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starkly · 2 months

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Title: And It's Valentine's Day Rating: Teen+ Pairing: Peter Parker/Tony Stark Tags/Warnings: Getting Together, Fluff, First Date, Valentine's Day, Happy Ending, Age Difference, also peter is a lil anxious bean but it's fine Summary: Tony invites Peter to hang out not realizing it’s Valentine’s Day. Meanwhile, Peter is freaking out trying to figure out if Tony asked him to hang out on Valentine’s Day for a reason. Notes: for @starkly for the @starkerfestivals valentine's exchange <3 the prompt used was 'tony finding out peter’s had a huge crush on him since childhood'. i hope you like it, happy (belated) valentine's day <333333

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“Wait, you’re hanging out with him on Wednesday?” Ned’s voice said through Peter’s headphones.

“Yeah, why?” Peter erased the last part of the equation he had been working on and flipped his pencil back over to try again.

“Wednesday is Valentine’s Day.” MJ sounded amused.

Peter’s head shot up to stare at his best friends on his computer screen. There was no way…he looked up at the calendar hanging on the wall above his desk and stared. Wednesday was indeed Valentine’s Day. Oh.

“Why would he invite me to hang out on Valentine’s Day?” Peter blinked. “Oh my god, what if he asked me to hang out because he knows I’m a single loser who would be all alone and he felt bad for me?” His voice raised an octave as he rambled on, anxiety flaring.

“Calm down, dude,” MJ rolled her eyes. “He probably doesn’t even remember the day of the week, let alone what stupid commercialized holiday it is.” She did air quotes around the word holiday.

“No, you’re right, yeah. Yeah.” Peter nodded.

“Still haven’t told him about your massive crush, huh?” Ned shoved a handful of chips into his mouth.

“Of course not!” Peter squeaked. “He does not need to know about that. Oh god, what if he knows about that? And that’s why he invited me over? What if he’s going to make fun of me? Or worse, what if he likes me back?!”

“Peter!” MJ yelled. “Breathe. Tony would not invite you over just to humiliate you. I might have a lot of issues with the man and his hoarding of wealth, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t see how much you mean to him.”

“Wait,” Ned cut in. “How would him liking you back be worse?”

Peter groaned and dropped his head to his desk with a painful thud.

—-

By Wednesday, Peter had worked himself up, back down, and then back up several times. He spent the rest of Saturday night on the call with Ned and MJ, the only way they could hang out now, being at three different colleges. On Sunday, Peter took his laundry to May’s and had dinner with her before swinging around Queens for a bit. He tried to get out and patrol his old neighborhood, but with his dorm closer to campus in Manhattan, it didn’t always happen.

Classes were normal, which was nice, but it gave Peter too much time to think about seeing Tony on Valentine’s Day. He kept up a constant stream of messages in the group chat, eventually causing MJ to send the rolling eyes emoji and put on Do Not Disturb. MJ was probably right, Tony probably didn’t even remember what day it was when he asked Peter to hang out. Wednesdays were Peter’s easiest days, schedule wise, and Tony more than likely remembered and that was why he picked Wednesday to hang out.

Peter had himself convinced of that when he finally activated the suit and took off towards the tower on Wednesday afternoon. It was nothing, just friends and superhero colleagues hanging out, like they did all the time. There was no reason to think anything deeper was happening, pfft why did he even get so worked up? That was dumb.

Launching himself higher on his next upswing, Peter let go of the web and sailed through the air towards the landing deck of the tower. He landed in a crouch, popping back up quickly, mask retracting as he skipped towards the sliding glass doors.

“Welcome, Peter!” Friday greeted him.

“Hi, Fri!” The rest of the suit retracted into his web shooters once Peter had removed his backpack. He flung it onto the couch and headed to the kitchen for a drink before going to find Tony, as was his routine now when coming to the tower. Peter stabbed the straw into the top of the juice box and wandered down to the workshop, slurping happily.

Tony was where he usually was when Peter came to find him, hunched over a worktable. This time he was soldering something, so Peter came in quietly. Nothing worse than being startled while doing something delicate, he knew. It didn’t seem to matter, though, because before the door even finished sliding shut behind him, Tony was looking up, his smile already forming.

“Hey, Pete.” He pulled off his goggles and set the soldering pen back in its holder. “How was class?”

Peter told Tony about the lecture, his only class on Wednesdays, as he finished up his juice, suction noises included, which made the older man roll his eyes. Peter laughed and tossed it towards the can, landing it without even looking.

Tony shook his head. “Show off.”

Peter grinned, heading over to his own station to check on the latest batch of web fluid.

—-

Peter could feel Tony come up next to the table, his arm hairs picking up the slight change in air flow as Tony moved. He looked up from his notes and noticed the sky outside was dark. “How long have we been working?”

“About three hours, but Friday says it’s time for dinner, so,” Tony shrugged in a what can you do? kind of way, as if he didn’t have the power to tell his own AI no. “What are you in the mood for? Your pick tonight.”

That gave Peter pause, and he swallowed. All the thoughts of “was this or wasn’t it?” that had quieted while he worked, came flooding back to him. Normally, Tony just had Friday order them whatever was fastest (usually because they got caught up in their work and were starving by the time they called it quits in the lab), but letting him pick sounded almost…date-like. No. He had already gone over this with himself, they were just friends hanging out.

“Uhm, Italian?” Peter inwardly winced. That was such a romantic Valentine’s cliche. Ugh.

“Sure,” Tony turned his attention to Friday. “Order us up some chicken alfredo, and stuffed shells, baby girl. Oh, and some cannoli, from the usual place.”

Dessert, too? And Tony remembered that the stuffed shells were his favorite. Oh, man…

They headed back up to the penthouse and got comfortable on the couch, Friday pulling up the movie list for them to browse. Dinner and a movie wasn’t unheard of for them, so Peter forced himself to calm down. There was no way this meant anything more than their hang outs usually did.

“You okay, Pete?”

Tony’s voice cut through Peter’s internal panic and he turned wide eyes on his mentor.

“What? Yeah, of course.”

“You sure? You look like you’re gonna hurl.” The man’s brow was furrowed in concern.

Peter wanted to bury his head under the cushions and never come out. How embarrassing for Tony to have noticed he was freaking out. And how embarrassing to be freaking out over nothing. Tony was a straight-forward guy, he does what he wants and doesn’t do what he doesn’t want to. If he wanted this to be a date, he would have asked Peter on a date. It probably would have been way fancier than lab time and ordering in, anyway.

“I’m all ears if you need to talk about anything,” Tony offered. “I was in college once, I know it can be a weird time,” he joked.

“No, it’s not that,” Peter assured him. “I just, uh, sorry. I’m being weird. Ignore me.”

“Something is obviously on your mind, so spill.”

Peter wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole. God, his face must be a tomato by now. “No, it’s fine- it’s nothing.” He bit his lip, physically trying to keep the words in. He tended to word vomit when he was nervous, and Tony tended to make him nervous. Peter seemed to always be word vomiting around the man.

Tony was quiet, just looking at Peter. The younger man finally cracked.

“I just…it’s Valentine’s Day and I wasn’t sure if this was just us hanging out like normal or it was supposed to be more, but of course it wouldn’t be more, I mean. You’re you and I’m me, there’s no way it would be more. And I told myself that, and MJ told me that, but my stupid brain has not let me not obsess over it since Saturday!” Peter rushed out. “And now you let me pick dinner and you got dessert and it’s Valentine’s Day.

“And I know it’s so stupid to assume, but then this stupid crush goes and convinces me that everything you do is a sign that you like me, too, when in reality it’s probably such the opposite because you have never given any indication that what you feel for me is anything but platonic, and Valentine’s Day is just a made up commercialized holiday so-” He glanced over at Tony and the man was staring, wide-eyed. Peter’s mouth snapped shut and he sunk further down into the couch. “Maybe I should go,” he mumbled.

“Well…first off, I didn’t realize it was Valentine’s Day,” Tony said slowly, before Peter could get up.

Peter nearly facepalmed, because of course. He had worked himself up over nothing and now he’s spilled his guts all over the place and there’s no way to shove those back inside.

“And second, that was a lot. How long have you been holding that in?”

Peter bit his lip. “A…while.” Tony looked expectant. “I mean, I always had like a celebrity hero-worship crush on you after Iron Man came to be. And then I met you and it sort of became more than a crush, but I knew nothing would ever happen because of Miss Potts and my age, so I tried to ignore it. That obviously has not worked well,” Peter said self-deprecatingly, looking down at his hands where they twisted in his lap. “And then after you and Miss Potts ended things, and I got older, well.”

The older man studied Peter for a minute. “What if I told you there were some not so platonic feelings on my end?”

“What?” Peter’s head snapped up, eyes wide with shock. He was sure he heard that wrong. There was absolutely no way that someone like Tony Stark would ever like him…

“Kid, fuck, Pete,” Tony sighed. “I’m, what, 30 years older than you? I had to keep that as buried deep as I possibly could. There are so many potential ramifications with just our ages alone, let alone the whole mentor-mentee situation. I wasn’t quite ready to admit to myself that I had any feelings or attraction towards you, especially when you were 17 or 18. It made me feel like a dirty old man, and I never wanted to pressure you into anything. Which it felt like it would be no matter what,” Tony explained. “But, you brought it up first.”

Peter blinked several times before looking over at Tony. “I mean, I’m clearly not all that opposed to the age thing…”

Tony stared before snorting. “How do you go from a rambly nervous mess to a cheeky little shit in the span of three minutes?”

A shrug. “Natural gift, I suppose.”

“C’mere,” Tony held open his arms.

Peter hesitated for just a moment. Tony didn’t move, though, just waited for what decision Peter would make. Finally, the younger man scooted over on the couch and let himself be enveloped into Tony’s warmth. The embrace was comforting, and felt so familiar despite this being the first time they’d been like this.

“I’m willing to try if you are,” Tony whispered.

Taking a moment to think about it (something that MJ would be proud of him for, he was sure), Peter nodded. “I really like you, Tony, more than I probably should.” He rubbed his finger over the stitching of the pocket opening on Tony’s jeans.

“You said you’d had a crush on me as a kid, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Peter agreed. “I didn’t really know or understand who you were when you were just Tony Stark, CEO of Stark Industries. I heard about you from time to time, mostly Ben or May shaking their heads about some new weapon or scandal. Sorry,” he added.

Tony snorted. “They weren’t wrong.”

Peter hummed. “But once Iron Man existed, well, you were a real life superhero. I was eight, that was the coolest thing ever for me.”

“Jesus, eight,” Tony groaned.

“Don’t make it weird!” Peter gently shoved his elbow into Tony’s ribs in warning.

“It’s already weird.”

“True.”

There was silence for a few moments. “So, how did it feel to come home and find me sitting in your living room?

“Oh, man,” Peter giggled. “Pretty sure my stomach dropped to the floor, and then you took me to my room and shut the door,” Peter turned to look at the man. “My fourteen year old, recently-discovered-pornhub brain nearly exploded.”

Peter shook with Tony’s laughter, smiling at the reaction to what was once such an embarrassing memory for him. He snuggled further into Tony, still a little stunned that he could. They both sat there, content in the quiet of the penthouse. After a while, Tony finally spoke.

“We should go on a second date,”

“We haven’t even gone on our first,” Peter laughed.

Tony laughed, too. “First dates are always full of nervous energy and awkward conversations, but if we count tonight as our first date, then I can take you out and spoil you the way I want and we can call it our second date,” the man explained. “Then, all the first date jitters are solved! Plus, as you pointed out, it is Valentine’s Day and I got dessert.”

Peter had to admit that was pretty sound logic, and Peter knew he was going to need all the help he could get on a date with Tony Stark. He would be awkward no matter what they called it, but thinking of it as a second date was helping to ease Peter’s mind already. Also, a first date of take out and a movie snuggled on the couch sounded perfect to him. “Okay, now hurry up and pick a movie.”

Tony picked Empire Strikes Back. He wasn’t a genius for nothing, after all.

#I LOVE THIS #starker #fic #text

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