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Peter can’t sleep.
It’s nearing two in the morning, patrol had ran on late - an altercation two wannabe muggers had gone on much longer than it had any right to. They’d put up a good fight, their weapons, which Peter had presumed at first to be regular knives had easily cut through his webs, something else he now had to worry about. After finally rounding them up, waiting for the police to arrive, he had stolen one to take back with him to hopefully test during his next lab session with Tony.
His body feels exhausted, but his mind is wide awake, continuously running over the problem, trying to find new angles, new solutions. Sighing, he rolls over and peeks at the clock on his bed stand. 2:10. Knowing full well he has school in the morning, Peter guiltily takes out his phone. May would kill him if she knew he was staying up so late, but by this point there really was no other option. There’s no way he’s getting to sleep if his mind is still focussed on those knives. He needs a distraction.
Half an hour of mindless scrolling on Instagram later, his mind has finally stopped spinning. But now that he’s checked insta he has to check twitter. That’s the unspoken rule of technology, and the reason why he was so reluctant to check his phone in the first place.
He switches over to Twitter which was still displaying his latest post. Blearily, he looks at the stats. 368 likes, not bad. He scrolls through the replies, favouriting a few. Twitter is a whole other level of thirst, and Peter had been only too happy to participate. As far as he was concerned, starting an Iron Man stan account had been a healthy way of coping with his crush on Tony. He got to vent his frustrations, interact with likeminded individuals, and it kept him from literally begging to suck the mans dick every time they were in contact, so that was a bonus.
Not that they’d seen each other recently. Last week Tony had had to cancel their lab time, some emergency out in Japan, so it had been almost two weeks since they’d last seen each other. Peter is having withdrawals. It‘s a special kind of torture, not seeing him. On the one hand, Peter half hopes that time spent apart could be good for him, could help his crush to fade a little. On the other, he’s pretty sure all it does is make it worse.
He craves the attention, the quiet focus. Craves the safety of the lab, working side by side, Tony’s smile when everything finally comes together, and his soft private one he seems to save for Peter, eyes crinkling and fond, proud. He misses their conversations, about school, spiderman, anything in between. But most of all he misses the way Tony makes him feel, just being in his presence enough to have heat curling through him, whole body alight, nerve endings on red alert every time their hands brush, or Tony leans over him to look at something, absentmindedly gripping his shoulders.
He knows its wrong, Tony is his mentor, his friend. He no doubt sees Peter as nothing more than a kid that needs looking after. But still Peter wants. Every time they‘re alone together his imagination runs wild, filled with possibilities. Hot, filthy, possibilities.
With that in mind he composes a new tweet. A picture of Tony at some conference earlier in the week, hands steepled beneath his chin, one encased in a gauntlet, the other linked through the metal. It‘s hot. He‘s wearing those damn amber glasses, looking out over the audience, the physical embodiment of ‘bored, but still better than you.’
Peter types out a quick caption, posts it, puts down his phone and falls into a blissful, dreamless sleep.
###
He wakes up four hours later, not, much to his surprise, due to his alarm, but to Ned’s ringtone screaming throughout the room.
What the fuck, he thinks, rolling over and stabbing blindly at his phone, sliding to the right.
“Dude,” he says, voice raspy. “It’s six am, what’s wrong with you.”
“Peter,” Ned says, sounding somewhere between panicked and laughing.
“My alarms not due for another twenty minutes, Ned,” he whines. “I didn’t get to sleep till almost three last night, why would you do this to me? Betrayal of the highest order.”
“That explains a few things,” Ned says, and yeah he’s definitely laughing, the asshole.
“Explains what?” Peter asks, still sulking.
“You might want to check your twitter, dude.”
“What about my twitter?” Peter says, dragging himself upright. “I haven’t posted anything in like, three weeks.”
“No, not your personal one, your Spidey one. You’re an internet sensation.”
“What,” Peter says again, stupidly. “Hang on, I’m putting you on speaker.”
He fiddles about with his phone, still squinting from sleep. Ned is rambling away about likes, and trending stories, and Peter suddenly gets a bad, bad feeling about this. He didn’t use his spiderman account last night. Oh, god.
He finally gets the app open, and there, top of his page, is that picture of Tony Stark with the words ‘top me‘ repeated six times, there on his official spider man twitter for the entire world to see. For Tonyto see.
“Fuck,” he whispers, horrified. “Ned, holy fuck, what do I do. Everyone has seen this. Everyone. Oh fuck. It has ELEVEN MILLION LIKES, NED.”
Ned, the fantastic friend that he is, just laughs.
“Oh my god. Oh. My. God. This is it. This is where I die. Remember me when I’m gone, will you?” With that Peter hangs up.
Embarrassment crawls through him and he folds in on himself as heat burns across his cheeks. He’s sweating. He’s physically sweating. Beyond mortified, he searches through his notifications. Twenty new messages from Ned, a text from MJ which simply reads ‘?’ and one from, as if it couldn’t be embarrassing enough, his Aunt May, who has written ‘you okay honey? x up late last night I see.’
He feels like he’s dying. Like at any minute his body will simply combust with a rush of sheer embarrassment. He‘s just considering throwing himself out the window, when he sees a notification pop up for a new reply from ‘YouKnowWhoIAm.’
He stops breathing. Any and all hope of Tony not having seen it, or having the decency to at least pretend he hadn’t, gone, along with his dignity. With shaking fingers, he clicks on the link.
‘Why Spidey, I’m flattered. I never knew you felt this way.’
And then.
‘Check your DMs.’
Ohhh, Peter is done for. With trepidation, he opens his inbox.
Kid what the fuck
Oh that’s not good, opening with kid. That is definitely not good, right?
Mr. Stark I can explain
Oh you can, can you now?
No. No he can’t explain. He’s so screwed. Tony is still waiting on an answer though, and he has to say something. In lieu of finding any good excuses, he types:
I was hacked
Ha. Ha. You see I thought that too, but according to FRIDAY there’s been no unusual activity on your account in the past 48 hours
Shit, Peter thinks. Well, as they say, in for a penny. He’s not about to give up now.
Ned stole my phone
At 2 am? From a different house? Nice try
Fuck, of course Tony knows that. Stupid thing to say, Parker. But it’s six am and he’s all out of ideas.
I was drunk?
If you’re asking, you’re not telling. Happy will pick you up after school, we’ll talk then.
Panic shoots through him at the prospect. He absolutely cannot go right? He has to flee the country. Actually maybe he could call Thor, beg him to beam him up to Asgard. Or Loki. Yeah Loki would probably be the better option. He could even ask him to cause some mayhem on Earth, give everyone time to forget about it.
Belatedly, his alarm blares out from his phone. Oh well. He has seven hours left to live. And he gets to spend them at school.
###
Happy doesn’t say anything to him as he crawls into the back of the car, and for once, he is thankful. All day all he could hear was people talking about the tweet. The news was all over the school, people speculating about the relationship between spiderman and ironman, wondering if this means that spiderman is gay, if it was just a joke. In short, it was hell.
Ned stopped laughing fairly quickly at the look on his face. Even MJ managed to express some concern for him, which was nice of her. She gave him one of her crackers at lunch, officially turning the title of best friend over to her. He told them in whispered bursts what happened, and what would be happening after school. They whispered back platitudes and encouragement, telling him to just take what comes his way, and to try and not beat himself up too much. Tony’s unlikely to be properly angry at him. They’ll be finding the whole thing funny in two weeks time.
Still, Peter thinks as they pull up to Stark Industries, that’s two pain filled weeks of horror.
FRIDAY instructs him to Tony’s private lab, and no matter how much wheedling he tries, he gets nothing out of her about what’s in store. The only thing she assures him is that Tony isn’t angry, which, small mercies.
He isn’t even pretending to work, is the first thing Peter notices when he lets himself into the lab. Tony is just sitting at his desk, eyes gazing vaguely up at the ceiling. They snap to Peter when the door closes.
Sometimes he forgets, when they haven’t seen each other in a while, just how intense Tony’s stare is. He tries to hold his gaze as he walks towards him, but ultimately he can’t, staring down at his feet. He comes to a stop about two feet away, steels himself, and looks up.
“So,” Tony says, and Peter is immediately comforted by the fact that Tony looks about as embarrassed as he feels. He doesn’t know if he could have dealt with that smooth, unbothered address.
“So,” Peter echoes, bracing himself.
“You want me to top you, huh?”
He takes it back. This is worse, this is absolutely worse. He wants uncaring Tony, right now. He can feel his entire body flush red as he tried to stammer out some kind of a reply, and Tony relents, holding up one hand to stop him.
“I’m just messing with you, kid,” he says, voice soft. “No need to have an aneurism on me.”
Peter exhales a shaky attempt at a laugh, and takes the seat Tony offers.
“I gotta ask though,” Tony says after a moment, once again staring at him with laser focus. “Where the hell did that come from?”
“I-“ Peter looks down at his hands. “I made a mistake.”
“That much is pretty obvious, sweetheart,” Tony says, and oh, he doesn’t call Peter that often, usually only in dire circumstances, when one of them is an inch from death. It’s nice. It’s also mortifying, the way he feels himself perk up just from hearing it.
“I, uhm, I have, a few different accounts? And I, I clearly didn’t check which one I was using before I posted that Mr. Stark I am so so sorry, I never meant to post it, or, or to make you uncomfortable, and I totally understand if you never wanna speak to me again I-“
“Woah,” Tony cuts him off, hand reaching out to grab Peter’s arm, but seemingly thinking better of it, instead coming to rest on the table beside them. Peter feels part of himself shrivel away at that, at the thought that Tony can’t even bring himself to touch him anymore. “Slow down, Pete. It’s okay. I’m not mad at you.”
And somehow, that’s suddenly the worst thing he could’ve said. Suddenly, Peter is done with all of it. He’s been stretched taunt for moths now, and this is finally the part where he snaps.
“It’s not okay, Mr. Stark. I know you’re not mad at me, but honestly it would be better if you were, because then then maybe I could get some sort of closure, or, or be able to move on with my life, because this crush on you is going nowhere and I, I can’t do it anymore I can’t just go on and pretend that this never happened, that I’m not completely in love with you and you’ll never feel the same, and I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry. I never meant this to happen I swear, but it did, and it has, and. And that’s how I feel. And I know it’s wrong and I know you’re so much older than me and I know it would never, ever happen but-“
He’s cut off by a hand on his arm. Tony is looking at him like he’s just seeing him for the first time, and he’s so close, Peter did not notice him moving closer, and it’s all he can think about, how easy it would be to just. Close the distance.
Tony’s lips are soft against his own, soothing. Stunned, Peter lets his eyes slip closed, savouring the moment. Tony’s beard scratches lightly at Peter’s skin as they press against each other, and it’s heaven. It’s heaven. There are no other words to describe to feeling of a tongue softly tracing the seam of his lips, of it pressing, gently, ever so gently, inside, slick heat as Peter slides his own tongue against Tony’s, something igniting deep within him, want, sheer want, eclipsing all other feelings.
Tony pulls back before the kiss can progress further. Peter notes how his pupils are slightly dilated, breath coming heavier than before. They look at each other in awe for a moment, before Tony clears his throat.
“You and I are going to have a long talk about this.”
Peter stares, equal parts dumbfounded and ecstatic. His brain is just beginning to catch up with what happened. Tony kissed him. He just kissed Tony Stark. Tony wants this. He wants him.
“Yes,” he finally replies. “Yes. But first,” he says, and Tony’s eyes glitter in anticipation, knowing exactly what he’s going to say next.
“Lets do that again.”