night at all?”

“Wait,” Peter says, a little hope seeping into his tone. “Do you remember what happened last night?”

“You were just crying on the couch when I left,” Kate says with a shrug. “So like a normal party.”

Kate Bishop is monumentally unhelpful. 

Their conversation is cut off when the fortune teller clears her throat purposefully, and Wanda and Kate turn to look, seeming to see her for the first time. 

The woman nods at the chair opposite her own, eyes on Peter.

“Let me read your cards,” she says.

“Oh, tarot!” Wanda exclaims, delightedly.

The woman’s eyes widen. 

“Yes,” she says. “Would you prefer to do the honors, priestess?” 

She holds the deck out to Wanda, casting her eyes down.

“No, grandmother,” Wanda says, gently. “The cards have never spoken to me. But I would love to watch you do a reading, if you would.”

Peter shoots Wanda a look. Sometimes she says things and honestly has no idea how offensive they sound. The fortune teller can’t be older than 40. Hardly in grandmother territory.

The woman doesn’t seem to mind, however. She’s got a smirk on her face as she motions to Peter to sit.

“Hold on,” he says. “I never agreed to have my fortune told or anything.” 

But Wanda and Kate jostle him into the chair, and the woman is holding the deck out to him.

“Cut the deck into three and shuffle them,” she instructs, pushing them into Peter’s hands.

Then she removes the option to give them back by pulling a crumpled pack of clove cigarettes out of her back pocket and sticking one into the side of her mouth. 

“Do you mind?” she mumbles around the cigarette. 

Peter shakes his head, still holding the cards dumbly with both hands.

“Shuffle,” she prompts him, lighting the cigarette and inhaling deeply. 

Peter does, cutting the deck into three equal stacks and then putting them back together in a different order. They’re soft to the touch and yellowed from age and use, a blue India ink pattern on the back with facing designs done in faded pale pastels. They look almost hand-painted.

He pushes the reconstituted stack back to the woman.

The tent is slowly filling with a spicy-sweet smelling smoke from the cigarette, floating upward to hang around the lantern lighting the tent. It creates a hazy atmosphere that Peter can only assume is intentional.

The fortune teller’s fingers brush over the deck. Her nail polish is black and chipping, nails bitten down to the quick.

She pulls a card from the top of the stack and lays it in the center of the table.

“This,” she says, tapping it forcefully. “Is you.”

At his right shoulder, Kate snorts. 

The card depicts a court jester in red and blue motley. Beneath the picture, it’s labelled. The Fool.

“Shut up,” Peter says.

“I’m just saying, Parker,” Kate says, voice shaky with suppressed laughter. “The woman’s got you down. Maybe there’s something to the whole psychic thing.”

The fortune teller tsks at Kate.

“It’s not a bad thing,” she says to Peter. “The fool is a symbol of youth. He represents new beginnings. Hope for the future. A pure heart.”

Peter sighs and scrubs at his face. Once upon a time. Maybe once that had been him. But it’s not anymore. He wants to tell her that her psychic news reports might be a little out of date.

“The next card,” she says, tapping at the deck. “Is what crosses you. It’s the biggest challenge you must face.” 

Then she flips the next card over laying it horizontally across the first card. It’s a skeletal figure on a pale pink and orange background, leg raised in a morbid dance. Death.

On his left, Wanda gasps and clutches at Peter’s shoulder, squeezing.

“You aren’t a stranger to death,” the woman says thoughtfully. “But this time, you sought him out. And that was very unwise, young man.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Peter says, suppressing the urge to shiver.   

The woman hums thoughtfully, eyes not leaving Peter’s as she draws the next card and lays it on the table. Five of cups, water spilling in a waterfall effect from one ornate golden chalice to the next.

The expression in the woman’s eyes turns sympathetic. She strokes the card lightly.

“This one represents grief,” she says. “Deep mourning. A cup that cannot be filled. This is your past.”

Peter feels his jaw tighten. Isn’t she just supposed to tell him he’ll meet a handsome stranger or something? It’s really just his fucking Parker luck that he gets the weird reading.

Then she turns over the next card. The figure’s face is obscured by smoke, and it wears a long cloak, but the curved horns that emerge from above the smoke are unmistakable. 

“This is the near future,” the fortune teller says. “There is a devil at your back, and it will not be easy to shake him. But remember it’s also a card of deception. The devil is the lord of lies.”

Then she does that unnerving thing again, looking over Peter’s shoulder as though there’s something there. It’s at this point that Peter determines that she’s fucking with him. He wants to turn around, just to be certain, but he won’t give her the pleasure.

He grits his teeth even more as she lays out The Lovers, with its illustration of two intertwined trees with vaguely human faces, foreheads pressed together. 

“This card,” the fortune teller says, “Represents your aspiration. The thing you want most. The … Purpose of your present trials.” 

Peter just stares at the card with a feeling of empty, sucking longing in the middle of his chest as she lays out the remaining cards. Tells him that his mind is clouded, that he needs to learn to trust others and call on them for help, that he struggles with nightmares and deep sadness. 

And the whole time he just wants to scream at her “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.” But he doesn’t, because May taught him to have fucking manners, and because Wanda and Kate are still there at his side, and he doesn’t want to seem even more unhinged than usual. 

“Okay, well, this has been fun,” he says when the fortune teller pauses. 

She holds a finger up to him, silencing him.

“There’s still one more,” she says. 

When she turns it over, Peter actually gasps like a dying fish. It feels as though the breath won’t come to his lungs even though he’s sucking it in. 

“The Hanged Man is a symbol of sacrifice, of acceptance of the price that must be paid for the things we want most,” the fortune teller says, her voice a hypnotic sing-song. “This is the endgame. Your present path, unchanged, will lead you to the hanged man.”

The card shows a figure with his ankles tied to a tree branch, hanging upside down with his hair brushing the grass.

It’s just a stupid playing card. It’s part of a game that children use to scare themselves. But Peter recognizes that face. The cut of the beard is unmistakable, the curve of the jawline, the arms pulled taut with the figure’s hands tied behind his back. It’s Tony. It can’t be anyone but Tony.

“Do you recognize him, young man?” the woman asks, reaching out a hand to cover Peter’s. 

He looks into her eyes, a blue so pale it nearly fades into the surrounding white. The looks she’s giving him is cool, assessing. There are two options, Peter realizes. Either she planned this, palmed the cards to make the right one come up, or he’s going absolutely batty.

He picks the far more attractive option, and yanks his hand from her grasp, exerting far too much strength and nearly toppling the table in the process. 

“We’re done here,” he says, coldly. “Done. And fuck you very much.” 

He shrugs off the attempts of Wanda and Kate to catch up with him and stalks away. It’s not until he’s standing outside by the bonfire that he looks down at his clenched fists and realizes he’s taken the card with him. 

Peter stuffs it in his pocket just so he doesn’t have to look at it any more, and shakes his head to clear it. The entire day has been a clusterfuck. 

He’s not sure how long he stands there, clenched hands in his pockets, staring into the flames, before he feels a bump at his shoulder. It’s Kate, holding out a steaming mug of cider in his direction. 

“Thanks,” he mutters, wrapping cold fingers around the warm mug and inhaling the scent of apple and nutmeg and cinnamon.

“You’re kind of a freak show, I hope you know that, Parker,” Kate says.

“Yeah,” Peter says on a sigh. “I know.” 

“Generally I like that in a person, but it seems like I should offer to let you talk about your … Feelings? Or something?” 

Her face contorts in a grimace of distaste, and Peter can’t help but laugh.

“God, no,” he says. “I do not want to talk about my feelings any more.” 

“Thank fuck,” Kate says. “I am really shitty at feelings.” 

It makes him feel a little lighter. They talk about the trick arrows he’s designing for the Hawkeyes, and it’s almost as though things are normal. 

“Please,” she says. “No matter how much he begs, do not let Clint talk you into a boomerang arrow. I mean, honestly. I don’t know where these ideas come from.”

Then Wanda comes up and apologizes for making him deal with the mean tarot lady, even though he can see by her expression that she doesn’t understand what happened any more than Kate does. But she brings them sticks with marshmallows stuck onto the ends, and they toast them and make s’mores, and all-in-all, it’s not a bad ending to the evening.

After the fire’s burned down to the embers, and the food table is completely bare, they walk back down the path to the barn together. Bruce has the other room in the barn, but he’s camped out on the front porch with Clint drinking beer, so they just wave at him as they leave.

The tall grass in the field is wet with early morning dew, and the stars are bright and sharp against the black sky in a way they never are in the city.

Back in his room, Peter strips out of his smoke-infused clothes and decides he needs a shower. He stuffs the tarot card underneath the mattress of the creaking wrought-iron bed, averting his gaze as much as he can while he does, and wraps a towel around his waist before heading to the bathroom.

Peter turns the water on in the shower as hot as it will go and, as the room fills with steam, unwraps the bandage from his hand.

What the fuck? Not only has it not healed, the liquid stitches have dissolved, and it’s still oozing blood. The skin around the incision is white and wrinkled where it’s been kept covered all day.

Peter pokes at it and hisses in pain. He might have to get Bruce to take a look at it if it doesn’t start healing soon. The edges ache in a way that he’s worried might mean an infection. He really hopes he’s wrong. Can he even get an infection? It hasn’t happened since the spider bite, but this whole thing seems unprecedented.

It still makes him feel a little sick to his stomach to look at it, so he ties a washcloth around it and ducks into the shower. There, he clings to the tiles and lets the scalding spray pound at his tense muscles. It has to be well past one in the morning now, and the day feels like it has lasted forever.

He quickly washes with a mint eucalyptus soap that May says is supposed to be soothing, thinking unwillingly as he soaps up his back of the way the fortune teller had looked over his shoulder at nothing. It sends an involuntarily shiver across his body. There’s an itch between his shoulder blades again in a spot that he cannot scratch no matter how he contorts himself. 

Stupid. He’s being stupid and freaking himself out. Peter washes his hair aggressively, then shuts off the water. The tiny room is enveloped in a cloud of herbal steam, fogging the mirror and leaving a slick layer of condensation on everything. He shakes his overlong hair out like a dog, hoping to shake some of his unwelcome thoughts with the water. No luck.

Peter unwraps the now steadily bleeding cut and adds more butterfly bandages and a heavy gauze wrap, gritting his teeth as he pulls it tight. Super healing really has made him a baby, he thinks. 

He reaches out and swipes at bathroom mirror to clear off the fog, fumbling in his bag resting on the toilet for his toothbrush. But when he raises back up and glimpses into the mirror every muscle in Peter’s body is shocked into complete stillness.

He’s a mouse frozen in the hypnotic gaze of a snake. He’s prey. He’s a meal, and he feels it.

There’s something behind you, the fortune teller had said. And he’d thought she’d been speaking metaphorically. Which would all be fine, except there really is something behind him now. Peter sees it - still hazy - in the mirror, over his shoulder. 

Like being hit in the face, his spidey senses light through all of his nerves in the space of a moment, no build up and no warning. Danger, danger, danger … 

There’s a tremor in his hands from trying to keep still, and his breath comes quick and shallow.

Peter squeezes his eyes shut. This can’t be happening. It can’t be happening, so it isn’t happening. And when he opens his eyes, the thing behind him will be gone. 

He counts to ten. He opens his eyes. It’s still there.

It’s standing. Just standing there and breathing. He can see its chest plate rising and falling with effort. The last time he’d see it, it had been eerily still, and he’d prayed to every god in the multiverse to see it move.

Peter knows the thing isn’t Tony. Not even from the deepest pit of hell could Tony Stark ever set off his spidey senses. But the thing at his back is wearing Tony’s face; a vision pulled straight out of Peter’s memory. It’s Tony in his last moments – one side of his body burned beyond recognition from wielding the Infinity Stones, reactor dead in his chest, eyes glazed over with pain and death. 

It’s a nightmare brought to life, and it’s just standing there. Until it isn’t. Instead, it’s stepping forward with a shuffling gate, so close that Peter can feel its hot breath on the back of his neck. 

Peter lets out an involuntary whine. The thing is so close he can feel the bulk of it hovering inches from his skin. It feels completely beyond his control when he meets the monster’s milky gaze in the mirror.

They stare for a long moment, neither moving. Then the thing reaches out a charred finger to brush at the palm of Peter’s hand. It feels solid and rough, tracing his lifeline. 

Peter bolts, the touch jolting him out of his stillness. He races out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind him, and runs to his own room. The bedroom door gets locked with a definitive click.

It’s the instinct of a child afraid of the dark that pulls him to the bed, that makes him curl into the tiniest ball he can manage and hide his head underneath the down-filled quilt. His breath is still coming thin and fast, making the dark atmosphere under the blanket grow dank and humid.

Then he hears it above the sound of his own breathing and his pulse pounding in his ears. The door creaks open, even though he knows he locked it. He knows he did. There’s that uneven gait across his floor – a stomp, as though the movement is difficult, and then a dragging of the other foot to meet the first. Stomp, drag, stomp, drag, stomp, drag. It makes its way closer to the bed, and Peter feels like his heart is going to burst in his chest it’s beating so quickly.

All the trembling, pounding things inside him go silent and still, though, when he hears the creak of the bed springs, and feels the other side of the mattress sink down.

The thing adjusts its weight, making the old bed frame squeal, and then it seems to find its position and settles at Peter’s back. Its breaths are labored, but grow deeper as they lay there, side by side. It’s almost as though it’s falling asleep.

It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real, Peter repeats to himself. He’s having a mental break, a very vivid hallucination. But somehow knowing that doesn’t ease the terror he feels gripping his muscles. Knowing he conjured this thing, this aberration of Tony, from his own mind is worse. It doesn’t relieve his childlike fear of the monster in his bed. It just gives it layers.

So Peter waits motionless, muscles tense less an unwary movement wake the sleeping thing beside him. The blanket is pulled up over his head, and his mind in screaming in terror. He lays there and he waits for the sun to rise and banish the dark thing. He can make it, he thinks. Just a few more hours ‘til morning.

Chapter Text

I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.

- Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

Three: In A Dark Wood

Peter’s in a cave. He hears water dripping from a rocky stalactite, echoing in the underground chamber and feels the particular chill of air underground. But he’s also somehow in the lab at the compound – shiny metal work tables messy with abandoned experiments, the makeshift collider Tony won’t let go of snaking around the room, holographic displays up and running complex calculations.

How can it be both? It’s definitely both. His breathing echoes against the rock walls, and there’s Tony in the middle of it all, swiping madly through ideas on a holoscreen and letting out little huffs of disgust when he comes across one that isn’t up to par.

Oh. He’s dreaming. That’s nice, then. Peter is no stranger to dreams of Tony Stark, and this one isn’t starting out the way that most of the bad ones do, so it looks like he got lucky. His brain is giving him a reprieve from nightmare visions. Usually it isn’t so kind.

He takes a step forward to approach the man in question, shoes squeaking on the stone. Peter winces, and Tony stills at the sound, back going taut. Then he spins on one heel, giving Peter a lopsided grin while his eyes rake over him.  

“Peter. Benjamin. Parker,” he says, and Peter’s heart churns at the warm, gravelly timbre of his voice. Then: “You are a goddamn idiot.”

“Mr. Stark?” Peter asks, suddenly unsure of himself.

This is not how things usually go.

“Standing on your own two feet, I see. So, not drunkenly messing with the forces of darkness tonight then.”  

“Sir?”

Damn it, even Peter’s good dreams aren’t cooperating tonight. Which is just typical. He watches as Tony’s face contorts in concentration, eyebrows furrowing at Peter. He wants to protest. To bring the grin back. He misses it.

“You really don’t remember?” Tony asks.

He’s got that look on his face, his untangling the problem face. Usually it’s some math that Peter’s lost the thread on, but occasionally it’s literal untangling. Like that time they helped Clint set up his entertainment system. Peter likes to see the moment when everything clicks into place and he finds the solution. His whole face opens up wide. It’s irresistible.  

“Last night,” Peter says. “I don’t really remember much.”

“Yeah,” Tony says. “Got that. You’re real handsy when you’re drunk, you know?”

Peter feels himself flush. He wonders for a minute if this is going to turn into one of those dreams. The humiliating ones that still somehow leave him hard and straining when he wakes.

“Wanda,” Peter mumbles. “There was something in the punch.”

Tony’s fist hits the worktable by his hip.  

“Dammit,” he grits out between clenched teeth. “I fucking hate magic.”

“Oh my god, right?” Peter says.

Then they’re both grinning at each other, and it feels so right. Peter feels himself pulled toward the other man, stumbling closer and closer.  

“This is a dream,” Peter says.

“Yeah, kid,” Tony says, softly. “Sorry to drag you away from more pleasant ones. So not my idea.”

Peter shakes his head. They’re so close, inches away. Peter can see the gray hairs scattered through Tony’s beard, the lines at the corners of his eyes that crinkle even further when he smiles. He can smell him, the cologne with hints of amber and cedar, his skin beneath that warm and salty. It’s the polar opposite of the nightmare he had earlier. Menace replaced with comfort.

“Mr. Stark, can I ask you something?” he says.

“Shoot, kid.”

“Why are we in a cave?”

Peter lets his eyes wander around the room to the rock walls, the stalactite formations.

“Not my choice, Pete,” Tony says. “This is your dream. All of this is from your mind.”

“My mind might be a little …”

Peter holds out a hand, waggles it back and forth.

Tony snorts.  

“Well, I wasn’t gonna say anything. I’m just grateful you gave me something to occupy myself.”

He gestures at the lab equipment, the holoscreens whirring through material.

“Well,” Peter says. “It’s self preservation, really. I know what kind of trouble you get into when you’re bored. I don’t wanna know what happens if I let you loose in my head without giving you something to occupy yourself.”

Tony’s look turns sly.  

“Keeping secrets from me, Pete?” he asks. “Something in your head you don’t want me digging into?”

“What?” Peter says over a nervous laugh. “No, why would I … No. No, um, secrets.”

“Good,” Tony says.

A shadow flits over his face, there one minute, gone the next. He places a hand on Peter’s lower back, warm and firm, ushering him to sit at one of the work stations.

“We need to talk about some things,” he says, as they settle side by side. “But first, I want you to do me a favor.”  

“Anything, Mr. Stark,” Peter says, leaning back into the press of Tony’s hand. “You know that.”

“You know what I really miss? Now that I’m … Dead?”  

He says the word like it’s weightless, but Peter feels it heavy on his chest. He tries not to show it, to play along.  

“What?” he asks hoarsely.  

“Coffee,” Tony says. “I know it’s weird. You’d think it’d be the whiskey I really miss. But apparently I’m way more addicted than I ever realized, because it’s been three years, and I’m still getting the shakes.”  

Peter bites down on his lower lip to reign in the grin that wants to spread across his face.  

“So you think you could do me a solid, kid, and dream me up a really good cup of coffee?” he asks.

Peter’s nodding before he’s even done talking, closing his eyes, trying to concentrate.  

“No, wait.”

A hand in his hair makes his eyes spring open. Tony’s fingers tug gently at the strands, half smile back on his face as he studies Peter.  

“Don’t you dare think about that sludge that Clint makes at the compound. I know you. You think coffee is just coffee, but that stuff is an abomination.”

He hasn’t moved his hand from Peter’s hair, but with his other he snaps right in Peter’s face.

“Think about that time I took you to Del Posto. You remember?”  

Peter nods, Tony’s nails scraping lightly against his scalp. He remembers. Low lighting, candle on the table, white linen tablecloths, Tony in a blue pinstripe suit that made Peter’s mouth water. They’d been celebrating his acceptance to MIT. Ostensibly. Really, Tony had been buttering him up before he told him about the academic trust fund he’d set up for Peter.

“Think of it like a scholarship,” Tony had said. “If you applied for any of my scholarships, you’d get one easily.”  

“It’s outrageous,” Peter had replied, looking at the number of zeros Tony had written on the cloth napkin he’d shoved across the table at Peter. “This is way more than tuition.”  

“Living expenses,” Tony had said. “If you’re keeping Spider-Man a secret, you can’t exactly have a roommate.”

Peter had spluttered and protested, but in the end he’s always been really, really bad at saying no to Tony Stark.

“Think about the espresso they served with dessert, yeah?” Tony is saying now, voice low and hypnotic. Peter shuts his eyes to concentrate. “Dark roasted, smooth, smoky aftertaste, just a hint of honey for sweetness. If you really care, you’ll make it quad.”  

Slowly, Tony’s fingers slide from Peter’s hair, and Peter definitely doesn’t whine in protest, but that’s only because he’s practicing extreme self-control.

“Bingo,” Tony says, and Peter opens his eyes.

There’s a steaming mug on the bench. Tony’s fingers wrap gently around it as he brings it to his lips. Then he lets out a long sigh.

“Oh, baby, you treat me so good,” he groans, and Peter’s honestly not sure if that’s directed at him or at the espresso.

“You with me, Mr. Stark?” Peter asks.

Tony’s eyes blink open. They’re soft and warm.

He stands, gripping Peter’s shoulder with a hand, and placing a kiss at his temple, right at Peter’s hairline.

“Thanks, kid,” he whispers into Peter’s hair, sending a full-body shiver through him.

Then he’s gone, across the room, leaning his hip on another workbench while he sips his coffee and looks at Peter. He grimaces.

“So,” he says. “You’d think that being dead would mean the end of dealing with bureaucracy, right? I certainly did. I mean, I’ve never been good at following directives at the best of times. I thought the powers that be would understand that. But it turns out, not so much.”

“You’re saying there’s, like, a post-death Congressional Committees to deal with?” Peter asks, spinning on his stool so he’s facing Tony. He’s just spewing word vomit at this point, trying to compose himself after that kiss.

“Not exactly. It’s more like there are all these rules. Things I can’t say. That I can’t tell you.”

“What, like general afterlife stuff? ‘Cause I’m not saying I’m not curious, but I think it’s something I can wait on.”  

“This is more pressing,” Tony says, scrubbing at his face with one hand. “Look, you need to figure out what went down last night. It’s very important. I can’t believe you’re going into this blind …”

“So you know what happened?” Peter asks.

“Yes,” Tony grits out. “I do.”

“But you can’t tell me.”

“Nope. I can’t. Jesus, this is so fucking … Listen to me, Pete. I need you to really focus.”

“I’m focused,” Peter protests.

“Whatever you do, you can’t look back.”  

Peter’s heart drops a couple inches in his chest. It feels like a heavy stone.

“You mean you want me to stop thinking about you?” he asks, softly. “’Cause it’s not like I do it on purpose, Mr. Stark. I just …”

“No, hey, stop,” Tony snap his fingers at him. “C’mon, Pete. Look at me.”

He paces forward, crouches down so his face is even with Peter’s, balancing himself with a grip on Peter’s thigh.

“Listen to my words,” he says. “That’s not what I’m talking about. You just Cannot. Look. Back. You’re a genius. I know you can figure this out.”

“I don’t …”  

Peter’s brain is focusing too much on the hands on his thigh to think about much else. What were they talking about?  

“Kid please,” Tony says, desperation turning his voice raspy. “Please. This is life or death. Repeat it to me.”  

“Don’t look back,” Peter says in a rush.

“That’s right,” Tony says, nodding. “And when in doubt, trust that Peter tingle.”

“Don’t,” Peter protests. “Don’t call it that.”

“Yeah,” Tony agrees. “That is a really stupid name.”

“Says the man who invented BARF.”

“Ok, maybe not one of my finest.”

Tony’s smile is more distracting than it should be. Peter feels himself want to fall into it. And then he’s just falling. He’s off kilter. He almost feels drunk again.

“Mr. Stark,” he says, tipping forward. “I feel a little weird.”  

Strong arms are around Peter, lifting him to his feet, holding him up. He blinks a couple times, struggling to keep his eyes open.

“I think you’re waking up, kid,” Tony says.

“Hmm,” Peter says, nodding, his head moving too far forward when he does. His control of it is slipping.

“Shit, you aren’t gonna remember any of this either, are you?” Tony says.

“Seems unlikely,” Peter mumbles.

“Well, in that case,” Tony says. “What the hell, right?”  

Peter’s trying to make sense of that statement. He thinks he can get it if he pushes his eyebrows close enough together. But before he can quite puzzle it out, Tony’s gripped a fist in his shirt, and their mouths are clashing together.

Peter gasps when their lips meet, and Tony takes full advantage, invading Peter’s mouth with his tongue and twisting it around Peter’s own. It’s desperate and sharp, and Peter thinks that by the time it’s over his lips will be bruised. He clings and opens himself as much as he can to the kiss. This doesn’t feel like any dream he’s had before. It’s so much more.

When Tony finally pulls back from the kiss, Peter follows his mouth instinctually, nipping at his bottom lip and making Tony groan again. This time, he’s pretty sure the reaction is all for him.

Still, he pulls back again, holding Peter tight, but bringing their foreheads together. It reminds Peter, vaguely, of something. A playing card, he thinks. Two trees in a dark wood, lovers intertwined. But he can’t remember why it’s important.

Their faces are so close together that, when Tony speaks, his voice is a ghost across Peter’s lips.

“Don’t die,” he breathes. “If you die I’ll fucking kill you.”  

Peter doesn’t think that quite computes, but his brain is the consistency of maple syrup right now, and he can’t quite express the idea. He opens his mouth to say something, but Tony silences him with one final gentle kiss.  

Peter feels himself swoon, sinking down into blackness. He can feel Tony’s arms around him – strong and comforting – for a long moment in the dark. And then he’s gone.  

*

Even before he opens his eyes, Peter knows the bed is empty. He can tell there’s no weight on the other side of the mattress, no tortured breathing next to his ear. He sags into the pillow in relief. It was a nightmare. It was only a nightmare.

And then after the nightmare there was … Something nicer. He can’t remember the details, though. He’s left with just the impression of someone holding him close. 

Golden sunlight is streaming through his bedroom window onto his face. He’d rolled over onto his back at some point in the night, and his arm is hanging over the side of the bed, tingling like it’s fallen asleep.

Looking down, Peter curses. He’s bled through his bandages, thick as they were, and now there’s a small pool of blood on floor and his hand is dripping in slow, heavy droplets, making little splashes as they fall. For a moment he just stares dumbly at the mess of it.

Then he pushes himself up, groaning, to make himself clean up. It’s still unpleasant to see his own blood outside of his body. His stomach rebels at it, but he manages to wipe up the worst of it with his towel from last night. After the prickling numbness fades, his injured hand feels like it’s on fire, and he has to patch it again, raiding the bathroom cabinet for more supplies. God, he’s a mess. 

He manages to find a numbing cream, which he slathers on along with something anti-bacterial before taping and wrapping the wound up again.

The whole time he judiciously avoids looking in the bathroom mirror. Of course he realizes that the incident last night must have been nothing more than a vivid dream. It makes sense, really. He was tense and exhausted, and his emotions had been running on full throttle for most of two days. It would have been weirder if he hadn’t had nightmares. 

He reminds himself of all of this again while he checks in on Jeff and then trudges up the hill to the farmhouse. It’s still early, just gone seven, and a fog lies low on the ground, slowly but surely being beaten away by the rising sun. The dew from last night has frozen, leaving the field sparkling and frosted over. 

Peter can see a steady stream of smoke rising from the chimney of the farmhouse, and it makes him feel warm despite the nip in the air. The image makes him think about home fires and safe havens, and he smiles into the scarf wrapped around his neck. 

It’s surprising, when he crests the hill, to see the evidence of the party last night almost completely gone but for the embers of the fire still softly smoking in the fire pit. The tents and lights have been taken down. The trailers and vans that Laura’s family arrived in are nowhere to be found.

The farmhouse looks like it always looks, white siding and green shutters, porch swing rocking gently in the wind. But it seems a little bereft now without the trappings of last night’s party. Even the festive bunting that hung around the porch has been taken down.

It’s a stark contrast to what Peter hears when he approaches the door. The kids are screeching at top volume, feet pounding as they run. Over the din that’s Clint’s sharp whistle utterly failing to bring them to order.

Peter pushes the door open only to have Cooper slam forcefully into his knees.

“Aw, c’mon Coop, watch where you’re going,” Clint calls.

“Parker, you’re awake,” Kate says, stomping into the front room with Lila thrown over one shoulder, giggling while her long brown hair sweeps the floor. “I don’t know how you slept through the racket.” 

“Is everyone gone?” Peter asks. It seems like a really quick departure.

“So will we be after breakfast,” Hope says from her place at the dining room table.

“Hey, no,” Clint protests. “Hope, you said I could have the kids for a long weekend. I’ve got projects.”

‘The kids’ is how he refers to Peter, Kate and Wanda. Peter sort of feels like he should object to the moniker. They aren’t even the youngest Avengers anymore. But he thinks it's because Clint and Laura see them as an extension of the family, and so he doesn’t protest.

“Fine,” Hope is sighing. “But we’ve got training scheduled on Tuesday. I want you all back for that.” 

“Sir, yes sir,” Clint says with a sloppy salute.

Peter decides not to interrupt their bickering, and instead settles himself at the breakfast bar with a cup of coffee, watching Laura flip eggs and bacon in a cast iron pan.

“Eggs over easy, right, Pete?” Laura asks. 

He hums an affirmative, and then growls protectively when Wanda sits beside him and tries to steal a sip of his coffee.

“Get your own, Wands,” he says.

“It tastes better when it’s stolen,” she says sticking her tongue out at him.

“I knew you were really a super villain,” he mutters. 

Laura joins them with her own cup of coffee, sliding a plate with eggs, toast and bacon in front of Peter.

“Bless you,” he tells her, digging in.

“Oh, Pete, I almost forgot,” she says, digging into her back pocket. “Great Aunt Theodora left you something before she circled the wagons this morning.”

Peter gives her a quizzical look. He’s tried, really he has, but he can never keep all of Laura’s family members straight in his head. There are just so many of them.

“I’m sorry, great aunt who?” he asks through a bite of perfectly runny eggs.

“Theodora,” Laura supplies. “You met her last night. She said she read your cards.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that the woman who read my cards wasn’t a great anything,” Peter says. 

“She looks good for her age, right?” Laura says. “It’s the spellwork. You know I’ve never been entirely sure she isn’t drinking the blood of virgins or something in her free time.”

Peter’s almost entirely sure that Laura’s fucking with him, but she’s got such an innocent expression on her face that he begins to doubt. 

“Anyway, she said to give you that. Something about not breaking up the pair. Whatever that means.” 

Laura shrugs and pushes a card with a swirling blue back across the table at him. 

Peter hesitates, unsure that he wants to know which one it is. Finally, he flips it in a swift move, revealing the fool in his red and blue uniform. For a second he’s transfixed, studying the too-familiar sweep of curls, the shape of the eyes, the set of the chin. How could he not have noticed before? It’s so close to what he sees in the mirror every day. Well, except for the funny hat.

“Pete, are you ok?” Laura asks. 

Startled, Peter sits up from where he’s been leaning over the card. He stuffs it in his pocket where it joins the Hanged Man card he couldn’t bear to leave behind in his room this morning.

He feels like he’s going to vomit, is unsure of what this all means. Is he going slowly crazy, or is there actually something going on? A part of him wants to shove the cards at Laura or Wanda and demand they tell him what they see. But he doesn’t because he’s at least 90 percent sure that the answer will be nothing. Just a stupid tarot card. If he’s really going nuts, he needs to lock that shit down. They’ll have him benched, or worse, if it gets out. Hope is sitting there less than five feet away, and she wouldn’t hesitate for an instant to confiscate his suit. 

And now he’s panicking. Fuck. 

“You look really pale,” Laura is saying. “Here, drink this.”

She’s pushing a tiny brown glass bottle into Peter’s hand, and without thinking he knocks it back like a shot. It takes a minute, but soon his stomach settles and his breathing steadies.

“What,” Peter asks rubbing his temples. “Was in that?”

“Just a little calming brew,” Laura says, laying the back of one cool hand against his forehead. “A little chamomile, a little vervain, a little something extra.”

Peter opens his eyes at that. Laura winks and wrinkles her freckled nose at him in amusement. 

Wanda reaches over Peter for the bottle, sniffing it curiously and giving Laura an approving look. Peter really, really wishes people would stop dosing him with magic without warning him first.

“Laura Barton,” he says, softly. “Are you witch?”

She laughs out loud at that. 

“It sort of runs in the family, Pete,” she says. “Besides, my husband fights gods and aliens with a bow and arrow. He’d be dead a thousand times over if I didn’t coat him in layers of protective magic every time he walks out the door.”

“What are you saying about me?” Clint calls, poking his head in from the living room, Nate hanging off one shoulder like a backpack.

“That you’d be useless without me,” Laura says.

“Oh. Well, carry on. We are invading Fort Cooper.”

“Onward!” Nate shouts.

“Onward!” Clint agrees, running off.

“I just don’t understand,” Peter says, wonderingly. “Why so many of the women in my life turn out to be witches. Is it something about me personally? Something weird about my aura?”

He turns to Wanda. 

“You’d tell me if I had a weird aura, right?”

“What are we talking about?” Kate interrupts, plopping down in a seat beside Peter, and shoving her feet unceremoniously into his lap. Peter lays a hand across her ankle and pinches. 

“About how all the women in Peter’s life are witches,” Wanda says with a grin.

“Well, lucky for you Parker, you’ve got at least one normal friend. I’m not a witch.” 

Peter looks at her skeptically.

“You’re like one letter off,” he says. “There’s not that much of a difference.”

Kate leans over and flicks him on the ear.

“Yeah, well,” she says, settling back in her seat and crossing her arms. “You have a weird aura. So there.”

*

When Clint said he had a list of projects for them to work on, he wasn’t joking. Now, for instance, he has Peter and Wanda helping him build a fence. As one does. 

“I wanna get sheep,” he’s explaining as he holds a post steady for Peter to hammer into the soft earth. “Laura says no, but if we already have a sheep pen, then my argument is stronger.”

“So we’re helping you manipulate your wife?” Wanda says, summoning a ball of red energy in her palm, and using it to levitate one of the fence slats into place.

“Not manipulate,” Clint huffs. “Persuade. I’m going to persuade her. With the logic that we already have a sheep pen.”

Peter gives the post one more powerful whack to settle it into place. He’s still babying his left hand, but he an easily handle the job with his right. Magic and super strength definitely make the task go by quicker than it would otherwise. He steps back and wipes the sweat from his forehead. The sun is beating down on them this afternoon, wiping away all traces of autumnal chill. 

He really doesn’t want to get Clint started on the sheep again. He’s already gone over his plans for hand-knitted wool sweaters for everyone in the family, like they’re the Weasley’s brought to life. There are a remarkable number of steps between sheep and sweater. 

“So,” Clint says, offering him some water and bumping their shoulders together. “I heard you met Jake last night.”

“Jake?” Peter asks, confused.

“Oh, come on, man. Laura’s cousin? Red hair. Got sort of an Ed Sheeran thing going on?”

Peter raises and eyebrow at the reference, and Clint raises his hands in defense. 

“Lila went through a phase,” he says. “I know what Ed Sheeran looks like. Anyway. You made an impression on him.” 

The pieces slowly click into place, and Peter snaps his fingers.

“Creepy mask guy!” he exclaims.

“Would we call him creepy?” Clint asks, voice shifting up an octave. “Never mind. He asked for your number, and I was wondering if I should give it to him.”

“Why would he ask for my number?”

“Well, golly gee, Pete, I think he might want to ask you to go to the big game with him. Maybe afterwards, you two can share a milkshake.”

“What?”

“Geeze,” Clint sighs, rubbing at his temples. “He wants to ask you out, I think? He’s based in New York, working on some cirque de something performance art thing. He thought you were cute, and he’s a really nice guy, so …” 

Peter’s stomach clenches in mild panic. It’s not that he hasn’t tried getting out there. Dating. It’s just that it always, always ends disastrously. MJ had moved to the other side of the country after their big break-up. Otto turned out to be a mad scientist in the ‘psychopathic murder-y’ way and not just in the ‘sexy in a lab coat’ way. Eddie had left him for an alien symbiote.

Maybe Peter couldn’t have prevented any of those things from happening. But a part of him worries that he picks the wrong people because he doesn’t want things to work out. Because a part of him is still holding a space open.

He doesn’t want to drag Clint’s nice, unassuming cousin into the shitshow of his life. Because what happens when he doesn’t give Peter an excuse to end things other than ‘Sorry, I’m just sort of hung up on a dead guy who I never even kissed.’ 

“I don’t know, Clint,” he says, digging a toe of his worn Chuck Taylor into the dirt. “I’m not really in a good place to date right now.”

Clint gives him a hangdog look that morphs slowly into pity. Peter has always been so bad at keeping secrets.

“Ok,” he agrees. “Fair enough. Just … You shouldn’t wait around forever, you know, Pete? You deserve to have someone nice. You’re allowed to have that.”

“Thanks man,” he says, more to the ground than to Clint. “That’s … Nice of you to say.”

“You two are moving too slow!” Wanda calls from the bed of Clint’s truck. She’s got a fence slat ready to go, but nowhere to put it.

“Foreman’s cracking the whip,” Clint says, patting Peter on the back. “Let’s do this.”

*

The hollows of Laura’s face are cast in dark shadows, in contrast to the yellow light that gleams on her forehead, her cheekbones, giving her a skeletal appearance. 

“The name of the game,” she says, holding the flashlight to the tip of her chin and looking menacingly along the line of children and adults. “Is flashlight hide and seek. The first rule of flashlight hide and seek is always have extra batteries.” 

Clint dutifully passes extra D batteries down the line. Peter slips his into his pocket. On either side of him, Lila and Cooper are looking serious, lines of Kate’s deep purple lipstick smudged under their eyes. 

“It’s camouflage,” Cooper had said, as though it were obvious, when Peter asked.

Laura is reciting the rules of the game, which by this point is really unnecessary. They play it every time the Avengers come for a visit in the little copse of trees behind the house. To the kids it’s the woods proper, but in reality it’s just a couple acres of oaks and poplars, and the wildest thing that lives there is a family of possums that tend to keep their distance.

Laura covers the basics anyway. It’s tradition. One person designated as seeker. Everyone else gets a five-minute head start to hide. Then on the signal it’s a free-for-all as everyone runs for home base, the picnic table in the back yard. Those that get caught in the beam of the seeker’s flashlight are out. First one back to base wins.

It’s mostly an excuse to let the kids burn off some energy. They think it’s elicit because it all happens in the dark, and Clint and Laura get to sleep in the next morning because the kids are so exhausted. 

With much ceremony, Laura walks up and down the line of participants having them draw straws to see who’s the seeker. Cooper, Lila, Kate, Wanda and Clint, who’s partnering with Nate, all draw long straws. It’s Peter who gets the short one. Parker Luck, he thinks ruefully. 

Laura sets the the timer on her phone, and everyone scatters into the woods to hide, flashlight beams floating across the open field like large and lazy fireflies.

“So,” Laura says, ruffling his hair as they wait perched on the picnic table. “Clint said he talked to you about Jake.”

“Ugh, not you too,” Peter moans, burying his face in his hands. 

“If you don’t like him, I’ve got a lot of cousins,” she offers.

“Laura, honestly, the last thing I’m worried about right now is finding a date.” 

“Maybe it shouldn’t be so low on the list, though,” she says. “You’re looking a little rough lately. I just want to see you happy, Pete. And if I can help you officially become a part of the family in the process, I wouldn’t mind that either.” 

“You know you don’t have to lock me down, right?” he says, trying to deflect. “I’m a sure thing.”   

Laura snorts and shakes her head.

The timer goes off, and Peter’s handed a flashlight and sent out into the darkness. There’s an icy breeze blowing in from the east. Peter can hear the tree branches groan as they sway in the wind as he approaches the tree line, scanning his flashlight back and forth, looking for signs.

Fallen leaves and twigs crunch and crackle under his sneakers as he enters the underbrush. It’s an even more complete darkness under here, without even the stray light of the stars to guide him. 

Peter just stands there for a moment, closes his eyes and lets himself really listen and tune his senses. He can hear rustling in the distance, sense a slight disruption in the air flow which could mean someone hiding. He should really try to tone down the use of his spidey senses for a game like this. But it’s hard to not use the gifts you’ve got, and it’s not like the others won’t be using all of their skills as well. He’d bet anything that Clint has already scaled a tree like monkey by now.

The itch between his shoulder blades has been with him all day, persistent if not intense. But for some reason it chooses now to flare, making him wriggle uncomfortably in his layers. He can’t help but think back to last night’s nightmare and how incredibly real it had all seemed at the time.

He doesn’t like how very suggestible the whole ordeal makes him feel. Peter’s always prided himself on his brain. Even back in high school, when he was still getting regularly beaten up by Flash Thompson, he always had that. If he were actually that smart, though, would he have been taken in by it all? Wouldn’t he be able to rid himself of the fear that even now trickles down his spine with good, old-fashioned logic? Maybe it doesn’t really work like that, but it seems like it should.

Cautiously, Peter makes his way between the trees, stepping softly and listening for signs of the others. He’s been creeping around for maybe ten minutes when he hears a tale-tell giggle from somewhere up in the canopy. He zeroes in on the noise, and when he thinks he’s got it pinpointed, he cups his fingers around his mouth and bellows.

“Olly olly oxen free!”

The woods erupt into chaos as everyone breaks for home. Peter can hear feet pounding from every direction as his quarry scatter. He runs too, following what he thinks must be Kate’s light footsteps deeper into the woods, determined to catch her. There’s bright, high-pitched squealing from one of the kids somewhere to his right, and a muffle ‘oof’ of someone tripping over a tree branch from behind him.

Peter is just pausing to catch his breath when he hears it, and his entire body jerks to alertness. 

Crunch, drag, crunch, drag, crunch, drag …

That was a nightmare, Peter reminds himself. It was a dream. Only a dream. But the sound is there, separate from the other patterns of footfall now moving away from Peter. Crunch, drag, crunch, drag. Closer. It’s getting closer. 

And in that moment, it doesn’t matter if it's real or if it’s in his head. He has no choice but to flee, to get as far away from whatever is behind him as possible. He runs, dodging trees and stumbling on rocks. He gets hit full in the face by a bare branch, and just keeps running even though it leaves lines of fire burning down his face.

Behind him, he can still hear the thing coming, steps moving double time to keep up, but still inexorably moving forward. Gaining on him, even. Distracted by clocking the thing following him, he doesn’t initially notice the ground sloping subtly downward until he’s tripping and then falling, end over end down into a shallow, dry ravine.

He ends up face first in a pile of damp leaves, some of them working their way into his mouth so that he tastes dirt and rot. Peter spits, pushing himself to his feet, preparing to run again when he hears it no more than a yard away. Crunch, drag, crunch, drag, crunch, drag …

Stand and fight, Peter thinks. He doesn’t have a choice. He has to turn around and face the thing. Whatever it is. But there’s a niggling in his head, starting as a whisper and building to a headache-inducing scream. Don’t look back. It isn’t his spidey sense, exactly, but it’s similar. It’s like someone else’s voice in his head. Someone he trusts. Don’t look back.

Operating purely on instinct, Peter breaks to the right, staggering through a deep drift of leaves, hands reaching out and fumbling until his fingers meet the rough bark of a tree.

He puts his back against it, squeezing his eyes shut tight, and sinking down into a crouch. His entire body is shaking from adrenaline and fear, and the thing is still coming in shuffling steps, close enough now that he can hear its ragged breath.

Peter bites down on his bottom lip to suppress a scream. The footsteps stop. For a long, drawn out minute he hears nothing but the thing breathing beside him. Then there’s a thump and a screech of metal against wood.

The thing, whatever it is, has settled against the other side of Peter’s tree.

Everything goes still and quiet. After a few minutes pass, Peter wonders if the thing is gone now. He slowly unwinds himself from the knot he’s tied himself into, letting his shoulders unclench and arms loosen their hold around his own legs.

He should have known better.

As soon as his hands drop to the ground, he hears a skittering among the leaves to his left. Something rough and dry skims across his knuckles. Peter wants to bolt but is too frozen with fear to move an inch. It’s the burned-out finger of the creature he saw in the mirror last night. He knows it is. It rubs across the back of his hand and then cups it in a bony palm. 

The movements are gentle, almost a caress if it weren’t for the menace pouring off the creature in nauseating waves. Peter whimpers, and the thing lets out a pained, hollow sigh. It sounds like wind blowing through a cave, and Peter wonders hysterically if it’s meant to be comforting.

The creature takes a firmer grip on his hand. He can feel where the charred skin is sloughing off away from bone. Ever so slowly, Peter’s hand is pulled backwards until it's in complete possession of the thing, resting on chilled metal. Its thigh, maybe?

Peter struggles to breathe when he feels something loosen around his hand, and realizes that the creature is unwinding his bandages. They fall away into the dirt, and then his hand is being lifted higher and higher. 

The first swipe of the coarse tongue is delicate, tender even. The thing laps along the edge of the cut in Peter’s palm. His mind becomes a dark, sucking blank, unable to process anything that’s happening. The phrase that manages to push its way up through his fear is a line from a storybook that May used to read to him before bed when he was very young. A monster talking to a child: I’ll eat you up I love so.

It runs on a loop as Peter’s breathing gets faster and faster. Then the creature stabs its tongue directly into the open wound, and he screams at the pain of it, cry echoing unanswered out into the darkness. The thing doesn’t seem to mind. It attaches dry lips to the place where Peter’s skin gapes open and sucks at the blood running freely from it.

There’s the sharp pain of it, the incomprehension of what is happening, and then Peter goes hazy from blood loss, or adrenaline overload, or pure fear. He floats. He hears the creature lapping at his skin. He smells burnt flesh and ozone and coppery blood. He lets it happen. And inside he screams and screams into the void.

He doesn’t know when the thing stops drinking, or when it drops his hand. He’s only aware of time passing again when a bright light is shining in his eyes and he’s blinking up into Wanda’s pale face. 

“Peter?” She calls, sounding terrified. “Peter, what’s wrong?” 

And then the world comes back to him. He flings himself into Wanda’s arms, knocking the flashlight she’s holding askew and making her stagger under his weight. He can’t help it. It feels so good to be in the arms of something warm and living. There are tears streaming down his face and he sobs out a word that might be ‘help’ and might be her name.

He can’t hear the nightmare creature breathing anymore, can’t smell it or sense its menace in the air. But he isn’t fooled. Peter knows better now. The monster is still there. It’s always there. Waiting in the shadows. Waiting for him.

Chapter Text

A wind has come and gone, taking apart the mind;
it has left in its wake a strange lucidity.

How privileged you are, to be passionately
clinging to what you love;
the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you.

Maestro, doloroso:

This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us.
Surely it is a privilege to approach the end
still believing in something.  

-October, Louise Glück

Four: The Orpheus Curse

Peter’s back is to the wall, but he can still sense the creature. It’s right behind him, lurking on the other side of the wood and plaster. He thumps his head against the barn wall, and Jeff snorts at him in soft alarm. The 500-pound swine nuzzles in closer to Peter’s side and snuffles at the buttons on his flannel shirt.

It helps, a little. This is what Peter has been reduced to. He has an emotional support pig. The sharp adrenaline spike of fear is fading a little now, being slowly replaced with bone-deep lassitude.

Wanda emerges from the bathroom with the first aid kit. Her face is pale and blank, and she moves with a sort of unmoored, floating quality. Shock, Peter thinks. 

She’s spattered all over with Peter’s blood. He’d been so out of his mind when she found him that he hadn’t even realized he was bleeding on her. There’s a bright red handprint high on her neck, speckles of red on her chest and forehead. It’s a good thing she’s wearing her signature red, or there would be no hope of saving her sweater. 

She approaches and settles between his splayed legs, pushing Jeff away gently and taking Peter’s left hand in both of hers. She tsks sharply at the sight of the gaping wound, and pulls a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a swab out of the open first aid kit by her side. 

“You should have told me what was happening,” she says sharply as she rubs at the cut, leaving a trail of fire behind. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.” 

“I didn’t know what was happening,” Peter protests. “Not at first. I thought I was just hung over and having weird dreams.”

Wanda glares at him, disbelieving.

“I swear,” he says. “But Wanda, you have to believe me. I’m not just going crazy. Something is following me. Something bad.” 

“I believe you,” she says, meeting his gaze firmly. “My magic was drained after the party. I kept trying to tell myself that it was nothing, and I was just under the weather. But clearly not.” 

She bites off the t at the end of not, and then digs through the first aid kit and pulls out a wicked-looking curved needle.

“Oh, c’mon, Wands. No.”

Peter looks dubiously at the needle. It’s not like he’s never been stitched up before, but it’s always unpleasant, and he usually heals up before he has to take such measures.

“Don’t be a baby,” Wanda says. “It’ll keep bleeding otherwise.”

She does take a little pity on him, offering up a dusty bottle of whiskey liberated from Clint’s stash. Peter takes a long glug, places his hand palm-up in Wanda’s lap and nods once decisively.

There’s a delay between when he sees the needle slide through his skin, and when the pain hits, a sting that radiates out from that small pinprick and sinks down into his bones. Peter takes another long swig of whiskey to distract himself and grits his teeth, grinding them together as he watches Wanda pull his skin together with neat, precise stitches.

He whimpers when she tugs too forcefully on the black surgical thread. 

“Sorry,” she whispers.

“Just … Gentle,” he begs. 

After that she goes slower. Which is better, but so, so much worse. The pain is duller, but he feels every single stitch and tug, and has to think about what’s happening. The needle in his skin, the gash slowly closing but still weeping beads of blood. 

Peter squeezes his eyes closed and waits for it to be over. He feels Wanda finish the stitches and tie off the thread, run another alcoholic wipe over the cut.

“There,” she says. “All done.”

“Thanks,” Peter croaks, allowing his eyes to crack open.

Wanda’s looking at him with worry plain on her pale face. Peter immediately feels awful, now that the active pain is gone. That can’t have been easy on her.

“We’ve got to figure out what’s happening, Wands,” he says, glancing down at his newly-patched hand, sealed together with a jagged black line. “None of this is normal.” 

“I … Yes,” Wanda says. “I’ve got an idea, actually. But you might not like it.”

“What is it?” He asks cautiously.

Wanda raises her fingers, red whorls of magic sliding between her fingertips.

“You could let me take a look inside your head,” she says. “I think you probably have memories from that night still, just buried. And I should be able to unlock them with a little … Push.”

Peter doesn’t like that idea at all. He’s honestly had more than enough of people fucking around with his head to last a lifetime. But it doesn’t feel like there are any more options. And if it has to be someone, he’s glad it’s Wanda.

“I trust you,” he says after a long beat. “Do it. Now.”

Wanda shuffles in a little closer between his legs and lifts both her hands to Peter’s temples, red still hovering around her fingers. Her touch is cool on his skin.

“Think about that night,” she says. “As best you can.” 

Peter stares for a beat into her serious green eyes, and then he closes his own and tries to think back. 

‘What would you do to bring him back?’ Wanda asks him as they sit together on the couch, in the middle of the Avengers’ Halloween Party. And Peter answers ‘Anything.’  

Then it’s late, and they’re stumbling out of the compound. Wanda has a heavy book in one hand, and Peter’s wrist in the other, pulling him along. Into the drizzling night. Into the woods.  

Peter sees, but he doesn’t really understand. It’s like walking in on a movie halfway through. There’s paint on the ground, concentric circles, and balls of red energy surrounding them. Then Wanda hands him a bowie knife.  

Peter inhales sharply when he sees himself press the point of the knife to his own palm and slice. He squeezes his hand into a fist and lets the blood trickle down. Wanda is off to the side, speaking in a low voice. She’s saying something, droning, but none of the words make any sense to Peter.  

Heavy drops of his blood hit the damp earth at the center of the circles, and the paint on the ground sparks into sudden, frightening flame.  

The cool fingers against Peter’s temples are gone in an instant, and he’s in the barn again. Wanda stumbles back from him, falling on her ass and scuttling away.

“Oh God,” she says, burying her face in her hands. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t.” 

“Wouldn’t what?” Peter asks. “Wands. Wouldn’t what, exactly?”

When she raises her head, he sees that she’s crying. 

“I was looking for ways to bring Vis back,” she says on a shaky exhale. “I tried everything I knew, and then I went looking for anything I didn’t. I searched trough Stephen’s library. And I found a spell.”

“Right, yeah. Ok.” Peter says. “Spell to raise the dead.” 

“I knew it was dangerous. It’s blood magic. Of course it is. But I’ve got a sense for these things. And I knew it could work. For the right person. But, Peter, we must have done something wrong. We were so wasted. I … I know we were trying to bring Stark back, but I think something else must have come through instead.”

When he hears her say it, Peter feels the ring of truth in those words. They opened a door, and something else came through. Something dark. Something wrong.

It’s that moment that Clint chooses to throw the door open with a sharp bang. Both Wanda and Peter jump, looking up at him with wide, panicked eyes.

Clint’s got a tray with two steaming mugs on it in his hands. Peter sees him take in everything. The blood on Wanda’s neck, the cut on Peter’s hand, the open first aid kit. 

“Ok,” Clint says. “I’m starting to feel like this isn’t the right time for hot chocolate.” 

Peter feels the hysterical laughter bubble up from his chest, unstoppable. 

“Oh no,” he says through giggles. “It’s fine. Wands and I just accidentally summoned a demon from a hell dimension. Nothing to worry about. Hot chocolate for everyone!” 

*

“Blood magic!” Dr. Strange yells as he paces the length of the Barton’s kitchen. “Really? I expected better of you, Ms. Maximoff. It’s unstable, and it’s dangerous, and people lose their souls that way. Ancient One preserve us!”

“It was an accident,” Peter protests, feeling like he should defend Wanda a little here. “We were really, really drunk.”

“Oh, well that makes it ok then,” Strange spits at him.

Maybe not the best excuse he could have gone with. Clint had hauled them both up to the main house after he’d found them in shambles in the barn, and wasted no time in calling in Strange to consult. The good doctor seemed very displeased to have his business interrupted, and the story they’d told him had only worsened his mood. 

“Could we maybe save the scolding for later?” Clint asks, interrupting just as Strange seems ready to start yelling again. “I think they get that this is not good. But it might help if the rest of us know exactly what is going on.”

It’s fast approaching dawn and the whole household, minus the Barton children, is gathered around the dining room table – Laura and Kate in their pajamas, Wanda still in her bloody sweater and jeans, Clint hovering nearby and pouring coffee for everyone. Peter is sitting on the floor, back pressed against the wall between the kitchen and the laundry room. It’s a thin wall. On the other side, he can hear the creature scratching and scrabbling at the plaster. He tries his best to ignore it.

“It’s called the Orpheus curse,” Strange says, red cloak whipping around him dramatically as he continues to pace. 

“I thought you said it was a spell,” Clint says, shooting a look at Wanda. “You said it was a spell. To bring Tony back.”

“It is a spell,” Strange answers. “But when, after a couple thousand years, every person who tries to use it dies a tragic death, spells tend to get a certain reputation. It has never worked in recorded history. Not even for the man who gave it his name.”

“Well, I didn’t know that,” Wanda says.

“You didn’t exactly know much, did you?” Strange snaps, bending down towards her. “And this is exactly why I shouldn’t have given an untrained hedge witch access to my library. Talent is nothing without training.”

“Listen, you elitist, self-aggrandizing piece of shit …”

“Could we cool it with the pejoratives?” Laura interjects, but is ignored by the other two. 

“You cannot rely on instinct for everything,” Strange bites out. 

“I knew it could work,” Wanda insists, stubbornly. “It could. I can tell. Maybe not for Vision and I, but for Peter it could work. It needs someone pure—”

“If anyone says ‘pure of heart’ again, I am going to scream,” Peter interrupts loudly. 

He clearly is not anything of the sort. If he were, there wouldn’t be a devil with Tony Stark’s face behind him right now.

“Fine,” Wanda grits out. “But it could have. If we had done it correctly.”

“Which you didn’t,” Strange says.

“Obviously,” Wanda snaps right back at him.

“How is it supposed to work?” Laura asks, calmly “Ideally. Maybe that might help us figure out how to fix it.” 

She’s trying so hard to be the collected one, Peter thinks. To play mother to them all. He doesn’t envy her the task. 

Wanda and Strange stare at each other, the air crackling dangerously around Wanda, the corner of Strange’s eye twitching.

Finally, Strange throws up his hands angrily, and breaks the standoff. He flings himself into a chair and drums his fingers on the table.

“You know, of course, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.”

Clint, leaning on Laura’s chair, makes a face of confusion.

“Let’s just say we didn’t,” he suggests.

Strange sighs. 

“Alright,” he says, beleaguered. “Orpheus and Eurydice were Greek lovers, according to the legend. He was the son of a goddess and a mortal, she was beauty personified, et cetera, et cetera. When Eurydice died, Orpheus was heartbroken. He traveled down into the underworld to beg Hades for her return. Now, for whatever reason, Hades decided to grant Orpheus a boon. He told the young man that he could have his lost love back, whole and alive, if he could travel back into the human world with her walking behind him, and never once look back.” 

His words send a cool trickle of recognition down Peter’s spine, and he shivers with it. Don’t look back, a voice calls in his head. Not his own voice. Someone else’s.

“Orpheus was foolish, and prideful, and he thought the task would be easy,” Strange continues. “But as he walked the path back to the living world, he began to doubt that Eurydice was really behind him. He heard other footsteps moving with his, but they stopped whenever his stopped. He thought it must be a trick that Hades was playing, and just as he was about to reach the boundaries of the underworld, he looked back over his shoulder to make sure and saw his dead love there, right behind him.”

“And they lived happily ever after?” Clint suggests.

“And at that moment, Eurydice was sucked back down into the underworld and Orpheus’ soul was devoured for his lack of faith and his betrayal of his promise,” Strange replies. “And that is what has happened every time anyone has tried to use the Orpheus curse to bring someone back from death. They always fail. They cannot help but look behind them. From fear, or doubt or pride. It’s human nature.” 

Peter hadn’t. But it hadn’t been his own doing. His guts churn. It wasn’t his spidey sense. He knows what that feels like. What then? What could it have been that saved him? And beyond that, what did the creature do to him in the woods 

“I-it …” his voice goes shaky, but he musters steadiness again and seeks Strange’s attention. “It drank my blood. In the woods. From here.”

He holds out his jaggedly stitched hand, remembering the rough caress of a tongue, the stinging, sucking caress.

“Why did it do that?” 

“Blood magic,” Strange reminds him, sharply. “It’s why it won’t heal, too. It’s your life force binding the creature here. Your blood is sustaining it. Fool.”

“So what?” Peter asks. “I’m just stuck with this thing until I slip up one day and it eats my soul? Or until I don’t have any blood left to feed it?” 

“Theoretically?” Strange says. “We would need a liminal space. So we can conjure a doorway between the dimensions and bring your creature fully into our plane. It’s a challenge, though. The only such place I know of is in the mountains of Tibet, at a very ancient monastery. It’s a long journey even if they grant us access, and I don’t feel quite comfortable transporting this thing through a portal.”

“If it’s just a liminal space you need,” Laura says. “There’s one right up the mountain. The stone circle.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Strange turns to her, raising an eyebrow. 

“It’s been there for centuries,” she says with a little shrug. “It’s the whole reason my family settled here. It’s a stone circle. These big boulders. We still use it for solstice ceremonies. Plus, it helps charge the wards.” 

“Wards?” Kate asks. She still looks groggy and confused by all of the proceedings.

“Katie, you don’t think I’d just trust SHIELD to protect the family, do you? I mean, they were infiltrated by wannabe Nazis. I have very good wards set up.”

In response, Kate buries her nose in her coffee cup and mutter to herself. To Peter it sounds like “Fucking magic.”

“Anyway,” Laura says. “If you need to create a doorway between dimensions, the stone circle is a good place for it.” 

Strange gives a sharp nod. 

“Then there’s just the matter of the incantation,” he says. “To create the door. And I’m afraid it’s a tricky one. It really will require a coven.” 

“I can call Aunt Theo,” Laura offers. “See if I can get her and a few of the cousins to come back. Not sure how amenable they’ll be, though. I can see now why she felt like leaving in a hurry. Must have sensed this thing. Whatever it is.”

“Good,” Strange says. “It’s a plan, at least.”

“Do we really have to wait around?” Clint asks. “Doesn’t really seem like something we want to wait on.” 

“I know, but we need backup, honey,” Laura says, reaching for his hand. 

“But isn’t it just three witches to make a coven?” he asks. “Seems like we’ve got that here.” 

“Oh no.”

Kate pushes her chair back from the table.

“I see that look on your face, Clint, but I do not mess around with the occult. It’s a personal philosophy. I’m not casting any spells, or summoning any demons.”

“Calm down, Katie-Kate,” Clint says. “I wasn’t talking about you. You’re not exactly spiritually sensitive. But, uh, there’s not like a gender requirement, right?” 

He shoots a look at Strange, who shakes his head. 

“I mean, then we’ve got three witches,” Clint points a finger gun first at Laura, then at Wanda, and lastly at Strange. “That’s all we need.”

Strange grimaces, but nods.

“It’s a bit makeshift, but it should work,” he says. “I’ll need some time to prepare everything …”

“Wait,” Peter cuts him off. “Just … Wait.” 

He’s been caught between following the conversation going on in front of him and listening to the creature behind him and its increasingly frantic scrabbling. He can sense how it wants to be closer to him. How hungry it is. 

And even through his distraction, he thinks there’s something about this conversation that’s just wrong. 

Peter thinks back to Theodora reading his cards. He feels in his pocket for the two cards – one stolen, one given. The Hanged Man and the Fool. Surely there’s a clue there. She had said that the Hanged Man was his endgame. That it represents sacrifice. And maybe she was onto something after all.

He pushes himself to his feet, walks toward the table. As soon as he does, he feels the thing at his back, hot breath right there on the nape of his neck. Peter does his best to ignore it, though it makes him tremble. None of the rest of them can see it. He knows that now. It’s only Peter who can sense it at all.

“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe it isn’t the best idea isn’t to bring some demon we don’t know anything about into the real world. I mean, that seems like a really bad idea, actually.” 

“And what do you suggest instead, Mr. Parker?” Strange asks. 

Peter braces himself and tries to speak as forcefully as possible.

“This is my fault,” he says. “I’m the one who thought it was cool to perform some weird blood ritual while wasted. I’m the one who was desperate enough to try and raise the dead. If I’m what it wants, maybe I should just … Let it have me.”

The whole room goes eerily quiet. Five sets of eyes stare at him.

“Oh fuck this.”

It’s Kate who breaks the heavy silence. She’s got her arms crossed, glaring daggers at him.

“Parker, you self-sacrificing idiot, that isn’t how we do things. Honestly.”

“I’m just saying maybe …”

“And I’m saying no,” she cuts him off. “Look, we’ve faced the forces of evil a hundred times over, so what’s one more? We’re gonna bring this fucker fully into our dimension, and then I’m gonna put an arrow through its head.”

Peter lets out a long, low exhalation. 

“And what if that doesn’t work?” he asks.

“Then I’ll shoot it again. Are you saying you don’t think I can take on one measly demon spawn?” 

“That’s not what I …”

“Five Avengers and an actual witch, Parker. You’re really saying you don’t think we can beat tall, dark and creepy?”

“No?” Peter says, uncertainly.

“You’re damn straight.”

Kate extends her death glare around the table, and in an instant the air is full of chatter. Ideas for destroying the thing are tossed around, one cutting off another. Kate gives him a tiny smile and then sits back down to talk strategy with the rest of the group.

Peter remembers being out in the woods, so alone and so empty in the darkness. And it’s the exact opposite of this here now. The first rays of the sun are beginning to peak over the horizon, and his friends are here thinking of ways to protect him. The room is warm and bright. Peter feels the thing behind him take a step back, and then another.

Peter returns Kate’s smile, then steps forward, pulls a chair out and sits down at the table with the rest of the group.

Laura comes around and sets a cup of hot chocolate in front of Peter, squeezing his shoulder with a warm hand.

“Nothing magical this time,” she whispers into his ear as she passes. “Unless you count chocolate.”

*

When the sun is properly risen, Laura suggests that Peter take a nap while they finalize plans. He and Kate walk back to the barn where Peter settles into bed with Jeff laying out beside the bed within Peter’s reach. Kate’s outside in the common area, feet up on the coffee table and arrow knocked in her bow.

“Keeping watch,” she’d said, even though he’d insisted that she didn’t need to. The threat isn’t anything she can fight. Not yet.

He can still sense the thing, a little. Ragged breath and ominous intent. But it’s less frightening than it was with the sunlight streaming in from the window, a friend and ally right outside his door, and a giant pig snorting in its sleep beside him.

The mixture of those small comforts, and his deep exhaustion help Peter slip quickly into sleep.

Peter’s in his bed back at May’s place. The metal slats of the bunk bed above his head are a familiar and comforting sight, as are the posters lining his walls – Iron Man, the Periodic Table, The Ramones – and his ancient Apple 1 computer whirring away in the corner.

Outside his window, car horns honk, and Mrs. Pikitis yells something about hoodlums out into the night. All combined together, it’s a perfect distillation of his childhood, and it makes his muscles relax and allows him to sink down into the mattress, nestling deep. May’s on the other side of his closed door, sleeping herself, or guiltily marathoning the Real Housewives, or anxiously cleaning the deep freeze through a bout of insomnia. He’s home.  

It even smells like home, a scent he didn’t know to recognize until he moved away and it was suddenly scarce. Cheap laundry detergent, the patchouli incense May insists on burning, cinnamon and cardamom and chili drifting up from where the Laghari’s have been cooking dinner in the apartment below.  

Peter’s relaxation is nearly complete when he hears the metal of the bunk bed creak above him and sees two legs dangle over the side. Well-tailored black dress slacks matched with designer red sneakers. Peter lets out a breath that transforms half-way out of his mouth into a laugh.

Then Tony Stark leans his head down from the top bunk, grinning mischievously.

“I would like to go on record as being very, very supportive of your change of venue, kid,” he says, shuffling off the edge and landing on his feet in front of Peter.

Peter grins right back, biting down on his bottom lip to keep it from stretching painfully wide across his face.

“I’m so glad you approve,” he says.

Tony stuffs his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels.  

“You changed some things around since I was here last,” he comments. “Bunk beds. Nice touch.”

“Ned needed somewhere to sleep when he came over.”

“I’ve never been much of a top bunk kind of guy though,” Tony says. “Bottom is cozier.”  

He raises an eyebrow at Peter, and Peter scoots back toward the wall, making room for Tony to crawl in beside him, pulling the blanket back so the other man can huddle in close.

Peter’s breath catches a little when they’re finally chest to chest and eye to eye, sharing a pillow. It doesn’t matter how many dreams like this he has, it’s always thrilling when they get this close. The air goes heavy between them, and it’s teasing and tantalizing in turns.  

Tony reaches out a hand to push an errant curl out of Peter’s eyes, and then lets his fingers trail down his face.

“I can’t tell if it’s really wrong or just wrong enough to debauch you in your childhood bed,” he whispers into the scant space between them.

“Do I get a vote?” Peter asks. “Because I have strong opinions on this topic.”  

He moves forward, closing two-thirds of the distance between them, but waiting on Tony to come the last little bit.

“Would we do this for real, do you think?” the other man says, instead of moving. “Like, if I came over for Thanksgiving dinner. Do you think we’d wind up in here christening this bed?”

It’s … More introspective than this usually goes, but Peter plays along. It’s a nice thought. He hums thoughtfully.

“If you came for Thanksgiving,” he says. “As my guy? May would make tofurkey and Brussels sprouts, and you’d have to pretend to enjoy them just to try and get on her good side.”

“Shit,” Tony says, grimacing. “I’d have to hide an emergency pie somewhere just to make it though.”

The thought makes Peter break out into a giggle.

“But afterwards,” he continues once he’s conquered his laughter. “I’d make an excuse to drag you into my room. Show you my posters or my academic decathlon trophies or something.”  

“You do have excellent taste in art,” Tony says, eyes flickering to the Iron Man poster above Peter’s desk.

Peter feels his cheeks go hot at the reminder of what exactly had been going through his 14-year-old brain when he picked that out. He’s sure he’s tomato red.

“Jesus, you’re cute when you blush,” Tony says, and then he does, finally, move in those last few inches to bring their lips together in the lightest brush.

Peter sinks into it, offering his lips up fully to be kissed, impossibly pleased when Tony takes advantage of this, delving into his mouth and rolling them so that his body brackets Peter’s. The weight of him is perfect, holding Peter secure but never making him feel trapped.  

It’s an almost flawless harmony of a kiss. The feeling of it sings through Peter’s veins. And the only discordant note is that, when he licks his way into Tony’s mouth, the taste of him is sharp with the tang of old pennies. Something about that wriggles deep into Peter’s mind. But he’s too focused on the feeling of the warm line of Tony’s body against his to figure out why it tickles and insinuates itself deep.

Time passes in the way it does in dreams. So hazily that it might be a few minutes or a few hours later that Tony pulls back, placing a final peck to the bow of Peter’s lips, the corner of his mouth.  

He braces his arms on either side of Peter’s head, muscles tensing and veins standing out in stark relief, and takes a moment just to let his eyes sweep over Peter.  

It’s only with the removal of the all-consuming distraction of Tony’s lips that he’s able to think at all about what they talked about in his last dream. It had seemed strangely unimportant just a moment ago. But now it springs to the front of Peter’s mind.

“Tony,” he says, gripping at the man’s waist and looking up into those dark, lust-blown eyes. “We figured it out. The curse, and the monster. And I remembered what you said. About not looking back. You saved me.”

A soft, sad smile lights across Tony’s face for an instant before fading. He reaches out to run a thumb along Peter’s cheekbone.

“I knew you would get it,” he says. “You’re so fucking smart, kid. You’re worth ten of me.”

Peter shakes his head. He’s going to protest that, but Tony silences him with another long kiss. When he pulls back, he’s got a near-pained grimace on his face.

“This is all going to end once we break the curse, isn’t it?” Peter asks, softly. “These dreams are different. They’re connected, aren’t they?”

“Like I said,” Tony rasps, swallowing thickly, Adam’s apple bobbing. “So fucking smart.”

Wildly, Peter thinks that it’s almost been worth it. All the terror, all the threat. To have Tony here like this, open and affectionate and all his. He feels tears prick his eyes.

“No, sweetheart,” Tony says, rolling them so that their bodies are side by side once more and pulling Peter into his chest. “Please don’t cry. You’ll break an old man’s heart.”  

Peter laughs wetly, but his heart isn’t in it. He’s leaking onto Tony’s dress shirt. He pulls back just enough so he can look into the man’s eyes.  

“I …” he starts and then stops. “If this is the last time. You knew, didn’t you? How I felt? At the end? Sometimes I think you had to. But other times I worry that maybe you didn’t. That I let you go without you ever knowing that I …”

A part of Peter wants to say it. But it feels like cheating, now. Like a way to make himself feel better when he doesn’t deserve that.

But Tony’s smiling down at him, now. Beaming.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Pete,” he says. “But you are really, really bad at keeping secrets. I think maybe I knew before you did.”

He pauses, reaches down to take Peter’s injured hand in his and bring it to his lips, placing the lightest kiss there over the stitches before bringing it to his chest. In the dream, Tony’s heartbeat is strong and steady against Peter’s palm.

“The thing is,” Tony says. “The thing is, a part of me hates that you had to see what it was like at the end. It wasn’t a pretty sight. But, selfish as it is, I’m so glad that the last thing I saw was your face. Don’t think for a second that you didn’t make me feel loved.”

Peter fists his hand in Tony’s shirt, hoping it will help steady him, somehow.

“Good,” he manages to choke out. “That’s good.”

“What do you need, kid?” Tony says, bumping their foreheads together. “Tell me, please.”

“Just kiss me,” Peter says, closing his eyes and taking in the smell of him, the feel of him. One last time. “Kiss me until I have to wake up.”  

And that’s what Tony does, gentle, sucking kisses that say the things neither of them can manage until Peter’s brain goes fuzzy and unfocused.

He fights it as long as he can, but the darkness takes him in between one kiss and the next.

Chapter Text

What hills, what hills are those, my love
That are so bright and free
Those are the hill of Heaven, my love
But not for you and me.

What hills, what hills, are those, my love
That are so dark and low
Those are the hills of Hell, my love
Where you and I must go.

-The House Carpenter, Old English Ballad

Five: Demon/Lover

Peter wakes to a warm line of heat against his back, another body curled protectively around his. He feels, unaccountably, on the verge of tears, and for a moment he just relaxes into the comfort of an arm around his waist and a firm chest against his back.

The room is cast in a deep orange from the setting sun, shadows gathering in the corners like dust. He’s slept late, much longer than he intended. 

Hazily, he thinks maybe Kate got tired and decided to crawl into bed with him instead of keeping watch from outside. Peter shifts a little because his foot is falling asleep, and only in the adjustment notices that his left arm has been pulled behind him at an odd angle, across his chest.

The entire world is like a hidden image picture. One minute, he’s blinking awake to an uncertain mass of black and white squiggles, and the next everything shifts into horrifying clarity.

The chest against his back is hard metal, armor. The hand that circles his wrist is rough and bony. There are lips against his palm, and a tongue tenderly prodding at the place where there used to be stitches.

Peter whimpers to himself when he realizes what’s happening, and his companion reaches the ashen hand not wrapped around his wrist up to brush a few stray hairs off of Peter’s forehead. 

“Shhhhhhhhhh.”

Its voice is a hollow rattle in its chest, like a snake about to strike.

“Shhhhhhhhh,” it says again, skeletal fingers running through Peter’s hair.

Peter opens his mouth to scream, to call for help. Kate is just in the next room.

When he opens his mouth, though, his voice is gone. The creature behind him reapplies itself to his palm, and Peter’s nostrils are filled with the coppery tang of blood. It’s so overwhelming he can almost taste it, like old pennies. It lingers on his tongue and sparks something in him, something familiar. 

He could fight it, he thinks, if only he could turn around and face it head-on. The temptation whispers through his veins. The scariest things are the ones you can’t see. The ones that live in your imagination and fester there. Peter is strong. He’s not a coward. 

His brain is moving slow like molasses. His muscles feel like wet string as the tongue prods into his wound, and he wonders just how long the creature has been at this, just how much blood he’s lost. He wants to turn, to look in its milky eyes and find out why this is happening to him. What it wants. He’s certain the answers are there. But when he tries to make his body turn there’s that voice again, inside his head and yet not of it, screaming at him not to look back. He can’t look back.

Peter’s breath is coming fast and panicked. He’s hyperventilating, still unable to make his voice work. He fumbles for his phone on the nightstand, knocking it to the ground instead with his scrabbling, uncoordinated movements. 

At the sound of the thing crashing to the ground, Jeff rouses and squeals as though he’s the one under attack. Peter hears something thump in the next room over. The creature senses the disturbance and pulls Peter in closer. It grips his hip, and the hand wrapped around his wrist turns vice-like. It sucks at the wound, digging teeth into the meat of Peter’s palm. That jolt of unexpected pain finally pries a cry from Peter.

As though on cue, Kate surges through the door so forcefully that it hits the wall with a percussive BANG! Her hair is sticking up in a million directions, one side of her face is creased where she fell asleep against a cushion, but her eyes are sharp as they survey the room, and the arrow in her bow never wavers. 

“Whassit?” she asks with a sleep-addled voice, then stifles a yawn into her elbow.

The tongue retracts, the mouth retreats and Peter is released in one quick movement. No longer pulled taut, he sags into the bed and lets out a wet, tearful moan. The solid line of the creature is gone from his back. And while he’s certain it’s still somewhere nearby, it’s far enough away that it’s just a tingle at the base of his neck, not even an imminent danger in the language of his fucking Peter tingle. 

Peter looks up at Kate with tears clinging to his eyelashes. Her expression is stunned. 

“Thanks,” he croaks. “My hero.”

“Shit, Parker,” she says, voice quivering. “Shit. That thing had a hold on you. Invisible something. I saw it let go.”

She shakes her head vigorously, as though to shake the image away.

“This is some exorcist-level shit, and I do not want any part of it.”

Peter squeezes his eyes closed and his body into a ball, trying to stave off the way he’s trembling now. 

“It’s gone now,” he says. “For the moment. Thanks for that.”

“Don’t mention it,” Kate says, crouching down to run a hand down Jeff’s back.

“Who’s a good pig?” she whispers to him, scratching behind his ears. “You are. Yes, you are.”

“That is some pig,” Peter agrees, voice still a little croaky, but growing firmer.

“Parker, you’re bleeding everywhere,” Kate says, looking over at him. 

When Peter looks down at his hand, he sees that the stitches have split open, a rather gruesome busted seam. The bed looks like something out of a murder scene. He’s going to need to buy Laura and Clint so many new sheets.

“Fuck,” he says.

“I could patch you up,” Kate offers, hesitantly. “But I’ve been told my bedside manner is somewhat lacking. I could also help you up the hill to Laura? She’s a million times better at this stuff than I am.”

Slowly, Peter pushes himself up to sitting, groaning at the effort. He nods at the suggestion.

“Yeah,” he says. “Let’s go.”

*

Laura holds a little jar of balm up to Peter, but doesn’t apply it right away.

“It’s, um …” he starts to ask.

“Got a little kick?” she suggests. “Yes it does, but it’ll help with the pain. And maybe the bleeding. I really don’t like how much blood you’re losing.”

“Not really a fan myself,” Peter says, but he nods his acceptance of her latest magic potion.

They’re at the kitchen table, the last rays of the sun turning the clouds a pale purple. Inside, there’s a fire in the fireplace, and every light switch is turned on in deference to Peter. He could have told them that it doesn’t matter if its dark or light, but it’s a kind gesture.

Laura rubs a rosemary-scented ointment into his palm, around the edges of the wound, while Peter scarfs down a portion of chicken and dumplings. Laura’s chicken soup probably really does have curative properties, so he doesn’t feel so bad about the happy noises he makes while he eats. 

“So it was in bed with you?” she asks, softly, as she selects a needle from a kit to her left.

Peter nods.

“Drinking,” he says with a grimace.

“And cuddling,” Laura adds. 

Peter remembers the arm at his waist, the fingers in his hair, the brush of a kiss … But no, no that came before, didn’t it? The last was from a dream that he can’t quite see the shape of, no matter how he squints.

“I guess you could call it cuddling,” he admits. “It always feels terrifying. My senses go on high alert, but it’s always sort of …”

“What?” Laura prompts.

Her eyes are on threading her needle, not him, but it’s the sort of studied lack of attention that makes him think she’s getting at something. It reminds him of the way she interrogates her children when she catches one of them in a lie. But Peter isn’t lying. 

“I guess it’s sort of gentle when it touches me,” he says, brows knitting. “But there’s so much menace rolling off this thing, Laura. I don’t know. Maybe it just likes playing with its food.”

“Hmm,” Laura says, taking up his hand again.

“Don’t do that.” 

Dr. Strange barges in, cloak whipping in invisible wind.

Laura looks up at him skeptically.

“And don’t give me that look, woman,” he huffs. “You know as well as I that the boy needs to leave a trail of blood for his little friend to follow.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter says, a little horrified. “Trail of blood?”

“Mr. Parker,” Strange sighs. “Of the two of us, one of us has decided to fuck around with ancient blood magic, and the other is just trying to clean up a rather unfortunate mess. So I’ll thank you not to look at me like I’m some kind of dark sorcerer. You want to fix this, it’s going to require a little more bleeding.”

“Right, sorry,” Peter mutters, eyes dropping from Strange, and cheeks heating a little. The man might be a dick, but he’s not actually wrong this time. 

“Just wrap it for now,” Strange instructs Laura. “We’re very nearly ready.” 

He stalks out the room, and Laura makes a disapproving sound, reaching for the gauze. 

“How that man was ever a doctor …” she mutters to herself.

So Laura wraps Peter’s hand while he finishes his dinner and thinks to himself. There’s a battle ahead, and he’s not even sure what he’s fighting. So before it starts there really is something he thinks he ought to know.

“Hey, Laura,” he asks as she’s tying off his bandage. “Can I ask you something.” 

“Of course Pete,” she says, leaning in, fingers skimming his forehead as though what ails him might still be something commonplace – a fever, a cold. “You can ask me anything.” 

“Those cards your great aunt left me,” he says, digging into his pocket for the cards.

It’s strange, probably, that he’s been carrying them around with him, pressed face to face together like praying hands. But they still feel significant in some way, if only he could suss out their meaning.

Peter unfolds the cards from one another, lays them on the table and nudges them in Laura’s direction.

“Be honest, will ya?” he says. “Does anything about those two look … Familiar to you?”

He’s worried that the resemblances he’s seen in the cards are only in his head. If it is, he’s not sure what that means for his sanity.

Laura leans in for a better look at the cards, fingers skimming them delicately.

There’s a sharp inhale of breath, and then she’s staring at Peter.

“How long have these looked like this?” she asks.

“You see it too, then?” he asks, hopefully. “I mean, this one definitely looks like Mr. Stark, right?”

He holds the Hanged Man card up to her, and she nods. 

“And this one is you,” she says, jabbing at the Fool. “How did I not see it before?”

“I mean, maybe it’s just power of suggestion …” 

“No, Pete, listen. Aunt Theo’s read the cards for me a hundred times before, and they’ve never looked like this.”

She turns the cards over on the table to check the backs, and then rights them again.

“This is definitely her set, but this isn’t what these cards usually look like. I mean, for starters, the Hanged Man is usually blond.” 

“So, that’s another weird thing, then.” 

“What did she say to you,” Laura asks with a far-off voice. “When she laid down these cards. Anything specific?”

“Not really,” Peter hedges. “I mean, she said the Fool was me. It was the first card. And the Hanged Man was the last. She said …”

He concentrates, trying to remember the fortune teller’s words. 

“She said that this card was the endgame. That my present path, unchanged, would lead me to the Hanged Man. You think it’s just because this thing, whatever it is, has Mr. Stark’s face?”

Laura’s face screws up in concentration and then, as Peter watches, it softens. When she looks back up at him, it’s with the faintest hint of a smile at the corner of her lips. 

“What?” Peter asks. “You think you know what it means?” 

“I think I might have an inkling,” Laura allows. 

“Well?” 

“I can’t tell you yet,” she says. “I’m sorry Pete, I’m just not sure. And it’s not a thing to risk.”

“But …”

“I’m sorry,” she says, clasping his forearm warmly. “But you really need to trust your instincts on this one Pete. I think you’ll know, in the end. If anyone does.” 

“Jesus, why does everything have to be a riddle?”

Laura just gives him a fond look, and picks up his bowl to take it to the sink.

Despite her dissembling, though, something warms in Peter’s chest. He thinks about the taste of copper on his tongue, and Tony’s face looking out at him from a tarot card, and waking up from a bittersweet dream. 

Something glows at the edge of Peter’s mind. An answer. A hope. But he stubs it out like a smoldering cigarette before it burns his fingers. Don’t be stupid, Parker, he tells himself. You know what this is, and it doesn’t help to dream.

*

They gather at midnight, because of course they do. A part of Peter wants to giggle at the cliché of it all. Gray wisps of clouds are obscuring the waning moon, and the six of them convene at the picnic table in the back yard, bundled in coats and scarves against the chill night air. Clint and Kate are quick to wave a goodbye before heading along the rocky path up the hill to where the standing stones sit. They’ll be the first guard, ready to attack when the fucking thing at Peter’s back decides to show its true face. The coven stays behind. 

Wanda takes his right hand in her mittened left one and gives it a squeeze. Laura is at his other side, hand on his shoulder. 

“You ready for this, Pete?” she asks, mouth tilting up in a reassuring smile. 

“As I’ll ever be,” Peter says on a sigh.

“So,” Strange says, clapping his hands together decisively, and directing them to the trailhead. “Here’s how this will go. Your path to the standing stones is lit by fire. The path itself is symbolic. When you cross onto the trail, it will feel like death. At least that’s what the texts say. Though they are conveniently unspecific as to what exactly that means.”

“Ok,” Peter says. “Sure.”

It’s not as though he hasn’t been dead before. Really, it could be worse.

Strange raises his eyebrows, but continues on with his spiel.

“You must follow the path precisely,” he says. “No deviation. And leave a trail for your, um, companion to follow.” 

“Trail of blood,” Peter nods. “Gotcha.”

“Right,” Strange says. “On the journey, I cannot stress enough the importance of not looking behind you.” 

“Yeah, Dr. Strange,” Peter says. “We covered that. Believe me when I say that I am definitely not down for any soul devouring.”

“Er … Good, then. You will only be safe once you enter the circle of the standing stones. Once that is done the creature should take on physical form. After that, we should at least be able to fight it. Though gods know what you and Ms. Maximoff have been able to conjure.”

Peter fingers the web shooters at his wrists, and for a second wishes he hadn’t left his suit behind back in the city. He’d feel better if he had a little more fire power. But he’ll have to make do. 

“Alright,” he says, firmly. “Let’s open a portal to hell. Whaddaya say, witches?”

Wanda stifles a giggle at his attempt at a joke, but then her face goes solemn as she conjures red flames in her hand and sets fire to the archway of twisted branches they’ve erected at the trailhead. Laura gently takes his injured hand and unwraps it, letting the gauze flutter to the ground.

She kisses Peter’s forehead, gives his good hand one last squeeze, and then steps back to join the other two.

There’s a chant in a language Peter can’t identify – sonorous and hypnotic in its rhythms – and then the red flare of Wanda’s magic stretching out into the forest. Peter takes a deep breath and steps through the burning archway – feeling the intense heat of the flames against his skin – and onto the trail.

The path winds up at a steep incline. It’s covered over with dead leaves and shadowed by old, twisted trees. He stands for a long moment just surveying, hands hanging loose at his side. Then he squeezes his left hand into a fist, lets the blood trickle down his fingers and onto the forest floor, and starts walking. 

The last time Peter died, it was an unmaking. He burnt to ash, molecule by molecule. This time around, he was prepared for the pain. But it doesn’t come. Instead, he’s just so cold. It isn’t the chill of an autumn night, or even the freeze of deep winter. This cold is different. It feels more like a gaping absence. It’s a cold borne of nothingness. The scientist in Peter wonders if its anything like what one would experience in the complete vacuum of space.

Regardless, it seeps deep into his bones, making his joints ache and his feet feel like lead. He moves forward, but he moves slowly. And behind the soft tread of his own footsteps, he can hear others. Step, drag. Step, drag. 

The monster follows him, as he knew it would. It had been keeping its distance while he was in the presence of friends, biding its time. Now it gains on him, coming closer and closer. It wants to hold him close. It wants to eat him up. Peter squeezes his fist again, feeling the liquid trickle down. Breadcrumbs, he thinks. He’s leaving breadcrumbs. Wouldn’t want it to lose its quarry, after all.

Strange said the path would be marked with fire, and sure enough at the next turning Peter sees a torch nestled in the ground. He lingers at it for a long moment, letting the flames warm him just a little. Enough to feel his fingers. Enough to feel something at least. 

He can’t stay too long, though. Those footsteps are coming closer and closer. Peter drags himself further up the path. It’s so dark and so cold. And even moving at a decent clip, he hears the creature close by now, hears it breathing. 

He comes to a spot where the path is intersected by a fallen, moss-covered log. He puts both hands down on the bark, intending to vault himself over. But before he can do so, a skeletal hand grips his elbow, jerking him to a stop. 

All of Peter’s breath leaves his body in a whoosh. Hot breath on his neck, rough fingers digging into his skin. A tug, another, pulling Peter back into the creature’s embrace.

He’s trembling and terrified. It wants to hold him close. It wants to eat him up. And it’s such a contrast from the cold, empty nothing of the forest that a part of Peter wants to turn and let it. Peter shivers, but he can’t tell if it’s from fear or want. The two emotions clash and muddle in his head until he can’t tell which is which.  

Those charred fingers interlace with his for a brief moment, pulling his hand up to graze a kiss across his knuckles with desiccated lips. Peter lets out a stuttering breath. He can’t think. He wants to look into the creature’s eyes and know its intentions. He closes his eyes and starts to turn his head. 

The creature lets out a rattling moan. It’s the sound of every ghoul and goblin that Peter ever imagined in his childhood. It jolts through him leaving him shockingly sober. There’s a nightmare at his back. It’s a nightmare. He runs.

Peter passes two more torches, feet pounding up the hill with the thing following in shambling steps. He races until he stumbles, feet catching on rock, and his knees hit the dirt.

When he looks up, he sees he’s in a clearing, surrounded by a circle of tall smooth stones. They’re deliberately arranged but worn down by age until their pattern can just barely be discerned. The stone circle. He made it.

The horrible freezing emptiness is receding, replaced by the warm flush of his sprint up the hill. The relief of blood pumping through his veins, of heat and exertion is only temporary. He hears the monster’s footstep echo against the stone barriers, making it sound like an army of dark creatures at his back. 

Breathing heavily, Peter stands. His fingers hover over the triggers of his web shooters, his spidey sense tingles on high alert. If they did it right, this can all end now. He just has to face the monster. Just has to turn and fight. 

Eyes trained on his dusty sneakers, Peter turns on a heel. He clenches his jaw. He braces. He raises his head.

An inhuman howl echoes between the stones, and it takes Peter a long moment to realize that it’s coming from him. It feels like it’s being pulled directly from his chest. He brings a trembling hand to his mouth to cut himself off as the thing that’s been haunting him takes a step forward into wavering moonlight. 

Warm brown eyes, wicked mouth, whole and strong and standing there in the middle of holy ground wearing his worn out Black Sabbath t-shirt and jeans is Tony Fucking Stark.

“You did it, kid,” he says with a voice like sun-warmed sand, crooked smile creeping across his face. “Passed every ridiculous test. I knew you could.”

Peter’s heart seizes. Like a punch in the gut, the dreams come flooding back to him. Tony holding him close in a cave, looming over him in his own childhood bed, kissing Peter and absolving him.

Impossible. It’s impossible. But he’s there, just like Peter remembers him, a few feet away. Three steps would bring them chest to chest, face to face. Tony makes to bridge the gap between them. He steps forward, but Peter holds a hand out to him, web shooters at the ready.

“Stop,” he says, fighting to speak with authority. “Just stop, Mr. Stark.” 

“Pete?” Tony asks, his tone all confusion. “Why …”

The thing is, it is impossible. So as much as Peter wants to believe, the doubt creeps in. If the creature following him, haunting him, threatening him is standing before him now, and so is Tony, then which face is true? How can he know?

It has been three years since he’s seen Tony Stark alive and well. Three years of longing and mourning have cast a veil over everything. And he can’t quite make up his mind if that wicked glint he sees in Tony’s eyes now was always there when he looked at Peter, or if it’s the result of something else. Something using Tony’s face. 

“Tell me something only you would know,” Peter begs.

Tony’s eyebrows creep together, he rubs at the sharp line of his beard.

“Please, Mr. Stark,” he says. “I need to be sure.”

“What the hell, Parker?”

Keeping his hand up and an eye still on Tony, Peter glances at Kate, approaching from his right. Clint, no doubt, is up a tree somewhere to provide air cover.

“Just give me a minute, Kate,” he shouts. “Hold your fire.” 

She glares at him, and she doesn’t lower her bow or let the string loosen, but she nods the affirmative.

Peter turns back to the man in front of him, who’s holding his hands up to Peter as though he’s trying to gentle a horse.

“Ok, kid,” he says. “Ok, let me think. Something only I would know?”

“That’s the idea,” Peter says. 

Think of something, he pleads in his head. Please think of something. 

He had braced himself for a monster. To be presented instead with something he wants so dearly and desperately is like finding out a wall is made of air. Peter feels like he’s falling and there’s nothing at all to cling to. What he’s asking for, really, is a lifeline.

He thinks back to Laura in the kitchen and her small, secret smile when she looked at his tarot cards. The Hanged Man is right in front of him. But Peter knows that cards can also be reversed. 

“Oh!” Tony snaps a finger at him to get Peter’s attention, as though it could be anywhere else. It’s exactly what he used to do to snap Peter out of a daze when he was lost in a project in the lab. “Alright, this is embarrassing, but no one else could possibly know, so …”

Peter nods, prompting him to continue.

“When I first gave you the suit,” Tony says. “I set up an alert so that Karen would inform me whenever your vitals spiked to certain levels. Heart rate, breathing, things like that. When your vitals spiked, I would look at the baby monitor to make sure everything was on the up and up. That you didn’t need me to help with a fight, yeah?”

The heat rises in Peter’s face, and his stomach swoops a little.

“But the first few times it was triggered, it wasn’t a tough fight,” Tony says. “It was because you were using the mask when you, um …”

And, yep. That’s where Peter was afraid this was going. Shit, he so doesn’t want to think about this.

“I guess the sensory dampening settings helped when you were a teenager with senses dialed to 11,” Tony says, skipping over the details. “Who am I to judge? But I was getting daily alerts about your, um, habits …” 

Peter is never going to live down the shame of this. Never, never ever.

“Impressive,” Tony says. “But that wasn’t exactly tenable for my own fucking sanity. So I made you a sense dep mask and told you it was to help you sleep on long quinjet flights. But I figure you got the idea, because I didn’t get anymore Peter is either dying or jacking it alerts from Karen after that.”

Peter lets out a little moan of pure embarrassment and rubs at his face with his good hand. 

“So what about it, kid?” Tony asks with a hopeful smile. “Am I me? Do I pass?”

Peter … hesitates. He sees Tony’s expression slump as he does. The thing is. The thing is, Peter knows that story. He finally pieced it all together during college with some help from Karen, and it was just as mortifying then as it is now. 

But because Peter knows the story, whoever stands in front of him now might too. He’s been in Peter’s head. The dreams are proof enough of that. Making him all soft and pliable while the monster at his back fed on him. 

He feels frozen in place as he realizes there’s absolutely no way to know for sure if the man in front of him is really Tony Stark or some demon from another dimension using his face because it’s the one most likely to break down all of Peter’s defenses.

In the end, it’s instinct that cracks the stand-off. Tony gives him a resigned little smile and says “When you’re ready. You’ll decide when your ready.” And then he takes a step back, away from Peter.

Peter’s hind-brain howls at that. He just got Tony back, and his entire being rejects the idea of him being even a millimeter farther away than he already is. It’s unacceptable. 

Peter releases an incoherent yell of protest and flings himself at Tony, barreling into the man at full speed and knocking the breath out of his body.

Strong arms purposefully cage themselves around Peter’s back, and Peter looks up into dark, dark eyes filled with hunger. He’s pulled forward forcefully until their lips meet.

Fire flows through Peter’s veins. He feels like he’s being devoured. The lips on his are bruising. The tongue that insinuates itself into his mouth is insistent, licking in as though it wants to taste every inch inside of him. A groan rumbles between them, and Peter can’t tell where it starts and ends.

When they break apart for breath, foreheads pressed together, all doubt is burned away. Peter traces the crow’s feet at the corner of Tony’s eyes with his thumb. He recognizes the want in there now. It’s the same he saw all those years ago in the lab together. The one they both tried to ignore.

“I love you,” he whispers, finally. The words he held back for so long, and then regretted for longer. They feel like dawn breaking over the edge of the world. “I love you.” 

Fingers comb tenderly through Peter’s hair, running along his jaw, down his neck as though starved for touch.

“I know,” Tony says with a mischievous grin and an evil glint in his eye. Then: “Fuck, I love you too, kid.” 

They stay wrapped in each others arms for what feels like a long, long time. Until Peter notices Tony shivering. It’s still dark and cold, and he has no coat. 

It’s only then they notice five pairs of shocked eyes watching them.

“Tony?” Clint asks, disbelievingly as he lowers his bow. 

“Legolas!” Tony replies, throwing his arms out wide in greeting. “I missed you too. Bring it in.” 

They’re rushed, pulled into a knot of people. Clint slaps Tony on the back, Laura runs a reassuring hand through Peter’s hair and whispers to him.

“I knew you’d figure it out.”

Strange mentions taking readings, Kate complains loudly about the weirdness of it all, and Wanda sidles up to Peter, shaking her head.

“How did we manage to do that fucking spell right?” she asks.

Peter grins at her.

“I don’t know, Wands,” he says. “It must have been Parker luck.” 

Through it all, Tony never lets go of Peter’s hand. The wound is starting to knit back together, finally, and the bleeding has mostly stopped when he brings Peter’s knuckles up to his lips and places a kiss there. 

The motion sends a shiver down Peter’s spine. They’re on the ridge of the hill, looking down into the hollow where the farm sits. The sun hasn’t breached the horizon yet, but the sky is growing lighter, the stars fading slowly from view. They linger behind together, letting the rest of the group troop down to their beds. It has, after all, been a very long night.

“It really was you,” Peter says, looking up into Tony’s face. He’s hungry for the sight of it. Can hardly believe that he gets to see it again, breathing, shifting in thought. “The whole time it was you.” 

Tony looks pained at that.

“I didn’t pick the mask,” he says, voice a low rumble pitched for only Peter’s ears. “It was supposed to be a test. That you could face the fear for this huge thing you were asking of the universe.” 

“Fucking bureaucracy,” Peter says, and Tony snorts.

“I’m sorry I scared you, sweetheart,” he says, running a callused hand along Peter’s jaw. “I just wanted to stay close. You were so warm, and so alive. I never wanted to leave you.” 

Me neither, Peter thinks. Ever. But he doesn’t have to say it, because Tony already knows. Peter trusts, this time, that he knows.

Chapter Text

Slowly we are learning,

We at least know this much,

That we have to unlearn

Much that we were taught,

And are growing chary

Of emphatic dogmas;

Love like Matter is much

Odder than we thought.

- Heavy Date, W.H. Auden

Six: Epilogue

The apartment smells like vinegar and burnt tofu and the weird, starchy aroma of lima beans. And it sounds like a full-on construction site.

May has been in the kitchen for the past half hour “Bringing out dessert” but in reality just banging things around to release some of her frustration. She’s got a giant cast iron pan passed down from her grandmother that she’s currently deploying with extreme vigor and effectiveness.

So maybe Peter’s idea to bring Tony home for Thanksgiving had been less a less than stellar one. The fact that his boyfriend has recently been resurrected has kept May’s aggression toward Tony passive so far. Today it has consisted of pointed glares, forcing Tony to eat ham-flavored Jello that she swears is French and called an aspic, and the currently-ongoing banging.

Having Happy around has helped to break the tension a little, but Peter will be shocked if her current passive stance on their relationship lasts to Christmas. It’s not as though she’s the only one to cast doubt upon their relationship.

The other members of the team have been cautiously supportive at least. Hope couldn’t care less as long as they both show up for training and Dr. Strange is mostly just interested in running tests that Tony’s so far managed to avoid.

Kate teases him mercilessly for wanting a sugar daddy, Wanda gives him an uncharacteristically soft expression every time she sees them together, and even Clint and Laura have been cool about things. Although Peter did accidentally walk in on Laura giving Tony a shovel talk that ended with threatening to put him in the grave permanently if he fucked things up. So there’s that.

But May was never a fan of Tony Stark to begin with. She didn’t like when they were hanging out together in the lab, she definitely didn’t like it when she found out Tony had been helping him with his work as Spider-Man, and when Peter had sat her down to tell her that A. Tony was back from the dead and B. they were together, all of the color had drained from her face.

Peter thinks it’s mostly the age difference, but also the danger associated with Tony’s lifestyle, and the “Fuck You” attitude he brings to everything. It’s all part of what makes Peter love him, but he’s trying to be sympathetic to May’s point of view. It’s not as though she could really say “Over my dead body” when he told her.

He can’t manage too much care for what she thinks, though. Even with the glares, and the burnt food, and the banging. He’s too fucking happy.

It doesn’t mean he’s not looking for an escape hatch from the awkwardness of this Thanksgiving dinner, though. He just needs a quick break while May loudly finishes her pumpkin pie, maybe a swing around the block. Tony and Happy were in the living room watching football the last time he checked, leaving Peter with a window of opportunity.

He’s just opening his window, planning on slipping on his mask once he’s outside, when an arm wraps around his chest and a chin comes to rest on his shoulder.

“Not abandoning me now, are you spiderling?”

Tony’s chest is pressed against his back, and his voice rumbles through Peter’s body in a very distracting way.

“Just, um, needed a little break from the noise,” he says, leaning back to press them more fully together. A chilly breeze wafts through the window, bringing with it the smells of hundreds of other people’s Thanksgiving dinners – apples and turkey and sage.

Tony groans at his mention of May’s antics.

“What do you think the odds are that Aunt Hottie takes that frying pan to my head?” he asks.

“First of all, you’ve got to stop calling her that,” Peter says. “So gross. And I’d say she’s maybe 60-40 in favor of assault right now. But give her a couple months.”

“I will have my suit at the ready.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter says with a sigh. “I wish she were more … Supportive.”

“Hey, no, kid,” Tony says, stroking his fingers along Peter’s abdominals, voice losing the bravado he’s been holding to all day. “She’s entitled. She’s not even wrong. I know I shouldn’t … I don’t deserve this.”

“Don’t,” Peter says.

He cranes his neck, looking back to catch Tony’s gaze with his own. “I just got you back.”

Peter presses his mouth to Tony’s, warmth running through his body as the other man surrenders to the kiss despite his words. It’s been less than a month. This is all still so new, and Peter wants him all the time, like he’s empty without Tony touching him. A part of him is still terrified that this will be taken away somehow, that this is just a temporary reprieve.

He turns his body in Tony’s arms so he can lean more fully into the kiss.

“You know,” Tony says after tugging Peter’s bottom lip in between his teeth. “We never did get to christen your bed properly.”

The wicked glint in Tony’s eyes as he says it makes Peter’s stomach twist pleasantly. A grin spreads across his face, and Tony kisses the corner of his smile. Without any further hesitation, Peter pushes the other man backwards toward the bed.

It’s still bizarre to him that Tony remembers those dreams. In a way, they’ve been here before, and yet it’s completely novel. There’s none of the haziness of a dream, smoothing out the rough edges of reality.

This time, Peter notices the worn patches on the carpet in his room, the dust accumulating on all of his old textbooks, the mess of wires and gears on his desk from an unfinished project the last time he was back for a visit. All those details his sleeping mind failed to conjure. It’s a reminder that this is true, this is real.

“Hurry,” he says into the hollow of Tony’s neck. “She won’t sulk forever.”

Peter struggles quickly out of jeans and his sweater, ducking down onto the lower bunk and situating himself on his hands and knees. He lets out a shaky breath when Tony’s body covers his own, skin against skin.

Peter can feel the sunken place on Tony’s chest, where the arc reactor once sat, rubbing between his shoulder blades. He shudders at the thought of how many times they’ve come close to not being right here together, how easily they could not have this.

Then Tony brushes a thumb over his nipple and presses his hips up against Peter so he can feel the insistent hardness there, and Peter’s brain goes offline in favor of feeling.

“Want you so bad, kid,” Tony says, hot breath ruffling the short hairs on Peter’s neck. “All the time.”

Peter bows his head and arches his back, trying his best to breathe when Tony circles his entrance with a finger.

“You got anything here for me, Pete?” he says, with a soft huff of laughter.

Peter scrambles, desperately, for his old stash wedged behind one of the metal slats below the mattress, tossing the tube back to Tony hurriedly.

“Good boy,” Tony says, placing a kiss on Peter’s spine and then returning his now slippery fingers to their place.

There isn’t time to go slow, and they’re both a little too on edge, too desperate, to make the attempt. The prep is quick and cursory, both of them familiar now with what Peter’s body can take. Then Tony slides home in one smooth stroke, punching all the breath out of Peter’s body in one glorious movement.

He sets a steady, punishing pace, scraping his fingers down Peter’s torso and pressing his forehead against Peter’s back, licking up a line of sweat.

“J-Jesus, Tony,” Peter stutters between thrusts. “More. Give me more.”

He feels the other man smile against his skin, and it fans the flames inside him even higher.

“As you wish, kid,” Tony says.

The world tilts a little as Peter’s hauled upright, knees positioned on either side of Tony’s thighs, back pressed to his chest. The shift allows Tony to sink even deeper into him. Peter reaches up above his head to grip the metal slats of the top bunk to steady himself. Tony’s hands grip vice-like onto Peter’s hips, guiding him up and down, hitting that perfect spot mercilessly every time.

It’s not always like this between them, but sometimes, sometimes it seems like they’re both just so hungry for each other. It’s like they’re trying to beat back something cold and dark just with the fire burning between them. They know, both of them, what it is to live in a world without the other. Maybe that’s the shadow they’re fighting back against at times like this. When all of Peter’s nerves spark and fizzle and Tony holds him so tightly it’s like he’s trying to solder them together with just the heat of their bodies.

Normally, Peter finds it hard to reconcile the Tony he knows so well with the monster that stalked him for those few dark days. But at times like this, with his fingers pressing bruises into Peter’s hips, mouth moving hungrily across Peter’s shoulders, he begins to glimpse the connection between the two. So warm and so alive, he had said the night he came back. And Peter is more than willing to give him as much of his own warmth as he needs.

“Fuck, Pete, so good,” Tony huffs. “Let me in, sweetheart. C’mon.”

The only thing Peter can manage is a punched-out “Yes,” that’s more of a whine than anything else.

Gripping Peter’s chin between thumb and forefinger, Tony forcefully turns his face for a kiss that’s mostly his tongue overtaking Peter’s mouth. He’s invaded from every angle, and it’s perfect.

Tony uses one hand to tug his body down while he thrusts up, driving so deep that Peter can almost feel it in his teeth.

Peter can feel his control slipping, his hands on the bed slats squeeze, eliciting a metallic groaning. The bed is making disturbing noises even without Peter’s help, distinctly not designed for two grown men, especially as enthusiastically engaged as they are.

Then Tony’s hand moves from his hip to stroke along Peter’s length, and Peter loses the final finger-hold he had on his control. Sparks roll through his body in a wave. He feels himself spill over Tony’s callused hand, and he hears metal snapping in his own hands.

The world tilts again, the mattress sliding forward at an acute angle. The two of them tumble forward, legs and arms tangling, and Peter manages to catch the crashing top bunk just before it lands on top of them.

They end up face to face, with Tony on top of Peter. Wide-eyed, they stare at each other for a long moment.

It starts as just a twitch of Tony’s lips, and then they’re both giggling hysterically. Tony rests his forehead on Peter’s chest, body shaking with laughter. Peter wraps an arm around him as he pushes the top bunk away from them so that it’s perched at an angle on the edge of the bottom bunk posts.

“In all my years,” Tony says between jags of teary laughter. “I’ve never actually managed to break a bed.”

“It’s a first for us both, then,” Peter says, smiling into Tony’s hair.

The moment feels soft and warm compared to the intensity of just a few seconds before, and Peter feels the joy of it bubble up in him. He gets both now – dark and intense, and light and charming. He gets every angle of Tony now. No longer a solemn memory, or a ghost, or a symbol.

Their laughter is interrupted by the loud crack of his door swinging open and slamming against the wall. May is there in the doorway, Happy standing at a distance behind her. The pan in her hand slips from her fingers to the floor with a clang.

For a long moment, Peter’s brain stutters for an excuse, but he comes up blank. There’s just no way to play this. No mistaking what they were doing, or what happened as a result. Peter and Tony are both caught up in another round of helpless giggles, tears springing to Peter’s eyes and running warm down his cheeks.

May’s jaw dislodges from where she’s had it tightly clenched.

“What the f—“