Hellooo this is an askblog for the various Tonys and Peters that appear across my (@ursafootprints) fanfic ‘verses! (AO3!)
You can ask questions of any version of Tony and Peter from my fics! (And if you want to, you can definitely also ask questions of the side characters or OCs in my fics, but the canon characters I’m most confident with are the ones that appear in the IM and Spidey solo films, so it gets to be more of a toss-up outside of those casts!)
Please remember to say which version of the characters you want an answer from in your ask! You don’t need to use these exact terms, but the organizational system I’m going to use is:
you’re not yet done: fic: ynyd, ynyd: tony, ynyd: peter
wicked love* series, meaning you should never cross my mind and something chronic (bit demonic): fic: wicked love, wicked love: tony, wicked love: peter
Pyrite*: fic: pyrite, pyrite: tony, pyrite: peter
double-blind*: fic: double blind, double blind: tony, double blind: peter
Naturally: fic: naturally, naturally: tony, naturally: peter
and so on! Feel free to ask about the versions of characters from my other fics, too; I’ll update the tags on this org post as they become relevant.
Works marked with * are Starkercest, so please filter their fic tags if that's a squick for you! And no fear, I know this blog has a very niche audience lmao so I’ll only occasionally be posting to the main Starker tag. Thanks for reading! 💖
[fic: Perpetual Motion] Tony, what was going through your mind when Peter came to the Tower, after months of not being in contact, and hearing him beg “"I'll do anything" while kneeling at your feet to just get you to listen to what he had to say?
I didn't-- look, I thought he was just there to ask for the suit back so I was trying to shut it down before he could get too worked up about it. Obviously I wouldn't have handled it like that if I already knew what was going on.
…And then, I was worried, obviously. It wasn't like him. So either I was wrong about how he'd bounce back after I cut him off, or something else was wrong.
Perpetual Motion Peter: did Tony act in bed like how you imagined in your daydreams?
...Not really.
But it wasn't really... the same situation, I guess. In my head he always talked more, but obviously with... how things happened, he wasn't going to say anything... dirty, or romantic, or stuff about how I looked or anything. ...I guess I don't know if I'd have actually wanted him to.
But he asked me if I was okay a lot, and he did say some nice stuff. And he went slow. Those parts were the same.
For DB, how does Peter know for sure Tony got cured? Does he assume his cure worked? Is there a time where he worries SIM is still there but pretending? Is there a universe where it failed but SIM played off as being Cured?
[[🐻ursa interlude🐻
Peter technically can't know whether it worked on Tony's, like, morals, but he can confirm that there are no detectable traces of Extremis in Tony's system with a blood test! And he's able to pretty well trust that it did also cure the mental/moral changes given that Tony removed Peter's monitor band, started working on dismantling his previous Evil Plots, and was able to express earnest and accurate regret for/understanding of exactly how fucked up those plans were.
Peter's definitely On Alert for anything that seems suspicious, but cured!Tony doesn't give him much cause to really spiral about it!
As for whether SIM could've faked being cured... if he thought to, ignoring the issue of a blood test it could've worked at least for a little while, but not for terribly long!
And honestly, I don't really see him thinking to do it. Even after the events of the fic, he's too megalomaniacal to truly realize/accept that Peter does not and will not ever have more loyalty to him than he does to his own morals, and that there is absolutely no way that Peter would ever come around to accepting his plans. He would only fake being cured if he thought it was the only way to keep Peter attached to him, and he wasn't ready to accept that yet.]]
So can we discuss how uh conflicted Father’s Days are for certain Peter and Tony pairs (DB, WL) do they ignore it or are there certain expectations they still go through the motions of?
[[🐻ursa interlude🐻
Wicked Love: Peter has very little cognitive dissonance about dating his dad, so he would be all about celebrating Father's Day as per usual! And would probably go all-out about it, to make up for the probably somewhat awkward and lackluster Father's Days that happened during that period where they were still repairing their relationship.
...Tony however has very much cognitive dissonance about dating his son and would feel very conflicted about the whole idea, so likely what would happen is that he'd do his best to enjoy whatever Peter put together for him but be Off enough that Peter would notice and then have to scale back again in the future.
It would likely be one of those conversations where Peter was trying not to have hurt feelings about Tony being less than all-in on the whole incest thing because he does understand, while Tony was feeling awful for obviously hurting Peter's feelings but like, he can't snap his fingers and just be chill about the incest thing either-- a definite stress-test for the relationship as a whole, haha.
double-blind: The main issue here is really just that Tony like, hates himself and doesn't think he deserves to be celebrated as a dad, but he would do a lot better not being weird about it! He'd be able to take the gesture for what it was and appreciate the effort Peter put into it.
Meanwhile, if anything I think Peter would be determined to celebrate (though not with anything huge) in order to form new Father's Day memories with his actual in-his-right-mind dad! They would definitely both have a shitton of underlying feelings and processing to do about the whole concept, but not in a way that would take celebrating off the table.]]
In Perpetual Motion, at what point did Toomes seal his fate? Was it only after Tony knew the full depths did he uh chose for Toomes, or once Peter came in sobbing did Tony mentally knew what he was going to do?
[[🐻ursa interlude🐻
He wouldn't have insisted on Toomes being dead just for threatening to reveal Peter's identity! Learning about the sexual abuse was definitely the tipping point. Prior to that, there was always the potential that Toomes was bluffing re: outing Peter's identity and could have been reasoned with about how yeah he was definitely going to prison but it would also definitely be a smoother process for him if he kept his mouth shut-- but once Tony knew what he'd done, he was a dead man.]]
I have one little question for the amazing author and then for the characters of Double Blind:
To the author: I don't know if I'm too dumb, but could you explain the title of the fic?
Is it Double blind as in Tony being unaware of Peter's double identity, underestimating him once at the start of the fic and then twice at the end when Peter injects him the red liquid? Or double blind as in both him and Peter being unable to see past the situation? I'm dumb and curious please explain.
To Tony: Do you still regret it by the end? After all, if nothing had ever happened you would've never had a taste of Peter. You would've been forced to see him giving himself to someone else.
To Peter: how do you see the upcoming days from now on? Aren't you afraid of what will happen?
Side note; I loved this fic so much!!! Omg I could kick and scream about it all day. I wished there would be a continuation of it showing us what happened after Peter paralyzed Tony. Does he save the word? Does he just scape from the house? Does he regret it last moment and just waits by Tony's side?
Omg I just loved this fic. Anyways I talked too much I'm sorry!!! ꉂ(ˊᗜˋ*)ʱªʱªʱª
To Tony: Do you still regret it by the end?
Tony: There's no way that I wouldn't regret it. If there was ever any chance of Peter being open to our relationship moving in that direction, we could have gotten there without things playing out the way they did. It didn't need to start like that. It didn't need to be violent. I'll always regret hurting him.
To Peter: how do you see the upcoming days from now on? Aren't you afraid of what will happen?
Peter: I'm... yeah. It's really scary. I don't really know... how Dad is going to be able to break up his plans and all the people involved without... without things getting really dangerous. But-- I couldn't let him stay like that, and I couldn't let him go through with it. He was going to hurt so many people, and he wouldn't... I know that the real him wouldn't have ever wanted that. I had to do something.
[[🐻ursa interlude🐻
could you explain the title of the fic?
The title is a general reference to the varying degrees of deception that both of the characters are committing in the fic, and the resulting ignorance from the other character!
Peter is hiding his identity as Spider-man, hiding his suspicions about Tony, and then ultimately hiding his plan to cure Tony/lying about his intentions by asking to sleep with him, so those are all things that Tony is initially unaware of. Tony is hiding his role in the crime ring, hiding his sexual interest in Peter, and lying about his political intentions (by posing as a philanthropist when he actually wants to control the government,) so those are things that Peter was initially unaware of.
My hope was that it would also evoke the mutual betrayal between them-- Tony by assaulting and then imprisoning Peter, and Peter by plotting to overthrow Tony! (The wording itself is just borrowed from the concept of a double-blind clinical study, where all parties are blinded to which trials are experimental vs placebos. I often try to grab ~thematically appropriate science-related terms/phrases to use for my Starker fic titles!)
[fic: kidnapping au (from the post where Peter makes it home)] Peter, is there anything you want to say to your brother, maybe after having some more time to get used to being home?
Sometimes Peter found himself thinking that he did all that work to get home just so he could die in the right universe.
Not that he wanted to die. He didn't, really. And he knew sometimes people wanted to hurt themselves when they'd gone through something like he had, but he didn't want that either.
He didn't really want anything.
When he was still gone, he'd dreamed about coming home. He'd ached for it. He'd thought about hugging his parents. He'd thought about seeing his friends— going to the movies, playing video games, putting together Lego sets. He'd even thought about school, the dull but comforting familiarity of that routine, the praise from his teachers and the purpose that came with having something to do and the chatter of hanging out in homeroom and getting to talk to someone, anyone other than—
But school wasn't going to happen. Not anytime soon, anyway. Peter kept waiting for his parents to bring it up, but even Howard hadn't mentioned it. They just indulged him, letting him lie around the house all day wrapped in blankets like a baby, sleeping or pretending to watch TV or nodding along while they talked at him, and feeling— feeling—
And Peter missed his friends, so much, so much, but every time he thought about actually having Harry or Ned or MJ come over— after everything, after all that time, when everyone knew what happened to him even if his parents hadn't actually told the press because that's what happened to people who were kidnapped and how was he supposed to just talk about plans for the summer or the cool movies that he'd missed or funny things at school when—
He did hug his parents, though. Sometimes, when he could stand to. Sometimes he wanted to cling to his mom like a parasite and never let go, burning like lungs without air to be held by someone that actually loved him, that actually wouldn't hurt him, to have the memory seared into his skin of what family and love and safety actually felt like.
And sometimes it set him on edge even to have someone sit too close to him on the couch, like the next accidental brush against his body might finally be the touch that he could never come back from, and sometimes his feelings flipped back and forth between need and 'nonono' so quickly he was just left sitting with an agonizing, indecipherable ache that he didn't know how to get away from.
So he didn't go to school. He didn't go out to any of his old favorite haunts with his friends. He didn't poke at the projects he'd left half-completed in his corner of the family workshop. He didn't go to his family with all the impassioned speeches he'd imagined in his head about how much he loved and appreciated them or about how they had hurt him or about how they could change things so that all of them could really get along and be happy as a family.
He just let the days pass as mindlessly as he could make them, the unlocked door and his bare wrist a glaring reminder of what he could be doing with his new lease on life if he wasn't too (weakpatheticstupidwrong) to use it.
His mom wanted him to see a psychologist. Howard did too, even, or at least he wasn't against it, which— just went to show how fucked up he thought Peter must be, because Peter knew what he thought about men who went to psychologists.
Peter had gone noncommittal in his panic. His old patterns colliding with his new ones— the desire to be a good son and go with the flow to make his parents proud, the conditioning that if he let his dismay show on his face it would be taken as an excuse to be pet and coddled and fucked until he was too exhausted to be afraid anymore— and he hated it, he hated himself, he hated that after everything he was still just going to let things happen to him that he didn't want—
And then Tony had piped up with, "C'mon, give the kid a little time before you start adding stuff to his plate."
Maybe he'd seen the suppressed panic in the tension of Peter's shoulders, or maybe he'd just recognized what a waste of time it would be for Peter to try and talk about anything when he couldn't be honest about what happened.
Or maybe he had his own reasons to not want Peter to talk to a therapist, Peter had thought even in the midst of his relief, because he had weird, mean thoughts like that about Tony now.
But either way— it was enough. His mom's mouth had gone flat with uncertainty, and Howard had started in on Tony like he always always always did no matter what Tony said, all "Leave the decisions to your mother and I, Anthony," but with Tony bringing it up first it didn't leave Peter to strike out all alone when he said:
"...It might… be good to have more time first."
His parents seemed shocked to hear him speak up for reasons that Peter was too exhausted to examine, but his mom finally hesitantly agreed, and Howard followed her lead. They were worried about him, but didn't want to push him either, all of it clear on their faces.
Peter didn't know how Tony felt or what kind of expression he was wearing, because he didn't look.
---
Having Tony around was… weird.
Peter knew that what happened wasn't Tony's fault—
(Would he have taken you if he didn't know about your brother, his mind whispered.)
Peter knew that his brother wasn't the person who had hurt him, but that didn't matter to the stupid prey animal part of his brain that was always on alert for— his— moods.
They wore the same expressions. They had the same laugh. They had the same scowl. Tony's eyes were darker and his skin was smoother and he didn't laugh or smile much at all these days, except for little wincing ones sometimes like someone trying to fake enthusiasm over a bad gift, so it really seemed like that should've been enough differences. But it wasn't, and Peter found himself tracking Tony's position in a room the same way he had back in that tower, listening for footsteps or the distant sharp edge of irritation from another room or the gentle sigh that meant he was about to feel hands on his hips and lips against his neck.
Which was stupid, because Tony was avoiding him, too.
That should've been enough. The way Tony had even— thought to ask, "Do you want me to leave?", that should have been enough. He'd heard what Peter had to say and connected the dots about how Peter might feel about it and he'd offered to leave, to let Peter out of his sight, just so Peter could feel more comfortable, and— it should've been enough.
And if that hadn't done it, the fact that Tony stayed squirreled away in the workshop all day studying multiverse theory should have. Peter hadn't asked him to leave, so he was staying, tucked away where he couldn't make Peter feel scared, researching how to keep him safe from anyone else out there beyond the reaches of their universe.
It should've been enough.
Peter went to see him in the workshop that night. Their parents had already turned in, but Peter knew how late Tony stayed up when he was working on something, and Peter got all of his sleep through napping in the living room these days.
"Hey," he said as he picked his way down the stairs, and Tony looked up sharply, surprise written all over his face.
Peter didn't remember him being so expressive, before. He'd always felt like he was two steps behind, left wondering what Tony actually thought, what he actually wanted, how he actually felt.
"...Hey, kid," Tony said after a beat, with one of those forced, bad gift smiles. Peter didn't blame him. "You're still up?"
Peter shrugged, folding himself into a rolling chair that he pulled back over near the stairs. There was another one at the work bench across from Tony's that he could've pulled up to see what Tony was working on, but— neither of them wanted that, he figured.
"Thanks for backing me up before," he said, instead of 'the last time I fell asleep in my bed I woke up in that tower.' "With Mom."
Tony echoed his shrug, but his shoulders were tight, and it didn't look as casual as Peter thought it was supposed to.
"Yeah," Tony said, turning his eyes back down to the mess of paper on his bench. "Figured you might… need to get your story figured out."
Peter shook his head, winding and unwinding a loose thread from his sweater's sleeve around a finger.
"I'm not going to go."
He would, if their parents forced it. But it felt nice to say something like he had a choice.
Tony looked up, a slight pinch between his eyebrows, and Peter dropped his own gaze to his hands.
"...You could tell the truth," Tony said slowly. "I know you're… worried. But there were enough things about your case that didn't make sense… We could get them to believe you. Mom and Dad and whatever shrink."
Peter scoffed, frowning as he pulled the loose thread taut around the tip of his finger until it bloomed a deep, angry pink.
"About everything?" he asked. His pulse was fast, which was stupid.
"If you wanted to," Tony said, and speaking of stupid—
"You don't actually want me to do that," Peter said. His chest was tight. He was being rude. If he didn't calm down, Tony would—
But Tony didn't come over to cuddle him and tell him he was just tired and that he'd feel better in the morning. He just stood there, quiet, until he finally said, "You can say anything you want, Pete."
"You don't mean that." He never did. He never did, he always said that Peter could say or ask for or do whatever he wanted but it was a lie every single time— "You don't want me to go and you don't want me to talk about who took me and you don't want me to talk about us."
Peter couldn't look at his face. He didn't know why he was still afraid that Tony would be angry at him after all this time, because he never was, but he remembered what he looked like every time he ordered Peter out of the room so that he could deal with his men.
"...I want you to— I want you to feel better, kid," Tony said, and his voice was so strange that Peter couldn't picture what his face looked like.
He looked up, and Tony was—
Sad. Hurt. Helpless. It wasn't anything new after all. Usually Tony just sighed and cooed over Peter's bad moods, sympathy and pity but no real heartache, but sometimes he would look like this when Peter cried.
'I hate you,' Peter screamed at him sometimes, and it would make Tony cry too. And he'd say 'I know,' and 'I'm sorry,' and—
"He told me he loved me," Peter said abruptly, not meaning to, the words just materializing in the air, and Tony flinched like he'd been slapped.
And now that the thought was out there, Peter had to finish it.
"He told me all the time," he said. "Am I supposed to talk to someone about that? That he was nice about it. He's the one that took me and kept me and, and controlled me and didn't listen to me but he was nice. And he never teased me or bit me or pulled my hair, and he didn't call me names, he never called me a slut or a whore or anything, and he told me he loved me."
Tony looked—
Hollowed out. Miserable. Like he could sink through the floor. And Peter realized he was being mean, throwing those things they'd done together in Tony's face like he hadn't liked them at the time, he was being— horrible and spiteful for no reason, but—
"You've never said it to me at all, did you know that?" The thread around Peter's finger snapped as he pulled it too tight, and the choked flush of color in his fingertip seeped away, the skin seeming sickly pale in the new light of comparison. He said, "Not even since I got back. And— and not on the phone or on my birthday or after you fucked me, not ever. Am I supposed to— am I supposed to talk to someone about that?"
It was ridiculous. Ridiculous. Peter shook his head frantically, and he couldn't stop the words from pouring out.
"Like, what does that mean? I wanted that from you so bad and then he's the one who actually said it, and he was a— a monster, and he said it while he—" Peter's throat caught on a disgusted scoff instead of the word for what had happened to him, because after all this time he still couldn't bring himself to say it. "So what does that mean? What does that mean? What do I do with that? What's a doctor going to tell me about that?"
Tony was pale and shaking, holding himself up over his work bench. Peter felt vicious and horrible and out-of-control, like he wanted to throw something or scream or cry or make Tony hold him.
"I'm sorry," Tony said, like he always did. "I know, I'm sorry, Pete, I'm so sorry, I—"
Peter braced himself for it. 'I love you,' those words that meant everything and nothing and that he didn't know if he'd ever be able hear again without it feeling hollow—
"I can leave," Tony said. "I can go, I can leave you alone, I shouldn't be here. I just wanted to help. Tell me what you need and I'll do it, I promise, just tell me, kid."
Peter stared.
There was a part of him that wanted to be angry. That Tony still wouldn't say it, even after everything, even after what Peter had just said.
But then— he would've been angry the other way, too. That when Tony finally said it, it was only after it had been ruined for him, after Peter had damn-near begged for it.
So if he would be angry either way, maybe it wasn't even actually about the words. Maybe he just wanted to be angry, an excuse to be nasty, and Tony was a convenient outlet. Maybe that's what the other Tony had done to him— made him into the kind of person that looked for excuses to hurt people.
"I don't want you to leave," he said. It was strange to realize, his anger suddenly distant as his mind found something else to latch onto, and he continued slowly, testing the truth of the words on his tongue. "You're helping. With… research, and Mom and him."
Tony's face did something then that Peter couldn't read all the nuances of, shifting with half-formed emotion, but it finally settled on 'helpless' as he said, "You're scared of me."
Was he? Well, no, obviously he was. It may have just been a stupid animal part of him, conditioned to cringe by the set of those eyes in that face just as surely as a dog flinches at a raised hand, but he was scared. All the time, of everything, but especially Tony.
And yet—
"But I don't want you to leave," Peter said again. His eyes fell to his lap as he toyed with the thought, frowning. Tony was… a buffer between their parents, yes, and the only person who knew what actually happened, but more than that— "It… feels different, with you here. Like he can't… come after me. Even though that's stupid."
"...I thought you said he was dead," Tony said, quiet.
That's not what Peter had said. But there wasn't a point in correcting it, really, when it was probably true. The other Tony— the other-other Tony, the one with dark hollow eyes who had sent Peter home after Peter drugged away the traces of Extremis in his system— he had made it pretty clear he wouldn't have anything to stick around for, once Peter was gone.
Peter shrugged, drawing his knees up to his chest on the chair.
"I said it was stupid."
Tony didn't say anything for a moment, and his voice was quiet when he said, "It's not stupid."
He cleared his throat then, but his voice still cracked when he said, "Do you… You mean it? You feel… better, if I'm…"
Peter didn't speak, but he nodded, and he knew that Tony had seen from the sound of his shaky answering sigh.
"Okay," Tony said, finally. "Okay. Then I'll stay."
Peter tucked his head down against his knees. He said, quietly, "Thank you."
And then, "I'm still mad at you."
He didn't know how Tony would take it. He didn't even know what he would say if Tony asked why. He hadn't known he was angry right up until they started talking, and the idea of pulling on that thread was exhausting.
But it felt important to say.
"I know," Tony's response came, finally. "You should be."
It was a little bit satisfying to hear, in a bitter way. In a way that none of his apologies or promises so far had been. Peter still didn't know exactly what he'd been looking for when he decided to find Tony downstairs, but he thought maybe it was something like that.
He uncurled himself and stood up from his chair. He didn't look at Tony's face, because he didn't want to have to think about what kind of expression he was wearing.
"I'm going to bed," Peter said, taking a few steps towards the stairs. And then, because he could, because Tony might listen, he added, "Don't follow me."
Tony made a soft noise that Peter couldn't interpret.
"I won't," he said, when he found his voice.
Peter believed him, more or less. It should have been enough, but he still crawled onto the living room couch instead of into his bed, letting the solid backrest reassure him that no one else could slip in beside him.
Maybe he didn't know what he wanted, but he knew what he didn't want.
[fic: YNYD] aaaaaand I’m back obsessing over the YNYD boys. So after Tony saw how Peter reacted to him saying “You've been so good, Pete." while they were having fun on the couch, have they delved more into playing into Peter’s praise kink?
Tony: I'm insulted that you would think there's a world where I don't take every available opportunity to tell Peter—
Peter: Wait—
Tony: —just how—
Peter: Tony—
Tony: —amazing he is—
Peter, laughing: Tony, be good.
Tony: —aaaand that's all I have to say about that!
Peter: See, he likes when I can tell him he's been good, too.
[fic: Perpetual Motion] Question for Tony: if Toomes didn't take himself out and you would have to deal with that yourself, what would you have told Peter when he would've asked?
The truth. "He wasn't willing to negotiate and things got out of hand." The terms of the negotiation wouldn't need to be any of Peter's concern.
[perpetual motion] Peter, how would you feel if it turned out that Tony had killed Toomes after all?
…I don't know. I already… I already hate that he died because of me. At least if he'd gone to prison, Liz could still visit him if she wanted to, right? He was a bad person, but it never sounded like he was a bad dad.
[perpetual motion] I’m just so curious — how did Tony’s perception and feelings toward Peter change and progress through this fic? Because of Tony’s and Peter’s estrangement after the ferry incident, Tony didn’t really get to know Peter via the “feel-good lab times” present in so many fics. Like this was mentee-to-ex mentee-to kid I have to protect-to ???
Like, what was going through Tony’s mind? I guess since Perpetual Motion is all of Peter’s POV, I’m desperate for Guilty!Tony’s POV.
[[🐻ursa interlude🐻
SO while PM!Tony did not have a lot of actual face-to-face time with Peter prior to their estrangement after the ferry + Peter coming back into his life to ask for help with Toomes, Tony was already pretty damn fond of Peter from their few in-person interactions, keeping tabs on him via Happy + his voicemails, and highlights from the Baby Monitor footage.
They weren't close, but Tony thought highly of him, and he wasn't happy about the estrangement but was willing to do it for Peter's own safety after realizing that he was not a strong enough mentor to help guide Peter through the superhero lifestyle effectively. (This is just legit my read on their canonical relationship to this point, with the minor modification that PM!Tony probably dug a little bit more into the Baby Monitor footage than canon Tony-- not to search up anything scandalous/creepy, but his sense of boundaries is juuuust that next level blurrier.)
So going into PM Tony is kind of kicking himself for thinking he could be a good mentor, for failing Peter as a mentor and almost getting both him and the people on the ferry hurt in the process, and thennnn on top of that he has multiple things going on in his personal/professional life (including Vulture's hit on the StarkJet being successful, in PM!)
Enter Peter, who not only was not kept safe by Tony backing out of his life, but who was hurt far more badly than Tony could have imagined and obviously did not trust Tony to help him out of that situation for months after how harshly Tony cut him off.
SO.
"Kid I have to protect" is not wrong. "Kid I need to protect" is even more correct. Tony recognized from the start that he was the absolute worst person to take care of Peter's emotional needs once the immediate threat of Toomes was gone, both from a "general emotional intelligence" perspective and a "I am myself at this moment in one of those places where I'm prone to making bad decisions" perspective, but he needed to be able to do something to make amends for ruining Peter's life, and Peter didn't want anyone else's help!
So he didn't want to force Peter to talk to May or a therapist (and while he 100% would have done it if Peter did want it, the fact that Peter didn't made it easy to justify his own 'those would be some difficult conversations on my side' selfishness instead of pushing for it,) and as Peter's only confidant he only really knows how to be a support in a couple of different ways and a few of them are kid-inappropriate. Ostensibly platonic sugar daddy time!
And then he could TELL that the whole codependency thing wasn't great but what is He The Adult Here supposed to do when Peter won't even talk about it with Karen? And he could TELL that Peter had some attraction to him but whatever, it's not like he needs to call that out and embarrass the kid as long as nothing happens and clearly nothing is going to happen so he'll just keep supporting Peter as much as possible and yes they slept together on the couch but it was fully-clothed drunken silliness and Peter doesn't seem traumatized by it and and and--
(And and and-- Peter was not misreading him on the couch! He is possessive of Peter. Whether you read it as nonsexual or otherwise, he considers Peter his [RELATIONSHIP UNDEFINED] and even aside from all the normal moral and good reasons to be outraged about what happened with Toomes, he's fucking pissed that Toomes got his dirty hands on something of Tony's and there is a part of him that also feels the need to do something about that.
Which. Considering the nature of the relationship. Was always going to be bad. Oh, Tony.)
So: he needs to protect Peter. He needs to keep Peter's secrets. He needs to make up for how he already failed Peter. He needs to be someone that makes Peter happy. He needs to be someone that makes Peter feel safe. He needs to be someone that Peter can trust.
And sometimes those things come into direct conflict with each other, and some of them he already knows that he's failed from step one, and he knows he's going to drive himself into the ground trying to do them anyway but he can't do anything else.
(And alllllllllllll of that is why Peter was also not wrong when he noted that Tony does not have romantic feelings for him. He doesn't! He has all kinds of feelings-- paragraphs and paragraphs of feelings-- about Peter, and he obviously cares about Peter and his happiness very very much, but all of those paragraphs and paragraphs of feelings are standing in the way of actually being able to develop a real connection with him.
The longer they keep sleeping together the more likely that is to change, but as it stands at the end of the fic, he really is acting from a place of wanting to give Peter what he asks for and not from a place of any fledgling romantic feelings.)]]
From all your Tony’s, who do you think loves Peter the most? I wanna say Pyrite is the least but obviously I think he still loves Peter. Perpetual has to be above Pyrite? But less than DB and Wicked Love. YNYD is probably the healthiest love but def not the most.
[[🐻ursa interlude🐻
Oh gosh! Okay well obviously this is a very squirrely thing to quantify but:
Wicked Love (parental love wins the crown)
YNYD (the most mature and developed romance)
Naturally (the second-most mature romance and the oldest Peter)
First Contact (canon-Tony levels of invested in Peter)
And then the shake-up-- this is where I'd actually put Pyrite Tony! (With the understanding that I am making a probably arbitrary-to-others distinction between "love" and "care for.") I understand why it seems like he'd be at the bottom of the list-- he is an unreliable narrator and would rate himself lower than this, lmao-- but while he is unambiguously a terrible person and is not particularly careful with Peter, he does love him. Peter's his brother!
After that we have:
Stalemate (Tony is catching feelings by the end of the fic)
Perpetual Motion (cares about Peter very deeply, and has a weird codependent obsession with making him happy, but does not love him-- and again this is the distinction between "love" and "care for" because yes he should swap with Pyrite if we're going by who cares for Peter's happiness the most)
aaand actual bottom of the list is NYC Babylon Tony, whose experience of love is so fucked up that it doesn't really even count.
You will notice that double-blind is not on this list and that's because I do not really know where to put SIM!Tony haha. He loves Peter very deeply (up there with WL!Tony as you anticipated-- he's a bad parent but he's a parent!,) but his love is like… warped and abusive and shallow? He doesn't really engage with who Peter genuinely is as a person much vs the image of Peter that exists in his head, so he's kind of at the top and just above the bottom of the list at the same time.]]
[fic: Perpetual Motion (during the convo between Tony and Peter when Peter learned about Toomes’ death) ]
Tony, after trying to figure out what Peter needed in the aftermath of dealing with Toomes, what was going through your mind when Peter’s only request was to be able to come back to the Tower 🥺?
'Why?'
I still don't know why. I mean, obviously he still thinks I'm-- someone I'm not, someone that could actually help, not the guy who caused all this in the first place-- but I don't know how much of it was even about me, really. Maybe just a place to go where he didn't have to lie about it, since it's where he first talked about it, some kind of-- mental association. I don't know.
For PerpetualMotion!Tony — even before Peter directly asked to have sex with you, did you suspect/have an inkling that was something Peter wanted from you? Like when you were doing his stitches, or even before that?
He's-- he's a teenager. Even if I didn't think he'd actually-- go for it-- ask, whatever-- it's not a surprise that he'd think about it.
