When the gauntlet was wielded, it burned the arms of the men grasping it. It ate at their flesh, crawling up their limbs like fire.

They didn't let go. They didn't let go as they struck down Thanos. They didn't let go when they willed the universe to right itself.

They didn't let go until the ashes molded back into the people that had been stolen.

The gauntlet dropped out of Tony's hand, his fingernails chipped off, his forearm crisped and bleeding through the cracked flesh.

Steve Rogers let the gauntlet hit the orange dirt of Titan with a resounding thud.

They were tired—past tired. They were past exhausted; they were drained, like some of their years had been sucked out of their very hands. Steve, the super soldier that he was, collapsed into the dirt, wearily muttering that he needed to get back to Wakanda. To Bucky.

Tony didn't let himself fall. He forced his feet to shuffle through the gritty dirt, using every ounce he had left to search the vast horizon. He needed to find him. He couldn't die yet; he couldn't die without making sure that…

The dust swirled and ejected a large, grey man with red markings. He looked around, bewildered.

Tony looked away. It wasn't him.

The planet spat out the alien girl next.

Then the obnoxious space-traveler from Kansas.

Even Stephen fucking Strange was allowed to stumble out of the dust itself. Tony stared at him, hurt and disdain coloring his expression.

"He's coming back," Strange told him. But even at the wizard's sure look, Tony doubtfully stared at the expanse of dirt. Waiting for a kick of dirt. A swirl to turn into a kid.

"Tony," Cap called behind him.

He ignored the man. He shuffled his feet forwards, scanning every speck of dirt on this goddamn planet. But there was nothing. Nothing was happening, and he'd done all of this for just that one goddamn—

A pile of dirt began to rise.

Tony lurched forwards, tripping and landing on all fours. He scrambled towards the rising dust, ignoring his inoperable limb. "Please. Please, please, please, please, please…"

And as the ash was swept away, Peter Parker was left blinking up at the stars.

"Oh my god," Tony sobbed, falling into the kid and wrapping him up with his one arm. "Peter. Peter. Fuck. Peter."

Peter slowly hugged him back, his arms shaking as he reached for his mentor. "Mr. Stark?"

Tony choked out a relieved sob. He thought he'd never hear that stupid title again—not in the way it mattered. But here he was. He had— "Jesus Christ. Yeah, kiddo. I-it's me."

Peter's grip latched onto Tony more firmly this time, as if suddenly realizing what was happening. "Oh my god. That was… that was—"

Tony shook his head. "You're good. You're here, so it—don't—you're good, Pete. I got you."

Peter nodded frantically into his shoulder, his hug becoming stronger than any normal man could muster.

The relief flooded through Tony. Through his chest, through the arm clutching his kid, through the arm that burned and drooped. It rushed through his head, flooding his vision and smothering his focus. He felt his good arm sag.

"M-Mr. Stark?"

Tony couldn't find the energy to reassure his kid this time.

"N-no! Mr. Stark, come on! I-I just got back! You, you can't!" A sob. "Please! I need you! As Spider-Man and as Peter and as a… Please, don't go. Please, don't go!"

Slumped down into the dirt, Tony thought he managed to give the teen a reassuring pat.

"Tony!"

The orange dust swirled into nothing.

When Tony woke up, he thought he was in the ocean. It felt like there was saltwater and sand weighing his eyes down, making them hurt to open. He tried and tried before letting a wave sweep him back under.

His head cleared again, and he felt a burning on his left arm. Like a sunburn. Like a jagged rock's scrape. Like a shark attack. Like all three in one.

He winced as he tried pulling at it. He wasn't sure if he moved it at all. He heard the voices of other people swimming out to him.

A wave crashed over his head and stuffed him back under the water.

The third time he drifted into consciousness, he heard a beeping. It was a steady beeping that didn't sound anything like the shore or the seagulls. It was loud and regular.

There wasn't any beeping in the ocean.

Forcing his sand-bitten eyes to open, Tony blinked blearily. Bright lights and regular ceiling tiles and white sheets. This wasn't the ocean at all.

"Tony?" That, that was a voice he knew.

Tony managed to move his eyes down to see the brunet teenager halfway on the bed. Peter looked exhausted with disheveled hair and bleary, red eyes. He also looked desperately hopeful.

"Hey, kid," Tony croaked, his throat raw from swallowing so much saltwater.

"Oh my god, Mr. Stark!" Peter threw himself at the man, wrapping his arms around him before stiffening and pulling back. "Oh, ah! I'm sorry! Did, did I hurt you?! I'm—"

Tony swallowed back the bile gnawing at his throat. "Don't. You're good. Just, don't say that."

Peter's eyes flashed with understanding before he quickly nodded. "Right. Man, I'm— uh… glad you're OK, Mr. Stark."

Tony dropped his bleary gaze to his left, seeing a cast encompassing his forearm.

"They—Dr. Cho—saved your arm," Peter hurriedly reported. "She used that, like, MRI tube thing that rebuilds skin and muscle tissue? That's, like, the coolest thing ever, by the way. But she used it on you, and your arm is good but the bone was, like, splintered, so they had to repair that in surgery first, but now it'll heal like normal, and the outside is all good."

Tony nodded, still staring at the arm.

"I, uh, think I should go get her," Peter said, worry soaking into his tone. "She'd wanna—"

At the sight of Peter moving towards the door, Tony reacted on instinct, grabbing onto the kid's wrist with his good arm and staring at him with a wild panic. "No!"

Peter blinked, clearly taken aback by the display. Hell, Tony was taken aback by it. Still, Peter took it in stride and nodded. "Oh, OK. I can, uh, stay?"

Tony settled back against his mattress with a nod, never releasing his hold on Peter's wrist.

Peter hovered at his side, obviously unsure what he was supposed to do.

"Sorry," Tony muttered. "Just, don't go anywhere yet. I just got you back."

Peter's shoulders relaxed as he nodded in understanding.

"Come 'ere," Tony told him as his eyelids drooped with exhaustion. He gently pulled on his hold around the teenager's wrist.

Peter understood, leaning forwards and crawling into the space next to Tony. "Just, make sure I'm not hurting you, OK? You've got, like, tubes, and—"

Tony released a breath as he relaxed further into the bed. "Don't worry 'bout me, kid. Just stick around."

"OK, Mr. Stark."

Tony waded back into the ocean and let the current tug him under.

After a week of being caged off in the Tower's med bay, Tony was done with being cooped up. He was done with always feeling exhausted.

He was not done with letting Peter out of his sight. And Peter knew this, which was probably why Tony awoke to a weight on his torso, track laughter in his left ear, and crunching in his right.

Tony blinked his eyes open to see Peter eating a blueberry waffle over him, casually leaning on him as he watched an episode of Friends on a StarkPad. He blinked again. "Please tell me that you're not eating an Eggo over the cripple's face."

Peter jumped, not expecting his cushion to be conscious. "Oh, sorry, Mr. Stark!" He quickly paused the show and leaned off his mentor. "I was just hungry. Do you want some?" Peter extended the waffle in front of Tony's face.

Tony, however, pushed the waffle back towards the adolescent's face. "Eat your sugar brick."

Peter smiled and complied.

The doors opened, and Dr. Cho entered the room with a smile. "How're we doing today, Tony?"

Tony gave her an annoyed stare. "About two minutes from using my super-kid to break out of here, Helen."

"Hey, I wouldn't do that," Peter protested, mouth full of waffle.

Tony gave him a I-so-don't-believe-that-for-a-second look.

"Good to hear," Helen said with a slight laugh. "Sounds like you've got enough strength back to finish recovering in your own bed."

Tony scoffed. "I think I've recovered more than any man should."

Still, Helen took all of his vitals before declaring him released. Peter watched on warily as the IV was removed.

"Thank God," Tony muttered, stretching his arms out.

"Your bone is still mending, Tony," Helen told him with a serious stare. "The Cradle helped it along, but it still needs time. Give it time."

Tony waved her off, sliding his legs over the side of the bed and demanding a pair of pants.

A couple days later, Tony was stretched out on the couch, an episode of some comedy show blaring on the TV. This was normal.

Peter was lying beside him, his head pillowed on Tony's lap. Pepper was curled into Tony's other side. Rhodey was off fighting The Man in a restoration effort after the Snap's resurrection. All also normal.

Vision floated through the living room walls, back to Wanda's bedroom. Clint and Natasha poked at an omelet on the stove while Steve and Bucky chatted over coffee at the kitchen table.

That was not normal.

The sight of the assassin sitting at his kitchen table made Tony twitchy. (The goddamn assassin had murdered his parents.) But Tony trusted Steve. After everything after the Snap, after all the shit that Cap had done to help Tony reunite with his kid—for god's sake, the super-soldier had agreed to undoing the Snap on Titan, away from Bucky, just to please him.

Tony couldn't thank him enough for that.

"Squirt, come get an omelet!" Clint called from the kitchen.

Eyes fixed on the TV, Peter ignored him. Tony looked fondly down at the kid before looking to the TV himself.

A minute later, Clint was beside them. "I know you ate that entire box of shitty waffles. So come eat some real food." Clint grabbed Peter's arm and started to pull him up.

Still staring at the TV, Tony's good hand instinctively latched onto the back of Peter's t-shirt. "My kid. Don't touch."

Clint dropped the teen with a huff.

Pepper grinned at her fiancé. "Tony, Peter needs to eat."

"No, I don't!" Peter protested.

Tony frowned down at the teen. "Did you really eat an entire Costco-sized box of Eggos?"

Peter's gaze flicked up to the man's. "I was hungry."

With an eye roll, Tony hefted the kid off of him and pushed himself off the couch. Peter popped up beside him and obediently let himself be pushed into the kitchen.

Tony nudged the kid into the seat where a plate of eggs was waiting. As Peter dug in happily, Tony made a mental note to keep a better eye on Peter's eating habits. He fished out his phone and drafted a new text.

"Who you talkin' to?" Peter asked in between bites of omelet.

Clint sat down at the table with his own plate of food. "I thought everyone you knew was here."

Tony gave the archer an annoyed scowl. "Shouldn't you be providing for your giant family by now?"

"We lived through the Snap," Clint reminded him. "My team didn't."

"Yes, we did," Tony snapped back, his tone biting with a venomous edge.

Everyone in the kitchen froze, feeling the air dip into something darker.

"I'll be here as long as you need me," Clint answered before turning to his food.

"Great," Tony quipped. "Pack it up, Barton."

Natasha walked past, flicking Tony's ear as she did.

Tony pointed an accusatory finger at her. "I saved you, Cinderella."

"I never disintegrated, Stark."

"Maybe we could, like, not talk about it anymore?"

The Avengers turned to see Peter staring at his food with wide eyes and flushed cheeks.

Bucky and Steve made a move to get up, but Tony beat them to it, squeezing onto Peter's shoulder reassuringly. "Sure thing, kid. You finish those eggs, and I'll tell you what happened to the Infinity Gauntlet."

After a few more breaths, Peter was able to pick his fork back up and continue eating. "I thought you guys destroyed it?"

Tony sank into the chair next to him, texting that update to May as she worked to help all the resurrecting victims. "That's what the official story is."

Peter blinked. "Did Vision actually get the mind stone back?"

"We split up the Infinity Stones," Steve voiced in. "Just in case."

"Yeah because that wizard bitch wouldn't stop whining about getting his back," Clint muttered into his mug of coffee.

"Wow, you'd think after single-handedly saving the world, I would at least get to be the one that tells the kid about it," Tony griped.

Steve held out his hands (his right covered in a plaster cast) in a what-the-hell gesture.

"So, anyways," Tony continued on, "it was another lively day on Earth without you, and I woke up one morning and thought 'Huh. What was that intern's name again? Percy Patterson? Maybe I'll get him out of the soul stone today.'"

It was just a quick stop to the grocery store. Peter had been begging to get out of the Tower for days, and Tony still couldn't deal with letting the kid out of his sight for longer than the length of a shower. (Which was an improvement if he did say so himself.)

"How come Happy isn't driving us?" Peter asked, staring out the window excitedly.

Tony glanced at him and rolled his eyes. "He's not a fan of you sticking your face to the window like a dog. And he's in Wakanda on a cleanup mission."

Peter whirled in his seat to stare at him. "He got to go to Wakanda? How come everyone but me gets to go to Wakanda?!"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Legally-not-an-adult. You wanna explain that trip to your aunt?"

Peter crossed his arms and grumbled, "I bet Clint would fly me to Wakanda."

Tony's heartrate picked up at the thought of his kid flying to another city, another country, another continent; he made another metal note: disable all of Clint's clearances from any and all aircrafts.

"Maybe we can get stuff to do a pizza night," Peter suggested a minute later, back to his chipper self. "May was saying yesterday that she's been wanting pizza."

"Pizza night it is," Tony confirmed and pulled the Audi into a parking space outside the store.

Turns out shopping with Peter was an exhausting process. The kid was like a toddler whipped up on Pixie Stix and cocaine. Tony spent the majority of the time shoving his cart past others just to keep up with the teenage whirlwind.

It was when Tony threatened to strap the kid into the cart's child seat that Peter deemed they had everything they needed. Tony kept a hand on the teenager as they paid for the groceries and carried the bags out to the parking lot.

They'd almost made it to the car when a crowd of reporters and flashing cameras swarmed the duo. Tony tightened his grip on Peter's shoulder as the paparazzi shoved into them.

"Is it true that Peter is your long-lost son?!"

"Peter! How does it feel to go from living in an orphanage to the Stark Tower?!"

"Tony, how long have you known that you're a father?!"

Tony swayed as the cameras were shoved at them. How the hell did they know Peter's name? How the hell did they know a single thing about him?

Peter turned his panicked eyes to his mentor, snapping Tony into action. "No comment!" Tony helped push Peter through the mob, all but lifting the kid into the passenger's seat once they reached it.

He hurried over to his side, only to be cut off by a couple of daring reporters. Tony scowled and shoved them away before whirling on the mob. "He's not my kid! He's an intern for SI, and he's a minor, so if I see a single one of these photos in public hands, expect a lawsuit in the next minute."

And with that, he turned and threw himself into the car, slamming the door shut before the reporters could yell out again.

Tony threw his bag of groceries haphazardly into the back seat, not caring that they spilled out. He didn't even buckle as he shoved the gear into reverse and swung out of the lot. With a glance to his left, he saw Peter staring out the windshield in a daze, his bags of groceries still on his lap.

"Seatbelt," Tony prompted tightly, directing the car onto the main road before punching the gas.

He waited for the telltale click before he floored it to the Tower.

Pepper demanded they hold an official press conference after that. She reasoned that it'd only get worse for Peter if they didn't—especially if the rumors of their relationship grew into something more than familial. Tony reasoned that she was right.

He told the press everything he'd okayed with Peter and May: Peter was a high school student with a genius mind, his big brain got him noticed by SI, and Tony created the internship after meeting the teen. Tony considered the child prodigy a friend, and he was integral to Tony's recovery after saving the world for you fucking scum.

(Pepper had pinched the bridge of her nose at that.)

Tony had closed it with praises that made Peter blush and a few not-so-thinly-veiled threats about anyone approaching the kid.

And the conference had worked its magic—the paparazzi died down, the headlines moved onto more novel disasters, and the public seemed to retract its interest in the duo to a more appropriate level.

But Peter had to go to school sometime.

"I just think it's a waste of a supercomputer humanoid for you to be getting your education from a high school," Tony said at dinner one night.

Bucky and Steve exchanged a knowing glance.

"I don't think Vision would want to be my, uh, governess," Peter said with a cringe.

"I wouldn't mind," Vision politely voiced as he curiously licked a cube of butter. Wanda pulled the butter away from his mouth with a grin and added the butter to his baked potato instead.

Tony threw his hand out to Vision with an approving smile.

"Tony, he's a teenager," May told him. "He needs a social life beyond the world's superheroes."

Tony blinked incredulously. "But why?"

"OK, that's enough of your opinion for one night," Pepper declared, shoving a roll into Tony's mouth. "Peter wants to go back, and that's all that matters."

"Yeah," Peter agreed. "I'm totally gonna punch Flash for outing my identity to the world."

At the same time, May said Peter's name disapprovingly, Tony gave him a look of considerate approval, and Bucky muttered, "What the hell is a Flash?"

"He totally sucks," Peter told him. "But he's not the worst so I won't, like, make his life suck. Hey, maybe Spider-Man could—"

This time, the voices were a chorus of unanimous no's.

The next morning, Happy pulled the indiscreet car in front of Midtown High. Only two reporters were on the curb, daring the wrath of Stark's lawsuit.

Honestly, it was better than anyone had hoped.

Tony's hand came down on Peter's shoulder, startling him out of staring at the building. "You know, you don't have to go. And I dunno if you've seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but I'm thinking we're having a weird role reversal here."

Peter grinned at him. "I've seen all of your old movies, Mr. Stark."

Tony groaned, pulling away. "Ugh, you're killing me, kid. Stop reminding me how freshly you've come out of the womb."

Peter turned back to the window with a smile. "It'll be good. I get to go back to my normal routine, and that might help with the nightmares—"

"What nightmares?" Happy called unhappily over his shoulder.

"Ignore the help," Tony told the teen, waving off Happy. "And kid, you do what you think is best, and I'll support you one hundred percent of the way. Or I'll tackle you in the Iron Man suit so you don't do it. I'll make the call as the situation arises."

Peter smiled at his mentor. "I think it'll be good for you, too."

Tony frowned at him. "As much as I love revisiting nerd facts when you get home from school, I'm not totally out of the science field—"

"No, no, you're like the smartest, Mr. Stark," Peter hurriedly explained. "I just mean, like, the separation. While I'm at school. It might help with your anxiety."

Tony squinted. "What do you know about my anxiety?"

Peter gave him a look. "You're the one insisting we share a room lately. I know about your nightmares."

Tony's squint narrowed. "What do you know about my nightmares?"

"Listen to the kid, boss," Happy instructed, not looking up from the Candy Crush game on his phone.

Tony shot him a look of betrayal.

"You're the best, Mr. Stark," Peter insisted, rushing forward and pulling the man into a hug. And then, quietly, "And thanks for saving me."

Tony returned the hug, gently smoothing the back of Peter's hair. "Yeah, well, I'd do it for any Stark Industries intern." He nonchalantly wiped at his eyes. "You just happen to be my favorite."

Peter pulled away with a smirk. "Just say it."

Tony faked indifference. "Say what?"

"Say you love me."

"I would never say that."

"Say I'm your favorite kid."

"You're not my favorite kid. Happy is my favorite kid."

Peter just laughed and hugged Tony one last time. "I love you too, Mr. Stark."

Tony pressed his lips together, realizing he wouldn't be able to open them without saying something truly embarrassing.

Peter pulled away and reached for the door handle.

"Uh, uh, uh," Tony chastised, grabbing onto the kid's forearms. "What's the protocol?"

Peter titled his head up at him with a frown. "Come on, Mr. Stark. We're at school."

"Oh, you mean the place that visit regularly on a schedule?" Tony gave him an insulted look, pushed the kid back, and got out on his side. He scanned the area as the reporters buzzed over, demanding statements and answers to questions. He then held out an arm to block the reporters, giving a beckoning wave inside the car with his other hand.

Peter leapt out of the car with a smile and turned to his mentor. "Bye, Mr. Stark. Text me if you're having too bad of a time without me."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Have a good day at school, kid."

Peter took off for the front steps of the school as Tony turned to the reporters. "Let's play My Question, Your Question. Me first: What're your full legal names? I wouldn't want the summons landing on the wrong doorsteps."

By the time that Tony dropped into the backseat of the car, he was exhausted. What an emotionally exhausting morning.

Happy's smug look caught Tony's eyes through the rearview mirror. "I'm your favorite child, boss?"

Tony's rolling eyes landed on the school outside his window. "No more talking or you're fired."

Happy pulled the car into traffic with a smirk.