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“I still can’t picture you doing laundry,” Peter said, looking at his options in the closet for a new pair of sheets.
“Who do you think does my laundry?” Mr. Stark asked, sounding vaguely offended.
Pete picked the flannel sheets with the trees on them; they were his favorite sheets for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. Maybe because they reminded him of Christmas. He wondered if Mr. Stark was doing anything for the holiday or if they could coax him over to the apartment…
“I was thinking maybe like a maid or I don’t know, a laundry service. You just don’t seem like a person who-” He shut his mouth with a click, suppressing a smile at the look on his mentor’s face.
“For your information,” Mr. Stark threw the four pillows off the bed and onto the floor with a dramatic flair, “I can be a responsible adult from time to time. My suits get sent to the dry cleaners. There’s no point in sending my old band t-shirts off to get washed professionally when I can dump them in a washer just as good as anyone else.”
“Well, you don’t cook,” Peter pointed out. “You order takeout half the time.”
“So does your ridiculously hot aunt.”
Peter grinned. “You two should get married. Then you can just combine your takeout orders.”
His mentor spluttered. “Then I’d be your dad and the rules would get much stricter, my fine fellow.”
Peter just laughed. “I don’t see how that’s possible.” He shook out the fitted sheet, tossing an end to his mentor. A year ago, if someone had told him he’d be doing something as domestic as making a bed with Mr. Stark- hell if someone had told him he’d know Tony Stark- he would have said they were crazy. He tucked in his corner absently. “Mr. Stark, May wants you to come over for Christmas this year. I do too, actually. We both want you there. But if you’re busy-”
“You want me to come over for Christmas?” His voice had gotten weird.
Peter looked up. “Well, yeah, or we could come to you. But if it interferes with your plans with Pepper-”
“Nah, Pep’s on a business trip for the next three weeks. We’re sort of combining Christmas and New Year’s.”
“Then you should come! You had us over for Thanksgiving and May makes these amazing cookies- no, don’t look at me like that, they’re better than her date loaf- and we wear our pajamas all day-”
“You’re sure your aunt wouldn’t mind me over? I’m not sure she’s my biggest fan, especially after our last mission-”
“May likes you. Really,” he assured the man. They tucked the fitted sheet in.
“Well, if you really don’t think she’d mind, I’d actually really like that, Pete. I’m trying to be more honest about my feelings, so I want you to know that I really enjoy our time together-”
“Wait, oh no-” Peter had just realized.
“What? I don’t have to come- you asked me to-”
“What? Oh, not that Mr. Stark, no- I really want you there. I love you, it’s just the sheets.” But he shut his mouth with a click again.
“The sheets?” Mr. Stark looked completely lost and overall thrown off. “What’s wrong with the sheets? I thought these were your favorites?”
“No, they are, it’s just I shouldn’t have picked them. They’re very… very light.”
“Light? They’re flannel. So certain Spiderbabies don’t freeze their butt off-”
“No, not light like weight-wise, light like they’re- No, it’s okay, Mr. Stark. Really. Let’s just finish and then maybe we can go back to watching our show?” he asked hopefully. He could always just change the sheets before he went to bed. Mr. Stark wouldn’t notice.
“You said ‘oh no,’ Peter,” Mr. Stark said accusingly. And- “That means there’s something wrong, Pete.”
“No, no, really- I was just having a moment and-”
“You don’t want these sheets on the bed because they have a white background,” Mr. Stark posited, sitting on the sheets so that Peter couldn’t throw the blanket over them. Not moving despite Pete’s best efforts to goad him back into action. “Why?”
He blushed, against his will. “I don’t want to stain them by accident since they are my favorites,” he said, very quietly.
Mr. Stark didn’t get it. “Like when you eat in bed? I know you do that, Pete, but honestly most teenage boys are much worse from what I’ve been reading in those books May sent over-”
“I don’t eat in bed, May would kill me-”
“So then what- oh.”
“I’m having my period,” he said softly, feeling the flush spread down his neck and to his shoulders. He hated this- he didn’t want to have a period, boys didn’t have periods-
“Got it. Pick a different set of sheets, kiddo. We can put these on next week.”
He blinked at the man. “But we’re almost done. That would be stupid.”
“I can refold them. In addition to doing laundry, I’ve also been known to fold things. My hidden talents never cease, Pete. And just for your snide remarks earlier, know that I’m going to make you breakfast tomorrow morning.”
He was halfway through folding the top sheet up again when Pete’s mind clicked back into gear. Climbing over the bed ungainly, he threw himself onto Mr. Stark. “I really do love you,” he said into the man’s ear, feeling moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes.
His mentor had nearly been knocked over; bracing himself, he settled his arms around the teen. He sighed dramatically as if this was costing him something to admit. “I love you too, Petey. It’s not hard- you’re one of the best guys I know.”
“Sorry- I know it’s just sheets-”
“It’s not-”
“But you’re so nice to me and it’s so stupid, if I was a real guy, I wouldn’t have this problem-”
“Hey-” Mr. Stark rocked back on his heels so that they were looking at each other. “Guys can have periods. This doesn’t make you any less real. Got that?”
Peter bit his lip, he didn’t know… Mr. Stark arched an eyebrow, waiting. “I don’t know.”
“Human bodies are messy, Pete. You got put into the wrong one by accident, but we’re working on getting you into the one you belong in. Until then, I’ll change the sheets however many times it takes to get it right. Understand?”
“Understood.”
He brought over a dark blue set of sheets instead, quietly watching the deft way Mr. Stark tucked in the top sheet. “I used to make the bed with my mom,” his mentor offered without prompting. “We could have had someone else do it- we actually had all the ridiculous staff you think I should have- but she liked to do it and I liked to be with her.”
“Do you miss her?” Peter asked quietly. They were only a week away from the big anniversary.
“I do. Dad too, actually.” Mr. Stark came around the bed. “She always had me ‘test’ it out afterwards. She’d pull the corner back and make me get in,” he looked at Peter expectantly and the teen grinned, climbing obediently under the covers, “then she’d tuck me in and ask how we’d done. No matter how old I got.”
He sat on the edge of the bed. “How’d we do, Pete?”
“Real good,” he said softly.
Mr. Stark smiled down at him, deep affection evident in his brown eyes. “I look to you to know what kind of man I want to be, Pete. How could you think you’re not real?”
That made him cry. “It’s stupid, making you change the sheets.”
“It’s basic human decency, Pete.” He thumbed away the moisture. “Want to continue our show now?”
“Yeah.”
“Need a heating pad for your belly?”
He chewed on his lip and nodded. “Everything hurts, Mr. Stark.”
His mentor hummed. “Maybe take off your binder, Pete? I can leave one of my big hoodies in the hall. I’ll find the heating pad and some Spider-kid painkillers.”
“Yes, please.”
It was a relief to take the binder off, even if he didn’t like the way his body looked without it. He tapped at his chest self-consciously; it was overly sensitive from his menstruation but otherwise he thought that they were beginning to get smaller as the hormones started to kick in more and more with each passing week.
Pete changed his pad, wishing his period was already over. It was an offense to his masculinity each month that he would rather do without. It was weird- when he was with May or Mr. Stark, he almost forgot about things like this entirely. Like with the sheets…
Putting on his pajamas, he glanced at his bed. Changing the sheets had been such a little thing for Mr. Stark, but it had meant the world to him. Maybe tomorrow he’d help make breakfast…
He scrambled into the hoodie waiting outside his door gladly. Not only did it cover his body, but it smelled like his mentor. And his mentor made him feel safe. “We should start watching Christmas movies,” he said, climbing onto the couch next to the man.
“Nothing too saccharine though.”
“No, no, nothing with a Christmas romance in it,” he agreed. Pressing the heating pad to his abdomen, he leaned on Mr. Stark. “Maybe you can tell me more about your mom too, some time?”
“Sure, kid. Anything you want.”