I'm Just Human

Chapter Fourteen

Tony mechanically moves through the motion. Left foot, right foot, left foot, grab the coffee pot, pour the coffee, check the fridge, read the news, drink the coffee, take a seat.

He can't remember the last time he slept. It's been a while. He knows Friday's been tracking it for Pepper when she realizes, but he couldn't really care less. All his dreams are filled with endless nightmares that he can't bear to endure any longer. He'd rather be a shell of the person he once was, too tired to think in a line instead of the constant circles it seems to work in.

Lately, his dreams have been less about the real things like Afghanistan and the wormhole, and more about the what ifs and the maybes. Like Peter getting hurt while out as Spider-Man before Tony can finish making the new suit. Or Peter finding that Tony's his biological father. Or May deciding he's not allowed to see Peter ever again.

Going drastically far in his avoidances and sleep-deprivation just to avoid nightmares about possibilities is something very Tony Stark and he doesn't really mind it. He's been doing it since his parents died so he's okay with doing it now too, he's had plenty of practice.

"-burning building," the news anchor is saying, gesturing to the video playing in the top corner of a red figure swooping into one of the windows and emerging a moment later with people holding onto him. "Spider-Man saved all fifty-eight people trapped in the building, along with dozens of pets. It was a miracle... He was a miracle and we owe our thanks to the masked vigilante."

Tony shuts the TV off, taking a deep breath to steady his suddenly racing heart. It's like when you've realized you've left the stove on or like the moment you realize you've tipped the chair back too far or when you miss a step on the stairs. Panic and panic and panic.

"Fri, does Pepper have any work for me to do today?"

"It is currently three fifty-seven am. Miss Potts is currently sleeping in her room on the seventy-eighth floor. Would you like me to wake her?"

Tony rolls his eyes, draining his coffee.

"No, don't wake her. I was just wondering if I have work to do." His socked feet slide on the tiles of the kitchen and he nearly falls, only barely catching himself on the counter to straighten himself.

"If I may," Friday buts in. "You have been up for ninety-seven and a half hours, Boss. It is recommended-"

Tony rolls his eyes again, ignoring the black spots that dance across his vision. "I don't care what's recommended, just tell me what I can be working on."

*

"Mister Stark?" A shy, tentative voice calls, waking him from his sleep. He probably passed around somewhere around hour one hundred and nine from his guess. "Are you sleeping on the floor?"

Tony lifts his head off the floor, blinking a few times to stop the world from spinning before focusing on the teenage boy standing in the doorway to his lab.

He's wearing a plaid button-up with a grey long sleeve over top that swallows his small body in the fabric. His hair is wavy and tousled like he tried to make it flatten, but it didn't end up working in the end. Tony kind of wishes he let it loose and curly like when he was a little kid. (Tony has to remind himself once again that Peter is fifteen. He's not five anymore.)

"What?" he says, feeling stupid and slow and unable to process why Peter is standing in his lab or why he's on the floor. He doesn't remember why he's on the floor nor has his body or brain caught up enough to get off the floor.

Peter, as though he's realized what's happening, takes a quick step backwards, off the threshold of the lab with widening eyes and rambled explanations falling from his mouth.