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“Really?” Tony asked him, for the fourth time that night.
“Really, Tony,” Peter said fondly, rolling his eyes when his boyfriend pouted. He shuffled across the couch so his knees were pressed against Tony’s thighs, reaching out and running a hand through his styled hair. It earned him a glare, but he didn’t pay it much mind.
“How can there be nothing you want?” Tony asked again, voice incredulous and both brows half-way up his forehead. Before Peter could answer his face changed, his forehead creasing as the lines around his eyes got deep with worry. “Is it...did I do something wrong?”
If this has been months ago, Peter might have gotten upset. But ever since a too-late night in the lab resulted in sleepy, heart-felt love confessions, Peter had been doing his best to not take anything Tony said at face value. Tony was really, really good with words, better at wearing masks, and excellent at never showing how he was really feeling.
That was something Peter hadn’t known until they’d started dating. He’d thought the energetic, enthusiastic man he knew down in the labs, who he invented with late into the nights, whose brain went even faster than his, was who Tony Stark really was. But that was just one mask that Tony wore, one facet to the amazing, wonderful, beautiful person that was Tony Stark.
This, the Tony before him, was the one who had been used for his resources more times than anyone, least of all someone as amazing as him, should have ever had to deal with. This was the Tony who had been left behind when he wasn’t useful, who’d been betrayed by people he’d called family.
So Peter didn’t get annoyed that Tony was worried he’d done something just because Peter didn’t want him to get him some big, extravagant gift, and he didn’t assume that Tony was trying to buy his affection—they got enough accusations like that from the media. Instead, he really thought about why Tony would be so bothered that Peter didn’t want anything from him, and felt his heart ache.
“Baby,” he said softly, rubbing the skin behind Tony’s ear gently, “I don’t need you to buy me anything, alright?”
“No?” Tony asked, and it was clear that he didn’t quite get the concept of what Peter felt like the holidays were all about.
To him, and Aunt May, the holidays weren’t about giving gifts or throwing parties. They’d never had the money for that, not after his parents had died, so they’d focused on what the holidays should mean—at least in Peter’s opinion. For him and his, Christmas was about spending time with his family. It was about having days off that they could spend together, lazing around the apartment and drinking copious amounts of eggnog. It was all about cuddling up in front of a cheesy movie, of being together, which—
“Oh! I just thought of the perfect present,” Peter exclaimed. He swung himself onto Tony’s lap to give him a kiss, hoping to distract him from the inevitable protest he was going to make. Peter knew that for Tony, the holidays weren’t about spending time with family and being close with your loved ones, and were rather about showing off what you could give.
But maybe this year it could be different.
Peter pulled back, grinning as Tony hummed against his mouth and leaned up to chase the kiss even as Peter straightened out.
Tony pouted up at him cutely, and asked, “What?”
“Take a vacation,” Peter told him seriously, thumbs brushing over his cheekbones, “and spend...I don’t know, take a week and spend the whole thing with me.”
“That...isn’t a gift,” Tony pointed out, hands on Peter’s hips.
“Of course it is!” Peter enthused, bouncing a bit in place as he really started thinking up a plan. His smile stretched wider and he started talking faster as he said, “It’ll be amazing! We can wake up together whenever we want and hang out in bed all day and cuddle for hours, and we can have sex for like, days without having to stop! We can see about taking lessons with that chef like you keep saying we should do and we could visit May and—” Peter broke off with an excited noise, swooping down for a long kiss filled with excitement. “C’mon, Tony, it’ll be perfect! Please, that is definitely the best gift you could get me, okay?”
Tony’s face flickered through a whole series of different emotions quicker than Peter could keep up with, but finally, it landed on something soft. Peter had to kiss him, moving their mouths together sweetly as he tangled his fingers into Tony’s hair to hold him in place as they made out familiarly. Eventually, they were both breathless and Peter pulled back to rest their foreheads together, still smiling.
“A vacation?” Tony asked him, hands clenching around Peter’s hips but not pulling away.
Peter nodded, grinning so widely his cheeks ached, as he confirmed, “Yes, a vacation that we can spend just the two of us. No work, no school, maybe superhero-ing if they really need us. But other than just you and me.”
“That...Pete, that sounds amazing,” Tony admitted, voice a little rough, and Peter kissed him again. And then again.