Irondad/Spiderson Post-Endgame - LYKHIW timeline

No. 23 - Just Outside The Door

Whumptober 2020 Prompt No. 23 - What's a Whumpee Gotta Do To Get Some Sleep Around Here

Exhaustion | Sleep Deprivation

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I'm using my own Fix-it to Endgame "Like You'd Know How It Works" as a basis for the timeline, though the prompt will work fine without having read that story. The important part is, that Tony's not dead.

Baseline: a few days after Tony is brought back from the multiverse.

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His room was dark. In fact, the entire house was dark as it should be at 1 o'clock at night. Dark and quiet. It wasn't the darkness that bothered Peter. It wasn't total darkness. After all, the light of the moon still shone brightly enough for him to make out the little imperfections in the paint on the ceiling. The moonlight and his enhanced senses. It was the quiet that bothered him, that made his chest seem a little too tight, his breathing a little ragged. It had been just 3 days since Mr. Stark had enhanced the walls in the upstairs bedroom and ever since when Peter was lying awake at night, when a nightmare pulled him out of his sleep in the early morning hours like it had the past days, he couldn't hear his mentor anymore.

He was just a couple of doors down. Logically, he knew that. Logically, he was... he was pretty certain of that. And while Peter had always stopped himself from listening in on anything too personal, there was just a sense of calm that came over him when he heard the man turn in his bed, the low snores he sometimes pushed out, the steady beat of his heart. He would have to concentrate and really listen for the familiar rhythm but once he would pick it up, he'd be okay. He'd remember that Mr. Stark was right there, well, and very much alive.

But not anymore.

There was only silence in his room now unless you were to count the frantic beat of his heart and the deep shaky breaths he sucked in and blew back out. It hadn't even been a nightmare this time, not truly. He hadn't really fallen asleep in the first place. Exhaustion was tugging at the edges of his consciousness and that's where his thoughts had started to spiral.

Mr. Stark was okay. Peter was... he was pretty sure of that. He had succeeded, had brought him back home and now he was okay. But there was a little voice in the back of his head that kept nagging, that kept telling him that maybe... maybe he was wrong. Maybe it had all been a delusional dream, too good to be true, Peter wishing something into reality that was unobtainable. He had seen his mentor die after all. He had died right in front of him, the memory etched into his memory, right there whenever he closed his eyes. Dimensions, time travel... was that really real?

A cold shiver ran down his back and before he knew it, his feet had swung off the bed, silently carrying him to the Stark's bedroom door.

Peter was highly aware that this was a little creepy at best and highly inappropriate at worst. Only for a moment. He wouldn't stay for long. He just needed a few minutes to... to quiet the nagging doubts that were persistently working its way up from the back of his mind overwhelming any rational thought.

As he sunk down to the ground and came to sit his back leaning on the frame, he pressed his ear against the door. There were just enough sound waves vibrating along the sturdy wood for him to hear. It had been a little pathetic how he had come to realize that. How three nights ago at 4 o'clock in the morning he had stolen out of his room and crawled up to the door, out of his mind in panic from the nightmare that had roused him. He had clung to the wood and heard the soft snores on the other side that hadn't been Pepper's.

He could hear them now too, both of them. Peter closed his eyes, letting the noises from the room wash over himself and calm his nerves. Two healthy hearts beating almost in union, deep breaths - a little elevated maybe but nothing critical - and Mr. Stark's low raspy voice, only a whisper. He couldn't quite tell what his mentor had said but the corners of his mouth twitched as Pepper breathlessly giggled in response. They were fine. Mr. Stark, he was right there, talking and moving around if the creaky sounds of the bed were anything to go by he was—