#axiwrites

[5am-the-foxing-hour]

Where can I find that thomaceit story ? 👀👀

In my brain... amongst all the other wip ideas that aren't the old ones... sadly

I am not generally known for posting chaptered stories before i have like 4-5 chapters already going and a more ironed out plot

So far the only thing for the au that needs a name is an incorrect quotes post here

#axiwrites

[sassy-starker]

Five Times Stark Industries Employees Saw Peter Parker

(And One Time They All Found Out Who He Was)

Word count: 9128

CW: none

Notes: I promised @tony-is-my-daddy that I would tag them in my fluff fic and that was literally almost 2 weeks ago so I’m really, really sorry. I got caught up with finals and everything, but, I finally present to you, A Self-Indulgent Fic Where Peter and Tony Act Sappy And Confuse Employees

1.

Peter couldn’t focus.  His eyes were bleary and his mind was wandering.  His attention was completely taken up by the hollowness in his chest.  The workshop felt all too empty and quiet, but he knew that background noise wouldn’t help.  He needed someone there.  He needed people— hell, even just a person— to be with him.  His mind felt distant, yet all too aware at the same time and it was driving him insane.  He hated the winter.  He hated seasonal affective disorder.  He hated this.

In a rash decision, before his brain could even think, Peter pulled out his Stark Phone and tapped into messages.  He tapped on his most recent contact and began to type.

Peter: hey, do you think i could go down to the intern labs and just work down there?

Peter: like the ones with the individual workspaces?

Peter: i need to be around people

Tony: Of course! I should be done with my meeting at about 5 so then we can go binge shitty rom-coms and cuddle and eat Chinese food

Tony: Pepper saw me on my phone. Gotta go

Peter: <3

Tony: <3

Peter, now with confirmation, gathered up what he was working on in his backpack and shoved his phone in his pocket before getting up and moving to the elevator.

“Where to, Peter?” FRIDAY asked him.

“Fifty-fourth floor please.”

The elevator moved relatively quickly down the floors, and it wasn’t long until it dinged and the doors opened, revealing rows and rows of worktables with interns scattered around and working on individual projects.  Peter knew that they moved on and off the floor, depending on whether they were working in groups with their department or solo.

People looked over to the unknown young man while he set his stuff down on a table.  He paid no mind, feeling comforted by having people around.  He always felt nice when he knew that he wasn’t all alone, that the world was still there and time was still moving on.  Just as he sat down, though, a lab director from some floor below them walked right up to the desk.

“I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re allowed to be here,” he said in a sickly sweet, obviously fake voice.

“Excuse me?” Peter asked politely, looking up to the man.

“This space is for interns and employees. You don’t appear to be either,” the man elaborated.

“No, I’m allowed to be here,” Peter shot back simply before looking away from the man and reaching for his bag to pull out his project materials.

“Who do you think you are?” the lab director interrogated. “I’ll get you kicked out of this building!”

“I’m Peter-” the young adult started, but was cut off by FRIDAY interrupting.

“No last names, Peter,” the AI warned. “We don’t want anything to happen to you.  I can assure that Peter is allowed to be here.”

Peter simply looked up and gave a shrug to the lab director before continuing to pull out the materials from his bag.  The man looked up to the ceiling fearfully before retreating back to his own workspace.

That was the first time they saw Peter.

2.

The next time Stark Industries employees saw Peter could only be described as chaotic.

The door to the stairs opened and somebody rushed out, weaving their way around people and workstations with practiced ease, all while laughing so hard that there were tears falling from their eyes.

Upon closer inspection, the employees realized that it was, in fact, the mysterious young man from only a week earlier.

Moments after Peter rushed in, the elevator dinged and the doors opened, and out ran the Tony Stark, covered in red and blue glitter. Not to mention that he looked furious, but not the type of furious where he was genuinely angry. It was more like that fond kind of furious, where you’re annoyed and upset, but can’t help but find the situation a bit funny and the person responsible is somebody you care about.

Tony ran out of the elevator, also weaving around his employees and their projects, obviously chasing the young man. By that point, though, the young man was laughing so hard that he had slowed down considerably. Thanks to that fact, Tony caught up and tackled him to the ground. All the employees were frozen in shock and just watching as their boss stood up and rubbed glitter off his skin to get it onto the man he was now standing above.

“No!” shouted the younger, getting up from his spot on the floor and giving the engineer a light shove. Both of them were still smiling and laughing about it though. “This is gonna take forever to wash off!”

“How do you think I feel?” Tony retorted, sprinkling some glitter into the other man’s curly hair. Once again, the younger man gave him a light push.

That’s when the two of them became acutely aware of the attention they had garnered.

“Sorry for disrupting your work,” Peter apologized to the crowd of employees sheepishly.

“We’ll send somebody to clean up the mess we made,” Tony told them, eyeing the trail of glitter he had left on the floor, “but get back to work.”

Hesitantly, they all began to go back to their workstations, but kept their eyes on the two men as they talked quietly and walked back to the elevator. Nobody said a word until the elevator doors had closed, obscuring their view of their boss and the mysterious man.

“Who the fuck is that kid?” Ashley questioned, turning to the coworkers she was in an experimenting group with.

“I have no idea,” Dylan answered, slowly tearing his eyes away from the elevator doors.

“He’s definitely a weird one,” Jenna piped up decisively. “I mean, have you ever even seen a picture of Tony Stark smiling that fondly?”

“And he talked back to him!” Dylan added on. “Like, holy shit, that kid shoved him and Stark only laughed!”

“I’ve seen a lot of strange things while working here,” Ashley told them, sparing a glance at the elevator, “but this is definitely one of the strangest.”

3.

“Please?” Peter begged.

“No,” Tony answered for what felt like the hundredth time. “Gossip spreads across the building quickly and basically every employee is already trying to figure out who you are! I don’t want them finding out and leaking it to the press!”

“But they already know, so what does it matter? It’s not like the rumors will go away if they just don’t see me again!” Peter argued, jumping up from where he was seated in order to stand in front of his boyfriend.

“The rumors will die down if they don’t see you again. They’ll eventually move onto talking about something else,” Tony replied, grabbing Peter’s hand and pulling him close. Peter embraced the man and the two just stood there for a few moments.

“I just want you to be safe,” Tony told him quietly.

“I’ll be fine,” Peter responded, pulling away but still holding onto his boyfriend’s hands. “All your employees sign NDA’s, so even if they did leak something to the press, which I doubt they would, legal would be on their ass and sue them for all they’re worth.”

Tony sighed, realizing that Peter had a good argument that he just couldn’t counter.

“Fine. You can come help me with the presentation.”

Peter pumped his fist in the air and let out a whoop in victory, causing Tony to roll his eyes fondly.

+++

When the employees working in R&D walked into the small auditorium on the 16th floor, they knew Tony Stark was going to be there, but they didn’t expect the infamous mystery man to be there.  On the stage, Peter was talking animatedly about something or other while Tony just listened, a fond smile on his face and his eyes sparkling.

The crowd walked in hesitantly, everybody’s eyes on the two men up front, who still hadn’t acknowledged them.  When everyone was seated and the clock struck the exact time the presentation was supposed to start, the two finally turned to them to get started.

“Hello, R&D department! I hope you’re all doing well!” Tony greeted with his press smile on. “You all know who I am, but I have somebody else here with me today.”

“What’s up? I’m Peter,” the younger man introduced himself, hitting the woah as he said his name.

“Did you just-” Tony started with a sigh before cutting himself off. “You and your fucking tiktok dances.”

“You say that as if you didn’t ask me to teach you the Renegade last week!”

“That was different! That was for the Stark Industries tiktok! I need to be relatable so I stay relevant!” Tony defended.

“And yet you still won’t let me teach you the dance to ‘Say So’ even though it’s iconic!” Peter shot back.

“You and I have different ideas of what counts as iconic,” Tony said dryly before turning back to the crowd of employees. 

“Anyway, today Peter and I will be telling you all about the new prosthetics line that your department will begin developing!”

Despite the importance of the presentation, the employees were only half listening as they were more focused on whispering about the mystery boy.

“Okay but what the actual fuck happened at the beginning of this?” Jenna asked quietly as she leaned over to her coworker on the right of her.

“No fucking clue. I can't believe this dude is just casually talking and joking around with Tony fucking Stark!” Dylan whispered in reply, not taking his eyes off the stage.

“And apparently he taught Stark how to do the Renegade. That’s fucking insane,” Ashley added from Jenna’s left.

The three turned their attention back to the two men on stage, finally listening to what they were saying again.

“Street smarts!” the younger man exclaimed, jumping in about something they were saying before.

“Stay alert out there,” both Peter and Tony quoted with large smiles. As if nothing happened, they jumped right back into the presentation.

“This is the weirdest fucking thing in the world,” Dylan declared quietly.

“I second that,” Ashley muttered.

“I third that,” Jenna added on without taking her eyes off the stage.

The presentation went on a bit longer, but it didn’t drag on.  It helped that the entire time the two men were joking around and making the employees progressively more and more confused.

Peter and Tony wrapped up the presentation soon enough and the R&D employees began to file out, most of them keeping their eyes on the two men talking quietly on stage.  Jenna, Ashley, and Dylan walked out together, some of the last to exit the auditorium, and the three made it to the elevator before Jenna realized she left her jacket behind.  She told her friends that she would catch up to them and way back to the now empty seats.  Not paying attention to the world around her, she looked for where she had sat and made her way through the row until she reached her seat and found her cardigan.

“See, I told you it would be okay,” said a voice from the stage.  Jenna turned around and saw Peter talking to Tony, the men standing close together.

“You know I just get worried,” the billionaire replied, his voice more sincere than Jenna could’ve ever imagined. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I can take care of myself, Tones. You don’t need to worry so much.”

Jenna felt like she was intruding on a private moment, so she started to make her way out of the rows of seats and back to the door as quickly and quietly as possible.

“Just because I don’t need to worry doesn’t mean I won’t. I care so much about you, Peter. You know I love you.”

Jenna froze in place, right at the end of the row of seats and about to step into the main aisle that led to the doors.  Against her better judgment, she found herself staring up at the two men on the stage, her gaze stuck on them.  She just couldn’t look away.

Peter and Tony were basically right up against each other.  They only were a couple inches apart with both their hands intertwined.  She couldn’t see it earlier, but, now that they were right next to each other, Jenna could tell that Peter was about half a foot shorter than Tony.  The younger man was looking up at the billionaire with a bright smile that was returned.  It was like nothing she could’ve ever imagined; a ball of sunshine and pop culture references right next to a man known to be scuffed up and rough around the edges.  It was like this boy brought out a completely different side of Stark.

“I love you too,” Peter replied softly before leaning up on the balls of his feet to give Tony a soft kiss on the lips.

Jenna, sucked in a breath of air harshly, the sound being enough to alert the men to her presence.  The two men stared at her with wide eyes for a moment and she stared right back.

“Shit.” Tony broke the silence of the room, his voice conveying the concern written across his face.  Peter put a hand on his forearm and schooled his features into a comforting look.  The man looked over at him and tried to take solace in his lover’s gentleness.

“I told you something was gonna go wrong,” the billionaire said with a mix of concern and fear on his face.

“We’re not getting into this argument again,” Peter responded decidedly, his tone making it sound final.

“I- I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize I was walking in on anything. I just came in because I forgot my jacket! I . . . please don’t fire me, Mister Stark,” Jenna stammered once she had broken out of her shocked stupor.

“He’s not going to fire you,” Peter reassured her with a kind tone.

“Well . . .” Tony said, but his tone was a bit humorous.

“You’re not gonna fire her because we decided we couldn’t wait until we got back to the penthouse to be all sappy.” Peter gave the man a stern look and it occurred to Jenna once again that this soft, delicate-appearing brunet clad in pastels had somehow reined in the man who had spent so many years being known as a playboy.

“I’m not going to fire you, but you can’t tell anybody, not even anyone within the company. If you do, my legal team can and will sue you for all you’re worth. Understood?” Tony had a dangerous edge to his voice, letting the girl know that he was completely serious. There was no way that this was an empty threat.

“Understood,” Jenna replied with a curt nod. “But I just have one question.”

“Shoot,” Peter told her.

“How old are you? Because . . . well, you look pretty young.”

Tony started laughing and Peter gave him an annoyed look.

“Stop laughing! You do this every time!” Peter exclaimed, lightly slapping his arm.

“Everybody thinks you’re, like, sixteen! You look barely old enough to have your license!” Tony shot back, his laughter dying down.

“I’m twenty-one,” he told Jenna. “I’m not underage, if you were wondering. Tony may be a bit of a mad scientist, but he doesn’t date people who are underage.”

“Okay, good. I was just worried for a second. Um, thank you for not firing me and I swear I won’t tell anybody. I should get going,” she rushed out with a relieved smile.  Without another word, she made her way out of the auditorium, holding her jacket close to her chest.

When she got back to her floor, Dylan and Ashley bombarded her with questions about what took her so long, but she just told them that it took her a second to find it.  Of course, they weren’t satisfied with that answer, but Jenna didn’t let anything slip.

That was the third time Stark Industries employees saw Peter.

4.

When Jenna walked into work the next morning, early as always, she found an envelope sitting on her designated area of her group desk, which separated into four sections for her project team to sit at. Across the front, it had her first name written out in a neat, cursive scrawl. She furrowed her brows as she looked at it, questions racing through her mind as she wondered who it could’ve been from.

Without another thought, she ripped it open and pulled out the contents. She unfolded the paper that was inside only to find a letter written in the same handwriting.

Dear Jenna,

I wanted to write you a letter, but realized that I never caught your name yesterday. I hope you don’t mind, but I asked FRIDAY who you were. Thinking back on it, that definitely makes me sound like a creep, so I apologize.

I wanted to thank you for not completely flipping out on Tony and I in the auditorium yesterday. I know that the whole thing was definitely crazy and it would’ve made sense if you freaked out. I also wanted to thank you for not immediately telling anybody. Seeing as no news stories have come out and nobody in the building has confronted Tony, I’m assuming you didn’t leak it, which is relieving.

I hope you’re doing well and if you need literally anything, just drop off a letter in the company mailroom in box 106.

As a thank you, there’s a Starbucks gift card also in the envelope! I wasn’t sure if you liked coffee, but seeing as you work in R&D and most of the employees in that department survive off coffee, I’m going to assume you do. Enjoy!

I’ll (hopefully) talk to you soon!

-Peter

P.S. Tony might not say it, but he’s also grateful that you haven’t leaked anything! I can promise that you’re good in his books :)

“What’s that?” Ashley asked, sneaking up behind Jenna and startling the woman.

“It’s nothing,” Jenna replied quickly while shoving the letter back into the envelope and cramming it into her bag. Ashley gave her a suspicious look but let it go, sitting down at her area of the group desk that was beside Jenna’s.

“I have a prediction!” Dylan announced as he entered the almost empty floor and waltzed over to Jenna and Ashley. He collapsed onto his stool and dumped his bag onto the floor beside him.

“This should be good,” Ashley muttered sarcastically, crossing her arms.

Jenna just looked away.

“So, we’ve established that it’s strange that nobody has ever heard of Peter and how, out of nowhere, he shows up!”

“Yeah, that’s kinda why we all think it’s weird,” Jenna shot at him, hoping that it covered up her panic.

“It’s also odd that he’s got a bit of a resemblance to Stark,” Dylan continued, decidedly ignoring her.

“I don’t see it,” Jenna interrupted once more, but the man didn’t stop.

“Maybe, just maybe, Peter is Stark’s son who he didn’t want in the spotlight until he was old enough to handle it!”

Ashley gasped while Jenna glanced away from them with a look of both panic and amusement. 

“Or Peter is Stark’s illegitimate child and he doesn’t want to have a scandal!” Ashley built on the theory with an excited smile and wide eyes.

“What do you think, Jenna?” Dylan asked, and both of Jenna’s teammates had their eyes on her.

“I think you two are full of bullshit,” Jenna told them, trying hard to keep her voice steady. “He’s probably just Stark’s intern. Maybe he’s a super genius or something.”

“Bor-ring!” Ashley replied with a roll of her eyes.

“Yeah, our theory is way better,” Dylan bragged, a bit of humor in his tone.

Jenna stayed oddly quiet for the rest of the morning.

+++

When lunch rolled around, Dylan and Ashley went off to the food court floor of the building, but Jenna decided that she wanted to make use of the Starbucks gift card she’d been given. When she opened the envelope back up to get it, she discovered that it was a two-hundred dollar gift card, which left her in shock for a few moments. Still, she shook herself out of it and went to go get a sandwich and a coffee.

After lunch, she found herself back with her teammates, working on their project, but sipping on a venti white chocolate mocha this time around. Around half an hour after they’d come back from lunch, the elevator doors opened to reveal Peter, wearing a sunny yellow sweater that matched the smile on his face. He walked out of the elevator and seemingly ignored all the eyes on him. He made his way over to a table working on prosthetics and began to help them out, the team there looking a bit surprised but extremely grateful for the assistance.

When Peter looked up and spotted Jenna, he gave her an even brighter smile, which she returned. She shook the coffee cup in her hand a little, bringing his attention to it, and he gave a silent chuckle. Jenna took a sip of her mocha and turned back to her project.

“What the fuck was that?” Ashley asked, drawing both of her teammates away from where they were designing arm prosthetics.

“What?” Dylan and Jenna replied in unison.

“That little interaction you just had with Peter,” the blonde woman elaborated, looking at Jenna accusingly.

“What interaction?” the man piped up before the brunette could respond.

“She and Peter made eye contact and smiled at each other and then Jenna held up her coffee cup and Peter chuckled!”

Dylan gave Ashley an incredulous look before shifting his gaze to Jenna.

“It was nothing,” Jenna defended with a level voice before getting back to work.

“Does this have something to do with the letter from this morning?”

“What letter?” Jenna and Dylan asked in unison.

Ashley sighed. “Jenna, come on, just tell me what’s going on? Is there something you know that we don’t?”

Before the brunette could even respond, Peter passed by their table.

“Hey, Jenna!” the young man greeted cheerily.

“Hey, Peter,” she responded, a smile on her face.

When he was gone, she went right back to her work, ignoring the looks from her teammates.

Jenna knew it was going to be a long rest of her day.

That was the fourth time Stark Industries employees saw Peter.

5.

By the next Friday, the questions from Dylan and Ashley had died down, but the suspicious glances were definitively not stopping, nor becoming anymore secretive. Luckily, though, Jenna was becoming better and better at ignoring the looks from her coworkers.

There were no more appearances from Peter, but Jenna had been enjoying exchanging letters with the brunet. The letters would sometimes be accompanied by pictures, mostly of Peter and Tony, and the woman had fun printing dumb pictures of her own and sending them back. The two would share funny stories and talk about themselves, though Peter still never shared his last name, but the brunette didn’t blame him for that; she knew he wanted to continue to keep himself on the down low. Tony would sometimes put in a few sentences on a letter, mostly a short quip about something his boyfriend wrote, and Jenna couldn’t help but find her boss’s dry wit rather humorous.

As the weekend approached once more, Jenna found herself feeling glad to get away from her teammates’ conspicuous looks and probing questions. When it reached midday, she was beyond happy to escape to the food court, rushing in order to get ahead of Ashley and Dylan. 

When she walked into the food court, she knew there was something going on. The chatter of the floor was quieter than normal, despite the normal amount of people being there. It was less conversation and more pointed whispers. When she followed where everybody’s eyes were looking, she discovered Peter sitting at one of the round tables on his own.

The young man had a couple slices of pizza on a plate in front of him, with one slice in his hand. He had wireless earbuds in and his phone was propped up using a pop socket attached to the back. It was obvious that he was watching some show or another.

Jenna simply shrugged and went to grab her own food, paying no mind to the whispered gossip spreading across the floor. She got a container of Chinese food from one of the stations and looked around to find a place to sit before realizing that she didn’t know where to go. She usually sat with her teammates, but she had been trying to escape them until she had to get back to work, which left her with nobody to eat lunch with.

In a strange and unusual burst of confidence, Jenna walked across the floor and toward Peter’s table, decidedly brushing off the eyes that followed her. She put her food down and sat in the chair across from her boss’s boyfriend, attempting to act casual as the quiet chatter toned down in order to hear what happened next.

Peter looked up when she sat down, seemingly confused that somebody was joining him at his table. When he saw that it was Jenna, however, he cracked a bright smile. He took out his earbuds and put them back into the carrying case before shutting off his phone and setting it face down on the table.

“Hey, Jenna!” His tone was bubbly, an air of familiarity to it. Just hearing him talk made Jenna feel calmer; the boy had a way of doing that.

“Hey, Peter,” she greeted back, less excitedly but still conveying that she was happy to see him again. “What’s up?”

“Not much! Tony’s in a meeting and I decided to come down here for lunch. I didn’t like how quiet it was.”

“I think you mentioned that once. That you don’t like being alone in spaces, I mean.” Jenna paid attention to every word in every letter she received from the young man. She felt like she connected to him in a way that she’d never connected to anybody before; it wasn’t like any friendship she had in the past.

“Yeah. It just feels nice to know that the world is still turning and I’m not completely alone.” He looked sad for a moment, eyes glazed over and distant. It was a somber kind of happiness, a mix of emotions that weren’t supposed to be mixed in case of an explosion, but not a loud one; it was more of a combustion, internal and quiet, soft and powerful. “But, anyways, what’ve you been up to?”

“Not much,” Jenna replied, trying to move on from the delicate moment. “Been working on the prototype for the prosthetics and I think it’s going well. There’s a few bits and pieces that me and my teammates have gotta work out before we send the design to our lab director, but I think we’ll get there soon.”

“That’s really cool! I honestly can’t wait for the prosthetics line to go into production! I think it's really gonna change the game since it’s gonna be a high tech line but also more affordable than the competitors!” Peter’s eyes were shining, the gleam replacing the far off look from only moments earlier.

“I’m excited for it too!” Jenna admitted. “I know it’s gonna help so many people and I can’t wait for it to go on the market!”

Peter opened his mouth to respond, but his phone buzzed before he could speak. He picked it up and read the notification, giving a small chuckle and typing out a response before looking up at Jenna.

“Was that . . .?” Jenna trailed off, unsure of how to finish the sentence but sure that the brunet caught her drift.

“Yeah,” Peter responded easily with a fond, but exasperated, look. “He finished his meeting and asked if I saved him some food from my lunch. I did, but I’m tempted to eat it myself and tell him to go get his own food.”

Jenna snorted.

“I’m not that mean, though, so I’m gonna take him the last two slices.” He slid his phone into his back pocket and his earbuds case into his front one before standing up and grabbing the plate with the two slices of pizza.

“I’ll see you later, Jenna!” he called as he walked away, heading towards the private elevator.

“See you, Peter!” With that, the woman went back to eating her lunch, as if nothing had happened at all.

When two people sat down at the table, Jenna looked up at them, only to find her two teammates, who had bewildered and suspicious looks on their faces. Dylan’s brow was furrowed and Ashley’s eyes were narrowed, the blonde obviously more dubious than him.

“What the actual fuck, Jenna?” she asked, voicing everybody’s thoughts.

“What?” the brunette replied as if she didn’t know.

“Don’t act all innocent! How are you so friendly with him?! This shit doesn’t add up!” Dylan nodded along to Ashley’s words. 

Jenna gave an exasperated sigh.

“Sorry, but that’s confidential information. NDA’s and all that, ya know?” She was trying everything she could to weasel her way out of it, but it was the first time she’d given her teammates a semi-straight answer, even if it wasn’t that revealing.

“Oh, come on, Jenna!” Dylan finally spoke up. “It can’t be anything that serious! Just tell us what’s going on?”

“I’m afraid that Ms. Locke is right, Mr. Hoffman. This is confidential information that Ms. Locke does not have the authority nor the necessity to reveal to you,” FRIDAY interrupted, garnering the attention of the people watching.

Jenna only shrugged under the intense gazes of her coworkers, but it still shut them up about it.

That was the fifth time Stark Industries employees saw Peter.

+1

It was relatively quiet for the next few weeks after the food court incident. While the suspicious glances remained, the questions had died down, though whispers still followed Jenna around as her coworkers spread rumors about how she knew Peter.

Speaking of the brunet, he hadn’t shown up since the incident, but he and Jenna had continued to exchange letters, becoming closer friends as time went on. The next time news about Peter came, it was only news for Jenna, as nobody else had any clue of how the young man was involved.

It had happened when Tony Stark had come to the R&D floor to talk to the employees there about the progress on the prosthetics line. Everybody had been trying extra hard to look busy as the man went around, all of them hoping to seem like they were valuable employees who actually did work.

Jenna’s team was the last that the billionaire came to, but as soon as he started talking to them, the brunette noticed something.

He had an engagement ring on.

The woman mentioned nothing, though she did freeze for a moment when she noticed it. Still, she pushed through and continued with the discussion about the progress they had been making.

When her boss later stepped away to answer a text, she quickly told her coworkers she had to use the restroom, rushing away and going down the hallway that Tony had gone down, which happened to lead to the bathrooms.

When she got there, she found him smiling down at his phone and typing quickly.

“Did you guys get . . .?” Jenna started, but trailed off at the end, startling the man a bit. He looked up at her, eyes a bit wide, but immediately recognized her. He looked confused at the question for a moment before realizing that her eyes were on his ring.

“Yeah, we did,” Tony answered, looking a bit sheepish as a blush painted his cheeks.

“How did it happen?” It was obvious that the girl was excited to find out.

“It’s actually pretty funny. I got down on one knee to propose and he looked so exasperated and I freaked out because I thought he was gonna break up with me or something. Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring box. He was planning on proposing that night too.”

“That’s absolutely incredible!” Jenna told him excitedly, but still kept her voice quiet.

“When we told our friends, they all looked so unsurprised that something like that would happen for him and I.”

The two both laughed before the billionaire’s phone buzzed again.

“I’ve got a meeting in, like, five minutes, so I should probably go.”

The two said their goodbyes and he started to walk back out to the main area to head to the private elevator, but stopped and turned around before he could.

“Just do you know, you’re invited to the wedding.”

Without another word, he walked away, leaving Jenna standing there in shock. A million thoughts were racing through her head and her eyes were still trained on the end of the hallway where the man had disappeared from.

“I’m invited to the wedding,” she whispered to herself. Taking a moment, she shook herself out of it and began walking back to her team’s table to get back to work.

Before she could get there, though, Ashley rushed at her and grabbed her arm, pulling her back the way she came. The blonde pulled her into the women’s restroom and checked every stall to make sure they were empty before turning back to her coworker.

“What the fuck it this?!” She held up a letter and  Jenna immediately knew who it was from. She snatched it from her co worker's hand and skimmed through it, praying to Thor that it wasn’t one of the letters that explicitly mentioned Peter dating Tony. She then proceeded to thank Thor when she realized that it was one one of the notes that mentioned a relationship, but not outright who it was with.

“Okay, Peter and I have been talking through letters. So what?” she replied, attempting to keep her voice steady so it sounded like she wasn’t fazed by the whole thing.

“Are you fucking with me?! You’re friends with this mysterious dude who’s all buddy-buddy with Tony fucking Stark and you’re expecting me to just let that go?! You’re out of your mind!” Ashley was obviously worked up about the whole thing and the brunette didn’t know what to say, but, luckily, her coworker started talking again before she could get a word out.

“You’ve been so secretive these past couple months and it’s been annoying as all hell! You’re not telling me anything and it feels like I’m so disconnected from you! Just tell me what’s going on!”

“I can’t! I can’t tell you what’s going on! I’m sorry that I don’t wanna lose my fucking job just so you can know every aspect of my life! Just let it go and leave me and my letters alone!” Jenna blew up, which was something she didn’t do very often.

Unsurprisingly, Ashley looked taken aback, shock written across her face. Jenna immediately regretted it.

“I’m sorry,” she told her friend softly. “I just can’t tell you.”

Jenna turned around and left the bathroom, the letter in her grasp. As soon as she was out, she went to her lab director and asked if she could leave a little early, giving the excuse of feeling sick. Of course, her lab director was understanding as always and let her go. She quickly gathered her stuff, ignoring the looks from Ashley and Dylan, and hightailed it out of there.

+++

“Dylan!” the R&D lab director, Kelsey, called from her office.

The man shot up from his team’s table, where the silence was as dense as molasses and the tension was so thick that you could cut it with a knife.

“Yes?” Dylan asked as he made his way over and placed himself in the open doorway. The director stood up and handed him a couple files.

“I have to go to a meeting, but these files need to be turned in. Could you take them up to the boss’s office for me?”

“You- you want me to take these to Mr. Stark?” His voice was a bit shaky.

“It’s not that big of a deal. You go to floor 89, you find the office with his name on it, you knock on the door, you tell him that I sent you, you give him the files, and you leave. I promise it’s not as stressful as you think it is.” Kelsey’s tone was comforting, but it did little to ease his anxieties.

“Okay,” he muttered, turning around and heading towards the elevator.

When the doors opened and Dylan stepped in, he found himself alone in the elevator. The silence was filled up by his anxious thoughts about what could go wrong. He spent the entire ride up trying to take deep breaths and remember that it was a simple job; just go in, give him the files, and leave.

The elevator stopped and he stepped off onto the eerily quiet office floor. It seemed that nobody was there and it freaked him out; it felt like a horror movie. He crept along the halls until he made it to a door with his boss’s name on it. He raised his hand to knock until he heard voices coming from inside.

“I don’t get why it’s such a big deal.” That was Tony Stark’s voice, and Dylan recognized it immediately.

“It just is!” A voice replied. It took Dylan all of three seconds to realize that it was the mysterious Peter who seemed to show up at the most random of times.

Against his better judgment, Dylan peered through the semi-open blinds that covered the windows of the office. When he did so, he found Peter sitting on the edge of the desk and Tony a couple feet in front of him.

“It doesn’t seem like that hard of a decision. If you don’t like this guy, don’t invite him to the wedding! It’s so simple!” The billionaire looked confused at the dilemma at hand, though Dylan had no clue what they were talking about. He was getting married?

“But it’s not! I don’t want to invite him, but it would be rude if I didn’t!” Peter looked worked up about the whole thing, face slightly flushed and fiddling with his hands.

“It might be rude, but if you don’t want him there, then don’t invite him!”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Except that it is.”

“Maybe for you!” It wasn’t a yell, but it wasn’t quiet. Peter had stopped fiddling with his fingers and was now pulling slightly at his hair.

“What do you mean?” Tony spoke like he could accidentally shatter the young man in front of him if he wasn’t careful.

“I mean that you’re Tony Stark. You’re a famous billionaire that can do whatever you want. If you don’t want to invite somebody, you don’t invite them. You don’t care if it’s rude because you’re Tony fucking Stark and you can do anything you’d like. I’m not like that, I can’t just do whatever I want. I’m Peter Parker, an average guy from Queens, and I’ve always been just that. If I’m rude, there’s consequences and it can actually affect my life. I have to think things like this over, even if you see it as trivial.”

Tony paused for a moment, letting the words sink in.

“Except you’re not just some average guy. You’re Peter fucking Parker. You’re incredible. You’re gonna change the entire world. Maybe I don’t get these kinds of things because I was raised in such a different world than you, but all I want is for you to be happy. Whatever choice you make here, I’ll be fine with, but that isn’t what I care about. I care about you, because you’re the most amazing person on this planet. You’re Peter Parker, the man I fell in love with.”

Dylan’s jaw dropped as he finally found the closure he’d been seeking for months. He knew what Peter’s last name was, he knew what relationship he had to Tony Stark, he knew who Peter was. He had never expected this, though. He cringed as his mind went back to that theory he had about Peter being Tony’s son.

He watched as the two shared a short kiss and finally moved back in front of the door, feeling the need to give his boss the files, run back down to his floor, and tell his teammates everything.

Dylan knocked on the door and he could almost feel the two men inside freeze in shock. It only took a second before the door opened, though, and revealed Peter Parker standing there with Tony Stark slightly behind him, both of them looking worried.

“Uh, I’m from R&D and my lab director, Kelsey, asked me to deliver these files,” Dylan stuttered out, failing at his attempt to remain casual.

“Oh, uh, yeah, yeah, thanks,” Peter replied, seemingly relieved as he took the files.

“I, um, bye, I guess,” Dylan stammered before turning around and booking it out of there. He could feel the two men’s eyes on him as he left.

When Dylan got to the elevator, he pressed on the button a few times, praying for it to arrive faster, and jumped on the moment the doors had opened wide enough to get through. He then adamantly pressed the button for the R&D floor. The elevator ride down felt much longer than the one up.

When Dylan did get to his floor, he raced through the doors and to his teammates, grabbing each of them by the upper arm and dragging them into the men’s restroom. He checked every stall to make sure they were alone before locking the bathroom door and turning back to his teammates.

“You guys aren’t gonna believe this!” Dylan announced. “I found out some crazy shit!”

“Why am I here?” Jenna asked him in a deadpan voice. “Can I leave?”

“Jenna, you’ll actually wanna hear this! I found out who Peter is!”

Ashley and Jenna both froze, but for different reasons.

“You gotta tell us!” Ashley exclaimed excitedly.

“No, you better fucking not!” Jenna said over her.

“What?! Why?!” Dylan looked genuinely confused.

“Because we’re not supposed to know! It’s obvious he wants to keep his identity a secret! You can’t go around telling people! You need to tell him and Stark that you know so they can feel sure that his identity won’t get leaked!”

“God, you’re such a buzzkill, Jenna,” Ashley shot at her.

“No, I’m a good person.”

It made her teammates go silent, the words piercing through them like knives.

“If you wanna go and tell and lose your job, then go ahead, but I want no part of it.” Jenna turned around and started to leave.

“Do you know?” Dylan asked her, making the woman stop in her tracks.

“What?” Jenna slowly turned back to him.

“Do you know?” he repeated, voice cold and serious.

Jenna stayed silent for a few moments, mulling over what she could say.

“Not on purpose . . .”

“And you didn’t tell us?” Ashley questioned, betrayal written across her face.

“Sorry I respect their privacy!” It was obvious that she was very much not sorry.

“Wait . . . did you find out when you went back to get your jacket after the presentation?!” Dylan exclaimed, looking like he had put all the puzzle pieces together. When Jenna stayed quiet, he knew that he had gotten his answer. “Holy shit! What happened?! Did you, like, see them kiss or some shit?!”

“Kiss?!” Ashley shouted.

“Jesus Christ,” Jenna muttered, putting her head in her hands.

“No fucking way! They’re in a relationship?!”

“Yeah!”

“That’s it,” Jenna declared decisively and turned around.

“Where are you going?” Ashley asked her, bewilderment shining in her eyes.

“I’m going to go tell them that Dylan figured it out and that you know,” Jenna told the blonde, voice laced with venom.

Jenna unlocked the door and left, not letting her teammates get another word in, but the two followed her out and watched as she stormed past all her coworkers and to the elevator, disappearing as soon as the doors opened.

“I might lose my job,” Dylan muttered, eyes wide and trained on the now closed elevator doors.

“Is it true?” one of the other employees, Amelia, asked as she walked up to Dylan and Ashley.

“Is what true?” Ashley replied.

“That Peter and Stark are in a relationship? You guys were implying it in there, and you aren’t exactly good at being quiet.”

“I’m definitely gonna lose my job,” Dylan whispered, correcting his earlier statement.

“So it is true!” Eric, another employee, shouted.

Everybody started talking, the floor turning into a storm of chattering.

“We’re so fucked. We’re absolutely, completely, utterly fucked,” Ashley murmured, only loud enough so Dylan could hear, and the man only nodded in agreement.

The two slowly walked forwards, looking around at their gossiping coworkers as they made their way back to their desk. They looked completely horrified, and guilt was quickly eating away at Dylan.

Before they could sit down, the elevator doors opened and Jenna walked out with Tony and Peter in tow. Everybody stopped, staring at the three of them. Peter looked nervous and tears were glistening in his eyes, but Tony just looked furious, his expression mirroring Jenna’s.

“Okay, which of you knows?” Tony asked the room, his voice deadly calm. He didn’t yell or scream, but that steady tone was almost worse than him blowing up at them.

One employee raised their hand, and everybody else followed, the last people to put their hands up being Ashley and Dylan.

“All of you, go to the auditorium. Now. All the other employees will meet you there. Do not say a word of this to them before I get there to talk to them about it. Do I make myself clear?” 

If looks could kill, all of the R&D employees, minus Jenna, would be dead. All of them mumbled their confirmations or nodded and slowly shuffled off to the elevators, heading to the auditorium floor.

Ashley and Dylan had fallen into the back of the crowd and were the last to get onto an elevator, meaning they could see the floor before the door closed. The two watched as Tony turned back to Peter and Jenna, who were looking regretful and heartbroken respectfully. The last thing they saw before the elevator started moving was Peter beginning to cry and burying his face in Tony’s shoulder as the man embraced him and Jenna putting a comforting hand on his back.

By the time the R&D employees reached the auditorium and began to make their way into the seats, other employees were either already there or just getting there. There was chatter, a mix of people confused why they had been called there and those who knew praying that they wouldn’t be fired. The chatter seemed to die down a bit as everybody was seated, all of them waiting in anticipation for whatever was going to happen.

After a few minutes, the doors of one of the entrances to the auditorium, which had been closed, slammed open. Everybody turned, though plenty of them couldn’t see the doors, and watched as Tony Stark stormed down the aisle towards the stage, Jenna Locke behind him and looking slightly less, but still plenty, furious. The two made their way up the three stairs that led up to the stage.

All the employees gazed up at the two standing center stage, and they were glaring back at them with serious faces. After a moment of silence, Tony finally spoke.

“I’m sure the majority of you are wondering why I called everybody to the auditorium. Today, somebody found out something that they shouldn’t have about my private life and, instead of coming and talking to me about it in order to keep it confidential, they went and told somebody, and those people’s department overheard. That person who found out and told will be fired and the person who was first told and was complicit in revealing information about my life will be put on probation.”

In the back of the auditorium, Dylan and Ashley sank down in their seats.

“You may also be wondering why I have one of your coworkers up here with me today. If you weren’t already aware, this is Jenna Locke.”

Jenna gave the audience a curt nod.

“Jenna also found out about this information a couple months ago. Instead of telling anybody, she talked to us and promised to keep it to herself, and she has kept that promise. She was also the one who told me about the information leak.”

The employees, minus the R&D department, were on the edge of their seats, eager to find out the information but scared of their boss and what he could do to them if things got out.

“Seeing as nothing can seem to stay a secret here, I have elected to talk to you all about it. Keep in mind that what happened in terms of this information being revealed was a serious breach of confidentiality and disrespected not just my own privacy. Take this as a warning. If any of you are to tell anybody outside of this company about this, your employment will be terminated and my legal team will sue you to kingdom come. This is not a three strikes you’re out situation. Do not tell a soul about this. Keep in mind the fact that you all signed non-disclosure agreements when you took this job. This counts as a company secret, and you will treat it as one.”

Everybody seemed to nod or give a murmur of confirmation. It wasn’t much, but it appeared to satisfy the man.

“Moving on, I’m sure you’ve all either seen or heard about Peter. Only a select few of you know who he is, though without his consent, and others have seen us interact but never known who we are to each other. This information about our private lives was discovered and we have no choice but to let you all know in fear of rumors and gossip being spread around and taken outside the company. Everybody, please meet my fiancé, Peter Parker.”

The room was shocked into silence, the only sound being the clacking of Peter’s shoes as he softly walked out from the wings and to Tony’s side. None of the employees uttered even a sound as they looked up at the boy, whose eyes were still slightly red and puffy from when he had cried only ten minutes earlier.

“Hey, everybody. I’m Peter. You’ve all probably seen me around,” the young man introduced himself, voice only loud enough to hear. “Like Tony said, we weren’t planning on telling people yet, but we don’t get that choice anymore.”

They were still silent.

“Since this will be your only chance to do so, we’ll be answering questions about this,” Peter continued. Nobody spoke, until one person in the third row raised their hand and the young man motioned to them. “Yes, go ahead.”

“How, uh, how old are you?” the woman asked quietly, looking slightly concerned.

Peter sighed as Tony looked to him with a humorous smile.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” he told the billionaire, who didn’t have a chance to respond before Jenna started laughing a bit. “You too?! I can’t believe you would betray me like this! This happens every fucking time!”

The employee who asked furrowed her eyebrows, seemingly mirroring the confusion of the rest of the audience.

“I’m twenty-one,” Peter told her. “Tony likes to make fun of me because I look like I’m not old enough to drive. Jenna’s laughing because she asked the same question when she found out.”

The woman nodded along with the explanation and everybody went silent again before another person raised their hand and Peter pointed to them.

+++

Eight Months Later

“And this is your team!” Kelsey told the new employees excitedly. “Meet Jenna and Ashley! They’ve been here for a while and are definitely excited to show you the ropes!”

“It’s nice to meet you!” Jenna greeted. “What’s your name?”

“I’m River,” the new guy replied quietly, cheeks flushed.

“I’m glad to have you on the team, River!” Ashley exclaimed.

“I’ll leave you all to it!” Kelsey gave River one last smile and walked off to talk to some teams about their projects.

“We’re finishing up some last touches on the update to the prosthetics line,” Jenna explained to the new recruit as he sat down. He nodded along as she began to explain the project.

Jenna was cut off by the elevator doors opening and Peter walking onto the floor.

“Excuse me for a second,” the woman told her team before jumping up and running over to the brunet.

“Who’s that?” River asked Ashely as he watched Jenna excitedly embrace the man and begin to talk to him.

“Have you signed all your NDAs?”

River nodded.

“Peter!” Ashely called. “Come meet the new kid!”

Peter bounded over eagerly, a large smile on his face as he approached the two employees, Jenna trailing him.

“Uh, hi, I’m River.”

“Nice to meet you, River! I’m Peter Parker. It’s always great to see new faces around here!”

“It’s great to be here,” he replied awkwardly.

Peter nodded and was off again, going around to teams and helping with projects, but, more importantly, just talking to the employees in general.

“Is he a director or something? Everybody seems to know him,” River questioned his team.

“He’s even better than a director,” Ashley told him with a grin. “He’s Tony’s Stark’s fiancé.”

Shock painted itself across River’s face.

“There’s no way that’s real!”

Ashley and Jenna glanced at each other before turning back to River. They didn’t say anything else to him, which was unnerving to the new employee.

As if on cue, the elevator doors opened once more and the Tony Stark walked out, a small smile adorning his face. Peter worked up from where he was helping a team and flitted over to the man happily. The two shared a short kiss before Peter turned back a bit.

“We still on for lunch on Friday, Jenna?”

“Of course!”

Peter shot her a smile and the couple entered the elevator, talking quietly as they disappeared behind the metal doors.

“Okay, so maybe it is real.”

Tag List (Let me know if you would like to be added or removed):

@darkerstarker @dim-ships-johnlock @haylove5

#axiwrites #starker #starker fanfic #tony stark/peter parker #starker fluff #starker fanfiction #theres a little hint of angst but its barely there #this was an excuse to write cute scenes #anyways i hope yall like it

[sassy-starker]

Jupiter

Word Count: 28,576

TW: Serious physical bullying (to the point where some might consider it unrealistic, but you wouldn’t believe the shit I’ve seen in public schools)

“Well, tell me how am I supposed to see the magic? ‘Cause I don’t believe in it no more”

-EDEN, XO

Soulmates were a strange thing, connecting two people together for eternity, yet not being able to tell if a person’s soulmate would die before they had the chance to meet or giving someone no soulmate at all.  There were theories about how it worked, from quantum entanglement to straight-up magic, but nobody was really sure in the end.  Most didn’t care about the science anyway. 

They cared about falling in love. 

Anthony Edward Stark had been born without words on his wrist and those words had not appeared in the years after he was born, leaving him destined to never find true love.  Destined to be isolated from the rest of the world.  It was partly why his father hated him, but his mother didn’t mind all that much. 

(Of course, she didn’t.  His mother had always cared about him.) 

No matter where he went, Tony wore bracelets over his wrist.  When people asked, he claimed that he wanted his words to be private so nobody could see them and pretend to be his soulmate.  He never let it slip that he didn’t have a soulmate, making sure that the only people who knew were his parents and Jarvis. 

Not having a soulmate, along with his abusive asshole of a father, was a factor in how he acted once he had grown up.  He drowned himself in alcohol until he was sure it would fill up his lungs and had sex with as many people as possible, hoping to fill the loneliness inside of him. 

It didn’t work. 

Luckily, Pepper and Rhodey were there to remind him that not having a soulmate didn’t make him any less deserving of familial and platonic love.

Pepper had already found her soulmate, a woman named Natasha Romanov.  She had been searching for a long time, but eventually found Natasha when the woman came in for an interview for a job in PR.  Pepper had the words, ‘I did not expect you to be this pretty’ on her wrist while Natasha had the words, ‘And I didn’t expect to find my soulmate in a job interview’ on hers.

Rhodey had found his soulmate when he was grabbing takeout for him and Tony.  He accidentally bumped into his soulmate, Sam Wilson, in a Chinese restaurant.  Rhodey had the words ‘Fuck, I am so sorry,’ while Sam had the words ‘Don’t be’ on his wrist.

Both Pepper and Rhodey were there when he got a soul sentence.

It was a rainy afternoon in August, droplets of water falling down gently like shimmering diamonds outside the windows of the penthouse kitchen.  Tony hummed a tune as he grabbed a granola bar from the pantry, coffee brewing behind him.  As he turned back toward the coffee maker to grab his mug, he felt a strange sensation across his left wrist.  It was somehow comforting and stinging at the same time.  It burned and yet it was cooling and soft.  It was like no sensation he had felt before.  He dropped the granola bar, pulled down the sleeve of his shirt, and there it was, the words that would haunt him for years to come.

What’s your favorite planet?

Tony Stark screamed.

Pepper and Rhodey came rushing in to see what was wrong, only to find Tony staring at his wrist and a granola bar on the ground.

“Tony, what’s wrong?!” Pepper exclaimed, her face portraying her confusion.  In response, the man just turned his wrist around, showing off the words that had chosen to place themselves on his skin.

“Tones, this is amazing,” Rhodey told him. “Why aren’t you excited?”

“I am thirty-one years old,” Tony replied, pulling his wrist away and staring down at the words as if they had hurt him. “By the time my soulmate is eighteen, I’ll be forty-nine. Whoever they are, they don’t deserve that.”

“Tony-” Pepper started but was cut off.

“And I’m a superhero that could get killed at any time. It just wouldn’t work.”

“Tony, you have to-” Rhodey began but Tony interrupted again.

“No! I’m not going to look for my soulmate, I’m not going to meet my soulmate, and I’m sure as hell not going to fall in love with my soulmate! We’re not even going to talk about them, okay!?” Tony was shouting at the end of his little speech, tears glimmering in his eyes like the rain outside.  He stomped off, leaving his coffee and his granola bar behind him.

+++

“I just needed company now. Yeah, I just needed someone around.”

-Conan Gray, Comfort Crowd

When Peter Benjamin Parker was born, it was a rainy day in August, rain dripping down the window panes in the hospital.  He was born with a single word on his wrist.

Jupiter.

His parents loved his soul sentence.

When he was young, he heard stories of soulmates meeting and staying in love through their entire lives, never giving up on the other.  He completely believed in soulmates and true love, never having doubts about it.

Peter’s parents died when he was four years old.

The idea of soulmates lessened in his brain, falling into the back of his mind to deal with at a later time.  As he began to open up to the idea of soulmates once more, tragedy struck.

He lost his uncle.

Grief overtook him and he didn’t have the room to worry about soulmates, instead filing them as fantasies and pretended they never existed in the first place, despite the happy couples around him and the words on his wrist.

Peter spent his years wearing a bracelet and never looking at the single word that had planted itself on his left wrist.  He gave up on romantic love, instead choosing to find a couple of friends who wouldn’t mind his inherent lack of interest in soulmates. 

Luckily, he met Ned Leeds and Michelle Jones in middle school.

Ned was a hopeless romantic, constantly looking for his soulmate everywhere he went.  He was determined to find them and never lose them.  It hurt Peter’s heart a bit to know that his friend still believed in love but didn’t let that get in the way of helping the boy find the one the universe chose to be his.

MJ was a different story.

The girl acted as if she had no interest in love or even friends, but Peter was good at acting like he was dumb.  He didn’t let it on, but he knew that she was looking for her soulmate.  He saw the subtle glances to her words when she thought nobody was looking and the ways she strained to observe every last person she saw.

Peter loved being with his friends, but it changed when both of them found their soulmates in the same week of junior year.

In the middle of October, a new kid arrived at Midtown and everybody was eager to talk to him, wanting to know if he was their soulmate. Due to that, their little trio didn’t get to meet him until the beginning of November.

Turns out, his name was Jacob and he had the words ‘You’re the new kid, right?’ on his wrist while Ned had the words ‘Is three weeks too long to be considered new?’ on his.  They were soulmates.

Peter had tried to be happy for Ned, he really did, but it was hard when his friend practically abandoned him to start hanging out with his soulmate all the time.  He was down a friend and left with MJ.  He didn’t really mind, but it was difficult when he realized he had nobody to talk to.  May was always gone and MJ was always buried in a book or drawing people in crisis, leaving Peter to drown in loneliness.

Still, he was glad he had anybody at all.

That Friday, at Academic Decathlon practice, a new kid joined the team.  Her name was Sydney and she had the words ‘Welcome to Academic Decathlon practice, loser’ written on her wrist. MJ had the words ‘If I’m your soulmate, am I still a loser?’ on hers.

And then MJ abandoned him too.

Peter found himself alone at lunch and without somebody to talk to, without anybody to listen to his frustrations and his interests that he so badly wanted to talk about.  He began to keep to himself, never opening his mouth to say a word except when asked to speak in class, but even then he gave short, often one-word answers. He even quit Academic Decathlon. This, of course, led to him being the freak of the school.

Rumors constantly floated around about him and stares, whether curious or disgusted, followed him wherever he walked in the halls.  He kept his head down and tried his best to ignore everyone despite the verbal harassment and physical bullying.

Silence ruled his entire life as he moved from junior year to senior year, voice becoming hoarse from lack of speech.  His teachers rarely called on him, knowing he would only give short answers and that he already knew the material.  He was left alone in that sense, but the bullying only got worse. Teachers would turn their heads and pretend they saw nothing, never getting Flash and his posse in trouble because of how much money was between the group.

So Peter let it happen, let it become as normal to him as the seasons and days pass.  He was waiting for the last day of school so the torture would finally end.

As much as he wished to go to college, he couldn’t afford it.  He had gotten into MIT and hadn’t responded yet, but knew he would soon have to decline so he could take a gap year, or possibly two, to work and get enough money to go through at least two years of higher education.

The universe really had it out for him.

+++

“Called to the devil and the devil said quit. Can’t be bothered, better handle your shit.”

-Rainbow Kitten Surprise, It’s Called: Freefall

The universe really had it out for Tony Stark.  He was practically knee-deep in paperwork and had so much more work to do, meaning he couldn’t go back to the workshop.  He groaned as he flipped through another legal document, trying to figure out why he even owned the company at this point.  Still, he worked on.

Tony was almost grateful when he heard a knock at his office door, hoping it would be someone who could distract him from his work for a bit.  Unfortunately for him, the door opened to reveal Pepper, who was holding a small folder of documents in her hand.

“I’ve scheduled for you to go to Midtown School of Science and Technology next week to give a talk about aeronautics to the senior class,” she told him without a greeting, walking forward and setting a folder on his desk. “These papers contain all the things you need to talk about, what to remember about the school, and the top students just in case you run into them or have to talk to them in the lecture.”

“Are you seriously trusting me to talk to impressionable young minds about science?” Tony asked her, picking up the folder and beginning to flip through the files.

“It’s just a simple lecture,” the CEO reassured him. “You’ll be fine.”

With that, Pepper exited the room and left Tony to flip through everything.  He sighed and opened the folder completely, deciding to look at the top students first.  It was the ten best students, the first paper on the stack being the tenth best kid.

Tony flipped through the files without interest, half-heartedly glancing over the information about the students’ extracurricular activities and GPAs. He paused when he got to the last paper, though, as he saw a handsome young man who happened to be the brightest of everyone in the impressive school.

He was a senior named Peter Parker.  He had a perfect GPA, took seven AP classes, had near-perfect scores on the SAT and ACT, and had been accepted to several nice colleges.

Tony couldn’t stop staring at the paper, taking in all the boy’s accomplishments and his soft eyes and fluffy brown hair and bright appearance.  He suddenly wasn’t dreading the lecture as much.

+++

“Make my messes matter.  Make this chaos count.”

-Sleeping At Last, Jupiter

When it was announced that Tony Stark was going to be giving a lecture to the, frankly rather small, senior class, Peter couldn’t find it in himself to care.  There wasn’t any big excitement for him.  Yeah, sure, Tony Stark was a genius superhero with a shit ton of money, but Peter himself was a genius superhero with no money, so it didn’t really matter.

Peter was just glad the attention was focused on the lecture and not him. That meant he got through the next few days with minimal bruises and no bloody noses. It was the best week he’d had in a good while.

His luck ended on Thursday, the day before the lecture, when Flash decided that Peter had gotten through the week so far too easily.  So he beat up Peter a little worse than usual, leaving him more bruised than other weeks. The blunt force had also caused some bleeding, but it didn’t really matter to Peter. He would usually heal fast but he knew that May’s paycheck wasn’t the highest, so he skipped a lot of meals just to make sure he wasn’t taking more money away from his aunt than he needed to. It upset his advanced metabolism but didn’t hurt more than everything usually did.

When Peter patched himself up, he noticed the black eye he was donning. He didn’t really care about that either.  Apathy was a common thing for Peter and it didn’t matter to him just like everything else.  Knowing nobody would care, Peter came to school with the black eye.  The teachers wouldn’t do anything about it anyway.

It was only when Peter arrived at school that he remembered the lecture that was happening. The seniors were taken straight from homeroom to the cafetorium for the presentation and would be allowed to leave early afterward.  Chairs were set up in front of the small stage and the tables were pushed back.

Peter sat down in the back row, alone and away from the other students, who were trying to sit as close to the front as possible to be closer to Tony Stark.  Once everyone was seated, the genius came on stage and was met by cheers.

“Thank you,” Tony said in his press conference voice. “Thank you all so much. Big shout out to your school for having me. I’m excited to talk to you all about aeronautics.”

As he spoke, Tony searched the crowd for someone, and nobody noticed except Peter.  When the man caught Peter’s gaze, recognition flashed in his eyes and his smile turned genuine for a second before returning to his paparazzi smile.

Peter didn’t care.

Instead of paying attention, the boy pulled a sketchbook out of his backpack and flipped to an empty page, putting his pencil to the page and waiting for something to come to mind to draw.  Eventually, without thinking, he began to draw the solar system. He liked space after all.

“And since you’re such a small group, you each get to ask one question!” Peter heard Tony say once he had turned back to the lecture. The questions began as he continued to sketch.

When Peter’s mind came back into focus once more, he realized he had sketched Jupiter in the middle of the page.  With a glare at the sketchbook, he dropped his pencil and let it clatter to the ground. He gave a small growl and ripped the page out.

“How about the young man in the back?” Tony asked and everybody turned to Peter, who was holding the torn out paper, which he was getting ready to crumble up. He closed his fist around the paper and tried to ignore the stares.

“What’s your favorite planet?” Peter questioned with a shrug, looking halfheartedly at the famous man just a couple dozen feet in front of him.

Tony’s eyes widened and he gave a quick glance down to his left wrist before regaining his cool and answering, “Jupiter.”

Peter’s own eyes widened at that.  He pulled up his sleeve and looked at his bracelet-covered wrist, going to move the jewelry, before stopping himself and lowering his hand.  Tony had moved onto the next person, so the vigilante grabbed the discarded paper in his lap and finished crumbling it, letting it drop onto the floor without a second thought.

“Thank you so much for having me, Midtown!” Tony said with his press smile plastered on before giving a wink and walking off stage to the applause of the teenagers.  In the very back, he could see Peter packing up his sketchbook.

“Thank you so much for coming, Dr. Stark,” Principal Morita expressed with a grateful smile.

“It was no problem,” Tony chuckled before sobering up. “I’d love to talk to your top student though. Peter Parker, was it?”

The principal turned nervous. “Uh, may I ask why?”

Tony gave a suspicious look. “I’d like to talk to him about a job opportunity at Stark Industries.”

“I don’t think you want Mr. Parker for the job. Perhaps you might like Flash Thompson. He’s extremely smart,” Morita advertised with an anxious smile.

“I didn’t see Mr. Thompson on the top ten students list,” Tony commented with a dangerous edge to his voice. “I did see Mr. Parker though. I don’t get why you’re so against me meeting him.”

“Well,” Morita stuttered out, “it’s just that Mr. Parker is a bit . . . quiet and, uh, strange. He doesn’t quite fit in with the other students.”

“I don’t see why that matters. I’d like to see him.”

With a sputter and stammered, “Of course,” the principal rushed out, leaving Tony alone in the wings.

“Mr. Parker!” Principal Morita called to the person at the back of the exiting crowd. Peter whipped around and looked at him with no emotion. “Could you come over here?”

Everybody watched as Peter made his way over, not quite walking fast, but not quite trudging to the stage. Whispers broke out about it as the seniors exited, the doors closing behind the last of them.

“Dr. Stark wants to discuss job opportunities at Stark Industries with you,” Morita told him quietly once he reached the stage. “Please don’t mess this up for the school.”

Despite the hushed tone, Tony heard him, eyes widening at the very prospect of a staff member saying that to a student. He studied Peter for any sign of shock or fear, but all he saw was an emotionless face and a small nod in acceptance.

Principal Morita walked out and gave Peter one more warning look before exiting the cafetorium.

The boy turned around and looked over to Tony, who was frozen in shock in the wings.

“If you don’t want me as your soulmate and never want to see me again, just tell me,” Peter reassured him. “I wouldn’t hold it against you.”

Tony sputtered for a second before walking out of the wings and standing right in front of Peter, who seemed to shrink back a bit without even moving a step. “What in the world gave you that idea?”

“I don’t know . . .” Peter muttered, averting his gaze to the floor. “The way you seemed shocked to see me right now. The look you looked at me during the lecture. The way you moved on so quickly after my question. It just kinda gave me that impression.”

“I moved on because I didn’t want to announce you as my soulmate in front of your classmates in case you didn’t want to be my soulmate,” Tony answered, “and I was looking at you in shock because of what your principal said to you.”

Peter looked up to meet the man’s eyes before looking down at the floor again.  He gently pulled up his sleeve, took off his bracelet, and offered up his wrist, showing off the word ‘Jupiter,’ which stood out against the yellow and blue bruise.

“Peter . . .” the genius started quietly and trailed off. “Peter, are you being abused?”

The way Tony said his name felt so intimate, but the boy didn’t have time to dwell on it.

“What?!” Peter exclaimed, looking up at the man and startling him with the outburst. “No! My aunt wouldn’t do that!”

“Then what’s this bruise?” Tony questioned a bit louder now, but it was more around his normal volume.

“Just . . . bullies. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

Tony sighed and looked down, putting his face in his hands for a moment before looking up again. He gently grabbed Peter’s hand and the boy began to pull away before stopping himself.  Tony added that to the list of things he needed to ask him about.

Tony tenderly led him to the edge of the stage before releasing his hand and sitting down with his legs hanging off.  Peter followed his lead but kept his legs up and crossed them, twiddling his thumbs in his lap.

“What's your favorite planet?” Tony asked him after a moment of silence.

“Pluto,” Peter answered after thinking about it for a second.

“You know that isn’t actually a planet, right?”

“Shhh, you’ll hurt Pluto’s feelings!” the boy quietly exclaimed with a grin. Tony could see a bit of the younger man’s true personality cracking through the mask, so he turned to him and returned the smile, giving a soft laugh.

A faint blush rose to Peter’s cheeks as he realized that he was the one who made the man of iron laugh.

“Seniors, you are now free to go. I repeat, seniors, you are now free to go,” a voice said over the intercom.

“Since you’re being released early, do you wanna come to the tower?” Tony offered, giving Peter a kind look.

“I’d love to.”

+++

“Milemarker twenty-seven says we’re on the way to heaven and I smile at the passenger seat.”

-Lincoln, Banks

The ride to the tower was mostly silent, interrupted every once in a while by Tony asking Peter a question about himself and then giving his own answer after the younger man.

When they arrived, Tony led Peter up to the penthouse and let him sit in the living room while he quickly went to the kitchen to make them coffee. When it was finished, he brought in milk and sugar and set them on the coffee table, sitting in the armchair next to the couch Peter was seated on.

“I really wanted to avoid this topic,” Tony hesitated, “but I have to ask about the black eye.”

Peter retreated into himself, the slight light in his eyes disappearing and the mask of apathy falling back on. “It’s really nothing,” he defended in a monotone voice.

“If it really is nothing, then why did you go back to pretending you don’t care?”

Silence fell over them as Tony continued to look at Peter with a sadness that made the younger feel a wave of guilt wash over him.

“It’s just bullies, so it’s really not a big deal.”

“Is this a regular thing? Do the teachers not care?”

Peter’s silence said more than anything he could’ve answered the question with.

“When did it start?”

That’s when Peter broke down. He began to quietly sob, trying to muffle it as tears rolled down his cheeks. He hadn’t cried since before he met Ned and MJ and it felt good to just let it happen.

It was the first time in about a year and a half that somebody had cared enough to ask if he was okay.

“Peter, love, you don’t have to try and stay quiet,” his soulmate assured him softly. “Just let it all out.”

Tony stood and moved to sit down next to Peter. He tenderly reached over to the younger man but hesitated when he flinched and went quiet for a moment. Then the sobs returned at full force, even harder and somehow conveying the younger man’s anger at himself. Tony felt his own tears well up in his eyes but didn’t let them out. Instead, he continued to move and gently coaxed Peter into his arms, letting the younger cry into his chest. He rested his chin on the curly mop of brown hair and finally let his own tears gently fall from his eyes.

Tony rubbed Peter’s back gently, nearly getting up to go find the bullies who hurt Peter every time he felt Peter flinch against his chest from his hand running over a bruise.

“Baby, I’m so sorry I didn’t find you earlier,” he apologized sincerely before wondering when the last time Peter heard an apology was.

“‘s not your fault,” the younger reminded him as he pulled away from his chest.

“Could you tell me the full story?” Tony inquired as he tenderly took Peter’s hands in his.

And so Peter did.  He told him about meeting Ned and MJ and then them both leaving him in junior year. He told him about not talking because he had nobody to talk to. He told him about the touch starvation he felt. He told him about being bullied because of not having friends. He told him about his teachers letting the bullies get away with it. He told him about covering up his emotions with complete apathy. He told him about being beaten up the day before. He told him about his doubts and fears about love. He told him everything.

“I just gave up on emotions. I just gave up on me,” Peter sobbed quietly, looking up at Tony with glistening eyes.

“Well, I’m not giving up on you,” Tony declared, making the younger give a small, wavering grin, but a grin nonetheless.

Peter leaned into Tony’s chest and listened to the man’s heartbeat. Both weary from the day, they fell asleep in each other’s arms on the couch, ninety-three stories up from all of their problems.

+++

“I’ve been naive and I’ve been feeling hazy maybe.”

-Bowling Shoes, Portland

Peter left early the next morning but not before Tony made breakfast for them. They had pancakes, which was the only food the genius knew how to make without completely ruining the kitchen.

Now, Tony was left sitting at the breakfast bar, drinking his coffee and looking down at the drawing Peter had torn out of his sketchbook for him.

It was a pencil sketch of an ocean under the starry sky and had Peter’s signature in the bottom right corner. He was contemplating where to hang it up in the tower when Pepper walked into the kitchen, moving to the coffee maker to grab a cup before the workday started.

“How are you, Tony?” she asked, not looking up from where she was choosing the cup size for her coffee.

“His name is Peter,” Tony told her, staring at the paper. Pepper looked over to him with confusion etched onto her face.

“I’m sorry, but what are you talking about?”

“My soulmate,” he elaborated. “His name is Peter. Peter Parker.”

“What?!” Pepper exclaimed and ran over to the breakfast bar, coffee long forgotten. “You met your soulmate?! Where? How? When?!”

Tony set down the paper and looked up at his long-time friend with a sad smile. “He goes to Midtown. He’s the top student and he’s a senior, so he was at the lecture.”

Pepper noticed his somber face and immediately sobered up. “Does he . . . does he not like you?”

“He does,” Tony sighed as tears slightly welled up, “but some things have happened to him recently and he’s scared of me leaving. Fri, could you bring up some pictures of Pete from yesterday?”

“Sure thing, boss.”

The hologram on Tony’s watch activated and showed a picture of Peter sitting in the back of the audience and not looking up. He swipes and there’s one of him looking up, but you can see the black eye. Pepper’s brow furrowed in concern. The next image was of Peter showing Tony his soul sentence, but there’s the hand print bruise.

There were more images of bruises of his arms and where his jeans rose a bit and showed off his ankles.

“Is he being . . . ?” Pepper started but trailed off.

“He’s being bullied because he’s quiet. He doesn’t have anyone to talk to since his friends left him and his aunt is always working,” Tony explained, eyes focused on the image of Peter crying into his chest. “The teachers don’t care in the slightest. Hell, when I asked to speak to Peter, giving the excuse that he was the top student, the principal tried to convince me to talk to a student who wasn’t even in the top ten. He’s hurting, Pep, and I don’t know how to help him”

Silence fell over them and the hologram shut off, leaving Tony’s deactivated watch behind.

“You just gotta be there for him, Tony,” Pepper encouraged. “I know you, and I can tell you care for him. If you show that to him, I have a feeling that you’ll be a lot closer to making everything work out.”

+++

“Could’ve been one lonely night just like the others, but you lit up my life. This is what it’s like to be lovers.”

-Ollie MN, Please Never Fall In Love Again

Tony had never had a proper first kiss. Hell, he’d never even had a proper relationship. His younger years had been filled with emotionless sex. There was no meaning in real romantic love for Tony, so he learned how to focus on family and friends in his thirties.

Well, that was all before Peter Parker.

Tony had always been one for looks, but that tended, of course, to be for sex. Men and women, anybody really, just had to be hot for Tony to have sex with them.  There was no appreciation for kind eyes or fluffy hair or soft skin.

That was all before Peter Parker.

Tony had thought he would never feel romantic love. He had heard stories of falling in love with your soulmate faster than one would think to be possible but was never too intrigued by the topic. After all, why should he care about how fast someone falls in love when he doesn’t even have a soulmate?

That was all before Peter Parker.

Tony wanted to kiss Peter and run his fingers through the boy’s hair and drag his calloused hands across his skin and look into his coffee-brown eyes all day and fall in love as fast as possible.

And, dear lord above, he had fallen in love.

The second time Peter came over to the tower was the following week.  The two sat on the couch, close together but still with a bit of room.  Tony didn’t push his soulmate to move any closer, completely content with going at the younger man’s pace.

That was new, too. Tony had always wanted to set his own pace, but, for once, he wanted someone else to decide how fast everything moves.

They sat and talked, blabbing away about science and basking in each other’s company as they sipped mugs of hot chocolate.  Tony’s chest felt lighter every time Peter inched even a little bit closer to him, wordlessly informing the genius that he was slowly growing more comfortable around him.

“So you made the webs yourself?” Tony asked Peter, astonishment laced into his tone.  Peter couldn’t stop the blush that spread across his cheeks.

“Yeah,” he replied sheepishly but with a small grin. “Used some scraps for the actual shooters and some chemicals from the school chemistry lab to make the web solution.”

“That’s amazing!” the genius exclaimed, knowing that he meant it. “Just imagine what you could do when I get you in a proper lab!”

“You’re . . . you’re gonna let me in your labs?” Peter questioned in amazement, yet somehow remaining slightly neutral.

“Of course! You’re a fucking genius!”

The praise made Peter turn a deeper shade of pink.  Tony couldn’t help but just stare at him in awe.  His soulmate was gorgeous in his opinion, especially when he allowed his emotions to peek through and paint across his face.  Without thinking, the man reached forward and began to run his fingers through Peter’s hair.

Peter froze for a moment, shock getting to him as he looked up at his soulmate. For a second, Tony thought he would flinch back, but Peter leaned into the touch. As Tony began to continue the movement, his soulmate’s eyes fluttered closed and his shoulders sagged as if the simple touch helped release everything he had been holding onto.  He let himself be pulled into Tony’s side as the soft feeling of his hair being played with calmed him.

When Peter leaned against him, Tony wanted to shout for joy.  He slowly shifted the younger man from where he was leaning on his shoulder to his chest and then to a lying position with his head in the genius’s lap, all while continuing to run his fingers through his hair.

Tony couldn’t help but notice how at peace Peter looked.

It was the most relaxed he had ever seen his soulmate.  

+++

“If it makes you happy, then why the hell are you so sad?”

-Sheryl Crow, If It Makes You Happy

“Hey, FRIDAY said you had something to tell me,” Rhodey said as he entered the lab, finding Tony working on an Iron Man gauntlet. He looked up and motioned for the colonel to come and sit next to him. Albeit hesitantly, Rhodey walked over and sat down.

“I found my soulmate,” Tony blurted out, looking at his friend dead in the eyes.

“You what!?” Rhodey cried out.

“He’s a senior at Midtown and I met him in the presentation,” Tony told him. “His name is Peter Parker and I care about him so fucking much, Rhodey. I wish I would’ve listened to you and started searching sooner because he’s . . . because he’s really needed someone this past couple of years.”

“What . . . what are you on about, Tones?” Rhodey questioned him with a puzzled look.

“He hasn’t had anybody to talk to since junior year. No friends. His aunt was always gone. He was just . . . alone. And he’s been bullied really terribly and no one cared and I wished I found him sooner so I could’ve helped.”

“Tony, it’s not your-”

“Except it is my fault, Rhodey!” Tony shouted, pulling at his hair in frustration. “I completely ignored the fact I had a soulmate and, by the time I found him, he’d already put on a complete mask of apathy and hadn’t cried for a year and a half! He had bruises all over him and a black eye and just said it didn’t matter! He sat on my couch and sobbed and . . .  and flinched when I reached over to hug him and tried to muffle his sobs and I wish I had found him earlier.”

They both stayed quiet, letting the echoing effect of the words fill up the air.

“Tony,” Rhodey finally chimed in, “I’m gonna help in any way I can.”

+++

“Told you not to worry, but maybe that’s a lie.”

-Billie Eilish, ilomilo

When Peter came over a couple Saturdays later, for the fourth time since they met, his bruises were mostly healed and his black eye from the first time they met was gone, but there were new bruises and his cheeks were red, and it obviously wasn’t from the sun. The marks almost looked angry, but maybe that was just because of Tony’s rage toward whoever hurt him.

Tony didn’t let his anger show on his face, instead electing to delicately bring the younger man into his arms. When he felt Peter hug him back and bury his head in his shoulder, the billionaire could only smile.

“How are you doing?” Tony asked as they pulled away.

“A bit better than last week,” Peter told him with a soft smile that made the genius feel warm inside. Tony returned the smile in order to tell Peter that he was glad about that, and he thought he got the message through.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” Tony announced and held out his hand for Peter to take.  The younger did so while giving him a skeptical look.

“Those words can never end well,” he replied.  Tony said nothing more, though, and led him to the elevator, asking FRIDAY to take them to the roof.  Peter kept glancing anxiously at the man, who just gave him comforting smiles in return.

Finally, the elevator dinged and the doors opened, revealing the rooftop terrace, but it wasn’t the terrace that caught Peter’s attention.

In the middle of the roof, there was a table set up with a white tablecloth that had rose petals scattered on top of it, a candle in the middle, and two champagne flutes with a green bottle next to the candle.

“Tony,” Peter breathed out in amazement, “what is this?”

“Peter Parker, would you do me the honor of going on a proper date with me?” Tony asked him, offering his hand once more. The younger man looked up at him with a mix of surprise and love in his eyes, simply nodding and putting his hand in Tony’s.

The genius led Peter to the table and pulled out a chair for him, pushing it in once he was seated.  He moved around to the other side and sat down, smiling at his soulmate.

“You didn’t have to do all this for me,” Peter told him softly.

“I didn’t have to,” Tony admitted, “but I really, really wanted to.”

A bright blush rose to Peter’s cheeks, nearly hiding the angry red. Tony reached for the bottle and began to fill Peter’s glass.

“Tony, I’m not old enough to drink,” Peter reminded him.

“This makes it way less romantic,” Tony chuckled, “but it’s sparkling grape juice.”

Peter put his hand up to his mouth and laughed.

“You really didn’t have to do all this for me,” the younger told Tony, a small smile still gracing his face.

“I would do anything for my soulmate” Tony replied with a soft grin.  Peter’s smile, however, began to fade a bit, making the billionaire’s eyes turn concerned. “Is everything okay?”

Peter sighed. “It’s just that word.  Soulmate.  I just . . . it’s just strange to me.”  Before Tony could even open his mouth to reply, Peter added on, “Not in a bad way or anything!  I’m really excited to have a soulmate and you’re amazing. It’s just that having a soulmate or even just anyone to care for me is . . . weird, I guess.”

Tony wondered if Peter could hear his heart splintering and shattering in his chest.  His soulmate’s words echoed in his head, the broken tone they were uttered in going straight to his gut and making it churn uneasily.

“Pete . . .” Tony started but trailed off.

“I know, I know. I sound really dumb,” Peter noted, a sad smile on his face as he looked down at his hands folded in his lap.

“I don’t think it sounds dumb.”

The vigilante risked a glance up, only to find Tony looking at him with a loving yet melancholy expression.

“Nobody’s cared and you deserve so much more,” Tony told him. “I never looked for my soulmate.  I just . . . believed that whoever they were wouldn’t want me.  Then, Peter, I found you and I just wanted to get to know you and love you and be your soulmate.”

“Tony, I-” Peter started but was cut off.

“I saw you and I knew that I never wanted to let you go. I didn’t even know if you wanted me as your soulmate and I was taken aback that you actually did.  And then . . . then I talked to you for a few minutes and it broke my heart.” Tony let out a chuckle that sounded slightly like a sob. “You are one of the most amazing people I have ever met and you have gone through so much shit that you don’t deserve and you’re still so wonderful.  Under every mask of apathy, I found the real Peter Parker, the one who makes me laugh and is a genius and the one that I planned this date for and the one that I want to plan a million more dates for.”

Tony’s emotions were on full display, concern and sorrow and love painting his features.  Peter couldn’t stop the look of shock and love that his face morphed into, crystal clear tears pooling around his coffee brown eyes.  He wiped away his tears with the sleeves of his sweatshirt, Tony catching a glimpse of his soul sentence as he did so.

The two soulmates fell into easy conversation as a chef came by and put down plates of spaghetti with arancini on the side, the scent of the food wafting through the cold, early spring air on the roof.

“Traditional Italian food?” Peter asked and looked up at Tony as he picked up his fork.

“I’m Italian and I thought it would be fun for us to have some traditional food,” Tony responded with an easy smile that Peter returned.

“I didn’t know you were Italian.”

“I mean, we haven’t had that many chances to talk.”

“Besides the fact that we text all the time every day.”

The two laughed and returned to their food, letting a comfortable silence fill the air on the rooftop terrace. It was quiet and cozy without them having to try.  It was a feeling that Peter hadn’t felt in a long time.  He couldn’t help but relish in the feeling of content that was filling up his chest. It was like happiness was returning, the whole world turning back to being right once more. 

It couldn’t last though.

“I really hate to bring this up,” Tony quietly started, “but I have to ask about the red cheeks and new bruises. Same bullies?”

The content poured out from his chest, leaving the empty, hollow feeling that Peter almost always felt.

“Same bullies,” Peter muttered in confirmation before taking another bite of his pasta to avoid having to say anymore.  Tony sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, leaving the worry to fill Peter’s head.

“I, uh, I know. I’m just- they’re . . . it’s really okay.  It’s kinda stupid. I mean, I’m a superhero and I deal with worse. It’s not that bad.  It just kinda looks . . . bad?” Peter stuttered over his words as he choked them out, hoping Tony wasn’t exasperated with him.

“What? No, it’s not stupid!” the billionaire insisted. “You’re being hurt! That’s not dumb. You shouldn’t be getting hurt.”

“You shouldn’t have to worry about it,” Peter told him quietly, barely meeting the man’s eyes.

“But I do,” he declared, his voice rising in volume. “You’re my soulmate, Pete, and I can’t stand you coming over here and always having to see you hurt!”

“I’m sorry,” Peter blurted out, guilt eating away at the inside of his stomach.

“Don’t apologize, love.” Peter blushed at the nickname. “I’m supposed to worry. That’s my job as your soulmate.”

“I’m just not used to having somebody who cares so much about this.”

“I’m going to change that.”

+++

“It cannot wait, I’m yours.”

-Jason Mraz, I’m Yours

After dinner, they slow danced to music played by a live pianist.  Towards the end of one of the songs, Tony leaned in and pressed a light kiss against Peter’s lips, and everything felt right.

+++

“Hold, hold on, hold on to me, ‘cause I’m a little unsteady, a little unsteady.”

-X Ambassadors, Unsteady

Later that night, Peter and Tony found themselves cuddled up in Tony’s bed as a movie played in the background.  The warmth between them began to fill Peter up with content again, the gentle feeling of skin against skin calming him down. It truly felt like he was ninety-three floors up from all of his problems.

Then his phone began to ring.

The sound startled the couple, disrupting the soft peace of the room. Peter pulled away from the embrace and grabbed his ringing phone off the bedside table while Tony paused the movie.  He wiped at his bleary and unfocused eyes until he could make out that the contact was Aunt May.

Shit.

Slightly panicked, Peter accepted the call and put the phone to his ear, shooting up from the bed and starting to pace the room.

“Peter Benjamin Parker, where are you?!” May shouted loud enough that Tony, who was worriedly watching Peter pace, could slightly make out what she had said.

“Uh, I’m, uh, at Ned’s,” Peter attempted to lie, but May knew better.

“I already called Ned and he said you weren’t even friends, so I have no clue who you think you’re fooling,” she replied sternly.

“I’ll, uh, I’ll be there soon and I’ll explain. I promise,” Peter swore and hung up the phone before his aunt could answer him.  He sighed and threw his phone on the bed before flopping down beside it.

“Fuck,” the younger muttered, bringing a hand up to cover his worried face.

“Was that your aunt?” Tony asked him, sitting down on the edge of the bed and intertwining their hands.

“Yeah,” Peter replied, sitting up and putting his head on his soulmate’s shoulder. “She wants me to go home, but I thought she was working the night shift.”

Peter began to stand up, pulling his hand away from Tony’s to grab his phone and shove it in his pocket before grabbing his sneakers off of the floor.  He sat down on the bed once more and laced his shoes up.

“I’m so fucked,” he groaned as he ran his hands over his face once more. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to say to her! ‘Oh, hey, May! Where was I? Oh, yeah, just at Stark Tower because my soulmate is Tony Stark! Anyway, it’s nice to see you because we rarely see each other anymore. Goodnight!’  I can’t just say that!”

“Maybe . . . maybe you could,” Tony told him after a beat of silence. Instead of replying, Peter just gave him a look as if he was out of his mind. “Hear me out! I could come with you and we could explain everything! It’ll be fine!”

“I . . . you would come with me?” Peter questioned quietly and looked up at Tony.  The genius gave him a gentle smile.

“If you’re okay with it.”

“Then we should get going because she is going to kill me if I’m not there in the next twenty minutes.”

Tony stood up, grabbing Peter’s hand and dragging him up too. He grabbed a pair of sneakers and slipped them on before snatching a jacket up from where it was carelessly thrown on the back of a chair.

“I’ll drive,” Tony announced before intertwining their hands once more and pulling Peter with him.  They speed-walked through the halls of the penthouse and took the elevator down to the garage. Tony picked a car that wasn’t too flashy, though Peter would disagree on that, and got in the driver’s seat, leaving the younger to get in on the other side.

The ride over was filled with conversation and Tony assuring his young lover that he would be okay.  What Tony didn’t say was that Peter could stay over at the tower for however long he needs if his aunt needs time to process everything.  He internally made the promise though.

When they pulled up to the apartment complex and parked along the street, Peter had to take some deep breaths.  Tony turned the car off and reached over the console to take Peter’s hand in a gesture of comfort and reassurance.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Tony guaranteed. “We’re gonna be okay.”

Peter nodded and took one final breath before opening the car door, Tony doing the same on the other side.  Luckily, the street was practically empty and too dark to see much, so nobody saw as Tony Stark walked to the other side of a flashy car and took his soulmate’s hand.  The two quietly walked up to the building and Peter unlocked the door with one hand, having had many years of practice doing so.  They climbed the stairs, not even bothering to approach the elevator because they wanted to stall having to tell May.

Finally, they reached Peter’s floor and found themselves in front of the door.  They disconnected their hands and the younger fumbled around in the side pocket of his bag to get his key.  Once he got it, he took a breath and softly swung the door open, immediately seeing Aunt May glaring at him from the kitchen, her anger evident on her face.

“Peter Benjamin Parker, where were you?!” she shouted, making Peter flinch back a bit. “I got my shifts moved around and thought ‘won’t it be great if I come home early and get to spend some time with my nephew?’ But apparently not because you aren’t at home and you aren’t at your friend’s house and you won’t answer my texts and I was just stuck-”

May cut herself off, finally seeing Tony standing behind her nephew with a mix of worry and guilt painted on his face.  She couldn’t help but gawk at him for a minute in complete and utter confusion.

“Peter,” she whispered dangerously, “you have ten seconds to tell me why the fuck Tony Stark is in my doorway.”

“Well, that’s, uh, that’s a funny story,” Peter stuttered, scratching the back of his neck anxiously and not meeting his aunt’s eyes.  He took a step in as she glared at him and Tony followed, gently closing the door behind him.

“Peter,” she warned, “tell me what’s going on.”

“I found my soulmate!” he blurted, finally making eye contact with the woman.

“You . . . you what?”

“I found my soulmate,” Peter repeated quietly, shoulders sagging.  May gave him a bewildered look before sighing and walking over to the living room.  She sat herself down in an armchair and put her head in her hands as she rested her elbows on her knees.

Peter and Tony shared a distressed look before hesitantly following her. They sat on the couch, a little closer than an acquaintance or co-worker would, and May noticed this when she finally looked up.  Her eyes traveled down to where Peter’s soul sentence would be and realized that it was uncovered for the first time in years as if it had never been hidden away at all.

“Who?” May questioned quietly, meeting Peter’s gaze.  Her nephew fell quiet, unsure of what to say.

“Me,” Tony told her gently, making the woman’s eyes fall on him.  Her face morphed into confusion and then shock, brows furrowing.

“You?” she asked in bewilderment. “You, Tony Stark, are my nephew’s soulmate?”

Tony simply nodded, not knowing what else to tell her. He felt so uncertain, terrified of what could come out of his mouth if he opened it.

“I . . . I just can’t . . . I can’t even process this,” May stammered out, looking between the two men, completely and utterly astonished.

“I should probably go for now,” Tony murmured and the ‘for now’ wasn’t lost on her.  She could only wonder how long they had known they were soulmates.

“We still on for next Friday?” Peter asked him, tearing his gaze away from his startled aunt.

“Of course,” Tony replied with a tender smile.  He gave his soulmate a kiss on the forehead, not wanting to straight out kiss him goodbye in front of the rattled woman, and began to leave, but not before turning around and shooting one more concerned look at the woman.

Once the door had shut, Peter and May looked to each other again, the young adult nervously twiddling his thumbs.

“Peter-” May started but the teen interrupted her.

“Let’s just drop it, May,” he said decidedly and stood up, beginning to make his way to his bedroom.

“Why did Ned say you guys weren’t friends anymore?” she asked him and her nephew stopped dead in his tracks.  He slowly turned around but kept his gaze on the carpeted floor.

“Because we aren’t friends anymore.”

“Why? When did that happen? Why didn’t I know?”

“Because you never cared to ask!” Peter shouted, looking up at her.

May finally noticed the bruises, the purple and yellow around his arms and his ankles.  His cheeks were red as if he had been slapped.  The bags under his eyes gave away the little amounts of sleep he’d had.

“He stopped talking to me! Found his soulmate and left, okay?! It doesn’t matter!” Peter continued, venom laced into his tone. “Let’s just leave it!”

May Parker didn’t know what to say in the slightest.  She was baffled beyond belief.  Her nephew, the only living relative she had, and only through marriage, was standing before her, shouting and bruised and without a friend.  It opened up a pit in her stomach as wide as a canyon and she felt like she was falling into it.  She hadn’t been there.  She hadn’t been there for anything that had happened and it felt awful.  She felt awful.  What type of guardian was she?  She wanted to scream and cry and get mad but it was only at herself.

“When did you find out who your soulmate was?” May questioned quietly, not finding it in herself to even raise her voice a bit.

“A month ago,” Peter told her softly, his face showing off his defeat. “And it was the best day I’ve had in a year and a half, no thanks to anyone I knew before it.”

Peter turned around and left, slamming his bedroom door behind him and leaving May to go over everything she had done wrong.

+++

“Do we have to talk about it? You know how I make you feel, right?”

-gnash, feelings fade

Much to Peter’s surprise, the next week was not too terrible.  As it was nearing the end of the year, most of his grade was too worried about college acceptance letters and scholarships to notice him, so he spent most of the week slipping under the radar.  There were only a few shoves here and there, giving his previous bruises and cuts time to heal.

Peter was sitting in his last period of the day, eagerly awaiting the final bell.  His physics teacher had seen how antsy the students were, as it was their last period before the weekend, and gave them the last ten minutes of the period to do whatever they wanted.

As soon as the teacher had announced that they could do whatever they wanted until the bell rang, Peter pulled out his sketch book and a pencil.  Ignoring the world around him, the young man began to draw, letting the sound of his peers talking fade into the background.

Ned was sitting right next to Peter, as they had been given assigned seats at the beginning of the year.  He was looking at his phone, scrolling through Twitter, but couldn’t help but let his eyes wander to the friend he’d drifted apart from.  He watched as Peter sketched out a picture of space, with Jupiter in the middle of the page.  He followed the boy’s eyes as he looked down at his wrist with a small smile.

Ned nearly had a stroke as he realized that Peter’s soul sentence was uncovered.  He had never seen it before, as Peter had always been really secretive about it when they were still friends.  His gaze was focused on the word ‘Jupiter’ as Peter went back to his drawing.  In a rash decision, Ned decided to speak up.

“Did you find your soulmate?”

Peter startled a bit before looking at Ned.  He shyly pointed a finger towards himself, silently asking if the boy was talking to him.  He received a small nod in response.

“Uh, well, yeah,” Peter replied, looking down at his wrist before looking back up at Ned.  “It’s a really weird story.”

“Are they, uh, nice?” Ned asked, unsure of what else to say.

“Yeah . . . he’s great.  Sweet, supportive, kind, loving. He’s everything you could ever want in a soulmate.”  Peter looked a bit wistful, eyes soft as he traced a finger over the soul mark.

Ned opened his mouth to speak again, but the dismissal bell rang.  He watched as Peter quickly shoved his sketchbook into his bag before flinging it over his shoulder and racing out of the classroom.

All Ned could think was, ‘Who even is he anymore?’

+++

“Keep me in your glow, ‘cause I’m having such a good time with you.”

-Kacey Musgraves, Golden Hour

“Thanks, Happy!” Peter exclaimed as he made his way out of the car.  He received a light grumble in response, but he knew that Happy still appreciated the thanks.

The young genius made his way to the private elevator, ignoring all the confused looks he usually gets from staff in the lobby.  As he stepped in, FRIDAY spoke up.

“Good afternoon, Peter!” she greeted kindly.  “Boss is in the penthouse kitchen.  Would you like me to take you there?”

“Yes.  Thank you, Fri!”

Peter checked his phone as the elevator ascended.  He scrolled through Twitter, just taking a look at what was going on and retweeting a few dumb posts that he found funny.  He slipped his phone back into his pocket as the doors opened.

The young man was met by the sight of his soulmate leaning against the counter with a mug of coffee in one hand and his phone in the other.  He looked up from where he was checking his email once Peter walked in.

“Pete!” He set down his coffee and phone on the counter.  The younger man dropped his bag by the elevator doors and ran over, the two embracing each other.  Peter buried his head into Tony’s shoulder and the man put his chin on the crown of his soulmate’s head.  The two fit together like two puzzle pieces that were always meant to go together.  They stayed that way for a few moments before pulling apart, though they continued to stand close to each other.

“How was your week?” Tony asked gently.

“It actually wasn’t too bad,” Peter admitted with a shy smile.  “Everybody’s really preoccupied with figuring out what college they want to go to and trying to get scholarships for it that I was able to just fly under the radar.”

“That’s really good,” Tony replied with a smile.  “I’ve never actually asked you what college you’re going to.  Have you already accepted an offer somewhere?”

Peter gave a small sigh at that, looking away from Tony and down at the floor. “I’ve been accepted to a few good schools and I was hoping to accept an offer from MIT, but my aunt and I just don’t have the money for me to pay tuition, even with what we’ve been saving for years, and I don’t qualify for enough financial aid scholarships to cover it.  So I’m probably gonna take a gap year or two to get a job and save up.”

Disappointment radiated off the younger man and it was obvious to Tony that his soulmate wished he could just go off to college right after senior year like pretty much everybody else.  An idea sparked in Tony’s mind.

“I can pay your tuition!” he exclaimed with a smile.  Peter quickly looked up from the floor to give Tony a bewildered gaze.

“I couldn’t ask you to-”

“But you aren’t asking me to!  I’m offering and, by ‘offering,’ I mean that I’m paying your tuition to whatever school you want to go to and I’m not taking no as an answer.”

“Tony, tuition is so expensive!” Peter argued.

“And I’m a billionaire!  It wouldn’t make a dent in my wallet!” Tony countered.

“But-”

“Peter, it’s okay!  I have the money and you deserve to go to college!  I’m not gonna let you give up the opportunity to go to a school you want to go to just because-”

“Tony, I’m not a charity case!” Peter shouted, cutting the man off.  The room fell into silence, Tony staring at him in shock.  Peter just averted his gaze, staring back at the floor.

“What?” Tony breathed out in confusion.

“I’m not a charity case,” Peter repeated in a quieter voice. “You don’t have to pay my tuition just because I’m some poor kid from Queens.”

“Peter . . . that’s not why I want to pay your tuition,” Tony told him gently, reaching forward to grab the younger man’s hands.  “I want to pay your tuition because you’re my soulmate, and I want everything for you.  You deserve the fucking world.”

Peter looked up from the ground, his hopeful eyes gazing into Tony’s. “You promise you’re not just doing this because you pity me?”

“I promise.”

Peter raised himself up a bit, balancing on the balls of his feet, and gave Tony a short peck on the lips before coming back down and leaning his head against the man’s chest.  Tony released his hands in order to wrap his arms around the boy, Peter mirroring the action and wrapping his arms around Tony’s waist.

“I’ll let you pay for my tuition under one condition,” Peter said quietly. “You can only pay for whatever my college savings doesn’t cover.”

“Deal,” Tony replied with a smile, glad he had convinced his soulmate . “And it’s not like you’ll have to pay for a dorm on campus.”

Peter pulled back a bit, looking up at the man in confusion.

“I have a penthouse that’s basically right next to campus,” he elaborated, “so you can stay there and I can go visit all the time.”

“Don’t freshman usually have to live in the dorms?”

“I can pull a few strings.”  Tony shot him a wink.  When Peter opened his mouth to protest, Tony simply said, “Trust me, those dorms are disgusting.”

Just accepting it, Peter laid his head back on Tony’s chest.

+++

“I started working as a dime store clerk. I thought it would make me the kind to put you first.”

-Blind Pilot, Packed Powder

That evening, Tony and Peter sat on the couch together, Peter’s laptop open.  Peter found the email that announced that he had been accepted and went to the link that prompted him to accept or decline the college offer.  Taking a deep breath, the younger man moved his mouse and clicked to accept.  A screen popped up, congratulating him for being MIT-bound and giving him information about the next steps.

Peter just stared at the screen in shock while Tony jumped up from the couch and started clapping.  The younger man set his laptop to the side and his soulmate pulled him up from where he was sitting, giving him a quick hug.

“You’re going to MIT!” Tony exclaimed as he grabbed Peter’s hands.

“Holy shit, I’m going to college! I’m going to college! I can’t even believe it!” Peter exclaimed.

“MIT is pretty impressive,” a voice spoke from behind the couch.  The two soulmates whipped around only to be met with Pepper fucking Potts right outside the doors to the elevator.  Peter froze up while Tony gave the woman a huge smile.

“You must be Peter,” she says, walking forwards and offering a hand to him over the couch, which the young man tentatively shook.  “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Um, all good things I hope,” Peter replied sheepishly as he pulled his hand back.

“All great things,” Pepper assured him before taking on a teasing smile. “Ever since you two met, Tony has spent half his time talking about you.”

“Really?” Peter questioned while Tony looked a bit abashed.  Pepper gave him a nod along with a huge grin.

“Anyway, I just came up to hand some paperwork off to Tony,” she told them, motioning to the files she had placed on the counter, “but I’m really glad I finally got to meet you, Peter.”

“I- uh- um- it was really nice to meet you too,” the young man stammered out with a small smile.

And with that, Pepper went back to the elevator to return to whatever she had been working on before.

“Do you think she liked me?” Peter asked as he tore his gaze away from the elevator doors and looked at Tony.

“Oh please, she already loves you.”

+++

“One, two, three, and four. How long til I feel like myself again? And I’d walk out the door, but where would I go?”

-Tessa Violet, Honest

The next night found Peter eating an awkward dinner with May.  Tension continued to linger between them from the conversation the week before.  Neither could come up with a topic of conversation, so they just sat there in silence, focusing on their meals.  Finally, Peter spoke up.

“I committed to MIT.”

May looked up at him, eyes wide and mouth agape.

“Peter, what the fuck?!” she shouted, standing up from her place at the table. “You know we can’t afford tuition to MIT!  You and I decided you were going to take a gap year or two where you could work and save up money!  Why would you-”

May cut herself off as he finally took another look at her nephew, who was just looking up at her calmly.  Slowly, she lowered herself back into her chair, giving him a suspicious look all the while.

“Can I explain?” he asked, seemingly unflappable.

May, unsure of what else to do, simply gave him a nod.

“My soulmate𑁋” May was never going to get used to him saying those words. “𑁋asked me about college and I told him my plan to reject all the acceptances so I could save up money during a couple of gap years.  He simply interjected and said he would pay for my tuition, and I-”

May cut him off again. “What?! You’re just-”

Peter cut her off right back, being just a little bit louder than her. “I told him no.  He kept trying to convince me and I told him I wasn’t a charity case.  He was . . . shocked.  He didn’t realize I felt like he was only offering cause I’m some poor kid from Queens.”

May was quiet and the look on her face was indiscernible.

“He assured me it wasn't because of that, but that he wanted to because I’m his soulmate and he thought it was wrong that I had to turn down an offer from an amazing school just because I couldn’t afford it.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but Peter kept going.

“I made a deal with him.  He could pay my tuition, but only the part of my tuition that my college savings don’t cover.  He told me he had a penthouse near campus and that I could stay there so I wouldn’t have to pay extra for a dorm room.  So, I committed to MIT and, whether you like it or not, I’m going there in the fall.”

May stayed silent as her nephew stood up from the table and walked to his room without another word.  She couldn’t fall asleep all night and, when she heard Peter’s window open at one am as he came back from patrol, she left a plate of food outside of his door, knowing he would still be hungry after not finishing his dinner.

+++

“I won’t hate you, but oh it stings.  How does it feel to be adored by him?”

-dodie, Adored By Him

Only a little over a month ago, Peter would’ve jumped at the chance to be friends with Ned and MJ again, despite how quick they were to leave him behind as soon as they found their soulmates.  Once MJ had left him too, Peter began to feel as if he was only a stand-in until his (ex) friends’ soulmates came along, ready to replace him as if he’d never been there at all.  He remembers trying to convince himself that he was being irrational, that all of these thoughts were just him being over dramatic.  He tried to defend their actions, no matter how much they had hurt him.

Once Peter met Tony, that changed.  He’d told his soulmate how he felt, trying to downplay it and make it seem as if he was the one who had been acting like a shitty friend.  It took a lot of time and many conversations for Peter to begin to realize that he was allowed to feel upset that his friends had abandoned him.  It wasn’t his fault.

A little over a month ago, Peter would’ve jumped at the chance to be friends with Ned and MJ again.  Now, Peter had no interest in being friends with either of them.

It was midday on Tuesday and Peter was sitting at lunch, just texting his soulmate.

Soulmate<3: Do you have any plans for spring break?

Peter: nope lol

Soulmate<3: Have you ever been to Italy?

Peter: no???

Soulmate<3: We should go during your spring break!

Just as Peter went to respond, somebody sat down across from him.  He sighed and looked up, expecting one of his bullies, but, instead, he saw MJ, looking like she was trying to play it cool.  He saw right through her, though, as she was avoiding eye contact and had a slight flush on her face.

“What do you want, Michelle?” Peter asked coldly, setting his phone down on the table.  He watched her wince a bit as he called her by her real name instead of her nickname.  “You don’t sit over here anymore.”

“Sydney isn’t here and I wanted to sit with somebody I know,” MJ told him, crossing her arms.

“Why don’t you just sit with Ned?” he shot back at her with a raised eyebrow.

“His table is full.” She motioned and Peter followed her movements, looking at the table where Ned was sat with his soulmate, all the other seats being filled up with his new friends.

“Well, I’m sure you know plenty of other people, so why don’t you go sit with them and leave me the fuck alone.”

MJ was quiet for a few moments, just looking at Peter.  He glared right back, not breaking eye contact, as if he were daring her to say something else.

“Your soul sentence is uncovered,” she said quietly, focusing her gaze on his wrist.

“And?” he retorted, but didn’t bother hiding his wrist.

“And why is it uncovered? You’ve always kept it covered. You never even told Ned and I that it said𑁋” she stopped to look at it for a moment more. “𑁋Jupiter.”

“Well, it’s not like it even fucking matters, considering we’re not friends anymore.”

“But-” MJ started to counter, but Peter’s phone buzzed, interrupting her.  He went to reach for the phone, but she grabbed it first, looking at the notification.

Soulmate<3: Did I scare you off?

It buzzed again.

Soulmate<3: I know how you feel about me spending money on you, but I feel like you’d like Italy a lot!

And again.

Soulmate<3: Just give it some thought. It would be a really fun vacation! I promise Italy is really cool and I have some villas and such in a few cities, so we could travel around the country!

And once more.

Soulmate<3: Anyway I’ll see you this afternoon! I love you!

MJ slowly handed the phone back to Peter, who looked down at the notifications, quickly reading them, before looking up at the girl’s shocked face.  Peter, without a second thought, slung his bag over his shoulder, standing up and walking out of the cafeteria.  After a beat, he heard MJ running after him.  He made no attempt to speed up or hide, simply resigning to his fate of being bombarded by her questions.

“Peter!” MJ called, catching up to the boy.  She eventually did and started walking by his side, having to speed up as he began to power walk.  Eventually the two entered the library and MJ followed Peter all the way to the back, where he set his bag on a table and collapsed onto a chair next to it, glad to be hidden by the bookshelves.

MJ just slowly sat down in the other chair, turning to look at Peter.  He, decidedly, did not meet her eyes.

“So . . . you found your soulmate,” she said more than asked.

“Why does it matter to you?” he snapped, trying to keep his voice down. “Why do you give two shits who my soulmate is?”

“Because we used to be friends.”

“The key phrase there is ‘used to,’ as in, we aren’t friends anymore, so let it go.”

MJ fell silent, her gaze once again falling to Peter’s wrist.  Something felt familiar about it, as if she had some idea of who his soulmate is.

‘What’s your favorite planet?’

‘Jupiter’

MJ’s eyes widened in realization as she looked back up at Peter’s face.

“Holy. Shit,” she said, staring at him.  He turned to her with a suspicious look.

“What?”

“Holy shit!” She still tried to keep her voice down.

“What?!”

“It all makes sense! The lecture, Jupiter, your soul sentence suddenly being uncovered, your soulmate wanting to take you to Italy! Your soulmate is Tony-”

Peter slammed a hand over her mouth, effectively shutting her up.  His eyes were wide as he tried to figure out if anyone had heard her words.  Slowly, giving MJ a look of warning, he took his hand off of her mouth.

“Is he . . . no fucking way,” she said, voice quieter.

Peter’s shoulders sagged and he began to fiddle with his fingers, looking defeated. “Yeah, he’s my soulmate . . .”

MJ paused, just needing to let it sink in.

Peter fucking Parker was Tony fucking Stark’s soulmate.

And, even more than that, Tony fucking Stark was Peter fucking Parker’s soulmate.

“You can’t tell anybody,” Peter told her quietly, anxiety dripping into his voice. “It’ll get leaked to the press and . . . everything will suck for me and him.”

“I . . . I won’t tell anybody,” she promised, “but you’ve gotta answer my questions about it.”

Peter sighed, but nodded.

“Is he, like, actually interested in being in a romantic relationship with you?” MJ asked tentatively.

“I mean, he sets up romantic dinner dates and invites me over all the time and wants to take me to Italy, so you can probably fill in the blanks,” Peter answered, a bit of sarcasm laced into his voice.

“What’s he like?”

“Kind, sweet, supportive, caring.  He’s pretty much everything you could ask for in a soulmate.”

Despite having her own wonderful soulmate, MJ couldn’t help but be a bit jealous by the way Peter described his soulmate with a loving look in his eyes.  A sweet, caring soulmate who wants to whisk you away to Italy over your spring break and set up romantic dates for you all the time?  That’s basically everybody’s dream.  She couldn’t even begin to imagine being adored by a world famous billionaire superhero.  From the loving look in his eyes, MJ could practically see how in love the two were.  Tony Stark probably worshipped the ground Peter walked on and would give him the universe if he asked for it.

Everybody wanted that— MJ wanted that.

“Does he know about, ya know, your alter-ego?”

“He built me a new suit actually.”

“Have you two done it?”

Peter’s eyes went wide and he looked at her in shock. “Jesus Christ, absolutely not. He knows I’m not ready and he’s . . . actually really okay with that.”

The questioning went on and on until the bell rang.  The two stood up and prepared to go their separate ways, but before MJ could leave, Peter grabbed her wrist.  She looked back at him in confusion.

“I was serious when I said that you can’t tell anybody. If anything is leaked to the press, I’ll know exactly who did it and me and my soulmate won’t hesitiate to destroy your entire fucking life.” The girl had never seen Peter act so cold, so she nodded along, a bit scared, until Peter let go of her wrist and she could leave.

That afternoon, Peter could feel MJ’s eyes burning holes into his back as he got in Happy’s car.

+++

“Nothing’s gonna hurt you, baby.  As long as you’re with me, you’ll be just fine.”

-Cigarettes After Sex, Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby

When Peter reached the penthouse floor of Stark Tower and the elevator doors opened, the first thing Tony said to him was “Did I scare you away by asking if you wanted to go to Italy?”

The young man sighed, dropping his bag by the elevator before walking to the living room and collapsing onto the plush couch that probably cost more than his apartment’s rent.  Tony walked after him and lifted Peter’s head up a bit so he could sit down, placing his soulmate’s head down on his lap and beginning to run his fingers through his hair.

Peter hummed a bit at the comforting gesture. “I was going to respond to your text, but then MJ sat down at my lunch table.”

“What did she say?”

“She told me that her soulmate wasn’t there and she wanted to sit with somebody she knew.  Then she commented about how my soul sentence was uncovered.  As soon as I told her that it was none of her business, my phone buzzed.  She read the texts, I ran away to the library, she followed. Long story short, she put all the pieces together and found out that you’re my soulmate.”

Tony sucked in a breath, completely freezing up.

Sensing the man’s anxiety, Peter continued. “I threatened that if she told anybody, then we’d destroy her life. She seemed pretty scared, so I think we’ll be safe.”

The man let out a breath of relief, going back to back to running his fingers through his younger soulmate’s hair.  The two let the room be silent for a little bit, simply basking in each other’s presence.  Finally, Tony spoke up.

“So . . . about Italy.”

Peter sighed.

+++

“What would it feel like to put this baggage down? If I’m being honest, I’m not sure I’d know how.”

-Sleeping At Last, Six

Peter climbed through his window a little past midnight, having gone on patrol right after having dinner with Tony.  He took the suit off and changed into some more comfortable clothes before walking to the kitchen, hoping to grab a snack before he went to sleep.

When he got to the kitchen, Peter found May sitting at the table with a mug of tea.  She appeared to be deep in thought, but looked up when her nephew came in.

“Peter,” she murmured, stopping the boy in his tracks, “can we talk?”

It may have been a question, but Peter knew he couldn’t say no.  So, he padded forward gently and sat down on the chair across from the woman, not meeting her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, making him look up at her. “I haven’t been there for you. I haven’t been a good guardian. I have no excuse. Yes, I was working a lot to pay rent, but . . . I should’ve been checking up on you instead of just assuming that you were okay.”

“Aunt May-”

“No, Peter. I’m sorry. I barely talked to you. For fuck’s sake, I didn’t even know you’d met your soulmate! That’s inexcusable.”

May tore her gaze away from Peter’s eyes, looking down at the table as tears fell.  Guilt came off of her in waves.

“Aunt May, I’m not gonna act like it’s all okay, but I accept your apology. It’s obviously not all gonna go back to normal right now, but I’m willing to put in the effort if you are.”

“Of course I’m willing to put in the effort, Pete.” She met his eyes once more. “You’re my nephew, and I love you.”  She stood up and walked around the table, leaning down to give him a hug.

“I love you too, Aunt May.”

They stayed like that for a few moments before pulling away.  May sat back down, but now on the chair next to Peter.

“Now, tell me about this soulmate of yours.”

Peter laughed a little, giving her a smile as he began to tell her about Tony.  She nodded along and asked questions, chuckling at the stories he told about all the dumb things they’d done together.  Finally, the conversation was starting to wind down.

“He wants to take me to Italy for my spring break,” Peter admitted quietly, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“You should go,” May told him.  The young man looked up at her in shock so quickly that he might’ve given himself whiplash.  “I’m serious! It’d be fun for you and it’ll be nice for you to get away with your soulmate for a little bit.”

“You’re sure you’re okay with it?”

“Peter, I only want the best for you.”

+++

“I don’t care if you’re not sorry, I forgive you. And with or without your support I will continue.”

-The Front Bottoms, Cough It Out

Just like the day before, on Wednesday, Peter was sitting at lunch and texting Tony, who was figuring out all the details for their trip to Italy.  Then, because Peter couldn’t go a single day without something happening to him, two people sat down at his table.  He looked up and saw MJ, once again, but she was with her soulmate this time.

“What do you want?” Peter snapped as he turned off his phone.  He kept a hold on it though, not wanting to make the same mistake as last time.

“Um . . . I’m Sydney,” the girl introduced herself, extending a hand across the table.  Peter looked down at it and then back up at her, raising an eyebrow.

“I know. We met before I quit AcaDec,” Peter replied dryly, causing Sydney to retract her hand a bit.  “If you two don’t want anything, then could you very kindly fuck off?”

“I just wanted my soulmate to meet one of my friends,” MJ told him.

“We aren’t friends, Michelle.”

“Look, I’m extending an olive branch here. You obviously have no friends-”

Peter cut her off. “And whose fault is that?  Oh, right, you and Ned’s. Completely forgot that you two cut me off and avoided me for a year and a half!  Funny how stuff like that slips my mind!”

The two girls winced a little bit, not saying anything as Peter went back to looking at his phone and resolutely ignoring them.

“Are you texting your soulmate?” MJ asked him, leaning over the table to see his phone.  Peter quickly pulled it back, shutting it off once more.

“What’s it to you, Jones?” he replied in lieu of an answer.

“I was just curious if you’re going on that Italy trip.”

“Did you tell her?” Peter demanded, leaning into MJ’s space aggressively as his eyes flickered to Sydney for a second. “‘Cause if you did, you’re completely aware that your life would be ruined, right? You know that he would absolutely destroy you everything you’ve ever loved, and for all the shit you’ve put me through, I wouldn’t even try to stop him.”

“Is that a threat?” she challenged.

“It’s a promise.”

Sydney looked back and forth between the two as they stared each other down, her face giving away how confused she was.

“I didn’t,” MJ conceded, leaning away.  With one last glance to the girl’s soulmate, he leaned away too, but there was still that dangerous air to him.

“Smart choice.”

“I’m sorry, but what the fuck is going on?!” Sydney asked, looking absolutely bewildered at the interaction.

“It’s a long story,” MJ replied without tearing her gaze from the boy in front of her, “but that’s not the point. Like, I said, I came to extend an olive branch. You let us sit here at lunch, and we’ll ward off Flash and his clique from coming near you.”

Peter mulled it over in his head, eyeing her suspiciously.  After a few moments, he seemed to make up his mind.

“Fine, but you can’t force me to talk to you.”

“Deal,” MJ agreed, putting a hand forward. Peter shook it before going back to looking at his phone.  Sydney didn’t say anything, but continued to shoot the boy confused looks every once in a while.

“And, Michelle?” Peter piped up just before the bell rang.

“Yeah?”

“We’re still going on that Italy trip.”

The girl gave him a small smile, which he didn’t return, before getting up and leaving, Sydney by her side.

+++

“Aren’t you the guy who tried to hurt me with the word goodbye? Though it took some time to survive you, I’m better on the other side.”

-Dua Lipa, Don’t Start Now

The next week and a half passed in a blur of less bruises than usual, hanging out with Tony, trying to make things go back to normal with May, and sitting with MJ and Sydney during lunch.  Peter didn’t really talk to the two, leaving them to their own devices.  It took him a couple days to even greet them when they sat down, and a few more to make any conversation with them.  He decided that lunch definitely wasn’t his least favorite part of school.

Finally, finally, it was Peter’s last period of the day before he was released from school for his two weeks of spring break.  As soon as that bell rang, he was going to race out of there and go meet Happy, who would drive him to the airport, where he’d board Tony’s private jet and be whisked away to Italy for an incredible vacation with his soulmate.

Everybody was just sitting around and talking, eager for the bell to ring so classes would end and break would begin.  Peter was enthusiastically texting his soulmate, who, despite having traveled to Italy several times, seemed just as excited for the trip as Peter was.

Ned, much like two weeks before, couldn’t help but let his eyes wander to Peter, who was smiling down at his phone.  His eyes drifted to his soul sentence again, where the word “Jupiter” was still beautifully scrawled.  Peter, able to sense the gaze, turned to look at Ned.

“Who are you texting?” Ned asked, trying to play it off.

“It’s nobody,” Peter replied before going back to texting, assuming that the boy would be satisfied with that answer.

Ned, not wanting the conversation to die, continued. “I, uh, I noticed that you’ve been sitting with MJ and Sydney. That’s new, I guess.”

“Less like I’m sitting with them and more like they’re sitting with me.”

Ned, again, was not satisfied, so he tried once more. 

“Are you doing anything over spring break?”

“Some stuff, yeah,” Peter told him, not looking up from his phone. “Doing a bit of traveling.”

“Oh, you and May are going somewhere?”

“Nope.”

Ned sighed, but, for reasons unknown to him, he didn’t want to give up until he got a real answer.

“Are you-”

“Why do you even give a shit?” Peter interrogated, looking up from his phone to face Ned. “We haven’t talked in a year and a half, so I’ve got no fucking clue why you care now.”

“I’m just curious!” Ned defended.

“Why? Because I’ve got a soulmate now? Is that why you’re so fucking curious? Well, I don’t give a shit, Leeds. So why don’t you go run off to your perfect little life with your soulmate and your new friends and leave me the fuck alone.”

“What happened to you, Peter? Why are you like this?”

“Wouldn’t you be oh so eager to know?!”

The bell rang and everybody raced to get out of the classroom, excited for break.  Peter was happy to run out alongside those people, effectively ending the conversation.

Ned moved slower, watching the boy go.  As he slung his bag over his shoulder and followed the crowd, he could only think of what an enigma Peter Parker had become.

+++

“Baby, there’s no question, no competition. I love you more.”

-Son of Cloud, I Love You More

“First time out of country?” Tony asked as he watched Peter stare out the window of his private jet.  The younger man turned to him, looking sheepish.

“Second time out of state.”

“I guess I’ll have to force you to travel with me more.” Tony took Peter’s hand gently in his, rubbing circles into the back of it, and the younger man gently rested his head on his soulmate’s shoulder, feeling happier than he’d felt in a while.

“You already know what I’m going to say to that.”

“I do, but I’m still gonna try.”

Peter only snorted.

+++

“‘Cause I am captivated by you, and I am so in love with the things you do.”

-mxmtoon, late nights

“Holy. Shit.” Peter was standing outside Tony’s villa in Florence as the chauffeur who drove them there brought their bags inside.  The villa was large, with beautiful landscape in the front and an elegant porch that had large curtains drawn open.  Ivy was growing up the walls and there was a balcony on the second floor that spanned the entire length of the house.  It looked grand in the early afternoon light.  He stood, completely entranced, as his soulmate came up beside him and put an arm around his shoulders.

“What do you think?”

“What do I think?” Peter repeated incredulously. “What I think is that this place is absolutely insane!”

Tony only laughed and grabbed the younger man’s hand, pulling him inside the villa.  As expected, it was as luxurious inside as it was outside.  It wasn’t the type of luxurious that the tower was, though.  It was less high tech and more open air, with plush couches and potted plants and large windows and hardwood floors.  It could be described as looking like the embodiment of the typical luxurious Mediterranean house.

Peter looked around in awe as Tony led him up the stairs and through the second floor hallways to their room.  It had a gaudy california king canopy bed and french doors that led out to a balcony overlooking the pool that was in the backyard.  Through an open door, Peter could see a spacious bathroom.  He broke away from Tony’s hold to step forward and examine in, slowly spinning in a circle to take it all in.

“You like it?” Tony asked, bringing snapping Peter out of his trance of astonishment.

“Like? Tony, this place is unbelievable!” the younger man exclaimed as his soulmate walked over to him. “Like, this is practically the most beautiful home in the world.  I’ve never been somewhere that looks like this before!  It’s absolutely extraordinary and I-”

Tony grabbed Peter’s hands in his own, which made the younger man stop rambling and look up at him.

“I just want you to have the most incredible spring break in the world.”

Peter couldn’t help but smile at that.

The late afternoon found the two soulmates lounging in beach chairs by the pool, soaking up the golden rays of the afternoon sun and drinking local wine.

+++

“But it’s too late. You believe in fate.”

-dodie, Absolutely Smitten

“Why do you love me?” Peter asked Tony on their last night in Florence.  They were sitting on the balcony after having gone sight-seeing all day, overlooking the landscaping in front of the villa, with a delicately made cheese and meat platter on the small table between them.

“What?” Tony inquired, turning to look at the young man who was curled up in his chair and looking out over the gardens.

“Why do you love me?” Peter repeated before shifting his gaze to look at his soulmate. “Of all the people in the world?  I know we’re soulmates, but beyond that . . .”

He paused, looking away from Tony again.

“What did you even see in me that made you want to be my soulmate when you easily could’ve walked away and never seen me again?”

It was silent for a few moments, Peter simply staring out over the balcony railing and Tony studying him.

“I spent thirty-one years thinking I didn’t have a soulmate.”

Peter turned to look at him, but he had started staring out at the landscape.

“Honestly, when I got my soulmark, I felt so guilty. I couldn’t help but wonder what poor soul would be stuck with me as a soulmate. I intended on never going out looking for my soulmate.  I didn’t want to burden whoever it was in that way, they didn’t deserve that. I spent all this time trying to avoid my soulmate, and then I ran straight into you. Funny how fate works, right?”

Peter tore his gaze away from Tony and looked down at his lap, messing with the hem of his shirt.

“And then I met you, and I felt guilty all over again, but it wasn’t the same. I felt guilty because you were suffering, looking for anybody to hold onto, and I was out there, in the same exact city, doing everything I could to avoid you.”

Peter looked up at his soulmate, who was already looking at him, and their eyes met.

“I couldn’t𑁋 can’t let you go. You’re sweet and kind and compassionate and a genius. You were this ethereal being that crashed right into my life and, if you met me and still wanted to stay, then there was no way I could let you go.”

Peter closed his eyes, tears gently rolling down his cheeks.  Tony shifted forward and wiped them away with the pad of his thumb and the young man leaned into the touch.

“I love you,” Tony whispered.

Peter opened his eyes and looked up at him. “I love you too.”

+++

“Love has flooded my heart and there’s rain in Venice for the first time.”

-Steve Harley, Rain in Venice

Tony’s villa in Venice was along the canals.  It, of course, was smaller than the one in Florence, but it was just as elegant.  The moment they entered the city, Peter fell in love with the canals and the buildings lining the water.  Tony made a mental note to bring him to Amsterdam one day.

The days spent in Venice were much more laid back than those spent in Florence.  Tony took Peter to the Teatro La Fenice to see a ballet performance and they spent the days visiting old churches and being rowed through the canals.  Peter had insisted they visit the Ghetto Ebraico di Venezia, the small part of the island that the Jews in Venice had been forced to move to in 1516, as he had promised May he’d go to get a bit closer to his Sephardic roots.

Peter had seen movies that took place in Venice, rom-coms and such, but he took them all with a grain of salt.  Over the course of his stay in Venice, he began to wonder if perhaps those movies weren’t as fictional as he thought after all.

+++

“Hold my hand, darling. Pull me in your waters. When you call my name, I’ll be on my way.”

-Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Pacific Love

As Peter had predicted, Tony’s villa right outside of Rome was just as fanciful as the one in Florence, with a fountain out front, several balconies, an outdoor shower that overlooked vineyards, and an even more elegant pool in the back.  They had arrived there towards the evening, just as the sun was beginning to set, so they decided to eat dinner on the balcony connected to their bedroom, watching the sun go down as they talked about their plans for the next day.  There were so many museums to visit and sights to see𑁋 and there were a few places that couldn’t not go.

The Colosseum, the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, the Sistine Chapel, the Arch of Constantine, and the Vaticans were must-sees, of course, but more was added to the plans for the rest of the trip, such as going to a wine tasting and seeing Palatine Hill.

As Peter slipped his hand into Tony’s, he reminisced about how everything felt right.

+++

[snapshot; Florence, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark are sitting on lounge chairs by the pool in the late afternoon with two half-full wine glasses sitting on the small table between them.  They are both in shorts and a t-shirt.  Both are smiling, laughing over something.]

[snapshot; Florence, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark, who is in a disguise, are walking along the Ponte Vecchio.  They are holding hands.]

[snapshot; Florence, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark, who is in a disguise, are in the Uffizi Palace and Gallery.  Stark is reading the plaque next to a statue while Parker looks up at said statue.]

[snapshot; Florence, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark, who is in a disguise, are walking through the Boboli Gardens, holding hands.]

[snapshot; Florence, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark are eating dinner on the front balcony of Stark’s villa.  They appear to be laughing about something.]

[snapshot; Venice, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark, who is in a disguise, are being rowed along in a traghetti along the canals of the city.  Parker is looking at the buildings in awe while Stark is looking at him lovingly.]

[snapshot; Venice, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark, who is in a disguise, are eating dinner at a restaurant along the canal.  Parker is taking a sip from his wine glass while Stark appears to be telling him a dramatic story.]

[snapshot; Venice, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark, who is in a disguise, are sitting across from each other in a cafe.  Both have a cup of coffee in front of them.  Stark appears to be speaking while Parker is giving him a look of fond exasperation.]

[snapshot; Venice, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark, who is in a disguise, are walking into the Teatro La Fenice to see a ballet.  They are both dressed nicely.]

[snapshot; Venice, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark, who is in a disguise, are standing in front of a synagogue at the Ghetto Ebraico di Venezia.  Parker looks extremely emotional and Stark has an arm around his shoulder.]

[snapshot; Rome, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark, who is in a disguise, are standing in one of the rows of the Colosseum, overlooking it.  Parker looks amazed and Stark is looking at him with a smile.]

[snapshot; Rome, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark, who is in a disguise, are standing in front of the Pantheon, looking up at it.  They are holding hands.]

[snapshot; Rome, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark, who is in a disguise, are at the Trevi fountain.  Parker has his back to the fountain and his eyes closed as he throws a coin over his shoulder into the water.  Stark watches him with a smile.]

[snapshot; Rome, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark are sitting on the ledge of the pool, both in swim trunks, with their feet dipping in.  Each has a glass of wine beside them.  Parker is leaning his head on Stark’s shoulder.]

[snapshot; Rome, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark, who is in a disguise, are standing in front of the Arch of Constantine.  They are holding hands.]

[snapshot; Rome, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark, who is in a disguise, are walking through a vineyard.  They appear to be going to a wine tasting.  They are holding hands and Parker appears to be talking.]

[snapshot; Rome, Italy; Peter Parker and Tony Stark, who is in a disguise, are sitting on a picnic blanket in a park with grapes, cheese, meat, and wine in front of them.  Parker has a homemade flower crown on his head that he appears to have made from the wild flowers around them. Parker is putting a homemade flower crown on Stark’s head and the latter is looking at him with a fond smile.]

[snapshot; Rome, Italy; Peter Parker is leaning over the edge of the balcony connected to the villa’s master bedroom.  Parker is wearing only a too-big button down shirt and a pair of shorts.  He is holding a wine glass in his hand.]

[snapshot; Rome, Italy; Peter Parker is leaning over the edge of the balcony connected to the villa’s master bedroom.  Parker is wearing only a too-big button down shirt and a pair of shorts.  He is holding a wine glass in his hand. Tony Stark is hugging him from behind.  Stark’s head is resting on Parker’s shoulder.  They are looking out over the vineyards.]

[snapshot; Rome, Italy; Peter Parker is sitting in a chair by the pool with a journal and pen in hand.  Stark sits beside him, reading a book.]

[snapshot; Rome, Italy; Peter Parker is standing alone on the balcony in the front of the villa.  He has a slightly sad smile on his face and he leans over the railing.  He appears to be looking up at the stars.  His mouth is open, like he’s saying something.]

+++

“But I’m gonna have to learn that this love will never be convenient.”

-The Front Bottom, Tattooed Tears

On the day that the two soulmates were meant to fly back home, Peter woke up to his phone buzzing incessantly on the nightstand.  Sluggishly, he pulled himself up a bit and grabbed it, looking through the notifications.  His Instagram suddenly was getting a ton of new comments and followers and people were tweeting at him, asking about being with Tony.  Panicked, he opened up Safari and typed in his name.  It came up with pictures of him and Tony throughout their trip in Italy and news articles about who he was.

Peter turned his phone off and set it back down on the bedside table.  He pulled himself out of Tony’s arms and got out of the bed.  He stood up, but just froze, staring out the window.  He didn’t even notice when tears began dripping down his face.

“Peter?” Tony asked groggily, blinking against the light shining in through the window.  The younger man turned around and faced him.  Once Tony saw the tears, he shot up and scrambled out of bed.  He gently took Peter’s hands and led him to sit down on the edge of the bed.

“They found out,” Peter told him, voice choking up.

“Found out about what?” Tony rubbed circles on the back of his soulmate’s hand.  Peter grabbed his phone off the table and pulled up Safari again, showing Tony the search results from earlier.  The man only stared at the news articles and pictures of them, disbelief and a bit of fear shining in his eyes.

“Someone must’ve leaked something to a tabloid cause they’ve been following us and I . . . I don’t know what to do.” Tears came down faster as Peter rambled on.

Tony let go of the younger man’s hand and wrapped him in an embrace, pulling him close to his chest.  “I promise, we’ll figure this out.  We’ll put together a press conference and, afterwards, we’ll destroy the life of whoever leaked it.  Everything will be fine.  I’ll be right there beside you the entire time.”

As Peter’s sobbing slowed, the two pulled away.  Tony kept his hands on Peter’s shoulders though, whether to ground himself or his soulmate, he wasn’t sure.

“I’m gonna call Michelle,” Peter declared, determination seeping into his tone, “and I’m gonna figure out if she pulled this shit or knows who did.”

Tony only gave a nod as Peter pulled up the old contact from when the two teens were still friends, intertwining his hand with Peter’s free one.

The phone barely finished ringing once when the girl picked up, Peter putting her on speaker.

“Peter, I know it looks bad, but I wasn’t the one who pulled this shit,” MJ told him before he could even get a word out.

“Why should I trust you?” Peter bit back, but his voice wavered a bit.

“You know me. You know I wouldn’t have done this. We may not be friends, but I wouldn’t hurt you like this, I wouldn’t ruin things like this. You know that.”

Peter let out a shaky sigh. “You wouldn’t have. I know that, but did you tell anybody?”

“I only told Sydney because she was demanding answers out of me, but I already talked to her this morning and she was freaking out about the whole thing, genuinely worried about you. I told her before decathlon practice so nobody was there that could’ve heard-”

MJ paused, her end of the line going silent.

“Holy shit, I think I know who leaked it!”

“Who?! Please, MJ, you gotta tell me.”

“Flash must’ve gotten there early or something! We both know everybody on the team and none of them would do this except for him!”

Peter paused, the realization that Flash had fucked up his life more than he already had with his bullying sinking in.

“Peter, I’m so sorry . . .”

“I know you didn’t mean for him to overhear it, MJ.  I don’t blame you.”

“Hey, Peter?” she asked.

“Yeah?” he responded cautiously.

“Fuck up his entire life for me, would ya?”

“What else would I do? Let him get away with this shit? He’s gonna regret this shit for the rest of his life.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Peter hung up the phone and turned to Tony. His eyes shone with determination as he thought of how much he was going to fuck up Flash’s life. “I have a good feeling about this.”

“Really?” Tony laughed. “Because I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Then I’ll just have to prove you wrong.”

+++

“Does that seem right? Wade through pain to know the chosen life?”

-Jack Stauber, Pizza Boy

The moment Peter and Tony got off their eight and a half hour flight from Rome to New York, they were being whisked off to a press conference.  When they reached backstage, Pepper threw them each a pair of clothes and ordered that they go freshen up in the bathroom so they don’t look like absolute shit at the conference.

When they got back to her, she was pacing back and forth rambling off orders to an assistant, who looked freaked out.  She stopped when the two soulmates showed back up, now looking like they were actually ready to face the press.

“Pepper, I’m so-” 

“Peter, don’t say sorry. This wasn’t your fault,” the CEO told him before turning to both of the soulmates. “I may be stressed about this whole thing, but I’m not mad at either of you.”

Peter gave her a small, sad smile that she returned.

Footsteps were heard behind the two soulmates, so they whipped around, coming face-to-face with Rhodey.  The man quickly extended a hand towards Peter.  The young man took it, the two shaking before separating.

“I’m Rhodey, though I’m hoping Tony already told you about me,” he introduced with a humorous tone, but everybody could tell he was trying to hide his nervousness. Peter gave a smile a nod at that. “I’m glad to finally meet you, Peter, but I wish it wasn’t under these circumstances.”

“I wish it wasn’t either, but I think it’s gonna be okay.”

As the clock hit three pm, Pepper walked out on stage and to the podium.  Reporters began yelling questions, but she held up a hand to silence them.

“As you are all aware, some photos came out recently after an unknown person leaked Dr. Stark’s new relationship to the press. Before anything else is said, I would like to let you all know that this was highly inappropriate, not only leaking this relationship, but also taking pictures of someone’s private life. The reporter who did this had absolutely no right to do so and there will be repercussions.”

The room stayed silent as she paused.

“Unfortunately, what has happened cannot be undone, and so we must have this press conference much earlier than we were hoping to. Now, Dr. Stark and Mr. Parker will come out to answer questions.”

Pepper stepped away from the podium as Peter and Tony walked onstage, one of Peter’s hands intertwined with Tony's.  The younger of the two winced a little bit as the cameras began flashing and questions were yelled at them.  As they stepped up to the podium, Tony raised a hand, signaling everybody to be silent.  Luckily, it worked; the man had always been the kind of person who could control the room.

“You all know me, but, due to unfortunate circumstances beyond our control, today, I am introducing you all to Peter Parker, my soulmate.”

The room went up in a frenzy as he said the word “soulmate,” reporters taking pictures and more questions being yelled.  Tony held up a hand once more before motioning to Peter to speak.

“Hi. My name is Peter Parker, and I apologize because I’m new to this whole ‘press conference’ thing, and by new, I mean this is the first time I’ve even stepped foot into one,” the young man introduced sheepishly.  The crowd gave light laughs at what he’d said.

“We will now be taking questions,” Tony announced.  Hands went up and questions were yelled. The man searched through the crowd, eventually picking someone. “Yes, the reporter from CNN.”

“Mr. Parker, according to what’s been revealed through the press leak, you are eighteen, correct?” When Peter gave a nod, the woman continued. “So when and how did you and Dr. Stark meet?”

“It’s kind of a funny story actually,” Peter replied a bit sheepishly. “About three months ago, Tony was actually giving a lecture at my school about aerodynamics and, since it was only the senior class, we were all allowed to ask one question, so that’s how we found out.”

“Um . . . the reporter from the Washington Post,” Peter called out before the room could get too crazy.

“What do your soul sentences say?” the reporter asked.

“Mine says, ‘What’s your favorite planet?’” Tony answered, holding up his wrist.

“And mine says, ‘Jupiter.’” Peter held up his wrist too.  Cameras flashed as the reporters rushed to take pictures of them showing off their soul sentences. The soulmates met eyes and gave each other a smile before looking back out at the sea of people.

“Reporter from the Wall Street Journal.”

“Dr. Stark and Mr. Parker, why did you two decide to keep your relationship hidden once you two met?”

“We kinda wanted to keep it on the down low until I graduated high school,” Peter admitted shyly.

“We knew it would affect both of our lives once the public knew,” Tony continued, “and we wanted to wait until we were ready. As you can see, though, the choice to wait was taken from us.”

“Uh . . . the reporter from the LA Times,” Peter called.

“Mr. Parker, seeing as you are being introduced into the limelight, would you be willing to tell us some more about you?”

“Uh, sure, I suppose,” the young man answered, a bit surprised by the question. He’d never really been asked about himself, as most people weren’t very interested in what he did. “I’m sure you all already know, but I’m a senior at Midtown School of Science and Technology, so you can assume I’m a bit of a nerd.”

“‘A bit’,” Tony said with a snort.

“You don’t get to talk. You’re practically the king of nerds!” Peter shot back, causing his soulmate to fondly roll his eyes.

“Besides that,” he continued, getting back to the question, “I like to read poetry and draw. Also, I believe one of the photos was Tony and I in the Jewish ghetto of Venice. We were walking through because I insisted, seeing as I’m Jewish. Side note, I can’t believe that with all the Jewish guilt I grew up with, my soulmate still ended up being a goy. My ancestors must be so disappointed that I didn’t score a nice Jewish boy.”

The crowd laughed at that and Tony gave him a playful shove that the young man returned.

“The reporter from the Huffington Post!”

“Mr. Parker, it’s going around that you are going to MIT in the fall, and that is Dr. Stark’s alma mater, correct? Could you tell us about that?”

“I am going to MIT in the fall, that is correct,” Peter replied before Tony cut in.

“And before anybody says anything, Peter got accepted to MIT before we even met each other, so I had nothing to do with it.”

Peter nodded along before calling on another reporter.

“Mr. Parker, obviously you are being thrust into the spotlight very quickly. Do you feel able to stand it and everything that comes with it?” asked the reporter from the New York Post.

“It’s definitely going to take some getting used to, and I wish I had been able to do it on my own terms, but I think I’ll be able to get through it. Plus, I have Pepper to make sure I don’t say anything too embarrassing.”  Peter smiled at Pepper offstage.

“Reporter from the Daily Bugle,” Tony called out and Peter felt a sense of dread.

“Now, seeing as you, Mr. Parker, are 18 and you, Dr. Stark, are 49, there is a 31 year age gap between the two of you. Is nobody else worried about this? Mr. Parker, do you parents feel okay about this? Are they worried that you’re being taken advantage of?” The reporter looked smug.

Tony opened his mouth to respond, but Peter cut in before he could.

“First of all, obviously soulmate relationships don’t always seem conventional, they go beyond traditional. It’s not like we can argue against fate. Second, nobody else is worried about this because I am an adult who can think for myself and recognize when relationships are toxic. Third of all, if you took five minutes to look up the information about me that people found once my identity was leaked, you would know that my parents are dead and I was raised by my aunt and, by the way, she’s just fine with me being in a happy relationship.”

The room went silent, everybody taking a moment to absorb the answer that the young man had just given.  Before long, the conference got going again.

“The reporter in the very back. I apologize cause I can’t see what company you’re with, the man in the blue shirt.”

“I’m with Breitbart News,” he told them. “I was wondering, despite being soulmates, is this a more traditional relationship or more of a monetary exchange?”

“Are . . . are you asking if I’m a sugar baby?” Peter questioned incredulously.

“I was trying to say it in more formal terms, but, yes, that is basically what I was saying.”

“No hate to people who make money that way, but I’m not a sugar baby. This is a genuine relationship.”

“You should see how much I try to get him to let me spend money on him,” Tony cut in with a smile. “When I suggested we go to Italy for his spring break, it took hours of arguing to finally get him to agree to go. Even then, I think it was just because I wore him out.”

Peter rolled his eyes but gave a smile.

“One last question. We’ll take it from the NPR reporter towards the back.”

“Mr. Parker, do you have any plans for working at Stark Industries?”

Peter lightly smiled at that. “I was already working with Tony in the lab and I’ll continue to do that, but I think Pepper wants me to look around a little bit in the business side of the company, so I’ll probably end up shadowing her for a bit.”

“Thank you all for coming,” Tony called out before he and Peter walked off stage, both waving as they did so.

When they got off, they were greeted by Pepper, who had a big grin on her face, along with May, who had finally gotten to the tower in the middle of the conference.  She came up and gave her nephew a big hug, making sure he was okay.  After several reassurances that he was fine, May pulled back, satisfied.

“Do you think it went well?” Peter asked Pepper anxiously.

“I think it went better than expected.”

+++

“He’s never gonna make it. All the poor people he’s forsaken. Karma is always gonna chase him for his lies.”

-Alec Benjamin, Outrunning Karma

The moment that Peter arrived at school, he already knew it was going to be a bad day.  As he stared through the windshield at all the paparazzi surrounding the school, he let out a tired sigh.  Tony had tried to convince Peter to let him drive him to Midtown, but he had refused, thinking he was prepared to face his newfound stardom on his own.  As he sat in the driver's seat, gazing out at the sea of reporters and students while anxiety bubbled in his gut, Peter began to regret not taking Tony up on his offer.

Deciding he couldn’t delay it any longer, Peter turned off the car, grabbed his backpack from the passenger's seat, and opened the door.  He stepped out of the car, swinging the bag over his shoulder as he closed the door and locked the car Tony had lended him.  The slam of the door alerted people to his presence, and he was quickly crowded with paparazzi.  Gritting his teeth, Peter attempted to move through the horde, slowly getting through.  By the time he made it through the entrance of Midtown, he felt like he’d spent hours just trying to push through the reporters.

To nobody’s surprise, all the students in the lobby stared at Peter as he came into the building.  He tried his best to ignore their gawking as he walked through the halls to his locker.  As he turned down the first hallway from the lobby, two people came up on either side of him.  He looked to them, feeling anxious, but realized that it was only MJ and Sydney, standing by him as if they were guards.

“Are you doing okay?” Sydney asked him, genuine worry laced into her voice.

“As okay as I can be at the moment,” Peter replied, but gave her a smile that she returned.

“So . . . not very okay?” MJ questioned with a hint of sarcasm.  Peter let out a small laugh.

“Yeah, not very okay, but at least I’ve got my two friends to help me.”

Both MJ and Sydney stopped in their tracks, Peter stopping only a foot ahead of them as he quickly realized they fell behind.  He turned around, giving the two a questioning look.  They slowly came back to his sides and began to walk with the young man, both looking a bit tentative.

“Are we . . .” Sydney started but trailed off.

“Are we friends?” MJ asked him quietly.

“Yeah . . .” Peter replied quietly, “I think we’re friends.”  He turned and smiled at them and they returned it as they got back to their normal pace. 

As the three rounded the final corner, they all stopped, finding Flash and his little posse of rich assholes all standing in front of Peter’s locker, the leader of the group leaning right back against it with a smug smile on his face.

“Well, if it isn’t the sugar baby slut himself, Peter Parker!” Flash announced to the hallway, causing Peter to roll his eyes. “Oh, are you getting an attitude now?”

“Can I just get to my locker, Flash?” the boy asked, him, MJ, and Sydney walking forward until they were right in front of the clique.

“Damn, you're moody today, Parker. Has being spoiled by your sugar daddy made you whiny when you don’t get what you want?”  Flash’s gang laughed while MJ and Sydney looked like they were getting ready for a fight.  The student lining the halls whispered to each other as they watched.

“Listen, I’ve dealt with enough bullshit these past few days already, so can you just lay off for the first time in seven years? Get your head out of your ass and take a moment to look past your own ego. Isn’t bad enough that my relationship and my identity got leaked for the entire world to see and now I’m gonna be followed by paparazzi until I die?!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Parker! That must be so hard! I wonder who in the world could’ve leaked your identity?” Flash’s fake sympathetic face turned into a smug grin once more as he reached the end of his sentence.

Flash was expecting Peter to cry or scream or punch him.  He was waiting for the boy to storm off or get into a full blown fight with him.  Internally, he was hoping he would be lucky enough to see him have a full breakdown in the middle of the hallway.

What Flash wasn’t expecting was for Peter to start laughing.  A huge grin spread across the brunet’s face and he looked away for a second, running his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip and turning back to Flash, all while chuckling like a mad man.

“You're an absolute idiot. You do realize that, right?” Peter asked once he stopped laughing.  The smile was still on his face.

“What?” Flash shot back, brow creasing.

“I said that you, Eugene Thompson, are an absolute idiot.”

“What are you on about, Parker?”  Flash took a threatening step towards the boy.  To his surprise, though, the brunet didn’t look scared in the slightest.

“No, wait, I think he’s onto something,” MJ cut in with a somewhat sadistic grin.

“Yeah, I can see where you’re going with this, Peter,” Sydney added, appearing to be in on whatever the boy was talking about.

“Spit it out, Parker,” Flash threatened, towering over the other boy.

“You do realize my soulmate is Tony Stark, right?”

“Obviously,” Flash retorted, rolling his eyes. “The entire world knows now because somebody was so cruel as to give away your identity to a reporter!” He looked proud of himself.

“A reporter who trespassed onto private properties owned by Tony several times in order to get those pictures.”

“So what?”

Peter snorted, looking up at the boy in disbelief. “I can’t believe you aren’t catching on to what I’m implying.”

Flash’s brow creased even more.  A feeling of dread built in his stomach as Peter looked at him, eyes filled with pure, unadulterated glee, as if everything he ever wanted was about to come true.

“Can you even begin to imagine how mad my soulmate is about me not being able to come forward about my relationship with him on my own terms?” Peter questioned, voice laced with slightly sadistic happiness. “And can your tiny brain even process how much power he holds in the world? And do you have any idea of how much my soulmate genuinely cares about me? Maybe, since you are on the decathlon team, you’ll find a way to connect the dots.”

Flash paled, him and all of his posse taking a step back from the boy.

“Now, how do you think Tony felt when, on the day he met me, his soulmate, I was covered in bruises and scrapes and had a black eye because of you? And then how do you think he felt when I told him about how you’d been bullying me for seven years? And how about when I kept flinching cause I was terrified I was gonna get hit like I did every day in these very hallways? How livid do you think my soulmate is right now? I can promise that he’s ten times more angry than that.”

Flash was trembling, staring at the boy who could ruin his life with a single word.

“Peter, do you remember what you told me when I first found out about who your soulmate was?” MJ asked the brunet with an evil grin directed at Flash.

“Of course!” Peter turned to look at MJ. “I believe I said, ‘If anything is leaked to the press, I’ll know exactly who did it and me and my soulmate won’t hesitiate to destroy your entire fucking life,’ and later I told you that it wasn’t a threat, but a promise.” He turned back to flash. “And, lemme tell you something, Flash, I never go back on promises.”

The bully was shrinking in on himself, gazing wide eyed at Peter.

“I’m not gonna encourage Tony to do anything,” Peter told him with a kinder smile, and the boy began to gain back his confidence. “But I’m not gonna stop him either. Now, can I get to my locker?”

Flash quickly scurried out of Peter’s way and his gaggle of rich kids dispersed immediately, leaving him standing there beside the locker.  As Peter grabbed his things, he made conversation with MJ and Sydney, the three swapping stories from spring break. Halfway through MJ’s story about how she and Sydney got gal-pal’d at a cafe where they were having a date, Peter closed his locker door to see Flash still next to his locker.

“Why are you still here?”

“Your soulmate . . . he isn’t actually gonna hurt me, right?” the bully asked, voice wavering like Peter had never seen before.

“He isn’t going to hurt you, Flash,” Peter replied with a smile. “He’s gonna hurt your future and I’m not gonna stop him.”

Without another word, the three teens left, heading to their first class, as Flash just watched them go, wondering what would happen to him.

+++

“And for a moment I thought you were there, but, then again, it wasn’t true.”

-AURORA, Runaway

The day passed in a blur of stares and teachers being unusually nice to Peter.  Despite how nice it was to not have to deal with bullies, Peter felt worn out by the time he collapsed into his seat in physics, his last class of the day.  About a minute after he sat down, other people started flooding in.  Ned sat down at the desk next to him but awkwardly kept his gaze towards the front of the room.  When the bell rang, Mr. Harrington stood up from his desk and closed the door before standing in front of the chalkboard.

“Today we’re going to continue the renewable energy unit that we started before spring break. Keeping true to our syllabus, we’ve covered hydroelectric, biomass burning, solar energy, wind power, and geothermal. As I told you at the beginning of the fall semester, in an attempt to keep up with modern science, they added on an extra energy source to look at.  After that, we’ll be finished with this unit.”

Most of the class let out a sigh of relief.  Physics units tended to drag on and everybody was glad to be moving onto something new.

“So for the next couple of days,” the man said, taking a glance down at the clipboard he was holding, “we’ll be talking about Stark Industries’ arc reactor technology as a renewable energy source.” He stopped and looked up at the class, and at one student in particular.

Peter was looking forwards at the board, decidedly ignoring all the eyes on him.  The room was silent for a few moments as everybody just stared at the boy sitting in the back corner of the room.

“If you wanna say something, then go ahead and say it,” Peter dared, finally looking away from the board.  The class looked slightly apprehensive and he figured that news about his little confrontation with Flash must’ve gotten around.

“Well . . .” Mr. Harrington started uneasily, “I suppose we just, uh, you know . . . had something to say about it since . . . since you’re . . .”

“Since I’m what?” the brunet replied with a challenging glint in his eye.

“Since you’re . . . well . . . uh . . . well, I don’t wanna make you uncom-”

“No, I wouldn’t be, so why don’t you go ahead and tell me what I am,” Peter tested with a dangerous smile, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair.

The tension in the classroom was thick enough to cut with a knife.

“I thought you'd like to say something about the arc reactor technology since you are, um, Tony Stark’s, you know, uh, soulmate and all,” Mr. Harrington quickly rambled, his voice lowered a bit as if hoping Peter wouldn’t hear it.

Everybody stayed quiet as Peter uncrossed his arms and leaned forward a bit, putting an elbow on his desk and resting his chin in his hand as if bored.  “Well, it’s a fusion reactor that can produce an electromagnetic field, provide renewable energy, the whole nine yards. It has a palladium core and a new element was synthesized to stop the reaction within Tony’s body due the palladium that was poisoning him, et cetera. Can we get back to normal class please?”

Slowly, everybody turned back to the front of the room, where Mr. Harrington was frozen.  Seeing the eyes on him, he jumped back to reality and started the lesson.

Towards the end of the class, Ned worked up the courage to rip a bit of paper off of the page he’d been writing in and pass a note to Peter.  He watched out of the corner of his eye as the boy opened it, looked at it with raised eyebrows for a moment, scribbled something down, and then carelessly threw it back to him.  Ned picked it up and saw what was inside.

Under his original note, which read ‘so what happened at the beginning of class was crazy, right?’ was Peter’s simple response of, ‘I guess.’

Ned just let out a sigh and crumbled up the note, shoving it into his backpack and giving up for the time being.

When the bell rang, Peter rushed out of class and Ned ran after him.  By the time he got outside of the classroom and caught sight of his old friend, though, the boy was walking with MJ and Sydney, the three of them laughing over something.

‘When did they become friends?’

+++

“As I watched you walk away, I felt something in me change.”

-Sorority Noise, Blonde Hair, Black Lungs

Ned spent the rest of the week trying to talk to Peter in physics, the only class he had with the boy, and watching him, MJ, and Sydney hanging out during lunch or in the halls together.  All of the students stayed out of the way of the three friends, more terrified of Peter than MJ, despite how much scarier her demeanor was.

Despite all of his friends and his soulmate, Ned was realizing that he missed Peter a lot.  He yearned for their days of going to the library during lunch to hide from Flash and having Star Wars marathons with the boy.  He couldn’t believe that he’d let go of his best friend so easily after their years together.

“No, no, really!” Peter’s voice cut through Ned’s thoughts. The table Peter sat at with MJ and Sydney was actually pretty close to his own and he couldn’t help but let his eyes drift over.

The two girls were laughing, but he was laughing with them.

“I swear!” the brunet got out through his laughs. “He walked in and went, ‘Do you know who Jimmy Fallon is?’ and I was so confused because who the fuck doesn’t know who Jimmy Fallon is?!”

Peter and Ned used to video call and watch Jimmy Fallon together on school nights, talking about how they hoped to get invited onto the show one day and why they would be invited.

“And then what did he say?” Sydney prompted.

“He just goes, ‘I was hoping you did because Pep scheduled you to go on his show on Friday’ and I just immediately walked out on him!”

Ned watched MJ open her mouth to say something, but a hand waved in front of his face, breaking him out of his trance.  He turned and saw Jacob, his soulmate, looking at him in concern.

“You okay?” he asked, brows furrowed.

“Yeah, I just have a lot on my mind.”

In the background, he heard MJ say, “That’s honestly insane! I would love to be on Jimmy Fallon!” and Peter responded, “Tony said I’m allowed to bring people backstage, so you two should come with me tonight!”

In the foreground, he heard his mind wishing it was him that Peter was inviting.

+++

“Shooting stars never fly for me. My heart’s on Mars, kinda hard to see.”

-Shakka, When Will I See You Again

That night found Ned on the couch with his mom, Emilia, The Tonight Show playing on the TV.  He had been home alone for a little over a week since his dad was (and still was at that moment) on a business trip and his mom was out volunteering with the Red Cross to bring water to a small village in Lebanon, meaning that she’d been completely disconnected from the news cycle.  Before long, the interview portion of the show came up, and Ned felt dread building up in his stomach.

“With us tonight, we’ve got a young man from Queens who was recently thrown into the spotlight, and I have the honor of being the first talk show host to interview him. You probably already figured it out, but Peter Parker is here with us tonight!”

“No fucking way,” Emilia breathed as she watched her son’s friend walk out on stage, shake hands with Jimmy Fallon, and sit down on the chair closest to the desk. She turned to her son with confusion written across her face. “Ned, why the fuck would Peter be on The Tonight Show?”

Ned opened his mouth to answer but Peter talking on screen stopped him. “Thank you so much for having me!”

“Of course!” Jimmy responded with a smile. “I’m glad I get to be the first person to interview you after the press conference! Speaking of which, you did great in that!”

Ned and his mom just watched the show, frozen.

“Thank you!” Peter replied with a laugh. “I was a bit worried that Pepper would be mad at me after I low key popped off at that Breitbart reporter . . . and when I just suddenly started talking about being Jewish and proceeded to call Tony a goy on stage.”

The audience laughed while Peter gave a sheepish smile.

“But, in terms of scoring a non-Jewish soulmate, Tony Stark is pretty high up there!”

“Holy fuck,” Emilia whispered, eyes glued to the screen.

“I guess, but have you seen Thor’s abs?” Peter joked. “I mean, I would gladly become a pagan if it ensured that he was my soulmate.”

The audience laughed once more, Jimmy joining in.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Tony and I love each other a lot.”

Awww’s sounded in the crowd while Peter gave a shy grin.

“Ned, what the actual fuck?” Emilia exclaimed, turning to her son, who gave a shrug before they both turned back to the TV, unable to stop watching.

“What’s it like being soulmates with Tony Stark? Is he as suave and smooth as people remember from his playboy years?” Jimmy questioned, leaning forward with his arms on his desk as if the young man was about to tell him some hot gossip.

“Absolutely not,” Peter replied plainly, making everybody chuckle. “He’s sweet, he’s supportive, he’s an absolutely incredible soulmate, but he’s also a huge dumbass.”

“Wait, you can’t just leave us hanging! You gotta tell us what he does!”

“Tony just forgets that he’s a human sometimes. Like, he somehow just doesn’t remember that he needs to eat and sleep. One of his little robots, Dum-E, likes to make him smoothies, but he puts motor oil in them, and usually Tony knows better than to drink them, but when he’s tired, he doesn’t even think twice.”

“Holy shit!” Jimmy choked out through his laughter. 

“Not to mention that he is nothing like the playboy persona he’s portrayed as. Affection and gift-giving are one-hundred percent his love languages. Everybody’s like ‘Tony Stark is a cool playboy who only cares about sex and being rich,’ but half the time we’re together is just us holding hands and hugging and cuddling.”

“This is absolutely incredible,” Jimmy says. “You got your identity leaked, got right off a flight from Italy, went to a press conference, told off a reporter, and then five days later literally destroyed the entire persona Tony Stark had built up. You’re amazing.”

“Somebody’s gotta tell the world that Tony loves setting up romantic dates and watching shitty rom-coms and if nobody else is going to, then it is my moral responsibility.”

“Absolutely incredible,” the host repeated, looking out at the audience and motioning to the young man before going back to his original position of looking at him. “So, what’s up for you next? What’re your plans?”

“Well, I’m graduating high school in a little less than a month and I’m going to MIT in the fall, which I’m super excited about! As for the summer, Tony is almost certainly gonna try and take me traveling, and as much as I tell him that it’s okay and he doesn’t need to do that for me, he won’t stop trying. He’s stubborn as all hell.”

“That's so nice though!”

“It’s really sweet, but it takes time to get used to having a soulmate who’s rich. Like, I live in a two-bedroom apartment in Queens with my aunt and now, suddenly, I have a soulmate who can just hang out in Paris for a weekend like it’s nothing. It’s like whiplash!”

“That’s absolutely insane.”

“I know, right? But it’s also really nice to have access to good scientific equipment so I can work on projects that I’m really hoping can help people!”

Jimmy nodded along, motioning for Peter to continue.

“Well, I’m working on making these bandages that are modeled after Spider-Man’s webs that would be biodegradable and also more effective than regular bandages because they could go on any size cut and wouldn’t fall off as easily. Plus they could be used in an emergency to stop someone from bleeding out from a stab or gunshot wound! Besides that, we're working with the Trevor Project to set up a shelter in Queens for homeless LGBTQ youth.”

“You seem really committed to these projects,” Jimmy told him sincerely, causing the young man to smile.

“I mean,” Peter replied quietly, “if you have the power to do something and you don’t, then how are you better than the bad guys? Now that I have the ability to help people across the world, I’m not going to stand on the sidelines and watch them suffer anyways. So I’m really glad that Tony and I are working on some great projects and that we’re going to help a lot of people.”

“Peter Parker, everybody!” Jimmy exclaimed, motioning to the young man, who blushed as the audience cheered for him.  Standing up and shaking the host’s hand once more, Peter waved as he walked back off stage, the applause following him as he went.

“Coming up, we have our guest performance from-”

Emilia turned off the TV and let the room fall into silence.  Ned looked over at her as she just stared at the black screen.  Slowly, she turned and met his eyes.

“So . . . Peter is Tony Stark’s soulmate?” Emilia asked her son distantly.

“Nobody knew until a bunch of photos of them on vacation in Italy were leaked,” Ned explained.

“He didn’t tell you? I thought you two told each other everything?!” Emilia’s tone echoed with confusion and concern.

“We haven’t really talked in a year in a half,” the boy admitted. “We kinda stopped being friends after I met Jacob, and then he didn’t really hang with anybody after MJ met Sydney.”

“You just left him all alone?”

Despite Ned knowing what he’d done in the back of his mind, the weight of it didn’t occur to him until that moment.  He was the reason Peter never had any protection from bullies. He was the reason Peter was always covered in bruises. He was the reason Peter stopped caring about everything and everyone around him.

If you have the power to do something and you don’t, then how are you better than the bad guys?

“Yeah . . . I guess I did.”

“You should talk to him,” Emilia told him quietly.  Then, she stood up and walked off to her bedroom without another word, leaving Ned in the dimly lit room with only his thoughts to keep him company.

+++

“But I’m a constant headache, a tooth out of line.”

-Joyce Manor, Constant Headache

Flash Thompson was flipping through channels as he sat on his family’s living room couch, trying to drown out the silence of the empty house.  Both of his parents were on business trips, so he was all alone.  With his homework done and him being unable to fall asleep, the boy found himself down stairs with a tub of ice cream he pulled out of the freezer.

Flash hit the button to switch channels again and found that he’d made it to HBO.  Seeing as it was a little past eleven thirty, Last Week Tonight was on the air and the host was finishing up his main story.  With nothing better to do, the high schooler put down the remote and watched.

“Now, I know we often finish with our main story, but we wanted to talk about an event we haven’t had a chance to cover yet, since we weren’t on the air last Sunday. I’m sure you’ve all heard about it, since you haven’t been living under rocks, but we wanted to talk about Peter Parker.” “You have to be fucking kidding me,” Flash groaned, rolling his eyes as a picture of his peer showed up next to the host.

“I know he’s been the talk of the week, but if you haven’t heard of Peter Parker, he is Tony Stark’s soulmate and the two of them were keeping their relationship private. However, somebody found out about their relationship and told a reporter about it. That reporter then followed them around their vacation in Italy, took pictures of them, and then posted them online, therefore leaking Peter’s identity and pushing him into the limelight.”

A couple of people in the audience booed.

“He’s actually handled it surprisingly well, though. He and Tony Stark did a press conference where they gave reporters a chance to ask questions and then, just on Friday, Peter went on The Tonight Show and talked about what his life is like and what he’s been up to.”

Flash looked at the TV deadpan as he remembered the interview.

“Very excitingly, I am being given the chance to talk to Peter Parker tonight, so everybody give him a warm welcome!”

The audience went crazy as John Oliver stood up and walked over to the area beside the space where his desk is.  There was a table with two chairs set up on opposite sides.  Peter Parker walked onstage and waved shyly as he made his way to his seat.  The two men shook hands before sitting down.  Flash booed at his TV from where he sat on his couch.

“Thank you so much for being on the show!”

“Thank you for having me!” Peter had a bright smile on his face. “I’ve been a fan of your show for a long time!”

“I’m glad to hear that, but that begs the question𑁋” John leaned in a bit, as if he were about to tell a secret. “𑁋has Tony Stark watched my show?”

The crowd laughed.

“He actually has! I made him watch it one night and he’s been watching it every week since!”

“Yes! We made it!” the host shouted, raising a fist up in victory as the crowd cheered and Peter laughed.

Flash rolled his eyes again and began to half tune-out the interview as he just stared blankly at the wall about his TV.  His mind was in a different place, thoughts running through his head at lightning speed.

‘Why does Parker get a rich and famous soulmate?’

‘He doesn’t deserve all of this!’

‘Why does everybody like him now?’

Flash tuned back into the interview at some point, catching the words that his classmate said.

“Yeah, I was bullied a lot, but it kinda stopped once I was outed as Tony’s soulmate. I think people are a little afraid of me now, but before that, it was really awful. It was extremely physical to the point where-”

Flash turned off the TV.

+++

“I wanna be someone to someone, someone to you.”

-BANNERS, Someone To You

Ned spent that school week attempting to build up the courage to talk to Peter.  He finally did that Friday, seeing Peter head to the library for lunch and promising to meet up with MJ and Sydney later.

“Hey, Jacob, I think I’m gonna go to the library for lunch,” Ned told his soulmate and bolted to after Peter, not giving the boy a chance to respond.

Ned slipped into the doors right after his ex-friend, watching as he disappeared behind some bookshelves and subtly following.  He kept a good distance as he pursued Peter and peeked through some books to make sure the boy was sitting down at the little study area in the back before making his way in.

The moment Ned stepped into the study area, Peter looked up at him, his face turning into a slight scowl.

“What do you want?”

“I need to talk to you,” Ned told him, practically begging.

“We’re talking right now,” Peter shot back sarcastically.

“Seriously.”

The brunet sighed and shut his laptop, which he had opened to work on his assignment.  Ned couldn’t help but to stop and notice that the laptop looked custom, looking nothing like the Stark Computers that were on the market.  It wasn’t lost on him that it was probably a piece of tech that Tony Stark had made for the boy.  He pushed away the thought that it was likely something the two soulmates had made together.

Ned took the sigh to mean that Peter was giving in and letting him talk, so he sat down in the chair across from him, twiddling his thumbs nervously in his lap.  It was silent for a few moments as they both waited for the other to say something.

“If you wanna say something, then go ahead and say it,” Peter told him, repeating what he’d said the week before in physics.

“I miss being friends with you,” Ned murmured, looking up and making shy eye contact with the boy, who did not seem fazed.  In fact, he only raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

“Are you fucking with me?” Peter asked him.  When Ned remained silent, Peter gave a small chuckle.  “You aren’t fucking with me. You really came to talk to me and say you miss being friends with me only after a year and a half and finding out who my soulmate is. You’re absolutely unbelievable.”

“Why can’t we be friends again? You’re friends with MJ!”

“Because MJ didn’t just try to be friends again. We slowly started hanging out and she didn’t give a shit who my soulmate was. She just hung around because she had nobody to sit with. We were like acquaintances who became friends.”

“I don’t care who your soulmate is! I just miss you!” Ned defended.

“Too little, too late.” Peter shoved his laptop into his bag, stood up, and left, not giving his ex-friend another chance to speak.

Ned just let him go.

+++

“I think my head is fit to burst. Which breakdown shall I deal with first?”

-dodie, I Won’t Be Done

Flash, much like Ned, had been watching Peter for the entire week, however, it was for a different reason.  That reason being that he was absolutely and utterly pissed at the boy.  Sure, he was already mad that Peter had leverage on him now, but having seen the boy on several talk shows and being happy with his friends throughout the week made him livid.  In the back of his mind, he knew that what he was about to do could cost him his future, but all he saw was red.

That’s why, on the way to last period, Flash and his little gang of rich kids cornered Peter.  The boy was walking to physics alone, as neither Sydney nor MJ were in the class with him, and they approached him from all sides, forming a semi-circle around him and forcing him back against the lockers.

“What the fuck do you guys want?” Peter spat, voice conveying his lack of patience.

“What we want is for you to tell your soulmate to back off and not ruin my future,” Flash told him with venom, the rest of his posse voicing their agreement.

“Why should I?”

“Do you really want to know?”

Peter crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow.  The certainty that the group couldn’t do anything to him was written across his face.  Despite his better judgment and the threat of his life being ruined, Flash took a step forward, raised a fist, and punched the boy.

Hard.

Peter stumbled back and hit his head against the lockers, incapacitating him for a moment.  A couple of the bully’s “friends” took advantage of that and grabbed the boy’s arms, pinning him up against the cold metal.  Flash took a threatening step towards him and gave a smug grin, watching as Peter’s nose started bleeding.

“Not so confident now, huh, Parker?” Flash wound up his fist again and punched the pinned boy in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him.  One of his goons took the chance to kick Peter in the leg, hard enough that there was sure to be a bruise by the end of the day.  A flurry of hits and kicks rained down upon the brunet, him wincing with every single one.  Peter was counting down the minutes until the tardy bell rang.

Mere seconds from the sound of the bell, a stern voice called out, “Thompson, Parker, principal’s office!  The rest of you, vice principal’s office!”

As the gang let go, Peter stumbled a bit, struggling to get back on his feet.  The pain throbbed across his body as the beaten up boy trailed behind the clique.  Someone came up beside him and he turned his gaze to them, only to see Ned staring straight ahead.

“Did you . . . Were you the one who alerted Mr. Warren?”

Ned moved his gaze to the boy slowly before giving a small nod.

“Thank you,” Peter told him softly, sincerity shining through his voice.

The group split up as they reached the faculty offices, Flash’s gang turning the corner to go sit in front of the vice principal’s office while Ned, Peter, and Flash sat in the chairs outside the principal’s office.  They all stayed silent, not daring to utter a word.  After a few minutes, Mr. Morita stepped out of his office and the three boys looked up at him.

“Mr. Parker and Mr. Thompson, I’ve alerted your emergency contacts.  Mr. Leeds, there was no need to contact anyone as you were not involved in the incident, but please stay here so I can hear your story of the incident.”  The man walked back into his office and the hallway went silent again.

After only a few more minutes, a man rushed into the faculty offices and immediately made a beeline to the three boys.  As he stopped in front of them, it dawned upon Peter and Ned that it was Flash’s father.

“What the hell happened?” the man said gruffly, looking over the teens.  When he caught sight of Peter, his eyebrows furrowed, trying to figure out where he knew the boy from.  Before anybody could answer his question, Morita walked out of his office again.

“Mr. Thompson, thank you for showing up on such short notice. We’ll get started in a few minutes once Mr. Parker’s emergency contact show-”

“Am I late?” a voice asked, cutting off the principal.

All of the people already there turned to look at the entrance of the faculty offices, coming face-to-face with Tony Stark.  The new arrival made his way over coolly while the five already there stayed quiet.  Peter stood up as his soulmate joined the group.  Tony gave the boy a once over and his relaxed smile turned into a frown.  He took his soulmate’s face in his hands and took in all the bruises and the dried blood from his nose before letting go and turning to the starstruck principal.

“After a fight, aren’t students supposed to be sent to the nurse first before the principal’s office or have things changed since I was in school?” Tony questioned impassively, but it was obvious that the question was rhetorical.

“Uh, right! I’ll, uh, grab some ice for Mr. Parker’s nose! I’ll be right back!” Morita rushed out of the faculty offices and towards the nurse’s office.

While Ned, Flash, and Mr. Thompson stayed frozen, staring at the billionaire, Tony and Peter turned to each other.

“I didn’t know you were listed as an emergency contact for me,” Peter told him with a raised eyebrow, a question hidden behind the statement.

“Soulmates are allowed to be listed as emergency contacts as long as they’re over eighteen,” Tony answered the unspoken question and slipped one of his hands into Peter’s.

“I didn’t really pay attention when I had that class on soulmates in sophomore year,” the younger man admitted.

“Neither did I.”

Peter gave a small laugh, a little bit of light flooding into his eyes.

“You’re . . . you’re Tony Stark,” Mr. Thompson uttered, eyes wide as he stared at the billionaire superhero.

The two soulmates turned to acknowledge the other people in the room.  Ned looked a bit starstruck, but seemed the least shocked of the three, Mr. Thompson appeared to be shaken up, and Flash was pale, with his eyes wide and features conveying his horror.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Tony said with a sickly sweet voice, putting his hand forward.

The man took it, his hand shaking. “I, uh, I don’t believe we have. I’m Eric Thompson.”

“Pleasure to meet you.” Everybody could tell that Tony was, in fact, not pleased to meet the man.

“I’m a big fan of your work,” the nervous man told him as he drew his hand back.

Tony only gave a short nod of acknowledgement, not caring to make small talk with the bumbling fool.  Luckily, he was saved from the conversation by Morita reappearing, out of breath and clutching a bag of ice in one hand.  He walked over and handed it to Peter, who gently put it up against his injured nose.

“Let’s all go into my office,” the principal said, opening the door and holding it for all of them.  As soon as they all sat down in chairs in front of the desk, Morita went around to his side and practically collapsed into his chair.  Peter and Flash sat on opposite ends of the five seats set up, each having their respective contact sitting beside them.  Ned was stuck in between the two groups, feeling anxious despite having done nothing.  They all sat in silence for a few moments while the principal fumbled around for something to say.

“Now, I’m sure you’re wondering why I called you in today.”

“I’m assuming it has something to do with Peter being covered in bruises,” the billionaire cut in.

“Tony,” Peter warned, looking to his soulmate.  The man put his hands up in defeat.

“There was a fight in the hallway and I wanted to head everybody’s side of the story,” Morita continued as if the interaction hadn’t happened.  “Ned, as you were the one who told a teacher, can I hear your side of the story first?”

Ned gave a nod before starting. “I was walking to physics and I was rushing because I was going to be late, but when I turned onto the 300 hallway, I saw Flash and some of his friends beating up Peter while a couple of them held his arms to pin him against the lockers. I turned into the first classroom, which was Mr. Warren’s, and I alerted him of what was happening.”

“Thank you, Ned. Mr. Thompson, may I hear your side of the story?”

Flash, unsurprisingly, jumped into a false narrative. “I was walking to pre-calculus with my friends when Peter came up and tried to punch me. I tried to get him off, but he just kept trying to attack me, so I had to hit him back to make him stumble away and then my friends helped restrain him!”

“Are you sure about your story? It does not align with Mr. Leeds’ report and what Mr. Warren told me when he emailed me about the incident only a few minutes ago.”

“Are you calling my son a liar?!” Eric Thompson butted in, not giving his son a chance to respond. “I’ll have you know Flash here is a good kid who wouldn’t do anything like this! I cannot believe that he is being accused like this!”

“Mr. Thompson!” Morita spoke over the man. “No accusations have been made yet! I am simply telling your son that his story does not line up with the other ones. I am not calling him a liar.”

That seemed to calm the father down because he stayed quiet after that.

“Mr. Parker, could you please tell your side of the story?” the principal asked.  Peter took a deep breath and Tony grabbed his hand, squeezing it encouragingly.

“Well . . . I was walking to physics when Flash and his friends cornered me against the lockers in the 300 hall. I asked them what they wanted and Flash said that he was mad over the face that Tony was angry at him because he’s been bullying me for seven years. When I told them that it wasn’t my problem, Flash punched me in the nose and I stumbled back, hitting my head against the lockers. Two of his friends pinned me against the lockers and I started getting beat up. That’s when Mr. Warren broke it up.”

“He’s lying!” Flash shouted as soon as Peter finished telling his side of the story.  Tony glared at the bully, but Peter squeezed his hand and gave him a warning look.

“Seeing that Mr. Parker’s testimony lines up with Mr. Leeds and Mr. Warren’s testimonies, along with the security footage that the counselor sent me, I believe that you are lying about what happened, Mr. Thompson.”

Flash went pale again, looking over at where Tony and Peter were sitting.  The former had a smug grin on his face while the latter had a neutral expression, but happiness shone in his eyes.

“Mr. Parker, Mr. Leeds, and Mr. Stark, you are all free to go.”

The three men stood up and exited the office.  As soon as they were out, Tony turned to Peter, questioning if he was okay.  Ned watched his old friend spout off reassurances that he was fine and that his soulmate didn’t need to be worried.  Eventually, the man seemed satisfied and turned away from Peter.

The two soulmates looked at Ned for a moment while he stared right back.

“Thank you, Ned,” Peter murmured kindly, “for telling Mr. Warren, I mean.” Tony nodded along to the sentiment.

The two walked out and Ned waited a few moments before heading out the same way, not wanting to seem like he was following them.  As he walked to physics to catch the last few minutes of class, he wondered if he had made progress with Peter.

+++

“And I’ve been in this place before. Fine as we are, but we want more.”

-Lauren Aquilina, Fools

It seemed that Ned had made progress with Peter, because, the next Monday, MJ invited him and Jacob to sit with her at lunch.

“You’re biting your lip,” Jacob informed Ned as they stood near the doors of the cafeteria together.

“Oh.” He forced himself to stop.

“It’ll be okay,” the short boy’s soulmate reassured him, taking his hand. “I’m sure of it.”

Ned gave a curt nod and the two approached the table, sitting down across from where Peter, MJ, and Sydney were sitting.  The latter two gave the boys a smile while the brunet gave them a two-fingered salute, his face remaining neutral.

“Nice to see you two losers,” MJ greeted in her usual fashion.

“We were just talking about our weekends,” Sydney chimed in, trying to include them in the conversation.

“Cool. What did you guys do?” Jacob replied, saving Ned from where he was floundering for words.

“I mostly worked on a painting,” MJ told him simply.

“I visited my grandparents.”

“Nice! Ned and I spent the weekend hanging out.”

“What about you, Peter?” Ned asked, finally speaking.

Peter looked up from where he was picking at his nails, taking a moment to realize that everybody at the table was looking at him, waiting for an answer.

“Oh, uh, I spent most of the weekend with my soulmate.”

The table fell back into easy conversation, everybody satisfied with Peter’s answer.  It took a little bit, but Peter joined in by the end of lunch.

As the bell rang and all the teens got up from their table and began to head back to classes, Peter shot Ned a small smile before exiting the cafeteria.

In some strange sort of way, things were heading back to normal.

+++

“It’s a simple suggestion of a moment worthy to keep.”

-Wilderado, Millie

The Friday afternoon the day before graduation found Peter leading his little friend group through the lobby of Stark Tower, weaving his way around the crowds.  Nobody gave them a second glance, everybody knowing exactly who Peter was.  He even shot the desk lady a quick hello as they passed.  When they finally made it into the private elevator, all of his friends looked a little shaken up from the business of the ground floor, but Peter was unbothered.

“That was insane,” Ned announced, leaning back against the side of the elevator.

“Is it always that busy?” Sydney asked, looking a little out of breath.

“Only on weekdays,” Peter answered nonchalantly. “Not too many people are here on weekends.”

Soon enough, the elevator doors opened to reveal the penthouse living room and kitchen, which were connected to each other.  Peter, of course, walked out and dropped his bag by the couch before making his way over to the kitchen.  His friends walked out more slowly, taking in their surroundings before putting their stuff next to Peter’s.  Even MJ, who rarely showed emotions, looked a bit in awe.

The place had a modern design, very Tony Stark chic, but, despite that, it looked lived in.  There was a fuzzy blanket draped over the couch and what the group recognized to be one of Peter’s sweatshirts was hung over the back of a kitchen chair.  There were framed pictures on the wall and a bit of clutter on the kitchen island.  In a way, it was cozy.

The two pairs of soulmates watched as Peter opened up the fridge and pulled out a can of root beer before turning to them.

“You guys want anything? You can take whatever you want.”

“Are . . . are we allowed to?” Ned questioned, looking a bit anxious.

“I mean, I just gave you permission.” Peter had already moved to the pantry and grabbed a party size bag of chips before getting a big bowl out of the cabinet and pouring them in.

Sydney watched him with a raised eyebrow. “Yeah, but, like, this kitchen belongs to-”

“Me?” a voice cut in. The four teens in the living room whipped around and found Tony Stark standing at the entrance to one of the hallways that led off from the living room.  They stared in awe at him as he walked past them and into the kitchen.

“Hey, Tones,” Peter greeted as Tony approached him.  Once in range, the two shared a short kiss before separating.

“What are you all up to? You never mentioned you were bringing people over.”

Before Peter could even answer, Jacob cut in, worry laced into his voice. “You didn’t ask if we could come over?”

“Nope,” Peter responded plainly, popping the ‘p’ and laying his head on Tony’s shoulder as the man put an arm around his waist.  Jacob furrowed his eyebrows while the other three teens gave each other slightly bewildered looks.  However, they didn’t get any more answers.

“We’re decorating our graduation caps,” Peter told Tony, pulling away from his hold and grabbing his soda along with the bowl of chips.  The older man followed him as he walked back over to his friends and set the items down on the coffee table. “Also, don’t you have a meeting in, like, five minutes?”

“Shit,” Tony muttered, checking his watch. “I should probably get going, but we’re still on for getting takeout and watching movies tonight, right?”

“Of course!” The two soulmates shared another quick kiss before Tony made his way over to the elevator, the doors already opening for him.

“Say hi to Pepper for me!” Peter called.

“You got it!” Tony called back right before the doors closed.

Peter turned to his friends, who looked back at him in shock.

“Let’s start decorating!”

+++

“But God I want to feel again. Oh God I want to feel again.”

-Sleeping At Last, Touch

“Going through high school was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever faced. I felt alone for a lot of it. I faced a lot, from bullies to rumors to nearly failing classes. And, yet, here I am, standing in front of all of you today, giving this speech. Despite everything, all of us made it through. We made it to graduation and we’ll make it so much farther. And I am so glad to have made it here, to be graduating with the class of 20XX. We did it.” Peter finished his valedictorian speech with his voice strong, looking out over the crowd of teary eyed parents and proud relatives and caring friends from other high schools.  Everybody cheered, some seniors throwing their caps into the air.

He couldn’t believe that he had made it.

Peter made his way out into the lobby, weaving through the people, trying to find the people there for him.  Eventually, he spotted his aunt talking with Ned’s parents and made his way over.  Once he did, he also found MJ, Jacob, and Sydney’s parents, all talking with them.  His friends were standing beside them, all chatting excitedly.  Finally, there was Pepper, Rhodey, Happy, and, of course, Tony.

He made it.  He actually made it.

+++

“I did it all. I owned every second that this world could give. I saw so many places. The things that I did. Yeah, with every broken bone, I swear I lived.”

-OneRepublic, I Lived

Five Months Later - November

Peter awoke to a banging on his door.  He groaned, burying his head into his pillow.

“Come on, Peter! We’ve got class in forty-five minutes!” Ned’s voice floated through the wood.

After a moment more, the brunet got out of his warm bed and stumbled to the door, opening it up and seeing his friend, who was already dressed.  Looking over his shoulder, he saw that the room across from his had its door open, which meant that MJ and Sydney were both already up.

“Go get dressed,” Ned ordered. “Jacob made breakfast.”

Peter gave a nod and closed the door, drawing himself out of his sluggish state to get dressed and ready to go for the day.  When he got out of his room a few minutes later and walked into the kitchen, he saw his friends all sitting down for breakfast.  He joined them at his seat, happy to eat the pancakes that his friend’s soulmate had made.  There was light conversation as they all discussed classes and their plans for the day.  Peter and Sydney were talking about their engineering class when MJ asked the group if anything was going on for the day besides classes.

“Tony’s coming in today,” Peter told them and everybody looked at him, the table going silent. “You guys are really never gonna get used to this, huh?”

“Bro, your soulmate is Tony fucking Stark. How could we get used to that?” Jacob questioned him.

“Maybe because you guys live in his penthouse with me?” Peter suggested with a raised eyebrow. “Anyways, if you guys are free tonight, we could all go out to dinner together!”

Everybody voiced their agreement.  After a few more minutes, Peter and Ned got up from the table to head out to their first class of the day, which was earlier than everybody else’s.  They threw on their winter coats and gave everybody a goodbye before leaving, talking the whole way to the classroom and ignoring the looks that Peter got everywhere he went.  He had gotten used to people recognizing him.

That afternoon, when Peter and MJ walked back to the penthouse, having their last class on Fridays together, they didn’t talk much.  They simply stayed side by side and took comfort in each other’s company.

When they got to their place on the top floor of the building, Tony was sitting at the kitchen table, doing some work on his StarkPad.

“Tones!” Peter exclaimed, a large smile on his face.  Tony got up from his seat and the two soulmates gave each other a warm embrace, sharing a kiss.

MJ gave a small grin at the loving looks on the two men’s faces before walking to her and Sydney’s shared room to put her stuff down.  When she got there, she found her soulmate sitting on the bed with Ned and Jacob sitting on the little couch in the corner, all three of them talking.  The four only hung out for a few minutes before Peter popped in to tell them that they should get ready because Tony made reservations for all of them at a nice restaurant.

That night, the three pairs of soulmates sat around a table at a nice restaurant, telling stories and laughing, as if they’d known each other for forever.

It was as Peter laid in bed, held by his soulmate and looking at his alarm clock, that he realized how much everything had changed.  He was happy, warm, content.  It was everything he had ever wanted, and it was right there.

Soulmates were a strange thing, connecting two people together for eternity, yet not being able to tell if a person’s soulmate would die before they had the chance to meet or giving someone no soulmate at all.  There were theories about how it worked, from quantum entanglement to straight-up magic, but nobody was really sure in the end.  Most didn’t care about the science anyway. 

They cared about falling in love.

And Peter Parker and Tony Stark had fallen in love.

Tag List For All Fics (lmk if you want to be added):

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Tag List For Jupiter:

@haylove5  @honeybunstarker @bizzlepotter @freezing-blue @deni-gonzalez @chaniegaroo @darkerstarker @prism-opals @twokinkybeans @ilikestarker @smallnjh @starkerthanreality @bookworm1015 @starkershomelife @antis-fuck-off @itsdisapointmentasmrworld

#tony stark/peter parker #starker fluff #starker #starker fanfiction #ironspider #jupiter #soulmate AU #starker soulmate au #this took me way too long #im sorry it sucks #but i hope you like this! #pls like this #axiwrites

[sassy-starker]

WIP: Jupiter

A soulmate AU

-

Soulmates were a strange thing, connecting two people together for eternity, yet not being able to tell if a person’s soulmate would die before they had the chance to meet or giving someone no soulmate at all. There were theories about how it worked, from quantum entanglement to straight-up magic, but nobody was really sure in the end. Most didn’t care about the science anyway.

They cared about falling in love.

Anthony Edward Stark had been born without words on his wrist, destined to never find true love. Destined to be isolated from the rest of the world. It was partly why his father hated him, but his mother didn’t mind all that much.

(Of course, she didn’t. His mother had always cared about him.)

No matter where he went, Tony wore bracelets over his wrist. When people asked, he claimed that he wanted his words to be private so nobody could see them and pretend to be his soulmate. He never let it slip that he didn’t have a soulmate, making sure that the only people who knew were his parents and Jarvis.

Not having a soulmate, along with his abusive asshole of a father, was a factor in how he acted once he had grown up. He drowned himself in alcohol until he was sure it would fill up his lungs and had sex with as many people as possible, hoping to fill the loneliness inside of him.

It didn’t work.

Luckily, Pepper and Rhodey were there to remind him that not having a soulmate didn’t make him any less deserving of familial and platonic love.

Pepper had already found her soulmate, a woman named Natasha Romanov. She had been searching for a long time, but eventually found Natasha when the woman came in for an interview for a job in PR. Pepper had the words, ‘I did not expect you to be this pretty’ on her wrist while Natasha had the words, ‘And I didn’t expect to find my soulmate in a job interview’ on hers.

Rhodey had found his soulmate when he was grabbing takeout for him and Tony. He accidentally bumped into his soulmate, Sam Wilson, in a Chinese restaurant. Rhodey had the words ‘Fuck, I am so sorry,’ while Sam had the words ‘Don’t be’ on his wrist.

Both Pepper and Rhodey were there when he got a soul sentence.

It was a rainy afternoon in August, droplets of water falling down gently like shimmering diamonds outside the windows of the penthouse kitchen. Tony hummed a tune as he grabbed a granola bar from the pantry, coffee brewing behind him. As he turned back toward the coffee maker to grab his mug, he felt a strange sensation across his left wrist. It was somehow comforting and stinging at the same time. It burned and yet it was cooling and soft. It was like no sensation he had felt before. He dropped the granola bar, pulled down the sleeve of his shirt, and there it was, the words that would haunt him for years to come.

What’s your favorite planet?

Tony Stark screamed.

#starker #starker fanfiction #axiwrites #starker fic #pro starker #starker fanfic #tony stark/peter parker #soulmate AU #soulmates #this fic is gonna be a long one lmao

[sassy-starker]

i high key low key wanna write a fic where peter has ADHD. i actually have ADHD and i hyperfixate on stuff and it really affects me when people get annoyed when i ramble on about my fixation.

so, consider:

-peter rambling on to tony about his current fixation and then stopping and apologizing for rambling, but tony is like “no! i love hearing you ramble about things!” and it makes peter super happy

-peter fidgeting a lot and feeling like he’s weird for it, but tony reminding him that it’s okay

-peter having trouble paying attention when doing work and tony having to get him back on track

-peter forgetting he said something/told tony something already and tony reminding him (in a super gentle way) that he’s already said it

-peter forgetting to do things/grab things he needs to grab and tony helping to remind him and make sure he has everything.

-tony reminding peter to take his meds

in conclusion: starker with ADHD!Peter. thanks for coming to my ted talk.

#starker #axiwrites #starker fanfiction #tony stark/peter parker #pro starker #adhd!peter #i have adhd and i wanna project stop judging me

[sassy-starker]

Running

A Starker Drabble

There was something oddly therapeutic about running away, about knowing that nobody has any clue where you are, about having no idea where you’re headed. Nobody on the street pays attention to you, because you’re just another stranger heading somewhere— heading nowhere— and nobody gives a shit about you or your life. There’s nothing significant about you, no feature that makes you stand out amongst the crowds as you wander through the towering building and blinding lights of New York City in the nighttime. There was— is— something therapeutic about running away, and Peter Parker knew that.

It wasn’t anything important; he wasn’t on the run from a terrorist organization or a life of crime or his debts to the mob. There was no reason for him to run, for him to think about getting out of New York and never returning. He shouldn’t be running, shouldn’t be leaving, but he just couldn’t bring himself to stay after he’d found out. When he walked into his apartment and found out that Quentin was cheating, he didn’t think about his options. His first thought was simply:

Run.

It was dumb, and he knew that. He couldn’t just run away from his apartment, from his home, and never face what had happened. He should go back and sit down with his boyfriend— ex-boyfriend?— and talk about it, but the more he thought about turning back, the more unappealing it sounded.

So, instead, he walked, head down and hood pulled up, along the dark streets of the city, ignoring the world around him, and the world ignored him right back. He had no clue where he was going or when he would stop running. He had his phone, a charger, fifty bucks, and a small container of chocolate hearts that he’d bought to give to Quentin when he came home that evening after work.

Coming across the stairs leading to the subway, he went down, the sound of his sneakers tapping against the concrete drowned out by the sounds of the city. Making it to the bottom, he jumped the gates, a skill he’d had extensive practice at as a teenager. Finally, he stood at the bottom, waiting for the next train to come.

The station was empty, the tunnels eerily quiet with only the faint sounds of the world above drifting down, muffled by the amount of space between him and the city. It was calming, in a way, just like running, with nobody there to stop him, no person there to tell him to turn back. He was in control, he could go anywhere.

He could go nowhere.

He heard the train before he saw it, the deafening sound of it coming down the tracks echoing through the tunnels. The glare of the front lights made him squint his eyes a little, but he didn’t turn away.

When it came to a screeching halt, the doors slid open with a creak. He stepped into the cart closest to him, which was nearly empty except for one man sitting in the corner looking down at his phone. Peter sat down on a seat about in the middle of the cart, across from the doors he entered through and a little to the left, so he was in the same half of the car as the stranger.

The runaway didn’t pull out his phone or close his eyes, instead staring straight at the windows across from him and watching the concrete tunnels and blazing orange lights go by.

Nobody got on at the next three stops.

Peter could feel the other passenger sneaking glances at him, but said nothing and didn’t spare him a look, sitting unmoving as he continued to just stare out the dirty windows.

Another stop went by.

“Are you okay?” the stranger asked.

The brunet startled a bit and turned to look at the man, who was gazing at him with eyes full of what appeared to be genuine concern.

“Yeah. Why?” Peter replied, tone turning

slightly defensive, but a voice crack betrayed his assurance of being okay.

“You just looked like you were disassociating and I didn’t want you to miss your stop or anything.”

“Well, I’m fine, so you don’t have to worry.”

“No offense, but that sounded so fake that I’m only worrying more.”

Peter sighed, closing his eyes and running his hands down his face before opening his eyes again and looking back to the man.

“I’m just having a rough night,” he admitted with a shrug, hoping he could leave it at that.

“I figured. Not many people are riding the subway this late because they’re having a great day.” His voice was slightly humorous, but there was still that tone of concern underneath. The brunet found it almost endearing how much this stranger seemed to care about him.

“Well, wouldn’t that mean that you’re here because of a shitty night too?” Peter shot back, praying it would shift the focus off of him.

“I am,” the man confessed with a slightly sad smile. “How about this: if I tell you why I’m here, will you tell me why you’re here?”

Peter mulled over it for a few seconds, weighing the pros and cons. The logical part of him said that he shouldn’t even be talking to a random man on the subway, as you never knew who you could trust in New York City, but his curiosity wanted to find out why this stranger was here. Eventually, he came to a decision.

“Sure. What could go wrong?” Peter told him with a shrug, trying to act uninterested. “Why are you on the subway at two am, talking to some random twenty-two year old?”

“I’m a businessman and my assistant got pissed at me because I might have ruined a deal for the company I work for and I couldn’t sleep because I was so worried about it.” The sentence came out easily, no hesitation in the man’s voice. It was obvious to Peter that he was telling the truth. “Now it’s your turn.”

“I came home from a late shift at work and found out my boyfriend of two years was cheating on me,” Peter confided in the stranger, voice quiet and tone sounding almost embarrassed.

The man paused, simply staring at the brunet with a concerned face, looking even more worried than before.

“I’m really sorry. Being cheated on sucks.”

“It’s okay. I just didn’t know what to do and all I could think of doing was running, so here I am.”

The car stopped at the next station. Nobody got on.

Tears slowly started to leak out of Peter’s eyes and he didn’t realize how much he had wanted to cry until that moment. Still, he began to furiously wipe them away.

“Sorry. I sound like such a baby.” The tears wouldn’t stop falling.

The man got up and walked over, careful to keep his balance as the cart rocked back and forth on the tracks. He sat down near Peter, one seat between the two, enough to be close, but also enough so the brunet didn’t feel trapped by him.

“You don’t sound like a baby. Being cheated on feels awful, and I know that from experience. I don’t know why you would think that it’s dumb to feel upset over this.”

“Quentin, my boyfriend, I mean, he always told me I was just being dumb when I cried over things, and I am. I’m being a baby over this whole thing. Instead of facing him, I just ran away.”

The man sighed, eyes gleaming with sorrow and a controlled rage.

“He sounds like a dickhead.” That got a light chuckle out of Peter. “You’re allowed to be upset. You’re allowed to feel emotions. The fact that you’re emotional over him cheating on you is completely normal. He’s a manipulative asshole for making you feel like you can’t be mad at him.”

“You really think so?” The absolute hope in the brunet’s voice was heartbreaking, so full of innocence and wonder.

“I know so.”

The cart fell back into silence for a few moments as it came to a stop at the next station. Nobody got onto the cart.

“I’m Peter, by the way. Peter Parker,” the brunet introduced himself, deeming the stranger trustworthy.

“Tony Riggs,” the man replied, lying through his teeth about his last name. After all, his company didn’t give a face to the name of their owner, and he wasn’t about to give up his identity.

“It’s nice to meet you, Tony.” There was a soft smile on Peter’s face.

“You as well.” Tony matched his smile.

The cart came to a stop at another station and Peter gave a small sigh.

“I should get off. I need to go somewhere. I hope I see you again, Tony.” He stood up and walked off, leaving the man, who was in a bit of shock as the brunet walked off abruptly.

Tony was a moment too late to stand up and call after Peter, but the brunet was already gone. He didn’t know where the boy had come from or where he was going, but he did know one thing.

He wanted to meet Peter again, and he would go to the ends of the earth and back to see that soft, rosy-cheeked face and puppy dog brown eyes once more.

Notes: this was slightly inspired by this short fic by @birdycurtains and partly by a story of me talking to a stranger on the subway who was very nice to me and helped me through some shit. i’m open to writing a sequel to this if y’all want!

Tag List For All Fics (let me know if you would like to be added/removed!)

@darkerstarker @dim-ships-johnlock @ashleybeattie @haylove5

#starker #starker fanfiction #axiwrites #tony stark/peter parker #pro starker #ironspider #starker fic #starker fanfic #starker drabble #drabble #starker angst #kinda??? #idk but i hope y’all liked it

[sassy-starker]

I have a prompt for peter to be a senior in HS and he always gets picked up in a fancy car and people never know why and who's picking him up. Then one day Tony comes into school and is eating lunch with him or something.

Ask and ye shall receive!

Of Senior Year and Mystery Lovers

Word Count: 3680

TW: Bullying (but it’s not too serious. There’s very little violence)

Peter Parker was just about three-thousand percent done with high school.  He just couldn’t bring himself to care anymore.  Aunt May would joke about him having senioritis before senior year, but didn’t stop the boy from staying home from school when he genuinely felt like he couldn’t make himself get up and deal with it.  On those days, Tony would come over and whisk Peter away to Stark Tower, where they would sit around all day, eating Chinese takeout and binging shows on Netflix.

That was one more reason Peter was sick of high school: he just wanted to come forward about his relationship.  The media was going to tear him and Tony apart anyway for getting together when Peter was seventeen, so why did it matter if they just went ahead and told the world? At least, that was what Peter thought.  Tony wanted to wait a bit longer, just to make sure his younger boyfriend would be safe and wouldn’t be bombarded during school.  But as the summer after junior year passed and he began his last year of high school, the couple began to not care as much, becoming more and more reckless with each passing day.

+++

“Flash, you’ve gotta see this!” Aaron called from down the hall.  The final bell had just rung and everybody was milling in the halls, grabbing their stuff, and leaving the building.  Flash gave his friend a look, but followed him nonetheless.  The boy led him out the front doors of the school and down the steps until they were standing in the front courtyard.

“What are you-” Flash stopped himself as he realized where everybody was looking. “Holy shit. Whose car is that?!”

In one of the parking spaces closest to the building, there was a sleek, white Bugatti Centodieci, just sitting there like it was nothing.

“Nobody knows! They just pulled up!” Aaron replied, not taking his eyes off of the expensive car.

“Who the fuck would even be picked in a car like that?!”

The doors to the school opened and Flash looked back to see who it was, only to find Peter Parker standing at the top of the stairs and staring out at the car, an eyebrow raised and an unamused look on his face.  As if it didn’t even matter, the brunet walked down the stairs and began to walk along the main path to the parking lot.

Peter paid no mind to all the eyes on him and whispers that arose as he approached the 8.9 million dollar car.  As he approached the passenger’s side, the window rolled down.  The brunet leaned over, resting his forearms against the windowsill and smiled at whoever was in the car.  The students in the courtyard went quiet, hoping to hear what he was going to say.

“Really? A Bugatti?” Peter asked, his voice laced with fond exasperation. “What happened to not drawing attention to us?”

Somebody replied from inside the car, but it was too muffled for anybody to hear, except for Peter, who laughed a bit at whatever was said. “Yeah, sure,” the brunet replied sarcastically.

Another muffled response.

“Okay, okay,” Peter relented, putting his hands up in defeat before stepping away, opening the door, and getting in.  The window rolled back up as the car drove off with the high school student inside.

“What the actual fuck?” Flash muttered, still staring at the spot where the car had left his sight.

+++

The incident had happened on the first Friday of the school year, and by the time Monday rolled around, everybody had heard about Peter getting into the expensive car.  Some people had taken photos, which got spread around too.  When the brunet walked into school after the weekend, all of his peers were giving him sneaky glances and whispering speculations as to who was in the car.  The theories ranged from Peter having an estranged father who was rich to his aunt winning the lottery, but nobody really knew.

Peter walked down the hallway with an easy air, ignoring all the looks.  He was so tired of Midtown and was prepared to just turn around and walk right back out of the school while flipping off everybody in the hallway.  Of course, he didn’t do that, not wanting to face the repercussions.  So he just continued on his way to his locker, uninterrupted.

Well, he was uninterrupted until Flash came out of nowhere and slung an arm around Peter’s shoulder, walking with him.

“Let’s talk, Parker.” It wasn’t a question.

“No thanks,” Peter replied, using his hand that wasn’t carrying some of his textbooks to grab Flash’s arm and pull it off of his shoulder.  Without another word, he sped up and continued on his way.

Flash froze for a few moments, staring at Peter’s retreating figure and wondering when the boy got the balls to stand up to him.  Eventually, he snapped himself out of his and ran to catch up, taking his spot next to the brunet once more.

“What’s up with that stunt you pulled last week, Penis?” he asked with a snarl, getting up in Peter’s space as the boy opened up his locker and began to put his books in.

“What stunt?” he questioned innocently, a bit of smugness in his voice.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Flash growled.

“Oh, you mean when I got picked up?” Peter closed his locker and turned to the bully. “It wasn’t a stunt. He was just doing something nice for me.”

“Stop lying to-” Flash cut himself off, staring at the necklace Peter was wearing. “Where the fuck did you get that?”

“This?” Peter questioned, brows furrowed as he held up the charm on the necklace. “It was a gift. Why?”

“That . . . that’s a pendant from Graff’s solar collection.” Flash looked dumbfounded and his face scrunched up in concentration as he stared at the necklace. He grabbed it in one hand and leaned forward to examine it.

“What the hell?!” Peter exclaimed as he jerked back, forcing the necklace out of Flash’s grip. The bully didn’t give him an answer, only staring at him in shock. “Why do you even care?”

“My mother wanted that exact same necklace when the collection came out.”

“And?”

“And that necklace costs thirty-four-thousand dollars. How the fuck did you afford something like this?”

“I told you; it was given to me as a gift,” Peter replied with no hesitation, eyeing the other student warily.

“Nobody gives a necklace that expensive as a gift!” Flash was about to say more, but the warning bell rang, prompting Peter to run off with his things, leaving the bully alone by his locker.

That afternoon, the same car from the week before picked Peter up.

+++

The more Flash paid attention to Peter over the next few months, the more he noticed the weird things about the brunet.  There were so many things off about him and it just didn’t add up.  It was like he was missing a factor that helped it all make sense.

One of the first things he noticed was that Peter had started wearing designer clothes.  It wasn’t like the boy had just stopped wearing all of his nerdy t-shirts, he still did, but he was always wearing something designer along with it.

Peter always had on that damn Graff necklace, which was way too expensive for a poor kid from Queens to own.  Beyond that, Flash saw him wear ripped Gucci jeans that could be mistaken for any other brand.  The next week, the boy wore high waisted Guess jeans and a tucked-in Givenchy button down.

Peter’s old bag that he’d been using for years was suddenly replaced with a Burberry backpack and his barely working phone was abruptly substituted for a top of the line Stark Phone, and nobody said anything.  He felt like he was going insane and, by the end of the fall semester, he was more than ready to get away from Parker for a couple weeks.

+++

The two week break didn’t feel long enough to Flash, but he felt confident as he walked into school on the first Monday of the spring semester.  He was determined to solve the mystery that was Peter Parker and nothing was going to stop him.

Flash’s cockiness was quickly replaced by dread, however, as he turned the corner and saw Peter standing in the hallway, talking to some people from decathlon.  The brunet had been a bit of a loner ever since MJ moved away and Ned went off to a nice boarding school, but he had become closer with some of the people on the team after becoming the captain for their school’s AcaDec team.

That wasn’t what caught Flash’s eye, though.  What he immediately noticed was the outfit Peter was sporting.  He had on a gray turtleneck, an unbuttoned brown trench coat, black dress pants, and black loafers, the entire outfit being Louis Vuitton.  He looked like the epitome of dark academia, sleek and mysterious despite the bright smile on his face as he talked to his teammates about the national competition.

“Hey, Parker, can we talk for a second?” Flash asked, walking up to the small group.  He didn’t wait for an answer, instead grabbing Peter by the arm and dragging him away.  The brunet called out an apology to Betty and Abe as he was pulled down the hall.  Eventually, Flash yanked him into a rarely-used men’s restroom and released his arm.

“What the fuck, Flash?!” Peter exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air. “What was that all about?!”

“That was all about the fact that you’re entire outfit is Louis Vuitton!” Flash shouted back, confusion and aggressiveness present in his voice.

“Why does that matter?!”

“Because you’re some poor kid from Queens! How the fuck do you have designer clothes?!”

“It’s none of your business!” Peter’s stance was defensive, but he still stood strong.  The way he looked so unafraid only served to piss the bully off more.

In a fit of anger and frustration, Flash lunged forward and socked him right in the jaw, causing the brunet to stumble back a bit.  After a few moments, Peter regained his balance and brought a tentative hand to his face, lightly holding the place where he had been struck.

“Nice hit,” he said dryly, letting his arm fall back down to his side.  He whipped around and began to leave the restroom.

“You’re not gonna do anything?” Flash asked, making the brunet stop in his tracks. “You’re not gonna fight back? Scream? Cry? Go tell a teacher? You’re just gonna do nothing?”

“Exactly. I’m gonna do nothing,” Peter told him in lieu of an answer.  Without another word, he left the bathroom.

Flash didn’t see the boy in any of their classes that day.

+++

For the rest of the week, Peter didn’t wear any designer clothes.  He was only seen sporting old jeans, beat up sneakers, and his usual nerdy shirts.  Some people asked about his sudden change in clothes, along with the bruise on his jaw, but he remained tight-lipped, allowing nothing to slip about what had occured in the restroom on Monday.

Flash felt guilt bubbling up inside of him every time he passed Peter in the halls, but he pushed it down.

+++

By the beginning of the third week of school, Flash had pretty much gotten over his guilt.  It seemed as if Peter didn’t really care about what had happened, so he attempted to let it go as well.  He ignored the brunet and let the incident fall into the past.

On that Monday morning, Flash was sitting outside on the steps with his little posse, all of them just talking about what they had done over the weekend.  Their conversation stopped, however, when the rumbling of a car sounded.  A polished silver Ferrari pulled up in front of the school and parked in one of the spaces before turning off.  It had caught the attention of all the students hanging outside of the school, everybody turning to look at the car.

It was like a scene from a movie.

The door on the driver’s side opened up and Peter Parker stepped out coolly.  He nonchalantly closed the door behind him before using the car keys to lock it.  As if the whole thing was normal, he casually walked down the path towards the stairs.

The crowd of high schoolers were captivated by the strange scene.  Their nerdy classmate, who had an almost faded bruise on his jaw, had just stepped out of a sleek, expensive car like it was nothing.  Flash took a moment to take in Peter’s outfit, confused and frustrated at the fact that he had practically come back twice as hard after the bully took him down a notch.

Peter was sporting a tan wool turtleneck tucked into a pair of grey checkered pants along with a pair of black oxfords, the ensemble pulled together with a long, olive green overcoat.  His hair was neater than usual, with his curls being less frizzy and more skillfully arranged.  His Burberry backpack was nowhere to be seen, and an expensive-looking leather messenger bag was slung over his shoulder in place of it.

Nobody said anything as the brunet made his way up the stairs, expensive shoes clicking against the cement steps.  Flash, of course, had to ruin the quiet atmosphere.

“Parker!” he called, making the boy stop in his tracks and turn to him with an exasperated look.

“What do you want, Flash?” His tone conveyed his irritation.

“I just wanna know how much dick you sucked to get enough money to buy a Ferrari.” His little friend group laughed, but none of the other students joined in.

“None,” Peter told him, unfazed by the comment. “But not all of us get whatever we want handed to us. Though, you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, trust fund baby?”

Some of the teens in the courtyard let out an ‘oohh’ while others laughed at the mockery.  Peter just gave a smug smile and turned back around, heading inside the school before Flash could get another word in.

The two boys didn’t interact for the rest of the day, but Flash spent a good amount of time glaring at Peter, especially when he got back into the expensive car at the end of the day, the vehicle giving a thunderous rumble as he drove off.

+++

That’s how a good portion of the semester went.  Peter would show up in a fancy car, sometimes the Ferrari and sometimes a different one, and people would watch as he stepped out in an expensive outfit.  Flash would try to insult him at several points in the day, but Peter would either shoot an insult right back or ignore the bully completely.  Peter would sit at one of the picnic tables outside for lunch, where only seniors were allowed to sit, with Betty, Abe, and Cindy, while Flash and his posse would glare at them from another table.  Finally, Peter would get into his car at the end of the day and ignore Flash scowling at him.

Finally, after what felt like centuries, they had reached the last day of school.  Everybody was excited, but the seniors especially.  They didn’t have to do anything in their classes, seeing as their graduation ceremony was the very next day, and there was a senior tradition that they finally got to do.

For years, on the last day of the school year at Midtown, the seniors were allowed to have a family member or friend eat lunch with them, and they often did so on the picnic benches in the courtyard.  Afterwards, the seniors would be allowed to leave.  Most students would invite a parent or guardian, many of which would bring lunch for themselves and the student they were with.  A few of the teens would invite a friend who went to a school that was already finished with the school year.  Every once in a while, though not very often, a student would invite their significant other to the senior lunch.

Seniors and guests were milling around the picnic tables, chatting and catching up.  Some of the teachers were around too, conversing with the parents about graduation and how well the students had done in their classes.  Peter was sitting at a table with Cindy, Betty, and Abe, who had all brought a parent along with them for lunch.  They were all making small talk, trying to ease the tension and break the ice between them.

Unsurprisingly, Flash noticed that Peter wasn’t eating anything and that there was nobody there with him.  He used this to his advantage, of course, and easily thought up something to say to the brunet.  When Peter stood up and walked a bit away from the picnic tables to check something on his phone, the bully struck.

“Who are you waiting on, Parker? You know your parents aren’t coming, right?” Flash mocked, no sympathy for bringing up his dead parents.

Peter stayed quietly, continuing to type on his phone.

“Are you texting your aunt? Lemme take a guess, she’s too busy to show up for you,” Flash tried again, but to no avail.

Peter didn’t even grace him with a look.

“Are you deaf or something? Why aren’t you saying anything?! Just insult me back or some shit! Tell me to go away already!” Flash’s voice slipped into something desperate.  All he wanted was for his words to have some effect on the boy.

“You’re an asshole,” Peter told him, finally looking up.  He turned his phone off and slipped it into the pocket of his pants.  He crossed his arms over his chest, crinkling his button down shirt a bit and slightly pulling it out of where they tucked into his pants, not enough to completely come out, but enough to make the shirt look a bit looser on him.

The two stayed silent for a few moments, staring each other down.

“You’re an asshole, but even more than that, you’re an absolute idiot.”

“What are you getting at here, Parker?” Flash snarled, eyes shining with rage.

“I’m not getting at anything. I just thought you should know.”

Before Flash could get another word in, a thunderous rumbling sounded and the car that dropped Peter off at school that morning pulled up into the parking lot.  Once it had stopped, the driver’s side door opened and somebody stepped out.  Flash’s eyes flickered between the stranger and the brunet beside him, who had a big smile on his face.

The car door closed and somebody walked around the car, making their way straight towards the picnic tables.  The students and guests eyed the man as he sauntered forwards, taking off his sunglasses.

It was Tony fucking Stark.

Everybody was too in shock to say anything as the billionaire scanned the crowd.  He locked his gaze on Peter and strided over to the brunet.  He stopped less than a foot in front of him, the younger man having to tilt his head up a bit to look at him.

“You’re late,” Peter notified him teasingly.

“I’m not late. Everybody else is just early.”

“You’re not the queen of England, Tones.”

“In that case, I am late, but fashionably so.”

Peter rolled his eyes fondly as the billionaire gave him a loving smile.  Their little moment was interrupted though, by none other than Flash.

“What the actual fuck?!” he exclaimed, eyes trained on the two men. “You’re Tony Stark!”

“Am I?” the billionaire asked. “I didn’t notice.”

Peter lightly slapped his arm for that comment, giving him a warning look, though it was more amused than angry.

“This all makes so much more sense now,” Cindy said from her spot at the picnic table.

“The car, the clothes, it’s all coming together,” Abe added on, looking over at Cindy.

“I can’t believe I didn’t see it before!” Betty exclaimed, making eye contact with Peter. “You’re a sugarbaby!”

Peter choked on his own spit while Tony raised an eyebrow at the girl.  Flash blanched, eyes full of realization.

“I’m not a sugarbaby!” Peter defended once he had gathered himself.  The statement was met with a lot of confused looks and furrowed brows.

“You’re . . . you’re not a sugarbaby?” Cindy asked, looking like she had never heard something more puzzling.

“No!”

“So . . . you guys are just in, like, a real relationship?” Abe questioned them, bewilderment laced into his tone.

“No, we’re sworn enemies, destined to have one final fight and battle to the death,” Tony replied sarcastically.

“Be nice,” Peter scolded him before turning back to his peers and their guests. “Yes, we’re in a real relationship.”

“Nothing makes sense anymore,” Mr. Harrington mumbled. “I give up.”

Peter just gave him a sympathetic nod.

Most of the guests, especially the parents, were still in shock, eyes trained on the teen, whom they had seen at school events for so long, as he casually stood next to his boyfriend, Tony Stark, and acted like everything was normal.

“Wanna get going?” Tony asked Peter, drawing his boyfriend’s eyes away from the group of students and guests. “We could go hang out at the tower for a while before dinner. I made reservations for seven-thirty tonight at that restaurant we went to for Pepper’s birthday.”

“The place with the tiramisu to die for?” Peter looked excited when his boyfriend gave him a nod in confirmation. “Fuck yeah!”

Tony laughed a bit and the two began to walk towards the car, ignoring all the eyes following them.  When they reached the car, Peter looked back and called a quick “see you guys tomorrow!” to the people gathered around the picnic benches.  The couple got into the car and drove off, the thunderous rumbling going with them.

Flash stood there, frozen, until he felt his phone buzz.  He pulled it out of his pocket and looked down at it, only to see a text from Peter.

‘I told you so.’

Tag List For All Fics (lmk if you want to be added):

@darkerstarker @dim-ships-johnlock @ashleybeattie @haylove5

#i kinda hate this not gonna lie #i feel like i butchered the prompt #oops lol #starker #ironspider #pro starker #answered #tony stark/peter parker #axiwrites #anyways thank you for the prompt :)

[sassy-starker]

low key wanna do fics inspired by small snippets of songs. like, just a line or too. i got inspired bc while i was making dinner and listening to music, the song die young by kesha came up and there’s a line that goes “i hear your heart beat to the beat of of the drums. oh what a shame that you came here with someone” AND HOLY SHIT I WANNA WRITE A FIC WHERE PETER IS AT A STARK INDUSTRIES GALA AND TONY IS THERE WITH PEPPER BUT PETER CATCHES HIS EYE AND HE STARTS FALLING IN LOVE WITH HIM AND PETER ALSO LIKES HIM BUT DOESNT WANNA PURSUE IT BC TONY IS ENGAGED

#starker #axiwrites #starker fic #holy shit i really wanna write this #like it could be such a good fic #tony stark/peter parker #pro starker #would anyone want that? #pls want that

[sassy-starker]

i’ve had a starker fic with witch!peter in my drafts for so long and so i’m working on finishing that shit and i’m actually really liking it so far. expect that in the next week or so :)

#starker #starker fanfiction #axiwrites #pro starker #witch!peter #witch au #starker witch au #jdjdjssj im so excited

[sassy-starker]

Welcome To The Neighborhood

This took me a bit since I was setting up my dorm and starting classes.

This is a mob boss!Tony AU mixed with a coffee shop AU!

TW: guns, blood, violence Tony Stark was a name to be feared.  Everybody knew who he was, for he practically ran the entirety of New York, but nobody knew what he looked like.  It was better for the man if they couldn’t recognize him but still feared him.

Tony Stark was a rich mob boss who could get anything he wanted, so why the hell was he currently living in a shitty, run-down apartment in Queens?  Well, that’s a story and a half.

People were beginning to look for Tony, wanting to find out who he is so they could possibly take him down, which was impossible, but it was still a threat.  So, he consulted the most loyal men and women he had and they came up with a plan.

Tony Stark was currently Will Garner, a writer who was barely scraping by and lived in a run-down apartment in Queens.  It was the perfect disguise.

Tony assumed that nobody in the apartment building would try to greet him and give him a banana bread to welcome him like people did in suburbs and TV shows, and he didn’t mind it in the slightest.  Luckily, he was almost right.

Keyword: almost.

Three days after Tony moved in, there was a soft series of knocks on his door.  It was around five pm, which felt awfully late for someone to come over to his apartment.  He dragged himself off his couch and slugged over to the door, ready to tell someone off.  When he opened the door, though, any thoughts of telling the knocker to fuck off were completely gone.

In front of Tony stood a young man with curly brown hair, glasses, and a bright smile on his face.  He was holding a platter of cookies with plastic wrap over it.

“Hi! I’m Peter Parker! I just wanted to welcome you to the building.”

Peter Parker might have been the most wonderful name that Tony had ever heard.  The boy spoke quickly and quietly, adding more to the attractiveness of him.  Tony didn’t have a chance to say anything before the man spoke up again.

“I meant to come by earlier, but I’ve been taking extra shifts to scrape by,” Peter explained sheepishly. “I was able to get my hands on some ingredients, though, so I made an assortment of cookies because I wasn’t sure what you liked.”

“Thank you, Peter,” Tony said, cutting off his rambling.  Peter gave him a small smile that Tony returned.

“Just thought it would be nice to welcome you, uh . . .” Peter started but trailed off, waiting for Tony’s name.

“Will Garner,” Tony told him smoothly and without missing a beat.

“It’s nice to meet you, Will,” Peter said and handed the platter over.

“Do you want to come in? We could just chat and get to know each other. I haven’t really had a chance to meet anyone since I moved here,” Tony asked while motioning inside.

“I’d love to,” Peter replied with a blush painting his cheeks, “but I have a shift in a few minutes and really have to get going.  We could always meet up later if you’re okay with it.”

“Sounds good.”

Peter smiled again and turned around to head out, but before he reached the staircase, Tony called out, “And, Peter?”

The young man turned around and looked at Tony.

“Thank you for the cookies.”

+++

A week later and Tony still hadn’t had a chance to sit down and talk with Peter.  Every time he saw the man, he was heading out to a shift at wherever he worked or Tony himself was going out to a meeting with the higher-ups in the mob who knew where he was.

Tony was walking back from one of those meetings, tired as hell because it had gone on until it was eleven.  Now it was nearing half-past eleven and he needed to just get back before he collapsed of exhaustion.  His eye was caught, though, by a little coffee shop about two blocks from his apartment.  Making a quick decision, he walked inside.

The coffee shop was small and cozy.  There were couches toward the back of the store and almost all of the seats were armchairs.  Everything was mismatched in a way that made it stand out without feeling out of place.  The shop was warm and smelled of fresh coffee and vanilla.  Nobody was at the counter, but there was a bell with a small sign written in chalk that read ‘ring for service’.

Tony rung the bell as he looked at the menu and the display case of pastries.  When someone walked out and he glanced up, he saw Peter Parker in the flesh.

“Peter,” he said with a smile, surprising the boy, “I didn’t know you worked here!”

“Oh, hey, Will!” Peter greeted cheerily. “Yeah, I’ve been working here for a few years to save up for college.  What are you doing out this late?”

“I was working on my novel and decided I wanted to grab some coffee, so I wandered around a bit before I found this place,” Tony told him, the lie easily rolling off his tongue.

Peter gave a soft laugh and asked him what he wanted to order, to which Tony replied, “What would you suggest?”

“If you’re looking for something strong, then I would suggest the Snapdragon blend, but if you’re looking for something more light and sweet, then I’d say you should go with the Lily Latte.”

“I think I’ll go with the Snapdragon,” Tony decided and reached into his wallet to pay, but was interrupted by Peter.

“It’s on the house,” the boy said, turning around and beginning to make the coffee.

“Are you sure?” Tony asked him.

“Completely.”

Tony leaned against the counter as Peter made his drink, letting silence fall over the cafe.  The smell of the blend wafted through the shop, making the air feel warm and full.

“So, everything here is named after flowers?” Tony questioned, breaking the silence.

“Yep!” Peter answered with a smile, handing over the coffee.  When their hands touched briefly, his face turned red, which made Tony smile a bit.  “My friend’s dad owns the place and started it up when I was fifteen.  My friend, his dad, and I had been brainstorming themes and I came up with the flower idea.  He started it and I got a job.  Been working here ever since.”

“It’s nearly as cute as you,” Tony told him nonchalantly.  It made Peter’s face turn a darker shade of red.  “Do you wanna sit with me and finally get around to talking?  It doesn’t seem like it’s super busy at the moment.”

“Uh, sure,” Peter replied. “I’m just gonna make myself something to drink first.  Make yourself comfortable.  As the boy turned around to start working on his own beverage, Tony began to look around for a good place to sit.  Eventually, he decided on the couch near the back of the store.  He plopped himself down and waited for the boy.  When he finally lifted the mug to his mouth and took a sip of the coffee, he thought he was in heaven.

“Peter, this might be the best coffee I have ever had,” Tony told him seriously when the boy plopped down in the armchair next to the couch Tony was sitting on the corner of.

“You’re just saying that,” Peter replied with a blush before taking a sip from his own mug.

“I am dead serious, Pete.”

The next while was filled with chatter and getting to know each other.  Tony found himself actually telling the truth about himself when it came to things he liked and his inner problems.  Of course, he had to lie when it came to his career and his heritage, but he was as truthful as he could be in the situation.  When the clock on the wall began chiming to announce that it was five am, Peter took his and Tony’s mugs and walked back behind the counter to wash them, the mob boss following him and leaning over the counter to keep him in his line of vision.

“My shift’s over and my replacement for the morning shift will be here any second, so I’ve got to get back home to sleep before my next shift,” Peter told Tony as he dried the mugs with a towel and put them back on a shelf.  Tony couldn’t help but note how all of the mugs were mix-matched just like the rest of the shop.

“We can walk back together,” Tony replied.  Peter smiled at him and the two began to leave.  As they walked out, a woman walked through the door in the same uniform Peter was wearing.  The two baristas greeted each other and that was the end of it.

Peter and Tony walked back to the apartment complex in silence, basking in each other’s company.  When they got into the building, they climbed the stairs until they reached the third floor, which was where Peter’s apartment was.  Peter unlocked the door and opened it, but turned around before he walked through.

“Thanks for stopping by the shop today,” the younger man said before going up on his tiptoes to be able to reach and kissing Tony on the cheek.  Then, with a bright blush and no more words, he walked through the door and closed it behind him.

Tony stood in front of the door, frozen with shock.  Slowly, he lifted a hand to the cheek where Peter had kissed him and smiled.  He turned around and climbed the stairs up to the fourth floor, going into his own apartment and collapsing onto the couch.  He was on cloud nine.  He fell into a dream-filled sleep that he didn’t wake up from until the afternoon.

+++

“Are you even paying attention, Tony?” Natasha asked him with a glare.  She was sitting right next to him at the conference room table that also had all the higher-ups sitting around it.  Tony snapped out of his daydream and turned to her.

“Of course. Why?” he asked, feigning innocence.

Natasha sighed in exasperation and gave a roll of her eyes.  Everybody else watched the interaction go down without a word.

“Seriously,” Steve spoke up with a serious voice, “what’s going on?”

“It’s nothing,” Tony assured him, but it didn’t really convince anybody at the table.

“I know that look,” Rhodey chimed in an annoyed tone. “I know that look and that is a dangerous look.”

“What look?” Sam asked him, confusion laced into his voice.

“The look,” Natasha answered with a tired and annoyed glare at Tony.

“I don’t have the look!” Tony defended.

“You have the look and denying it only makes it worse,” Rhodey told him.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky cut in, “but what’s the look?”

“The look that Steve had when he first started hanging out with you,” Natasha explained, turning to Bucky.

“Wait,” Bucky said, making everybody turn to him. “Are you in love, Tony?”

“I’m not in love!”

“You’re in love,” Rhodey said conclusively.

“Who is it?” Steve questioned with a mischievous smile.

“Nobody!” Tony replied with a glare.

“You’re not leaving until you tell us who it is,” Bucky told him, mimicking Steve’s smile.

“I cannot believe I let all of you be my higher-ups,” Tony groaned, putting his head down on the cold table.

“Tell us! Tell us! Tell us! Tell us!” Sam began to chant, Bucky and Steve joining in.  The entire group began to chant it, pressuring Tony to speak up.

“His name is Peter, okay!?” Tony finally shouted, lifting his head up from the table and throwing his hands into the air in exasperation. “Are you happy now?!”

“What’s his last name, Tony?” Natasha interrogated.

With a sigh, Tony answered, “Parker. His name is Peter Parker.” 

Natasha pulled her laptop out of her satchel.  It looked inconspicuous enough, but it was equipped with gear and equipment powerful enough to hack the pentagon.  She began to search through files about Peter Parker, wondering if there was any dirt on him.  Tony glared at her all the while.

“Peter Parker, age 21, born in New York.  His parents died in a plane crash and left him to his aunt and uncle.  Uncle died when shot during a robbery.  Aunt died of a heart attack.  He still lives in the apartment that he was raised in,”  she read off to the room.  Rhodey, who was sitting next to her, grabbed the laptop to read for himself.

“He had no affiliations with any gangs or mobs.  No criminal record.  He was top of his class and valedictorian but never went to college.  He currently works at-”

“The Vanilla Orchid,” Tony said, cutting him off. “He’s been working there since he was fifteen to save up for college.  He wants to go into chemical engineering.  He’s a genius in science and in the kitchen.”

Everyone looked up at him in shock, wondering how the man knew all of this information.

“He likes the color yellow,” Tony continued, “but also loves green.  Not lime green, but the kind of green you would find on leaves in a rainforest.  His favorite time of year is early spring because he likes to watch the snow melt away and the flowers start to bloom.  He’s never been out of New York but has always wanted to go to Venice.  He likes wool sweaters, but can’t afford them, and prefers realistic fiction over any other genre.  He uses watercolor paints when he can afford them and always, always, carries a polaroid camera with him.”

“How do you know so much about him?” Steve asked in bewilderment.

“We hang out when he has night shifts and it’s not busy at the cafe,” Tony told him with a shrug.

“You really like this guy, don’t you?” Rhodey asked Tony softly.

“Yeah,” Tony told him with a soft smile. “Yeah, I really do.”

“Go get him, hoe!” Sam told him while pumping a fist in the air.  Everybody laughed and got back to the meeting.

+++

For the next month after Peter kissed Tony on the cheek, the two had been dancing around each other.  They flirted when they hung out at the cafe and dropped slight hints in their text messages.  Tony would constantly compliment him in an effort to see him turn red and stumble over his words.  Peter always seemed embarrassed by how he reacted to the sweet words, but Tony had assured the young man that he found it cute.

It had been a month of staying up all night at the cafe and talking on the phone and good morning and goodnight texts.  It was sweet and Tony was just falling deeper and deeper in love with Peter, which is why he decided to finally invite the younger man to his apartment.

Tony and Peter had arranged for Peter to come around at one pm so they had time to hang out before Peter’s afternoon and night shifts, but enough time for Peter to sleep after his shift that went until five am.  Tony had been rushing around to make sure that any clues of who he truly was were hidden away and kept secret.  Of course, he made sure that he had some weapons hidden around every room in the event that someone found him, but he wanted to be sure that Peter didn’t see them.

At one pm exactly, there was a knock on Tony’s door.  When he opened it up, he saw Peter holding a container of brownies, presumably homemade.  He was wearing a wool, pastel purple sweater and a pair of white jeans along with black ballet flats.  He was smiling that bright smile and had a faint blush painted across his cheeks.

Tony moved aside to let Peter in and shut the door behind the boy.  Peter set the brownies down on the kitchen counter and turned to Tony.

“How’s the novel going?”

Tony laughed and sat down on the couch, motioning for Peter to join him.  The younger man sat as close to him as he could without their bodies touching.

“The novel’s going well,” Tony told him, lying through his teeth. “I’ve been going back and editing some bits to make sure that the chapters I’m writing now are making sense.  I want to make sure there aren’t any plot holes.  How’s the cafe going?”

“Really well, actually,” Peter told him. “We’ve been getting a lot of customers! It’s busy, but that means more money going into the cafe and more tips.”

Tony gave a small laugh at that.

The two began to talk, discussing anything and everything in the world.  Tony asked Peter about colleges he would like to go to and Peter asked Tony about his writing.  The two teased each other about small things, unafraid to joke about each other.

A little over an hour after Peter came over, they started hearing voices outside the door.  The two looked at each other at first but brushed it off as a neighbor having some people over, but when the voices didn’t go away, they became suspicious.  Dread began to build up in Tony’s stomach, having a feeling about what was happening.  He pressed a button on his watch to alert his higher-ups of what was happening and then turned to Peter.

“I need you to hide in the bedroom.”

“Tony, I-” Peter started.

“There’s no time!” Tony cut him off urgently. “You have to hide!”

“Tony, I know what’s-” Peter tried again.

“Please, Peter!” Tony pleaded, motioning him to the bedroom.  Before either could say anything more, the door was kicked in.  Men and women in black suits entered, pointing guns at Tony.  Tony had already grabbed a gun that was secured under the coffee table, though, and was ready for it.

It was a standoff and everyone was silent . . .

Until a gun was fired toward Peter.

The young man moved out of the way in time so only his shoulder was grazed.  Before Tony could even fire, Peter pulled out a gun from the waistband of his jeans and fired at the woman who had tried to shoot him, a bullet going right through her heart.  Everyone stared at him in shock and Peter took the opportunity to fire.  He shot three more people dead, bringing everybody back to reality.

It was Peter and Tony versus the six that were alive.  The two were quick to dive behind the couch.  Tony popped up and surprised the intruders, shooting two of them dead.  The rest tried to fire, moving forward, but Tony ducked and Peter shot up, killing another.  The two crawled across the floor and took cover under the kitchen table.  Tony stopped for a moment, watching Peter, who crawled out under the other side of the table, shooting two more, one in the head and one in the chest.  With only one left, Tony crawled out from the other side and shot him in the leg, bringing him down before shooting him in the head.

The apartment was silent.

“Nice shot, Tony,” Peter laughed as he crawled out from below the table and stood up, blood still running from his shoulder.  He slowly dragged himself to the kitchen, set his gun down on the counter, and grabbed a dishrag, holding it over his shoulder and applying pressure in an attempt to stop the bleeding.

Tony crawled out, too, cautiously making his way over to the kitchen, too.  He gave Peter a wary stare, eyes dropping to where he was holding the rag on his shoulder.

“How did you-” he started, but Peter cut him off.

“You’re not as slick as you think you are,” he told Tony with a joking tone. “Think about it.  Tony Stark goes on radio silence the same day that Will Garner moves into the apartment building.  The t-shirts that Will Garner wears are expensive as all hell, and yet he claims he’s an author who is barely scraping by.  Will Garner never talks about his writing unless prompted and then immediately steers the conversation away from it.  Will Garner had never published an article online and, according to government records, does not live in Queens, New York.  And that’s how I knew that you, the so-called ‘Will Garner’, is, in fact, Anthony Edward Stark, famed mob boss that controls the city.”

“You are-” Tony stopped and collapsed in a stool at the breakfast bar with a sigh. “I underestimated your smarts and ability to figure shit out.  Though, I thought you would have been running away by now.”

“I fell in love with Tony Stark,” Peter told him with a soft smile as he looked down at his feet, “but he was just under the name of Will Garner.  Same person, just with a different job.”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it a job,” Tony joked, making both of them laugh.  Peter opened his mouth to say something more but was interrupted by five people running in, all with guns in their hands and ready to kill.  When they entered and saw all the dead bodies on the floor, they pointed their guns at the one person who they hadn’t seen before: Peter.

Peter put his hands up in the universal ‘I surrender’ position, causing the dishrag he was holding on his shoulder to fall to the floor.

“Guys! Guys!” Tony yelled, turning their attention to him.  “This is Peter Parker!”

“And how do we know he isn’t with them,” Steve growled with suspicion.  Natasha and Rhodey, though, lowered their guns.

“Maybe because I’m not dead and am currently bleeding,” Peter sassed with a roll of his eyes.

“And possibly because he took out seven of the men out,” Tony added on with a glare at Steve.

Bucky, Steve, and Sam lowered their guns, watching as Peter bent down and picked up the dishrag again, placing it back on his shoulder.  Tony turned away from his team to face the injured man.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly, scanning his body for other injuries.

“Just a graze on my shoulder,” Peter reassured him, “but it’s kinda bleeding a lot.”

Tony looped Peter’s arm, which was the one without the blood running down it, and put an arm around his waist, helping the stumbling boy out of the apartment and down the stairs, his higher-ups following them.  He thanked whatever deity was out there that none of their neighbors were around.  He helped Peter into the car and everybody else piled in quietly, looking on as Tony laid the boy down on his back and rested his head on his lap, keeping the rag on the boy’s shoulder and gently running his fingers through his hair.

+++

The last thing Peter remembered was Tony helping him into a car and laying him down on the leather seats.  As he groggily woke up, he found himself in the softest bed he had ever been on.  He looked around and realized he was practically drowning in pillows and he was in a canopy bed, the sheen curtains closed around him.  

The next thing he realized was that he was dressed in silk pajamas and his shoulder was patched up.  He slowly sat up, trying not to injure his wound any further.  He blinked to get used to the natural light of the late morning streaming in through the tall and grand windows in the large room with its high ceilings.  He looked over to see Tony dozing on the other side of the large bed.  As Peter sat up completely and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, the mob boss began to wake up.  Peter turned around to face him.

“Are you feeling better?” Tony asked him as he sat up and made his way over to sit next to the younger man on the ledge of the bed.

“Well, I’m not bleeding and don’t feel like I’m going to pass out,” Peter replied jokingly, “so I’d say I’m feeling better.”

Tony laughed and stood up, offering his hand to Peter.  He pulled the younger man up and let go of his hand so they could stretch.

“Let’s get you some breakfast,” Tony said and began to walk away, but Peter was frozen.

“Wait, breakfast?” Peter questioned worriedly.  Tony turned around to him.  “I missed my shift at the cafe! I didn’t even call in. Shit.”

“You were just involved in a shoot-off between two mobs and almost got shot but you’re concerned about missing your shift?” Tony questioned with bewilderment in his voice.

“Yes!” Peter exclaimed.

“Don’t worry,” Tony told him, voice returning to soft and comforting. “I called in and told them that something had happened.  It’s fine.”

The tension in Peter’s shoulders was released and his eyes filled up with relief.  He gave Tony a sincere thank you and then let the man lead him down to the kitchen.

Tony couldn’t help but watch Peter’s amazed eyes and excited face as they walked through the halls.  He marveled at the beauty of the mansion with its chandeliers and marble flooring, having never seen somewhere so nice before.

“What would you like?” Tony asked him once they reached the kitchen.  He motioned to a barstool at the breakfast bar, an invitation for Peter to sit down.

“I’m not really sure,” the younger man replied, furrowing his brow and biting on his lip as he tried to think about what he wanted.

“How about pancakes?”

The two men talked and laughed as Tony moved around the kitchen, making chocolate chip pancakes for the two of them.  Any tension in the room that had been caused by the afternoon before disappeared as they made conversation.

Finally, Tony set down a plate of pancakes in front of Peter.  As he turned away to go and grab his plate, Peter spoke up.

“Hey, Tony?” he muttered with shyness laced into his tone.

“Yeah?” the mob boss asked, turning around.

In a bout of courage that Peter had been trying to work up, he leaned forward and placed his lips on Tony’s, giving a short peck before pulling away.

“Thank you,” Peter whispered, his coffee-brown eyes meeting Tony’s whiskey eyes.

Without a word, Tony rushed forward and captured the younger in another kiss, every word they had ever shared melting into each other as they met their lips together like a tulip before it blooms.

And everything was okay at that moment.

#starker #starker fic #starker fanfiction #starker fanfic #coffee shop au #mob boss!tony #mob boss au #this took me way too long #but im proud of it #go me #tony stark/peter parker #pro starker #axiwrites

[sassy-starker]

Out of context lines from Jupiter:

-“He groaned as he flipped through a legal document, trying to figure out why he even owned the company at this point.”

-“Yeah, sure, Tony Stark was a genius superhero with a shit ton of money, but Peter himself was a genius superhero with no money, so it didn’t really matter.”

-“‘Shhh, you’ll hurt Pluto’s feelings’”

-“‘Peter,’ she whispered dangerously, ‘you have ten seconds to tell me why the fuck Tony Stark is in my doorway.’”

-“‘Fuck up his entire life for me, would ya?’”

-“‘You don’t get to talk. You’re practically the king of nerds!’”

-“‘Are . . . are you asking if I’m a sugar baby?’”

(don’t be fooled. Jupiter is extremely angsty, but it does have a happy ending)

#starker #axiwrites #starker fic #pro starker #starker fanfic #tony stark/peter parker #out of context #i had to go thru the entire 20k fic just to find a couple of funny lines

[sassy-starker]

‘Twas My Own Heart

I fell in love with @mrspeterstark‘s Cinderella AU moodboard and just had to write a fic about it so go check out their account!!!

TW: Abuse (I never meant for the story to go the way it did, but my brain and my keyboard took me there)

4.6k words

When Peter Parker was five-years-old, both of his parents died in a plane crash, leaving him under the guardianship of his Aunt May and Uncle Ben.

When Peter Parker was thirteen-years-old, his Uncle Ben was shot during a store robbery

When Peter Parker was fourteen-years-old, his Aunt May remarried a man named Kenneth Henryson, who had two sons named Weston and Rolland.

When Peter Parker was fifteen-years-old, his Aunt May died under suspicious and unidentified circumstances.

And that’s what led up to him being here, eighteen-years-old and basically a slave to Kenneth, Weston, and Rolland.

Loud ringing and yelling woke Peter up from his sleep, making him look over to his old, falling apart alarm clock and realize that he had overslept.  He shot up from his bed and scrambled around his room, grabbing the rags that he calls clothes and throwing on a pair of falling-apart sneakers.  All the while he can hear Weston and Rolland yelling at him to bring them breakfast.

Rushing down to the basement where the kitchen was, bells still chiming, he assembled a large breakfast for both the boys and their father.  He balanced a plate on each hand and one on his head and carefully made his way up several flights of stairs.  He gave both the teens their breakfasts and got their laundry in return, tucking it in a basket under his arm.  Finally, he made his way to Kenneth’s room and crept in, only to find the man sitting in an armchair and staring into the unlit fireplace.

Peter set the food on the coffee table and lit the fire without meeting the man’s eyes, too afraid of punishment to say anything.  He grabbed the man’s dirty clothes as he began to leave, but wasn’t able to escape before Kenneth said something.

“Peter?” he said more than asked, a tone that implied that the boy should pause.

Peter froze for a second before turning around to the man and quietly asking, “Yes, sir?”

“Don’t forget to bring me the mail as soon as it arrives.”

“Yes, sir.”

Peter left as soon as the interaction was over, dashing through the hallways and toward the basement, which held the laundry supplies.  Kenneth wouldn’t even spare the boy the chance to use a washing machine to wash their clothes, so he was stuck hand washing every last garment.

Just as Peter thought he was safe, Rolland rounded the corner and tripped him, causing the laundry to fall everywhere.  Peter bent down to pick everything up before he got in trouble and Rolland kicked him in the side, hitting bruises that were already there and most likely causing another one to start forming.  The breath was knocked out of him, but he continued to pick the clothes up and continue on his way as his tormentor moved in the opposite direction.

The day passed in a blur of chores and hits on already damaged skin.  Before Peter knew it, it was the late afternoon and the mailman was there.  Peter opened the door and accepted the mail with a smile, only getting a sympathetic glance from the deliverer who saw the state he was in.  Before he could get any more pity, the boy closed the door.  Remembering what Kenneth what Kenneth had said earlier, he ran to the man’s study and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Kenneth said in a monotone voice.  Peter walked in and stood straight in front of the man, head down.

“The mail is here,” Peter told him in a small voice.

“Well, tell me what there is,” the man commanded in a harsh voice.

Peter began to read through the letters and who they were sent by, being told whether to set them on the desk or throw them in the trash.  Finally, he reached the final one, which unfolded instead of being in an envelope.

“It’s an invitation from the king,” Peter told them, slight excitement in his voice. “It says that they are holding a ball to find Prince Anthony a suitor and that any young adults in the kingdom are invited!”

Weston and Rolland looked up from where they were sitting on the other side of the large office, turning to their father.  Kenneth had a happy tone as he went on about how they were going to meet the prince and become a part of the royal family.

“May I go?” Peter asked once the three had quieted down.  He received heated looks from the two sons but was met with a stone-cold face from his guardian.

“And why would I ever let you go?”

“Well, I, uh, the invitation, uh, stated that it was for any young adult, um, in the kingdom,” Peter pointed out, stumbling over his words.  Rolland and Weston began to shout about how they couldn’t let the dirty, ragged boy go with them, but their father simply held a hand up to stop them.

“I will let you go,” Kenneth stated, earning confused looks from his sons, “if you complete all of your chores and find something acceptable to wear to the ball.”

“I will!” Peter exclaimed with a smile. “I will!”

The boy ran from the office to go start making dinner, too caught up in his joy to see the malicious look that the father and sons shared between each other.

The next day, Peter found himself busier than he had ever been.  He was given more chores than he already had, had to help Rolland and Weston get ready for the ball, and, every free moment he had, he was getting his own suit ready.  He took whatever things that the other boys threw aside or were ripped by them and put it all together, sewing what was torn or falling apart.

It resulted in a black suit with a golden necklace and black ballet flats that Kenneth had bought for him, saying that, “Whores like you only get the things you deserve.”  He almost never wore them but thought that they were comfortable. The only part of the outfit he owned, besides the shoes, was a gold bracelet with a sapphire on it that his Aunt May and Uncle Ben bought for him the first birthday he spent with them.

It was the most important thing in the world to him.

Just as Kenneth, Weston, and Rolland were exiting the mansion, Peter came running down the stairs, yelling, “Wait! Wait for me!”

Peter stopped in front of them, out of breath but well dressed.

“I am a man of my word, Peter,” Kenneth told him with a hard look that Peter didn’t meet, “but I must ask where you got that necklace.”

“Wait a minute!” Weston yelled. “That’s my necklace.”

The young adult grabbed the fake diamond on the front and yanked on it, breaking the chain and making Peter stumble a bit.

“And that’s my old jacket!” Rolland screamed, tearing it off of him and ripping it to shreds.  The two boys continued until Peter was on the ground, bruised and clothes completely ruined.  Finally, Weston stomped on his wrist, breaking it and cracking the sapphire on Peter’s bracelet.  Then the three men left without another word.

Peter cradled his broken wrist, pulling himself off the ground and going to the nearest bathroom.  He searched under the counter until he, somehow, found a small metal rod and some gauze.  He lined the rod up straight and used the gauze to painfully wrap up his wrist and the rod.  He clenched his teeth as to not make any noise, a habit he had picked up from being under the guardianship of Kenneth.

Just as Peter made it out of the bathroom, the doorbell rang.  He slowly walked to the door, cautiously opening it, only to see Ned and MJ standing in front of him and holding a baby blue suit, still covered in plastic from the dry cleaner, a makeup pouch, and a jewelry box.  They were both already dressed up.

“You’re going to the ball, loser.”

The next half hour was a haze of makeup and dressing up, Ned and MJ not questioning the rags or the injuries he had sustained.  Ned had pulled out his contacts so he didn’t have to wear glasses and MJ covered up his bruises on his face and the freckles he was so insecure about.  Once he was ready, they ushered him to the limousine and got going, arriving at the castle in fifteen minutes.  The three, already late, rushed up the stairs and into the castle, guiding themselves to the ballroom.

They entered without any looks of suspicion, just walking right in with their fancy clothes.  As soon as they were in, though, a girl, known to be the princess of Wakanda, approached MJ.

“Hey,” she said with a smile. “I’m Shuri, you’re cute, and this party is lame.  Wanna ditch?”

Without a second thought, MJ nodded.  She was blushing, which neither Ned nor Peter had ever seen her do.  They watched as MJ’s hand was taken by Shuri’s and the two sped off to leave the ball.  Peter turned to Ned, but he was talking to a girl named Betty Brant and they were walking to the center of the room to dance.

With nobody to hang out with, Peter just wandered around the ballroom and admired the people and the decor.

+++

“This is stupid,” Tony muttered to his father’s advisor, Harold Hogan, but the prince just called him ‘Happy’. “It’s not like I’m going to meet anybody here that I will actually want to marry.”

“I’m sure your perfect person will come along.  It could be the next person you meet,” Happy told him.

“Weston and Rolland Henryson, sons of Kenneth Henryson,” a guard announced as the two bowed to him.  He paid no mind to the two boys as they tried to grab his attention.  Finally, they had walked away after a few minutes.

“Okay, so maybe not,” Happy said, causing Tony to laugh.  He stopped laughing, though, when someone caught his eye across the room.

“Have you ever seen that man before?” the prince asked the advisor, not taking his eyes off of the figure.

“Never.”

Ignoring the strange look from Happy and the glare from his father, Tony got up from his throne and began to walk across the ballroom until he was standing behind the man he had never met before.

“Have I seen you before?”

+++

“Have I seen you before?” a voice asked, causing Peter to jump and whirl around, shielding his face slightly, but then he saw who it was.

“Um, I don’t believe so, Prince Anthony,” Peter replied in a small voice, lowering his arms.  Before he could completely put his arms by his sides, though, the prince grabbed his damaged left arm to examine it.  Peter winced but didn’t move away.

“This is wrapped completely wrong! There should be a cast instead of gauze and there shouldn’t be a rod at all!” Anthony exclaimed, to which Peter flushed with embarrassment. “What doctor did this?”

“I, uh, did it myself,” Peter told him.

“You should get it checked out.”

Anthony let go of Peter’s arm and the boy hid it behind his back, not wanting to feel even more vulnerable.  He didn’t know what to say, but the prince luckily filled up space between them with words.

“I was going to ask if you wanted to dance, but I don’t want to injure your wrist further.  Would you like to go with me to the balcony instead?” Anthony asked him with a smile.

“I’d love to, Prince Anthony,” Peter replied politely, not making eye contact.

“Honestly, just call me Tony!” he exclaimed, grabbing Peter’s uninjured arm and guiding him to the balcony.  The guards closed the french doors leading to the balcony and closed the curtains to give the two some semblance of privacy.

+++

The two talked for hours, laughing and joking around, learning more about each other, even though Tony still didn’t know Peter’s name.  He tried not to push it as the boy looked scared to say anything about himself that was too personal.

The two leaned their arms over the ledge of the balcony, taking in the view of the kingdom at night.  Tony looked over to Peter and just looked at him in all his shy glory.

“Where in the kingdom do you live?” Tony asked the boy, still watching him.

“I live outside of the city and in the woods,” Peter replied, looking down at his injured wrist, which was covered by his suit jacket.

“You know you can look me in the eyes, right? I’m a normal human being.”

Peter sighed at the man’s words, closing his eyes slightly and willing his tears away.  He really didn’t want to look anyone in the eyes, but it felt rude to disobey, even if the prince’s words were more of a question or a suggestion than a command.  He turned his head and looked at him, hoping the man didn’t see the slight fear in his eyes.

“It’s not you,” Peter told him in a desperate way, hoping he wasn’t angry. “It’s just everyone.  I’ve kind of been taught not to look people in the eyes.”

“What? Why?” the prince asked him, noticing the fear.  Peter opened his mouth to answer, but a familiar voice rang out before he could.

“They’re leaving! We need to get you home before they get there!” MJ called out, causing Peter to look down.  Both she and Ned looked desperate, causing him to look around and try to figure out what to do.  Finally, he pulled off his suit jacket and began to climb over the edge.  He tossed the jacket aside as he did so.

“Wait, where are you going?” Tony asked, debating whether to grab his arm to stop him, but he could see bruises under the thin white button-up shirt.

“I’m sorry,” Peter apologized, “but I have to go.  It’s been wonderful. Thank you so much.”

Then he jumped off the balcony and landed in the grass below with a grace that suggested that he had done it many times before.  He began to run, jumping into the car with MJ and Ned, who Tony didn’t know.  As they drove off, the prince tried to identify who was leaving that they were running from, but all he saw was the Henryson family getting into their limo.

Feeling hopeless, Tony turned around to walk back inside, but stepped on something.  He looked down and saw the suit jacket and a golden bracelet with a sapphire gem on it.  He examined the bracelet, only to find an engraving on the back.

‘So we are always with you.

-May and Ben P.’

With this clue, he rushed back inside

+++

“He jumped over the balcony?!” Tony’s father exclaimed, eyes wide and mouth agape.

“But he left something behind!” Tony defended, taking the bracelet out of his pocket and handing it over. “It even has an engraving on it!”

His father took it, examining the gem before flipping it over and reading the engraving.

“May and Ben?!” he shouted with shock. “May and Ben Parker!”

“You know who they are?!” Tony questioned with hope laced into his voice.

“Yes!  Yes, I do!  Ben died a while back and May died just three years ago!  They left a son behind with May’s new husband!  I was friends with Ben’s brother, Richard, and his wife, Mary Parker!”

Tony had tears in his eyes at the realization that he had a way to find the boy.  He really thought it would be hopeless, but it was really going to happen.

“Did they have a son? Who was the husband?” the prince interrogated, grabbing his father’s shoulders and staring him in the eye with a serious look.

“They had a son named Peter! I got to meet him a few times and you met him when you were too young to remember!”

Joy filled up Tony’s chest as his father pulled away from his grip and began mumbling about how lucky they were that Peter dropped the bracelet.

Peter

It was a gorgeous name in Tony’s opinion.  It was as soft as silk and rolled off his tongue like honey when he whispered it to himself.  His head was full of images of the boy with his curly brown hair and baby blue suit.

“He was left with Kenneth Henryson who was May’s husband at the time of her death.”

And all the joy that filled Tony spilled out and he was refilled with a sense of dread.

+++

Peter had been on cloud nine since the night of the ball, constantly humming the songs that had come on during the ball.  He did all his chores with grace, flying across the hallways with delicacy and barely minding any punishments that came his way.  Everything was well.

Unfortunately, his guardian had noticed the change in him too.

That’s why, when they received a letter that the prince would be stopping by the Henryson household next day to see someone who had caught the prince’s eye, without specifying who, Kenneth made a decision to make sure Peter said nothing to anybody.

Peter was working on breakfast, singing a tune as he scrambled eggs on the stove.  He had clipped back his hair while he was working to make sure it wouldn’t get in the way, but just as he stopped to fix the clip, he was pushed into the stove, knocking the pan of eggs back and falling into the flame.  He had shielded himself with his arms, so he was lucky enough that his shirt didn’t catch on fire.  Before he had time to be grateful for his luck, he was pulled away from the stove and thrown onto the floor.  When he looked up, he was met face to face with Rolland.

Peter wondered for a moment where Weston was, but then he was picked up from the back and thrown against the pantry doors.  When he looked up once more, he saw his guardian in the doorway with a smirk on his face.  He didn’t have time to ponder the man before a kick was delivered to his ribs.  The next while was a haze of punches and kicks and hits and cuts.  He was, somehow, still conscious and aware as he was thrown into the pantry and the doors were locked behind him.

‘Well,’ Peter thought as he closed his eyes in defeat and leaned his head back on the wall behind him, ‘at least I have a food supply.’

+++

Tony was bouncing his leg the whole ride to the Henryson house, his anxiety getting the best of him.  His father kept giving him looks that said ‘you need to calm down,’ but he couldn’t stop the worries.

‘What if he doesn’t like me?’

‘What if he was just humoring me?’

‘What if he was only talking to me because I’m a prince?’

Before he had time to answer any of his own questions or calm himself down, they arrived at the house, which was in a secluded part of the forest.  Tony remembered his father telling him about how much Ben and May liked being in nature and enjoying the world around them.

The driver opened the door and security got out before the two royals, Tony getting out last after his father.  The group walked forwards and split for the king and the prince to be in front of the door.  Tony’s father knocked twice on the old wood.  The door flung open and they were met with Kenneth Henryson with his two sons behind him, both looking excited.

“Come in, your highnesses,” Kenneth told them with a large grin, moving aside.  The guards stationed themselves throughout the living room as Kenneth invited them to sit down.  He brought out tea and began going on and on about what an honor it was to have them here and to have one of his sons catch the eye of the prince.

“So which one are you thinking about marrying?” Kenneth finally asked, making both Tony and his father think about how rude the patriarch of the family was.

“Peter,” Tony answered simply, to which Kenneth became pale and both of his sons turned angry.

“We don’t have a Peter here. You must have the wrong house.  Thank you so much for coming, though,” Kenneth rushed out, standing up and walking to the door to open it for them.  The two royals stood up slowly, eyeing the man.  The room was dead silent and, then, Tony heard something.

“Wait,” the prince said, eyeing the man. “Who am I hearing sing then?”

“You must just be hearing wrong!  You should get that checked out!  Have a merry day!”  the man stuttered out again, motioning to the door.

Tony ignored him and began to walk closer to where he thought it was coming from, finding himself in front of the dumbwaiter in the kitchen.  It was coming from down the shaft, meaning someone was downstairs.  He ran past everyone and to the staircase that led to the basement, his father and the guards running after him.  He could hear Kenneth’s calls to come back follow him down.  Finally, he reached the bottom, finding a kitchen and a voice singing.  It was coming from the pantry.

Tony began to walk forward, his shoes making loud claps against the concrete flooring.  After he took just a few steps, the singing stopped and he heard something shift.  He tried to open the doors to the pantry, but they were locked.  Sighing, he pulled a hairpin out of his hair and used it to unlock the doors, hearing some panicked and short breaths.  He opened the doors and froze.

Sitting on the pantry floor was a beaten and bruised Peter Parker, looking up at him in shock through his bloody brown locks.  Tears gathered in Tony’s eyes as he looked at the small figure, who was wearing only rags and sporting burns all over his arms.  The poorly put together cast was slightly burned away.

“Tony?” Peter questioned, wincing as he tried to move to get out of the pantry.

“Hey, Peter,” Tony replied quietly as he bent down and picked the boy up bridal style, Peter flinched back as he moved.  He quietly groaned in pain before shutting his mouth and looking down in embarrassment.

Tony had been blocking the view of the pantry floor, so nobody else saw what was happening.  When he turned around with the beaten boy in his arms, gasps and catching breaths were heard throughout the room.  In the back of the crowd, the Henryson family went pale and quiet, averting their gazes from the prince.

“Let’s get him back to the castle,” the king said and the guards led the way out of the house.

+++

When Peter woke up in a soft bed with light streaming through large windows, he thought he had died and, against all odds, ended up in heaven.  When he moved his head to the side and saw the blurry figure of Tony sleeping in an armchair with his head propped up on his hand, he remembered the day before.  He shot up in the bed in surprise and realization and let out a cry of pain that woke Tony up.

“Peter!” Tony exclaimed when he woke up and became aware of his surroundings. “Are you feeling better?”

Peter took a few moments to register that Tony was asking how he was feeling.  He just stared at him in slight shock before slowly nodding his head.

“You scared me half to death when I found you,” Tony told him as he stood up from the chair and sat down next to Peter on the bed.  The boy flinched back as he moved closer, but didn’t move away.

“I’m sorry,” Peter apologized as he looked down at his hands, which were on his lap.  That’s when he noticed the proper cast he had on and all the bandages on his cuts, and, even without his glasses, he could see that his bracelet had been put back on his wrist.  Tony could see the confusion on his face.

“What are you apologizing for?” he asked.

“You came looking for me and I scared you.”

Tony opened his mouth to refute his points, but Peter cut him off.

“Then you brought me back to your palace and wasted resources to patch me up.”

Tony couldn’t even begin to process what the boy had just said to him.  He stared at Peter with a blank look and bewilderment in his eyes.  It caused Peter to shrink back in on himself, cursing his brain for even thinking about talking back to the other man.

“We didn’t waste resources. And even if we did, you’re worth it!” Tony told him with sincerity in his voice.

After a few moments of silence, Peter asked, “Why did you bring me here?”

“Because you caught my eye at the ball and I went to see you again.  You were all beaten up and I couldn’t just leave you there, so I brought you here,” the prince explained.

“I caught you eye?” Peter questioned him, finally looking up and meeting his eyes.

“More than I can say.”

Peter smiled, but winced at the movement.  Tony gave a small smile back.

“Oh! Here’s your glasses!” the prince told him, handing the item over.  Peter put them on and was grateful to be able to actually see things clearly. “But your prescription also seems to be extremely out of date.”

“Yeah,” Peter mumbled, rubbing at the back of his neck, “I haven’t really gotten my eyes checked since my aunt married Kenneth.”

“Peter . . .” Tony started but trailed off. “Peter, what happened?”

And he started from the beginning.

“When I was fifteen, she died and I was left under the guardianship of Kenneth.  He didn’t like me very much, so he made me do the chores and such,” Peter told him while giving a small shrug. “It wasn’t bad at first, but the tasks kept piling on and when I didn’t finish or messed up on something, I’d be, uh . . . punished.”

Tony sat in shock, looking away from Peter to look down at his lap.

“But it wasn’t that bad or anything!” Peter amended to assure him, but it didn’t really help. “Just some bruises and cuts here and there.  Maybe a couple of burns.  Something this bad has only happened once . . . or, uh, twice . . . or several times perhaps.  I’m not really helping this, am I?”

“You really aren’t,” Tony replied with a small smile, trying to joke a bit, but he couldn’t keep it up for long.  “You aren’t going back.”

“Really?” Peter asked him with hope laced into his voice.

“No way in hell am I letting you go back.” Tony declared firmly before his tone changed to being a bit shy.  “And, uh, you don’t have to say yes, but . . .”

“What is it?” Peter questioned nervously, worried about what he was going to ask.

“I really liked talking to you at the ball and I was wondering if you’d go on a date with me since the ball was, well, it was to find someone for me.”

“Tony, I’d love to.”

Peter wrapped his arms around Tony’s waist and buried his face in the crook of his neck.  Tony smiled and hugged Peter, too, careful of his injuries.  The two held each other close as the warmth of the sunlight coming through the windows encompassed them.

“I’ve got you, love.”

#starker #starker fic #cinderella au #starker fanfiction #angst and fluff #tw: abuse #I went on a writing binge #and had fun with it #axiwrites

[sassy-starker]

I’ve been getting a lot of people asking me to tag them for when Jupiter comes out, so I’ve decided to start a tag list for all fics! If you’d like to be on this tag list, lemme know! (for ppl who responded to the Jupiter WIP and asked to be tagged when the full thing comes out, then I’ll only tag them for that unless they ask to be tagged for all fics!)

#starker #starker fanfiction #axiwrites #starker fic #pro starker #starker fanfic #tony stark/peter parker #taglist #jupiter #jupiter wip

[sassy-starker]

Moonlight And A Guest

This is a continuation of Talk Too Much, which was my first starker fic! This ended up being much longer than I thought it would be, but I like it a lot.  Thank you all for your patience while I get into the swing of my classes and getting used to college!

Word Count: 6.2k

CW: use of the word ‘p*dophile’ and physical bullying

+++

Peter and Tony had been dating since Peter’s seventeenth birthday, in love and as happy together as they could be, but there was one problem.

Nobody knew they were together.

Okay, that was an extreme statement.  Rhodey knew about them, of course, as Tony had immediately run to him after Peter had left and told him everything.  The colonel, of course, was not surprised in the slightest, but happy for Tony nonetheless.

Still, nobody knew except for Rhodey and the couple was beginning to get anxious.  They knew Peter would get shoved into the spotlight and the two would get ripped to shreds by the press for their age difference.  Tony didn’t want that for his young lover but knew it was better than someone dropping an anonymous hint to a magazine and the whole thing being turned into a scandal that it isn’t.  So, they decided that they were going to slowly tell the people closest to them and wait until Peter was done with high school to tell the entire world.

They decided to tell Pepper first.

+++

Peter shivered in the cold January air as he dashed from the car Happy had picked him up into the side entrance of Stark Tower.  Even with his sweater, coat, scarf, and hat, he felt like he was going to contract hypothermia.  He cursed his inability to thermoregulate as he stepped out of the cold and into the warm building.

“Hello, Peter!” FRIDAY greeted cheerily as the boy stepped into the elevator.  “Boss is in the lab and Colonel Rhodes is in the living room.  Boss wanted to know if you wanted Chinese or Italian takeout tonight and said that he wouldn’t take ‘I’m fine with anything’ as an answer.”

Peter laughed at that.

“Tell him I’d like Italian,” he replied to the AI.  She gave him her assurance that she would tell him and the elevator fell quiet, soft music playing.  The elevator stopped and Peter realized that it wasn’t the floor for the lab.  He opened mouth to ask FRIDAY what was happening, but the doors opened and revealed Pepper fucking Potts before he could say anything.

“Peter!” Pepper exclaimed, walking onto the elevator and standing next to him.  “How are you?”

“I’m good, Ms. Potts,” he replied shakily, his nerves about telling her of his and Tony’s relationship returning. “How are you?”

“I’m doing fine,” she told him, “but you can just call me ‘Pepper’. We’ve known each other for over two years, Peter.

“Uh, alright, Pepper.”

They fell silent, Peter staring down at his shoes and Pepper looking at him with concern.

“Are you okay, Peter?  You seem nervous.”

Peter was saved from having to reply by the elevator dinging to signal that it had reached the lab.  He thanked every Norse god he could think of for the mercy.

“Uh, yeah, everything’s fine!  See you later, Pepper!” Peter shouted awkwardly as he quickly exited the elevator and walked through the glass doors to get to the lab, shutting it behind him and immediately locking it.

As the elevator doors closed and it started to keep moving, Peter fell against the door to the lab and leaned his head back on it, hands coming up to rub at his eyes in exasperation and embarrassment.

“Everything okay, love?” Tony asked him softly, standing up from his workstation and making his way over.  Peter let his arms fall back down by his sides and opened his eyes, pushing off from the door to look at his boyfriend.

“I’m just . . .” he started but trailed off, shoulders sagging and looking down to the floor.  Tony moved closer and wrapped his arms around him, letting Peter bury his head into the crook of his neck.  He rubbed soft circles on his lover’s back, knowing what calmed him down.

When Peter finally pulled away, he started rambling. “I’m just nervous about telling Pepper and I don’t know what her reaction will be and I ran into her on the elevator and it was really awkward.  What if she hates me after we tell her? Would you break up with me? I don’t want to ruin things with your CEO and it could just fall apart and I wouldn’t want to drag you down and it’s just really scary and I’m just . . . worried.”

Tony pulled him into another hug, holding him tight.  Tears began to slowly leak out from Peter’s eyes, Tony being able to feel them as they stained his shirt, not that he minded at all.

“Pete, sweetheart, she’s not going to hate you,” Tony comforted him, resting his chin on Peter’s head. “And even if she did, I wouldn’t leave you because of it.  I get that you’re scared, and I am too, but I would give up everything for you.  If she doesn’t like you, us, then it might be awkward when we’re working together, but I would give up the entire world for you.  I would sacrifice the entire universe.”

“Besides, it’s not like I could ever hate you,” a voice said from the doorway.  Peter and Tony quickly separated and turned around, only to see Pepper leaning against the doorway with a smile on her face and holding up her keycard to show how she got in.  The younger wiped away his tears as he stared at her in shock.

“It’s . . . going to take some getting used to,” she admitted, pushing herself off of where she was leaning and walking forward to stand right in front of them, “but I think you two are perfect together, though you’ll probably give me a good amount of PR headaches once you announce it.  Still . . .”

Pepper paused and looked at Peter with a sincere look of care in her eyes.

“I could never hate you, Peter.”

Peter rushed forward and threw his arms around her in a tight embrace, a huge smile painted across his face.  Pepper was a bit taken aback, but still hugged the younger man back with just as much emotion.

They stayed like that for a few seconds before Pepper looked up at Tony and motioned for him to join the hug.

“Okay, okay,” Tony relented and put his arms around the two of them in a loving hug, a smile across his face despite his exasperated tone.

“We’re a family,” Pepper said into the embrace. “A weird, strange, insane family, but a family nonetheless.”

Peter felt warm inside.

+++

They decided their safest bet was to tell Ned and MJ next.

+++

‘You can do this’ was the text Tony sent when Peter told him that he was going to tell his friends during lunch in the library.

P: can I though?

T: Stop being an edgy gen z kid and go tell them

P: okay, okay. I love you

T: Love you too

Peter trudged to the library, trying to delay having to tell his friends.  Seemingly too soon, he found himself in front of the doors and knew he couldn’t prolong it anymore.

Peter took a deep breath and pushed the doors open, walking in and heading to the table that he and his friends always sat at.  It was hidden away in a secluded area of medical books that nobody actually cared about, which made it the perfect spot for them to hang out in.

When Peter got to the table, Ned and MJ were already there, Ned scrolling on his laptop and MJ buried in a book.  He sat down at his usual chair, gaining their attention.  Ned pushed his laptop aside and MJ lowered the book a bit, just enough to see him.

“Took you long enough,” MJ jabbed, but Peter knew she didn’t actually mean it.

“Yeah, dude.  What took you so long?” Ned added on without a greeting.

“Well, I was, uh,” Peter stammered out, wondering how he was going to phrase his words.

“You were what?” MJ questioned, closing her book and setting it down on the table.  Ned leaned forward in interest while she gave Peter a suspicious look.

“I’m dating someone!” Peter blurted out, intimidated by their staring.

“Dude! Congrats!” Ned cheered, holding his hand out for a fistbump, which Peter returned, of course.

“I’m impressed,” MJ told him with a slightly less cold look than usual.

“Who is it?” Ned asked with excitement laced into his tone and a smile painted across his face.

“Well, the funny thing is, uh-” Peter started but was cut off by his phone, which he had set on the table, buzzing with a text.  He reached for it, but MJ grabbed it first.  Before Peter even had a chance to say anything, she read off the message.

“‘Meant to tell you that I added a heating system to the suit since you can’t thermoregulate and it’s getting cold out,'” she read off of his screen, eyes squinting at the message.  Both Ned and Peter opened their mouths to talk but were cut off by another message.

“‘Which you should’ve told me about earlier because you nearly died and scared the hell out of me.’”

Another message came in.

“‘You’re gonna kill me one day, babe.’”

And one more.

“‘But I love you.  I’ll see you this afternoon.’”

Peter, finally coming out of his shock, snatched the phone away from her and shut it off, slipping it into his backpack and avoiding eye contact with his friends.

“Holy shit,” Ned whispered in amazement, staring at Peter.

“Holy shit is right,” MJ added with disbelief laced into her tone. “Like, I could guess Spider-Man, but, holy shit, dating Tony Stark?  I don’t . . . what the fuck?”

“Haha, uh, yeah,” Peter chuckled awkwardly, looking up at his friends and rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s kind of a . . . thing and I was going to tell you guys today, but you sorta found out on your own, so . . . now you know, I guess.”

Silence filled the space in the little area, nobody daring to break the silence between them.

“How long have you guys been . . .?” Ned asked, trailing off at the end.

“Dating?  A little over a year.  We got together on my, uh, seventeenth birthday,” Peter told him with a small shrug.

“I would make a sugar daddy joke,” MJ chimed in, still staring at her friend with wide eyes, “but I’m too in shock to think of a good one.”

“Fair enough.”

When Peter got to the tower and Tony asked how telling his friends went, he simply replied, “Not the worst, but probably the strangest.”

+++

And then they were up to the person that scared Peter the most: May Parker

+++

“Nope!  I can’t do this!  Let’s save it for another day!” Peter exclaimed, hand hovering over the handle to the car door.

“You specifically told me to not let you chicken out of this,” Tony told him in amusement, trying to hide his own worry, “so you’ve gotta go do this.”

“And I’m also going to forever curse my past self for saying that,” Peter replied, leaning his head back against the seat and closing his eyes, shoulders sagging.

Tony put a comforting arm around him and let Peter rest his head on his shoulder, knowing physical touch would help the boy calm down.  He knew he was right when Peter let out a sigh of relief and leaned into the touch.

“It’s gonna be okay, love,” Tony assured him softly. “I’ve got you and I’ll be beside you the whole time.”

“Okay, let’s do this,” Peter said after a few moments, lifting his head up and turning to the car door.  He hesitated as he went to open the door, but did it after a second and climbed out, turning around and watching Tony do the same.

Tony closed the car door behind them and followed Peter into the apartment building.  They walked up the stairs, both grateful that they didn’t run into any of the neighbors, as it would be difficult to explain why Peter was just hanging out and talking to Tony Stark, world-famous billionaire and superhero.

When they reached Peter’s apartment, he slowly pulled his keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door, taking a deep breath before opening it and walking in, Tony right behind him.  They immediately saw May pulling something out of the fridge, back toward them.

“Oh! Hey, Peter! I was just-” May stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Tony standing behind Peter with a slightly nervous smile on his face. “Oh, uh, hey, Tony.  Come on in.  What do you need?”

“We need to talk to you,” Tony simply told her, trying and failing to keep the anxiety out of his voice.

May looked at her nephew, who nodded and motioned toward the couch.  Slowly, she shut the door and made her way to the chair by the couch, hesitation in her every move.  Peter and Tony walked over and sat down on the couch and May noticed they were sitting slightly closer than she thought people usually would, but just chalked it up to her making things up.

“What’s going on?” she asked, gazing looking from one to the other suspiciously.

“Well, Aunt May, I, uh, well, we . . .” Peter started, stuttering over his words and looking to Tony with worry.  Tony met his gaze with one of assurance and comfort.  Peter put his head in his hands for a second before meeting his aunt’s gaze and blurting out, “Tony and I are dating.”

Silence fell over the room for a second as May tried to process what Peter had said.  Her nephew was looking anywhere but at her and Tony had a comforting hand on his back.

“Well, I, uh, wasn’t expecting that,” May admitted, eyes slightly wide and a bit of shock on her face.  “I thought you were going to say that you had to go on a dangerous mission or have an STD. Wait, you don’t have an STD, do you?!”

“No!” Peter shouted, flushing with embarrassment. “I don’t have an STD!”

Tony could barely hold back his laughter at the whole situation, but May must’ve seen enough amusement on his face to say something.

“I’m expecting it to stay that way, Stark,” she told him with a cold glare that intimidated him like no villain could.  “Be good to my nephew.”

“I promise I will, Ms, Parker,” he replied seriously.  “There is no other way I would want him to be treated.”

She was satisfied with that answer.

+++

The next time someone found out, it was an accident

+++ “How are we going to announce it?” Peter asked Tony, half asleep but still a bit worried.

It had been a week since the two had told May about their relationship and everything was going well.  Peter had been allowed to go to the tower more since they told his aunt because she knew what it was like to be young and in love.

Currently, the two were the couch in the penthouse living room, a movie on in the background.  Peter had his head in Tony’s lap and the older was running his fingers through his younger lover’s soft hair.  Peter was leaning into his touch and letting himself get lulled to sleep by the gentle movements.

“How do you want to?” Tony replied, looking down at Peter.

“I don’t really know how someone would announce anything to the world,” Peter admitted with a small smile.  “Should we have a press conference?”

“Too stuffy. And bright. And loud. Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever want to go to a press conference again.”

“You say that as if you wanted to go to any press conference in the first place.”

“I can’t believe I’m getting attacked by the one person who I thought I could trust!” Tony exclaimed in feign offense and got back at Peter by tugging a bit at his hair, knowing it would rile him up.

And, as expected, Peter gave out a moan.  He quickly brought a hand to his mouth to stop it, cheeks turning red in embarrassment.  Tony grabbed the hand, though, and pulled it away, kissing each of his knuckles one-by-one.

“I wanna hear those beautiful moans, baby,” Tony told him a sultry voice, which only made Peter blush more.  He yanked on his younger lover’s hair again, a bit harder this time, and Peter moaned louder.

Peter sat up from where he was laying and swung a leg over Tony’s lap so he was straddling him, faces close together.  Tony made the move to put their lips together, sweet and passionate against each other.

Tony grabbed Peter’s ass, squeezing it and making him gasp.  The older used it to his advantage and moved his tongue into his lover’s mouth, not even having to fight for dominance.  Peter began to slowly move, grinding their cocks together slowly with friction building up.  They pulled away and looked at each other with loving smiles before putting their foreheads against each other.  Tony grabbed the hem of Peter’s shirt and started to pull it up when the elevator dinged, letting them know someone was there.

Peter scrambled off Tony, narrowly avoiding falling off the couch, and sat down next to the man, twisting around and looking at who was there.

It was (some of) the Avengers.

The fucking Avengers.

As in, Peter’s childhood idols, the Avengers.

Peter chose to blame Loki for this one.

Peter and Tony stared at them for a while in shock while three of the four Avengers gave them the same look in return, especially to Peter.  The two lovers were still panting slightly, but their breaths were slowly returning to normal.

Surprisingly, the first person to speak up was Peter.

“And, yeah, no. I’m too gay for this shit. Not today, Satan. I’m going to the lab,” Peter announced with an exasperated tone.  He stood up, Tony getting up, too, and walked past the Avengers, who had stepped out of the elevator and into the room, to get to the hall.  As he passed, he muttered, “Hey, Nat.”

“Hey, Pete,” she greeted back with a teasing look.  “Congrats on the relationship.”

From down the hall, they could hear Peter shout, “Shut the fuck up!”

Natasha and Tony looked at each other for a second before laughing, leaving the other Avengers confused.

“I’m sorry, but who was that?” Steve asked the question that everybody was wondering.

“Yeah, I thought you didn’t do flings anymore, Tony,” Sam added on.

“Wait, you think Peter’s a fling?” Tony questioned, slight confusion on his face.

“Well, yeah,” Sam told him, confusion on his face, too.  “Is he not?”

“He’s my boyfriend! We’ve been together for over a year!” Tony exclaimed with an offended tone.

“He seems familiar,” Bucky chimed in, “like I know him from somewhere.”

“That’s because you do,” Natasha told him, making everybody look over to her.  She looked over to Tony to get confirmation to tell them, to which she received a nod.  “He’s Spider-Man.”

“What?!” Sam exclaimed while Bucky just had a shocked look on his face.

“How old is he!?” Steve interrogated Tony, remembering how young Spider-Man had sounded at the airport.  Peter’s voice had, of course, gotten lower over the years, so it wasn’t as young-sounding now.

“Eighteen,” Tony told him.

“Tony, he’s a child!  You can’t be dating him!  This is ridiculous!  What type of person are you?! You’re disgusting!” Steve shouted at him, barely stopping to breath.

“Steve-” Tony started.

“No!  You can’t defend yourself here!  This is irresponsible and wrong!”

“Steve, let up, man,” Sam told him, trying to get the man to stop shouting at the billionaire.

“Are you trying to defend him, Sam?!  He is dating an eighteen-year-old!” Steve yelled at his friend.

“Steve-” Tony tried again, hurt written all over his face.

“Don’t even start with me, Stark!  You can’t-”

“Steve!  Stand down!” Bucky shouted at his old friend, staring him directly in the eyes.

“Bucky, he’s a p*dophile!  He-”  Steve began but was cut off by a knife whizzing right by his face, almost close enough to cut him but narrowly avoiding it.  Before the knife could lodge itself in the wall, it was stopped in midair.  When everybody looked over, they saw that Peter had caught it and was staring Natasha dead in the eyes.

“Violence?  Really, Nat?  I thought you were better than this,” he told her in a serious tone, but you could see that he was joking by the way his eyes sparkled.

Natasha laughed and walked over, Peter handing the knife back to her.  She gave him a light punch to the arm, Peter lightly elbowing her in response.

“I know I’ve said it before, but I think you are the only one who could act this way to Nat and not get killed,” Tony told Peter with a smile.

“You’re right,” Natasha replied with a tone that showed that it was a warning to them.

“Mr. Steve Rogers, I see your concern,” Peter said formally with a cold note in his voice, stepping away from Natasha and toward Steve, “but I can assure you that I am able to make smart and rational decisions for myself, regarding my schooling, future, and love life.  If you don’t like Tony and I being together, then feel free to fuck off, because you aren’t going to change anything.”

The room fell quiet, everybody looking between Peter and Steve, who were staring straight at each other.  Steve was debating inside his head as he looked at the younger man, who was giving him a solid, cold glare.

“I suppose,” Steve muttered, breaking the silence, “that I could try to put my thoughts aside right now and trust you both as adults who can make reasonable decisions and will continue to see your relationship to try and understand it.”

Peter began to smile, proud of himself for getting the man to trust them as adults. Tony gave Peter a loving look, which the younger returned, and Sam and Bucky were riding on the wave of pure relief that Steve was at least trying to trust the two.  Natasha gave a small smile, tucking her knife back into her belt.

+++

“Would you trust me to make it a surprise?” Tony asked Peter.

The two were laying in Tony’s their bed, Peter curled up against Tony with his head in the crook of his neck and Tony’s chin on top of Peter’s head.  They were close together and warm in the large bed, just talking.

“What do you mean?” Peter questioned, voice muffled by the position his head was in.

“Like, I’ll find a way to show that we’re dating by randomly showing up to hang out with you or pick you up or something,” Tony explained.  “Then, regular people will see what happened so nobody can make assumptions right off the bat and we can get amateur video footage to show what happened and stuff.”

“Mmm,” Peter hummed, thinking about it. “This is probably the dumbest thing I’m ever going to say, but I trust you.”

+++

“And the theme of this year’s prom is . . . Moonlight And A Guest!” the student president announced over the speaker system.  “So, get ready, seniors, for the biggest night of the year for you!  Everybody gets a plus one and tickets will be going on sale this Friday!  See you at prom!”

The classroom filled with chatter, but Peter really paid no mind, instead listening to Ned try and work out a plan to ask Betty to prom.  MJ was buried in a book, as always, and Peter wasn’t sure if she would even consider going to prom.  He never really knew with her.

“Penis Parker!”

Peter groaned internally and turned around to face Flash.

“What do you want?”

“I’ll understand if you want to sit this party out,” Flash told him, leaning his hands on Peter’s desk to tower over him.  “After all, it’s Moonlight And A Guest, and I don’t think you could even get your mom to accompany you.  Oh wait, she’s dead anyway!”

“Flash, you can’t even get in a relationship that lasts for more than two and a half weeks, so I don’t think you have the right to give me advice on love,” Peter shot back.  He immediately regretted it, though, when Flash gave him a look that told him he would pay for it later.

“I guess I’ve rubbed off on you,” MJ said once Flash had walked off.

“Yeah, I guess you have.”

+++

Peter had hoped that he could run from the school building as soon as the final bell rang in order to avoid Flash, but got held back by his teacher to discuss his absences, which meant he was one of the last people left in the school who wasn’t in a club.

Defeated and knowing his fate, Peter trudged to his locker to grab what he needed to bring home.  He pulled out his textbooks and a couple binders and went to close the metal door, but was stopped when it was slammed shut for him.  He looked over and saw Flash and his posse of rich kids and dickheads.

‘How are they the most popular kids in school?’ Peter wondered as he looked at them. His thought process was interrupted, though, with a punch to the face that sent him back into the lockers that were already barely an inch away from his head.  He got another punch to the cheek and then one more to the nose and he could feel blood start flowing from it.

A punch to the chest knocked the air from his lungs and left him vulnerable to attack.  A punch in the stomach and a kick to his right leg sent him sprawling to the floor.  And so the attack continued on.

Peter left the school forty-five minutes after school ended, but not without a slight limp, dried blood around his nose, and bruises all over him.

‘Come on, man,’ he thought to himself, ‘you’re Spider-Man.  You should be able to handle a couple of high school bullies!’

Peter’s mental berating was brought to an end when he entered the car with Happy and shut the door behind him.

“You’re forty-five minutes late!  Where the hell were-” Happy cut himself off as he looked into the rearview mirror and saw the state Peter was in.  “What happened?”

“Nothing important,” Peter assured him, but his voice cracked.  “It looks worse than it is.”

“It sure looks important,” Happy told him with a disbelieving look.

“I’m fine, Happy.”

“If you don’t want to talk to me about it,” Happy said, starting the car, “then that’s okay, but you’ve gotta at least talk to Tony.”

Begrudgingly, Peter nodded his head in affirmation and they began their drive, Happy not putting up the partition the entire time.

When they arrived at the tower, Peter got out and thanked Happy, limping slightly to the side entrance and entering Stark Tower.

“Peter, you appear to be very hurt,” FRIDAY said with concern in her voice despite the fact she was an AI.  “I suggest you get medical assistance.”

“I’m okay, Fri. No need to worry,” he assured, but it wasn’t very convincing.

When Peter exited the elevator, he immediately saw Tony sitting on the couch, scrolling through something on his Stark Pad, obviously absorbed in his work.  When he began to walk forward, though, the man looked up with a smile.

“Hey, love!  How was your-” Tony started but cut himself off once seeing what Peter looked like.  He got up and rushed over, checking the younger man over and trying to assess the damage.

“Pete, what happened?” he questioned gently, looking up to meet Peter’s eyes.  The younger man, though, kept his eyes focused on his shoes.

“It’s nothing,” Peter told him.  “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“FRIDAY,” Tony called out, not believing Peter, “give me a scan and assessment.”

“It appears Mr. Parker has several bruises, a dislocated shoulder and had a bloody nose,” the AI informed him in an almost sad tone.

“That doesn’t sound fine to me,” Tony told Peter, gently taking his lover’s hand and leading him over to the couch.  “What actually happened?”

“Well, they announced the theme for prom, and it’s Moonlight And A Guest, so everybody gets a plus one.  This kid, uh, he’s been . . . bullying me, I guess, since the beginning of high school.  So he made a joke about me having nobody to go with, said I probably couldn’t even get my mom to go with me and then . . . uh . . . turned it into a joke about how my mom is dead.”

“Peter, I-”

“That’s not the end.  I shot back at him about how short his relationships are and how he can’t give me advice about love, so he and his posse, uh, well . . . yeah, and now I’m here.”

It became quiet between the two.  Peter looked down at his lap, embarrassed, but Tony grabbed his hand and held it tight, not letting him go.

“Let’s get you patched up.”

+++

Peter wanted to leave the prom the moment he entered.

Moonlight And A Guest was held in a fancy venue not too far from the school.  It was an old warehouse that had been bought and remodeled to be made into a venue for weddings, bar or bat mitzvahs, and, apparently, high school proms.  The floors were concrete and there were pipes on the ceiling, but they hung stars from the pipes and had put in tables, chairs, and a bar.  It was only serving non-alcoholic drinks, obviously.  The real drinking was reserved for the after-party someone would throw at their house, usually a rich kid.

Peter hated the suit he was in, and the music, and the lights, and all the people.  It felt miserable, but he didn’t want to miss out on prom.  He was sitting on a plush couch in the very back of the venue, MJ sitting on the other end and reading a book.  Ned had disappeared to dance with Betty, meaning Peter was practically alone.  Plus, Ned was his ride, so he couldn’t really go anywhere without him.

Most of the songs were pop and rap, as it wasn’t a big slow dancing event.  It was a high school prom after all.  Peter was cursing himself for not bringing earplugs.

Peter was distracted from his misery by a text.

T: How’s prom?

P: awful

T: I’m sorry, love

P: it’s not your fault.  it is kinda my fault for coming

T: Well, it might not be completely terrible

P: it already is

T: You just gotta get into it! Go request a song or something!

P: fine, I’ll go request a song, but that’s as far as I’m going for prom

T: That’s something at least!

Peter got up and tucked his phone into his pocket, pushing his way through the boards of teens to get across the venue and to the DJ, who was an actual professional hired by the prom committee.

“Hey, man!” the DJ greeted over the music. “You got a song request?”

“Uh, yeah,” Peter replied. “Bloom by The Paper Kites.”

“Got it, dude!”

Peter took a deep breath and began walking back through the crowd.  He was about half-way through when his phone buzzed with a message.  He pulled it out of his pocket, not pausing in his movements.  When he looked at the text, though, he froze and confusion washed over him

T: Where are you in the venue?

P: what?

T: Where are you in the prom venue?

P: I’m in the middle of the crowd????

T: Got it

That’s when people started going silent in the room, looking toward the door.  People noticed others going quiet and saw what they did, a ripple effect going through the crowd until they were all silent and facing the door, the only sound being the music, which had also been quieted.

Peter turned and looked and was met by the sight of Tony Stark.

His boyfriend was dressed up in a black suit with the purple tie Peter had given to him as a present.  In his right hand, he was holding a corsage of white roses that had been delicately placed together just right.

Unphased by all the staring, as he had gotten used to it after spending his entire life in the eyes of the press, Tony began to walk straight through the venue, the crowd splitting for him like he was Moses at the Red Sea.

Everybody watched in confusion as Peter didn’t move for Tony, instead staring him straight in the eyes with an amused look on his face.  When Tony saw Peter, unmoving and looking close to laughter, a giant smile painted itself across his face.  He walked up and stopped right in front of Peter.

Those who weren’t already recording the entire thing pulled out their phones to do so.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at a huge conference in Japan right now?” Peter asked him with a teasing smile.  His peers watched the two, confused as to why Peter was just talking to Tony Stark like it was nothing.

“Pepper let me leave early,” Tony replied.

“Did she now?”

“She did! I told her what was going on and she let me come back!”

Peter paused, smile fading away and being replaced with a mix of shock, confusion, and joy.

“You told Pepper that I was going to prom and she let you drop everything to come back to New York for it?  You went all that way for me?”  Peter asked him softly.

“Of course I did,” Tony told him, taking Peter’s hand and lifting it up to put on the corsage. People were beginning to whisper, wondering what the hell was happening and why Tony Stark was at their senior prom and putting a corsage on Peter Parker.

“That’s a fifteen-hour flight and possibly lost business because of you leaving a conference, Tones,” Peter chided but looked down at the corsage for a moment before looking back up at Tony lovingly.

“What? Did you think I was going to leave my boyfriend hanging at his senior prom?” Tony questioned with a joking smile.

The whispers grew louder and were full of questions without answers.  People who had their phones out were even more focused on filming the entire interaction.  Nobody was noticing what music was coming on until Peter spoke up again.

“This is the song I requested,” he pointed out quietly, pointing upwards to motion to it as the soft guitar intro played.

“In that case, may I have this dance?” Tony asked, offering his hand.  Peter laughed and put his hand in Tony’s, letting his boyfriend drag him into a slow dance.

In the morning when I wake

And the sun is coming through

Oh, you fill my lungs with sweetness

And you fill my head with you.

“Why are you really here, Tones?” Peter asked quietly as they danced, making sure nobody could hear them.

“You really wanna know?” Tony replied in a whisper

Peter nodded.

Shall I write it in a letter?

Should I try to get it down?

Oh, you fill my head with pieces

Of a song I can’t get out.

“There are a couple reasons,” Tony admitted.  “I wanted to announce our relationship and thought this was a romantic way to do it, I wanted to show up that kid who beat you up, and . . . I wanted to be here at your prom.  This is the most romantic thing a high school kid can go to, and I wanted to give you the real experience of going with a date.”

Can I be close to you?

Ooh-oo-oo-ooh, ooh-oo-oo-ooh

Can I be close to you?

Ooh-oo-oo-ooh, ooh-oo-oo-ooh

“You really wanted all of that for me?”

“Of course, love.”

Can I take you to a moment

Where the fields are painted gold?

And the trees are filled with memories

Of the feelings never told?

“Pepper is going to kill you,” Peter told him, bringing his voice back to its normal volume.

“She said I could go!” Tony defended, spinning Peter around.

“Yeah, but it’s still a complete PR nightmare. Romantic?  Yes.  But the press will be all over it, tabloids will make it out to be terrible, and stocks will drop.

“I don’t care about all of that as much as I care about you.”

When the evening pulls the sundown

And the day is almost through

Oh, the whole world, it is sleeping

But my world is you

Tears filled Peter’s eyes as he thought about how Tony would give up the entire universe for him and knew that he would do the same for Tony.

“I love you,” Peter told him simply, but it was full of emotion and compassion.

“I love you too,” Tony responded.  “I love you more than words can say.

Can I be close to you?

Oh ooh ooh, ooh ooh

Can I be close to you?

Oh ooh ooh, ooh ooh

Can I be close to you?

Oh ooh ooh, ooh ooh

Can I be close to you?

Oh ooh ooh, ooh ooh

Can I be close to you?

Ooh, ooh

As the song ended, Tony and Peter leaned forward and shared a kiss.  Short and sweet, but a kiss filled with everything they had.

“You wanna ditch your senior prom?” Tony asked his boyfriend.

“Is that even a question?”

+++

‘Tony Stark’s New Boyfriend?’

‘Who Is The Mysterious Peter Parker?’

‘Tony Stark Crashes A High School Prom’

#starker #tony stark/peter parker #starker fic #starker fanfiction #axiwrites #pro starker #prom #im proud of this

[sassy-starker]

Talk Too Much

Caffeine, small talk

Wait out the plastic weather

When Tony Stark talked to Peter Parker for the first time, the first thought that ran through his head was, ‘He talks too much.’

The second thought that ran through his head was, ‘I should kiss him to make im shut up.’

The next thing he did was reel back.  He tuned out of the boy’s talking and retreated into his own mind, telling it to shut up and reminding himself that the boy was fifteen.  When he tuned back into the real world, he realized that the boy had stopped talking. He attempted to play it cool by jumping back in and sitting next to the boy on his tiny, twin-sized bed.  He didn’t know if Peter realized that he wasn’t paying attention, but the hero-worship in the boy’s coffee-brown eyes assured Tony that it was fine.

For the entirety of the Germany trip and the entire homecoming incident, Tony Stark had tried to repress all his feelings, pushing them to the back of his brain and yelling at his supposedly genius brain that the boy was too young to have some old, eccentric billionaire pursuing him.

Mmhmm, uh huh, discussing current events

I'll take my time

The month after the homecoming incident, Tony Stark gave into his mind and invited Peter Parker to the lab.

“This is insane!” Peter exclaimed as they entered the lab.  Tony had a friendly hand on his shoulder, guiding him inside.  He tried not to notice the absolute, unfiltered joy in the vigilante’s eyes, but he couldn’t help but notice.  He was too far gone.

“Go crazy, Pete,” he said, reluctantly pulling away from him.  The teen rushed around, not bothering to hide his excitement.  Tony sat down and began working on an emergency Spider Suit, but couldn’t find it in himself to focus.  He kept glancing up at Peter, a fuzzy feeling filling up his chest at how amazed he was by the lab.

Eventually, Peter caught sight of Tony watching him as he had been observing Dum-E and tried to mask his emotions, embarrassment filling up his coffee-colored eyes.  His face flushed, the pink traveling all the way up to his ears.  Tony decided at that moment that he wanted to make Peter blush like that every day for the rest of his life.

“Sorry,” Peter mumbled out, gaze falling to the floor.

“Don’t apologize,” Tony reassured him. “I’m glad a genius like you finds my tech interesting.”

Tony wasn’t lying about the genius part.  He had seen what Peter could do with some junk technology he found in the trash or some chemicals he got from a high school science lab.  The teen had made a computer and his web-shooters from practically nothing.  He knew he wouldn’t regret giving the vigilante full access to the lab.

Tony watched Peter perk up again, lips peaking into a grin and blush fading away but still slightly present on his milky white skin.  Peter started walking around again and Tony kept watching, not even trying to hide it anymore.  He thought he couldn’t be anymore gone with the boy when he spoke up.

Peter was looking at an unfinished project for Stark Industries.  It was a leg prosthetic that Tony was having trouble with; he couldn’t get the ankle to bend as well as a human ankle would.  He looked on as Peter observed it with focused eyes and a tongue stuck out in concentration.

Without looking up, Peter simply stated, “This would work better if the bolt for the ankle was lowered about a third of an inch. The ankle could bend at a more natural angle then.”

Tony got up, stool making a scraping noise against the ground as he did.  Peter looked up, eyes widening and face morphing into one of guilt.  Tony bent down to observe the prosthetic while thinking about what the boy had said.

“I’m so sorry.  I didn’t mean to say that out loud.  I’m probably wrong anyway.  I shouldn’t have tried to correct your tech.  I’m sorr-” Peter rambled on and on, but Tony cut him off.

“You’re right,” he said, turning his gaze to Peter and standing straight again.

“What?” Peter replied, voice small.

“You’re right. It would work better if the bolt were lowered.  You solved the problem I’ve been working on for a month and a half in a minute and a half.  You’re a genius.”

Peter flushed pink at the praise from Tony.

Yeah, Tony was gone.

I'm not the forward thinker

You read my mind

On his sixteenth birthday, Peter was invited to the lab.  Tony had been working on tech with him for a while and a good amount of the teen’s work had gone onto the market for Stark Industries.  When Tony tried to pay him part of the profits, the vigilante had refused.  He had even decided that he didn’t want to put his name on the products, humility on full show for Tony to see.  Out of options, the genius had instead decided the shower the teen in presents, giving him one almost every time he came over to the lab.  Peter always tried to refuse them, but Tony never let him.

That day in the lab, they worked together instead of on individual projects.  They were sitting right next to each other as they wired put together the Mark XVIII Iron Man suit.  The lab was silent except for the slight whirring of machines and their breathing.

The only thing going through Tony’s head was, ‘He’s a kid. Don’t be weird. He’s a kid. Don’t be weird. He’s a kid. Don’t be weird He’s a-’

“How’s school going?” Tony asked, desperately trying to make small talk.  If asked, he would’ve said that he preferred the lab to be lively with chatter, but he knew deep down that he just wanted to hear Peter’s voice.

Tony wondered if his father was looking down on him from heaven in shame, but his father’s sins far outweighed his own.  His judgment, even if justified by every melodious angel in heaven, meant nothing to him.

“Same old stuff as always,” Peter told him without looking up from their project. “Classes are easy, which is nice, but it’s still pretty boring.”

“You could always leave high school early and go to MIT,” Tony told him.

“Yeah, but I really wanna have the senior year experience,” Peter admitted.  Tony gave an understanding ‘hm.’

“You got somebody special you wanna spend your senior year with?” the genius teased.

It sent pins and needles into Tony’s heart.  He wanted to kiss the boy and shower him in compliments and take him around the world and make him blush.  He wanted to love him and be loved right back, but he knew that it wasn’t going to happen.  Peter would fall in love with another kid in his grade and go to prom and get his heart broken.  Peter was going to love someone and be loved right back, but it wasn’t going to be Tony.  That’s how it went.  The man knew that --  oh, he knew that -- but he loved and loved Peter anyway.

Peter sighed and tore his eyes away from the project, sitting up straight.  His shoulders slumped and his face fell slightly, helplessness filling up his expressive eyes.  Tony watched as the teen ran his hand through his hair, wishing he could put an arm around his shoulder and run his own fingers through the fluffy flop of hair on his head.

“Well,” Peter mumbled, “I like this guy, but he’s way out of my league.”

“I doubt he’s as far away to reach as you think,” Tony replied as he pulled himself away from the project as Peter did.  The teen snorted at the man’s response but didn’t meet his eyes.

“He’s never gonna think of me like that but I just keep dreaming that he does,” Peter admitted, a blush painting his cheeks pink.

Tony wanted to say, ‘I know how that feels,’ but replied with “I’m sure you’re just doubting yourself.  Tell me about him.”

“Well,” Peter says, a small smile on his face and his gaze resting on his lap, “he’s handsome and a really good guy.  He gets so much negative attention from everyone, but they just don’t know him like I do.  I’ve talked to him so much and I could keep talking to him for hours on end.  He’s so sweet and a genius.”

“He couldn’t be as much of a genius as you,” Tony complimented the boy, which made his blush grow darker.

“He’s known for being a genius.  He once called me one and I said I couldn’t be as smart as him, but he told me we’re on par.  I nearly died of happiness.”

Tony put a friendly hand on Peter’s should, which made the boy look up at him and finally meet his eyes.  He gave him a fierce look and hid his disappointment at how much the teen liked his crush.

“You just gotta make a move,” he told Peter.

Peter never brought his crush up again.

Better to leave it unsaid

Why can't I leave it unsaid?

Peter was invited to the lab on his seventeenth birthday too and he was just as happy to be in the lab as he was the first time he was invited.  That was one of the millions of things Tony liked about Peter: he was enthusiastic about small things.

This time around, the only thing running through Tony’s mind was, ‘Make a move. Remember what Rhodey said. Make a move. Remember what Rhodey said. Make a move. Remember what Rhodey said. Make a move. Remember what Rhodey said. But maybe you shouldn’t and-’

And then he looked at Peter smiling at him with rosy cheeks and joy-filled eyes.

He had talked to Rhodey right after Peter’s sixteenth birthday and the man, as always, was the only reason Tony hadn’t fallen apart.

Tony let out a long and dramatic sigh as he flopped onto the couch in the living room.  Rhodey, who was on the chair next to the couch, chose to ignore the genius and continued reading his book.  Tony gave out another overly dramatic sigh and Rhodey knew he would keep doing it until he paid attention.

“What?” Rhodey asked as he placed a bookmark between the pages and set his book down on the coffee table.

“I have a problem,” Tony informed him.

“I figured.”

Tony turned serious and sat up correctly.  He had a concerned and anxious look on his face, replacing his mask of confidence.  Rhodey rarely saw this side of Tony, which made him instantly worried.

“I’m in love when I shouldn’t be and it’s going to fuck everything up,” Tony told the man, forcing the words out of his mouth.  Rhodey raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth to continue, but the genius cut him off.

“I shouldn’t even be attracted to him.  It’s wrong and disgusting!  I’m an awful person and my mom is probably looking down on me in shame.  I can’t believe myself, Rhodey!” Tony got up and walked behind the couch, starting to pace back and forth.  “He doesn’t deserve to have me wanting to date him.  It’s awful and I’ve been trying to repress it for almost a year, and I should distance myself!”

Tony paused in his pacing and buried his head into his hands, mumbling out, “But, cara madre Maria e signore sopra di, I am selfish.”

“Well,” Rhodey said nonchalantly, “I’m glad you at least know you like Peter.”

Tony’s head shot up and he whipped around to face his friend. “How did you know?!”

“It’s obvious on your face,” Rhodey told him, picking up his book again, “and it’s obvious on his too.”

The genius just stood there as his friend began reading again.  He was in a trance of shock and fear and, most of all, hope.

Peter was sleeping over at the tower for the night as it was his birthday and Tony, knowing Pepper would be mad if he and Peter stayed up all night working as they had done several times before, decided that they would have a movie night.  They were sat next to each other on the couch with ‘Me Before You’ playing on the TV.

You know I talk too much

Tony couldn’t stop thinking about how close they were.  He watched with loving eyes as Peter rambled on about the differences between the book in the movie, declaring the book much better than what they were watching.  Tony couldn’t focus on the movie, partly because of his crush’s talking and partly because of how distracting it was to watch the boy talk on and on with drooping eyes and messy hair.  Peter turned to him once he noticed Tony watching, but didn’t stop rambling on.

Honey, come put your lips on mine

Finally working up the necessary courage . . .

And shut me up

Tony leaned forward and placed his lips on Peter’s.

We could blame it all on human nature

Tony pulled back and looked at Peter, who had a blush painting his cheeks and ears pink and a shocked expression on his face.

Stay cool, it's just a kiss

“What was that for?” Peter said with a smile before backtracking. “Not that I didn't like it! I really did! It was nice! I liked it a  . . . I liked it a lot.”

Oh, why you gotta be so talkative?

“You talk too much,” Tony told him. 

“Do you not like it?” Peter asked in a small voice and looked down at his lap in embarrassment.

“I like it a lot,” Tony told him.  Peter leaned forward quickly and gave him another kiss, the two moving toward each other until they were shoulder to shoulder.

I talk too much, we talk too much

#starker #tony stark/peter parker #tony x peter #songfic #i wrote this while wearing llama socks and crocs #talk too much #axiwrites #fluff #starker fluff

[sassy-starker]

what’s coming up

I’ve got some new fics coming up and I thought I’d share them with y’all

1. Pause, Rewind, Play - Tony, missing Peter after the snap, rewatches FRIDAY’s videos of him, tending to pause, rewind, and play them.

2. The Whispers Of Skin - Tony has been gone on a year-long mission and is just returning, but, due to the minimal amount of time he’s been able to talk to Peter, he doesn’t know his younger boyfriend has been spiraling downwards. Peter craves to control his own life and starts to develop anorexia because of it.

3. Jupiter - Soulmate AU. Tony has never had a mark and, after getting one in his 30s, decides to ignore it and pretend it never popped up. Peter has pushed his mark to the back of his mind after everything that’s happened to him. Now dealing with serious physical bullying, losing his friends, and never having somebody to talk to, Peter somehow finds his soulmate. Suddenly, things are looking up.

4. It Isn’t Rocket Science - Tony is a single dad who is raising his daughter, Morgan, and working a full-time job after his wife died several years ago. Morgan is struggling in math and science, so Tony hires a tutor from the local college, Midtown. Enter Peter Parker, a twenty-year-old genius looking to make some money and sees the tutoring offer. Love isn’t rocket science, but it sure is hard.

5. For Yourself- Tony never learned how to do housework; he always had someone to do that for him. Now that he’s dating Peter Parker and sees the younger man determined to do dishes and cook, he wants to finally learn.

6. Pencil Strokes - Peter is a college student who draws people for money in Central Park.  Tony is taking a walk to try and forget about how annoying Steve Rogers is. A pencil stroke of the universe pulls them together.

And I have more, but I don’t want to spoil any surprises!

Requests are still open!

#starker #starker fanfic #starker fanfiction #axiwrites #upcoming