thumb-sucking
Every time Tony see’s Peter, which is pretty much every second of every day, he swears the boy has an object in his mouth. The boy is always sucking on things, hard candy and pen caps and lollipops and the corner of his fingers, to the point where Tony wonders if he has some sort of an oral fixation. He never points it out, scared that he would embarrass the kid, but he takes note of the habit whenever he witnesses it.
It starts out slowly and inconspicuously, only getting far worse when Peter moves into the tower after his Aunt passed away. Peter always has a bag of jolly ranchers in his backpack and Tony often witnesses him popping piece of candy after piece of candy into his mouth, sucking at the colorful sugar until they melt. Sometimes he chews on them and those are the moments Tony wants to dive at the boy and confiscate the candy, while chastising him for ruining his teeth. He fleetingly wonders when he became domestic and parental enough to care about the boy ruining his teeth, but he still tries to replace the candy with blueberries next time he spends time with the kid in the lab. Peter is initially unhappy with this development, but then spends over an hour rolling the tart berries around his mouth and squishing them with his teeth and tongue.
After the candy problem, comes the pen caps and Tony affectionately teases the boy whenever he sees the tops of chewed up pen caps sprawled on the surface of bench or table in the lab and on the countertop in the kitchen. Every time Tony looks over, the boy is biting and chewing and sucking and once again Tony finds himself wondering if the boy is ruining his teeth.
He is almost happy when he catches Peter with the tip of his pointer finger in his mouth, one morning after Peter had spent the evening with Clint (who surprisingly seems really good for the kid), because fingers don’t cause damage to teeth. And then the man really feels like the father of a toddler. It is so undeniably a dad thing to prefer your kid sucking on fingers than pen caps and candies and Tony feels like a domestic mush at this development.
Sometimes when they are in the lab and he catches Peter biting pen caps or licking giant lollipops that scrape the top of the boy’s mouth and cause his teeth to rot, he teasingly tells the boy to suck on his fingers instead. Peter always blushes bright red when the man suggests that alternative, but he never protests. Tony often wonders why the boy doesn’t protest being treated like a child, but Peter is soft and so young and he can’t help but thinking that Peter must be a tad bit emotionally stunted.
Peter had gone through a laundry list of trauma in his short life span and losing his aunt had clearly been the last straw. He had been fragile ever since the woman had passed and Tony often felt like he was walking on eggshells around the boy, or like he has to treat Peter like glass in order to not break him completely. He refuses to do anything to further harm the boy and he is there to love and cherish and protect and never to harm. Peter is too precious and adorable and perfect to harm.
Tony glances up at the boy from where he is working on a new type of nano tech for his Iron Man suit. Peter is sitting criss cross applesauce on the floor. One elbow is on his left knee, his head resting lazily in his palm, and the other hand is rolling a ragged tennis ball towards DUM-E. The robot is playfully rolling the ball back and every time it gently hit his knee the boy would giggle softly and sweetly. Peter had his middle two fingers resting in his mouth and when he giggled spit would drip from the fingers onto his lap.
It’s slightly unsanitary, DUM-E isn’t a particularly clean robot, and Tony wants to grab the boy’s grimy hands and disinfect them before they returned to his mouth. But he doesn’t want to disturb the adorable boy from his game of catch and Peter had super healing anyways, so he’s sure a few germs wouldn’t kill the boy.
Peter claps his hands together when the ball rolls to him once more and when he returns his fingers to his mouth it is in a way that surprises Tony. When he glances over again Peter’s entire thumb is in his mouth. He is sucking methodically, like his entire life depends on it. The boy’s head bobs up and down at the rhythmic sucking and Peter strangely wants to reach forward and run his hands through Peter’s soft brown curls.
There is something so endearing and young and helpless about how Peter appears while sucking and it simultaneously fills Tony’s heart with joy, while still confusing him. He wonders if it’s normal for a 15 year old to suck their thumb. He hasn’t ever seen one suck their thumbs, but Tony hasn’t been a teenager in a very long time and it’s not like he’s in on the hip teenager things nowadays. For all he knows, sucking your thumb could be in.
Tony shakes his head, chuckling softly to himself. He doubts sucking your thumb is actually in. Peter is probably just tired and he’s always had an oral fixation anyways so it’s not like the thought of Peter being obsessed with having things in his mouth is brand new.
Peter’s head snapped up from where he was staring at the ball when he hears the chuckle and he drops the thumb from his mouth so quickly Tony wonders if it was ever there in the first place. He looks confused and soft and young and Tony drops the screwdriver in his hand onto the table with a soft, metallic clatter.
He slowly walks over to Peter, knowing that the boy hates to be surprised by sudden movements. Tony drops his body onto the ground next to the small boy and for a second he thinks that Peter may flinch away or get up and leave.
But Peter simply looks at him with bright eyes and then the boy is tentatively placing his thumb back into his mouth. Tony is beyond confused, because why would the teenager be sucking his thumb even after his mentor caught him?
But he doesn’t comment on it and he instead places an arm over Peter’s shoulders, pulling the boy into his side. Peter nestles into his mentor’s warm skin and Tony focuses only on the sound of Peter’s heartbeat and the feeling of every inhale and exhale the boy takes. It comforts him to know that the kid his here with him. They have both been through so much in life and it makes him happy to know that he is not alone. He has Peter and that’s all that matters.
Tony leans down and presses a soft kiss to Peter’s head, smiling at the shudder that passes through the boy’s skin. It makes him feel loved and complete and he wants to feel this way all the time.
He can feel Peter sucking rhythmically and he counts the beats in between every suck. He is still confused, but the feeling of the boy in his arms makes the confusion melt away and he is left with only the warmth.
He recognizes that someday he will probably have to unpack why the boy sucks his thumb. It may be an innocent part of his oral fixation, but if it is based in any sort of trauma- Tony feels responsibility to know and take care of the boy. There is something so undeniably infantile and somewhat concerned about the new habit, that Tony wonders if it is even responsible for him to ignore it. But he doesn’t want to embarrass the boy and the moment is sweet innocent and it’s easy to ignore the thumb sucking and explain it away as one of the kids eccentric behaviors.
Peter nuzzled against him like a cat, forcing Tony to lift his chin and let the boy occupy the space between his chin and collarbones. He is warm and heavy and Tony feels his eyes flutter shut as he listens to this heartbeat and the soft sucking sound. Peter is his everything and he loves this boy more than he loves anyone else in this entire world. He wouldn’t trade the kid, his kid, for anything.