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“Hey, Petey-pie.”
Peter shoots Tony a look, nose wrinkling in confusion. “That’s…a new one.”
“Hated it the second it came out of my mouth, so I’ll definitely be using that,” Tony replies, grinning at him as he settles next to Peter, swinging his legs over the side of the building to match him.
Peter laughs, leans back on his hands and sees Tony do the same out of the corner of his eye. The sun is setting, slowly, lazily, on the horizon - reds and oranges mix with blues and purples swirling together to look exactly like Peter feels now.
Conflicted.
Most days, the sunset is beautiful and nothing else. Today, the sunset cannot decide what it wants to be any more than Peter can.
Perhaps this makes it even more beautiful. It’s full of contradictions, and yet it continues to just calmly exist.
God, he sounds like a children’s poem.
“So…did you come up to the top of a building in civilian clothes just to watch the sunset, or is there something going on?”
Peter exhales, breath whistling through his teeth. His webshooters dig into the insides of his wrists, and he doesn’t really know what to say. Doesn’t really know what he’s feeling right now, only that it’s a lot and he thinks better when he’s high up. Something about being so far away from the hustle and bustle of New York clears out a lot of the extraneous noise in his head.
(Some of it always remains, because Peter’s brain has never quite grasped the concept of silence.)
He wasn’t planning on talking this out with anyone, not today. He’s not even sure why Tony is here. But Peter does tend to process faster when he gives voice to his thoughts, so maybe talking to Tony will get him home before May starts to worry.
With his eyes trained on the horizon, Peter says, “Some kid in Health class called me damaged because I asked if people were allowed to not want to have sex.”
He doesn’t look at Tony, but he knows Tony is looking at him. Probably trying to figure out if Peter is fucking with him or not.
He wishes he was. He wishes he hadn’t spent the rest of the day turning the word damaged over in his head and wondering if the kid was right.
After a long moment, Tony says, “That kid’s an asshole.”
Huh. He’s never seen Tony this clearly out his comfort zone. If that’s because Tony’s comfort zone is incredibly large or because Tony is incredibly skilled at faking it until he makes it, he has no idea.
“He is,” Peter agrees, and leaves it at that.
He wants Tony to ask. If he’s going to say it, he needs Tony to ask.
Thankfully, Tony has gotten pretty good at knowing what he needs, either consciously or subconsciously. “Do you - were you asking because you don’t want to have sex?”
Obviously, he thinks.
Aloud, he only hums. He’ll tell anyone who will listen that his mouth has a mind of its own.
Tony makes a noise in the back of his throat, doesn’t seem to know if he’s supposed to take this as an affirmation, a denial, or neither. “You - okay, Pete, you’re gonna have to give me more than that. I don’t -”
Just to put him out of his misery (and, hopefully, put Peter out of his own), Peter cuts his eyes to Tony and tells him, “I’m asexual.”
Saying it out loud is...less climactic than he thought it’d be.
Something shifts in his chest. His insides unknot, just a little.
And that’s that.
It’s not like he was expecting fireworks to go off or a choir of angels to start singing as soon as he spoke. It’s not like he was expecting gravity to stop working or the sky to change colors. It’s not like he was expecting some sort of groundbreaking, earth-shattering moment.
But he's still just a little surprised when it’s not groundbreaking. It’s not earth-shattering. It’s just Peter.
“I get the feeling this has nothing to do with plants.”
Peter snorts. “Definitely not.”
Tony’s waiting for an explanation, he knows. He should give one, he knows.
He just...needs a minute.
Tony doesn’t push, watching him carefully as he sits up and pulls his legs up from over the ledge to fold them underneath him. Peter hopes his gratitude shows in his demeanor, but he’ll worry about that later.
He takes a breath. Then another.
“Being asexual means you don’t experience sexual attraction,” he says, measuredly. Detachedly. Like he’s giving a presentation, because it’s easier that way. “It - it doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t like sex, or don’t want sex - I mean, it does for me, but that’s beside the point -”
“That definitely doesn’t sound like it’s beside the point, Pete,” Tony interrupts.
Peter stops.
Not actually a presentation. Right. This is - this is him coming out.
He’s coming out. Not for the first time, technically, but for a first time. He’s come out as bi enough times that the gravity of the whole coming out experience is dimmed, but it’s still different this time.
“I know,” Peter says. “It’s not, I know.”
Tony follows suit in pulling his legs up from the ledge, turns to fully face Peter. His eyes are soft. Fond. “Kid, is this the first time you’ve come out as - what was it, asexual?”
He nods.
The corners of Tony’s mouth quirk up in a warm smile. “Well, I’m honored, Underoos.”
He’s not being weird about it. Not that Peter expected him to be, per se, but…he is Tony Stark, playboy extraordinaire, so maybe Peter didn’t expect him to understand so easily. So many people can’t even comprehend how anyone could not like sex - a fact that Peter doesn’t really get because sex just seems gross and sticky and uncomfortable to him, but apparently he’s the exception, not the rule - so yeah, maybe he thought Tony would take longer to process. Sue him.
Peter’s about to speak when Tony says, “You know that kid was wrong, right?”
“What?”
“Whoever it was that said you were damaged - I can get him expelled if you want, just throwing that out - he was wrong.”
“Oh, that.” Peter rolls his eyes, and it almost doesn’t feel forced. “Yeah, I know. He’s an idiot. And no, you don’t need to get him expelled.”
Tony knocks his knee against Peter’s, smile widening. “Just remember that I could, though. Him and anyone else who says anything bad about you.”
“You can’t just -”
“I’m Tony Stark, of course I can.”
“Technically, yes. Ethically, no.”
“Eh, who needs ethics, anyway?”
“Mr. Stark.”
“I mean, in this day and age, no one gives a fuck about ethics.”
“Mr. Stark.”
They both start laughing at the same time, happy and open and light. The weight on Peter’s shoulders hasn’t exactly lifted, but it’s not quite as heavy anymore.
“Hey, kid.”
“Hm?”
“Teach me more about this whole ‘asexual’ thing later on, will you? If this is a part of you, I wanna know all about it.”
He’s not going to cry. He’s not.
If his eyes are wet when he looks at Tony and says, “Yeah. Yeah, I will,” then that’s nobody’s business but his own.