now, part one
Peter doesn't remember much from that day.
He remembers being confused, disoriented. He doesn’t know when and how Ben and May disappeared in the crowd. He doesn’t know if he was trying to run and hide and if that was how he got lost. Or how it started, at all. He remembers, kind of, seeing the buildings explode, people scattering in all directions.
He remembers, very vividly, a man in metal armor — it could've been a robot, but for some reason Peter always felt like there was a human inside — landing heavily right next to him. The face plate with glowing eyes didn’t move as the robotic voice said, let’s get you safe, and Peter didn’t have a chance to decide whether he should be scared or excited before metal arms wrapped around him and his feet suddenly weren’t touching the ground anymore.
Of course, that didn’t actually happen.
Traumatizing circumstances can push impressionable children’s minds to all kinds of crazy shit. In Peter’s case, it was this — being flown to safety by a hero in shiny armor. Literally. Peter also saw another guy, a small figure swinging and jumping around the tall structures of the burning expo-center like a gymnast holding on to an invisible rope. Also a hallucination, obviously. But that one didn’t seem to interest the several psychiatrists Peter shared it with as much as the character in the metal suit. Eventually Peter started pretending that he realized those were products of his imagination. It made it easier to cherish these memories — when he didn’t have to fight for them anymore. It’s hard to accept that some of the few things you remembered from the most pivotal day of your life weren’t even real.
When and how he stopped pretending and actually accepted it, he doesn’t quite know. Must’ve been a growing up thing.
As for the real memories, there was this: sitting in the back of a car, blue and red lights flickering in the windows, blurring into purple. Tony was there, holding Peter's hand. Tony kept saying, "You're gonna be okay. You're gonna be alright.” His voice was shaking and he would try to smile but it never turned out right. He kept covering his face and looking away. Peter remembers that because he’d never seen adults cry like this before.
Eventually, later that night or maybe it was already the next morning, Tony was the one who kneeled down in front of Peter to look him in the eyes when he said, “Your Aunt May and Uncle Ben died in the accident tonight. I just got the confirmation. I’m so sorry, kid.”
Peter doesn't remember what exactly he felt when he heard that. He vaguely recalls saying something along the lines of, "But where do I go now? I have nowhere else to go." Tony just hugged him and said, "I will make sure you're okay, I promise."
Most of what Peter knows about that day he found out later, from a series of people sitting him down in a series of nondescript rooms and telling him things in slow sentences and quiet voices. He hated that. He was a kid but he wasn't fucking stupid. He knew what terrorists were, for fuck’s sake, he had to make a school project about 9/11 every year his whole life. He kept trying to tell them — cops, social workers, psychologists, some unlabeled parties whose identity Peter never found out — that they could be honest with him, straight forward, like Tony was. That usually made them pause and start writing something down in their notepads.
After all, from that very first night and to this day, Tony never dressed up the truth to soften its impact, he never underestimated Peter’s ability to understand complex things for what they were.
And he kept his promise. He made sure Peter was okay. Still does.
The thought makes something in Peter’s chest clench.
Why is he thinking about this, now?... Oh, yeah.
“Wait, so, if your mom and dad died in a car crash, what happened to your aunt and uncle?" the fratty looking guy currently holding the joint they've been passing around asks. A girl sitting next to him elbows him in the ribs and he almost chokes on the smoke. "I mean, like, sorry, dude. My, ugh, condolences?"
Peter chuckles.
"Nah, it's okay, it's been, like, forever, I don't mind," Peter smiles easily and everyone relaxes a bit. "It was a terrorist attack at a big event, they got caught in an explosion."
There's a gasp and a few whispered oh my god and poor baby and before Peter is reminded too much of the almost forgotten feeling of suffocating awkwardness following moments like this, he snags the joint, takes a quick drag and says casually, "Hey, I got adopted by a rich guy, so it's all good."
Everyone giggles with obvious relief. Yeah, getting stuck comforting someone with a tragic background at a college party is a fate Peter would never want to inflict on anyone. Plus, he would rather be caught in an explosion himself than sit through another pity fest where everyone looks sad and uncomfortable and he feels like he owes them a slice of his feelings for their fine performance of empathy. He’s had quite enough of those, thank you.
So they all dodged a bullet there. Someone proclaims, “Oh, I had a dream the other day that I was adopted by the scary lady from Devil Wears Prada!”
“Are you sure it wasn’t the lady from Cruella? You just told me recently you can’t tell them apart…” someone else says.
“What if it was both and they were like, together, that’s why they were adopting you!” another someone else adds.
And the night moves on.
Peter stays in the circle for a few minutes before quietly slipping away. Fresh air sounds good. Also a drink. Or a snack. Or both. And a quiet place to contemplate. He kind of feels up for some contemplating right now and he will blame it on the weed.
He's supposed to meet new people and make friends or whatever. That's why he showed up at this random party a friend of a friend of an acquaintance invited him to. He doesn't even really know anyone here, and the few people he met he doesn't feel particularly interested in.
He is trying his best, alright? It's just. He's not feeling it tonight.
A light chat over sharing a joint that somehow transformed into a group therapy session which led to him sharing his family history to strangers certainly didn't help. The funny part is, he was trying to make friends, that’s why he joined in when everyone started swiping stories of their dead relatives.
Maybe he just has too many dead relatives? What a thought to have in the middle of a party, truly.
He makes his way into the kitchen to get a soda. It’s gotten busier, there is beer pong going and everything, the lights are low, music pumping, people are dancing and making out in the corners. It’s set to be a great party. All it does though is give Peter a vague feeling of unease. Now he’s just depressing himself, goddammit.
He should call Tony.
Peter grabs a coke from the cooler and goes outside, smiling back at a couple people he crosses eyes with on the way, mostly to be polite and blend in with the crowd.
It’s a chilly November night so the backyard is empty. Perfect. Peter zips up his hoodie and climbs on one of the chairs by the pool. He wonders if Tony had put an infinity pool on the roof lounge like he had mentioned a few months ago. It would be pretty dope. That infinity pool in the hotel in Dubai where Peter celebrated his 16th birthday was cool as hell. Except for Ned almost falling over the edge when a round of chicken fight got out of hand, but it wasn't the pool’s fault. Mostly Happy's.
Peter pulls out his phone and pauses, trying to assess if maybe he shouldn’t be calling Tony like that, stoned and suddenly caught in a memory loop, wondering why Tony was crying, that night in the car all these years ago. It’s been a thought in the back of his mind, lately. And he was trying to keep it there, in the back of his mind. But now he’s sufficiently high and everything is loose up in there and, well. It’s okay to call Tony, he decides. It’s always okay to call Tony.
"Hey, kid," Tony picks up right away. "Everything alright?"
“Hi! Yeah, I’m alright, just… kinda got bored at this party.”
Tony huffs out a laugh.
“Of course you did. Well, I think I’m about at my limit of the things I have allowed and/or taught you for now, but don’t you worry, when you turn twenty one I will show you the ropes and you will never be bored at a party again.”
“I hate to break it to you, Tony, but there is alcohol here.”
“At a college party?! I am shattered to my core.”
Peter is smiling. What a drama queen. They could probably switch to video, that’s what they usually do, and seeing Tony’s face would probably brighten Peter’s mood. But Peter isn’t sure he’s up for the task of controlling his own facial expressions, right now. Also, he doesn’t want to risk someone from the party peeking outside and noticing he’s video chatting with Tony Stark. That’s a whole lot of attention Peter would rather not deal with.
“Really, though, are you okay?” Tony asks after a beat.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m good. Just. I don’t know. We were smoking and sharing dead family members stories and I shared mine and then, like, brushed it off, and it felt weird, but what am I supposed to do, be the sad boy at a party? But, like, I’m not sad or anything, just. I don’t know,” Peter sighs. The luminescent blue surface of the water ripples gently from the breeze. “I guess I just bummed myself out as an excuse to get away. Oh my god, maybe I am the sad boy…”
There is a pause. Then, “How stoned are you, exactly?”
“A decent amount,” Peter admits seriously. “Hey, can we put like, colorful LEDs in that infinity pool? We’re still doing the infinity pool, right? I kinda want one now.”
“A decent amount sounds like a fair estimate,” Tony laughs. “Sure, we’ll put some cool lights in there. You can have your own sad boy pool parties.”
“I’m not sad! I reject it. I’m just… contemplative,” Peter picks up a leaf off the ground and starts twirling it between his fingers.
“You can have your own contemplative pool parties.”
“That’s better.”
“Hey,” Tony starts, it’s soft and quiet. “I’m proud of you for checking out this party and trying to make new friends. You’re doing good, kid. You’ll figure it out.”
Peter closes his eyes. Is it embarrassing that he needed to hear that? Whatever.
“How did you do it? I mean, when you were in college, or, ugh, I guess a little later in your case, how did you…”
“...avoid awkward tension when new people found out my parents tragically died?” Tony finishes for him. Peter makes an affirmative sound, grateful he didn’t have to spell it out for Tony to understand. “Well, it was a little different. Everyone knew who I was and what happened, so I never really had to share it with anyone. I guess it took some pressure off. Plus, I was the one dictating the vibe of the room at most parties, or at least a guest of honor, so if I just wanted to have fun people went with it, no questions asked. Made it real easy to be an arrogant little fuck, I’ll tell you that much.”
Peter imagines it. Tony, young and sharp around the edges, compensating for the lack of privacy by putting a glass cover over his feelings — you can see what’s inside but you can’t touch it. Peter wonders what he would do, if he was one of the people around. He’d like to hope he wouldn’t be able to play along and have fun when someone is hurt, maybe only long enough to make Tony feel comfortable and safe. And then he would subtly let Tony know that he didn’t need to pretend, with him.
Which is pretty much the opposite of what Peter wants people around him to do, so maybe he’s full of shit and does actually subconsciously want someone to comfort him while he sobs about his losses?
It’s different, though. Peter isn’t actively hurting, like Tony was at his age when it had just happened. He still has his privacy, the option to pick and choose who he shares it with. It’s different.
“So everyone knew you were obviously going through something terrible but no one acknowledged it? That sounds… lonely. I’m sorry.”
“It's alright,” Tony says, he sounds surprised and Peter can hear the smile in his voice. “I didn’t want them to acknowledge it, for that matter. But hey, I got through it and turned out mostly fine, didn’t I? Took me long enough, though. You’re already a decade ahead.”
Peter snorts a laugh despite himself. “Lucky me for having two sets of parents die before I was ten to get a jump start on the trauma.”
Tony breathes in sharply. “Peter. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m so sor-”
“Oh, no-no, it’s okay! I know you didn’t. I wasn’t being sarcastic. I mean, I was, but not like, at you. I know you get it.”
“...Okay,” Tony replies idly.
They fall silent for a moment. Fuck. Has he made this awkward now, too? He can’t have this be awkward, not with Tony.
“Thank you for talking to me about it, it means a lot,” Peter says. There’s nothing better than honesty to break an uncomfortable moment. A very controversial statement, but it works.
“Sure thing, baby. Anytime,” Tony says. Peter still hears the smile. He ignores a wave of warmth going through his body after being called baby, that doesn’t need to be acknowledged any further than his subconsciousness. He’s a first year college student away from home, first time alone in the adult world and all that, of course he wants to be called baby by his father figure. It’s not weird. It’s a transition thing, okay? Tony doesn’t call him that often, anymore. It’s not weird to like it. Or miss it.
(Maybe, if he shared that, Tony would say something like, “Oh, Peter. You will always be my baby, you know that, right?”)
(Maybe, Peter needs to see a therapist again. Figure out what the whole metal armor dude thing was about after all and if it’s connected to him having questionable tender feelings for his adoptive parent.)
(Not that he’s actually thinking about any of this.)
“Wanna know what I was up to while you were Project X-ing over there?” Tony says conspiratorially.
“Yes!” Peter exclaims, a bit too excited, and it’s immediately easier to breathe.
Peter leans back on the chair and lets Tony talk his ear off about a nano-tech based communication model he’s been working on. Peter gazes up at the clouds floating through the moonlit sky, at the tree branches swaying. “Whaddaya think?” Tony asks when he’s finished outlining the idea.
You’re fucking brilliant and I’m just lucky to have fallen into your presence, is what Peter thinks.
“Man, that’s gonna piss off so many people,” is what Peter says. “A global nanobyte network that anyone can access with pretty much any device? That would put several industries out of business. Cellular networks, wireless networks… They will eat you alive.”
“Uh, sure, whatever. I’ll pay them off. Oil companies were fussy, too, and look at them now. They should send me thank you cards for their redemption arc,” Tony says with a kind of obnoxious nonchalance that he’s probably the only person to pull off, completely justified.
Peter’s grinning. It was pretty chaotic for the first couple years after Tony presented the world with clean energy like it was a new StarkPhone model. Peter’s favorite memory from that time is a rare press-conference right after arc reactors were approved to go into mass production. The conference was supposed to focus on adaptation of gas-powered vehicles to run on reactors, but by the end it turned into a circus, with vocally unhappy parties trying and failing to paint Tony as a villain. Someone started screaming, “What about the workers? What about millions of people who will lose their jobs?!”
Tony looked that man straight in the eye and deadpanned: “They’re welcome to come work for Stark Industries. Benefits are pretty good. Plus, y’know, saving the planet and all that. Other questions?”
Peter was watching it live on a laptop backstage, proud and excited and honored to be on the inside of the world’s most significant technological revolution in, like, forever.
Seems like now he'll be on the inside of another one.
“That’s awesome, dude. I’m super excited!”
“It’s still just a project. Might take a few years to develop…” Tony says distractedly.
“Oh, please, knowing you it’s gonna be a few months, tops,” Peter teases. “The paperwork will be a bitch, though…. I can’t wait to be back in the lab with you so you can show me the details and everything. I have ideas.” Peter is already daydreaming about pulling the codes on the screens and throwing chips at each other while arguing over theories and making bets about calculation results.
Tony is quiet.
“You’ll have your own scientific advancements to work on soon, don’t hold yourself back by tagging along on mine,” Tony suggests after a noticeably long pause. He sounds cheerful. Peter stares at the clouds and the branches and suddenly feels uneasy again. “You’re welcome to, of course, if you have time to visit over the holidays I’ll show you all the juicy blueprints,” Tony adds when Peter doesn’t say anything.
Peter’s probably imagining it. He’s still high, it was a strange night, he misses home. He misses Tony. He’s imagining it. Tony didn’t just try to exclude him from doing science stuff together. And from coming home?... That would be ridiculous.
“Of course I’ll visit,” Peter says instead. “There’s no if about it. I can’t wait to come back.”
“I know, kid. You don’t have to, though. You know, if you wanna travel, or something. Christmas in Europe with Ned and MJ, hm? You can do anything you want.”
Peter sits up. The wind is getting stronger. The blueish glow of the pool that was fascinating to watch just minutes ago now feels cold and uninviting.
“If I can do anything I want then I’d like to go home for the fucking holidays, if that’s okay with you,” Peter snaps, rougher than he meant to. Or just as rough as he meant to because is Tony trying to avoid seeing him? What the hell was that?
“Peter. Of course you can come home,” Tony says firmly in his no-bullshit voice and the tone itself immediately calms Peter down a bit. “I miss you, buddy. Alright? I can’t wait to see you. I just… don’t want you to be stuck with me again, your first holiday season in the real world and all that, you should have fun with your friends. That’s all I meant, baby.”
Okay, that’s entirely too many occasions of being called baby in a row. Peter would be alarmed if he could help the effect it has on him, which is strangely pacifying. So he spiraled a bit, no biggie. Worse things have happened when bad mood and weed united forces.
“I miss you, too,” Peter says because it’s the truth. Saying it out loud feels weirdly vulnerable, so he adds quickly, “and New York! Dude, MIT campus is awesome and all that, just like you told me, but I miss the city. And I’ll still have fun with my friends, they’ll be back in town, too. And, um, the program is great, obviously, lots of cool projects, just… not as cool as what we would do, you know. In the lab. So, yeah. That’s all. I’m sorry I snapped.” He cringes a bit because that was pretty much a word salad.
Peter’s kind of a mess tonight, taking everything into consideration. Oh well.
“So MIT is not challenging enough for you, is that what I’m hearing?” Tony says with an air of sarcasm that isn’t actually sarcasm. Tony would never doubt Peter’s intelligence, even as a joke. More of the opposite, in fact — sometimes Peter gets the feeling that Tony overestimates it. Not with any aggressive expectations or anything like that, more like… he will sort of casually assume that something is within Peter’s level of comprehension when it’s not quite there yet. It’s a strange sensation that usually leaves Peter floating somewhere between imposter syndrome and excitement at being challenged. Mostly it all comes down to a deep rooted desire to live up to what Tony sees in him. It’s a never-fading motivation that Peter holds near and dear.
And if sometimes it hits him the wrong way and he crawls under the blankets feeling like someone way starter and cooler and more creative should have ended up in his place — it’s just a side effect he’s mostly learned to deal with by now.
“Something like that,” Peter replies, smiling.
“Been there, done that,” Tony sighs. “No worries, we’ll throw some challenges your way. Gotta keep you nice and entertained when you’re taking a break from your boring, unstimulating molecular bioengineering course with a minor in, what, theoretical chemistry?”
“Advanced experimental theoretical chemistry,” Peter corrects.
“Exactly, sounds like a snooze-fest.”
“It is!” Peter giggles. “See, you get me.”
“That’s why I was on drugs most of my time there…” Tony muses out loud and then clears his throat. “Not that it was a good decision. Very bad, Peter, drugs are bad. School is good. It gets more fun after the first year, I promise.”
Peter rolls his eyes. So he’s heard. He knows about Tony’s wild youth but mostly in very general terms, aside from a few stories he coerced out of drunk and nostalgic Rhodey. Tony tends to keep his past close to heart — what he already told Peter tonight is a rare a precious crumb of information — and Peter respects that, but- sometimes he wishes he knew more about Tony’s early life that he didn’t learn from online articles he would read as a kid when curiosity got the best of him. Maybe he’ll just ask, some day.
They go back and forth about Peter’s school work. It’s nothing particularly captivating but Tony sounds genuinely interested so Peter tells him about his papers and the professors and some campus events. It’s good to talk to someone who doesn’t hold their college years as the highlight of their existence, which isn’t the case with most people Peter meets here these days, both students and faculty members alike.
“Do you have a ride home?” Tony asks after a while.
Peter blinks, checks the time. It’s not even late yet. “Why, are you gonna drive four hours to pick me up?” he says cheekily.
“I mean, I totally will if I need to,” Tony responds and Peter pictures his eyebrow going up in a well duh expression. “And it’s more like two and a half hours the way I drive, let’s be real. And I have a chopper.”
Whatever happens in Peter’s stomach at the thought of Tony speeding down an interstate or taking a whole ass helicopter just to pick him up from a party — he chooses to be oblivious about.
“So extra,” Peter says as if he was annoyed. “I’ll just take an uber. But I’ll probably go back to the party for a little bit, maybe find more people to overshare with and beat myself up about it after.”
“Accepting your sad boy agenda, I see,” Tony chuckles. “Be safe.”
“Still not sad!” Peter exclaims for the hell of it. “And I will.”
He should go back in, like he said, move on with his night and let Tony move on with his. But he lingers.
"Hey, Tony?"
"Yeah?"
"I wanted to, uh, ask you something," Peter forces himself to say, biting his lip and gazing into the pool again like maybe it will give him courage… or whatever it is that he’s looking for.
"Shoot," Tony replies easily.
Peter takes a deep breath. He could still drop it, just say “nevermind, lost the thought” and Tony wouldn’t think twice about it. But it feels like the question will keep buzzing in his head, now that it has crawled out of memory storage into his everyday thoughts for whatever reason. So he might as well just deal with it now.
"That night, at the expo, when we were in the car, you were crying, like, you were crying pretty hard…”
"Was I?" Tony interjects before Peter can finish his shaky sentence.
"Yeah, it's… it’s like, one of the few things I actually remember. Unless it's also a hallucination? Which would kinda suck," Peter laughs nervously. "I just, I dunno, never asked — why were you crying like that? I thought I'd ask…" he trails off.
Tony is silent for a moment.
"So you're asking me why I was crying on the night of a massive terrorist attack on my event, that I personally organized it advertised, while hanging out in a cop car with a little kid I just found unconscious in the bushes whose family may or may not have died, as well as hundreds of people?"
…Okay, that was obviously a stupid question. Good job, brain, big kudos on that one.
"Well if you put it like that…"
"Why were you thinking about it?" Tony asks abruptly and there is a note of alarm in his voice Peter can't quite place.
"Just, I don't know, came up in my head recently," Peter says as casually as he can muster. "You know how sometimes you have a thought or a memory for so long that you sort of just accept it, and then one day you look at it and go wait, what?... I guess it was just one of those." He says it to himself as much as to Tony. He doesn't know the real reason so it might as well be as simple as this.
They fall silent again. It feels like there’s more to be said. For a brief moment Peter considers pushing, but the high is wearing off and he can see that just because his brain was wired for a more interesting story it doesn’t mean there is one.
"Hey, kid?" Tony calls gently.
"Yeah?"
"If you wanna talk about it more, everything that happened, I'm here, okay?"
"I know," Peter says softly. "Hey, Tony?"
"Yeah?"
"It wasn't your fault," Peter hears himself say. It sort of comes out, straight from the heart, and as it does he gets scared that it was uncalled for. He’s said it to Tony before, in much more heightened settings, but it’s been awhile.
"I know,” Tony sighs. Peter hopes he believes that.
And this is the moment, of course, when the door to the backyard swings open and Gwen — Peter’s pretty sure that’s her name, anyway — yells, “Yo, Peter, quit talking to your boyfriend and get back in here, I have another joint!”
Peter all but chokes on air while Tony laughs, loud and raspy, and hangs up with a, “Have fun, kid.”
“It’s not my boyfriend!” Peter exclaims with exasperation, getting up and following her back into the house.
“Girlfriend, then? A non-binary romantic friend?” she smiles over her shoulder, leading them upstairs. “You run from the party to call someone, talk to them for an hour while giggling and twirling your hair and gazing up at the stars…the facts are all there, Parker. Matt will be sad, I already told him you were single, he thought you were cute.”
Peter goes through several stages of utter embarrassment and lands on curiosity.
“Matt, who’s Matt? I am single. Did he actually say I’m cute? Is he cute?” Peter rambles, to switch the topic and, well, because he’s genuinely interested. His face is still burning but things are moving quickly so it’s best to not dwell on any of what he just heard. About him looking like a teenager in love while talking to Tony… No need to think about that now.
He was just high. Everyone is under some kind of chemical influence here. No one’s judgment should be trusted.
Gwen is grinning.
“Oh, you’re a player,” she says with a wink, and then throws a door open. “I’m back and I brought Peter! Light that bitch up.”
The occupants of the room cheer and Peter finds himself touched that everyone is so happy to see him, and that Gwen made sure to include him even though they only met a few hours ago. Maybe he is making friends, after all. They light that bitch — a joint about two times bigger than the one they had earlier — up, and the second time around Peter ends up having a much better experience with the whole socializing thing.
Matt turns out to be a second year law-major who ended up here much like Peter himself, invited by a friend of a friend. He has a dark and handsome kind of vibe that’s pulling Peter in before he knows it. When Matt casually informs Peter that he’s blind, about ten minutes into their first conversation, Peter thinks it’s a joke and starts laughing, and Matt laughs back, and as it dawns on Peter that he’s serious, the barrier of possible uncomfortable tension is already overcome. “So you lied when you called me cute, then? You have no idea if I’m cute or not!” Peter declares dramatically, encouraged by Matt’s easy smile.
“Oh, you’re definitely cute,” Matt purrs, and they click just like that. Fairly soon they end up alone on a couch, their bodies sliding steadily into a horizontal position. They alternate between talking — about everything and nothing, sharing random high thoughts and stupid jokes — and kissing, soft and exploring at first but growing more impatient as the night goes on. There are other people in the room in the beginning, Gwen and some of the familiar faces from their first stoner circle. Hands holding the joint keep appearing in front of Peter’s face and he never turns it down. It all gets very hazy very quickly. At some point, Matt is blowing the smoke right into Peter’s mouth, his eyes closed, the red tinted glasses glinting in low light. Peter is euphoric, breathing in the smoke obediently even though he knows he should probably stop. The world already feels very fragmented. He feels fucking amazing, though, so he pulls Matt into a kiss before exhaling.
Peter has made out with people at parties before. Not a whole lot, but on enough occasions that he’s pretty comfortable with that by now, as opposed to dying of anxiety like he was the first couple of times. This feels different, somehow. More… unhinged. More real. Matt’s hands get under his shirt and Peter has just enough sense left to look around in an attempt to make sure they’re alone. Everything is spinning. He catches on to the bright accent of Matt’s glasses and holds on to that.
Tony has a pair of glasses a similar shade of dark red. Peter remembers because Tony wore them to one of the red carpets or charity events they attended a few years ago. Huh, actually, Peter made out with some foreign ambassador's son at that event, come to think of it… that guy didn’t look nearly as hot as Tony, of course.
Fuck.
He moans into Matt’s lips, and the next thing he knows is a hand sliding towards his belt. Peter gasps and moans louder and is about to battle his newly found anxiety and go with it all, when Matt drops his voice and whispers into Peter’s ear:
“Is this okay, baby?”
”Sure thing, baby.”
”That’s all I meant, baby.”
Peter jumps off the couch so fast he almost sends Matt flying onto the floor, but Matt rights himself and turns attentively towards where Peter is now panting and trying to process why the fuck he’s sabotaging his chances of finally getting laid.
“I’m sorry, I just- Uh, I’m-” Peter tries, fully aware of how pathetic he sounds.
“Hey, it’s okay, Peter. We don’t have to do anything,” Matt says simply. They’re pretty much the same age but at that moment Peter feels dramatically younger. He doesn’t even want to know what exactly he’s projecting on what, right now.
“I’m gonna go, actually. I should- go home,” Peter blurts out, trying to straighten up his clothes and fix his hair with shaking hands. He has no idea why he’s freaking out, by the way. Matt doesn’t seem angry or disappointed, not at all, the way he smiles makes Peter feel like he’s just been absolved of all the embarrassment of this frustrating story. “Thanks for the fun time, take care of yourself,” Matt says with that same easy smile. Peter finds his hand and squeezes it in a silent thank you, and then leaves.
In the Uber back to his dorm — which is really more like a studio apartment — he texts the group chat with Ned and MJ.
"i just almost had real sex but freaked out and ran away lmao what is wrong with me????"
MJ sends a series of eye roll emojis, which mostly means she’s not in the mood to socialize, with a general disapproving connotation. Ned isn’t online so they most likely won’t hear from him until tomorrow morning.
For a wild disorienting second, Peter considers texting that to Tony.
He wonders what Tony would say to that…
Fuck. Jesus Christ. Peter shakes his head aggressively, earning a side eye glance in the rearview mirror from the driver. That was too much weed. Yep, that’s obviously the reason for Peter’s unstable state of being. Too much smoking. And kissing. And thinking. And that phone call.... What a fucking night, huh.
Eventually, Peter crawls out of the Uber and into his place and then straight into the shower. It’s warm and safe and the hot water puts him back into his body again. He downs two glasses of water and takes the third with him to the bedroom, where he climbs into the bed hoping to pass out in the immediate future.
And then his phone rings.
What kind of sick game the universe is playing with him tonight is unclear, but It’s Tony.
It’s pushing 3am so it’s a little strange, but not completely unheard of.
“Hello?” Peter says like he’s not sure picking up was the right choice. He’s still pretty stoned and this feels like a deja vu.
“Hey, kid, are you… sorry, am I interrupting?”
“N-no, you’re not,” Peter manages, pushing off an intrusive thought that if he did stay with Matt, right about now Tony most likely would be interrupting. “I’m- I actually just got back from the party and was, um…” Peter shakes his head, Tony doesn’t need to know what Peter was about to do to release the built up tension after the… whatever it was with Matt. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay, I just wanted to- tell you. Something.”
Peter pauses, the cozy darkness of the room suddenly feels unsettling around the edges and he buries himself further under the blankets. What possibly could Tony need to tell him in the middle of the night, after they had just talked a few hours ago? It’s weird. It’s alarming. It’s okay, though — it’s Tony. Whatever it is, Tony won’t let anything bad happen, right? Right.
“Okay. I’m listening,” Peter says, his quiet voice resonating through the silent space around.
For a split second Peter allows the venomous voice of anxiety to pronounce words like “cancer”, “brain tumor”, “heart failure” out loud inside his conscious mind. Luckily, Peter has learned to ignore things like that.
Tony takes a deep breath.
“I lied. About me crying in the car. I lost someone. That night. I was crying when we were waiting in that car because that’s when it hit me that I don’t… that he’s gone.”
Peter blinks at the silhouette of the ceiling fan looming over his head, speechless, the image of Tony’s face with tear streaks running through dried blood frozen before his eyes.
“Tony. I’m- I’m so sorry,” Peter says, failing to find the right words to describe how tremendously sorry he is. For Tony’s loss. For bringing it up. It doesn’t help that burning curiosity has already started devouring his insides. “Who was it? I mean, if you don’t mind talking about it. I’m sorry, I just, um. You don’t have to tell me anything. And I don’t blame you for not telling me before, okay?” Peter means it. He’s still mostly shocked but he knows he won’t hold it against Tony, he can’t.
“Thanks, kid. It means a lot,” Tony’s voice is tight. He takes another deep breath. “I don’t… mind talking about him. It’s been, y’know, almost ten years. I just, I haven’t talked about him in a while… Anyway, he, um. He was my partner. We were close.”
Peter feels the intimacy of it immediately, hears it in the vulnerable sound of Tony’s voice, sharing those words like a confession. Peter still asks for clarification he doesn’t really need.
“Like, business partners, or like, a couple?”
“Both, actually.”
“So he was your boyfriend?” Peter meant to keep his questions very calculated but holding back his curiosity in his current condition is a battle he was not prepared for.
Tony doesn’t answer for long enough that Peter starts worrying if he overstepped. When Tony finally speaks, it’s heavy with pain.
“He was my everything.”
A misplaced stab of jealousy that punctures Peter's chest goes to die in a landfill with the rest of his misplaced feelings.
“I’m really sorry, Tony,” Peter offers. He wishes there was more he could say. “Did you… did you get a chance to mourn him?”
There’s a clattering noise followed by Tony swearing under his breath. Then, “Of course you would say something like that, goddammit…” Peter hears the quiet swish of sliding doors to the main balcony of their penthouse, then a click of a lighter.
“I didn’t have much time to think about things like that, you know? I had a kid to take care of, it was more important. And before you say anything, it’s not your fault, okay? It was my choice. And, well. I think that’s what got me through it, at the end of the day. I had to be okay, for you. And I was...” Peter listens to him take a drag, transfixed, completely paralyzed in the moment. “Maybe that’s why I wanted to share with you, now. Maybe I’m just… trying to mourn him. Better late than never, right? He, uh, he deserves that. The least I can do is let him go.”
After suppressing the urge to scream, “What do you mean was okay, are you not okay now? I still need you to be okay!” Peter comes to the realization that Tony’s definitely not quite sober. Which is okay, Peter decides. He isn’t either and Tony can most likely tell. Maybe it’s a good thing, that way they can… just talk.
“Tell me about him?” Peter asks.
“What would you like to know?”
Peter has about a million questions just on the top of his head.
“How did you meet?”
Another pause. Inhale, exhale.
“I recruited him to help me with a business quarrel I had at the time with some colleagues. And we — clicked. Immediately. We kept in touch, it was mostly professional and just, friendly, for a couple years and then we, you know. Fell in love. We got to be together for a few years.”
Tony doesn’t say before he died but Peter still hears it.
“How old was he?”
“Twenty-one.”
Tony’s voice is broken glass as he says it. Peter feels the chilling fact of it run through his bones. Twenty-one. That’s… young. Very young. It’s only a few years older than Peter is now. All of a sudden the tragedy of it is greater than Peter initially expected. He lies there, lost for words under the blankets, listening as Tony takes a drag off whatever it is he’s smoking, breathes in sharply through his teeth.
“Does anyone else know?” Peter asks after a pause, following an unpronounced feeling of disbelief lingering since the start of their call. Not because he doesn’t trust Tony, of course — although Tony did essentially lie about it for years, but for some reason it doesn’t concern Peter right now in the light of what it was about, which feels like something worthy of an exception — just because it’s… strange, that Peter has never heard anything about this before, ever, from anyone. And Peter is definitely in the top five people who know the most about Tony’s real life. At least, he used to think that.
Tony hums thoughtfully.
“We kept it very private, for obvious reasons. And I made sure no one knew his identity. It was safer that way. And happier. Not a lot of people knew about us.”
He sounds so simply, profoundly sad. God. Peter wishes so bad he could be close to him right now. To give him a hug, cover him with a blanket. Make him hot chocolate and order his favorite take-out. Be there for him the way he’s been there for Peter, always. On so many haunted nights when Peter couldn’t sleep and couldn’t breathe from the overwhelming weight of sorrow that would sometimes appear out of nowhere and knock him off his feet. Tony was always there to catch him.
Peter wishes he could pay it back. Some day.
This sucks. Being away from Tony sucks.
“Pepper knows a little bit, not in detail,” Tony continues. “She doesn’t know what kind of… relationship we had. And Steve. Steve knows almost everything. Well, at least half of everything.”
Peter successfully suppresses another sting of inappropriate misplaced jealousy that sparks in his chest at the thought of Tony trusting Steve with this more than him. He knows it’s stupid, it’s just one of the stupid thoughts. He’s been having lots of them tonight but it seems like an extremely fitting night for it.
“Wait,” Peter blurts out as the memory emerges in his head, words rushing out of him before he catches up to them. “Is that what Steve was talking about, the night you were breaking up? When he said that you were just jealous because he got his soulmate back and you can’t get yours? Oh my god. That’s a fucked up this to say. Wow…”
Tony snorts humorously. “Yep. Yeah it’s- a pretty fucked up thing to say. But, forgive me if I’m wrong, I don’t think you were supposed to be listening to that conversation?” judging by the teasing tone he’s not actually mad about that. Good, because Peter had not really thought this through.
“Hey, you weren’t really trying to be quiet,” Peter retorts easily. He was totally eavesdropping, of course, but they don’t need to get into that. He’s a curious person, okay? “I’m sorry he did this to you.”
“I mean… he was right. I was totally jealous.”
“Well, obviously. But it’s okay to be jealous when someone gets to magically reunite with their lost love. That’s like, a normal thing to be jealous about. But he shouldn’t have thrown it in your face like that, it’s a shitty thing to do. And he broke your heart, so. Double canceled.”
Tony doesn’t respond for a moment. When he does, he sounds deep in thought, somewhere far away.
“I still don’t regret telling Steve, you know? I like that someone knows about him, he deserves people to know about him.”
Peter waits for Tony to say something else, but he doesn’t.
“I’m glad that you got to share it with someone. And thank you for sharing with me. I, um, I’d love to know more about him, too, so I could, I dunno, help carry on his legacy?”
Tony makes a defenseless sound. Peter squeezes his eyes shut, because if Tony starts crying then he will, too.
“What was his name?” Peter asks, blinking the threatening tears away. Simple facts are always easier to talk about than big feelings.
Tony’s reaction is not exactly what Peter expects.
“Fuck.” Peter hears the sliding door slamming into the frame, Tony cursing under his breath, steps, glass clattering. And then the line gets muted.
In total silence, Peter wonders if maybe he should’ve never asked about the car moment at all. If maybe with that question he pushed Tony to relive the trauma he wasn't ready yet to face again. If Tony will start drinking and Peter isn't around and what if-
“Sorry about that,” Tony plugs back in, sounding kind of out of breath. “His name was Peter.”
Peter blinks.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“His name was Peter?”
“Yep,” Tony says, popping the P.
Peter is smiling and it must be a nervous reaction to the general absurdity of tonight’s revelations. “My name is Peter, too,” he says dumbly.
“That is correct. You two happen to share a name. It’s a fairly common name, so it’s not a big deal.” Tony pronounces in a tone weirdly calm in contrast to the emotionally raw vibe of the conversation. He clears his throat. “Anyway, it’s late. You probably have classes tomorrow. I have… something tomorrow, definitely. Let’s go to sleep, yeah? Time to go to sleep-”
“Tony?” Peter interrupts.
“Mhm?”
“Will you tell me more about him later?”
Tony sighs. It comes out ragged, but maybe Peter just imagines it.
“Yeah, sure, I’ll- we’ll talk later. Goodnight, baby.”
Tony hangs up.
Peter stares into the darkness around and doesn’t move.
Tony had a young lover with Peter’s name who was his everything and who died the night of the expo, the same night May and Ben did, the same night Tony found Peter by a strange turn of fate and decided, on a whim and against everyone’s advice, to adopt him.
That Peter was twenty-one when he died, which means… he was a teenager when they met. And when they got together. Tony was in his thirties.
Tony called him baby three times tonight.
Peter lies awake, struggling to not dwell on any of the million thoughts running through his mind in the wake of all this information. It’s a lot to take in, he needs to process, it will all settle in his head tomorrow, after he’d slept and sobered up. It’s okay. No reason to dissect his feelings now when they’re all over the place. No reason to give whatever is fluttering in his chest any labels.
(It feels like hope. But that would be a crazy, irrelevant thing to feel, so Peter doesn’t give it any name.)
He stays awake for a long time.