eunoia || Peter Parker (Spider-Man: Homecoming)

02

One more drink, one less care.

One less bottle, one more night that Tony Stark could spend with himself before shattering into pieces.

One more drink. Just one.

All it took was a stomach and a swig, then he'd be okay again. The more he drank, the more he forgot about what he was feeling. It might hurt like hell in the morning, but he lived for the nights.

He was lost, confused. In just moments, his life had gone from yay to nay, with that simple news broadcast about a certain gas explosion. It was all gone – there, then gone. Just like that, whisked away from him so fast that it left him breathless.

And then—

Finding out that he was okay. That he was alive, breathing, walking, talking...it hit him like ten tonnes of bricks in a cement truck. His kid, his kiddo, was still alive. He'd lost everything, but in seconds it was back. Whiplash maybe, but could Tony really be complaining?

His kid was alive and living and had life, and would be able to grow up and have kiddos of his own and save some more people and enjoy himself. Tony couldn't believe it; his boy was back from the dead. Where he had been gone, he was back.

Tony would be able to build more suits with him. Tony would be able to watch him walk through his door. Tony would be able to listen to him drone on and on about his day. Tony would be able to talk to him.

The things he'd thought he'd never miss, was the things he missed the most. Hearing the kid chatter all day usually meant he'd have a headache that night, but if he could be there for the kid; if he could listen for the kid, he didn't give a damn about a headache or ten.

Tony had thought that he'd never get that again.

He thought it was all gone.

But Peter Parker was living, and he could do all those things again. He might even give him a hug, who knows?

But...he couldn't, too.

That's why Peter was in Wakanda enjoying his newly granted life, while Tony was hiding from the rest of the world and drinking his sorrows away. It was because he couldn't be the same, knowing—

Knowing what Peter had done.

But that wasn't why he was drinking. He was drinking because he hated himself every day because of it. Because he couldn't. He wanted to be able to just forgive and forget, he really, really did. Tony absolutely hated the Terrorist – with a passion. He'd been running around killing people, and no one did that in his city.

Upon finding out that the Terrorist was the teen he loved more than the world itself, he'd lost his mind.

There was no relief that his boy was alive. There was only grief.

And it was Tony that had done this to his kid's life. If he'd never gotten involved in the kid's life, then none of this would've happened in the first place. Peter never would've been tortured and killed, alone in that dusty warehouse by his friend's dad. Peter never would've had to fight for his life and nearly lose it, fighting in space, alone again. Peter never would've been kidnapped, presumed dead while being brainwashed in an isolated prison in the middle of the ocean. None of that would've happened.

He wouldn't be hiding from the police, the FBI, the president. He would still have his best friends, his aunt, his life.

And Tony knew all of this.