How Far We've Come

Prologue

A/N: Hello everyone!

This is my first Superfamily fic, so please, be gentle with me, but also feel free to offer advice or give me a heads up if the characters need to veer closer to canon. As expected, I am in COMPLETE denial of Endgame and Infinity War.

Stony is an established staple and Peter was adopted as a baby.

All content warnings will be placed in the tags but feel free to message me if you would like additional detail.

Enjoy!

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Prologue

It was five am at the tower and Tony and Steve couldn't sleep. Steve didn't sleep much anymore period, and Tony was a moonlighting insomniac, but tonight it was more than their owns demons that haunted them.

Tonight, their minds were firmly locked on to a new topic of concern: their fifteen-year-old son, Peter.

Steve ran a hand over his hair and sighed, taking a seat at the kitchen island while Tony cocked a hip against the countertop. "Tony, I'm worried about him."

"I know," Tony whispered back, a cup of coffee clasped tight in his hands. Steve wanted to say something about drinking coffee this late, or early if you looked at it that way, but now wasn't the time. Not with everything else on their plates.

Tony dragged a hand down his face. "What do you think it is? Do you think it's his anxiety again?"

Steve shrugged. "It could be. But he hasn't had a panic attack in months. Once we put Osborn away, the attacks stopped cold turkey." He pondered it a moment longer. "Besides, he doesn't seem anxious. He seems tired."

Tony took a long sip of his coffee and wished it had a little more kick to it. But he had promised Steve he would stop drinking. Peter deserved better than a drunk for a father and he wasn't going to have a repeat for the incident a few weeks back. "Do you think it might have to do with his birth parents?"

Tony and Steve adopted Peter when he was barely a toddler but the adoption agency had warned them that when Peter's parents had died, Peter had been in the house. All these years, there was no evidence that Peter remembered anything (he had been asleep and only woken up when the police searched the house) but that didn't mean bad memories couldn't return.

Both Tony and Steve felt they knew too much about bad memories returning.

Steve clasped his hands and dropped his chin against them. "I don't think so. He doesn't seem depressed. But it isn't his usual moodiness either. I can tell when he's feeling weird because he didn't sleep enough or because he's fighting with his friends. This isn't that."

"Maybe it's because of the recent mission," Tony murmured. "Clint got hit in the head right next to him. There was a lot of blood. Do you think he's struggling with hero stuff?"

"Maybe." Steve stood up and began to pace. "I just don't know, Tony. Something seems wrong. I can't put my finger on it. Something is just wrong."

"We'll figure it out, okay?" Tony set his coffee cup down and took Steve's hand in his own. "Right now, let's just go try for another hour of sleep. It's early and Pete won't be up for a few more hours at most."

Steve nodded and yawned as if on cue. "You're right."

Tony smiled and brought Steve's face down to his so he could kiss him softly. "I always am."

Steve tried to push the thoughts of what could be wrong with their son to the back of his mind and followed Tony back to bed.

He had no way of knowing that going back to bed would make everything that much worse.

So much worse.