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literaryavenger · 2 months

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Can I be him?

Summary: When Bucky finds something of yours, he hopes against hope that you feel the same way about him.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Enhanced!Fem!Reader

Warnings: Language cause it's me. Fluff. A lot of angst. Idiots in love. Self-deprecating thoughts, both reader and Bucky. No use of Y/N. My poor attempts at being funny.

Word Count: 4.8K

A/N: It’s 3am where I live, so… Happy 107th Birthday to my favorite Supersoldier! Today I’m posting 2 Bucky fics because my baby deserves it, this one and another one sometime around the afternoon. Hope someone likes it! Thank you to my angels @ordelixx and @mrsbuckybarnes1917 that gave me so many ideas that helped me finish this. I love you🖤

Masterlist

Being an Avenger is not easy.

The long missions, the intense training, the weight of the world on your shoulders…

Everybody on the team has a different way to unwind after a mission: Steve draws, Clint and Natasha compete doing target practice, Thor sleeps, Sam plays video games, Bucky takes motorcycle rides, Tony and Bruce work on side projects in their lab, Loki reads, Peter does his homework and Wanda cooks with Vision.

For you, it’s going to the rose garden behind the Compound.

It’s a bit of a sanctuary for you, Tony allowed you to put tall hedges of roses with a gazebo-like structure in the middle of them facing the lake, only it’s entirely made of vines.

You made it yourself, that’s your power: you can manipulate anything plant-related.

Everytime you finish a mission the team splits up as soon as the debriefing is over and you walk straight here.

You sit on the bench, also made of vines, take out your diary and start writing.

You write about everything, from details of missions to your feelings about the team. From things you did that you don’t want to forget to things that you want to do after you’re not so tired anymore.

The hedges hide you from view and the only thing you can see when you’re here is the lake.

Sometimes, after a particular difficult mission, you don’t even write. You just sit there and look out into the water, the sunshine or moonlight shining down on you, and you feel at peace.

It helps that nobody else ever comes here. The team understands it’s your safe space, and the agents are mostly scared of your powers ever since you grew a giant carnivorous plant and it bit an agent that squeezed your ass during training.

The agent got both taken to the medbay and suspended on the same day, and you got the thanks of about a dozen girls that had the same problem with the same asshole.

You walk out of the conference room, the debriefing of the team’s latest mission just wrapped up, and like usual everyone scatters to their own after-mission ritual.

Today, though, you can’t concentrate on anything.

Your feet take you to the rose garden by reflex, but your brain doesn’t even register you’re there until you sit on the bench.

Today’s mission took a lot out of you, not just because of the amount of magic you had to use to get everyone out safely, but also because it was your fault the team was in so much danger in the first place.

You fucked up your task, Natasha had to step in and save your ass, moving away from her post and making her late for her own task and that derailed the entire mission.

At the end, you had to use your powers to take out the hundreds of Hydra agents at the same time, which is no small feat and made you almost pass out.

Everybody told you on the way home not to worry, the mission was successfully accomplished and everyone made it out safely, but you know that if it wasn’t for your screw up the team would’ve gotten in and out of base without so much as a scratch.

Nobody had fatal injuries, thank God, but Sam got shot in the leg, Clint got stabbed and everyone else had various degrees of injuries because Hydra got the jump on the team.

Because of me.

That was all you kept thinking about. Your brain had a field day making up all kinds of scenarios where your mistake cost someone’s life, a few of them even had the entire team dying because of your stupidity.

You were so caught up in your head that you didn’t even notice someone following you to the rose garden.

Not that you ever do.

If there’s one thing Bucky Barnes knows how to do, is move around undetected. He’s a master assassin, he was trained for this for over 50 years, he knows how to be a shadow.

Except now he uses his skills for good during missions and, occasionally, to follow you.

Not in a creepy way, of course, just to check on you. At least that’s the excuse he always uses so he won’t have to admit to himself that what he does is, indeed, a little creepy.

But he can’t help himself, Bucky knew from the moment he saw you that he was fucked.

The moment you walked into the room to meet the team his heart was yours. You stole it with one simple smile, with one look of your beautiful eyes.

You introduced yourself and shook hands with everyone, but when you looked at Bucky he felt like a light came on and it was just you two.

You shook his hand and he felt like he had to take it off and give it to you, it was yours now. His hand, his arm, his leg, his head, his heart, his soul. Everything he is was now yours, he just knew it.

Then you said his name and he could’ve died right there and then. It was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard, and it was barely two syllables. Every word you said, every laugh and sound that came out of your pretty mouth, Bucky felt like it was all for him. Nobody else mattered.

Bucky knew then he was in love.

But he didn’t know how to approach you. You were like a fairy, like a princess. Growing flowers, always smiling, baking, growing everyone’s favorite flowers and always willing to help, like growing Aloe when Wanda burned herself cooking, or Chamomile to help with Tony’s anxiety, or Valerian roots whenever someone was feeling down.

You were like sunshine and he was terrified he’d kill your light. But he’d be damned if he’d let the world kill it either, he’d protect you with his life.

So he took to following you, making sure you were safe from a distance.

But it’s not like he never talked to you, the more time you spent with the team the more comfortable Bucky got around you and eventually you became friends.

Bucky knew you could take care of yourself, you were one of the strongest members of the team, but he didn’t like it when you were in your rose garden by yourself. The tall hedges made it impossible to see incoming danger, so he kept an eye on you just to be sure.

For his own piece of mind. And you never saw him.

That was Bucky’s actual way to unwind after a mission.

He’d tell everybody he was going for a ride on his bike, but he’d drive it through the woods around the compound and to the other side of the lake where he’d have a perfect view of you without you knowing.

Deep down he knew it was a little creepy, he could just ask you if he could join you, but he felt like you needed your time alone without anyone else around, and he knew if he asked you, you’d say yes no matter what you were feeling, because that’s just the kind of person you are.

So Bucky watched you from afar, always careful not to be seen. He watched you write for hours, it relaxed him to see your beautiful face so concentrated.

Sometimes you’d laugh quietly at what you were writing and those were the only times Bucky was grateful for the supersoldier serum that allowed him to hear such a beautiful sound even with so much distance between you.

But it was torture for him when he knew you had a bad day. Sometimes you’d hug your knees and cry, Bucky could tell how much you’d need a hug, and it killed him that he couldn’t just walk up to you and hug you.

Everytime he sees you cry his heart breaks a little and he always tries to make you feel better when you walk back inside. He doesn’t ask you what’s wrong, he just tries to make you laugh. But all he wanted to do was dry your tears.

You did notice Bucky always seemed to act a little goofy when you're feeling down, like he somehow knew, but you never thought much of it.

You knew he was a very observant person, so you assumed he just saw your mood through your behavior better than most.

Bucky loves hanging out with you, even if it’s just as friends. You make fun of him like with everyone else, you don’t treat him like could explode at any moment, never walking on eggshells around him like most people do.

You’ve never been afraid of him, and he’s glad that you don’t treat him like glass. You treat him like everyone else, and it makes him feel normal.

Everytime time he hangs out with you, you take him back to a time where he was unbroken. You make him feel alive again.

And he falls more in love with you by the second because of it. You’re all he wants, he wants to have you and kiss your lips and never let anyone hurt you. That’s all he can think about, but he knows that’s not gonna happen.

He heard you talk to Natasha and Wanda, heard that there’s someone you’d gone on a few dates with. But Bucky knows that guy doesn’t deserve you, nobody does.

Even Bucky himself doesn’t deserve you, you’re too pure for anyone in this world, but if there’s someone that has any chance of making you happy, Bucky prays to God that that someone is him.

Bucky knows today’s mission shook you deeply. He knows you blame yourself, and no amount of reassurance will make you believe that everything is okay.

So today, for the first time, Bucky actually follows you. He can see your unfocused eyes even as you walk and he wants to be near you, just in case.

He almost walks to you when you curl up on the bench and start sobbing quietly, but he holds back not wanting to startle or upset you further.

He just listens to your soft cries until you stop and compose yourself. You sigh and get up, walking back to the Compound to take a much needed relaxing shower.

But you’re still so much in your own head that you don’t even notice you left your diary on the bench in the gazebo.

Bucky did notice, though.

He’s tempted to call after you and tell you, but something deep down tells him not to. He waits until you’re gone and then walks to the bench, picking up your diary and opening it.

He doesn’t know why, he knows it’s wrong, these are your private thoughts, but he’s just drawn to it for some reason.

When he starts reading he notices you don’t mention any specific names, which makes sense because only you read it, you know who you’re writing about. He reads a page here and there, reading about your missions or lazy days.

He reads about some memories with the team you wrote about, some he remembers and others he probably wasn’t there for, but seeing all these memories from your point of view does something to him.

It makes him feel connected to you, makes him feel like he’s reading your heart and soul, because he kind of is. Then he reads something that captures his attention completely.

You write about eyes blue like the ocean and just as troubled, about a smile that could light up the world. You write about someone with a complicated past that never lost his spark, never lost his love for life.

A man that went through hell, and never once took it out on the world. A man that didn’t ever blame the world, even when he had every right to, choosing instead to protect it.

You filled pages and pages with everything you admire about this man, everything you love about him that you know he hates.

And Bucky feels like every word you wrote, you wrote for him. But could this be him? Could he be the one you talk about in all your stories?

He wants to. He wants this to be him. He prays you’re talking about him. He wishes this could be him… Who is he kidding?

Of course it’s not me.

It’s probably the guy you’ve been dating. Yeah, that’s it. You’re in love with that guy, that much is clear.

Bucky gets to the page where you write about your dates with the guy, but he can’t read them.

He closes the diary, not knowing that you compared your date to Bucky every step of the way. Not knowing that you granted the guy a second date just to be sure he couldn’t compare to Bucky, and went on a third date at a coffee shop just to let him down gently.

Bucky didn’t read how you know he’s the one for you, he didn’t read his own name written in your handwriting, the only name in your whole diary because he’s the only person you never want to forget, even though you know you never will.

But Bucky didn’t read that.

He puts your diary back where it was on the bench and, with his heart broken and his hope that one day you could be his lost, he goes back inside and to his room.

It’s only when you go back to the rose garden after your shower that you notice you left your diary there, but don’t think much of it. Nobody ever comes here anyway, as far as you know.

After finding out you’re in love with someone else, Bucky can’t stop himself from acting differently towards you, which you don’t fail to notice.

It’s not like he’s mean, but your interactions get shorter, like he tries his best to end the conversation quickly.

He no longer sits close to you, no longer tries to make you laugh when you’re feeling down, doesn’t hang out with you as much during your down time and if he does, it’s never just the two of you anymore.

It’s silly to say, but you miss him.

Bucky knows he’s been distancing himself, he knows you’ve noticed and he can see it’s affecting you, but he’s doing this to protect himself.

He knows it’s only a matter of time before you present your boyfriend to the team, the man you’re in love with and he doesn’t want it to hurt more than necessary.

You decide not to push Bucky, knowing he has his reasons to pull away from you. Maybe he’s just trying to deal with all the stress the team’s been under and you don’t want to add any more to that, so you let him be.

A few weeks later the team’s on their sixth mission in just as many days and everyone is exhausted. You’ve been taking down Hydra base after Hydra base, because waiting too long meant losing your chance to shut down their operations for good before they got the opportunity to leave.

You’ve been dividing in smaller teams to take down the bases while still giving the team a chance to recuperate, but this last one was the biggest and required the whole team together, which sucked for you because you were in the last team with Steve and Bucky that took down a base just yesterday, so the three of you got barely a few hours of sleep while you flew to the last base.

You’ve cleared the base, all that’s left is the agents in the courtyard who are really going down fighting. The whole team is outside now, the Hydra agents giving you a hell of a fight. You’re using your magic against your better judgment, giant vines coming out of your arms like whips, covered in poisonous thorns. One touch of that and anyone would go down immediately, everyone except you.

Or at least that’s what you think.

As you’re fighting you can see an agent trying to sneak up on Bucky who’s fighting near you, so you quickly take care of it for him.

Bucky turns around and sees the agent down and then looks at you with that charming smile you fell in love with and winks at you. “Thank you, doll.”

That’s the friendliest Bucky’s been towards you in weeks and you can’t help but smile back with a small blush.

You can see the last agent standing coming at you from your peripheral vision and you quickly whip him with a vine, taking him down as soon as you can so you can turn back to look at Bucky, still smiling at you.

Bucky’s smile drops quickly, though, as he sees your face draining of any color. You barely have the time to register the sting of your own thorn on your arm that you’re already falling to the ground.

Bucky tries to catch you, but he gets thrown back by your magic that goes into defense mode, creating a wall of thorns to protect your now unconscious body.

The team doesn't know what to do, none of them know enough about plants to be sure that these thorns wouldn’t just kill them all.

The only one that would know that is you, the person that’s passed out, or worse, trapped in the midst of a cocoon of thorns.

“Okay, we need to find a safe way to-” Steve starts but cuts himself off almost immediately. “What are you doing?!”

Bucky doesn’t even turn around to answer, too intent on breaking the thorns around you with his metal arm, not caring that the thorns are ripping his clothes and scratching his face, all he can think about is getting to you.

He finally manages to get through to you, but nobody can follow because your magic regrows the thorns Bucky broke, trapping him with you inside the cocoon.

But Bucky doesn’t care, his eyes never leaving your face as he kneels behind you, running a finger softly along your cheek and shivering when he feels your skin is cold as ice.

His mind goes to the worst possibility, that there’s nothing he can do, but his brain gives him some hope reasoning that your magic wouldn’t be working if you were dead.

Right?

He snaps out of his thoughts when he feels the thorns around you vibrate, he takes you in his arms and shields you with his body from whatever is about to happen.

But the only thing that happens is the shade cast by the thorns gets replaced by sunlight. Bucky looks up and realizes Wanda used her magic to lift the thorn cocoon.

“You couldn’t have done that before?!” Bucky barks at Wanda with a glare while carefully picking you up to take you to the Quinjet.

“She’s not the dumbass that threw himself headfirst in a mess of thorns without even considering another course of action!” Natasha came in Wanda’s defense, though she seemed more amused at Bucky’s antics than annoyed.

As the team heads back home in the jet, Bruce examines you and lets the team know you’re still alive but in a sort of coma.

Their relief is cut short when Bruce makes it known that he has no idea when, or if, you’ll wake up.

As soon as the Quinjet lands you’re taken to the medbay and hooked up to machines, an IV in your arm to keep you hydrated.

Bucky holds your hand through it all, staying all night next to you just in case you wake up. He didn’t want you to be freaked out and alone, he wanted to be the first person to see your beautiful eyes open.

When morning comes, though, you’re still unconscious, but Bucky doesn’t lose hope. You probably need a good sleep.

That’s what he tells himself for two, three, four days.

That’s what he keeps telling himself for a week, two weeks. Never once leaving your side, not eating unless Steve brings him food and makes sure he eats before leaving, and using the bathroom of your room in the medbay.

He barely sleeps and, when he does, he dreams of you.

Everyone was getting worried about him, he refused to leave your side until one day Steve came into your room to tell Bucky there was something wrong with your rose garden.

Bucky was torn between staying with you and seeing what Steve was talking about, but decided that it would kill you if something happened to your roses so he had to make sure everything was okay when you woke up.

Because you’re going to wake up.

Bucky follows Steve to your rose garden, and his eyes widen in horror as soon as he sees it. The roses, the hedges, the vines.

Everything is dying.

Bucky’s heart breaks, only one thought in his mind. If your plants are dying, does that mean you’re slowly dying too?

No. That’s unacceptable. You’re not gonna die, not if Bucky has anything to do with it.

He takes it upon himself to take care of your garden, watering it and doing everything he can to keep the roses and vines alive, fooling himself into believing that this will keep you alive.

He stays on the gazebo day and night, sleeping on the bench, spending every waking moment trying to keep a hold of even the smallest part of you.

But it’s not enough. Nothing is enough.

Bucky loses track of how many days he’s been in your garden, sleeping maybe an hour at a time here and there, watering the roses every few hours and crying the rest of the time.

After all it’s his fault, if he hadn’t distracted you none of this would’ve happened. You’d be in your beautiful garden, probably with your boyfriend, and the only broken thing would be Bucky’s heart.

That he could’ve lived with.

But how can he live with the knowledge that he caused your end? That he killed your light? That he killed his sunshine, his hope, the love of his life? He can’t live with that.

Not that he has to.

While Bucky’s spiraling while surrounded by dying roses, inside your room in the medbay you’re finally waking up after almost a month.

You open your eyes slowly, looking around you at the hospital-like room. There’s nobody around and, as you look at the window, you can see it’s really late at night.

You sit up and try to make sense of what happened while rubbing your eyes. The last thing you remember is Bucky’s bright smile, and then nothing.

You look down at your arm and see an IV, which you take out while frowning. How long have you been sleeping?

You carefully get off the bed and make your way outside to your rose garden, just to be sure everything’s okay. It’s not like anyone’s gonna stop you anyway.

When you get close, the moonlight shines on the hedges and you gasp at what you see. Your beautiful roses withering away, the gazebo made of vines dying too.

But the most confusing thing is the sobs coming from the bench, although no one’s sitting on it.

You get closer and see Bucky sitting in front of the bench while hugging his knees and crying softly. You frown and get a little closer before stopping, not wanting to startle him.

“Bucky…” You say quietly and his head snaps up, his eyes instantly meeting yours.

For a moment it feels like he’s trying to decide if you’re real, he reaches out and you extend your hand to take his. That seems to convince him and he gasps.

“Doll…” His voice is barely above a whisper, almost as if he thinks if he makes too much noise you’ll disappear.

“What’s wrong?” You ask him while getting a little closer to him, concern clear in your every feature.

It’s only when you get closer that you see his face full of cuts and you frown. Those are not just any scratches, it’s clear to you that they were made by thorns. “D-did… Did I do this to you?”

You’re kneeling in front of him now, one hand still in his one the other comes up to trace the cuts in his face softly, but he takes your hand in his and kisses your palm.

“I’m okay…” He reassures you.

Just then he realizes, you’re fussing over him when you’re the one that’s been in a coma for a month. “Are you okay? How long have you been awake?”

“I… I just woke up.” You tell him honestly, then look around at the dying roses and vines before looking back at him. “What happened to me?”

“You got stung by one of your poisonous thorns.” He says quietly, his thumbs rubbing circles on your skin while he refuses to let go of you. “You’ve been unconscious for almost a month.”

“A month?!” You’re shocked at the news, not knowing what to say or do, so you just stay there while letting the information sink in. The silence is broken by Bucky after a minute.

“I’m sorry about your roses… I tried to keep them alive, but…” He looks around with a hopeless expression. “I failed you.”

Your heart breaks a little. Does he really think he failed you?

You take a deep breath, then close your eyes and when you open them again a second later everything’s back to normal. The roses are as beautiful as ever, the gazebo just as majestic. It’s like nothing ever happened.

Bucky looks around in awe when he feels you take his chin and you make him look at you.

“You could never fail me.” You say firmly, wanting him to understand you mean it. You look at the cuts around his face and you can’t help the guilt and pain that you feel deep within you. “I’m sorry…”

“It wasn’t your fault.” It’s like Bucky can read your thoughts, he knows all you can see are your faults, and he wants you to know he doesn’t blame you for anything. “You weren’t even conscious. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I never wanted to be one of the people that hurt you…” Your voice is a whisper as a tear escapes you. “The world hurt you so much already… I never wanted to be part of that. You don’t deserve it.”

Bucky frowns. He feels like he’s heard those words, but where? No, he didn’t hear them. He read them. He read them in your diary, where you wrote about the man you’re in love with. Could it be possible?

Could I be him?

“It’s me…” He says lower than a whisper, his eyes locked on yours, and it’s your time to be confused now.

“What?” You ask him with a frown while wiping your cheeks.

“It’s me you’re in love with.” His voice is a little louder, but firm. He’s not asking you, he’s making a statement.

Your eyes widen in surprise, you almost take your hands away from his but his hold prevents you from doing that.

“I-I… What?” Is all you can bring yourself to say, confused as to why he’s so sure of it. Are you really that transparent?

“I read your diary…” Bucky says, guilt written all over his face, but at least he’s owning up to it. “You wrote about the man you love… and you wrote the same thing you just told me. It’s me, isn’t it? You love me back?” His voice is more hopeful now, his confident demeanor weavering.

“You… You read my diary?” You say, your mind still playing catch up.

It’s only a moment later that you register the ‘love me back’ and you don’t give him a chance to apologize or justify himself before you’re speaking again. “You love me?!”

Bucky hesitates a moment but nods firmly. “I love you, doll. I’ve loved you since the moment I met you.”

You feel like someone punched you and all the air has left your body. You have no idea what to say, so you don’t say anything.

Instead you lean in and kiss him.

Bucky wastes no time kissing you back, but a thought pops into his mind and he reluctantly pulls back. “What about your boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend?” You frown again, having no idea what he’s talking about. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“You don’t?” Bucky feels like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders and he pulls you to straddle him. “What about the guy you went on a few dates with?”

You narrow your eyes at him but decide to table the conversation about how he knows that for another time, so you smile at him and decide to just be honest with him.

“Do you honestly think that anyone could ever measure up to you? Because if you do, you’re an idiot.” Bucky grins and kisses you again.

Maybe he is an idiot. But when he’s the idiot you’re in love with, how much of an idiot can he really be?

It looks like he can be him after all.

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ichorai · 1 year

Text

spiderling ; peter parker.

sequel to particles!

pairing ; peter parker x stark!reader

synopsis ; peter was supposed to find you after strange wiped everyone's memory of him away. instead, you found him.

words ; 2.0k

themes ; angst, mild fluff and comedy

warnings / includes ; lots of feels crammed into this, peter is a flustered mess, reader is an insanely smart kid of tony’s, mentions of may and the rest of the spidey gang :(

main masterlist.

Ever since Peter had asked Strange to wipe the entire world’s memory of him, things had been… uneventful to say the least. He studied, he worked two boring jobs for a low minimum wage, and he visited May’s grave every afternoon.

There wasn’t much else to do when nobody knew him as Peter Parker.

Sometimes, he’d go out in his itchy, make-shift spider suit that he’d fashioned with bright fabrics from a corner store that also sold his most favorite orange-flavored popsicles, stopping common crime as the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

Other than that… he slept. He played Crossy Road on his phone—or he’d rewatch the Star Wars movies for the billionth time.

He thought of his best friends, Ned and MJ. He thought of his brothers, Peter 2 and 3. He thought of his Aunt May, and Happy, who visited her grave almost as frequently as he did. He thought of the closest thing he had to a father figure, Tony Stark. He thought of Mr. Stark’s oldest kid—which he used to refer to as his significant other.

The love of his life.

Y/N Stark.

Peter missed you. He missed you more than anything in the entire world. He missed your wide smile and the specific way you’d throw your head back and laugh so hard you’d be grabbing onto his arm, gasping for breath. He missed how you’d press your chest into his back and kiss along his neck while he did his physics homework, quietly mumbling corrections to his calculations when he’d distractedly scribbled down the wrong formula. He missed how Mr. Stark would pull him to the side to give him the ‘Responsible Dad Talk’ just about every time the two of you hung out together, and how you’d have to tell your dad that you could make your own decisions and you didn’t need him to hover over the two of you.

Besides, you used to say with a soft smile, it’s Peter. You know Peter. He’s… he’s Peter. He’d never hurt me, pops.

But he did hurt you. He erased all the memories you had together—he completely wiped himself out of your life.

You loved him—and he had taken that away from you.

“I love you,” you had whispered into him as you hugged him tight, a tear slipping down the corner of your misty eyes. Peter wrapped his arms around your waist and held you all the closer. “Come back to me, Peter. Or… or I swear to fucking God—I’ll find you myself and—”

Your words died on your tongue as he surged forward and kissed you, hard and desperate. The kiss tasted of salt from your tears, of coppery blood from his throbbing, split lip. Neither of you cared.

You hiccupped a sob when he reluctantly pulled away, pressing one last kiss to your grimy forehead, before letting you go entirely. He turned before he could see you crumpling into MJ and Ned, who had roped you into a pained embrace, your shoulders trembling with wracking cries.

That was five months ago. Five months after Strange wiped everybody’s memories of him.

He’d wanted to find you again—he really did. Obviously, you were an extremely busy person, not only being the oldest kid of Tony Stark, but also a genius student, a researcher, the heir of an entire company, and an older sibling to Morgan. But, if he was completely honest, he didn’t really know what to say.

Hey, I’m Peter Parker and I’m in love with you, but I never got the chance to tell you because this wizard that’s sort of a friend of your dad’s erased everyone’s memory of me because the multiverse broke and a bunch of bad guys from other universes slipped into ours because I ruined my friend’s chances of getting into their dream college—

Yeah. That wouldn’t really work out, would it?

So he put it off.

Put it off for a week, which rolled into two, which became three, which became three months.

All of a sudden, it was summer, and he still hadn’t seen you.

He made sure to go to the coffee shop MJ worked at, just to see how she and Ned were faring. From what he heard while he eavesdropped—they were doing great at MIT.

Peter tried his best to keep up with you through those news articles that kept flashing him ads like You Wouldn’t Believe What This Celebrity Looks Like Without Makeup! or Learn All About Steve Rogers’ Exercise Routine!

There wasn’t much that he could find about you, other than a couple pictures of you with your little sister, Morgan, chowing down on cheeseburgers at McDonald’s. After all, you’d always been a rather private person, which was the one jarring difference between you and your infamously public father.

Your social medias were, expectedly, all privated. Peter doubted you’d accept his follow request, anyway.

It was an ordinary Tuesday—Peter had a shift at a car garage in a couple hours, which left him quite a bit of time to burn. He had ACDC softly playing in the background—a band that both you and your dad had been completely infatuated with—half a dozen books spread out around him as he multi-tasked studying new chemical compounds for his web fluid, and rotational mechanics for an upcoming exam.

Then, much to his surprise, the doorbell rang.

It’s probably the landlord, Peter thought with a grimace, thinking of the old woman who always had a cigarette between her coarse fingers, despite her own strict policy of no smoking in the building. He turned the music down to a low thrum, before swinging the door open.

And… there you were.

Peter could feel his heart drop to the floor.

You were… God, you were beautiful. There wasn’t much about you that changed—you got a new pair of glasses, he could see, and you’d cut your hair shorter. There was a tattoo peeking slightly out of your loose-hanging t-shirt etched over your skin, depicting a sketch of an arc reactor, in memory of your late father.

Besides that, you were the very same. The same bright, intelligent eyes, the same lips that puckered ever so slightly to the side in thought, and the same brows that knitted together whenever you were concentrating.

Your hands were shoved into your jeans as you cocked your head, studying him with narrowed eyes.

“Erm,” Peter started, mouth opening and closing as his brain struggled to comprehend that you were here. In the flesh. Fuck, you were gorgeous. “Wh… Y/N?”

Your eyebrow arched high up, closer to your hairline. “First name basis already, huh?”

“I’m—”

“You’re the Spiderling, aren’t you?” you asked abruptly, nearly giving him whiplash. Before he could say anything else, you were swiping your phone open, a hologram of a Youtube video playing right in front of his face. The video displayed Spider-Man swinging from building to building, stopping a car from ramming into an elderly woman crossing the street with nothing but brute strength. Peter didn’t even remember that happening. To him, that was just an ordinary day. “That must’ve been, what—like, thirty-five hundred pounds, about fifty miles an hour? Impressive.”

“Wh—”

You brushed past him into his tiny apartment. Peter cursed himself for not throwing away the pizza boxes stacked on his kitchen counter, and for leaving his sketches of web shooters out on his desk.

A small smile graced your lips as you spotted the blue and red scrap fabrics discarded into the trash can. “Hm. You make your own suit? My dad did, too. God—are those goggles?” You picked up his vision goggles from his unmade bed, peering through them as you snorted in amusement. “How on earth do you see anything though these?”

“I—”

You turned to him with an intrigued grin. “I’m sure you already know who I am, seeing as you knew my dad. It’s nice to finally meet you, Spiderling.”

Peter blinked. The overwhelming sense of deja vu washed over him like a tidal wave—you were behaving eerily similar to when Mr. Stark had approached him to go to Germany back in 2016.

“I… how…”

“What’s your name?” you asked, gingerly stepping over his textbooks to stare at his pinboard, where his calendar hung.

“Peter,” he finally mumbled in reply, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. “And it’s Spider-Man, not Spiderling. What are you doing here? I mean, not that I don’t want you here, but, uhm—how did you find me?”

You looked over your shoulder with a knowing glint to your eyes. “I keep tabs on everybody my dad used to work with. Honestly, it wasn't too difficult to track you down—given the radius of where Spider-Man usually frequents and his response times to local crimes, it was easy to pinpoint where you lived. After my AI ran a couple voice recognition tests and estimated bodily proportions, that led me right to you.” You leaned against his rickety wooden desk with a curious grin. “Thought you’d be a bit older, though. Looks like you’re around my age.”

“I… that’s… wow.”

Wrinkling your nose in amusement, you turned back to his full calendar.

Peter prayed you wouldn’t flip over to your birthday month—he’d circled your birthday with bright red sharpie and drew loopy hearts all over the little square. Thankfully, you stopped skimming through, pausing at the relatively empty weeks where he had nothing planned other than a few work shifts.

“Looks like you’re free from school in a couple weeks,” you said. “I know this is really sudden and very abrupt of me, but—I’d love to offer you a job at Stark Labs. You must be crazy smart to design synthetic webs with a Young’s modulus that’s off the charts. Could really use that brain of yours at my company. Plus, you’ve got a lot of work experience in the bag.”

There was a beat of silence. Peter stared at you with parted lips.

A bit more timidly, you added on, “And… it’d be nice to work with someone that knew my dad.”

Well, Peter didn’t want to brag, but he’d definitely say that he didn’t only just know Tony Stark. But you didn’t need to know that right at this moment.

“Yes,” he blurted out, a bit louder than necessary. “Are you kidding me? That’s… that’s amazing! Yeah, oh my God, I’d love to! Thank you!”

Before he could stop himself, his body moved out of pure muscle memory and excitement, stepping forward to wind his arms around you, squeezing you tightly. Your familiar perfume made his eyes well with tears—fuck, he missed you so fucking much.

“Oh—” you began to say, muscles tensing. “Okay, then. You’re welcome, pal.”

Rouge flushed hotly over his cheeks as he realized that you weren’t his significant other anymore—in your mind, this was the first time the two of you were meeting. Quickly, he let you go, backing away with a grimace.

“Sorry,” he winced. “Sorry, I just—”

“Have we met before?” you asked, cutting him off. “I don’t know… it just feels like… nevermind. I’d probably remember a cute face like yours.”

Peter’s face burned an even brighter shade of red.

“Here’s my contact information. I’ll send you any contracts, NDAs, legality issues, dates for any research projects you might be interested in joining, payment negotiations, all that jazz,” you told him, placing a card onto his desk. “I look forward to working with you, Patrick.”

“Peter,” he corrected.

A smile played with the corner of your lips. “Right. Peter. Nice music taste, by the way. I love ACDC—I can see why my dad liked you so much.”

With that, you ambled over his scattered belongings on the floor, flashing him one last beam, before striding straight out the door.

Peter stared at the open doorway for a minute—or was it an hour? He really couldn’t tell.

He collapsed into his bed, the goggles you’d dangled digging into his back. He arched up just enough to pull it away, clutching it to his chest with a goofy smile.

You found him.

Against all odds, you’d found him.

Fuck, Peter loved you so much.

Telling you though—now that was a different story entirely. One that Peter knew was going to take time.

But for you…

He’d wait centuries.

#peter parker x reader #peter parker fanfiction #peter parker x you #marvel fanfiction #peter parker angst #marvel angst #mcu!peter x reader #peter parker fluff #mcu!peter parker #mcu!peter parker fanfiction #spiderman x reader #spider-man x reader #spiderman fanfiction #spider-man fanfiction #spiderman fluff #spiderman angst #peter parker x stark!reader

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artist-issues · 11 months

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I love Peter Quill's EMPATHY.

The second thing we learn about him (besides his love of music) is that he gets into fights with other boys because they "killed a little frog that didn't do nothing."

The filmmakers specifically give us a close up of HIS face when he notices that Rocket has scars on his back.

He goes to check on Gamora when the prisoners are trying to execute her, even though she tried to steal his orb and kill him and got him captured by Nova Corps.

He tries to keep Rocket and Groot and Drax from killing each other even though he has nothing to gain from keeping the peace, and he tries to comfort Rocket and looks distressed when Rocket says "I didn't ask to be taken apart and put back together over and over and turned into some little monster."

He has the most scenes of being willing to listen to insensitive Drax when Drax is trying to give advice.

Obviously he saves Gamora at the cost of his own well-being when she's stranded in space

He thanks Drax when Drax awkwardly proclaims them as friends, meanwhile Gamora snaps at him.

He rallies everybody into saving innocents and becoming heroes.

He notices Rocket, who has been nothing but a jerk to him, vaguely comparing himself to Yondu as a mean guy who miraculously didn't push his friends away. And then he makes this face,

Which is by far my favorite "Kind Starlord" moment, and says, "well of course not." Purely to comfort Rocket and reassure him that they're family, without actually SAYING all that mushy stuff, so Rocket keeps his pride without having to apologize.

And, you know, all of GOTG Vol. 3.

#Starlord is the Kindest Guardian #Star Lord #Gamora #Peter Quill #Chris Pratt #MCU #Guardians of the Galaxy #Rocket Raccoon

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theglamorousferal · 1 month

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Tony keeps in touch with Harley post IM3.

Tony hacks into Harley's school to see what his grades are and it not clocking that he could literally just ask about it.

Tony keeping up with the Keener’s via twice monthly phone calls that turn into weekly ones that turn into Tony and Mrs. Keener texting back and forth.

Tony invites the kid to visit during a school break where they both just tinker with things. Harley is nervous at first until they meet up again and they start snarking back and forth.

At least one minor fire or explosion happens. If asked, neither know what started it. (Tony was wiring a gauntlet and Harley jokingly called him Dad when Tony told him he had to do his homework.)

The Keener’s visit for a week in the summertime, Tony has bought the lake house earlier to have a place away from people. Mrs. Keener and Pepper get along pretty well and both the kids like Pepper, so Tony counts it as a win.

Tony offers to pay for Harley and his sister's education and Mrs. Keener took him up on it because there was no way she’d be able to afford to send both her kids to college unless one of them got a free ride and Tony shows he cares by spending money and making sure those he cares about are safe and comfortable.

Harley spends the summer before his freshman year of high school with Tony. Tony finds a used classic car and they spend the summer rebuilding it and upgrading the engine to run clean.

Tony finds Spider-Man and finds out he’s a year older than Harley. Tony panics because here’s another kid genius but this one's in way over his head and will stay in over his head regardless of if he has support or proper equipment. Tony decides that no one else is gonna help this kid and give him as much protection as he could if he built him a suit, so he does just that.

Tony finds out about Midtown through Peter and approaches Mrs. Keener with an opportunity for Harley. (It's a genius school and it's practically a feeder to MIT, it'll be great.) Harley moves into the tower that Tony has kept here because he has reason to stay in the city.

Tony is a lot better at dealing with a kid because he's been hanging out with Harley so long, so he invites Peter over to meet Harley and have lab time.

Harley just quips “so you’re my replacement?” to Peter and Peter immediately panicking and stuttering over himself while Harley howls with laughter.

Harley helps Peter learn to be more comfortable around Tony by roasting Tony for twenty straight minutes and after a month of lab days enlists Peter's help in making a program for FRIDAY to blast Barbie Girl when Tony has spent 24 hours or more in the lab.

Peter asks Harley to hang out with Ned outside of lab days. The three of them end up building a LEGO Deathstar and have drawn up the plans to be able to make it hover the next lab day.

Peter and Harley become thick as thieves and get to the point of that weird twin telepathy especially when it comes to being sassy.

One school break the three of them didn't go outside for the first four days, just spending most of the time in the lab so Pepper comes in and orders them to go outside for once my god Tony. Take them to your favorite burger place, I don't care, just be outside.

This leads to the three of them getting Pap'd. ("Yeah, I was out to lunch with my two interns, what's the matter with that?" is the quote above a picture of him laughing as the two boys pretend their straw wrappers are mustaches.)

This leads Tony to realize that he hadn't actually gotten the boys registered as his interns and remedies this immediately. (with backpay into a trust for each of them(Harley already gets an allowance, Tony has no idea how much is the proper amount to give to a 14 year old, and so usually gives him a few of whatever bills are in his wallet.))

Tony decides that now that they're officially employees of SI, that means they get to check out the place and so brings them down to R&D where everybody is immediately charmed by Peter and amused by Harley. The boys end up talking to the interns on the floor while Tony discusses the latest StarkPad.

One lab day both Harley and Peter look exhausted but Peter still showed up for lab time so they make their way there. Tony takes one look at them and asks FRIDAY to scan them, they both have fevers and he herds them into his living room.

Tony orders all the cold remedies he can think of to be brought up to the penthouse. Tony instructs the boys to pick a movie while he gathers blankets and dumps them on the boys.

Tony frantically texting Harley's mom and May asking them what he should do I've never taken care of a sick kid before, there are two of them, what do I do??

May asks Tony if Peter can stay the night because she's working a double that she can't get out of. He says yes if she can tell him what to do for sick kids because Harley's mom hasn't been able to respond.

Tony ends up joining the boys on the couch after forcing each of them to take cold medicine and thrusting a bowl of chicken noodle soup into each of their hands. Tony's in between the boys.

Over the course of WALL-E each boy begins to sag eventually trapping Tony on the couch. He's got one drooling in his shoulder and another drooling on his thigh. He asks FRIDAY to take several pictures before going back to his work on his StarkPad.

This starts Peter staying over whenever May is working night shifts. Then staying over every other weekend. Then Tony invites May and Peter to go on vacation to the lake house for a few days in the summer.

The Keener family is also present and May, Pepper and Mrs. Keener get on like a house on fire. Peter loves playing with Abbie with Harley. Three group chats are made that day. The adults in a co-parenting chat, the ladies in an exasperated with our geniuses chat and the kids in a sass and meme chat.

Just, Tony becomes a dad to two brilliant boys (and maybe one of the boy's baby sisters too depending how you want to write her).

#fanfic #long post #tony stark #peter parker #may parker #harley keener #irondad #spiderson #potato son #pepper potts #ironfam #starkers dni #irondad and spiderson #iron man #iron man 3 #pepperony #spiderman

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shockedemojiatsv · 3 months

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MOREEEEE BEN REILLY 🙏🙏🙏 IM BEGGING

▪︎■☆Benny, Baby☆■▪︎

☆ 🔞!!NOT SAFE FOR WORK UNDER THE CUT!!🔞

☆ cis!Ben Reilly / spiderhero!male reader

☆ Drabble and probably OOC

☆ angst and fluff headcanons first

☆ kind of cringe? Maybe? Maybe not? Depends on who's reading it

°○☆happy reading☆○°

☆ his morning voice is so deep but not in a sexy way its more like a funny way. Maybe not overly goofy but he's so loopy since he's still a little sleepy he will make you laugh a little with his voice.

☆ seldomly clumsy. He'll walk through corridors and move his hips to avoid hitting tables and when he miscalculates a move he'll wince in pain, but if you're there he'll try to pretend nothing ever happened.

☆ He's clingy. Like, puppy clingy. He'll never admit it but the next best thing other than working out is holding you. It could be in any kind of context. A fluffy moment, a sad scenario, or something a little more intimate. But don't expect him to get his grabby hands off of your body 24/7 because he just loves to hold you and be there for you.

☆ look at me in the eye and tell me he isn't dramatic. ATSV Scarlet spider here, imagine watching Grave of the Fireflies with this guy. Get your tissues.

☆ His hair is so silky. I'm sure he maintains it well. He's willing to share his own secrets to you so that the two of you are walking around with hair everybody wishes they had. haha.

☆ He's a little bit of a jealous person. Not in a toxic way, per se. But he's a little insecure whenever you spend time laughing and talking with the other spidermen. Usually the Peter's. Ben knows he's a clone. He thinks he's just a copy. He hopes you don't leave him for something more "original".

☆ continuation of the hc above me, he'll try holding your hand whenever you're talking to somebody. Not all the time. Just when he feels uneasy. Just a little reminder to you that he's there. Please don't go.

☆ bad nights aren't common between you two but he'll let his laid back facade fade away and he'll lean on you for comfort. You're his strength. His beacon of light. In a world quite cruel he knows he can rest on your shoulder and recharge his energy just being around you

☆ he loves to work out with you. Definitely. He's your best gym buddy and you'll end up exerting more effort into your routine because of how fun and challenging it is with Ben. He might forget a few basic equipment... so be prepared

☆ I just really like to think that he's a clingy puppy when you two are alone, and small remnants of that desperation for your attention clinging in the air. Hugs and cuddles, thumbs-up. Hand holding and a few kisses, thumbs up. Brushing his face against your chest or vice versa whenever you to get to bed, oh absolutely.

☆ I don't know if he'd be a PDA person, but he definitely would be. He likes showing how much he loves you. Like, every part of you. Your hands, your smile, you're voice, everything. It's like a warm presence that has him forgetting about all of the shit that made him edgy /hj. He'd hold your hand on your arm or your shoulder or whatever. He likes touching you

☆ call him petnames. Any kind as long as if it's a petname. And as long as if it's made by you. That takes the cake. His personal favorite is "Benny baby" because 1, it's adorable, 2, it's catchy.

°○☆ nsfw under the cut ☆○°

☆ He's sloppy. Literally about everything. When you'll kiss him or if he'll kiss you it doesn't matter who takes initiative, he won't hesitate to use his tongue. Sucking your tongue to get a better taste of it. Or kissing your cheek so much it becomes wet in a few minutes. He'll drool like a dog no matter what he does. He'd be ashamed of it at first but when you'll reassure him that it's normal and everybody has their own quirks during sex he won't try to struggle and hide it.

☆ pull his hair. He'd adorably whine and complain. He'd tell you to stop but he doesn't want you to stop. The first time you tried it he was feeling conflicted but he definitely didn't try to stop you the next time around.

☆ he'll probably try to cover his face whenever you fuck him. He's so shy all of the sudden... so when you web/cuff his hands above his head, leaving him powerless to cover his face he pretty much just cums sooner.

☆ if you're somewhere else and he's somewhere private, he'll send you a picture of his abs. Pretty normal. That is until he'll send you even more provocative pictures. That's when you snap and try to finish the errand to get home as soon as possible and fuck him till he goes blind.

☆ PET PLAY‼️‼️‼️ Please please PLEASE treat this man like a horny little mutt. He'll go crazy when you call him puppy or bitch or literally whatever. He's a golden retriever isn't he? Oh he'll melt. Get him a leash too. A pretty collar with your name on it. He'd hide it well away from guests but when you two are alone... he has his fun.

☆ remember what I said about pet play? Oh boy, take it to the next level and he'll go nuts. Literally. Strap him tight on a pet crawler and treat him like a legitimate dog. You probably wouldn't need to touch him for him to cum anymore at that point. Drowning in humiliation to the point where all he could do is whimper for your touch, a command, a word literally anything.

☆ he likes to be degraded. Call him a stupid mutt and tease him about his "rut". How badly he wants to breed/be bred. He'll let out a series of whines and please unless you gag your little puppy. Perhaps if you don't gag him, you can make him woof a little. It's embarrassing. Humiliating but Ben's already past point of clarified thinking.

☆ that doesn't me he isn't a fan of praise! Call him a sweetheart. Your loving little puppy. A good boy. Brush your fingers against his hair and scratch his scalp just right. He'll cum right then and there. Dick frotting against your leg. That is, if you gave him permission. If you spoil him and let him suck your dick while you praise him he'll get drunk. So unbelievably drunk, you'll end up doing most of the work again.

☆ rarely ever a bad boy. He'll follow your orders. And if he's being a brat... well, taming him isn't hard.

☆ if you're going to be bottoming he'll be really soft with it. He'll only go hard if you tell him to. He'll do everything you tell him to do. Go soft? He'll go soft. Move faster? He'll rut inside of you while he sobs out how good you feel around him.

☆ oh my god this man's cum. He definitely cums a lot. Ugagahahh like,,, BROOOOO. Istg. It drops down his dick like thick droplets of pearls and its so filling. Goddamn, doesn't matter if you dom or he does its so much. Please milk him.

☆ oh he has a happy trail. Fuzzy, dirty blonde, well kept ish. He doesn't like to shave it because when it grows back it just gets itchy.

☆ He's a biter. Doesn't matter who's on top. Expect love bites everywhere, anywhere. It feels right to him. In a possessive way. He's yours, your his. Actually, try marking him too. It's hotter that way.

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aludraslytherin · 4 months

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Why the fuck, when the Fidelius Charm was cast, did they not think to make a goddamn unbreakable vow !? Like, it's so obious ???

And Sirius ? They can literally take a memory into a pensine something and watch it, they have legilimency for crying out loud !! They have veritaserum ! So whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy ??? It's so stupid!

And Dumbledore ! oh this sorry excuse of a human being !

He knew that Peter was the secret keeper ! So WHY IN THE EVERLY MOTHERLY FLIBBIDY FUCK didn't he said so ???

It makes me so fucking crazyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

And everyone that is like 'ThE BoY WhO LiVeD' 'hE DefEtEd tHe DaRk lOrD' erh, NO ?! It was thanks to LILY ?? He was just an INFANT who had the chance to be under a protecting spell created by LILY when she SACRIFIED HERSELF for her son ? Why is everybody forgeting about her ??

Oh, and don't start me about Snape !

'hE wAs BulLiEd bY JaMeS, HiS WoRsE MeMoRy iS HiM BeinG BuLliEd' Yeah, because he called Lily a slur

'hE WaS jUsT MiSuNdErStoOd' No, he was a death eater, fully believing in Voldy's BS,he only changed side because the girl he was obsessed with was in danger... Because of HIM ! People tend to forget that he was the one searching and giving the prophecy to the dArK LoRd, resulting in Lily's death.

And, 'JaMeS WaS jUsT A BulLy' We only sees him throught Snape's pov, aka, when he got 'bullies'c after he called Lily a mudblood.

And if James is a bully, doesn't that mean the Snape is one too ? No because :

-He made fun of Hermione for her teeth

-He bullies his students

-he exposed Remus when he had no reason for, since he is the one brewing the wolfsbane potion

-he hates and bullies the son of 'the love of his life' because Harry had the infortune of looking like his father, that Snape resents

-favoritism

-he was a death eater

-he is a racist

-he is a blood supremacis

-he is Neville worst fear, the boy who literally had his parents torturedby Bellatrix. Shouldn't she be his boggart ?? But noooo, it's our 'wonderful and misunderstood' Snape

-when he hugged Lily's body, while her son was crying his eyes out, being hurt, seeing his mother die, having blood on his forehead, and then leaving the house without even comforting or taking Harry to Saint-Mungos !!

-blamed James for bullying him, when he created Sectum Sempra, and was into dark magic !

-trying to make Harry expelled

#ted talk #im so mad about those plothole lol #marauders #regulus black #james potter #jegulus #sirius black #ao3 #marauders era #wolfstar #dumbledore slander #i hate dumbledore #snape slander #i hate snape #snape was not a poor and misunderstood boy #he was a bicth and a biggot #awful man

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artfulacrostic · 10 months

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had my second high definition viewing of atsv in the theater today and here are my favorite details that i missed due to being overwhelmed on my first viewing:

LONG AF POST:

-gwen is literally wearing a rainbow shaped trans pride pin on her jacket with her prom outfit. she's soooo so canon trans <3

-captain stacy HAS A TRANS FLAG PATCH ON HIS POLICE UNIFORM JACKET?????? when i'm telling u my eyes popped out of my head 😳 SHES SO CANON TRANS!!!

-poster outside miles's guidance counselor's office reads: "visions sciences: telling you your story".

-parallel of miles's and gwen's dad kicking things out of general exasperation towards the beginning and end of the movie respectively

-when miles as spidey is talking to his dad and giving him advice (for himself) there's a reference to miles possibly reading vonnegut? (maybe in class??) "if this isn't nice what is" is a collection of kurt vonnegut's commencement speeches. (literally subtitled "advice to the young". the writers were extremely clever for this reference. if not reading it in class, miles has been searching up life advice on his own)

-i barely caught this but i'm PRETTY sure that in miles' room near his door there's a MICHELLE OBAMA presidential race sticker??? was president obama in the earth-1610 dimension michelle obama?? iconic if so

-fedex on earth-1610 is REDEX

-gayatri seems like they took elements of both gwen (police dad) and mj (young model) for her background as i believe i caught her visible on a "zomato" ad billboard (which appears to be the earth-50101 version of ubereats)

-i spent all of hobie's scenes trying to pick up the details of his many pins; but the only one that i could really make out with the quick shot changes besides the union jack pin was the one right above it, which is a three-leaf clover. i wondered if maybe it had some kind of significance to maybe irish independence or smth but i couldn't find anything online that backed that up so not sure what it means. if u know pls drop it in the replies.

-hobie's boots are definitely NOT ladder laced. i KNOW there is concept art and poster art of him with ladder laces but in the actual movie they are 100% crossed. also unlike the poster art, both boots have blue laces, not one blue, one yellow/orange. i wanted to be all on board the ladder lace code train but i'm pretty sure they just made his laces blue so that they could contrast against the red boots and be spidey colors. they probably abandoned the ladder lace part of the visual when someone realized what blue ladder laces meant in lace code. "HAS hobie killed a cop," you ask? given his comic backstory i'd say the odds are HIGH. but i would bet they didn't want people to think that since he's gone through canon event asm-90 ("a police captain close to spider-man is killed by falling rubble during a battle with a nemesis") that there's any possibility THAT was the cop he killed and he's proud of it (since it's supposed to be all abt character development from the ✨trauma✨ of the event)

-during the whole "intervention" scene, while all the other spider-people are facing directly in towards miles and miguel from wherever they are standing in the circle, hobie is the only one whose back is turned. he watches most of the scene over his shoulder. also, during a couple shots facing miles before the entire society of spiders show up, hobie is separated in the shot from all the other main spiders (Peter B, Gwen, Jess, etc) BY MILES. he is visible over one shoulder and everybody else is visible over the other. these two details are great signals of hobie having already MORALLY turned his back on miguel's authoritarianism, as well as giving a nice inverted "devil/angel on the shoulders" nod.

-peter b asks miguel to take a picture of him and mayday since it's her first chase; miguel brushes him off but mayday understands and uses her webshooter to click the camera button on peter b's phone and take a selfie without him noticing 😂😂😂 shes everything to me

-when miguel is pinning miles to the train, after gwen and peter b have caught up, there is a very fast moment when miles calls for help ("PETER!!") and peter doesn't reply to him, but calls out to miguel to calm down (smth like that) instead 🥲 peter for the love of god step up your mentor game and look out for this kid i can't handle it anymore

-when gwen takes the watch hobie made her out of the box, the screen is briefly visible and reads "project botleg". bootleg -> bot -> "botleg"; I SEE YOU HOBIE. people think he's so cool (and he is!!) but he's also just as much of a dork as all the other spiders. what a goofball

-in miles-42's room, a speed bag/speed ball/maize ball is attached to his wall near the door. there are other substantial differences to their rooms, but i think this is clearly a reference to uncle aaron-42's large presence in miles-42's life, given the association from both movies of aaron with the punching bag and miles getting guidance from him/looking to him for support.

-in addition to all the miles-1610 vs miles-42 prowler vs spidey reflection imagery in the end credits, guess who else has several moments of flashing from spider-man colors (red and black at least) to prowler colors (purple and green)?? miguel, that's who. miguel and miles-42/uncle aaron-42 team-up in beyond the spiderverse? or just an extra parallel for the antagonists sharing goals/possibly methods?

OKAY ANYWAY if ppl want i can try and dig up images of some of these but i figured that would make this post long af so that's all for now folks!! go see across the spider verse again and marvel at how much more fine detail you find like me 🕸🕸🕸

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rissa067 · 5 months

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not afraid to simp | p. parker

pairing: peter parker x fem!reader

word count: 0.3k+

synopsis: peter simps for his girl and he loves it

an: this is another one that i wrote in 2021 and am just now posting. no it is not proofread and i honestly do not remember what this is fully about, no i do not care if it matches canon or not because it isn't that deep. this is fanficton.

Peter Parker loves his girlfriend. He’s not afraid to show it either. Whenever he’s on patrol, especially in your neighborhood, he’ll stop by your apartment. Sometimes it’s for a quick kiss and ‘I love you,’ others it’s because he needs some patching up from a bad guy who hit him a little too hard.

Everybody who knows him knows you, even if you’ve never actually met. That boy never stops talking about you, he just loves you too much. It’s usually about how beautiful you look that day, or how funny you were when you were sleepy during movie night, or just because he can’t get enough of having you as his girl.

Whenever you need something, he’s there. He quickly learns your schedule and sometimes knows it better than you do yourself. For instance, he kept track of when you get your period and within a few months, he always knew when to have your favorite snacks and whatever lady things you might need on hand. Those days are always accompanied by movie nights, cuddles, and him making sure you’re as comfortable as possible.

At the beginning of your relationship, he was worried that you wouldn’t like how much he simps for you, but he quickly learned that you absolutely adored it and ate it up like you were the most Peter-starved girl in the world. The constant cuddles, affirmations of love, and all-around doting on you felt amazing and you truly knew how lucky you were to have Peter in your life. He was more than happy to give it to you, and even happier that you reciprocate everything back.

The team and all of your friends gave him shit for it at first, but when they saw how much you truly love and care for each other, they knew that you two were perfect for each other.

Peter truly was a simp for you, and you were a simp for him. He would never deny it because he was proud to admit it. He would simp for you until the end of his days just to make you smile.

#peter parker x reader #peter parker #this was probably written with tom!peter in mind but i'm sure you can use your imagination for any peter #peter parker fanfiction

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randomitemdrop · 25 days

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Trick or trivia

Happy Halloween! I do enjoy trivia of many types, but one of my favorite genres is what I call the Berenstein Timeline: unmade shows and movies, versions of classic movies where studios and producers made different decisions, some better, some much worse. All of these are real projects that were, on some level, considered (there are some recurring names)

"Heat Vision & Jack", a 90s pastiche of 70s-80s action shows starring Jack Black as an astronaut on the run from the law and Owen Wilson as his talking motorcycle

"Jurassic Park" directed by Tim Burton with Johnny Depp as Alan Grant, Jim Carrey as Ian Malcolm, and Vincent Price as John Hammond

the 90s "Batman" directed by Ivan Reitman; Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy were going to star but couldn't decide which of them would be Batman and which would be Robin

Back in the 1970s the American network was getting good numbers showing heavily-edited reruns of "Monty Python's Flying Circus", so they tried to sell the Pythons on the next logical step: an animated Saturday morning cartoon

"Edward Scissorhands" still directed by Burton but starring Tom Cruise or maybe Michael Jackson

"Return of the Jedi" directed by David Lynch; Harrison Ford was considering not coming back for the third movie and so when he came out of the carbonite there was a chance he would have been Christopher Walken

Guillermo del Toro's "At the Mountains of Madness". Also "the Hobbit" and lots of other things, he seems to have a lot of unmade projects

the 2010s "Star Trek" movie directed by Quentin Tarantino, where the edgy reboot crew visits the Gangster Planet from that one stupid episode of the original series

Everybody knows about the unmade "Superman Lives" starring Nicolas Cage in the title role, but did you know it was going to be directed by Tim Burton and include Christopher Walken as Brainiac, who would have been a green head on spider legs

Harold Ramis didn't particularly want to act on camera, so when they were casting "Ghostbusters" Egon could have been Christopher Walken, Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Goldblum, or John Lithgow. Supposedly the movie was originally intended to be a relatively serious exploration of Dan Akroyd's very real interest in paranormal investigation, although this clashes a bit with the fact that Peter Venkman was originally going to be played by John Belushi and Winston Zeddmore was written for Eddie Murphy who backed out when the character's backstory and most of his lines were cut

John Waters' animated series "Uncle John" on 90s MTV

the original version of "Bill & Ted's Time Van" starring Pauly Shore and Sean Penn

"Red Dragon" (the original Hannibal Lecter novel) directed by David Lynch starring John Lithgow as Hannibal Lecter and Mel Gibson as Will Graham

the 1970s "Dr. Strange" TV series

the 1990s Disney animated "John Carter of Mars"

the 1990s Warner Bros animated "King Tut" musical with songs by Prince

the serious horror version of "Beetlejuice"

Drew Barrymore's 2000s remake of "Barbarella"

the Dungeons & Dragons movie James Cameron was going to make until TSR left the table over merchandising disputes, forcing Cameron to go work on some dumb movie about the Titanic

American "Doctor Who" movie starring Michael Jackson

Canadian "Doctor Who" cartoon by Nelvana starring a Doctor based intensely off of either Jeff Goldblum or Christopher Lloyd

"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" directed by Terry Gilliam

"Good Omens" directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Johnny Depp and Robin Williams

"The Black Cauldron" using character and background designs by Nightmare-era Tim Burton

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fotibrit · 7 months

Text

Peters favorite holiday is Halloween. He patrols that night, of course, but it’s the only night that helps him understand how he is viewed.

It started his first year that he took patrolling seriously. He decided not to wear a costume, opting for his spider-suit as it’s own costume, but received backlash. Mostly from adults, who saw him for the child he was.

“you should dress up too, you know? The kids would get a kick out of it!” (Both parties in the conversation know why the last bit was added. Peter would only bother with the costume if it was for the good of all. If it benefits his community, if it makes it a happier time… who could say no?)

Ever since then, he dresses up over his spider-suit. it got easier once Stark was involved, as the spider-suit became streamlined. He wore cheap costumes over the suit, exclaiming if he saw someone dressed similarly. he introduced a new genre of costume, as the style caught on the next year: Costume over spider-suit.

Most importantly, Peter now carried around a candy bag. A candy backpack, more like, to avoid causing candy-rain (gravity and backflips don’t mix well). This backpack really showed him what he was seen as. Because the first few groups to approach him, the kids walked up with bags held open, chorusing “trick or treat!” and spidey was happy to give them each some candy he had put in his bag. But when he stopped a guy from robbing a house, the owner recovered from the encounter, and then insisted on giving him candy.

“you’ve got to say the words, just like everyone else, young man. Now, would you like hersheys or kit-kat?”

Halloween is Peter’s favorite holiday. Because he participates just like everybody else. And to the kids, he’s a hero. and to the adults, he is still just a boy.

Halloween is the one day a year that peter remembers, everyone is rooting for him.

#peter parker

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literaryavenger · 5 months

Text

Heartbroken

Summary: Tony helps you through your first heartbreak.

Pairing: Dad!Tony Stark x Daughter!female!reader

Warnings: Fluff. Language cause why not. Reader is hurting. Tony is an angel. My poor attempts at being funny.

Word Count: 1.4K

A/N: I wanted some soft dad Tony and this came out. The end is a little rushed, I didn't know where I wanted it to go but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I hope you like it!

Masterlist

You exited the elevator and made your way through the living room, not sparing anybody a second glance.

You went straight to your room and slammed the door behind you, leaving all of the avengers that were currently in the living room in a shocked silence.

That wasn’t like you.

You're a cheery and positive teenager that never misses a chance to hang out with your favorite group of superheroes.

Even during your bad days, you at least said hi and chat a bit before going to your room, so your behavior today as you came home from school leaves everyone worried.

They all know high school isn't easy, but it somehow never affected you much.

Maybe because you grew up in the spotlight, being a Stark.

You were the perfect combination of Pepper and Tony, smart and driven, sarcastic and confident, sweet and supportive. Really just a ray of sunshine in everyone’s life.

Everybody at Midtown High knows who you are and every student you meet gets surprised by how nice you are to anyone that approaches you, everyone expecting you to be a stuck up bitch.

You talk to and befriend anybody who’s nice to you, but you spend most of your time with Peter, Ned and MJ.

Speaking of which, while everybody stares at the door you just disappeared through, Peter enters the room through the window, a feat that not everyone is used to yet.

"Damn it, bug boy, stop doing that!" Sam almost yells, never failing to get startled by his abrupt entrances.

"Sorry, Mr. Falcon, sir." he says sheepishly while Bucky snickers like every other time, but before they can start bickering like always, Tony addresses Peter.

"What’s wrong with my daughter, Spider-ling?" he says in a serious tone, despite the nickname he can’t seem to get tired of.

"I don’t know, Mr. Stark. She was fine during lunch, but when school ended she was nowhere to be seen. We were suppose to meet at the exit like always but she rushed home alone. That’s why I’m here, I was worried." the more Peter talks the more Tony gets worried.

It wasn’t like you to not show up to do something you planned to do with someone else, let alone without giving a reason or at least a warning first.

Tony has heard enough so he gets up from his seat and walks towards your room, knocking twice, then once and then three times fast, a secret knock you came up with when you were little designed just for him.

He hears a faint ‘come in’ and, with furrowed eyebrows, he enters your room, finding you sitting on the bed hugging your knees to your chest.

Without saying a word he comes in, shuts the door and sits next to you, putting an arm around your shoulders. You shift to put your head in his chest and, when hug him as tightly as you can, Tony can actually feel his own heart breaking at the sight.

His little ray of sunshine, crying her heart and soul out and there's nothing more he can do but hold you. So he holds onto you just as tight as you are, willing himself not to let his own tears fall at seeing you so broken, needing to be strong for you.

After you calm down a bit, he can’t help himself as he asks "who do I have to kill?"

He feel a little better when he hears your little giggle against his chest, but he's still very worried and you both know he wasn’t entirely kidding.

He doesn’t rush you into talking, giving you time to put together your thoughts before starting to explain.

"I’ve been seeing someone..." you start, sitting up straight, sniffling, and he already doesn't like where this is going. "I’m sorry I haven’t said anything, mom knows though…"

"Of course she does." he mumbles, a little offended you would tell her and not him, and Tony Stark was never one to not voice his thoughts. "Why didn’t you tell me?" he was clearly hurt, pouting a bit just to amuse you. You giggle again as you answer.

"I’m sorry, but I know what you would’ve said: ‘You’re not allowed to date until you’re 65’" you try to imitate him with a deep voice that makes him chuckle.

"Damn right you can’t!" He says and you lighten up a little at his laughter and keep talking.

"I was going to introduce you soon, I swear! But then…" your smile falls and you can’t stop the few tears that escape. "Today, while I was waiting on Peter, I saw him…"

You trail off and he holds your hand giving you an encouraging squeeze but still not pushing you. Then, in the smallest voice he’d ever heard you use, you finish your sentence. "He was kissing another girl…"

He wished you hadn’t finished the sentence. You start crying again, quieter than before, but it still broke Tony’s heart.

"Oh, honey…" He wraps his arms around you again, mentally planning how to kill and dispose of the body of the little prick, when he hears you again, your voice barely a whisper.

"It hurts, dad… why does it hurt so much?" you still couldn’t stop crying, barely able to finish the sentence.

"I know, Tinkerbell." The use of your childhood nickname made you smile against the tears, the memory of how it came to be coming to the forefront of your mind.

You were about 6 years old, watching Peter Pan for the first time with your parents, when you started giggling uncontrollably.

Your parents gave you a funny look, expecting you to be sad at the part where Tinkerbell was dying and worried they were raising a little psychopath.

"What are you laughing at, Junior?" much to Pepper’s displeasure Tony had started calling you that, sustaining that you were turning out to be just like a little version of him.

Your mom disagreed, but was slowly changing her mind, especially after what little six year old you said next.

"Daddy’s just like Tinkerbell: if she doesn’t get attention he dies!" you got out between giggles, making Pepper almost double over laughing as Tony started a tickle attack, a fake offended look on his face.

After that your dad started calling you Tinkerbell, not able to let go of your first sarcastic comment, against him of all people, but secretly very proud.

You were brought back to the present by your dad’s words as he started rubbing your back.

"I know it hurts now, but it’s gonna get better, I promise. Your first heartbreak is never easy, but the good news is you have your whole life ahead of you to find a guy smart enough to understand how lucky he is to be loved by you and never let you go."

Now, Tony Stark is many things.

He’s a genius, billionaire, former playboy and philanthropist. He’s an entrepreneur, a superhero, a savior. He’s a role model, a caring friend and doting husband.

But, at this very moment, you can’t help but be proud to call him your father.

You wish you could tell him that at the moment, but you can’t find the voice to speak so you make a mental note to tell him later. Right now all you can do is hug him so tight you’re not entirely sure he’s able to breathe, but he doesn’t make any attempts to make you let go.

The next couple of hours are spent between hugs, words of encouragement and Tony trying everything he can to make you laugh.

When he succeeds in lifting your spirits, you both make your way to the living room where all of the Avengers are now, Pepper included. You sit next to her and she wraps her arm around you, having already been updated on the situation, of course.

Everyone else seemed to have come to a mutual understanding of not pressing the matter, knowing you’ll open up when you’re ready and not wanting to upset you again now that you’re back to your cheery self.

You’re glad nobody’s asking any questions, acting like nothing happened, exactly what you need right now.

You spend the rest of the day with your family, forgetting all about your broken heart, realizing you’re better off without him.

At one point your dad whispers to you "I still need the name of the little jerk, so I can fuck him up" and you can’t help but laugh, more glad than ever to be lucky enough to be a Stark.

#avengers x reader #tony stark #peter parker #pepper potts #avengers x platonic!reader #y/n stark #tony stark x daughter reader #dad!tony stark #marvel fanfiction #bucky barnes #sam wilson #avengers au #avengers x platonic reader

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hanasnx · 6 months

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idk insomniac peter seems the most experienced but like ????

he'd be one kinky mf too ngl

saying he's the most experienced makes sense bcos i think he's the oldest of the spider-men we know of rn (not including the vast array of comics available). besides, everybody wants a piece of ol spidey. everybody's got a hard on for him. and hes so warm and friendly, it prolly comes off as invitational and flirtatious. ppl mistake it for game simply bcos his cringefail loser personality is attached to an ultrahot bod and mutated spider-cock. doesnt hurt that he's the sweetest.

and its always the most vanilla-acting dudes you meet being the freakiest behind closed doors. i bet pete's into shit you've never met in any other guy. not just the traditional and expected stuff like bondage, no peter wants to try crazy shit. exhibitionism/agoraphilia: he wants to fuck you on a roof, on the ceiling, in the bathroom of the bar with no name just to do it (he'd never tell you, he's the type to act like he's above it and let you insist and make the decision for him). he has a keen sense of olfactophilia, amaurophilia, bet he's into a little bit of roleplay (def wants to "save" you after youve been "kidnapped" and you show your appreciation for your favorite hero), i can see him being into some breeding, dubcon (tricked/coercion edition). his fave positions are cowgirl, reverse face fuck, and doggy style off the top of my head. bet hes fantasized about being a little subby cuck.

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ironspiderfics · 9 months

Text

someone else living in his skin

by @iron--spider for @shoyzz-art

Peter slides up alongside Rhodey, and Rhodey startles.

There’s a cacophony of twinkling glasses and chairs being pulled out and whatever weird jazz music playlist Tony’s got playing, and all of it seems loud, in Peter’s ears. Shaking his nerves.

“Jesus Christ,” Rhodey says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What are you doing? I thought you were putting out table numbers—”

“Do you think he’s acting shifty?” Peter asks, calmly as he can.

He’s calm. Why wouldn’t he be calm?

His eyes are locked on Tony.

They’re in the middle of setting up this mini gala event, the opening for Stark’s new research facility in the Lower East Side. It’s gonna create hundreds of jobs and scholarships and internships and it’s gonna be a really good thing, partnering with the museums and businesses in the area. Peter’s actually really excited because he’s got the title of ‘Lead Researcher’ for the intern pool, whatever that winds up meaning from day to day, and he thought Tony would be really excited too. He loves celebrations, he loves new opportunities and helping people, but—

But for the last two days he’s been…different.

He’s been…off.

But Peter’s calm. He’s calm about it. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be calm.

His eye is just twitching a little bit.

Rhodey looks at Tony, and then he looks at Peter, and then he looks at Tony again. He narrows his eyes, like he’s trying to assess the situation.

“He’s just—I don’t know,” Peter says, blowing out a breath. He wrings his hands together and cracks his jaw.

“Is this a spidey sense thing?” Rhodey asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

Peter shrugs, still watching him. Tony is sort of looming around—straightening a table cloth here, pushing in a chair there, glancing over his shoulder like he thinks someone is watching him. He’s sweating more than normal.

“A little bit of that, a little bit of—just—he’s acting weird,” Peter says. “Not acting like himself, I guess ever since the other night when that guy tried to break in—”

“But we dealt with that,” Rhodey says, looking at him. “It was in and out—cops came, got the guy—”

“Right, I know, but it’s been since then he’s just been like—I don’t know,” Peter says, blowing out a breath. “Like he—the other night, he forgot that I already graduated, he was asking me when I was gonna graduate—”

“We all forget that,” Rhodey says, raising his eyebrow at him. “You’re perpetually twelve—”

“You didn’t even know me when I was twelve—”

“You’re twelve now—”

Peter sighs. “Well, he normally remembers, and he was the one at my graduation screaming and yelling and making a big scene so, that’s not really—easily forgotten, and he was being weird about Spider-Man the other day—”

“Weird how?” Rhodey asks, turning towards him completely, now. “Because he’s always weird about Spider-Man. Every other day he’s messaging me like how do we convince Peter to retire?”

Peter clicks his tongue. “Asking me things he knows. Like how I make my webs and which suit is my favorite and—I don’t know, stuff like that. Weird stuff.”

“You’ve been staying at the compound since that guy tried to break in?”

“Yeah,” Peter says. “Me and May both, the apartment has that infestation, everybody’s out for at least a week.”

He clears his throat. The guy trying to break in was weird—he seemed normal, no powers, no real intentions, he got pretty far but was taken down fast, and he didn’t seem at all—fazed, by any of it. He was even polite.

Maybe it got under Tony’s skin? A lot of stuff like that does. They’ve been through enough, with the dying, coming back again two years later, him nearly dying trying to fix it all—a petty thief trying to get into an Avengers compound is just the kind of irritation that might set him off. Last straw kinda deal.

Rhodey stares over at Tony again, and Peter looks too. Tony is being twitchy. He’s talking to waiters and he’s got his hands behind his back and his fingers are twitching.

“Has Pepper said anything to you?” Rhodey asks.

“Has Pepper said anything to you?” Peter asks, raising his eyebrows. “Because she’s more likely—I mean, with me, we talk about MIT, when I start, how my summer’s going, we talk about, um, TikTok recipes, we talk about MJ, and Tony in the capacity of like, Iron Man, and Spider-Man, or his birthday, or Christmas, but not like—I’m just saying, she’s more likely to—have said something to you, or Happy, than me.”

“No, she hasn’t, but now that you mention—and he is acting weird right now—and yesterday he did get off the phone fast, different from how he normally…” Rhodey trails off, shaking his head.

“Maybe he’s sick?” Peter asks, worrying a little bit more now. He thought maybe he was overreacting, he thought Rhodey would brush him off and he’d feel better and then Tony would magically start acting normal again after the conversation. “Nervous? He doesn’t usually—”

“No,” Rhodey says, shaking his head. “Not nervous, these things are—easy, like the back of his hand—sick, maybe, but I thought he was well beyond hiding sick from us, so I hope not—” He looks resolute, all of a sudden, and he claps Peter on the shoulder. “I’m gonna go talk to him. We’ve got an hour or so still, of set-up, so let’s just—just keep on putting out the numbers, doing everything on your list—”

“Okay,” Peter says, nodding, and Rhodey pats him on the shoulder again, moving past him. Peter watches, nonchalantly, as Rhodey walks up to Tony, taking his arm and sort of moving him across the room.

And it’s probably fine.

Rhodey’s gonna talk to him, figure it out, and it’s gonna be okay.

Peter keeps repeating that to himself, as he does his little jobs, and he marks them off his list in his notepad—table numbers, check, badges at the door, check, banners, check, taste test the hors d'oeuvres, mostly check, and he totally had that spelled wrong in his notes and it’s fine—

And when people start to arrive, he realizes that he hasn’t seen Tony or Rhodey since—Rhodey left to go talk to him.

And he gets a little nervous and he looks around, trying to scan the room—not completely full yet, and nothing’s started, but Pepper is here and he sees Happy—

—and May makes him jump when she shows up behind him.

“What’s wrong, honey?” she says, giving him that look, that look that’s gotten sharper and even more severe with every one of his near death experiences.

So he decides not to tell her what’s going on in his head. Which is usually the opposite of what she wants, but this probably isn’t anything, so. “Nothing,” he says, clearing his throat, still trying to scan around. But Tony and Rhodey aren’t here, not anywhere he can see.

“That’s not your nothing face,” she says, rubbing his arm. “Do you have a job you’re supposed to be doing? Is your brain tingling?”

He narrows his eyes at her. “No, it’s—no, it’s not—I gotta, uh, one second—can you make sure you get me one of those little wonton things? Or like three of them? I keep seeing them on the trays and I haven’t gotten to try one yet—”

“You’re concerned about that?” she asks, her eyes still worried and distrustful.

“Yes,” he says, grinning at her quickly before he starts to go looking.

Part of him feels like he should say something to Pepper, but he doesn’t want to stress her out—and like, it’s probably nothing, everything is probably fine, and he makes a beeline for the door that leads to the little backstage area.

“Tony?” he says, and the crowd noise goes muffled when he lets the door swing closed behind him. It’s so quiet back here—he doesn’t even see any of the employees or the guys that do the lights or any of Tony’s security—there wasn’t even anybody at the door when he scanned in.

He hears what sounds like something—brushing against the ground—

“Tony?” Peter asks again, glancing around. “Rhodey? Are you guys, uh—I feel like we’re getting ready to—”

Peter turns another corner and stops dead.

Rhodey is on the ground, knocked out, and Tony is dragging him by the arms. He looks up, and sees Peter there, and the look on his face—he doesn’t—Peter’s brain is going a mile a minute and he’s already surging forward to help but the look on Tony’s face—it registers somewhere in the back of Peter’s mind…

“Oh my God, what—what happened?” Peter asks, rushing over and kneeling down next to Rhodey. “What happened, what did—”

“Uh, he fell,” Tony says, and he kneels down next to him. He nods, and widens his eyes and shakes his head, and he doesn’t seem nearly as concerned as he usually would be. Tony normally loses his mind when Rhodey so much as gets a paper cut, so this is…this is…

“How?” Peter asks, looking at Tony and back at Rhodey again. “He was just—”

“I don’t think he ate enough,” Tony says.

Every alarm bell is going off in Peter’s head. They’ve been going off tonight, and for a couple days, honestly, if he really thinks about it, but it’s loud now. He feels like time is slowing down, like his vision is getting narrow, like all of his senses are on high and zeroing in.

And it feels wrong. The shift in the air and his own suspicion, it feels wrong. What would be wrong with Tony?

But that’s where this is going.

It’s focusing on him.

Peter looks at Rhodey, and there’s a bruise on his cheek—

And Tony is clenching and unclenching his fist—

“Tony?” Peter asks, slowly, glancing up at him. His brain isn’t working. It isn’t working and it’s working too fast and he feels like he’s trudging through sludge. Every move is the wrong move.

And Peter looks at him in a certain way. With suspicion. And he hates it, and he feels sick, but he can’t shake it—

And Tony doesn’t answer him. He just looks at him, and the light that’s usually behind his eyes is gone, and his expression is one Peter doesn’t recognize.

Like someone else is living in his skin.

And just as that thought takes hold and sends chills down Peter’s spine, setting off a whole new line of panicked questions in his head, Tony clicks his tongue. And he sighs.

“Shit,” he breathes. And it’s his voice, of course it’s his voice, but it sounds twisted, and different, and before Peter can even react, before he can pounce on the alarm bells and the way his senses are narrowing and signaling, Tony surges forward with a stiff arm to Peter’s throat, and knocking him to the ground.

Tony punches him, with his full strength behind it, and Peter is so shocked that he doesn’t even block, and he tastes blood immediately. He winces, gasping, and he blocks the next one, and then Tony is grabbing his forearms and tossing him across the room.

Peter hits a thing of shelving, and a bunch of buckets fall down on top of him, and through the pandemonium, he sees Tony running away from him.

“What the fuck,” Peter breathes, and he scrambles to his feet—

And Tony would never hit him, ever, not ever, and Peter’s head pounds, with the force of the punches, with the alarms going off, with fear and worry, and is this a clone, is it mind control—either way he has to get him, there’s a reason, but what is it, what is it—

And if he’s a clone it’d be different, but if it’s mind control, Peter might be able to get through to him, he might be able to break it—

And Peter scrambles to his feet, wiping the blood from under his nose with the back of his hand, and he starts taking off in the same direction Tony did—

And he can’t even call his name before he’s taking the full force of a repulsor blast.

He’s knocked backwards again, slamming into the wall, and he can feel it cave in against his back with the strength of the hit. He coughs, gasping, and his jacket is smoldering and his skin underneath it is too, and he sees Tony standing there with the repulsor aimed at him—he’s only wearing one, and Peter rolls out of the way, narrowly avoiding getting hit again and trying to catch his breath.

He’s not thinking, because nothing makes sense, and Peter just rushes at him and tackles him to the floor—

And Tony punches him again, with the iron hand this time, and Peter’s neck twists hard with the hit—his jaw cracks, blood in his teeth—

And everything in him is screaming to fight back, fight back, but it’s Tony, he—he can’t—he can’t hurt him he fucking can’t hurt him—

And he grimaces, metal in his mouth, and grabs both of Tony’s wrists, mid-flail, and pins him to the ground—

“Doesn’t fucking matter, it’s set,” Tony hisses, and he doesn’t even sound like himself, and the way his face is contorting, he doesn’t look like himself either. Peter’s heart is in his throat, and he dodges another repulsor blast that Tony manages to get off, and Peter covers the repulsor with his hand and twists Tony’s fist and focuses—

“What is? What is?” Peter knows it’s not him, not right now, not really, but he can’t help— “Tony, Tony, are you in there? Are you in there, can you hear—”

“It’ll still do damage where it is—they’d never scan Tony Stark himself at one of his own events,” Tony says, and he grins, manic. “Good way to get it done, huh? One big blast, kill him, ruin his reputation at the same time—”

And Peter’s mind drifts again, like a lifeboat at sea, and he remembers Tony saying earlier that he wouldn’t need his webshooters here, but he packed them anyway. He remembers him with a gym bag, a duffel, he remembers oh nothing, just a few extra lights, and May is here and Rhodey and Happy and people are starting to arrive and Tony himself—Tony himself, and he’s not a clone, he’s not, they’re—they’re trying to kill him, it’s—it’s mind control, it has to be, they used him to smuggle a device in, and they’re trying to kill him—

Peter’s mind drifts, and guides him, and every time it feels like a pull, like a bunch of arrows, but this is more powerful than he’s felt in a while—

And Tony knees him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him again—Tony grabs him by his shoulders and Peter wrenches away, and they both stumble to their feet again and for a minute they’re in a boxing match, except Peter keeps getting hit, because he’s pulling his punches, because it’s Tony, it’s Tony—

“Stop, stop, stop, you’re—”

Another blow across his cheek, breaking the skin, and he hears a high pitch in his ear, and Tony grabs him by the throat and shoves him against the wall—

And Peter gasps, and pushes him, hard, and Tony trips back and nearly falls and even the way he’s moving right now doesn’t seem like him—

And Peter rushes away and tries to run, his head drifting, pulling him, alert, alert—

Webshooters, backpack, the duffel—they were together, he left it—left it with their stuff, back here, when they—when they got here—

And there are arrows in his head and they’re pulsing and buzzing like neon signs, and he knows he’s going the right way—

But he’s being pulled back to the ground by his ankle, and his head cracks on the tile, and it’s stars and metal and arrows and buzz buzz, how much time is on the clock, we don’t know, we don’t even know it’s a bomb, we don’t even know if it’s counting down, but it sure as shit feels like it—

And he tries to scramble up again and his spidey sense can usually help him from all angles, but it feels off, here, and he knows it is when Tony hits him in the face again, when he grabs him and throws him—and punches him again, rattling his brain in his skull—

And it’s because it’s Tony, because he’s not—he’s not a threat, but he is, he is, right now he is—

“Tony!” Peter yells, because maybe he can get through, maybe he can— “Please—”

And he dodges out of the way of another hit, and stumbles up against the far wall in the narrow backstage hallway—

“Tony, this isn’t—it’s me, it’s Peter, Tony, you have to fight this!” he yells, and he starts running again—again—

“He’s not home!” Tony sing-songs, laughing. “Should have known you’d be fucking trouble, a stupid fucking kid is Spider-Man—”

And Peter runs from him, and sees the fire alarm on the wall, and he grabs it and pulls it as he passes it by—

And the alarm goes off in the real world now, in tune with the one in his head, flashing red and white. He hears Tony curse and yell behind him, and Peter has to—he has to—

Doesn’t fucking matter, it’s set—it’ll still do damage where it is—

It has to be a bomb, it has to be—

And he grits his teeth—Tony is still on his heels, and tears sting in Peter’s eyes along with the heartbeat thump of the pulp his face is turning into, and he sucks in a breath and dodges another repulsor blast—

He has to get him to stop, stop, stop trying to stop him—

And he turns around, and tries to hold back and focus at the same time—

“I’m sorry, I’m—I’m so so sorry—”

And he punches him once, and then again, directly in the face, and Peter knows how strong he is and he tries not to hurt him too badly, and Tony crumples and Peter catches him, guiding him to the ground—

And even though the arrows and the alarms are buzzing and jolting in Peter’s entire body now, he sniffles through the blood and makes sure Tony is still breathing, makes sure he still has a pulse, and he is, he does, and Peter squeezes his shoulder and he can’t think about after, not til they get there—

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, squeezing his shoulder again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

And he gets up and he doesn’t let himself look back and he starts running again—

And he’s limping now, and he doesn’t know where that came from, and he finds the place where they stored their bags—

And alarms in his head, and the fire alarm in the building, and lights flashing on and off and he can hear the insanity in the main ballroom, and he finds the duffel and rips it open and—

It is a bomb.

And it’s got a five minute counter.

Peter scrambles, his head pounding pulsing sick, and he gets his webshooters out and puts them on and grabs the entire duffel bag and slings it over his shoulder.

And he makes a break through the nearest emergency door.

And he gets a running start and leaps into a swing, and his whole face hurts and the emergency in his head is steeping him in a bubble now, because the source is with him, and the danger is still back there, because he doesn’t know if knocking Tony out broke the mind control or if he’s gonna wake up still trapped as an angry Terminator—

And Peter swings, trying to launch himself higher and higher, and he can hear the timer clicking and he keeps track of the count and he can’t be a second off or this is gonna go south—

And it might not work anyway—

And this is dire straits, but Peter finds himself thinking of normal things, and they rise above the noise in his head and the oncoming sirens and he doesn’t feel calm, exactly—his face is pulsing with the pain of the hits he took and he feels like he lost a couple teeth, and his shoulder feels like it’s not in the socket properly every time he swings higher, and his leg is in fire and his spidey sense is an orb of panic, encasing him in a snow globe, but—

He thinks of watching that African Grey Parrot with MJ and Ned the other day, for two hours straight, wiping out the entire YouTube catalog of all his antics. He thinks about the yoga class with May at Bryant Park they got with that Groupon and the seven chai lattes she had lined up beside her mat like bowling pins. He thinks about touring the MIT campus with Tony and the way he introduced him to everybody and said this kid is gonna be the best student you ever have. Sharing french fries at Sebastian’s Cafe. I’m so proud of you.

And he hears the beeping speed up, and he’s thinking of all of that and everything else and why did I wear these shoes why not the brown ones as he tosses the duffel into the air at the arc of his highest swing, and it explodes above him in a mess of orange fireball and knocks him right out of the air—

Tony wakes up broken apart.

He doesn’t open his eyes right away. He’s not in the vice grip anymore, not locked into some subconscious pit in his own body while some asshole takes the reins, but he feels like—he feels like the asshole could take over again at any minute, like he’s still in his head somewhere. Dormant, waiting for a moment of weakness so he can shove Tony back down in his cage—

His hands are cuffed together, and he’s—he’s cuffed to something—

He groans, rattling his hands a little bit, and he wakes up and—

Rhodey and Pepper are there. He’s on the floor, and cuffed to a pipe in the wall, and they’re sitting in front of him, and they both look wary and he doesn’t fucking blame them, and his head is pounding and his memories are slapdash watercolor but—

“It’s me,” he breathes, his throat hurting. “It’s me, it’s me—”

“There’s something wrong with you,” Rhodey says, and he exchanges a look with Pepper. He’s got a butterfly bandage on his cheek and Tony thinks that’s me, my fault and what else did he, what else—

“No, I know,” Tony says, squeezing his eyes shut, and his head is pounding and it feels like someone shredded him from the inside out, and—

Tony, you have to fight this—

He remembers, barely—the NYPD taking that guy away, laughing at the idea that they had to ‘save Iron Man’, and he was alone that night and still skeeved off over the whole thing and then he felt the pinch on his arm and felt the thing burrowing and he panicked and he couldn’t even panic for long enough before he seized, before he fell inside himself—

“Thing in my arm,” he croaks, still squeezing his eyes shut tight, because light hurts because voices hurt because everything hurts, and he’s trying to put together the puzzle of his memories and he feels like he might throw up because—because he’s here now but the other guy—he’s here too, he’s still in there, he’s still—and any moment he could— “There’s a thing in my upper arm, left arm—you need to—dig it out, I think it’s right below—right under the skin, it’s like—it made me—made me susceptible, created a link, I don’t fucking know, get it out. You need to get it out.”

“Tony, what—”

Pepper’s voice.

“Pep, he’s—”

“It’s me right now, get it out of my arm or it might not be me in—” He opens his eyes too fast, and really feels like he’s gonna fucking throw up, and they’re both looking at him like he’s the biggest piece of trash they’ve ever had the misfortune of knowing, and that makes him sick too, and what did he—what did he do, what—puzzle pieces, shifting, falling off a glass table—

And he feels his hands breaking skin—

“Jesus Christ,” Rhodey says, and he shifts around and moves over to Tony’s left side, pushing up his sleeve. Tony isn’t even sure where the hell they are right now—he was deep inside, dark and dank and paralyzed in his own body—

“Jesus,” Rhodey says again, and Tony cranes his neck a bit and sees it, feels Rhodey running his finger over a little bump in his arm about the size of a nickel—

“Cut it out,” Tony says, closing his eyes again. “I’m serious, find a knife, cut it out, that’s—”

“Tony,” Pepper says, and she’s rubbing his knee—

“Pepper,” Rhodey says, in that warning tone he has, and the fact that he has to warn Tony’s wife not to touch him is just—

“Cut it out, Rhodey, I’m serious—”

“Alright, Jesus Christ, alright—” And he scrambles away—

“Sterilize it, Rhodey,” Pepper calls after him, looking at Tony again. Her face is streaked with worry, and she looks at him with wariness and pity and love all at the same time. “Tony, why didn’t you—you couldn’t say—”

“I was here but I wasn’t,” he breathes, and the cuffs are hurting his wrists, and everything is fucking hurting, and what did he do what did he do how the fuck long has it been. “Someone—someone got me, I let my guard down and someone—”

It was so easy. The guy used himself as a distraction, as bait, and then he—he did whatever the hell he did and then he was in Tony’s head—

“Okay, okay,” Rhodey says, rushing back around the corner again. “Close your eyes, Tony, if you are—Tony, goddamnit—”

Tony swallows hard, nodding and closing his eyes, and he winces, holding onto the pipe as Rhodey cuts into his skin. He does it fast, and Tony grits his teeth, and he feels Rhodey take the thing out and then he hears him stomping and stomping and stomping—

Feels like plates falling and crashing to the ground inside Tony’s skull.

He doesn’t get it all, but he gets flashes—the bomb under his hands, Rhodey confronting him, Peter—

Peter.

He remembers hitting him. Over and over, and is that the same hit or—how many times did he—

Peter hitting the wall, and Tony recoils, a tremor running through him, and what did he, what did—

“Where’s Peter?” he asks, looking back and forth at them. His arm is throbbing, everything hurts, he’s frail and sick and he’s probably gonna fucking puke but he doesn’t care. “Where’s Peter, where is he?”

They both just stare at him, and kind of look at each other, and Tony’s heart sinks.

“What, did I kill him?” he asks, his voice breaking. He grabs onto the bar he’s cuffed to, feeling like he needs to hold on. He’s terrified. “What, what? Where is he?”

“Tony, you were…” Rhodey starts, shaking his head. “You—the kid knew you were acting weird and I went to confront you and you knocked me out—and I guess—Jesus, I guess you were—are, I don’t goddamn know—being mind controlled, and you brought a bomb in here—we’re at the gala, for the new facility—and Peter sussed you out and you two got into it and he knocked you out and I guess—knocked this guy’s control on you loose enough—but he—he took the bomb and—he had webshooters and he—”

Tony closes his eyes, white noise eating into his vision, and he feels like he’s gonna pass out. “Is Peter dead?” he breathes, shaking.

“We’re trying to find him,” Pepper says, and she rubs Tony’s knee again. “Some people got footage, he tossed it into the air and he was blown back and now we can’t—Happy is out there looking, Sam and Natasha are looking, we’ve got emergency deployment teams looking—”

“Uncuff me, please,” Tony half-whispers, because his voice gets caught in his throat. “I need to help, I need to—I need to help look for him—”

“Tony, you’re—”

“He’s not in my head anymore,” Tony snaps, looking at Rhodey. He doesn’t know how the fuck he can prove that, but he can feel it now. It’s different, he’s—he feels ill, and weak, but he doesn’t feel trapped. He doesn’t feel like the ground is about to fall out from underneath him. “And you need to find someone to get that dipshit, he was supposed to be in jail, but right now, I’m—I’m in here alone, okay? I wanna help look for Peter, I want to—please let me, please. You can stay with me, but I need to—just—please. Please.”

Pepper and Rhodey exchange a look, and Tony keeps getting flashes—his fist connecting with Peter’s face, grabbing him and throwing him against the wall—and he shakes them off, swallowing hard. “Please,” he breathes.

Rhodey heaves a sigh. “Lemme get the key.”

Tony watches the footage from the quinjet while they scan over the city. He was ruthless, relentless, and he watches himself grab Peter by the throat, toss him every which way, hit him and hit him and hit him again. He made him bleed, over and over, he shot him and burned him up and dragged him to the ground, and Peter barely fought him. He actively avoided it, and got worse because of it. Tony keeps watching, and before long Clint is walking over and taking the phone from him.

“It wasn’t you,” he says, giving him a pointed look. “Alright? You know that. It wasn’t you.”

“Sure looked like me,” Tony says, getting up and walking back over to Friday’s main control panel. Peter wasn’t in a suit, so this is harder than normal.

“It wasn’t,” Clint says, sitting back in the pilot’s seat. And he doesn’t say much else about it, but Tony knows he knows firsthand what he’s going through, what this feels like. And it helps a little bit, but not much. The images are imprinted in his head.

He loves Peter. May trusts Tony with her nephew, her surrogate son, the person in her care, and it’s gotten to the point that it’s just a given that Peter is safe with Tony, that Tony’s always gonna help him and protect him. But now there’s this. Now there’s Tony punching him and hitting him and choking him and making him bleed, and he looks down at his hands and they shake.

Nobody else was hurt, he didn’t do anything else, but that’s because Peter took the bomb. He took that on himself, Tony’s mistake, Tony’s problem, and he put himself in danger to solve it and save everybody. And now they can’t find him.

Tony wavers back down into the closest seat.

“Stop beating yourself up,” Pepper says, walking out of the back compartment and sitting down next to him. “It wasn’t you. You’re a victim here too.”

“I hurt him, whether it was…me in charge or not,” Tony says, his eyes straining with tears as he looks at her. “These hands hurt him. And I almost…blew up the goddamn gala, if it wasn’t for him noticing—”

“I didn’t notice,” she says. “I should have—Rhodey should have—”

“You guys are busy,” Tony says, looking at the screen again. He’s got a social media tracker up too, and so many people are talking about what happened. Peter didn’t have a mask on, but thankfully, there’s no good footage of his face.

Everyone is calling him a hero. Because that’s exactly what he is, what he always has been.

“You need people to look out for you too,” Pepper says, running her hand through his hair. “We should have done better, but Peter’s got that little…alert system in his brain, and he’s intuitive, and he knows you. He loves you, he worries.”

Tony shakes his head, looking down at his hands again. He knows May is with Happy, searching, and he can’t even imagine how she feels right now. He feels fucking sick.

“You need someone to check you out too,” Pepper says, still touching him gently, and he doesn’t deserve that either. “Probably have a concussion.”

“Not til we find him,” Tony croaks. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Tony,” she says, but he shakes his head. He’s supposed to be better than this. They defeated a fucking Titan, they defied death and time and saved the goddamn world. And he lets a petty thief mind control him? Take away his agency? Hit Rhodey, threaten an event with innocent people, hurt Peter, badly, put him in harm’s way—

“Tony,” Clint says. “I think we got something.”

Peter needs to get up.

He’s been laying here for forty five years he’s an old man now—

He needs to get back he needs to fix Tony so nothing else happens he needs to protect him and get that guy that did this it must have been that guy that’s when it started and he doesn’t know how he did it but he mind controlled him somehow—

Peter coughs, twisting onto his side, and he spits out some blood, and a tooth, and he hopes it’s his wisdom tooth that’s been bothering him the top right one—

He got exploded, that’s right—

And his face hurts, and where the repulsor got him is burning and he feels like he’s wheezing and he falls back on his back again and he feels like he’s on fire a little bit and is his left eye closed or welded closed or gone forever and his leg—twisted—

And just a second just a second—

Black again, in a wonder wheel of spiraling stars—

“Hey, hey. Pete.”

He opens his eyes. Tony is there, cupping his face in his hands, and Peter smiles a little bit, dizzy.

“Is it you?” he asks, or thinks he asks. He can’t hear his own voice. Tony sounded muffled too, but he nods at him.

“It’s me,” he says. He looks so sad. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Peter closes his eyes again, because they’re so heavy. “It’s okay,” he says, and he feels like he’s being lifted up, and he doesn’t remember anything else after—

He opens his eyes. He feels like he’s moving, and he recognizes the tiny medical room in the quinjet. Tony is right next to him, and he stands up when he sees Peter’s awake, and is Peter awake? He feels…crazy, he feels…

“Tony,” he says, and he tries to sit up. “Is it you? Is it you? Are you—”

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Tony says, stepping closer. He still sounds muffled, and faraway, and so does everything else. But he looks like himself. He’s not off anymore. “I’m not gonna hurt you again. Jesus, Pete, I’m so sorry—”

Peter shakes his head, blinking at him. “You didn’t, you—it wasn’t you, you didn’t—”

“I did, technically,” Tony says, and he just stands there and he’s got tears in his eyes and he isn’t really looking at him. He’s close, but he’s keeping his distance. “We’re on our way back, to the compound, May and everybody else is meeting us there—you, uh, you saved everybody, you’re burned in a couple places from the blast and my—goddamn repulsor, but Helen’s gonna—when we get back, she’s going to—”

He sighs, stops talking and rests his elbows on the bar of the bed, and hangs his head, like he’s ashamed. Peter hasn’t ever really seen him like this, and his brain still feels like it’s swiss cheese but he sits up a little bit more. He covers Tony’s hands with his own and squeezes them, and tries not to think about how much everything hurts.

“You wouldn’t be mad at me if this was opposite,” Peter says, staring at the top of his head. “You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t blame me at all and I don’t blame you either so. So. Just don’t even, I mean. Just don’t.”

“You can’t even talk straight,” Tony says, still not looking up.

“That’s most of the time,” Peter says, still holding onto his hands.

Tony sighs. “I put you in danger and I hurt you. I watched the footage, it was a fucking nightmare, and you let me keep hitting you because you know how strong you are and you didn’t want to hurt me so you just let me keep hurting you—”

“It wasn’t you,” Peter says, trying to be assertive, and he’s so tired, he’s so, so tired. He leans forward, resting his head on Tony’s shoulder, and he closes his eyes. “It wasn’t your fault. It isn’t. So stop. I know you won’t and you’re gonna live in this and punish yourself forever but like, don’t. Don’t do that.” He sighs, leaning into him. “Did you guys get the bad guy—”

“Sounded like it,” Tony says, and he’s still hanging his head, and Peter sighs. “I think so. I gotta check in with Rhodey again. Make sure nobody else got mind controlled.”

“So it all worked out,” Peter says.

“You nearly getting exploded is not it all working out.”

“I didn’t get exploded I only got slightly singed and nobody else got exploded and you are no longer mind controlled so. Win to me.”

Tony sighs again, and he gently, very gently, wraps his arms around Peter and hugs him. “I’m gonna jump off a fucking roof,” he says. “I never wanna hurt you. Never. I can barely remember it, I’ve got flashes—”

“Don’t try,” Peter says, reaching up and holding onto his arm.

“—but I saw the footage—”

“Forget it,” Peter says. “Erase it.”

Tony shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have ever—allowed it to happen in the first place, and I still don’t know how the hell it did, and I’ve just got—a lot of work to do, to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I can’t let myself get taken like that, used like a fucking goon against people I love. Jesus Christ. You’re hurt because of me.”

“Nope,” Peter says, because he doesn’t have the brain power to try and fight him harder, even though he knows it’s gonna be a guilt battle probably for the rest of their lives.

“Pete,” Tony says, still holding onto him.

“Nope,” Peter says again, and he drifts. Spidey sense is dormant. He’s a piece of raw meat but he’s—safe.

And Tony isn’t there when Peter wakes up again, back at the compound. May is there, and after she hugs him and kisses him about a hundred times, she breaks out the Tupperware, containing all the little appetizers from the gala that never was.

And Tony stays missing in action the next couple days, even though everyone else comes by to see how Peter is doing. Rhodey implies that Tony paid a special visit to the asshole that did this, but he doesn’t go into detail on what the encounter entailed. The guy did have hidden powers, clearly, and Doctor Strange even gets involved trying to figure out how he did it, what exactly that thing was that they pulled out of Tony’s arm.

But three days later and Peter still hasn’t seen him again.

“Maybe he’s busy,” Ned says, as he and Peter and MJ walk up and down the hallways. Peter broke his ankle, somewhere in all the insanity, and pulled a muscle in his calf. He’s been trying to walk around a lot during the day, even though he’s still on bed rest.

“He’s not busy,” Peter says. “He’s avoiding me.”

“Well, he beat the shit out of you, and he feels bad,” MJ says.

Peter sighs.

“I’d feel bad too,” MJ says, “even if I was mind controlled. It still sucks, I mean, when I saw him his knuckles were still all bruised. Just a constant reminder of what someone made him do.”

“You saw him?” Peter asks, looking at her.

She looks a little bit like she wants to take a back, but she nods. “Yeah, uh, earlier. When I got here, when I was talking to Pepper.”

“Did you talk to him?” Peter asks, as they turn around at the end of the hall. He’s trying to sound nonchalant and failing spectacularly.

“Not really,” MJ says, taking Peter’s hand. “He wouldn’t really even look at me, I can tell he—he’s just really guilty. He feels really bad.”

“Peter doesn’t want him to feel bad,” Ned says.

“Yeah, but once you feel bad, you feel bad,” MJ says, “it’s not like it magically goes away because someone says that it should.”

“Maybe we can magic him,” Ned says. “Doctor Strange, you know. He could do that.”

“Yeah, let’s just hack into his mind again,” MJ says, widening her eyes at him. “I’m sure that’s the right course of action.”

Peter sighs again. “I don’t know what to do,” he says. “He could do this forever. And ever and ever.”

“Well, definitely as long as you’re all bruised up,” MJ says, reaching over with her free hand and brushing her thumb over Peter’s cheek.

And two more days go by without seeing Tony, and it’s almost time for Peter and May to head back to their apartment, even though May said they could stay at the compound as long as he wanted to.

And Peter decides to do something.

“Friday is he still there?” Peter asks, making his way down to the workshop.

“Yes, Peter,” Friday says, in Peter’s ear.

“And you’re not lying to me?” Peter asks, rushing down the stairs, quick as he can with a bum leg.

“No, Peter,” Friday says. “I am not permitted to lie to you.”

Peter smiles to himself. He knows he still doesn’t look wonderful, but he looks a lot better than he did, and either way he can’t take this anymore. And he gets down to the workshop in what feels like record time and he scans in without trying to make a lot of noise, and when he opens the door he sees Tony at the back door as if he’s trying to escape.

“Stop!” Peter yells, his hands up. “Stop! Don’t leave!”

Tony whips around, his eyebrows furrowed. “Kid?” he says, already walking back over in his direction. “Are you okay?”

“No!” Peter says, a little more forcefully than he intended to.

“What’s wrong?” Tony asks, gently, weaving around the work stations and reaching his side.

“You’re ignoring me!” Peter says, and he sounds like a small, stupid child, but he doesn’t do anything to change that. “And I don’t like it.”

Tony’s face falls, and he nods, glancing away from him. “I’m not…ignoring you, I just—I felt like—”

“I know you feel bad,” Peter says, sucking in a big breath. “And I know me telling you not to feel bad doesn’t change the fact that you feel bad, but I seriously don’t want you to feel bad, because now this whole like—keeping yourself separate and out of my sight thing feels like you’re punishing me.”

“I’m not,” Tony says, fast. “I was just—”

“You don’t need to punish yourself either—”

“I wasn’t really…exactly…c’mere, come sit down—”

“I’m okay,” Peter says.

“I know, I know, I wanna sit,” Tony says, taking Peter’s arm and tugging him over to the closest workstation with two rolling chairs. They sit down, and they both sigh, and Tony keeps talking. “I was just, uh—I sent out messages to everyone involved at the gala explaining things a little bit, and I got everything rescheduled on my own, and I, uh—met up with the asshole at Riker’s and attacked him and nearly got arrested myself—”

Peter leans on the workstation, running his hands over his face. He can imagine that, and he doesn’t like it.

“—and I’ve been building some new security protocols, and working on another nano suit for you that’s a lot like my watch gauntlet that can—stay on your person, read your heart rate, come to you if you need it—but I’m trying to make sure it only comes in the correct instance, and not if you like, see a cute dog—”

Peter laughs a little bit, shaking his head at him.

Tony smiles softly. “But I’ve been doing all that, along with maybe, slightly punishing myself by—staying out of your way—”

“You’re not in my way,” Peter says, feeling a little bit too emotional, maybe. “You’re not. You never have been. Never will be.”

“You don’t know that—”

“Tony—”

“What I mean is…old man, long shadow, you know, I’ve been there—”

“You’re not your dad,” Peter says, shaking his head at him. “You’re a good—you’re a good father figure, you’re a…good father.”

Tony brightens up a little bit, and his nod almost looks like a question. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Peter says. “No matter what.”

Tony nods again, more solidly this time. “One more thing—”

“No more saying sorry,” Peter says, shaking his head. “You told me I can never say sorry again, well now, you can’t either so, how about—”

“Thank you,” Tony says, and Peter stops talking. “Thank you for—realizing that something was wrong, thank you for figuring it out, thank you for knocking me on my ass when I wasn’t me, thank you for—saving everybody and me too, in the process. Thank you, Pete, really. Thank you.”

Peter’s throat goes tight, and there are tears in his eyes, and he nods again. “You’re welcome,” he says, holding his chin high. “Any time.”

“And I’m sorry,” Tony says, fast, rolling forward and wrapping him up in a big hug. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Last time, I’m sorry. Okay I’m done. I’m so sorry. Okay I’m actually done.”

Peter snorts, hugging him too, burying his face in his shoulder. “No more mind control,” he says, letting the apologies drift into the air unanswered.

“Oh no, never again,” Tony says, rubbing Peter’s back. “And I figure, when you’re—when you’re tip top again, we can get into the ring, and I’ll feel better if you get a few good shots in, and I’ll forget about the whole thing if you break my nose—”

“No,” Peter says, shaking his head and still holding onto him. “I’m not doing that.”

“Too afraid to box an old man, huh?”

“My old man, maybe,” Peter says, feeling particularly sentimental.

And Tony laughs, in a rush of breath, and holds him reverently for a second. He pulls back, and pats Peter’s cheek. “We’ll see,” he says. “Might get Rhodey in there too, to make it fair—”

“He’ll probably take you up on that,” Peter says, getting to his feet. “Okay, lemme see the suit, remember I get last say in design decisions—”

“Oh, you aren’t going for bright yellow?” Tony asks, resting his hand on Peter’s shoulder as they head over to the main workstation. “You don’t like that?”

“Better than that time you tried to integrate green and made me look like a Christmas tree,” Peter says, grinning at him.

“Hey,” Tony says, typing in a few commands and bringing up the specs. “I thought that was very festive.”

And they start working, and Peter remembers feeling safe, before, when they were on the quinjet and his brain was still scrambled. But he feels like they’re on the other side of it now, for real.

Safe. Really, truly safe.

#irondad #iron dad #peter parker #tony stark #spider-man #iron man #works by iron spider #irondad fic #iron dad fic #marvel fic

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