IronDad/SpiderSon One-shots

Belongings

Third Person POV:
Word Count: 2,173
Spooktober 2022 Day Thirty-One: Stillness

As Tony opened the door to the apartment, he was hit with the same earthy scent he had smelled when he was here weeks prior. Just weeks ago, he was over there for dinner. He was asking May what kind of candle she burned ("It's called Autumn Nature Walk. I just found it the other week when I was out shopping the other day."). He went home and ordered five more for her, knowing that she was going to burn through the candle pretty quickly. He never got the chance to give them to her though.

It was his fault. That's what it felt like, at least. He knew that, really, it wasn't his fault. It was Thanos's fault. He was the one that had come to earth, ready to destroy it and half of its population. He was the one that had actually done it. But, Tony still felt at fault. He wasn't able to stop him. He wasn't able to save everyone. He wasn't able to save them. Two innocent souls. One who wasn't even eighteen. One who stepped up to take care of a kid that wasn't her own. Two souls lost because Tony wasn't able to stop him.

Everyone was still so unclear of what happened. The world was asking so many questions that no one had the answers for. "Where are the people that were 'snapped'?" "Can we get them back?" "Why would Thanos do this? What did we do to him?" "What are we supposed to do now?" "How do we move on from them?" It was question after question after question and no one was ready for them or to answer them. Tony banned watching the news after that.

Now that he had recovered from his little space trip, he decided it was time. He knew he wasn't going to be ready, but it was the least he could do. There wasn't even an idea of how to bring the people back. No one had any hopes of bringing them back, but it felt wrong to just let the Parker's stuff get thrown out or tossed away. It felt wrong not to keep the little that he had left of them.

Tony closed the door to the apartment. He looked around the place. Everything was so... quiet. It was so still and silent. There wasn't a Peter going on to his aunt about all the nerdy things he liked to talk about. There wasn't a movie playing in the living room. There was music coming from the stereo in the kitchen. There was nothing. The quietness was freaky, but what really freaked Tony out was the stillness of the place. May and Peter were everything but still. They were constantly moving. Constantly busy. There was never a time that they stopped fully. That's why the stillness was unsettling.

Still, Tony knew what he had to do. He had a group of movers coming in about two hours to help move the heavy stuff. That left him the smaller stuff to worry about. Rhodey was supposed to be coming in about a half an hour to help. He financially wanted to do this on his own, but he was still on lightweight duty. Plus, Rhodey was pretty insistent on coming. He knew that his best friend just wanted to be there for him. He could live with that.

Getting to work, he started with the things that were easy. He walked to the kitchen, starting to gather all of the kitchen supplies. For people that didn't cook very often, they sure did have a lot of cooking utensils. There were tons of spatulas and serving spoons. He didn't judge. He just packed it all away as carefully as he could. They didn't have much glass. They mostly had plastic ("It's because after Peter got bit, he was breaking glass plates left and right. He wasn't meaning to, but after I found out about him being Spider-Man, I got rid of most of our glass items. I know he felt bad, but he was also pretty grateful. He didn't have to worry about breaking a glass every time he wanted a cup of water."). It was easier to pack than glass was. He didn't have to worry about placing things down in a specific way. He could have tossed it all into the box and called it a day, but he didn't. He didn't because he cared.

It took about twenty minutes to fully pack the kitchen. Only three boxes, to which he wrote the word 'kitchen' on with a black sharpie. After that, he moved to the living room. He started packing away the movies, doing his best not to look at the titles and remember when Peter introduced them to him ("What do you mean you've never seen The Breakfast Club? No, F.R.I.D.A.Y., turn of Star Wars. I am not leaving until you watch this cinematic masterpiece."). He did his best to not study the little trinkets that decorated their living room ("Oh, I made that in art class. M.J. helped me make it. It might not look like a pumpkin, but that's what it is supposed to be.").