st_arkintern | (no subject)

(no subject)

It is a clear, windless day when Peter Parker steps outside the Madonna Inn, a backpack slung over his shoulder. Peter is grateful for the good weather. It's still a little nippy out (his nose tickles from the cold), but it's nothing that Peter can handle after fifteen New York winters.

Peter quickens his pace afterwards and jogs over to where Tony Stark is already standing on the Madonna Inn's mostly-empty parking lot. "Hey! Ready to get started?"

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Peter glances over at Tony. "Seeing me grow?" he repeats.

"Yeah." Tony plucked his pen back up, rolling it between his fingers. "You haven't noticed?"

"I mean, it's kinda a strange choice of words," Peter says, suddenly embarrassed. He is less surprised by the fact itself as he is the admission. Tony wasn't usually this open about anything.

"Which part?" Tony asked innocently enough, setting his hands back to work on the design.

"The part about me growing," he says, and then Peter finds himself second-guessing himself. "I mean, I dunno. Do you mean you just like spending time with me?"

“Teaching you. Watching you figure things out for yourself. Asking questions. Pushing back. Making mistakes. Carving your own success.” Tony brushed the patch of skin under his nose, sheepish but earnest.

"We're going to keep doing this when we get home, right?" Maybe it wasn't right for him to feel so insecure when Tony has given him no reason to doubt him. "I mean, I know you're very busy there, but here..."

You're not.

Tony lowered his pen once again, turning his head towards Peter. His expression was soft, but it was keenly observant.

Peter dampens his lips and looks down; he wishes that he had been working on something because he could pretend to be so busily working on it that he didn't notice how intensely Tony was looking at him.

"Sorry, it was a stupid thing to ask," he says, avoiding Tony's eyes.

"You say that like What Happens At The Inn, Stays At The Inn." Tony pulled him in for another side hug, holding him there against him.

Peter lets himself be pulled in.

"I mean you got work and Avengers and stuff," he says. "And I have school and Academic Decathlon and being Spider-Man."

“Yeah?” Tony gave his back a firm pat. “You’re worried about our worlds getting siloed off.”

"I mean, we do have a lot of free time here."

“It won’t be day to day like this once we’re home.” Tony brought his hand back to rest on Peter’s shoulder closest to him. “Weekends?”

"Weekends, yeah," Peter says, nodding. "You should come over for dinner sometime, too. May makes a lot of strange food, but most of the time it's pretty good."

Turkey meatloaf notwithstanding.

"Can I trust her not to sabotage it?" Tony chuckled, all too aware of the woman's distaste.

"Yeah," he says. "I think if you come around a little more, May might really start to like you."

"Well, then I've got no choice." Tony winked. "Look. I get it. The Distant Dad cliche. I've got as little interest in perpetuating as you are in living it."

Peter dampens his lips.

"Can I ask you something?" he asks. "About that time we were in the car after Berlin?"

"Yeah." Tony brought his hand back, laying his pen down to rest on the table.

"Were you just... not used to people hugging you? Or was it just weird because it was me?" Peter pauses there, realizes how it might be interpreted, then quickly scrambles to clarify:

"I mean, I guess we didn't really know each other then."

"...What?" Not the smart nor cool response to give, but Tony could only squint. Whatever Peter was getting at, he was coming up blank with the recall.

"The car door thing," Peter says, embarrassed at being the only one who remembers it.

"Yeah...car door thing." Tony slowly nodded, his expression as blank as his recall. "Let's pretend I need a refresher. That day was a little hectic."

Understatement.

That embarrassment only grows. What felt like something so impactful to him was probably just another day of being Tony Stark to Tony.

"We were, uh -- we were in the car and we were talking about the Avengers. You gave this whole talk about how I shouldn't do anything you would do and shouldn't do anything you wouldn't do."

Peter pauses there, briefly. Those details aren't really relevant but he gives them out anyway. "Happy left the case outside my door and then you just leaned over to open the car door, but I thought you were coming in for a hug and it turned out you weren't."