Archive of Our Own

They've been celebrating, awake for what feels like a geological era at this stage, and Tony is circling the drain.

He takes another sip from his tumbler, occasionally nodding along to what Quill's saying, full-on cruise control through the conversation, and wonders where Peter got it. His Peter—not his exactly, christ—kid Peter, the one across the Tower’s lounge, huddled by the balcony door with a talking raccoon, entertaining.

It’s not the sort of trinket you pick up at a flea market, that bracelet on Peter’s left wrist. A bit understated but looks expensive. Not that the price matters that much, but the kid’s stubbornly thrifty, and Tony’s seen and owns enough high-end things to recognize quality.

It’s thin, dark, almost black but not quite, the color standing out against Peter’s pale skin. Charcoal maybe? Slate? Tony can’t tell from here, but it has to be one of those shades that marketing people dream up. Something new, maybe. Tony likes new, but it’s not why the bracelet's got his attention.

His eyes survey the room, taking in the Avengers and the Guardians mixing—Tony isn’t just staring in one direction, the after-save-the-world (again, not even theirs) party refusing to wind down—but they keep coming back to that small silver clasp that sits next to Peter’s pulse point. A tiny fuck-you to minimalism, a covert nod to those who know what they’re looking at.

A gift. From someone.

Tony’s picked out a lot of jewelry over the years. Paid for even more and had others shop on his behalf. He’s not the type to notice accessories on others, though, not unless they serve a purpose. A pendant disappearing in the dip between the breasts. A ring that warns ‘off limits.’ A long earring that’s meant to draw his attention and make him want to kiss up the neck, to suck the earlobe in.

This bracelet makes him tilt his head and squint.

That clasp bounces about on Peter’s deceptively small wrist when Peter wildly gestures at Rocket and—typical—spills some of his soda on his own jeans and some on the floor he’s sitting on. Peter frowns, just for a second, and then laughs, carefree and bright, the silver catching the light from the fixtures when Peter rubs the stain in and gets back to discussing whatever it is that keeps him so engaged. There is a small, minuscule puddle of liquid by Peter’s sneaker when he draws up a knee to his chest and puts his chin on it.

Tony taps his fingers on the backrest of the couch and tries to refocus on Quill. He catches himself zoning out after less than a minute or so—why do they encourage these team-ups?—eyes drifting back to the open balcony doors.

Quill’s still going. Tony throws in “Right, the warehouse,” and that should be enough to keep the leader of the Guardians occupied at least—

Possibly indefinitely. Footloose. How are they not all dead after following Quill into a fight on the other side of the galaxy? How are they actually back and in one piece?

Is it slate? With the outside getting darker and darker, the warm air breezing in, the bracelet wrap looks like midnight remembering something it forgot at twilight. The clasp might as well be a mini solar flare in the dim of the spaceship's cockpit, and Tony tries and fails to recall the last time he bought something that wasn’t a self-indulgent binge that tends to accompany a close call and normally ends up with Peter muttering, “You shouldn't have.”

Tony didn’t buy him this. He could have; it’s tasteful, not blinding like some gaudy, gem-encrusted monstrosity. It doesn't scream look at me, I'm worth more than your car. Instead, it whispers, look closer.

“A refill?” Tony interrupts. This other Peter barely gets out a "Huh?" before Tony's already gesturing for the first passing Avenger to take over the babysitting duties.

He saunters to the balcony, the promise of fresh air pulling him away. That, and he needs to look closer. He leans against the doorway, facing the inside, and loosens his tie, the knot slipping down as Tony spaces out at the stretch of skin at the back of Peter’s neck.

The slightly too-large t-shirt exposes a bone at the bottom of the nape when the kid nods at Rocket.

Tony looks away and shakes his head at Steve’s pleading face, saluting him and Quill with his glass.

He shouldn't be drinking. Tony's not even a finger of this scotch in, having been nursing the same tumbler for what might be a decade, and already he can feel his mind wander.

His foot shifts when he moves to let Drax onto the balcony, and it ends up pressed to the side of Peter’s hip, the dark blue jeans the kid’s wearing rubbing against the shine of Tony’s shoe when Peter looks up. He smiles up at Tony from his position on the floor, the bracelet sliding down his forearm as Peter lifts his hand up to move a rogue strand of slightly curling hair behind his ear. Peter then continues talking to Rocket, but his left hand drifts, the small knuckles of his fingers that can rip through concrete folding against the side of Tony's Giovanni loafers.

It's nothing. Subconscious maybe, or completely accidental, but there is a persistent itch in Tony’s brain, and he lets himself space out just a bit longer.

“Not even a little? And nobody dies?” Rocket drawls a few minutes later, skeptical, which has Peter turning back to Tony, eyes questioning, asking for something. Permission to keep laughing as if he’s immortal, as if they all aren’t a few bad decisions away from a very permanent checkout? Not—

“Can we?” Peter sounds unsure, but wanting, and there is always a persistent itch in Tony’s brain, not just when Tony lets himself hover too close, soaking up mainlined pure Peter—Peter, thoughts creeping.

Peter did so well off-world. Exceptionally well. Tony should be proud—and he is—but that pride is not why Tony’s nodding before he even realizes he’s agreeing to turn the after-party into an after-after party and move this supercharged shindig to a club where nobody dies, not even a little, unless they really can’t help it. He briefly wonders what kind of space dives the Guardians frequent, but his thoughts are slow, everything hazy.

“Sure we can. We can do anything you want.” Tony goes for a sip, lets the scotch burn a path down his throat, and it takes an effort to make eye contact with Rocket. “Why not?”

Plenty of valid reasons for not, but Tony doesn't stop at Steve’s concerned and, frankly, low-key tired expression, the very unimpressed Nat, or the shit Hill gives him over the phone when he drops the news as an FYI. 

Maria has “You can’t be serious” concerns about the number of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents it will take to commandeer and swarm the club by the time they get there, but Peter wants to go. The kid who is wearing a bracelet Tony did not buy for him wants to go, show off their world, and Tony’s good at pulling strings. Almost as good as Peter is when it comes to pulling Tony’s, whether he knows it or not. 

It’s Peter, of course he doesn’t, but Tony is ready to unleash the entire Avengers and Avengers-adjacent ensemble on an unsuspecting New York just to make him—

What?

The elevator descends with some presiding doom, but a hell of a lot more excited buzz from the guests, and Tony smirks at the steel trap stuffed full. It’s not a strategy to be pushed close to Peter, side-by-side at the back. Tony had stepped in first, cornering himself against the wall, and now Peter’s wrist is swaying perilously close to Tony's thigh.

"So, nobody dies?" Grumpy Smurf in front of them asks Green Mean Machine (not Banner), sounding disappointed.

“Not unless they’ve been real bad,” huffs Bucky under his breath, joking.

Tony shakes his head, amused, but too distracted by the way his fingers twitch in a reflex he can't control.

“Bucky,” Steve grunts a warning, and Tony shifts his stance, stretches his neck—left, right—his index finger brushing against the warmth of Peter’s wrist when his arm dips lower, catching on the bracelet for a split second before pulling back. Is it leather? It might be stone. It feels like both, and Tony can’t determine the material from his quick run-by, although that doesn’t matter either.

"Nice," Tony murmurs in barely a thread of sound behind the others. "New?"

He didn’t time it this way on purpose, but before Peter can even formulate a response, the elevator dings open, disgorging its contents into the brightly lit lobby. Tony leads the way toward the limos, curling and uncurling his fist, his fingertip burning.

“Relax, the night’s young,” he pats Steve on the back as he ushers him inside one of the cars and on the way to high-risk, high-reward socializing. “Make sure to crack a window open for Rocket. Clint, photos, yes?”

The limo's interior is not as cramped as Tony's thoughts—a mental junkyard on a good day—but the seating arrangements are less than ideal. Peter is squished between Bucky’s bulk and Drax, who is taking up enough space for three people (maybe four if he keeps flexing), while Tony’s stuck next to the charming Grasshopper, her slightly nervous energy offsetting Gamora’s perpetually stern face and Nat’s particularly stern side-eye.

Tony’s not naturally suspicious—okay, who is he kidding—but he's seen fresher roadkill than what looked at him in the mirror during a quick shower before they went out, so… sleep-deprivation-induced paranoia? Yeah, let’s go with that, since Peter’s too busy cozying up to the Winter Soldier, his hand brushing against Bucky’s, their bodies almost fusing every time the limo hits a bump.

Jealousy is for those who have more to prove and less to lose, but fuck, if the way Bucky’s arm swings around Peter to bring him closer doesn’t send a surge of something decidedly acidic through Tony's veins, immediately followed by suddenly feeling as if he’s being licked by a very large, very happy puppy.

Empaths are funny like that.

“Champagne?” he offers, turning to Mantis with a smile, hoping it’s enough for her to stop muddling his emotions, since there's enough of that going on as is.

Tony shouldn’t want Peter and mostly succeeds in keeping it in check, boxed up, labeled “Do Not Open.” But, of course, others would. Makes sense. Because it’s Peter.

Why wouldn’t Bucky notice him? Hell, why wouldn’t anyone? Peter’s the whole package—brains, brawn, and a heart bigger than most planets. That’s a rare gift, to be an unassuming human serotonin dispenser, especially now, and that kind of thing doesn’t go unnoticed, even by WWII soldiers.

It’s—

Peter’s bouncing outside the club, a one-man welcome committee on speed, cheeks flushed, small but larger than life, and Tony can’t help it. Can’t help that pang again—of jealousy? No, definitely not. More... admiration wrapped in a barbed-wire fence of frustration as he watches Peter high-five an Asgardian warrior, who is the first to step out from a village in Norway and straight onto the Park Avenue sidewalk.

This wasn’t Tony’s doing. This takes the motherfucking cake. He didn’t think of contacting Strange, didn’t think that half of New Asgard would make a safer and better party than whoever S.H.I.E.L.D. could manage to get here on short notice after this hit Fury's desk. Tony was too tired to think of that, but someone did.

Portals swirl and shimmer, spitting out more guests, and Valkyrie swaggers in with her usual unapologetically threatening vibe, flanked by Korg and Miek, this circus already drawing a crowd.

Tony and Bucky are still loitering by the car when an agent dressed in civvies and muttering “two blocks” into his comm passes by. Tony turns his nose away from the sticky-sweet smell of Bucky’s joint that he—also unapologetically—whipped out the second they got out of the limo.

The perimeter is locked down, a military cordon keeping the curious out, the crazies in, and Tony’s head is swimming. Bucky takes a drag, holds it in, and after a while, exhales a lazy plume of smoke. A walking, talking fuck-you to authority that’s needlessly attractive.

“You good?” Bucky asks, extending his hand to pass the joint over; the poster child for “zero fucks given” if Tony ever saw one. Tony likes him, he does. Bucky is easy to like, but—

“Peachy,” Tony frowns, waving off the generous offer, unable to blame the weed when it comes out the way it does: “Are you fucking my kid?”

“I am more likely to be fucking the raccoon,” Bucky immediately laughs, something bumping Tony’s shoulder.

He turns to find Clint perched on top of the limo, legs swinging, scrolling through his phone.

“He’s fucking me. And possibly raccoons,” Clint delivers, absolutely deadpan, not even looking up from his screen, but nudges himself slightly over to cage unprotesting Bucky between his legs, making him lean with his back on the car. “No joy in getting Rocket to stick his head out of the window, but Quill was amiable. Wanna see?”

Strobes are trying to induce seizures, the music thumping hard enough to rattle fillings. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, for once, are proving they're good for something other than standing around looking important—especially the one who obviously bartended his way through college. He's killing it at mixing The Irish Trash Can without the trash can, and pure Red Bull sans the booze but plus the umbrella hits Tony harder than a brick.

"For the love of all that is holy and slightly unholy, why?" Tony has to shout in Bucky's ear. He means Clint, who is doing handstands in the middle of the crammed dance floor, his t-shirt riding up to his throat, revealing, yup, so many hickeys that Tony gets mildly concerned they don't feed Bucky enough.

Bucky's mouth quirks up slightly as Clint collapses into a heap of unfazed Asgardians, already shitfaced less than half an hour in. Impressive, even for him, although he might have been ahead of the curve before they got here.

“None of your business,” Bucky shouts back, only somewhat less classic Barnes due to the volume, but still straight to the point. “Just like what you do with your kid is none of anyone’s business.”

“That’s not what I—”

“I said what I said,” Bucky shrugs and walks off toward Clint, leaving Tony to ponder when the hell that happened.

"About a year, give or take," Nat materializes on Tony’s right, a puff of her breath hot against his ear. “They work. Somehow. You good?”

Tony’s... something, but he makes a vague enough gesture that is neither here nor there, not even insulted at another, not-so-subtle check-in. He’s been checking in on others too.

"Why now, do you think?" Tony deflects, sucking more of his Red Bull, then toys with the umbrella. Bucky is private, to say the least, and Clint is a walking disaster on his best day, yet here they are, Bucky picking him up off the floor, grinning, and, Jesus have mercy, offering Clint a piggyback. "I wouldn't judge Barnes for keeping it on the down-low. Hell, I'm nearly judging him for not doing that anymore. Fuck. My. Eyes."

“You kidding, right?” Nat nudges him with her hip. “You were there. My guess is as good as any, but I’d say probably for the same reason why it’s been nearly two days and everyone’s still—”

The rest of her words get swallowed by Quill’s reaction when the Blue Swede song finally comes on—kid Peter isn’t the only Peter who's done well off-world—and Nat actually smiles, turning away to the bar.

“I am gonna—" he waves at Nat, who is no longer paying attention, and starts moving through the crowd.

Everyone’s fine. Tony's fine. Peter is fine—his Peter—

—is not fine.

Tony finds him in the hallway, staring at the wall in front of him, queuing for a bathroom that shouldn't need a queue. The place is a zoo, sure, but even zoos have some order to the madness, and it's just a barely filled club, not a fucking Beyoncé concert.

"Someone's..." Peter looks down after pointing at the door, sighing, not even blushing as Tony would expect him to; shoulders slumped, right hand fiddling with… that bracelet. He sounds exhausted. "Think everyone's having fun?"

Judging by the fact that the door to the bathroom doesn't budge when Tony taps it with his shoe, at least two people definitely are, making the best out of 'A Midsummer Night's Screw'—or however Shakespeare would put it if he weren’t six feet under, dead for centuries, and completely irrelevant right now. Personally, Tony isn’t one to judge anyone for some indiscriminate fucking in a toilet. Been there, done that. The polite thing is to use the stall, though. There’s a muffled groan from behind the door, just to confirm the theory.

"There has to be another one somewhere," Tony says instead of answering Peter's question and peels Peter off the wall, palm against his shoulder blade, walking him further into the hallway, past the 'Staff Only' sign, hoping for a... ah, there it is.

"After you," he cracks the door open, has a quick look, and has to add when Peter hesitates: "Go, go, I'll wait."

Peter nods, avoiding his eyes, his expression grateful but still miles away from okay. He disappears into the bathroom, leaving Tony now leaning against the scuffed wall. The noise of the party has faded into a dull roar, the world's lamest ocean tucked inside his ears. He absentmindedly scrolls through his phone, not that he's expecting any life-altering emails at—what? Three A.M.?

His knee jerks him awake when a few seconds of stillness attempt to KO his body into sleep. Adrenaline is bankrupt, and Tony is in the process of mastering the art of staying conscious when Peter eventually walks out, hair damp, looking just a smidgen less like he's about to keel over.

“You—" Tony tries, but Peter’s already frowning.

"Everyone keeps asking that," the lines around Peter’s mouth deepen. "You?"

"Not even a little," Tony admits. Fuck, that was too close, kissing-death-on-the-lips close. "You nearly—"

“Yeah, not just me,” Peter nods, shifting from one foot to the other. Peter, Tony, and everyone else, but that’s a moot point to mention.

It’s unclear who makes the first step, but then Peter's face is suddenly pressing into Tony’s chest, his arms squeezing the life out of him, and Tony actually couldn't give a shit—for all of ten or so seconds this hug lasts—about who gave Peter that fancy trinket that is now digging into his spine. It seems to be the night for being unapologetic, though, so he doesn’t deny himself taking a deep breath of Peter's hair that leaves his cheek just slightly wet.

“Right,” Tony clears his throat, claps Peter on the back. “I need a minute, but then let’s go and find a drink that tastes like it's trying to compensate for something. Yeah?”

That's a dumbass plan, if Tony ever had one. But as the jello shots keep coming—bright, wobbly, and suspiciously potent—Tony hits a second wind. The buzz is thick enough to swim through, and Peter perks up, just about not feeding Tony the fourth snack of gelatinous alcohol, which is, frankly, four more than Tony had planned on having. But… well, human serotonin dispenser, sporting a wild, reckless smile, warm hand pushing Tony towards the floor.

“Thought you didn’t dance,” Nat smirks, shouting over the din of a bass drop that shakes the building.

Tony snorts, thinking that dancing is a liberal term for what’s happening out here, but he’s always up for conducting a social experiment.

They leave Nat behind after ducking an honest-to-god conga line with Banner and Steve in the middle, though Tony bets it’s less voluntary and more a 'caught in the wrong place at the wrong time' situation. And, alright, things are definitely getting out of hand when Thor, who Tony didn’t even realize was here, starts swinging Mjölnir around as if it is a glow stick at a rave, much to both the delight and terror of everyone within a five-meter radius.

Peter grabs Tony’s hand, dodging a mess by the makeshift Asgardian stronghold on the VIP couch, and keeps walking. And it’s fine, fine, the pendulum of 'we nearly died' swinging ferociously towards 'we are fucking alive' as they stop in the corner of the room, breathless, laughing nonsensically, the strobe lights of the club bouncing against Peter’s face.

Tony forgets himself, just for a moment, and the bass throbs through the air like it's coming from inside his own chest. He reaches out, fingers wrapping around Peter’s wrist, as if he's got any legitimate reason to examine it that closely.

He shouldn’t want to, but he does—fuck, does he want.

“Just checking something,” Tony mutters, a lame-ass excuse if there ever was one, not that Peter could possibly hear him. The room swims, the floor tilts, Tony feeling the edges of his control fraying. The world seems out of focus except for Peter—Peter—Tony completely oblivious to when his other hand ended up on Peter’s waist, the heat of Peter’s body bleeding through the fabric of his t-shirt.

Tony’s not looking at the bracelet, doesn’t even see the fucking thing, just reads Peter’s lips when he mouths “What—” his voice drowned out by a particularly aggressive drop in the track that rattles Tony’s ribcage and derails his train of thought.

Peter's back hits the mirrored wall in a fuck-up of epic proportions waiting to happen, and, hell, Tony might have actually pushed him there. Pushed him there, already leaning closer, just a bit closer, because Peter is his, and if Peter is his, then—

The reflection bounces back with a sea of faces, some of which Tony knows, most he doesn’t, and even though it’s all the names he can't be bothered to remember, it’s—

Tony is just shy of one more shot.

The outside slaps Tony with a sobering high-five from reality, and he flashes a few grins, spares a few nods, and ducks into the first empty alleyway. His breath fogs up, and he's just mildly aware that there are still enough people around the corner to prevent him from unleashing a world-class "Fuck!" at the top of his lungs.

“Uh, hey?” Ah, screw Tony sideways with a wrench. “What—”

Tony really tries. He does. To be a good man. Unfortunately, this fluctuates from day to day. Before he knows it, he’s manhandling Peter, yet again, toward the wall. It’s brick this time, not glass, but that's semantics when your heart’s pounding loud enough to shatter either. Then he violently yanks on Peter’s left wrist, rougher than he deserves, and the kid just takes it.

"Who—" Tony can't even finish. This isn't him. Or maybe it's exactly him, and that's the problem.

Because, fuck it, if anyone should be clamping anything on Peter, it should be—

No, strike that; brain, delete.

His throat tightens, since really, Tony lecturing about the dangers of accepting gifts from power players is a joke so rich it should be taxed.

Peter, with all his superhuman abilities, doesn’t move, and Tony takes a closer look. Okay, okay, the bracelet’s dark, the color maybe slate, but Tony’s not betting on his visual assessment under a flickering lamp post that’s flunking Illumination 101. And Tony’s eyes are made for high-res, backlit screens in well-lit labs, not peering at ambiguous jewelry in the gloom. His other hand goes for the silver clasp, while he wedges his knee between Peter's legs in a move that borders on something more invasive than practical to hold him there.

Tony's less than an inch away from being able to snap that clasp open—to finally breathe—when Peter whispers:

"Please don't."

Everything zooms out, and Tony’s not just in a dirty alley gripping Peter's wrist—he’s… quite possibly that guy. The guy who doesn’t know when to back off.

No, this… this definitely isn’t him. Tony doesn’t aggressively accost those who did nothing to deserve that. He doesn’t yank wrists and wedge knees in places they shouldn’t be. He doesn’t scare the wits out of people—out of Peter—who, yes, is currently looking at him like Tony’s about to rip his heart out and eat it for breakfast. Someone might as well be jamming a screwdriver into Tony’s gut and giving it a good twist every second of every day when he so much as thinks about Peter, but he’s not this guy. He’s not the guy who fucks with people who matter to him. And Peter matters. Peter matters more than anyone.

Tony’s hand drops, the clasp slipping out of his grasp as he steps back, nearly tripping over his own feet.

"Fuck," Tony mutters, wondering if repeating it enough times will somehow summon a magical CTRL+Z for real life that’ll make this go away. Not just this moment, with Peter too still, too quiet, staring at him with wide brown eyes, but this—this heavy, choking, overpowering feeling in his chest, fueled by guilt and self-loathing. “Fuck. Fuck.”

Tony needs to—

Needs to get a grip, needs to stop orbiting Peter because, seriously, what the fuck is he thinking? What the fuck has he been doing for the past… god knows how long? His hands sag by his sides, fingers flexing uselessly, as if they can’t figure out what to do now that they’re not touching his kid. And Tony’s supposed to be smarter than this, supposed to be better than this. Not coming apart at the seams like some cheap knockoff version of himself when the pressure gets too high. He needs to get a grip, needs to pull his shit together, needs to forget that they nearly died, that Peter nearly died, needs to—

Needs to—

Get that damn bracelet off.

“Fuck!” It rips out of him, and he presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, as if he can rub out the image of Peter’s face, pale and shocked. He feels raw, skinned alive and left to dry out under a weak streetlight. He almost—what? Crossed a line?

Tony doesn’t trust his voice, just grits his teeth, biting back another string of useless expletives, trying to keep the panic from spilling out.

“Please look at me,” asks Tony’s personal voltage spike, and Tony’s the idiot who thought he could control it.

Tony’s stomach churns, and he thinks he might actually be sick, right here. He forces himself to look up, just a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye. Peter’s still there, of course he is, because Peter’s not the kind to bail, even when Tony’s being a massive, universe-sized dick.

"Kid, I—" Jesus tap-dancing Christ, what the hell is wrong with him? “I—I shouldn’t be looking at you.”

The second it slips out, Tony regrets it. No, scratch that—he fucking despises it. But it’s out there now, hanging in the fresh night air between them, and of course, Peter’s eyes go even wider, because Tony’s life is nothing but a game of ‘how much worse can this get?’

Peter’s mouth parts in a silent O, and Tony can almost hear the gears turning in that brilliant brain of his, trying to understand the mess Tony just vomited into existence. God, please, Tony wishes he could reach out, grab those reckless words, stuff them back down his throat, and maybe choke on them for good measure.

“I’m not. I am not a kid, T-Tony,” stammers the not-a-kid, who—let's face it—still had fucking balloons (granted, set up by Tony himself) for his twentieth birthday just a few weeks ago. Who has been calling Tony by his first name for barely a year. Who now sports an expression that Tony plans to dissect later when he comes to his senses. An expression that, for now, Tony christens a mistake, mistake, mistake. “I. You should. Please look at me. Please don’t stop looking at me. Please don’t ever stop. Please.”

Tony should do the sensible thing. He should create more distance, put a football field between them, maybe a couple of state lines, because he is staggering on the edge of an event horizon, and Tony’s not equipped to deal with that. He knows this, he knows this, and yet his feet are betraying him, not retreating to the farthest reaches of the planet—actually, the next fucking galaxy sounds better—not pulling him the hell out of this alley, but planting themselves right there, rock solid, since apparently, self-destruction is what he excels at.

What the fuck, Tony? What the f—

Instead of stepping back, Tony’s leaning in, his hands—shit, shit—already moving with a mind of their own, touching down on Peter’s cheeks. Cradling his face. Softly, at least, still somehow trying to protect the very thing he’s about to ruin.

And it’s far too late for logic or sense or any of the usual bullshit mental safeguards he throws up to keep from doing something monumentally stupid. It’s too fucking late because now, already, in the blink of an eye, his lips are on Peter’s, and the world stops dead in its tracks, screeching to a halt like it just hit the mother of all brick walls. He doesn’t hover, doesn’t give Peter a chance to stop him, doesn’t barely brush against Peter’s mouth. Nope, he’s all in, full contact, all systems go, Tony launching this rocket with no idea where it’s going to land, and—

He thumbs Peter’s mouth open, feeling the way his skin heats under the touch, the way Peter’s pulse jumps, wild and frantic, beneath his fingers. And licks into it, bold, thirsty for it, Peter’s hands coming up to grip Tony’s jacket, fisting the lapels. God, he wants him, needs him—Peter, Peter—something in Tony’s chest clenching tight enough to crack ribs as he kisses him. He doesn’t know how long he can keep this up without combusting, without burning them both to ashes—it’s been seconds already, his tongue licking Peter’s, and holy shit, fuck.

Peter makes a startled sound. A small, little noise.

And only then it happens. He pushes him away. Correction: Tony pushes himself away.

The limo door barely clicks shut behind Tony before he’s slumping into the seat. His head falls back against the headrest, eyes closing. Perhaps if he squeezes them shut hard enough, he’ll wake up in a place where he hasn’t just—nope, scratch that. He should own that.

It’s… comfortable here. Quiet too. The seat’s soft, the kind of indulgent luxury that whispers lies in your ear, telling you that you’ve earned it, that you deserve it, and he can’t stand it. He jerks forward, elbows digging into his knees, hands dragging down his face as if he can peel away the last ten minutes. As if he can scrub the memory of Peter’s quiet moan from his mind. But no, no—because when has that ever worked?—it’s lodged in there like shrapnel by his heart, and no amount of pulling at his own skin is going to tear it out.

This fuck-up. He is this guy, obviously. The guy who can’t keep his shit together, who kisses the one person he shouldn’t, who doesn’t know when to back off, for sure. Takes—nearly takes—what he wants and doesn’t think about the fallout until it’s too late. The guy who shoves his foot so far into his mouth, he’s practically gagging on his own kneecap. And here he thought he wasn’t that.

Thought he’d built up a fortress around himself so high, even he couldn’t scale it. But Peter didn’t just climb over it, he fucking vaulted right to the top, didn’t he? And Tony, in all his spectacularly fucked-up glory, just had to go and shove him off the second it got real.

He sighs. Breathes through his nose. Once, twice. Then punches the ceiling, wondering why they are still parked. The driver doesn’t take the hint, and Tony does it again. Harder this time, as if he can punch his way into forward momentum.

Move, damn it. Let's go.

The car stays put, though, glued to the curb.

Shit.

Tony takes another breath, and it lodges itself somewhere in his throat, halfway out, halfway down, when a spider doesn’t so much fall as it slinks inside through an open skylight.

Just drops in, soft thud of rubber soles hitting the floor, the limo sagging slightly under the added weight—just enough to remind Tony that yes, it’s happening right now. Still happening, and Tony seemed to have walked away from that alley for nothing.

Tony catches a flash of muscle as Peter’s t-shirt rides up when his body arches on the way in, exposing a stretch of pale skin, and Tony’s sick, simply sick for noticing. Wants to scratch his own eyeballs out, Hellraiser-style, for focusing on the wrong thing at the worst possible time. His stomach twists in a way that’s become uncomfortably familiar, and he’s not sure if it’s shame, guilt, or the sharp thrill that he should definitely be locking down right about now.

And then Peter is sitting across from him, just like that, t-shirt down, feet down, eyes down too, right hand gripping a bracelet on his left wrist. There’s all this space between them, an invisible buffer zone—the DMZ of too many shades of fucked-up—and Tony glances to the front, questioning if there’s even a driver up there. Did he hallucinate that part? Because let’s be real, his brain’s pulled worse stunts tonight. That’s good, very good, actually, because—

That’s when the car starts to move. No. Really, no.

Not an inch. Not a fucking millimeter. Stay.

Fuck.

“Fuck,” he says it out loud, leaning back, eyes on the ceiling. This must be one of those existential days where you realize you’ve been driving your own goddamn life off a cliff and, yup, here it is—the inevitable moment when you’re flying down, wheels spinning over nothing, horn blaring. “Fuck.”

The door suddenly swings open mid-move, and Clint and Bucky all but tumble in. Tony’s never been both more and least excited to see those two. Clint actually eats the floor with a triumphant “Made it!”, while Bucky, the ever-stoic murder machine, frowns a little, scooping Clint up. He dumps Clint down next to Peter, then plants his own ass by Tony’s across from them.

"Gotta pick up Lucky," Clint drawls into Peter’s face, and judging by the way Peter recoils, that breath is probably marinated in enough booze to fuel a jet. "Then pizza."

Tony throws a side-eye at Bucky, expecting more frowning, maybe a little eye-rolling, but nope—the bastard’s smirking, just a bit, the corner of his mouth quirking up in that annoyingly self-satisfied way. He’s relaxed against the seat, legs spread slightly, looking at Clint with an expression Tony doesn’t really know how to describe. Affection? Amusement? The kind of look you give a puppy that just pissed on your shoes but is too cute to get mad at?

“Marvelous,” Tony exhales, getting up and moving to knock on the panel separating them from the driver.

When he returns, less than twenty seconds later, Clint is half on Bucky’s lap, his drunken attempts at seduction met with Bucky’s lazy swats, a chilled smile on his face as he sparks up another joint. Because clearly, the best way to handle a drunk Hawkeye is to get high as fuck. Peter has relocated to where Bucky was sitting before, filling the Bucky-shaped void, and he… presses up against Tony’s side as soon as Tony sits down.

“Fantastic,” Tony nods, his brain seizing up, shaking his head at Bucky, who offers him the joint. Again.

“Live a little,” insists Bucky, and Tony knows better than to take advice from someone whose metal hand is off-key groping Clint. But.

Peter beats him to it, the silver clasp branding itself into Tony’s corneas when a slim hand reaches out across the limo, long fingers trapping that jay.

The car is still. Everything is still. And so is Tony. Mostly. His head is sinking into the leather of the seat, his body mirroring Peter’s. The scent of weed—cheap shit, no doubt, probably picked up from the back of a gas station with change from a vending machine—clings to the car’s expensive upholstery, which should be groaning in disgust despite the cracked skylight.

“Give us twenty,” Bucky had grunted before ushering Clint out of the car, hauling that sack of very drunk, very endearing potatoes by the arms. That was… what? Twenty minutes ago? Twenty seconds? Doesn’t really matter because time’s decided to go fuck itself, warping and stretching like taffy on a hot day.

Tony… Tony can’t even name it, whatever the hell this is that’s happening right here and now. Doesn’t want to, either, because giving it a name is putting a collar on it—makes it terrifyingly real. It’s easier to pretend this is just one of those ‘almost’ moments, a blip in the simulation, a glitch they’ll both—he and Peter—conveniently erase from memory when Bucky drags his stoned ass, as well as Clint’s, back to the car.

Easier, but not true.

Nothing about this is easy.

Tony’s been slowly moving his hand toward Peter’s left—the one lying between them. Peter’s eyes are half-lidded and dazed, lips wet and inviting, looking like they’ve been kissed by sin itself, having been licked over and over by a quick swipe of his tongue as soon as he took that first drag. And now Tony's fingertips are buzzing for that death wish, nearly there.

Just a brush, just a touch, and it’ll all fall. Dominoes, Rube Goldberg, whatever. Once it starts, it won’t stop. And the tension is dense as fuck—the atmosphere on Venus, sulfuric acid clouds that Tony can taste on the back of his tongue, mixing with the weed and cedar and that faint, familiar scent that’s just… Peter. Tony could sell Peter’s scent to masochists. Would make a killing.

Tony shifts, just a bit more, inching closer, closer, closing that microscopic gap. So close now that if he so much as breathes wrong, he’ll make contact with Peter’s wrist. Close enough and slow enough that he couldn’t even blame it on inertia if that were to happen.

Peter seems to be waiting, lips parted, chest rising and falling, the skin on the inside of his wrist so thin Tony can see small veins underneath, pulsing with life. Somewhat protected by that skinny, elegant bracelet—dark, cursed, and ready to fuck up Peter's life with just one touch from Tony. An immovable object daring Tony to be the unstoppable force.

Tony waits too. For Peter to do something that’ll make this easier, that’ll push him over and take the decision out of Tony’s hands.

“Could you—” there it is, Peter muttering the words. “Do you. Do you think you could—”

“They’ll be back soon,” Tony brushes his thumb under the bracelet, skin soft and hot, and Peter’s whole body shakes at just that, mouth opening more, his bottom lip so pink, so plump, begging to be bitten, chewed, imprisoned between Tony’s teeth.

“Do you think—” Peter keeps talking as if he didn’t hear him, which is impossible, because Tony can feel the heat of Peter’s face against his own, his stubble likely scratching that perfect cheek already. “Do you think you could want? Me? I’ll be so good, try so hard, I’ll do anything, Tony, I promise. Please. Maybe just once? If you could? I. Please.”

What?

Tony flinches back.

Does not fucking compute. Reboot the system, because what the actual hell?

Peter, who’s got the kind of heart you could slap on a Hallmark card, the kind of goodness that makes you sick with how pure it is. Peter, who’s the antidote to all the bullshit Tony’s been swimming in for years. A walking, talking cure for cynicism. The hottest thing Tony has seen in his arguably long life. Peter, who deserves a brand-new model, fresh off the lot, not some busted-up relic that should’ve been sent to the scrapyard ages ago—but that’s beside the point.

The point is, how does someone as smart as Peter—a fucking miracle in sneakers who could out-nerd Tony in a heartbeat—not realize?

“What?” Tony legitimately can’t breathe, and kind of wants to shake him. Wake up, kid.

“Oh.” One word, so small, so simple, but a direct hit. Fatal. “I see. Sorry. I—Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought. Sorry.” Peter looks down and away.

That’s three ‘sorrys’ in less than ten seconds, and Tony’s pretty sure a fourth is locked, loaded, and ready to blow his brains out, but the door is swinging open again. No time to do anything except scowl as three assholes tumble into the limo.

Bucky, Clint, plus the dog.

Lucky’s wet nose shoves its way right into the middle of Tony and Peter’s almost-but-not-quite-linked hands, effectively obliterating whatever was working on properly dismantling Tony. Peter plasters the weakest smile Tony can recall ever seeing on his gorgeous face while petting Lucky’s head, fingers scratching behind the dog’s ears.

What the hell does Tony even say? Does he say anything? Do anything? What’s the protocol for when you almost—almost—have a life-altering moment, forced into cracking your chest open, because Tony will absolutely not have Peter think so little of himself, and then a happy, lovable dog shoves its nose into the middle of it?

“Sorry,” Peter says it again, softer this time, turning back to Tony while Clint and Bucky settle down across from them.

With a small, sad smile, as if he’s apologizing for existing.

Peter, who let a celestial being into his mind two days ago and convinced it—just by being his amazing fucking self—that not just Tony, not just the Avengers and the Guardians, but a whole goddamn alien planet, billions of people, deserved to keep existing. This Peter. Tony’s Peter. Thinks—could even think—that there is a universe out there where Tony wouldn’t want him?

“Get out,” Tony hears himself say, and before Peter (by all the gods, Tony is not letting this go to chance and does not want to have to seriously consider committing the kid for the worst case of imposter syndrome in history) can misunderstand him, Tony grabs his wrist, hard, squeezing it tight. “Barnes, take your pets and get the fuck out. I’ll send another limo. A fleet of limos. I’ll owe you one. A hundred. A thousand. But please, for the love of everything, get out. I am begging you.”

Bucky smirks, an understanding grin spreading across his face. He nods, tilting his head to his metal shoulder, already gripping Clint by his.

“Shut up,” Tony shakes his head, preempting any ancient wisdom Bucky might want to drop while Clint swivels back and forth, eyes wide as saucers. Big, clever saucer eyes that suddenly narrow and stop.

“Huh. How long has this been going on?” Clint asks, words slurred but somehow sharp enough to sound completely sober.

Bucky, still smirking his now apparently permanent shit-eating grin, stands up and pulls Clint with him. “Eh. At least four years for the genius idiot,” he says, jerking his head at Peter, “‘bout two and countin’ for the bigger genius idiot. C'mon.”

Tony frowns at the fact that Bucky just summed up his entire emotional crisis in one fucking sentence while corralling a human disaster and a dog.

“Forget the limo, Stark. I’m trashed, Clint’s trashed, the party’s dead. Well, maybe not for you. Later.” He waves them both off—not that Tony was going to say shit in response to that, and, by the feel of it, neither did Peter, who might not even be breathing—and slams the door shut with a finality that hangs in the now painfully quiet car.

The car that gets even more painfully quiet when the driver’s door opens and closes after Bucky’s tap on the outside, and whoever it was behind the wheel—mental note, track them down, get them to sign an NDA—leaves too.

Alone. Again. Not that Tony’s keeping count, but if he were, this would be the nth time they've found themselves in this awkward limbo in the last few hours. Tony’s fingers are doing a slow, lazy rub against Peter’s wrist, bumping into that unidentified maybe-slate leather or stone. Peter’s skin is warm velvet, and Tony’s brain is firing off a thousand thoughts a minute, most of them useless, aside from the one that keeps nagging: should probably do something right about now.

Only Tony... well, doesn’t move. Neither of them do. A strange, suspended animation where Tony’s all out of ideas—which is weird as hell because Tony Stark is never out of ideas. Except maybe now, when the only thing he can think of involves less talking and more... more things that shouldn’t be happening in the back of a limo that’s definitely not going anywhere.

Two years and counting, Bucky had said. Not wrong. And what does Tony do? Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothi—

—Peter yanks his hand away like it’s on fire.

Before Tony can even process it, Peter’s already ripping the bracelet off his wrist, his face flushing with so much panic and guilt that it’s just as unexpected as the move itself.

“Oh god, sorry, I am so sorry,” Peter’s mumbling, the words tumbling out of his mouth. “It’s this thing, it has to be this thing. She said it was lucky, lent it to me, and Mantis is so nice and lovely, and I thought, what’s the harm? But... and then you were... gravitating, sorta, and I—I... god, I should have let you take it off. I thought. I thought... just once. Just once, and I would at least have that. But of course you would never, and, oh my god, Tony, I don’t know what I was thinking, that’s nearly rape, shit, shit, Tony, I am so sorry. Fuc-k.”

That last ‘k’ rings in Tony’s ears as Peter easily tears the bracelet in half. It ends up in two separate pieces that fall on the limo’s floor, and Peter’s eyes snap to Tony’s.

“Please don’t hate me. I didn’t know. I didn’t, I swear,” Peter keeps going, creating space between them, nearly—yes, actually—falling on his ass backward in front of a dumbstruck Tony, then crawling back until he hits the opposite seats and slumps against them. “Not at first, at least. Not until you… on the dance floor. And I followed you out, and you were so obsessed with it you kissed me, you kissed me. I should have... I should have stopped. And now you just... after... with Bucky and Clint... Please don’t hate me. I know, I know, but please don’t hate me. I can handle you not loving me back—plenty of people do—but I can’t handle you hating m—”

“Oh, wow,” Tony interrupts, rubbing the bridge of his nose, sighing. “You. You really are an idiot. Like, top-shelf, deluxe edition idiot. Selective hearing too? Excellent. Well, that’s...”

...just fucking perfect.

Takes the pressure off.

No, really.

Thank fucking God.

Tony isn’t exactly graceful when he gets down on that floor himself, sliding off the seat. Hell, it’s barely dignified, but fuck it, there’s nothing dignified about how much he wants this. How much he loves. That pedestal he’s put Peter on, though? So high up, NASA’s probably tracking it. Tony’s spent so much time staring up at it, it’s a wonder his neck isn’t permanently stuck at a 90-degree angle.

Crawling—yeah, Tony is on his hands and knees now, crawling across the floor of a limo, and Peter’s eyes are deep with shock. Please, it’s not like Tony’s about to pounce and rip his clothes off. Which, actually, is exactly what he’s about to do. Funny how the moment he finally gets his knees dirty, the icy grip that’s been crushing his chest starts to loosen.

Liberating as fuck, honestly.

Because here’s the thing: Tony’s been in a bit of a shitty, disastrous predicament, trying to balance wanting someone so much it hurts and revering them like they’re something out of a fucking holy text. Can’t exactly nail someone to the limo floor if you’re canonizing them, can you? But here? Now? After that? Of Peter thinking that the bracelet was—what exactly? An alien version of Viagra? A sex artifact wrapped around the best wrist in the world? Because the Grasshopper gave away the Dildo of Destiny to someone else and it wasn’t up for grabs at the time?—Tony’s finding the sweet spot.

Ah, god, what a sweet spot it is.

Peter’s not perfect. Or, alright, he’s close. But almost perfect doesn’t have to be untouchable, does it? You can’t screw someone into next week if you’ve turned them into a goddamn deity. Can’t love them like you’re supposed to when you’re too busy praying at their feet.

“Wasn’t obsessing about the bracelet, kid,” Tony can see the panic fading from Peter’s eyes the closer he gets, slowly being replaced by something else. Something Tony knows all too well because it’s been staring back at him in the mirror for far too long. “Obsessed with you.”

Tony stops when he’s next to Peter, now hovering over him.

“Want to wait? Do it right? I’ll take you out, charm the ass off your ridiculously attractive aunt, or maybe fly you to France? Italy?”

A hot puff of air from Peter’s trembling lips hits Tony’s mouth.

“No, listen. Listen. You need to know you are everything to me by now. How do you not? And I am far from who you think I am, kid. Stop… stop thinking about it that way. Just stop, okay? If you want it to work. And, god do I want it to work. Not untouchable. Not perfect. A perfect man wouldn’t want their first time to be outside a shitty apartment block in Brooklyn with, look at that, the skylight still open. Wouldn’t want you to—here, right now—show me how pretty you can beg while kissing you all over, licking you open, and then splitting you in half, would he? I would. I adore you, by the way, if that’s not clea—”

Peter yanks Tony down by his tie.

Tony doesn’t need more of an invitation. Nope. The kid’s a gift-wrapped sex bomb delivered on a silver platter, and Tony’s not about to waste another second. He gets his hands all over him; Peter’s hair, his neck, gripping him possibly too hard. 

But two fucking years. 

Two years of pretending this wasn’t something he wanted. That he wasn’t completely losing his shit every time Peter walked into a room. That he wasn’t dying for it when Peter so much as breathed in his direction, starving. And now Tony’s simply making up for lost time, needs to take a bite out of him.

Peter’s giving him these precious gasping noises now that Tony’s kissing him—cute, needy little sounds—seemingly just as wrecked by this as Tony is. Which, yeah, obviously. Tony’s hands slide down, grabbing Peter by the waist, narrow and lean. He pulls Peter to his own body, feeling him shiver—the kind of shiver that tells Tony, “I’m yours, take me, do whatever you want.” Oh, honey, you’re damn right Tony’s gonna.

Then Peter’s lips part, and Tony’s tongue is in his mouth, no hesitation. Zero. It’s filthy, a five-star-rated dirty kiss. Makes it hard to think straight—not that thinking’s a priority right now. Priority one? Get Tony’s hands lower. Priority two? Get Peter on the fucking floor. Tony’s fingers dig into Peter’s hips, maneuvering him forward and down until there’s not a single molecule of air between them. He nips at Peter’s bottom lip, taking that bite while laying him out. Which is, well, actually perfect, all the pent-up want pouring out.

Their tongues slide together, slick and wet, Tony feels Peter’s hands—shaky but determined—grabbing at his jacket, and Tony didn’t expect this. Not the jacket part. This. This. But then again, Tony didn’t expect a lot of things—aliens, super soldiers, a reactor in his chest, or this relentless need to shove a real-life superhero up against the first flat surface he could find. But predictable is boring; boring doesn’t set your soul on fire.

Tony’s hands—when did this happen?—are already under Peter’s t-shirt, fingers grazing over warm skin, muscles twitching under his touch.

Peter pulls back for a second, holding Tony’s face in his palms—still a bit wide-eyed. Lips red and swollen, ‘holy shit, is this happening?’ written all over his expression. Before he can say anything, Tony’s back on him, mouth slanting over his again, because talking is overrated and stupid and not remotely as fun as kissing, and, on a completely unrelated note, how the hell did Tony go all this time without this?

They’re pressed together, bodies flush, and Tony feels the heat of Peter’s skin through his clothes, too many layers separating them for now. A groan rumbles low in Tony’s throat when Peter arches against him, needy and wanton, pulling Tony’s tie loose, no longer unsure but frenzied and hungry, trying to swallow all the air out of Tony’s lungs.

Fuck, if Tony could crawl into Peter’s skin, he would.

Tongue against tongue, teeth grazing lips, hands roaming since neither of them seems to know what to do with all this want. And Tony wants—christ, does he fucking want. He pulls back just long enough to rip off his jacket, arousal spiking when Peter’s fingers fumble with the buttons of his shirt.

Then buttons start flying—pop-pop-pop—and Tony nearly groans out loud when Peter’s palms slide across his bare chest. The shirt’s off too, fabric falling over his shoulders, and Tony leans in for another kiss because, god, Peter tastes good. Sweet and addictive, never going to get old. Never not incredible, what with his mouth so hot, nuclear hot.

He drags himself down Peter’s body, tie still dangling as an afterthought, mouth landing on his stomach, pulling that oversized t-shirt up. Thinks about everything. How fast they’re breathing. How soft Peter’s skin is. The exact spot to kiss that’ll make Peter whimper again, because Tony now lives for that sound. He kisses up Peter’s chest, dragging his facial hair all over it, and then finally gets that t-shirt off, stopping at Peter’s lips for a spell.

“W-wait. Sorry,” Peter motions up, and Tony follows his gaze to the skylight, getting the hint. He moves off to hit a switch that has it sliding closed, not actually invested in it staying open, then moves back down again, hand in that silky hair, gentle, eyes locked on Peter’s.

“Hey,” he murmurs, then kisses him again. Tony’s the one driving this ship, but he’s not about to let it capsize. “You know we don’t actually have to do anything here, now, or anywhere else if you’re not up for it. Right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Peter nods, swallowing hard, licking his lips and wrapping his arms around Tony’s neck. “I want to. I… Yes. Please? Just…”

Slow the fuck down. Tony gets this hint, too.

Slow. 

Always start slow. 

Build it up, make him squirm a little. 

Tony chastises himself, kissing Peter long enough for them both to start getting restless, Peter's knees squeezing Tony’s hips. Barely-there movements of up and down start making an appearance. Not quite there yet—not grinding—but getting close.

Fuck. Alright.

Mouth. Tony’s mouth is legendary. At least, that’s what he’s heard. He is the one to toot his own horn, but let’s be honest—he could give a masterclass (if that kind of thing wasn’t frowned upon at, you know, reputable institutions). His lips trail down Peter’s neck, with the occasional nip of teeth in what he hopes is the perfect blend of pleasure and pain. Then he flicks his tongue out, tracing that line between Peter’s collarbone and jaw. That little shiver? That’s what Tony’s here for.

“What—ah,” whispers Peter, and, yeah, kid, you’re gonna want to hold on. Precision engineering, baby.

Tony knows exactly where to apply pressure, when to back off, and when to lean in with a little more force. Keep him guessing. Make him want it, but make him wait for it. Patience is the name of the game, whether you’re in the back of a limo or sprawled out on high-thread-count sheets, and Tony learned early on that people don’t realize how much they want something until you give them just nearly enough.

He presses his lips to Peter’s neck again, just beneath the jawline—a delicate spot—and lingers.

Waits there, feeling his pulse against his mouth, while his fingers deftly skate down Peter’s sides, and his thumbs ghost over the ridges of muscle to remind Peter that Tony knows his way around a good time. He could draw a blueprint of Peter’s body in his head, he’s so familiar with it already, and Tony grazes his nails lightly over Peter’s hips, across his jeans, making Peter moan—quiet, and so fucking hot.

It’s all math, really. Cause and effect. You push here, they moan there. Easy.

Only—

“Fuck, Pete,” he breathes against Peter’s skin, practically trembling himself, and doesn’t anticipate Peter pushing his head down lower… lower, which almost has no business driving Tony as wild as it does. Past nipples that Tony barely has time to lick, past abs too fast to properly appreciate them, and presumably down to Peter's eager dick. Fuck, he is strong, and suddenly demanding, and if Tony was about thirty years younger, he’d probably be blowing his load into his slacks right about now.

Tony's hands settle on Peter’s waist, fingers pressing in, and then Tony keeps dipping even further down, skimming past the waistband, eyes flicking up just to see the look on Peter’s face when he knows what’s coming next. Tony smirks against the bulge in Peter’s jeans, dragging his mouth over it, and Peter keens, nearly falling apart already.

Good. Let him.

Tony’s been around the block a few times. Okay, scratch that. Tony invented the block, sold it, patented the plans, licensed the rights, and then flipped it for a profit. And Tony’s here to make sure Peter doesn’t just lose his mind—he’s here to fucking steal it. With interest.

But Peter’s all flushed cheeks and swollen lips, and while Tony’s too old to be acting like a teenager seeing skin for the first time, this is Peter. He has to keep his hands from shaking while working those jeans open, ready to press all the buttons just to see what happens, but what does happen is Peter’s hips buck up into his hand, it’s Peter who damn near steals his mind, and Tony’s about to fly apart.

Meanwhile, his brain’s throwing up red flags, ‘Hey, Stark, you sure you don’t wanna just—’ No. Fuck no. Hell, yes. But no. Well, maybe? No. He’s not calculating everything from temperature differentials to the exact angle Peter’s hips should be at when Tony finally—ah, shit. He is. That’s right. He’s literally doing sex math.

“I love you,” Tony soundlessly mouths against the sharp V of Peter’s abs while Peter lifts up his plump ass to let Tony drag the jeans and underwear down, his fingertips tracing circles over Peter’s hips, coaxing another perfect moan out of him, and, yeah, okay, okay, Tony can—

“Please,” Peter begs, completely oblivious to how happy he already makes Tony, kicking off his pants and possibly the sneakers, squirming under Tony, just about not kneeing him in the process—ugh, no, none of that. “Please don’t make me wait. Ple—ah, yes, y-yes!”

Tony’s got Peter’s dick in his mouth, and he wasn’t bullshitting when he said back at the Tower, “We can do anything you want.”

And boy, do their goals align better than a supercollider.

Because the second Tony’s mouth is on Peter, it’s not just about doing what Peter wants—oh no—it’s about what Tony wants. And right now, what Tony wants is to keep his mouth right where it is and absolutely fucking wreck him. Hell, it's all about Tony, at least on this side of Peter’s pretty dick, fitting so well into Tony’s mouth. The pressure. The heat. Sucking Peter in, tongue lapping at the head, teasing the slit. The sheer thrill of reducing this wall-crawling super-nerd into a trembling mess who can’t even string a sentence together.

Dial it up, push a little harder, then back off right before it overloads. But not too much, because edging is an art, and Tony’s man enough to admit he doesn’t have it in him here. He’s not even pretending to slow down anymore because, let’s be real, who the hell has time for patience when things are going this well? When Peter’s halfway gone within possibly seconds, unraveling like a cheap thread at a high-end gala, legs shaking, voice cracking? Mutual satisfaction guaranteed. These soft, needy sounds—desperate little noises—go straight to Tony’s groin. Mission accomplished, kid, and Tony is ready to spend his life on his knees, performing a very different kind of worship from the one that’s been fucking with his head.

“Oh, god, Tony,” Peter mumbles, looking down at him with those wide, brown, blown-the-fuck-out eyes. It's a good look. Suits him.

Tony lets Peter’s dick slide from his mouth just long enough to smirk, because, of course, the smirk is non-negotiable, and asks, “You doing good there?” Not that Tony needs confirmation, Peter’s already leaking worse than a busted pipe, but Tony’s all about affirmation, can’t help it.

Peter nods frantically, and the next “please” that leaves his lips sounds like he might actually cry if Tony doesn’t get back to work. Now that’s marvelous.

Tony sucks him back in, moving his head up and down, fucking Peter with his mouth, then rubs his balls with one of his hands and sticks the other one under to squeeze the globe of his ass, and that’s the moment—this precise miraculous moment—when Tony feels Peter’s thighs really start to shake, all those micro-movements telling him he’s close. A countdown clock in Tony’s head: T-minus ten seconds to launch. Or, you know, detonation, and Tony really should quit it with the science metaphors, really should, but if he does, it’s Peter, Peter, Peter, and Tony’s own heart is beating so fast it has to be a single BPM away from setting off Friday’s alarms.

Tony flattens his tongue on the underside of Peter’s dick, taking him as deep as possible without choking, and yeah, Tony moans too, loudly, because this... this is good. This is better than he even imagined, and he gets to do it again, over and over, for as long as Peter will have him. He holds him in, breathing his scent, eyes squeezed shut, and then speeds up—up and down, up and down, up and down—

“A-ah, Tony, god, oh m-my god, Tony, oh-ohh,” and there it is. Game over.

Tony can feel it—Peter’s whole body tensing, muscles twitching in rhythm with Tony’s pace. And then Peter’s actually gone. Completely, spectacularly gone. He’s coming hard, shaking, and Tony’s there for all of it, swallowing it down. The come, the sounds, this single, overwhelming thought that it is Peter, the unexpected but greatest love of his life falling apart under him. 

Then Peter’s hands are on his face, nimble fingers tracing his skin, slipping under his jaw, pulling Tony up for an obscene kiss and Tony… Tony melts right into it. 

And after—after the belt buckle clicks and his pants are sliding down with Peter’s eager help, it’s slow for a different reason. Slow, not because Tony’s trying to hold back—no, this is the kid’s fault entirely. It’s Peter, smiling up at him like the world just reset, like Tony hung the damn moon and stars while simultaneously inventing cold fusion during his coffee break.

And how the hell do you rush that? You don’t. Not unless you’re a total idiot.

It’s the kind of slow where time warps, where every touch lingers longer than it should, where they laugh when Tony trips up a bit (sure, laugh it up, Parker, just don’t tell anyone), and then kiss some more, everything somehow feeling way too fucking easy.

Mainly because it’s not supposed to be complicated. And it isn’t. Well, complicated, that is. Naked bar the tie that Peter seems to be into? That? Yes.

It’s Peter pressing closer, skin on skin, and that’s all Tony can think about, even when he delivers on his promise to lick him open (Tony may be a sarcastic asshole, but he’s still a man of his word, thank you very much). Peter’s back arches at a batshit, out-of-this-world angle, his hands clawing at the leather seat he’s thrown over, ass in the air, and Tony licks and licks in these indulgent swipes, his beard probably scratching the hell out of the sensitive skin around Peter’s hole and thighs, but hey, you get what you signed up for.

And yeah, absolutely, it’s still perfection—but not in the way Tony’s normally obsessed with: polished, clinical, textbook. No, this is chaotic, messy, sweaty, and real fucking perfection. The kind you can’t put on a resume but really wish you could.

They’re not fumbling through the dark, trying to get somewhere anymore. They’re already there. Arrived at the destination and past deciding where to park. Beyond the instant gratification of nailing someone in the limo—though Tony fully intends to. Oh yeah, that’s happening. Beyond thinking if the car will shake at all when Tony finally gets his dick inside him.

Because the thing is, slow isn’t just slower.

It’s deeper.

Far deeper than it feels when Tony flips Peter over on his back again and fingers him open, his index and middle fingers sinking in, lube (please, it's Tony's limo) making an indecent sound with every drag in and out.

And maybe even deeper than when Tony finally has Peter’s legs around him and is honest-to-god fucking him bareback, all this pressure choking his dick inside the tightest and, arguably, most perfectly engineered ass in this sector of space.

Incidentally, in the sector of space where Tony's brain normally resides—somewhere between genius and absolute filth—he’s probably got a whole list of profound observations on this moment. Could write a paper on it. A thesis: "On the Dynamics of Fucking in a Confined Space: A Case Study." Maybe just on Peter’s ass alone. He’d even throw in a few graphs and some equations for good measure, something about velocity, torque, and the impact of friction coefficients on orgasm intensity. It’d be groundbreaking. Nobel-worthy. But when reality sets in—when his dick is actually inside Peter, buried to the hilt, hips flush, feeling that first, impossibly tight squeeze—it all gets blown right out the fucking airlock.

It’s less. It’s more. It’s everything in between, and fuck if Tony can explain it.

It’s less because the whole “clinical detachment” thing Tony normally prides himself on goes out the window. It’s more because, holy shit, Peter’s ass might be actively trying to kill him. Steam hot, clenching tight, obviously personally offended by Tony’s dick for some unknown reason and wants it dead. The second he bottoms out, the car rocks, and it’s—

“Fuck, baby,” Tony grunts in tandem with Peter’s breathy, wrecked little moans that go straight to Tony’s core, hacking past every logical part of his brain and heading straight for his balls. It’s obscene. Tony doesn’t even know how he’s still holding it together, but there it is—Peter’s hands gripping his arms, nails digging in, and fuck, if that’s not a welcome distraction from the way Peter’s body squeezes around him.

The air smells of pure, unfiltered sex—sweat, skin, and the faintest hint of cologne Tony slapped on hours ago that’s since been obliterated by the scent of Peter. There’s a musk to it, raw, primal, like someone bottled the essence of fuck me now and sold it to billionaires on the dark web. Tony didn’t think he’d ever describe it, but here he is, buried inside Peter, suddenly feeling like a slightly crazy poet. He’d laugh at himself if he had the air to spare—but right now, it’s all about the feeling.

About the feeling and the drag. The glorious fucking drag. Every inch of him sliding in and out of Peter—slow, then fast, then slow again because Tony’s savoring this. Fuck, he’s savoring it like a last meal on death row. And maybe it should be—because how do you top this? How do you top Peter moaning, “Oh, god, Tony,” nice and sweet, almost innocent, and then begging for “Harder, fuck, fuck me harder, please. Please, oh shit—”?

And goddamn if the car isn’t rocking harder after that.

Tony grips Peter’s hips—harder too—hard enough to bruise if Tony even had a chance of leaving a dent there, and there’s a part of him that’s thinking about structural integrity, if not of just the limo but of his own body. But it’s a fleeting thought, and fuck structural integrity. One shove forward, and the sound of the limo’s suspension groaning mixes with the gorgeous, filthy slap of skin against skin.

Rhythmically.

Every thrust pushes out a sharp, wet slap, punctuated by Peter’s breathy moans and the occasional muffled “fuck” from Tony’s mouth, and there’s leather creaking under them, glass windows fogging up, and the whole of Brooklyn and, possibly, New York, has shrunk down to the space between Tony’s hips and Peter’s ass.

Tony can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything except keep moving, keep fucking, keep falling apart, because this is not something you can quantify. No matter how many fancy equations you throw at it. There’s no formula for the way Peter feels around him, tight as hell, hot as a reactor core, and shaking—god, the shaking. His legs wrapped around Tony pull him deeper, telling him without words that this is it. This is where Tony’s supposed to be. It’s the dirty physicality of screwing someone who’s, okay, unfortunately a bit too young for it not to raise some eyebrows, but far less about the fucking itself and far more about the fact that Peter has wrapped himself around Tony’s soul, and no amount of “What will they think?” or “Am I even good enough for you?” is going to keep Tony at bay now.

It’s this, it’s them, flooding Tony’s senses as he fucks the kid—no, not a kid, fuck that—the young man beneath him into this poor, probably traumatized car, until it’s all Tony knows, Peter’s soft cries becoming less coherent by the second. Until it’s all Tony wants to know.

There’s a point—right there, oh-h, holy shit—where the car shifts just a little harder, tilts with the weight of it, and Tony catches Peter’s eyes, a mess of hair sticking to his forehead. Beautiful. They lock gazes, Tony exhales, “Peter,” and then everything just… collapses.

The elevator doors slide open with a smooth ding, and Tony steps out in his fashion disaster—tie banished to whatever dimension socks disappear to, half the buttons on his shirt MIA, and his jacket—

Fuck. Forgot the jacket. Noble sacrifice.

Peter, on the other hand, looks fresh as a daisy—which, yeah, isn’t even fair considering they’ve maybe had two hours of sleep, tops. Tony’s about 75% sure they conked out at some point.

“I’m just saying, if they crossed the streams in real life, we’d be talking catastrophic energy overload, total protonic reversal,” Tony insists, his tone already hitting exasperated genius mode, waving the hand with his phone in it for emphasis, the other holding bags—a ridiculous amount of bags—most filled to the brim with hot dogs.

“No, you’re not getting it,” Peter snorts, stepping out behind him, also burdened with what could only be described as a metric ton of processed meat. “You’re missing the point. The streams have to cross. It’s basic resonance theory—two oscillating fields in close proximity with matching frequencies create a standing wave, right? It’s fine.”

“Fine?” Tony barks a laugh as they weave through the lounge, morning light flooding the place, exposing Tony’s total lack of dignity, while the Avengers and Avengers-adjacent zombies start perking up at the smell of street food. He jerks his head toward Peter. “Fine? You cross those streams, you’re looking at a nuclear event.” Tony tosses his phone onto the couch next to snoring Drax and Thor, immediately forgetting all three exist, and scratches behind Lucky’s ears when the dog noses into his palm.

“Don’t be so stubborn,” Peter rolls his eyes like he hasn’t been grinning this entire time and they haven’t just spent the last fifteen minutes arguing about this to his absolute delight. The little shit. “The particle interaction isn’t that different from what we’ve been doing with the suit mods—containing two high-energy fields inside localized space.” He shifts the bags in his arms, setting them down on the bar counter and motioning people over. A number of zombies—how are they still awake?—start slowly converging on the food. “Crossing the streams would absolutely be a viable solution. The whole ‘it’ll destroy the universe’ thing is just a scare tactic. You get enough neutrinos aligned—”

“Really? You’re comparing Ghostbusters to our work with nanotech?” Tony shoots him an insulted look, one eyebrow raised, then turns away to drop a tiny Tiffany’s bag on Mantis’ lap (come on, if Tony found a way to escape Brooklyn, he can find a way to do some shopping before the stores are even open) and swats Rocket’s greedy paw away, making a mental note to lock him out of everything that isn’t bolted down.

“Same basic principles,” Peter shrugs, reaching into the first bag to grab a hot dog for himself and stepping slightly aside to let Bucky and Clint, who obviously beat them to the Tower, descend on the grub like they’ve been living off rations. Nat and Steve aren’t far behind, closely followed by Nebula, with Quill and Gamora suspiciously absent. “Come on, think about it. Oscillating frequencies? Controlled energy output? You’re the one who always says, ‘it’s all about the math.’”

Tony can’t help but smirk. Math.

“Yeah, but if we’re going by the movie’s logic, you’re talking total field collapse, followed by the kind of explosion that turns New York into a smoking crater.” He dumps the rest of the bags by Peter’s pile. “Relax, people—” he calls to the savages, “there’s enough to clog all our arteries. Drinks on the bottom, dig. But sure, Pete, keep believing crossing the streams is a good idea. You and your standing wave can explain the fallout.”

Peter’s laughing now—a real, full-body laugh—and Tony’s grin is cracking wider than the Liberty Bell. He strolls around the bar, dodging the growing line of superheroes shoving street food into their faces as if they’ve just returned from a world-saving mission, which—yeah, okay, valid.

“Oh, come on,” Peter says, shaking his head and half-choking on a laugh, accepting a Sprite from Clint. “You’d be the first one to test it out if you could. Don’t even lie. You love blowing shit up.”

“He does,” Clint chimes in, throwing Tony a can of 7Up that he fully intends to catch—but doesn’t. Peter’s fingers brush against his when passing the can, and honestly, as good a time as any. 

Tony deposits the can on the counter, wraps an arm around Peter’s waist, pulling him in close.

The world can deal.

Only Steve and Nat pause their chewing. With the number of hickeys Tony’s rocking, they should have known since he walked in the room. Nat arches an eyebrow. But… really? Observational skills, Romanoff? Tony’s disappointed.

“Not a word,” Tony says quietly to them, then takes a bite out of Peter’s hot dog, grinning around the mouthful as he continues, “And, yeah, Pete, try again, try better, and that’s why you can’t be trusted with the particle beams.”

Peter shifts on his feet, fidgeting slightly, but a brave, very brave idiot that he is, nuzzles closer to Tony instead of moving away, cheeks flushing. 

There is a pause. A short one. Then Nat shrugs, while Steve opens his mouth to speak—only for Bucky to shut him down with a metal hand on the back.

“Leave it,” Bucky tells him, unbothered, and for once, Steve listens. Tony has never appreciated this man as much as he does right now.

"So what you’re saying is you’ve thought about it." Peter pipes up, and Tony presses his lips to his temple, not pushing too much, warm sensation creeping up—not heartburn, thankfully. It’s the other thing.

“Of course I’ve thought about it. It’s Ghostbusters.” Tony says, then takes another bite out of Peter’s hot dog, resisting the urge to take a bite out of him instead—later, after they’ve actually slept—and adds, “Also, you’ve got mustard on your face.”