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English
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Part 5 of If I Have to Suffer, Then so Does Peter Parker
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Published:
2025-06-04
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3,265
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1/1
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390
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At least we had it for a moment

Summary:

“Hey, kid,” Tony’s voice sounds suspiciously choked up. If Peter didn’t know any better, he might even say it wavered. “Would you mind explaining what this is?”

Peter steps closer, setting his apple juice on the desk Tony is currently situated at before walking over to stand next to him, getting a glance at the paper. For a second, he doesn’t recognize it, but then he sees that one chemical compound that he knows by heart. He feels his stomach drop to the floor, through the floor, through every floor in this tower before settling in bedrock.

He'd forgotten about his old suicide planner, and was stupid enough to leave it in that damn notebook of his.

Notes:

Content Warnings
Suicidal Ideation: Detailed discussion of Peter's ideation and the reasons behind it. His method of choice is discussed, but not specified.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

“You do not get to take after my unhealthy habits,” Tony insists, “Growing spiders need to eat!” 

“I’m fine, Mr. Stark, really—“ 

“You have an enhanced metabolism, Pete,” Tony reminds him. “If you want to patrol…”

“You gotta eat,” Peter recites sullenly. 

“Cap’s got some enhanced granola bars in the kitchen, go get yourself a handful, and then we can get back to this,” Tony says. Peter nods, rolling his eyes, and makes his way across the lab with that very particular teenage-boy ambling gait. Like a penguin that’s suddenly found itself running on giraffe hardware. 

He leaves his schoolwork and backpack out by the bench they were working on. His notebook, an old, beaten-up thing with a blue cover, is open to a page full of math equations. Tony runs his eyes over them quickly, pleased to note that each one is correct. He’s not sure what they’re for, but if he were to guess, the kid hacked into some college-level calculus courses and is using them to his advantage, maybe trying to get ahead of everyone else at his school. 

Now, the thing is, one doesn’t exactly get to be a genius without a healthy (borderline excessive) dose of curiosity. And Tony Stark is one curious, curious man. 

So, he flips to the next page. 

Instead of math, this time, it’s chemistry. Messy, cramped handwriting is scrawled in every which way, clumped into paragraphs that have been shoved alongside hand-drawn diagrams and graphs. It’s pretty immediately clear that this is one of Peter’s first attempts at creating his web fluid. He’d conducted trial after trial, measuring everything from the tensile strength of the web to the minute differences in the time it took for it to solidify once leaving the web shooter. 

The next page is similar. Lots of trials, lots of chemistry, a hastily-scribbled plan for how to sneak into his high-school’s chem lab to gain access to more adequate equipment for these experiments. 

The page after that is just basic algebra homework. Then some more web chem, another couple pages of physics relating to Peter’s swinging, more homework… Tony comes across an interesting page full of observations Peter has made in regards to his enhancement. Apparently the kid used to have asthma. 

Tony closes up the notebook and goes to tuck it into Peter’s backpack. When he picks it up, though, a loose piece of folded piece of paper falls out from somewhere in the notebook, and, of course, Tony is nothing if not curious, so he opens it up, just for a quick glance. He’s expecting some algebra or chem homework, or maybe an observation Peter had hastily jotted down while on patrol. 

As he scans it, it is revealed that the paper is decidedly none of those things.

 

 

Peter finds several apple juice boxes tucked away into the back of the fridge, and snatches up a granola bar from the pantry on his way out, jamming it into his jacket pocket. He intends to also grab a bag of chips or something, but a certain spider-sense suddenly makes itself known deep in the base of Peter’s skull. 

He tenses immediately, thoughts racing towards Tony in the lab, the lack of other people up in the penthouse, the windows are locked, right? Right, the windows are locked, and so are all the doors, and Friday would set off an alarm if someone had broken in…

Something is wrong though. That, Peter is certain of. 

“Peter, Boss would like to remind you to return to the lab,” Friday’s voice is calm, as always, but it sends a jolt down Peter’s spine all the same. 

He goes to the lab, eager to check on Tony, just to make sure he’s alright. He sticks his straw into his juice box on his way down, trying to distract himself from the nagging feeling that something bad is going to happen. 

At first, the sight of the lab being fully intact and not on fire fills Peter with relief. It’s quiet, and there are no aliens or robots attacking his mentor. 

Oh, it’s quiet. That’s bad, right? Calm before the storm.

Tony is across the lab, holding a heavily creased piece of paper with a conflicted look on his face, flickering from anger to concern. 

That’s not good. 

“Hey, kid,” Tony’s voice sounds suspiciously choked up. If Peter didn’t know any better, he might even say it wavered. “Would you mind explaining what this is?”

Peter steps closer, setting his apple juice on the desk Tony is currently situated at before walking over to stand next to him, getting a glance at the paper. For a second, he doesn’t recognize it, but then he sees that one chemical compound that he knows by heart. He feels his stomach drop to the floor, through the floor, through every floor in this tower before settling in bedrock. His mouth goes dry and, from the sudden chill that falls over him, he knows that his face has gone pale. Peter’s notebook, the disorganized one for miscellaneous things, is set off to the side, and the paper he’d carelessly shoved into it months ago is unfolded, held in Tony’s hand. 

Tony has developed a very mild tremor in his hands over the years. Today, it seems particularly pronounced. 

“It’s… chem homework. I think? It’s from sophomore year,” Peter tries to dismiss, “For our unit on LD50s, you know. Standard, uh. Standard stuff. Yeah.” His heart is hammering against his chest. He’s pretty sure Tony can hear it.

“Right,” Tony says, arching a brow. “That’s why you wrote down the household and retail products needed to achieve this particular LD50, as well as a list of ‘things to avoid’, all of which are chemicals that would cancel out the reactions needed to create this concoction.”

Peter tries to snatch up the paper, but Tony holds it over his head. Peter huffs. 

“I was tired, I mixed it up! It’s supposed to be a warning PSA type of thing.”

“I’m not stupid, kid,” he says, “And I know for a damn fact that your LD50 unit was primarily on things like advil or cyanide, not this. I— God, Pete, why the hell do you have this at all? This recipe of yours is enough to kill ten people!”

“You think I’m trying to kill people?” Peter asks incredulously. Tony pauses, realizing how absolutely ridiculous that concept was, but his face still hardens. 

“I don’t think you’re trying to kill people, but I do think that this is concerning.” The paper is set down onto the table, and Tony flattens it out with one hand. “There’s a list of stores here, most of which have been crossed out or have price tags written next to them. You were going into stores, looking for these ingredients. What the hell were you thinking?” 

“It was supposed to be a warning! Like, ‘oh no, look how easy it is to get these ingredients’, you know?” Peter doubles down on his PSA lie. He thinks every single part of him is sweating, because he feels cold and clammy and so so panicked.

“Oh, so if I went to your chem teacher from last year and asked her about this assignment, she would confirm that it totally exists?”

Peter’s really trying to push this lie through, but there’s only so far he can go. Ms. Cunningham is not the type of teacher who would cover for Peter like this. So, he simply doesn’t respond. He tries to keep the guilty look from his face, but everyone knows he wears his heart out on his sleeve. 

“Peter,” Tony says, giving him a piercing stare as he points at the paper, “I need you to tell me why you have this.”

“I was curious?”

“So you think I’m stupid.” 

“What? I never said that!” Peter throws his hands up in the air, then crosses his arms over his chest. “I really was just curious.”

“You sure about that, kid? Because this particular chemical concoction of yours has been used almost exclusively for suicides since the early 2000s.” Tony taps Peter’s chemical structure drawing, jammed up into the far right corner of the page. 

“I— uh…” Peter stumbles over his words, and he feels like the ground is being pulled out from underneath him. “Well, I didn’t know that.”

“Sure you didn’t,” Tony shrugs. “Which is why you’ve been coming up with frantic, shitty lies this entire conversation. So,” He takes a deep breath, clearly trying to calm himself, “I will ask you this one more time. Why do you have this paper?”

And, well, Peter is kind of screwed here. There’s only one viable answer, given the presented context and evidence. It’s not an answer Peter wants to admit to, exactly. But he can’t have Tony know about this, because then he’ll tell Aunt May, and God knows she’s got enough shit going on. Peter will probably be forced into therapy, or have Spider-Manning held over his head until he’s “stable”, or maybe Tony will take away the suit altogether and then there won’t be anyone around to stick up for the little guy and keep Queens relatively safe and then oh God what if someone dies because Peter’s not there because he’s in the fucking psych ward—

“Peter!” Tony’s voice sounds distant, but urgent. “Peter, breathe,” his voice fades out again. “God, kid, you’re killing me here.” 

Peter manages to reign in his breath. Had he been hyperventilating? Yeah, he’d been hyperventilating. Oh, and Tony’s there! Great, that’s great… Tony’s holding Peter’s hands together. Both of them are shaking a bit, and everything’s kind of blurry. Ah, it’s because he’s crying. Got it. Crying in front of his mentor who is also an Avenger and billionaire and all that other shit. Totally cool. Way to go Peter! Fuckin’ idiot. 

“You with me yet?” Tony sounds concerned. Peter nods absentmindedly, then more firmly when he starts to come back to himself. 

“Yeah, yeah. Uh, sorry,” Peter tries to laugh nervously, lighten the mood a little, but it comes out as a trembling wheeze. “I’m good. Um. What were we talking about?”

Tony’s mouth presses into a thin line. He’s having one of those internal debates with himself, the type he gets stuck on because the matters of People and Emotions are much less stable than math equations. He comes to an agreement with himself.

“We were talking about this paper of yours. It’s very detailed, and, I’ve gotta hand it to ya, it’s incredibly advanced and takes just about every variable into consideration.” Tony waves the incriminating paper in front of Peter’s face. His breath hitches again. “It also just so happens to be a planner of sorts for how to acquire and create a lethal chemical in amounts significant enough to kill ten people, or, alternatively, one enhanced teenage boy.” 

Right. That. 

Oh, I’m so screwed, Peter thinks to himself. He just really doesn’t know what to say. 

“It… may be what you think it is,” Peter says, voice unsteady. “But it’s from ages ago, I swear!” He holds his hands up placatingly, but Tony’s face twists into a frown all the same. 

“Ages ago? Peter, you’re barely seventeen,”  Tony emphasizes, “You do realize why that’s not exactly a reassuring thing to hear, right?” 

“It’s nothing to worry about—”

“It is absolutely something to worry about,” Tony cuts in, “And, what’s more, it’s something you didn’t tell me. Or your aunt, or your friend— shit, what was his name? Ted? You probably didn’t tell either of them now, did you?”

Peter shakes his head. Tony sighs. 

“Just… make this make sense to me, okay, Pete?” Tony says, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Here, you know what, let’s sit down, and have a chat, and you’re going to make this make sense to me.” 

“Okay,” Peter says, taking the offer to pull out one of the stools laying around the lab and sitting down on it, his forearms folded neatly over the table. Tony does the same. They sit on the same side of the table, and Tony has turned his head to look at Peter. Peter keeps his gaze straight ahead, refusing to meet his mentor’s eye. 

“What do you want to know?” Peter asks, not sure where to start. When to start.

“I want you to tell me what this is, without lying,” Tony says, tapping the incriminating paper between them. Peter thinks he’s paling again, and his heart is beating in his throat. 

“It started as a school assignment,” Peter clarifies, “We were doing a unit on LD50s. I just got to thinking, ‘oh, what else could kill me’, you know? And I started researching, and I found this, uhm,” Peter stutters, feeling his breath catch the same way it did when this happened, “This forum. People were trying to figure out the LD50 of this one particular gas, and how to actually make it, and they weren’t doing a great job, obviously, I think they were younger than me, but I— I know chemistry. I like chemistry, I'm good at it. So… I figured it out. I didn't post it online or anything, but I figured it out.”

Tony seems to mull over the answer in his head for a bit. Peter watches him out of the corner of his eye. 

“But why?” Tony finally asks. “You went out and found the materials. Why was this something you were considering in the first place? Why was this something that you, Peter Parker, Spider-Man, a genius kid with a bright future, were thinking about at all?”

“Because I like where I am,” Peter mutters. “Like, I really like where I am right now. I’m Spider-Man, I help people, I’m close to getting a full ride to my dream school, I’m interning under you, at Stark Industries. I’m on a first name basis with all the Avengers, I have friends, food, a roof over my head, I have everything I could possibly want. I—” Peter draws in a shuddering breath, and, to his horror, he hiccups, catching on a sob. He frantically rubs at his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie, trying to wipe away the tears before they come. “I don’t want this to end, Mr. Stark, but good things don’t last for me.”

Peter’s shoulders shake as he tries to control his crying. His face has gone from pale and cold to red and hot, and he can feel his nose start to run. Shame burns in his skin. 

“I like happy endings. I want things to end on a high note. If— when everything comes crashing down, I don’t want to have to build myself back up, because I don’t think I’d ever be able to make my life as good as it is right now. What goes up must come down, and all that.” 

 

 

Tony is glad that Peter likes his life, he really is, but he’s at a loss here. And scared. God, Tony is scared shitless. 

Is this what being a parent is like? Being scared shitless all the time? And every time you think, oh, this is the most scared shitless I’m gonna get, suddenly your kid turns around from risking his life fighting crime to actively wanting to die and it’s just a whole other type of scared shitless, and, well. Let’s just say that Tony was never really expecting to be anything remotely close to a parent, and was therefore never expecting or prepared to be as scared shitless as he is right now. 

“So what is this?” he asks quietly, tapping on the paper one final time. His voice is rough. 

“A suicide plan,” Peter says solemnly. 

“Do you still have the supplies?” 

Tony wants to punch something when Peter nods, but there’s nothing to punch, because there’s no bad guy, there’s just Peter’s head. His brain. That damn genius brain of his. 

“I’m coming back to May’s with you tonight, okay?” Tony says hoarsely, but determinedly. “I’ll throw them out for you.”

“Okay,” Peter whispers. 

Everything is still for a minute. Tony is still clutching the paper in his hand. It crinkles a bit with his shaking grip. It’s a quiet sound, but it falls on his ears like gunshots in a desert. There’s so much to say. There’s not enough to say. He’s going to fuck it up, because he’s Tony Stark and he’s great at computers and machines and science but God, he can’t do this. He’s not great at humans, especially not small, teenaged ones, those volatile creatures they are. 

Tony sighs. 

“Look, kid, you’re right about things always changing,” he starts slowly. “They could get worse, but that’ll change too,” Tony takes the paper, sliding it closer to himself with his hand. He stares at it for a moment, and then folds it up, tucking those terrible calculations away. Something must come to him, because the next few sentences spill out like water. “I get what you mean when you say that what comes up must come down. We’re both more, uh, scientifically inclined, so I know why that phrase is attractive to you, but it’s a law of physics. Not of life. You can’t quantify your life with a graph and calculate exactly how good or bad certain points are, and being at a low point doesn’t mean you’ve lost any of the good parts. You can’t lose your positive experiences. They happened, and they’re yours forever.

“I thought I had things pretty good when I was your age. If I’d ended it there, though, I would’ve never known how much better everything was going to get. Things did get bad, but, in the end, I met Rhodes. Pepper. I became Iron Man, I’m an Avenger. I met you.”

Peter hums, tapping the table in an anxious pattern. “But it’s still… it’s all going to go away one day. It’s all going to end, or change, or get worse—”

“And I’ll still be there. You’re not facing your future alone.”

“But just, what if, you know, you die, or something?” Peter chokes out, “Or go away?”

“Like I said, you can’t lose your positive experiences,” Tony says, tries, he’s trying to convince his kid to live, “Even if I’m not here here, I’m still in your head, whether you like it or not.”

“So, what now? Do I just… keep going?” Peter asks. He sounds incredulous. Like there’s no way it could be that simple. 

“Yeah, pretty much,” Tony shrugs. “I mean, I did. Things turned out alright. At least, I think they did. Don’t you?”

“I guess so, yeah.”

 

 

Tony was right. 

Peter is curled up on the couch, tucked into Wade’s side, watching some shitty movie that he can’t be bothered to really pay attention to. He’s full, almost uncomfortably so, but not quite. He’s warm. Wade smells like Old Spice more than gunpowder these days. His scars have gotten softer with age as well. Less fights requiring chopped limbs, less fresh, tough scar tissue to bother him.

Peter is still Spider-Man. He’s a biophysicist. He technically runs Stark Industries as well, after Tony’s passing, but somehow…

Things are quiet, most of the time. 

This could all go away tomorrow. Or it could all go to shit in some other, terrible way. But he has this now, and he’s breathing. He’s thirty one years old, and he’s breathing. It feels impossible. 

He’s got something good. He’s not letting it go. He’s breathing. 

Tony was right. 

Everything’s alright.

Notes:

I don’t really write young!Peter very often but I met up with my mentor this week for the first time since i started college and the memories omg 😭 I remembered my deepest darkest fantasy (wanting someone to notice) and decided to write it bc ig it never happened

also pls pls remember to feed your authors a healthy amount of kudos and comments! they are my neurotransmitters <3