Oh my... I hit 1K (technically 1,001) followers today! Y’all don’t know how baffled I am that 1,001 people on the internet decided the things I write on the internet were worth paying attention to. I’m immensely grateful, and after a hard week of classes sucking the life out of me, this was a wonderful surprise to wake up to ❤️
I have some upcoming works that I’m excited for:
“Open when...” : a fic about Tony leaving a series of messages behind for crucial (and not so crucial) moments in Peter’s life.
“The Five Stages of Losing Peter Parker”: a fic about Tony stumbling through the five stages of grief (in no particular order).
“teach me how to say goodbye”: an angsty fic depicting that scene in EG from Tony’s perspective.
Hopefully they’ll be out and circulating soon (the aforementioned life-sucking pre-med schedule might delay that a bit) but until then... thank you so much and I love you all. ❤️❤️
i have fallen through a rabbit hole, and read so many of ur fics, i just need to say that i love you. the way that you write is just so amazing, you capture emotions in such a way that leaves me speechless and i felt like i needed to share that with you. if you ever start to wonder if you should keep writing, let this be your sign because the way you create is wonderful and you should know that i really, really love and appreciate you💖
Thank you, love, for writing me one of the kindest responses I’ve ever gotten. People like you and things like this are so encouraging and wonderful and I hope you know I appreciate YOU as much as you appreciate me. My readers are a set of amazing people and I am so grateful for each and every one of ya ❤️
Sleeping meant dreaming, and the last thing he needed was to feel separated from reality. Again.
Quentin Beck had gotten into his head and turned everything Peter thought he knew into a big fat question mark. He couldn’t tell if he’d been living in the illusion for minutes or hours or days because the second he thought he was out of it, that this was real, the picture changed.
Tony finds him on the porch swing, clutching his knees to his chest.
Peter’s eyes go dark when the figure registers, clouded over with doubt.
“Hey,” Tony says tentatively, moving toward the kid in slow, non-threatening strides. “Can I sit?”
He just stars at the man, his face only faintly illuminated by the glow of the moon.
“Are you--,” Peter starts to speak, but stops just as quickly. He wants to cry. He wants to scream. He hates this, hates that his world is so upside-down that he doesn’t know what to believe anymore.
He doesn’t have to finish the question, though, because Tony already knows what he’s going to ask. He can see the war going on in Peter’s mind, the constant fight to distinguish between fact and fiction.
"I’m real, Pete. It’s me.”
As if to prove his point, Tony gently takes the seat next to him and sits just close enough that their shoulders are bumping. His good arm wraps around Peter and he lets the weight fall on the kid’s shoulders.
“How do I know?” Peter whispers, shying away from Tony’s touch.
“If I wasn’t real, I wouldn’t know you have a scar on your knee from when you and Ned decided to three-legged roller blade. Or that the smell of peaches makes you queasy ever since that time you ate an entire pan of May’s cobbler only to throw it all up thirty minutes later. Or that you and your aunt put milk in the bowl before the cereal like heathens and now Morgan’s started doing it, too, because ‘that’s how Petey does it’."
Tony pauses, searching the kid’s face. The crinkles of frustration that were previously etched into his forehead have been smoothed over.
“Do you need me to keep going?”
“No,” he says, finally burrowing into Tony’s side, “I believe you.”
It’s been a week since Peter came home from what was supposed to be his vacation, but Tony still only knows bits and pieces of what happened.
He knows that Quentin Beck had a vendetta against Tony and decided to take it out on an innocent teenager. He knows that Beck manipulated said teenager, messed with his head and put it through a spin-cycle. He knows that Peter went through all of this, alone, refusing to call Tony until it was all over.
The snap had stolen most of Tony’s mobility, and even with state-of-the-art prosthetics, he’d probably never be able to don the Iron Man suit again.
Still, the kid could’ve called.
“How long have you been awake?”
Tony feels Peter’s shoulders tense up underneath his arm, and he wishes, for the millionth time, that he could've done something to help.
“A couple hours, maybe. I’m not really sure. I’m not really sure about anything anymore.”
Tears prick at Peter’s eyes, and the urge to scream comes boiling back to the surface.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Peter opens his mouth and takes a breath, like he’s ready to finally let it all out, but one look at Tony shuts him up again.
"Pete, talk to me. Please.” He’s begging now, begging the kid to just let him in this time.
“You were dead. He--I saw your headstone. I was at your funeral. You snapped your fingers and then... you were dead, Mr. Stark, because I didn’t do enough. I couldn’t save you.”
He’s openly sobbing, now, burrowing his head into Tony’s side like the man might up and disappear.
If Quentin Beck weren’t already pronounced dead by S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives, Tony might’ve killed him himself. An anger unlike anything he’s ever felt before rises in his face, but he wills himself to dampen it down. He can’t do anything about Beck anymore.
All he can do is try and meld Peter back together again.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Tony promises, holding him tighter, “It wasn’t real.”
“It felt real,” he says in between breaths.
Tony gets it. He’s been there before, when Wanda swirled her hands and twisted his brain and he saw all of them--the Avengers--dead at his feet.
“I know it does, but I need you to believe me. None of that was real. This, me and you swinging on the porch, that’s real.”
Peter’s still not convinced, but Tony has an idea.
“Remember when you made me read the Hunger Games?”
“Yea,” he sniffs, “you were so against it but you ended up finishing the whole series in like, two days.”
“Turns out that sometimes you have decent taste. Sometimes. Anyway, that’s not my point. Do you remember that game they play? Real or not real?”
The kid pauses for a second, realization dawning on him.
“You don’t have to do this, Mr. Stark.”
“Please. Please let me try to help you.”
Peter takes a breath, sees the hurt in Tony’s eyes. He needs to do this for Tony as much as he needs to do this for himself.
"I was dead for five years. Real or not real?”
Tony’s inhale is sharp.
“Real. God, I wish it wasn’t, but that was real.”
“We beat Thanos.”
“Real.”
“Captain America is old.”
“He was always old, kid.”
Peter rolls his eyes.
“That’s not how the game works.”
Now Tony is the one to roll his eyes.
“Fine. Steve is old. Real.”
“Aunt May and I live with you, now.”
“Real. At least, it’s real for the time being. And, before you ask, May and Happy staying in the guest house together? Also real. And I think it’s gross, too.”
“You’re mad that I didn’t call you.”
Tony thinks for a second.
“Not real. I’m not mad. I was worried out of my mind, though.”
Peter finds a spot on the ground and locks his gaze on it, guilt creeping into his cheeks.
“I didn’t want you to worry, that was exactly why I didn’t call you when this whole thing started. And I didn’t call you after because, well... I really thought you were gone. He made me believe--it felt real. You were gone.”
Tony goes quiet.
“There was a time when I thought you were really gone, too. And when I got you back--it took me a while to fully believe it. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again and then, five years later, that portal opened and you were right there and I just... it’s still hard to believe, sometimes. So I get it--the hesitation--but this isn’t an illusion, Pete."
Peter thinks back to that moment on the battlefield, when he’d come back and Tony had hugged him like they were the only two people in existence even as a war raged around them.
“You love me,” he whispers, “real or not real?”
"Real,” Tony says without a hint of hesitation, “of course that’s real."
They sit in silence for a few moments, breathing in the heavy night air.
“I love you, too.”
And he does, can feel it in his bones. That’s real.
His head is still spinning, and he still kind of wants to tear his hair out, but, with Mr. Stark here, it feels a little more manageable than it did before.
“I’m going to be okay,” Peter whispers, “real or not real?”
Tony leans down, presses a kiss to the top of the kid’s head.
“Real. I don’t care how long it takes. I won’t rest until I know that you’re okay--that you’re better than okay.”
Peter swallows thickly, letting a breath he didn’t know he was holding escape from his lungs.
"Thank you, Mr. Stark.”
Tony smiles softly and presses one more kiss against Peter’s hair.
"Anytime, kiddo.”
They’ve got a long road ahead of them, but right now, all that matters is that Peter is right next to Tony and Tony is right next to Peter and they’re both alive.
Name ten favourite characters from ten different things (books, tv, film, etc.) then tag someone else.
I was tagged by @coconutknightshade (thank you, love) and thought this could be fun :) Fictional characters are great because I think the best ones become a part of your life and can shape who you are as a person. Maybe I’m crazy. Dunno. I’m gonna add to this and put my fav quotes from said characters in here too, just in case y’all aren’t familiar w/ them. (also I have so many favs so these are real random and not in any particular order)
1. Tony Stark (MCU) -- “I shouldn't be alive... unless it's for a reason. I'm not crazy. I just finally know what I have to do. And I know in my heart that it's right.”
2. Shawn Spencer (Psych) -- “I can’t help being a gorgeous fiend. It’s just the card I drew.”
3. Nick Miller (New Girl) -- “Life sucks! And then it gets better, and then it sucks again.”
4. Rafael Barba (Law & Order: SVU) -- “We must not stand by and by our silence say it is acceptable to look the other way.”
5. Jessica Day (New Girl) -- “I brake for birds. I rock a lot of polka dots. I have touched glitter in the last 24 hours. And that doesn't mean I'm not smart and tough and strong.”
6. Elizabeth Bennet (Pride & Prejudice) -- “There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”
7. Burton Guster (Psych) -- “I am nobody’s pawn. I’m a Queen.”
8. Louisa Clark (Me Before You) -- “Astonishingly, not all girls get dressed just to please men.”
9. Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird) -- “I wanted you to see what real courage is... it’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”
10. Peter Parker (MCU specifically) -- “When you can do the things that I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you. “
Imma tag a few people I want to know more about but please don’t feel pressured or anything! @the-walking-library @btab66 @spooodergirl @yeedmylasthaw @mysterio-is-a-little-bitch @anyoneelsewhofeelslikedoingthis <3
tagging @hailing-stars because you gave me the motivation to finish this story (it’s been killing me) and actually post it. Hope it doesn’t disappoint too much, love.
Peter listens to the breeze rustle past the material of his suit as he flies through the air.
He’d spent the better part of the first few weeks of being back sitting in his new apartment, occupying himself by staring at the bars at the top of his bunk bed. Counting them up and down until he couldn’t do it anymore, until they became a blurred singular mass of metal suspended above his head.
YouTube was another welcome distraction, but he could only see so many “I died, and came back to life?! *storytime*” thumbnails on his recommended feed before his throat felt like closing up again. Instagram wasn’t much better, because half of the world might’ve gone offline, but social media hadn’t quite gotten the memo.
If he thought FOMO was bad before, it turns out that scrolling through five years’ worth of memories that he’d missed out on was like taking that empty feeling and dialing it up to eleven. Some of his classmates were still sporting braces when he’d last seen them, and now they were graduating college and getting married and even having kids of their own—memories and milestones all preserved for him to gawk at like he was observing relics in a museum.
A month had passed since the Blip. The Snap. Whatever you want to call it.
It was just long enough for the Honeymoon phase to be over. The initial excitement of tearful returns had quickly become a scramble toward a new normal, into a desperate attempt to fit half of the population into a world that, even in their absence, had kept turning.
That was the worst part, Peter decided.
He’d imagined his death before—what his funeral would be like. Sometimes, when it was late and he was alone he’d sit up and wonder what his world would like without him in it.
It was a morbid thought, sure, but it had only been that. Thoughts. What-ifs.
He’d always pictured that, eventually, even the people that loved him most in this life would have to move on. He’d want them to move on.
He’d done it plenty of times himself—after his parents, after Ben. It didn’t mean he’d forgotten them, but there came a point in the grieving process where he’d realized that the sun would keep rising every morning, that he was going to keep living even if his loved ones weren’t.
It was hard, and sometimes almost impossible, but he’d done it.
So it made sense that when the circumstances were flipped and he was that was gone, the people in his life would learn to keep living without him.
But just because it made sense doesn’t mean that it didn’t hurt to have to witness it first-hand.
Because this was a special form of hell most people don’t anticipate when they die: coming back.
Death was awful and sad and downright heartbreaking, but there was a certain finality to it. A sense of closure.
He hadn’t died. He’d disappeared, and somehow that was so much worse.
No one deserves to disappear.
No one deserves to face the reality of the world passing them by, to have to reopen wounds that have already healed, to have to shove yourself back into a script that’s already written you out.
Putting on the suit had been an impulsive decision fueled by a restlessness that he finally decided he couldn’t ignore.
The red and blue spandex felt more like home than his new apartment ever would, and Karen’s voice was a pleasant and familiar in his ear.
If he moved fast enough, swinging aimlessly through the city, it was almost as if nothing had changed—as if he had gone back in time, to five years ago, when the biggest stressors in his life were petty thieves on the street.
He sees the Tower in the distance—Tony had bought it back, at some point, had wanted to keep some connection to the city, just in case—stretching toward the stars, and before he knows what he’s doing his body is swinging toward it, driven by sheer muscle memory.
Peter sticks to the glass easily, and he climbs, one foot after the other.
It’s just him and spandex and sky, going on and on forever.
He feels like he should stop—should head back to the apartment that isn’t a home and count the bars on his bunk bed one more time—because climbing a literal skyscraper in this scattered state of mind screams bad idea.
“Peter, a fall from this height could--,” Karen starts, but he mutes her voice before she can say any more.
It’s a dumb idea, he knows that, but something in his bones begs him to keep going.
Maybe the world might would different from way up there. Maybe it’d finally look like home again.
He shoots a web to the top of the tower and spares a glance down.
The city is in repair, but it’s alive. Cars honk in the streets, people push past each other on the sidewalks. It’s New York—it’s always moving, it doesn’t matter if the world ends—New York doesn’t stop and wait for anybody.
From way up here, it’s like waving through a window, watching from outside the glass, helpless, as the world passes him by.
His breath hitches.
No one deserves to disappear.
He feels the web give way, feels the lurch of his stomach before the fear gives way to... numbness. Like he can’t feel anything at all.
And then he’s falling.
///
“Peter—hey!” Ned calls, running against the grain of students milling through the hallway.
“Please don’t be mad, but I got so excited and I couldn’t help myself and you weren’t answering your phone so I started the new set without you. Don’t worry, though, because I only got, like, the right wing assembled before I realized it’s not as fun without you there and--,”
The words fly out of Ned’s mouth in a half-comprehensible flurry until he stops to stare at the new baby blue cast his best friend is sporting.
“...what happened to your arm?”
Peter looks down at his feet, a blush creeping against his skin.
“I, uh... fell off a building?”
Ned scrunches his nose and leans closer.
“Were you,” Ned glances over his shoulder and lowers his voice to a whisper, “fighting bad guys?”
Yea, Peter thinks, something like that.
“It’ll heal in a few days,” he says instead, ignoring the question entirely, “May wanted me to cast it up anyway, you know. Just in case.”
He thinks it sounds convincing, and it must be, because most of the worry drains from Ned’s face.
“Oh. Okay. I just, uh, I thought you’d call me. I’m your guy-in-the-chair, remember? I’m here for you.”
“I know,” he says, feeling a twinge of guilt rise in his chest. He means it. Ned is a better friend than Peter deserves, that much he’s sure of.
“It just happened so fast and... I didn’t want to bother you.”
Things had just started to feel normal again, after the Blip. That’s what people had started to call it—the reversal of the Snap.
Some people were having a harder time adjusting than others, but Ned seemed to be doing better than most. His family had all been snapped and brought back together. He had a thing, for lack of a better word, going on with Betty Brant. He’d fallen right back into place in this new, messy reality, and Peter didn’t want to hold him back from that.
He didn’t need to know that Peter was having a much harder time with the whole thing, that he still had nightmares about the moments before, that he felt it when every cell in his body was torn apart.
But maybe Ned does know some of that, because he thinks he sees his friend’s smile fall just a little.
“Next time?”
The question hangs in the air for a second, and Peter swallows the urge to brush it off, to refuse his best friend who, bless his soul, just wants to help.
“Of course,” Peter says weakly, but it’s enough.
“Okay,” Ned replies, a finality to his voice, and he doesn’t push any further. Seriously, bless his soul.
“Do you, uh... do you want to sign my cast?”
In an instant, his best friend’s mouth perks back up at the corners and he’s already reaching into his bag for a marker.
“Dude,” he grins, “I thought you’d never ask.”
///
“Peter, I’m about to head out, but my phone is on so if you need anything,” she pauses when she gets to his doorway.
He’s sitting on his bed, managing an awkward attempt at pulling a sweatshirt over his head with only one good arm.
The bed dips a little when she sits down next to him and gently helps him pull the fabric over the blue cast despite his meager attempt at a protest.
He can smell the perfume on her skin and he flinches when he realizes he doesn’t recognize the scent. When he’d hugged her that morning before the field trip—a month ago, for him, but a lifetime ago for her—she’d smelled like apples and jasmine and sunshine.
She smells like vanilla and musk now, and it’s... different. Foreign. It’s just off enough to remind him that the woman in front of him, familiar as she looks, isn’t quite the same person he left behind. That thought makes him feel a little empty inside.
It’s a feeling he’s grown accustomed to in the past few days.
“Have you told Tony about that, yet?” She gestures to the injury on his arm, concern seeping through her eyes.
“No.”
May arches her eyebrow at him, silently prodding him for an explanation.
“It’ll heal by the end of the week anyway, and I don’t want to get him all worked up, especially when, you know--,” he stops short, biting his lip, “he’s still recovering. He doesn’t need—he needs to focus on himself, and he should be with Morgan and Pepper and his family right now. He doesn’t need to be worrying about me.”
The scent gets stronger the closer she gets, but he tries to ignore that when she wraps her arms around him. He clutches his fingers into the fabric of her dress and rests his head against her shoulder.
“We can’t help worrying about the people we love, sweetheart.”
He doesn’t deserve her.
“I’m okay,” he whispers, his face half-buried in her hair. She’d stopped dyeing it at some point, he notices, opting instead to let some strands of grey peek through.
She pushes against his shoulders until he’s looking straight into her eyes.
“Are you?”
He knows she’s not just talking about his arm anymore.
“Because I don’t have to do this—I can cancel right now. We can order a pizza, rent a movie. Just you and me.”
He knows what she’s really saying: we can go back to the way things were before.
“No, you should go,” he says quickly, pushing a smile onto his face, “I’ll be okay. Promise. You deserve a night out.”
May holds his gaze for a second longer, debating on if she should cancel anyway, despite his assurances.
“You promise to call if you need anything?”
“Of course.”
“Okay,” she says, but it’s still hesitant. She doesn’t know how to approach anything anymore—how to piece together the new parts of her life and reconcile them with her old one.
Because how the hell do you do this?
It’s not like there’s a road map for navigating the return of a child you thought was gone forever.
The scary truth is that she’s flying blind, making it up as she goes and praying Peter knows that even though some things have changed, he’s still the most important part of her life. No matter what.
“I larb you,” she says, and she means it. She might be stumbling through everything else—pretending to know the right things to say—but the fact that she loves him? She knows that.
“I larb you, too,” he says back, and something sad flashes in his eyes before he covers it up with a smile.
“Tell Happy I said hey.”
///
He wakes up to his phone ringing in his hand.
“Hey,” he answers, still half-asleep, expecting May’s voice on the other end.
“Hey, kid.”
Peter’s heart freezes in his chest.
“Mr. Stark?”
“The one and only.”
“What’re you—why are, um, what’s up?”
“I tried calling you earlier, but you didn’t answer and I haven’t heard from you in about a week or so and May said you’ve been a little off lately so I figured,” the words tumble out of his mouth in a rush, and he takes a breath to slow himself down, “I wanted to see you.”
There’s something fragile in his voice that makes Peter want to cry, but he wills the tears back into his eyes when he hears a knock on the door.
“And I hope that’s okay,” he can hear the voice on the other side of the door and through the phone at the same time, “because I’m already here.”
The key turns in the lock and suddenly he’s staring right into Tony’s face.
He drops the phone from his ear and Tony does the same.
“Hey.”
“H-hey.”
Tony moves first, taking a step inside and closing the door behind him. Peter’s still frozen to the spot when Tony assumes the seat next to him on the couch.
He notices the cast immediately.
“What happened to your arm?”
“Nothing,” Peter blurts, “I just... fell.”
His eyebrow quirks up.
“Are you patrolling already?”
He thinks about saying yes, because that would be easier, but something about Tony’s fingers running gently over his cast makes it impossible to lie.
“Not exactly,” he says, deciding to deflect instead.
Tony’s gaze flickers from the blue material to Peter’s face and back again.
“So I’ll ask again,” he says, his voice pressing and concerned all at once, “what happened to your arm, Pete?”
Peter’s eyes train on the paisley designs of the carpeted floor.
“I wasn’t patrolling. I’m not quite... I’m not ready for that, yet. I just needed a breather, you know? Because I see you guys with your new lives and I’m happy for you, I am. It’s just that sometimes this is all... it’s a lot to take in.”
Tony seems a little surprised by that, runs a hand through his graying hair.
“I didn’t think about how hard this has to be for you. I’ve been so focused on the fact that you’re here and that you’re alive... I didn’t think about the other side of it.”
The man looks right into his eyes, and Peter’s caught off-guard by the awe that’s still there—the same awe from that moment on the battlefield, when he’d hugged him close and looked at him like the planets had all aligned.
“It’s selfish, isn’t it,” Peter asks, but it’s not really a question. He shouldn’t be feeling this way—shouldn’t be feeling this lost when people like May and Tony’s lives were flipped upside-down and had only just been righted again.
He shouldn’t be resentful of the fact that May has Happy now, or that Tony has Morgan and Pepper and his little lake house in the woods. He shouldn’t hate that the world hadn’t paused just for him, that it passed him by. This—the look on Tony’s face right now, the softness in May’s voice when she’d realized he was really back—this should be enough.
“I could never think you’re selfish, kid.”
His mind flashes back to that night—to feeling utterly insignificant as he looked down at the world from the top of the Tower.
“You would,” he argues, his voice breaking as something inside him shatters, “if you knew how I really broke my arm.”
Peter can see the exact moment the pieces click together in Tony’s brain.
“I went to the Tower, because I thought it would help me make sense of everything, but it didn’t. I felt... I felt even further away from everyone. And then I was up there and the ground was so far down and for a second it just seemed like it would be easier if I--,” he’s choking on every other word, his throat stinging on the acid rising from his stomach.
“I didn’t fall, Mr. Stark,” he can see Tony’s Adam’s apple bob, can see the tears pricking in the man’s eyes as Peter admits to him, almost inaudibly, what he hadn’t even wanted to admit to himself, “I let go.”
The next few moments are a blur of sobs and hiccups and limbs tangled together as Tony lurches forward, almost on instinct, and holds him so tight he thinks his arm might break again.
“You should hate me,” Peter whispers, “May, too. I don’t deserve you. After everything I already put you guys through--.”
“Hey,” Tony quiets him, “nothing in this world could ever make me hate you, and I’d bet my whole life on May feeling the same way. I know it’s messy and complicated now, and I can’t even begin to imagine what you’re going through, but you belong here, Pete.”
Peter sniffles in response, and Tony pushes him back just enough to meet his swollen eyes.
“I wish I would’ve known how you were feeling. I wish I could just zapped the hurt away. I wish that, when we fought Thanos the first time, I could’ve saved you.”
He takes a breath.
“I’ve come up short a billion different ways in your life. And—despite what other people may think—I’m not arrogant enough to believe that I won’t keep coming up short, kid. There’ll be moments I miss, spaces I can’t quite fill. But I’m still going to try. I’m going to sit right here when everything around you feels big and hold you until it all feels small. I’m not going anywhere. We’re going to get through this together, okay?”
Peter swallows, burrows into Tony’s side.
“Okay.”
May comes shortly afterward, and Tony rubs Peter’s back while she holds his hand and listens through tears as he tells her about that night, about the night he’d felt so numb he felt like he’d needed to do something, anything to feel again. About the night he’d climbed up ninety-three stories just to dive down.
Tears and hugs and apologies are thrown through the air like confetti, all landing together in an mess of intertwined arms and blotchy faces.
“I’m sorry,” Peter says, one last time, the sound muffled by the warmth of someone’s shoulder.
“Shh,” May coos, the pads of her thumb pressed to his cheek, “we’ll make it work sweetheart, just like we always have. No requiems tonight.”
“We love you, kiddo,” Tony adds, “no matter what.”
For a second, the world falls away.
He knows that it won’t last for forever, that the same big bustling world is going to be there to greet him tomorrow, but for right now he fits perfectly in the spot between Tony and May.
For now, everything feels just a little bit smaller.
///
There’s an empty spot next to Peter when he wakes up to the sun streaming through the blinds. May’s arms are still tangled around him, which leaves...
“Right here, Pete,” Tony calls out from a chair across the room, looking like he hadn’t slept all night. A stack of papers that weren’t there before sits on the coffee table in front of him.
“My therapist had an idea,” he explains, nodding toward the pile. “I wasn’t talking to her. I didn’t... I didn’t want to face the fact that you might never come home. She thought it might be good to write letters, instead. I thought it was stupid, at first, but eventually it helped. It made me feel like, somehow, I could still talk to you. There were so many things I wanted to say, that I’d wished I’d told you sooner, and it gave me an outlet to do that. You don’t have to read them, if you don’t want to, because I’m sure most of them don’t make a whole lot of sense anyway, but if you want--,” he trails off.
Peter picks up one of the papers, hesitant.
He reads one, then two, and before long he’s almost through them all.
They all start the same way, Dear Peter Parker, and vary from there.
One of them talks about moving to the lake house.
I think you’d like it out here. It’s quiet, which is good, because sometimes I think that big brain of yours gets a little too loud. If and when you come back, there’s a room for you upstairs. I’ve even got those god-awful gaudy Yoda sheets you love so much tucked into a closet just for the occasion.
A few talk about Morgan.
I was terrified, kid, when Pep told me the news. I barely know how to take care of myself, let alone a tiny human. But Pepper’s always been my beacon of wisdom, and one day she smacked me upside the head and said that this wasn’t going to be anything new, that I’d already had years of practice. I’d never thought of it that way before—but she’s right. Of course she is. You’ve always been something like my kid, and in Pep’s words, I’ve even got the gray hairs to prove it.
The letters grow farther apart as the years go on, but the sentiment stays the same.
You haven’t been forgotten.
Tony watches, holding his breath, as the kid tears through letter after letter. He feels like he should be embarrassed, essentially baring his soul in written format, but the way Peter stares at each page with reverence supersedes anything else.
These words were long overdue, anyway.
May has long since woken up by the time Peter grasps the last one in his hands, reading silently over his shoulder.
This one isn’t quite like the others. It’s dated for today.
Dear Peter Parker,
Today is going to be a good day and here’s why: because today you’re you and you’re here and that’s enough. Because you’re not in this alone. Because even when the dark comes crashing through, when you don’t feel strong enough, you’ve got me and May and Ned and everyone else to carry you. I know you feel lost, and a little bit broken, and that’s okay. We’re going to be here, and we’re going to help you get back up on your feet. You’ll find your place here, kid. If there’s one thing I’m sure of more than anything else, it’s this: if you look up and look around, you will be found.
-T.S.
There are tears pricking at his eyes when he finally looks up.
At some point, Tony has reclaimed the spot next to him, and he and May exchange turns pressing kisses to Peter’s forehead.
“I’ve said it a million times, but I’m going to keep saying it until you believe it: you are not alone, Pete.”
You are not alone.
You belong here.
He looks outside, sees the same sun continue to rise, the same sky go on and on for forever, the same city continue to pass by, but this time it feels different.
This time, he does believe it.
Maybe not right this second, but somehow, someday, he’ll be okay.
Writing on tumblr is wild because some of my most popular posts are dumb things I dreamt up in exactly twelve minutes and some of my least popular posts are things I spent literal weeks working on. And I’ll be real -- sometimes that’s frustrating. I struggle with inconsistent praise and finding the motivation to write as much as the next person, but I’ve found that it helps me to remember why I started writing in the first place. My first ‘fics’ were nothing more than scribbled thoughts in a literal college-ruled notebook I kept under my bed. I wrote them because I wanted to read them, because I loved the characters and wanted to explore something. At the end of the day, notes and comments and kudos are nice, but if I can read my own fic and smile because it’s exactly what I had been missing, I consider that a success. Writers are often our own worst critics, but I think we forget sometimes that we're our biggest fans, too. Be proud of your writing, even if it’s just for yourself.
So, I’ve written a lot of things. A lot of stupid things. And I figured I might as well catalog them.
I’m also going to link my other accounts:
FF.net: psychicchameleon (for the love of God don’t read my old shit. I’m trusting you.)
Ao3: iloveyouthree_thousand
Note: everything is pretty Irondad centric unless otherwise specified.
one-shots:
and even if I’m gone, there’s always a place for you here -- “I wanted you to know that he never forgot about you. You meant a lot to him, to us. You were a part of this family too, and it didn’t feel right to not include you in our new home.”
it’s killing me to hold on (but I’m dying without you here) -- “I know!”, he snaps, turning to face the apparition, “God, Pete, don’t you get it? Every day I wait for the dream to end, but every single day that god damn sun rises and you still don’t come home.”
trope: Mister Stark -- “You’re not my dad, but you’re… something like that, I guess. Something special. You’re Mr. Stark.”
the graduation -- “He scanned the audience, and like a magnet, his gaze landed on May. And then Tony. Peter took a shaky breath. ‘Tonight, I’d like to talk about heroes.’”
a suit of armor around (his) world -- “He told me, once, that he didn’t think he’d rest until he could put a suit of armor around the world. I thought it was… a fever dream. But then I saw him look at you, wrapped up in that suit, and I realized that he’d already done it.”
sometimes a family is nothing more than a kid, his aunt, a guy-in-the-chair, and a handful of Avengers -- “Tony froze, a fuzzy warmth spreading in his chest as he searched Peter’s face for any indication that he understood the gravity of the statement he had just made.”
we push away the unimaginable -- “Tony didn’t know which scenario he was more afraid of: A pile of dust on the floor. Or May Parker, alive and well, having lost the one thing she had left to lose.”
and I’ll be right there with you, wherever you go -- “Ugh, you know that when you cry I cry,” she fans at her eyes desperately, “and Peter Parker if you make me smudge my makeup so help me–I will lock you in this room for the entirety of this wedding.”
you’ll always be my underoos -- “Jealousy was watching Morgan Stark crawl into her father’s lap, the two of them wearing matching grins as he held her tight, exchanging whispered I love you’s that were so easy and second-nature it hurt.”
sleep tight, I’ll be right here watching over you -- “If Tony had to choose between saving himself or saving you and Morgan—he’d choose you guys every time,” she tiled his head up gently, “it’s what parents do.”
in fourteen billion lifetimes, I’d still love you in every one -- “All I know is that,” he paused, waiting for Peter to meet his eyes, “in fourteen billion scenarios, he always brought you back. Ms. Potts, his little girl, and you were always a given.”
who tells your story? -- “He waited for the day that it wouldn’t hurt so bad, for the day he could tell his little girl about a superhero named Spider-Man, who knew an inordinate amount of B-list sci-fi trivia and cared about saving a stray cat as much as he cared about stopping a gang of arms dealers.”
you can take away my kid (but he’ll always be a part of me) -- “That kid—he ignited something parental in you before you even had a chance to fight it. We all knew you were a dad way before we found out Pepper was pregnant.”
five times Peter Parker could hear Tony’s heart beating (and the one time he couldn’t) -- “It helps Peter to hear his heartbeat. He knows that. As long as Tony’s heart kept beating in his ears, Peter knew he wasn’t going anywhere.”
there are moments that the words don’t reach -- “Peter was gone and he was alone and there was nothing to say anymore, because the worst had come and gone and Tony had let it happen with only two words of protest: you’re alright.”
the beginning of a future that could’ve been -- “Tony called Peter down to Pepper’s office under the guise of meeting up for lunch. Instead, he presented him with a plaque that he’d had rush-ordered, solidifying his position as the newest intern at Stark Industries.”
and we might not be able to save everyone (but I’ll be damned if I can’t save you) -- “I’ve been here, too, at the end of my rope. Because you’re a superhero, right,” he chokes, “a card-carrying member of the 'earth’s mightiest heroes’ club, but they don’t tell you when you sign up how much it absolutely sucks.”
The Cherry-Red Porsche 944 Turbo [from five-ish times Peter didn’t call Tony ‘dad’] -- “I don’t care how many times you save Queens, if you ever have to call AAA, then I feel like I’ve failed as a mentor.”
and they say a picture is worth a thousand words (but I never understood that until now) -- “Before they realized what was happening, it had become a tradition. Still, they’d never voice the fact that it was Father’s Day. It was just a random day that they happened to spend together. Annually.”
just get back up (when it knocks you down) -- “He said there’s always a choice, but I could see his face, Mr. Stark. He didn’t look like he had a choice. And in a different life, in a million different scenarios… that could’ve been me.”
because I don’t know what I’d do without you -- “You’re not my dad!” The words blurt out of Peter’s mouth before he’s even aware of them. Silence hangs thickly in the air. Peter’s voice is wobbly, softer, as he repeats, “you’re not my dad.”
sometimes parenthood hits you when you least expect it (but you accept it all the same) -- “You don’t just get to walk out on him because it got hard. He’s had enough taken away from him. I can’t watch him lose you too.”
blood or not, when you love someone three-thousand, they’re your family too -- “Peter’s brain is going haywire, trying to process the fact that this tiny human he’s never met before is calling him Petey and clinging to him like a long lost friend.”
Anthony Stark [from Stark: An American Musical] -- “Holy mother of—you bastard, orphan, son of a—good God that hurts.”
I still believe in heroes -- “Heroes make mistakes, kid, it’s part of the job. We continue to believe in them anyway, we have to, because the second we don’t… I—none of us should live in a world like that.”
trope: coming out -- “Pride means a lot of things to a lot of people. And sometimes, it’s nothing more than taking a breath and looking in the mirror and smiling because you’re you and that’s enough.”
bullet point fics and headcanons:
you win some (but, oh, you lose so much more) -- “That’s the way life goes; some people win, and off to the side, in the shadows, some people lose.”
it takes two to tango (and to give a certain Spider-Kid ‘The Talk’) -- “Come on, kid,” Tony breathes, accepting that this is his life now, “the sooner you ask the question the sooner we both get out of this special form of hell.”
back to the future past -- “Past Tony has come to expect their company, and even though he doesn’t know if time travel is something they should really be messing with, he’s really never been able to say no to his kids.”
prompt: birthday cake -- “The problem, however, is that it becomes a tradition: Peter Parker gets chocolate-coconut batter on the ceiling and all over his face. And every year, Tony chokes down a slice of the death cake just to see the kid smile.”
from one father to another -- “Scott almost didn’t do it.After all, a man who moved his family to the middle of nowhere is probably a man that wants to be left alone.”
the proposal -- “You’re a hopeless romantic, you know. A balcony, really? Don’t think I didn’t catch that reference.” Pepperony.
AC/DC -- “I’m warning you, kid, fun and games aside—you do not, under any circumstances, disrespect that song in this house.”
for the next Tony Stark -- [not really a fic, but kinda reads like one]
you’re here, there’s nothing I fear (and I know that my heart will go on) --
“Because if he was a sinking ship then she was the captain. Maybe the damage was too deep this time and he couldn’t be saved. She’d still do everything in her power to get him to float again.” Pepperony.
lean on me (and I’ll help you carry on) -- “When Rhodes finds out he’s living with Tony Stark, he thinks it’s a joke. One thousand, four hundred and twenty-eight incoming freshman, and he gets paired up with the prepubescent heir to Stark Industries?” James Rhodes & Tony Stark.
suit up -- “…and before you get any ideas, you’d be a junior groomsman, so no open bar and definitely no bachelor party, but for all the other stuff… well, I’d like you to be there.”
next time, you ride with me -- “For just a moment, he wants to let his best friend will carry him home -- again -- and believe everything will be okay.”
we’re in the endgame now -- [again, not really a fic, but kinda reads like one.]
Spider-Man: FFH deleted scene -- “Ms. Potts?” he calls down from the landing, gripping Morgan tighter in his arms, “w-what do you mean, ‘we need to keep him out of the city?’”
dialogue posts & incorrect quotes:
(warning: most of these are so short I debated even putting them here)
Karen’s namesake
Your name is what now?
I’ve had an epiphany.
You ate a banana?!
Peter Parker’s Intervention
Itsy Bitsy Avenger
Pour some sugar on me (except it’s salt and it’s in my coffee)
Tony’s Code Red
He could be stabbing me, and I’d still be proud of him.
Author Name: iloveyouthree-thousand (my real life name is Maddy tho)
Fandoms You Write For: irondad, might do some spideychelle fics in the future, and I used to write fics for SVU, Psych, and Gallagher Girls way back in the day when I was like twelve and just starting to discover this fanfic thing
Where You Post: mostly Tumblr now, though I used to post exclusively on FF.net (psychicchameleon) and I’m starting to transition into posting things on Ao3 too (iloveyouthree_thousand)
Most Popular One-Shot: from one father to another is my most popular bullet-point fic, but and even if I’m gone, there’s always a place for you here is my most popular traditional fic.
Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: Not really a multi-chapter fic, but it’s my five-ish times Peter Parker didn’t call Tony Stark ‘dad’ collection that I’ve only ever posted in its entirety on FF.net. There are some solo chapters on here, and I’ve used concepts from other chapters to write other fics on Tumblr, but I’ll link it if you want to read it. I also want to point out that the last chapter of that is titled “Endgame” and I wrote that before the Avengers 4 title even came out. Just saying. I been knew.
Favorite Story You Wrote: I really loved writing my Mister Stark trope fic, because I always wanted to psychoanalyze Peter’s use of that title specifically and that was a lot of fun.
Story You Were Nervous to Post: everything? I never know what kind of reception a story is going to get and I have a lot of anxiety when I post stories because it makes me feel kind of vulnerable. Like I’m putting this thing that I put my heart and soul into out into the world and y’all could just completely hate it. If I have to give a straight answer, I’d probably say because I don’t know what I’d do without you was the most nerve-wracking, just because it was my first fic in this universe and I didn’t know how it would go. But, hey, here we are.
How Do You Choose Your Titles: I write the story first and then I usually use the theme or a particular quote that I especially like and modify it to be a title. Also my titles have been (usually) all lowercase and in the blah blah blah (and blah blah blah) format since I saw someone else do it and thought I was being artsy.
How Many of Your Stories Are…
Complete: all of them! But that’s easy because I only do one-shots or one-shot collections now due to my ADD and habit of starting projects that I have no intention of finishing. I know the turmoil of starting a fic that ends on a cliffhanger and never gets updated again, so I try and spare y’all the pain and heartbreak by having fics that can all be read as stand-alones.
In-Progress: see above. But I do have a couple of fic collections that are in-progress on FF.net like this Hamilton-inspired collection or this collection that takes place between SMHC and IW. Don’t know if I’ll get around to finishing them, so be warned.
Coming Soon: I’ve got a couple ideas floating around -- I have a Dear Evan Hansen inspired fic I’m editing, a post-FFH fic where Tony lives and the funeral we see at the end of EG is all an illusion from Mysterio that is almost done. I have ideas for a babysitter AU-ish fic where Tony hires Peter as a baby-sitter and later finds out about the Spider-Man thing, a gala-trope fic that is as soft and fluffy as a baby bunny, and I want to do a field-trip trope fic but I’m trying to make it so it’s not like every other field trip fic out there.
Do You Accept Prompts: A thousand times yes. Three-thousand times yes. Seriously. Sometimes, even if I don’t do the actual prompt, your prompts remind me that there are people out there that want to hear more from me (amazing!) and that inspires me to keep going.
Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: Pretty excited about the Dear Evan Hansen tribute fic. It’s going to be angsty and soft and I hope y’all cry. I’m also excited to keep exploring a Peter & Pepper dynamic and writing a few fix-it fics for post FFH and Endgame. I’m just excited to write, I guess. Lol.
Tag Five Fanfic Authors to Answer These Questions: @celestial-irondad @coconutknightshade @keep-a-bucket-full-of-stars @pepperony3000 @madasthesea (I know I don’t talk to all of y’all but you’re great and I love you and feel free to ignore me if you want).
You know, I thought I was done with Marvel after my boy Iron Man peaced out, but I think I’d make an exception to see the next Avengers movie if and only if the entire plot is just Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (led by Queen Pepper Potts) raining absolute hell on J. Jonah Jameson and The Daily Bugle for doing our sweet sticky boi dirty and exposing The Itsy Bitsy Avenger to the world like that. It’s what Tony would’ve wanted.
I read this post by @ironmanstan about how Rhodey should’ve been the first one to see Tony after the ship landed and then I couldn’t stop thinking about it so I wrote this. It ain’t good but it needed to get out of my brain.
The trip to Earth happens literally at the speed of light.
In another life, he might’ve marveled at it--at the sheer inhumanness of this stranger carrying the ship that was very nearly his coffin through the vast expanse of stars and planets.
In this life, though, he just felt numb. In this life, Peter Parker had gripped his shoulders and begged to stay as the universe took him somewhere out of Tony’s reach.
He didn’t grieve. Not properly, at least.
He was still firmly in denial as he and Nebula worked day and night to fix the ship.
They knew, though, that any progress they made just postponed the inevitable.
That last night, he knew it was coming.
He recorded his message to Pepper, kicked himself one last time for everything he ever put her through, and then he waited.
Denial gave way to acceptance, skipping everything in between.
It was easy to accept that Peter was dead if Tony knew that, soon, he’d be joining him.
Except, in a twisted bit of fate, Carol Danvers shows up looking like God incarnate to save the day.
In what feels like the blink of an eye, he feels the gravitational pull of his own planet again and it all becomes real.
He will keep living and Peter will not.
Rhodey is the first to greet him, puts his arms and lifts gently under his shoulders, and Tony is brought back to that moment in the desert so many years ago
And his best friend must be thinking the same thing, because they don’t even make it two steps before his other arm wraps around Tony and he chokes out, “I thought we agreed that next time you ride with me, Tones.”
For a split second, the denial is back
For just a moment, he wants to let his best friend will carry him home--again--and believe everything will be okay
It doesn’t take long, though, for Rhodes to realize that something is missing from this happy reunion.
He doesn’t ask the question--can already infer the answer by the unshed tears in Tony’s eyes and the lack of a certain Spider-Kid that Rhodey had come to care about--but Tony says it anyway.
“I lost the kid.”
The broken admission is overshadowed by Pepper sprinting toward them, nearly crushing them both, disbelief written all over her face.
Rhodey thinks she notices the missing presence, too, but she doesn’t say anything--doesn’t quite know what to say.
Because Tony might be on Earth again, but one look in his eyes and they both know a part of him is still miles away.
The two of them share a concerned look, but they can’t fix him tonight.
Tonight, all they can do is carry him home and pretend.
Pretend that they can reverse the end of the world.
Pretend that, someday, Peter Parker will come home too, and that when he does, the part of Tony that died with Peter will come back with him.
Pretend that, when everything is said and done, they’ll finally get the happy ending they deserve.
A: How did you come up with the title to [insert fic]?
B: Any of your stories inspired by personal experience?
C: What character do you identify with most?
D: Is there a song or a playlist to associate with [insert fic]?
E: If you wrote a sequel to [insert fic], what would it be about?
F: Care to share a favorite hurt/comfort fic?
G: Care to share a favorite crack fic?
H: How would you describe your style?
I: Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)?
J: Write or describe an alternative ending to [insert fic].
K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with?
L: What’s the weirdest AU you’ve ever come up with?
M: Got any premises on the back burner that you’d care to share?
N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?
O: How do you begin a story–with the plot, or the characters?
P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)
Q: Do you have any discarded scenes/storylines/projects?
R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?
S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist?
T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand?
U: A pairing you might like to write for, but haven’t tried yet.
V: A secondary (or underrated) character you want to see more of in fic?
W: Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones?
X: A character you enjoy making suffer.
Y: A character you want to protect.
Z: Major character death–do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can’t tolerate?
