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“I hate Tony Stark.” Peter said, making dramatic mournful eyes at the camera in his laptop.
MJ narrowed her eyes at him. “Is that his code phrase for we need to call the police?”
“No,” Ned shook his head on the screen. “‘I hate Tony Stark’ is to prove that he’s not being affected by truth serum.”
“Right?” MJ sighed.
“I do.” Peter muttered obstinately.
Ned nodded sympathetically. “With his stupid hair and his stupid tech.”
“And his stupid bower.” MJ continued.
Peter let his head fall onto the desk in front of him. “It’s perfect. He’s perfect. Why does it have to be so perfect?” He whined. It was perfect. When Tony decided to make a bower he went all the way. He had taken his family mansion, vacant for years, stripped out the worst of the seventies and eighties decor and left the best bits of the turn of the century building. It was the kind of bower that had omegas beating the door down offering to stay.
“You don’t think it’s a little old fashioned?”
“It’s classic. It’s elegant.” Peter may have started to tear up. “It has a gable with a window seat looking over the back lawn.”
“That place is so different from his penthouse at Stark tower.”
Peter who had poured over the pictures of Tony Stark’s penthouse apartment long before he had been let inside nodded. “Of course it is. It’s a bower. It’s supposed to be inviting. The penthouse is just..” Peter sighed waving his hand.
“Really cool? Top of the line everything? Has the best view of Manhattan ever?” MJ asked.
Peter sighed again. “Cold, slick. It’s great.”
“But?” MJ encouraged him.
“The penthouse isn’t inviting. It doesn’t make someone want to stay.”
MJ and Ned exchanged a speaking look over the video call.
“You like the mansion better, Peter?” Ned asked with a smile.
“Yes! There’s a kitchen that gets amazing light and a garage that’s basically a machine shop and a pool that wouldn’t make you feel like you’re going to swim off the side of a building. And so many bedrooms.” Peter paused and added more quietly “It’s a place you could raise a family.”
There was a thump from Ned’s line. “Woah.”
“Do you want kids, Peter?”
Peter looked up at them. “Why do people keep asking me that? I’m still in college.” May had asked him that too when he had tried to explain to her how much he hated Tony and his bower.
MJ pinched the bridge of her nose. “Peter, people are asking you that because Tony Stark is building you a ridiculous bower. He’s not just decorating a room for you he’s completely renovating one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the world.”
Peter dropped his head down on the desk again, pouting. “He’s not building it for me.”
There were a quiet few seconds where he could feel their unwarranted scepticism through the call.
“Who’s he building it for then?” MJ asked. “He spends all his time with you and the Avengers.”
Peter pondered again who Tony could be trying to entice to stay with him. There weren’t many omegas in the avengers. Peter wracked his brain, eventually coming up with “Scott?”
“Wrong side of the country.” MJ told him.
“Nebula?”
“Cool, scary” Ned said, “but wrong planet.”
Peter slumped. “Fine, I don’t know who he’s building the bower for.” Peter felt like he should know. He and Tony spent as much time together as Peter could spare. “He started building it after his trip to Milan. Maybe he met someone there.” After all there were always beautiful people eager to talk to Tony on those trips.
“Or you.” MJ said.
Peter ignored her and let his head fall back on his desk. No way Tony would build something like that for him. Yes, they had fun together in the lab, and on missions, and on movie nights. Team training last week had been fun too. They paired up against the others and kicked their butts. Peter remembered how happy Tony looked afterward when he took the helmet off to grin at him. But Tony wouldn’t do this for him.
He lifted his head to see MJ gesturing emphatically at him while she looked at Ned.
Ned nodded. “Sooo….” he started in a familiar tone of voice. The voice Ned used when he had a plan. “Tony’s bower is perfect.”
“It is.” Peter nodded.
Ned made grabby hands at MJ. She nodded. “Yes, it’s very nice.”
“Perfect.” Peter sighed.
Ned went on. “If it’s so perfect, why hasn’t the omega Mr. Stark’s courting joined him there?”
“If they can’t see how amazing his bower is they don’t deserve Tony.” Peter said mulishly.
MJ rolled her eyes.
Ned held his hands up wide by his face. “Dude, you’re thinking about this wrong.” Ned paused for dramatic effect. It was long enough for Peter to hear MJ mutter “True.”
“You want Mr. Stark to be happy right.”
“Yes.”
“Having his omega with him would make him happy, right.”
“Yes”
“They might not deserve Mr. Stark but doesn’t Mr. Stark deserve a chance with the omega he’s building all this for?”
Peter hummed as he rolled that thought over in his head. “Tony has been looking a bit sad lately. He wasn’t excited about the last set of blueprints.”
MJ’s squinted at him in disbelief. “He’s shown you the blueprints of his bower?”
Peter blushed. “Not like that. He’s just had them up in the lab sometimes when I get there. I’m sure he doesn’t mean for me to see them.”
“Right.”
“You should totally go and figure out what would be turning his omega off about his bower.”
Peter blinked at the suggestion. “I...could do that.”
Ned nodded.
Peter frowned. “Everything I’ve seen looks good though.”
MJ looked at him sideways. “How much of it have you seen?”
“Just the outside. And through the windows. And I may have landed on the roof once.” Peter hid his face in embarrassment. He continued mumbling the same excuse he had given Happy when the man had asked him about it. “It’s just a really good place to land when I’m swinging past Central Park.”
“What a coincidence.”
Undeterred Ned said “You’ll have to go inside then. Check the place out.”
Peter stuttered. “Inside?”
Ned nodded. “If you want to figure out what’s keeping his omega way, you’ll have to go in.”
“Inside.” Peter repeated to himself.
“You’ve been to his penthouse. You’re one of like three people allowed into his lab.” MJ smiled “He won’t have a problem with you going there.”
“Yeah,” Ned said. “‘Specially if you can help him with his omega.”
“If I find something” Peter grimaced “wrong. How do I tell him?” Peter couldn’t imagine how that conversation would go. “I can’t just go up to him and say ‘Hey, I was poking around your bower’.”
Ned sat back away from the camera. “You’ll have to be subtle.”
Peter twitched a little.
MJ shook her head. “Tell Black Widow and have her tell him.”
“That could work.” Nat was an alpha. She’d know what to say to Tony.
“Cool.” Ned said. “You should go now.”
“Tonight?”
“Yep, the sooner Mr. Stark knows what the problem is the sooner he’ll be able to fix it.”
Peter nodded. That made a lot of sense. He could help Tony out, get rid of those pinched lines around Tony’s eyes Peter had been seeing more and more.
He pushed away from his desk and grabbed his suit out of its secure hidey hole. He heard Ned and MJ whispering to each other as he dug out his spider suit and started tugging it on.
“You think this will actually work?”
“Sometimes you have to go with the flow. If he follows it hard enough he might come out the other side.”
There was a second of silence then MJ clicked her teeth together slowly. “Peter make sure to check the bedroom. One of my friends did the bower thing last month. He got the living room all arranged. He found some nice pillows. But he forgot to decorate the bedroom. The omega didn’t talk to him for a week.”
Peter turned to look at the laptop mid hop into his pants. “You think?” He frowned. “Tony does sleep in the lab more than he should.” He nodded. “I’ll make sure to check it out.”
“Good luck.” Ned cheered him on.
“Go get ‘em.”
“Bye.” Peter ended the call and flung himself out the window.
The cold air and the twenty minutes it took Peter to get to Stark Mansion took the wind out of his sails a bit. Did he really think he could look at what Tony had done and tell the man what was missing to charm some other omega? Particularly when as far as Peter had seen through the windows everything was perfect.
Peter landed as lightly as he could on the low pitched roof and crawled head first down the side of the building to find a window away from the street. It wouldn’t do to have anyone notice Spider-Man, or Peter Parker for that matter, here. Peter listened hard to double check that there was no one in the building. As far as Peter could tell Tony had decided to live at the tower until the omega he was courting deemed the Alpha’s bower acceptable.
With a bit of prying he got one of the large windows open enough to slip through. He stuck to the wall long enough to shut it then flipped down landing lightly on the floor. He sighed as the carpet sunk just the right amount under his weight. It felt like it would be perfect for walking on barefoot.
The room would have been dark to normal eyes but Peter could see enough to know it was an office. Taking it in he decided that it was good. The furniture was quality and the desk would get indirect light when the sun came through the window. The worst thing Peter could find was that it felt un-lived in. Everything was a bit too crisp.
Letting himself into the hall he glanced around. There were the appropriate number of end tables with the right decorative clutter. Peter smiled as he noticed the pictures hanging on the walls. There was one of Tony, Pepper and Rhodey, scrunched together to get their three smiling faces in frame. As he walked he saw pictures of all the Avengers and their allies. Peter was amused to see Tony’s latest ‘Alpha of the Year’ magazine cover.
The next photo made him a bit misty-eyed. It was him and Tony on his birthday last year. They had started the morning tinkering in the lab and got so caught up that Steve, Natasha and all the others had decided to bring the party to them. Dummy had spent the afternoon trying to steal Peter’s party hat. Tony had come to his rescue many times by twirling him out of Dummy’s reach at the last second. The picture had caught the moment Tony had his arms around Peter and both of them grinning. Peter went from picture to picture until he realized he had come to the end of the hall and was facing the master bedroom.
He set his hand on the door lightly. Was he really going to do this? Was he really going to go into such an intimate space? Did he really want to see the room more than any Tony had created to share with some other omega? Half of him said yes he wanted to know everything about Tony, everything he said and did. The other half said no, he didn’t want to know what Tony made for someone else, What he would never make for Peter. Peter dropped his forehead against the door. Coming here had been a mistake.
“Hi.”
Peter jumped at the voice behind him. He spun to see Tony there in the dark hallway behind him. “uuuuu….Hi.” His brain finally supplied.
“You’re here.”
Peter started wringing his Spider-Man mask in his hands. “Uh, Yeah.” He couldn’t meet Tony’s eyes at the moment.
“Do you want the tour?”
“Yes, please.” Slipped out before his higher thinking could kick in. An Alpha offering a tour of their bower to another omega was scandalous. Only omegas in the Alpha’s family saw the whole bower before the couple nested. Peter bit his lip, maybe Tony thought of Peter as family. That should make Peter feel happier than it did.
Tony started toward the stairs nodding for Peter to follow him. On the first floor he took them left to a spacious living room where the lights came on automatically.
“So, we have enough couch space for fifteen people and cushions if they want to sit on the floor. The TV is hooked up to a Stark Satellite and can get every channel on Earth. Still need to go to the tower if we want anything from off Earth.”
Tony glanced at Peter. Peter, a little at a loss, nodded.
“Fantastic sound system and the place is pretty much soundproof so it’s great for movies.”
Peter nodded more firmly this time.
Tony took them across the hall. “This the study. It might not look like much but.” Tony ran his hand over the wooden table and a holographic display popped up. “Friday is completely wired into the whole house.”
“Oh,” Peter blinked. Then it clicked. “That’s how you knew I was here.”
Tony nodded. “That window wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.” He waited a beat then gestured at the shelves. “All of these are first editions I dug out of storage.”
“Good.” Peter said, starting to get a hold of himself. The room had nice high ceilings and the books added a nice hominess to it.
Tony bounced on his feet. Peter had seen him do it a hundred times before as he waited for the outcome of an experiment. Peter hoped whatever omega this bower was for appreciated that bounce.
“And the kitchen.” It was really a kitchen and dining room divided by a breakfast bar. Peter smiled to see one place in the house that had Tony's usual decorative style of highly polished metal. “Gas stove with six burners, two ovens and the fridge is thirty cubic feet with a separate freezer. Plenty of cabinet space for snacks too.”
“That’s handy.”
Tony walked to the far side of the room and opened the french doors there. Peter trailed after him sneakily running a finger along the counter top to feel the cold stone. “Here’s the patio and pool. The pool is heated and has a chlorine free filtration system. You can’t see it without the lights but the garden has been landscaped with all the flowers.”
“All the flowers?” Peter echoed back.
“Pepper and Rhodey have told me it’s an unreasonable number of flowers.”
Peter took it all in. The tour was a whirlwind but everything was wonderful. The sounds of the city on the other side of the garden walls were loud to Peter after the silence of the house. It made Peter remember the world outside, the world beyond the two of them. A world, Peter thought sadly, where he was a visitor here. Peter felt Tony looking at him as he looked out into the backyard.
“So…” Tony asked.
Light reflected off the tiny ripples in the pool. Maybe he would get to take a swim there after. He swallowed. After, after was a good word. After Tony’s omega joined him here. After Tony and whoever it was became one of those terrible couple names. He swallowed again. “It’s perfect.”
Tony lit up from within. “You’ll stay?”
“What?”
Tony dimmed. “What?”
Peter gaped.
“It’s perfect. You said so.” Tony’s jaw clenched.
“It is.”
“So, you’ll join me here.”
“You...built it for me?” Peter asked, not understanding.
Tony wasn’t looking at him anymore. He was staring off into the middle distance with what Peter called his thinking face. Peter tried to get his own thoughts under control. Had Tony renovated a mansion to make a bower for him?
Tony’s eyes flicked back to him twice then he pivoted smoothly toward the open doors.
Peter choked out “No.” before he realized that Tony wasn’t leaving. Tony pulled the doors shut cutting off the sounds from outside.
He looked at Peter with a tiny smile then slipped behind him, not quite touching but enough that Peter could feel the warmth of him along his back and smell his alpha scent mixed with cologne. “Let’s try this again.” He put gentle fingers on Peter’s hips and guided them back to the living room. “I imagine us here on the couch cuddled together after movie night and everyone has left. Maybe we fall asleep to Star Wars.”
Peter could see that clearly in his head. His fingers twitched toward the blanket on the back of the sofa wondering what it would feel like cocooning them.
Tony eased them forward walking to the study again. “This is the study. I can see you with your textbooks spread out here. Because somehow you’re taking classes that still use actual textbooks.”
Peter snorted at Tony bringing that up again.
“There’s a lot of room on the shelves. We could fill it with pictures, legos, kitchy alien souvenirs.”
Tony steered them back toward the kitchen and dining area. “Honestly, I’m not sure either of us know what to do with a kitchen. But imagine us having breakfast together here every morning. And the stove is there for the times when I fuck up and need to make you an apology omlet.”
Peter laughed and pressed the side of his face to Tony’s. Tony guided him to the french doors to the patio. He didn’t open them this time. He kept one hand hovering on Peter’s hip and pointed with the other. “Here’s the yard. Knowing our friends, they’ll show up with a grill and tell us we’re hosting a BBQ. And there will be pool parties.”
Peter was choked up again staring at the garden. “You built this for me? You made this bower for me?”
Tony shifted a bit behind him and Peter swayed following his warmth. “When I was in Milan, I kept thinking about getting back home. I got to New York and it wasn’t home. I didn’t feel like I was home until I saw you again.”
Peter closed his eyes and melted back into the alpha behind him.
Tony was so close that Peter could feel the pulse in his throat as he whispered “Will you stay? Make this home with me?”
Peter nodded drawing Tony’s arms around him. “Yes.”
Tony kissed Peter’s temple and whispered even more quietly “Thank you.”
They stood there for a golden eternity before something occurred to Peter. He felt the blood rushing to his cheeks but he said it anyway. “You know, I haven’t seen the bedroom yet.”
“You’re right.” Tony said, shifted and Peter was swept up into his arms. “Last stop on the tour.”
Peter laughed and drew him in for a kiss.
--------------------
Peter plucked his Spider-Man mask from the floor a little ashamed he had left it out in the open the whole night. His suit had been the last thing on his mind when Tony was whispering what he imagined doing with Peter in the bedroom. He glanced at Tony who was still stretched out on the rumpled sheets. “You didn’t mention. Is there a place for superhero stuff?”
Tony laughed and sat up. “There are two sub-basements for ‘superhero stuff’. And a secret room off the back hall if you need a quick change.”
“A secret room?” Peter asked amazed.
“Yep,” Tony said, picking up on his delight. “There’s even a hidden panel you slide back to get to the biometric scanner.
Peter dropped his mask and threw himself at Tony, his amazing, ridiculous alpha.