Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five
Celebration fic for reaching 1k followers (thank you!!). Chapter One of Three.
Warnings: kink. permission to cum. mentioned thorki. peter is 21.
When Tony sees Peter for the first time in two years, it is from behind the bar on the Avengers’ floor of the Tower. Most floors have a bar—a souvenir leftover from his drinking days when he liked to be able to make himself a whiskey no matter the floor he happened to be on—though he is now celebrating sobriety. This is how he celebrates: by being the most knowledgeable about the liquors he keeps on stock, and by volunteering to make drinks for the others on nights such as this when a group of the Avengers come together to relax and bond.
It was Pepper who convinced him to stop keeping count. After the dusting, he’d broken his years of sobriety—and who could blame him? He’d felt the world crumble to dust, had seen what was his son figure at the time crumble to dust in his arms. Drinking was the healthiest coping mechanism he had. Then, when they’d reversed the Snap, he’d gone off the drink. It had been some of the worst days of his life, getting sober again. Days when the DT’s had been so bad that he couldn’t hold the tools in his workshop and he couldn’t tell what was real or fake, when he snapped at anyone and everything and asked FRIDAY to lock down the lab and turn visitors away.
By the time he’d been fit to see anyone, Peter had left the Tower for college. Tony had stood in the tasteful but empty room, breathing in deep the leftover scent of boyish cologne, ashamed of what the scent did to him.
After all the ups and downs, starting to count his sobriety as Day One had been like rubbing dust in his wounds. He remembered day one thousand, day two thousand, for fuck’s sake. So he stopped keeping track and worked to take every day as it was.
That’s how he ended up here—on the other side of the bar—a seltzer he’d pause to sip at sweating in its glass beneath the bar. The Avengers put his skills to use, asking for rare and obscure drinks that call upon some of his most expensive stock.
“Is Peter coming?” Natasha askes, sipping her martini. She hadn’t quite laughed when he made it for her, sliding it across the bar and asking, is that dirty enough for you, Miss Romanoff? but it had been a close thing. Her eyes don’t move to him when the rhythm of his shaker stutters at the kid’s name, but Tony knows that she notices. She notices everything.
“He said he was,” Thor booms. The man has no inside voice—though hadn’t he grown up in a palace? Maybe he just needed to be able to hear his voice echo. “He facesnapped me earlier today to say as much.”
“Does he mean facetime or snapchat? I can’t tell,” Tony mutters.
“He means snapchat, unfortunately,” Rhodey says. “Thor’s addicted.”
“I like the filters,” Thor admits. “Look—this one gives me facial hair just like yours, Stark.”
That’s a frightening thought, though he does let Thor coerce him into a selfie. Really, it’d be a shame not to. Thor is handsome enough, and Tony is a goddamn sex symbol. Let the hundred thousand snapchat users that follow Thor save that picture for their own nefarious uses—you’re welcome. Just as they’re about to take another picture, a notification comes up on Thor’s phone that says spidertwink took a screenshot. Thor’s laugh rattles the glasses behind the bar.
“Peter must have enjoyed our picture,” he says.
“He’s out and proud,” Natasha remarks, lifting an eyebrow at his tone.
“As am I,” Tony says. “But I thought twink was a slur these days.”
“I think he’s reclaimed it.”
“I thought twinks were the delicious cream filled cakes,” Thor says.
“No, you’re thinking of—you know what, buddy, you’re actually not far off.”
This time Natasha does grin, hiding her smile behind her drink.
FRIDAY’s voice interrupts them to say that Peter, their last missing Avenger (except for Bucky and Steve who are taking personal time in a state not to be disclosed, and Bruce who is working with another gamma rad specialist overseas), has entered the building.
“Is he bringing the boyfriend?” Clint asks, wiggling his eyebrows.
It’s a result of years of PR-training that keeps Tony from scowling. Peter’s boyfriend had come as a shock, only just less painful than what Tony imagines taking Thor’s hammer to the gut might feel like. May had been the one who told him that Peter was dating an older man—twelve years older, at that!
“What do you want me to do, Tony?” May had asked during their weekly phone calls. (How else was he supposed to get information about how Peter was doing? Reply to the kid’s texts?) “He’s an adult. He’ll do what he thinks is right, regardless of how I feel. I’m trying to be the cool aunt. I’m just thankful he told me at all.”
Tony had a few ideas of what May could do about it: 1. Put her fucking foot down. 2. Lock Peter up in his bedroom and put bars on the windows, special vibranium bars that Tony could easily beg Shuri and T’Challa to have imported.
Anything really. Anything, except give her blessing.
“They broke up. Don’t you follow him on Twitter?” Natasha asks. “They made a joint statement a few months ago, about how it was mutual and they’re still friends and they wish each other the best in all things.”
According to May, the break-up itself had been Peter’s idea no matter what Twitter said, which made some feral part of Tony preen.
“What are we talking about,” a voice asks from the door. Peter stands there, dressed in his usual fare: jeans, a graphic t-shirt (figures the kid would wear his own merchandise, a Spider-Man shirt tight enough to leave nothing to the imagination). The first thing Tony thinks when he sees him is that the kid has grown up. He’s no taller, no wider, but the set of his shoulders is unmistakable. He’s wearing his hair differently now, too. More styled. “Who are still friends?”
Tony’s mouth is dry—he licks his lips, and fuck, the kid’s eyes track the movement.
Everybody knows about Peter’s crush on Iron Man. It’d made the morning news when a paparazzo snapped a picture of Peter on his way to classes at MIT with the band of his boxers exposed above his jeans. The IRONMAN decal on them had been unmistakable. A fan on Twitter asked if Peter had a crush on his teammate (teammates, the public considered them, except that after Thanos, threats requiring Peter to be called in from university were non-existent), and though Peter’s very diplomatic answer of I have crushes on all of them, have you seen them? didn’t single Tony out exclusively—it didn’t say no, now, did it?
Tony has worked, very resolutely, to ignore that crush for years (Tony is nearly thirty fucking years older than him, for Christ’s sake, which makes the twelve years between Peter and his ex look like a molehill at the base of the mountain). But crush or no crush, Tony can’t help that he’s missed this kid, that his heart clenches just at the sight of this kid. Tony had moved mountains for him—had risked everything for him. Invented fucking time travel for him.
And a seed is planted, right then and there. A seed that comes to him in the form of a question: would it be so wrong for them to indulge in each other? Are they not two adults, both of which have seen a side of the universe that civilians could never imagine? Who else could he find solace in, if not this sweet, handsome young man?
He pushes that thought away, buries it deep. But that’s the thing about seeds. They grow.
“Hey, kid,” Tony says. He wants to hug the younger man, but changes his mind at the last moment. Tony ghosted Peter for more than a year, ignoring the texts that slowly came further and further apart. Then when he had reached out, it had been Peter doing the ghosting. Maybe their repertoire is lost, maybe there’s no hope for reconciliation. He’s afraid that having a hug rejected might be too much for him to brush off in front of company. “It’s good to see you.”
Peter smiles. His hand isn’t as soft as it was when he was young; he’s developing his own calluses from day’s spent in labs at MIT. And that grip—god. Tony lets go to reach for his drink. Fuck, he’s parched. He needs to tell FRIDAY to prompt him to drink more water. “Hi, Mr. Stark. It’s good to see you too—you look great. As always, I mean. When are you going to get snapchat?” Peter changes the subject, face reddening. “Maybe if Thor had more people to send pictures of the dogs he sees in the park, we individually wouldn’t get so many. Help take up the collective burden!”
“Hardly a burden,” Thor mutters. “Look at this one—Peter, what is this one called again?”
“That’s a golden retriever,” Natasha supplies. “Are you drinking with us tonight, Peter?”
Peter makes a noise, pushing his hands into his pockets. “I don’t know—the, uh, tests I’ve done suggest that even though my metabolism burns it off quickly, it doesn’t take much to affect me.”
“So, you’re a lightweight?” Clint asks. His face is already flushed with alcohol from the drinks Tony has been mixing, not to mention the lager he and Sam have been demolishing. If Bucky finds out they drank all of his imported beer, there will be hell to pay, but at least Tony’s metaphorical pocketbook will be safe.
“Sure,” Peter says, taking a seat on the stool beside Natasha. “But I’ll take a drink, if-if you’re willing to make me one, Mr. Stark.”
“What would you like?” Tony asks. “And kid, for the love of God, start calling me Tony.”
“Start him strong. Make him a whiskey, neat,” Clint suggests. He slips an arm around Peter’s shoulders, like they’re old friends, yet Tony is the one second-guessing a hug. Life isn’t fair.
“I—sure. That sounds fine.”
“A whiskey,” Tony says flatly. “You sure? You don’t really strike me as the whiskey type.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Peter asks. There’s a fire that ignites behind his eyes, but Tony doesn’t know what it is nor what it’s burning. “What kind of type do you think I am?”
Something softer. Sweeter. More sour. He could think of a dozen mixed drinks off of the top of his head that the kid is more likely to enjoy than whiskey—it had taken Tony years to appreciate the taste, and that was all he could do: appreciate it. But there’s no way to express any of those ideas without coming off as a jackass, and Tony plans to at least make it through an hour of the party before becoming a proper jackass. He pours the drink and slides it across the bar.
Everyone watches while Peter takes a sip. The kid doesn’t sputter like Tony might have expected, but his face twists. Cheeks red, whether from embarrassment or the alcohol (hadn’t he said that it affected him more than it should have otherwise?), Peter forces a smile and nods. “It’s good,” he lies.
“I’ll pass on the compliment to the Macallan distillery.”
That gets a smile out of Peter—a real one. Tony still can tell the difference. The kid’s tells haven’t changed.
The only thing that’s changed is what that smile does to Tony’s heart.
An hour later, everyone is well and truly on their way to being drunk. Peter’s low tolerance has been proven time and time again: just minutes after taking sips from his whiskey (that he refuses to let go of), he sways in his seat, eyes heavy lidded. Another sip or two and he manspreads, a word that Tony would have preferred to never use outside nor inside his mind, but there is no other word for it: his shoulders relax, one arm slung over the back of the couch, and his legs are loose and wide, the perfect width apart for a man to kneel between.
Peter catches him staring. Instinct makes Tony want to look away, to pretend it was nothing but a glance, but he can look, can’t he? There’s nothing wrong with it. Nothing at all, based on the way Peter’s mouth slips open, head tilting back a little in his drunken drowsiness. Not a moment later, he is sitting up straight, lifting one leg to rest his ankle on his knee—and yeah, he’s adjusting himself. It takes everything inside Tony not to smirk into his seltzer water.
Then again, maybe the conversation around them is just turning him on. It’s certainly keeping Tony’s attention.
“You arranged for them to fuck?” Natasha asks. Her cheeks are flushed prettily, and she’s sitting with her legs tucked underneath her, twirling the toothpick that had pierced her olives between her nimble fingers. “That’s basically a threesome, just half as fun.”
“Thirty-three percent less fun,” Peter chimes in. The room ignores him (too caught up in Sam’s story) but Tony snorts and the grateful look Peter gives him for getting the joke is worth gold.
“No—he had no idea that I told her to seduce him,” Sam says. “I knew she had a thing for him—me and the guy were best friends at the time, so he was always around. I saw the way she looked at him. So for a few weeks I just play it up, right? Give her some dirty talk, bring him up when we’re fucking just to see her get all ashamed and embarrassed. After a while that wasn’t enough, so I told her to go for it. Fucking seduce him. It was a game to see if she could. And God, she was relentless. I gave her fucking tips, too: what to wear, what to say. I’d invite him over and then go out and leave them alone together. He held off for as long as he could—a true bro. Poor guy had no clue I was the one behind it.”
“He thought she was cheating on you?”
Sam hums. “He beat himself up about it until we came clean. Then we DP’d her. Made her dreams come true, swear to God. We broke up a year later but if she doesn’t still get off daydreaming about that, then she’s downright lying.”
“What about you, Clint?” Nat asks. “We want the kinkiest of your kink.”
The question has been the topic of discussion for several minutes now (with several stops along the way for terms to be explained for Thor, not to mention Thor’s goddamn revelation that his kinkiest moments involved Loki—his adopted brother which. Yeah. That’s going to take some time for Tony to digest—or purge right from his brain).
“I’ve been pegged,” Clint admits.
Tony rolls his eyes. Peter’s eyebrows are raised to his hairline while he’s both trying to listen eagerly and become a wallflower all at once. He sips at his whiskey again, eyes bouncing from one person to another whenever they speak. All they need is popcorn for this show. Which isn’t a bad thought, actually.
“Something to add, Tony?” Nat mocks.
“If taking it up the ass is kinky, then I’m pulling in a gold at the BDSM-Olympics.”
Clint squawks. Peter spits his drink half-way across the coffee table, a fine spray of 18-year aged whiskey that has everyone in the immediate vicinity cringing away. Gasping for breath, the kid pounds on his own chest, eyes watering. “Sorry, went down the wrong pipe,” he croaks. From her perch in the armchair, Natasha’s eyes are positively glittering.
“Pegging definitely counts as kink, man,” Sam defends, to vigorous nodding from Clint. “Anal is still taboo for plenty of people, and with the added element of a strap-on? That’s kink. If a woman was pegging you even with your history, Tony—”
“Don’t mention that in front of Pepper,” Tony bluffs. “It will bring up old memories, her face will get all flushed—”
“I’d believe you if I didn’t know how Pepper feels about giving or receiving anal,” Natasha chimes in.
“Oh? And tell us, Oracle, how do you know such personal things about my CEO?” Tony asks.
Thor leans over and stage whispers to Peter: “What’s pegging?”
“Peter!” Natasha cries. The kid shrinks in on himself, eyes wide as quarters. “You’ve been quiet. It’s your turn—let’s hear about your kinks.”
Sam groans. “Man, I don’t want to hear about it. He’s like, fifteen—”
“I’m twenty-one,” Peter says. His face is turning a marvelous shade of red, whether from embarrassment or anger. “And—with all due respect, Mr. Wilson—I’m a Gen-z. I’m probably kinkier than you.”
Voices rise all around the room, whether at the burn Peter just gave Sam or indignation on Sam’s behalf, but Tony’s mouth feels dry, incapable of chiming in. He reaches for his glass on the table and takes several sips which don’t help. To be honest, it’s difficult to imagine Peter being interested in anything alternative in the bedroom (not that Tony ever let himself ruminate on such a topic before, and not that he enjoys thinking about Peter having sex with Mr. Ex-Boyfriend). He’s baby faced, innocent, with a heart of gold. Then again, what’s the saying? That it’s always the shy ones?
“Go ahead, kid,” Tony says, voice cutting through the noise. He angles his body so that Peter has his undivided attention. “We’re listening. Regale us with your tales.”
“I—well—it’s hard to think of something when I’m put on the spot—” Sam scoffs. He leans over to Clint and mutters something in the archer’s ear. Peter’s jaw tightens. “Okay. Well. How’s this. So, my ex-boyfriend, Quent. He was like, my top, right?”
Tony is taking internal notes, his internal stenographer banging away on their modified keyboard. Peter bottoms. And even though he might have guessed (most people are switches, Tony imagines), confirmation of it is blowing the older man’s mind, even if his face remains calm and smooth.
“We were together for a year and he was older so, more experience, you know. He’s the one who introduced me to, like, everything. He had this thing though—” Peter stops, pressing his lips together into a thin line. He reaches out for his drink and takes a large swallow. Throughout the night, he’s gotten better about not wincing at the taste and burn. The drink gives him some courage, because he barrels on. “—he had this thing where he wanted me to ask permission before I could—you know. Cum.”
“That’s kinky,” Natasha admits. Tony would agree, but he’s lost the capacity for speech imagining Peter underneath him, face pinched with his attempts to hold off his orgasm until Tony (not some Quent, no one else) gave him permission. Tony hasn’t had a sip of alcohol tonight, but his head is swimming with an entirely different intoxication. Thankfully, it would take more than just the thought to get him hard.
“Oh, that’s not the kinky part,” Peter says, waving her away. “We broke up a few months ago, right? But now it’s like I’m conditioned. Every time I’m—” he moves his hand in a repeated motion over his crotch, and Tony’s eyes widen infinitesimally. “—solo, you know. When I cum, it’s no good. I feel bad, like I’m breaking somebody’s rules.
“But I found that I can—uh—get permission from other people. In a roundabout way. And it helps.”
“Wait,” says Sam, scrambling for his phone in his pocket. “Wait, wait, wait—”
Peter hides his mouth behind his hand, eyes looking anywhere but at Sam.
“Two weeks ago, Peter sent me a message—everybody, shut up, listen to this—” Sam clears his throat, reading. “We were talking about tonight, this very fucking party, and Peter asked, can I come. I said, I don’t see why not, but he said, so..? I was like, so what?—”
“Get to the point,” Clint prompts.
“—he beat around the bush with me until I said, word for word, Yes Peter you can come—”
“And I thank you very much, Mr. Wilson,” Peter says, exuding faux innocence.
The entire room breaks to pieces. Peter catches Tony’s eye and his laughter dies off, though the smile doesn’t fade. Tony lifts his eyebrows. Peter shrugs as if to say, what can you do? On a whim, Tony lifts his glass and they toast each other from across the room, water to whiskey. For the rest of the party (even during Twister, which Tony volunteers to spin the wheel for—and if anyone notices that the colors Tony calls out keep Peter separated from the other fitter gentlemen playing the game, no one calls him out on it)—Tony is lost in thought.
Natasha is asleep (probably) sitting up on the sofa, her head tilted back to rest against the back of the cushions, hair mussed. In her lap is Clint’s head, the man snoring gently. Thor had gone back to Asgard hours ago, but the remnants of him could be seen scattered around the apartment: copious drafts of beer, an end table that he had accidentally smashed to pieces when Mjolnir slipped from his drunken hand. Sam has taken up residence in the guest room, and Tony doesn’t imagine that he will make an appearance until sunset.
At the bar he sits, Peter beside him. Neither of them are drunk, though Peter looks exhausted, an elbow resting on the bar, his chin planted in his palm.
“I got way too used to sleeping through the night during break. This is good practice for the all-nighters I’ll have to pull when the fall semester starts.”
Tony smiles gently even as the reminder that Peter is leaving—always leaving—makes his chest ache. They’ve been talking for an hour or more, catching up on everything that’s happened. It goes unspoken for a while, that these are things they should have never had to catch each other up on. If Tony hadn’t fucked up after the un-Dusting, he and Peter would have had a relationship all these years.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Tony says. “That was on me. I was in a dark place. I should have just communicated that instead of shutting everyone out, but my Masters Degrees aren’t in communication.”
“You tried to make it right, but by then, I just—I was at school, and I was spending so much time with Quentin. It was easier to pretend like you weren’t making effort,” Peter admits, rubbing at one eye with his palm. “Then at least I didn’t feel so guilty for not answering you.”
“I forgive you, kid,” Tony says. “And for what it’s worth, I wouldn’t have answered me either.”
“’m not a kid,” Peter mumbles.
“Oh, that’s clear. I was awake for your class 401 on orgasm delay and denial.”
Peter groans, burying his face in both of his hands. “Ignore that,” he says. “God, that’s so embarrassing.”
Tony laughs. “You’re among—friends, it’s no big deal. At least you aren’t like me, with your sexual proclivities making page 1 of 100 on Pornhub.”
Peter peaks through his fingers, bloodshot eyes wide. “You’re on Pornhub?”
“Not anymore. Tech genius, remember? FRIDAY is constantly using facial recognition technologies to make sure that my NC-17 home videos stay offline, but ten, twenty years ago, they made their rounds. Mostly on the major news networks.
“But what’s a little homemade pornography when compared to secretly getting off with a distant friend’s permission?” Tony teases. Then it comes out before he can stop it, the filter between his brain and mouth always a little slow at catching inappropriate comments: “I’m a little offended that you never asked me.”
Those words hang between them for what must only be a split second, but it feels like millennia. Empires rise and fall. Jupiter makes an entire rotation, 400 million miles away. Peter stares, blankly. The change comes over him slowly: his eyes begin to bulge, his mouth drop, cheeks flushing. “I—what?”
Tony clears his throat, thumb rubbing the rim of the glass in his hand. Is he overplaying his cards? “I just mean, you never messaged me. Asking ‘to come’.”
“Well, we—we weren’t on speaking terms, I guess. If I’d messaged you, you would have been suspicious.”
“I guess that’s true,” Tony hums.
“And now my plot has been exposed,” Peter says, rolling his eyes. “I’m going to have to find some other way to—err—you know.”
Tony shifts in his seat. His foot begins to tap, anxious and silent on the floor. He can’t even look at Peter when he offers this, doesn’t want to see if there’s disgust on those precious features. “Look. If you need permission. I could give it to you kid. No ruse needed. Just message me.”
“Really?” Peter asks. He sounds breathless.
Peter’s alarm begins to go off on his phone. He scrambles to silence it, giving anxious glances to the sleeping Avengers across the room, but a stampede wouldn’t wake Clint and Natasha with out much Russian vodka they polished off towards the early dawn hours. When Tony looks at his watch, he sees that it’s seven in the morning.
“I should get going,” Peter says. “I promised I’d bring May breakfast.”
“Let me send you in a car. I don’t want you on the subway.”
“That’d be great, Mr. Stark. Thanks.”
They part at the penthouse door. He puts out a hand to shake Peter’s again, but the young man surprises him and steps in for a hug. They are nearly the same height, so Peter just buries his face in Tony’s neck, pressing them together firmly from chest to shoes. The kid is warm, so fucking solid, breath hot against where he’s got his face pressed in the crook of Tony’s shoulder. Tony shivers all over—but he’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He wraps his arms around the kid, one hand pressed into his lengthening curls, holding him close. Tony won’t turn down any more opportunities to be close to this man he admires—this man he’s infatuated with.
“I’m going to miss you, kid,” Tony says.
“I’ll come back. Soon. If you want me to?”
“You’ve still got my number. Text me, or something,” Peter says after they draw apart. His cheeks are flushed—and yeah, he’s angling his hips to try to hide the beginning of an erection. Tony does his best to keep his eyes on Peter’s and not embarrass the kid half to death. Inside, he’s preening. Fuck, the wonders Peter works on his ego.
The young man disappears into the elevator (and as the doors are shutting, Tony catches him pumping a triumphant fist in air). He can’t help it. He sags back against the frame of the penthouse’s door and grins, feeling twenty years younger. “FRI,” he says to the ceiling. “I really hope you got a glimpse of that. I want to see it on repeat.”
And by the time Peter has made it back to the apartment, he has a friend request on Snapchat from one UKnowWho.
