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i.
The first time Peter noticed Dr. Strange talked in his sleep was on the way to Titan. By Mr. Stark's rough calculations, they would arrive on Thanos' home world within thirty-six hours, so it was highly recommended they get some rest in the interim.
Doctor's orders.
“And that does mean rest, Parker,” Mr. Stark added, a pre-emptive scold embedded in there. “It does not mean: make a video diary of your first time on a spaceship.”
But they were on an honest-to-God spaceship, so Peter inevitably did.
He relocated to what appeared to be some kind of cupboard for a really big guy – ergo: a perfectly-human sized makeshift bedroom – and catalogued every tiny thing about it. Mr. Stark had taken the storage room beside him, under the guise of keeping an eye on him, but his breathing had deepened long ago.
Quiet as a spider, Peter left the room, phone in hand: flash on, video recording. His battery was still nearly full, courtesy of an impromptu alien invasion impending his usual social media scrolling.
Adrenaline hummed in his veins as he excitedly, nervously narrated the adventure so far – complete with the visual evidence to back it up. This would make for a great trip down memory lane one day, if Mr. Stark could stomach it.
Then: he heard it.
A voice – deep, assertive, authoritative and determined beyond belief, narrating something Peter's senses were too out of reach to dissect.
Curious now, Peter followed the voice deep into the heart of the bad guy's ship, rounding a corner and running into—
Oh. Well, it would appear he had just found where the good doctor disappeared to.
Because there lay Dr. Strange in a man-made metal cot, his trusty loyal outerwear standing guard for perpetrators.
The cloak shifted at Peter's entrance, the collar looking him up and down. He felt almost offended.
Eventually, Peter was deemed worthy enough to approach Dr. Strange, where he appeared to be resting and not actually talking to anybody.
Only—
Oh. Oh. Right. Yeah, that made more sense.
The wizard was a sleep-talker.
Speaking of: “It's a subarachnoid haemorrhage.”
Peter frowned, phone forgotten. “What?” he whispered, trembled; tenuous.
Dr. Strange took a while to answer, so long Peter half thought he'd drifted back to sleep, when he repeated, “A subarachnoid haemorrhage. You'll have to perform a craniotomy, and place a clip at the base of the aneurysm to stop the bleed.”
Peter listened; rapturous.
“Did you get that, Nick, or do you need me to show you?” Dr. Strange grumbled this time, condescension and irritation fusing together like iron.
And Peter smiled to himself, forgetting the enormity of what was at stake – the universe, their reality, his potential sacrifice – and simply said: “Absolutely.”
ii.
The second time Peter caught Dr. Strange talking in his sleep was the night of Mr. St—Tony's funeral.
...god, even just saying that didn't make it feel real. Mr. St—Tony had always been larger-than-life, all sweeping gestures and grandiose proclamations, complete with meticulous lectures on the finer points of nanotechnology. It was always after those performances that he allowed the mask to fall, to allow the real Tony Stark to bleed through.
Peter felt nothing short of privileged at being one of the precious few to catch glimpses of Mr. St—Tony in such a personal, familial light. It cut him something fierce to know it was a privilege that would never again see the light of day.
Nevertheless, the funeral was an intimate affair.
Morgan stared at him throughout the ceremony, and he could only guess what she saw in him: an anomaly out of place amongst family and friends.
The reason her daddy was dead.
“Mr. Stark. I don't feel so good.”
Panic took his heart in its palm, and it squeezed.
He excused himself from away from the log cabin, taking a seat on some fallen tree trunk. There, he buried his head in his hands and taught himself how to breathe.
The snap of a twig was all the warning his senses allowed before Dr. Strange's presence was alerted to him.
He sat down beside Peter.
“You heard me,” Dr. Strange said in lieu of a greeting. “When we were supposed to be resting.” He gave Peter a look.
“You called me Nick,” was all Peter said in response. “Who is he?”
Dr. Strange sighed, rubbed his temples. “He's a doctor, a colleague of mine, albeit an inadequate one.” He flashed Peter a sardonic quirk of the lips. “Profoundly irritating, as I'm sure you've gathered.”
“I don't know about that, sir.” Peter looks down at his worn leather shoes; the only black pair he had. “I've been told I can be profoundly irritating at times.”
Peter's senses, so attuned now in the wake of the devastation Thanos wrought, tracked his swallow.
Dr. Strange took a breath. “When you become a doctor, you swear a vow, a variant of the Hippocratic Oath.” He paused. “Primum non nocere,” Dr. Strange recited in perfect Latin. “First, do no harm.”
Peter looked down.
Dr. Strange sighed. Peter half-thought it was his favourite pastime.
“Come on, kid. I'm sure they're waiting for you.”
Peter and the rest of the Avengers were graciously offered accommodation in a nearby hotel for the duration of the wake.
Dr. Strange and his fellow, uh, wizard opted to stay as well, to give their condolences.
Aunt May volunteered to accompany him, to pay her own respects, but she was tired and stressed and too busy trying to figure out how to buy food again in an economy that thrived with only half the population, so he put on his big boy pants and faced the funeral on his own.
Big mistake.
So, later that night, in a hotel far too grandiose for his liking, when sleep eluded Peter for the god-only-knows-how-many consecutive days since Titan, he sought out the one person he knew would provide a welcome respite.
And that night, Peter found rest: sat with his back to the door, listening as Dr. Strange died and bargained over and over again in his dreams.
iii.
The next time Peter interacted with Dr. Strange in his sleep happened when he was drafted into his first magic-based S.W.O.R.D. mission – because apparently S.H.I.E.L.D. was so 2012.
Wanda Maximoff had apparently erected some kind of force field around a town no one had heard of before, which was equal parts cool and exponentially terrifying, and Peter kept having flashbacks to the civil war Tony drafted him into, and was thankful beyond belief he did not come face-to-face with the Scarlet Witch.
Dr. Strange was tasked with trying to communicate with Wanda, apparently through the medium of television adverts – you know, because that's a perfectly reasonable plan of action.
Well, they say tasked. In all honesty, Dr. Strange tasked himself, with or without S.W.O.R.D.'s input. Everyone else just worked around him on his time.
Peter wasn't doing much, didn't really understand what it was he was supposed to be doing, anyway. He got the impression they kinda just brought everyone along for the ride. That, and they kinda didn't know what to do with him now that Tony was—
Whatever.
Darcy Lewis was fun to talk to, though, and Agent Jimmy Woo taught him magic tricks that had Dr. Strange roll his eyes so hard Peter thought he'd never see them again.
(Which would be a great shame, his unconscious mind supplied. Dr. Strange had the most beautiful eyes.)
Monica Rambeau was fierce and fiery, kind and hard, and when she had the gutsy idea to face Wanda and warn her of Hayward's betrayal, Peter didn't hesitate one second to lend his strength to the cause.
Disastrous: their attempt was disastrous.
As Monica's specially designed space rover came apart, Dr. Strange pulled him out before Wanda's hex could take him in.
Just Peter. Monica had to find her own way out.
“What do you think you're doing?” he thundered, angrier than Peter had ever seen him. He had thought the anger directed at both himself and Monica, for their foolhardy actions, but no. No, he accepted Monica's explanation.
Peter's, however, refused to compute in that eidetic memory of his.
When all was said and done, when words were exchanged that should never have seen the light of day, Dr. Strange couldn't even look at him, and that hurt worse than any chaos magic ever could.
In his defence, Peter tried. He really, really did. He made it this far without seeking him out.
But now— now, he was consumed with a need too great, too untempered, too controlling.
As always, it was easy enough to find where Dr. Strange slept. All he had to do was listen to a narration of Thor and, uh, Loki's brief excursion to Earth. He slipped in the room.
By the time Dr. Strange offered Thor his help, he awoke, apparently now aware of Peter's sleep-stalking behaviour.
“I'm sorry,” Peter offered weakly – for everything – and to his utter horror sounded close to tears.
Dr. Strange sighed, muttered, “Get in, kid,” and Peter—
Half-drunk on adrenaline, sleep-deprived through trauma, craving the one person, the first person to touch him after Thanos unmade the universe—
Peter slid under the covers.
Cautious, gentle, keeping to the side he'd tentatively designated his own, until Dr. Strange released another exhale, large arms coming to pull Peter into his embrace.
Dr. Strange's chest was at Peter's back, and his heart sang.
Within seconds, he was asleep.
(The following morning, Dr. Strange became Stephen.)
iv.
Peter started going to the Sanctum Sanctorum. Not every day, but at least twice a week. It was comfort personified: familiar, safe.
Dr. Strange made Peter feel safe; feel home. Even though Peter – intimately – referred to him as Stephen in his private, personal thoughts, he remained Dr. Strange in reality.
That way, there could be no overlap.
As per usual, Peter strolled into Stephen's domain with abandon. Hey, if it wanted, it could keep him out. He was 99.9% sure the Sanctum wanted him to enter. Hell, perhaps the Sanctum even willed Peter's want into existence. At this point, he wouldn't put it past magic.
Nevertheless, the doors threw themselves open at his entrance, and Peter emerged.
Dr. Strange didn't so much as stir at his arrival. The edges of the Cloak did lift, however, which he took as a good sign.
He made his way over to what he had selfishly designated his impromptu lab area, and brought out the supplies for his web fluid. In all fairness, Dr. Strange had never said a word about it to him, and Peter knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if Dr. Strange minded, he would have said something by now.
The Cloak, seemingly bored of whatever it was that occupied the good doctor's attention, flew over to Peter's station without a second thought.
“Spider-Man, Spider-Man. Does whatever a spider can—”
“What are you singing?” Dr. Strange called: bemused, annoyed; possibly even arachnophobic.
“It's what all the kids are singing,” Peter said cheerfully. “It's catchy.”
The Cloak concurred.
“Is it?” came Dr. Strange's dry response, but even that did not hinder the workings of a smile on his face.
The rest of the day was spent working on their individual projects. Dr. Strange was summoned to Kamar-Taj by the new Sorcerer Supreme, Wong (“He got it on a technicality, kid, and if I had been here then the title would still be mine.”) at some point during the day, but he arrived just as Peter was debating what to order for takeout.
Afterwards, Dr. Strange offered Peter a guest room, the Cloak acting as a guide in spite of the fact the three of them had done this dance many times before. He would start his evening in the room, and come the morning, he would awake in Dr. Strange's arms. It was inevitable.
Tonight was no different. Peter's footsteps made little trace as they tiptoed into Dr. Strange's— no, Stephen, at night he was always Stephen – room.
Peter knew he was asleep. Stephen had gone through all the prerequisites for REM sleep without deviating from the script, his enhanced senses heard them all. His breathing had not changed its tune.
And yet, when he entered, he was greeted with a sleep-roughened, “Hello, Peter.”
“Um.” Peter carefully made his way under the covers. “Hi?”
It was the first time Peter had ever attempted to initiate conversation with a slumbering Stephen Strange – or, indeed, any slumbering person. Wasn't exactly part of his repertoire.
Still. How did the saying go? There's a first time for everything.
“I'm going on a trip around Europe with my friends this summer,” Peter began, strangely nervous, quiet and shy. He breathed out. “I'm a little scared. The one and only time I've left this country, excluding space, was when I went to Germany during the whole Accords mess.”
“You'll be fine,” Stephen murmured, so supportive even when unconscious. “It'll be good for you to spend some time with your friends. Peter Parker comes before Spider-Man. You’re too important.”
Peter found his lips quirk upward of their own accord. “Yeah?”
“Yes.”
v.
Peter's anonymity was ripped to shreds in a liar's reality, and he cracked.
Aunt May was compromised, Ned and MJ, even Happy— Their lives were ruined because Peter trusted, because Peter allowed himself to fall for manipulation, because Peter wanted to fall for manipulation.
Peter believed in Mysterio, and how many thousands of lives had his belief cost?
Not long after his plane touched down in New York, Stephen sent him a business-card, which Peter guessed was his way of saying, please contact me as soon as possible. But in his own way, Peter thought maybe Stephen was giving him some space, giving him a say in the matter instead of blindly advocating what he thought was the correct course of treatment.
Stephen was giving him a choice. When was the last time anyone spared him that kindness?
He went. Obviously.
Peter had his own course of treatment he wished to pursue; all he needed was a surgeon ready to excise the mass before it turned cancerous.
Stephen looked almost surprised to see him, which was weird. He thought Stephen knew all the comings and goings of his Sanctum. Unless he had made some kind of concession for Peter's presence, there really shouldn't be a reason for him to look so shocked.
“I’ve read about a spell you could do,” Peter said before Stephen could speak, flipping to a page in a dusty old tome that had taken about a billion years to find, locate and translate. But if Peter was anything, it was stubbornly persistent. “Here. This one. The Runes of Kof-Kol.”
Stephen's features shifted: blank, neutral, devoid of all emotion. Peter didn't let it phase him. He probably didn't like being shown up by a ballsy kid; it was the same with Tony.
“No.”
Peter's face, he was sure, was a picture of betrayal.
“Fine,” he said curtly, hoping the bluntness of his reply cancelled out any residual hurt. “Then I'll go find a sorcerer who will.”
Stephen's tone was unapologetically dismissive as he took the book from Peter with the simple fact, “You will be hard-pressed to find a sorcerer willing to perform a dangerous spell to brainwash the entire world.”
His expression softened, and Peter knew his face must have belied his hurt. He'd always been an open book.
“I'm sorry, kid,” Stephen murmured, low, sincere.
“Yeah.” Peter vehemently refused to register the hot sting of tears in his eyes, adrenaline coursing through his blood, burning with the need to get out of here, abort mission, Parker. It was a stupid idea in the first place. He should never have come here.
Unfortunately, magic trumped super-speed.
Arms came to wrap themselves around his frame – trapping the spider in a fleshy glass cup.
“Twenty seconds,” Stephen grunted against Peter's temple. “That's all it takes for the body to release oxytocin once your central nervous system has been depressed.”
Oxytocin: the love hormone.
“Your cortisol levels will decrease in that time, and you will feel less stressed.” His breaths came harsh against Peter's skin. “I promise you. You will feel better. Let me—” his voice caught. “Let me make you feel better.”
There, he held him as Peter let go, and released all of the trauma he'd gone through in the past, what, eight months – five years – crying into the fabric of Stephen's blue robes, the Cloak rubbing small circles on his back.
Eventually, the tears ran dry. Stephen still didn't release him. Instead, he bundled Peter in his bed (“Kid, when was the last time you slept?”) and climbed under the covers with him, providing him that much-needed comfort.
It didn't escape Peter's notice that this was the first time they had fallen asleep together in the light of day. Somehow, that felt important.
Peter waited, ignoring his own sleepy brain, until Stephen's breathing deepened. He needed to hear his words; he couldn't fall asleep without Stephen's murmurs coming harsh and fast or cool and slow.
And Stephen did not disappoint.
“I'm sorry,” he muttered. “I'm confused as to the relationship here. I mean, what is he, your ward?”
Peter giggled, the memory so fresh in his mind, an absolutely bonkers first meeting.
“No,” he said, following the script to a T. “I’m Peter, by the way.”
“Doctor Strange.”
“Oh, you're using our made-up names. I'm Spider-Man, then.”
Stephen's annoyance was palatable, and it was sweeter than any lullaby.
+1
All the life they shared, years of experience encased in single months and days, and never had Stephen heard Peter talk in his sleep. He knew the kid enjoyed listening to Stephen sleep-talk, knew he found it comforting, and found himself indulging Peter's whims.
Quickly, traitorously, Peter Parker had a person of the utmost importance to him. It shouldn't have come as much of a surprise; sleeping beside another person for long periods of time was conducive to forming strong interpersonal bonds, after all. Add into that Stephen's propensity for sleep-talking, and that would make for rather promising relationship.
However, Peter was always the one on the receiving end of Stephen's nocturnal audio.
Until now.
“Please don't turn me into a slug,” Peter slurred, delirious in sleep, an innocence that could only be his resonating in the plea.
Stephen frowned, perplexed, for all of five seconds before he realised what was happening. At long last, he finally got to see what it was like.
“Peter,” Stephen whispered, hand automatically coming up to comb through his hair, soothing him. “It's okay. You're just sleep-talking.” He craned his head awkwardly to kiss his head. “Go back to sleep. I'm right here.”
Petulantly, the kid Stephen coveted above all else gracelessly shoved his face in Stephen's neck. “But I don't wanna turn into a slug.”
Peter craned his head further, nose brushing the flesh there, sending goosebumps down Stephen's spine.
Amusement danced in his tone as he promised Peter, “No, kid, I won't turn you into a slug.”
Peter's sigh was content. “Y'promise?”
“I promise.”