🌌getting lost and getting found🌅
They weren't even friends; just a couple of boys who went to the same high school, graduated with the same class. Nothing could have precipitated Peter opening his aunt's front door and finding Tony Stark standing outside his apartment.
And when Peter says 'um, okay', when he goes back to his room and shoves clothes and a toothbrush in his bag on autopilot, he can't stop thinking about Tony's small smile--almost a smirk--and the shift of the other teen's hips as he'd turned and sauntered back down the hall.
There's a chance he won't be out there, that Peter will push out the building's front door and find no one parked at the curb, no one waiting. A joke, a prank, to kick off the ending of an era and the beginning of...something. Life, in all its chaotic, heart-rending glory.
But he freezes only for a moment at the top of the steps, and then he hikes his backpack strap further up onto his shoulder and comes down, bee-lining for the ridiculous candy-red sports car purring in the pick-up/drop-off zone, and for the dark haired boy leaning against the driver's side door, smoking, backlit by the streaks of the early, smoggy sunrise that spills between the buildings across the way.
"Took you long enough," Tony says, but there's fading surprise and traces of relief woven through the teasing, the foundations of a tentative, but warm, smile.
Peter just shrugs, cheeks heating as he chews at his lip. "Do you still want to...?"
He has to ask, has to--because even though Tony waited, even though they're standing on the same crumbling, stained sidewalk, in the same morning pre-heat mugginess, Peter still can't find whatever it is that made this...happen.
And Tony studies him for a second, uncertainty flashing across his features before something like cockiness, like teasing, like understanding replaces it.
"Yeah, I do. I might even tell you why, if you can't figure it out by the time we get to California."
"What? California? That's--"
"Really far," Tony finishes. He turns to open the door and slip into the driver's seat, takes a drag and ashes his cigarette out the window, and then looks up at Peter with a cocked eyebrow and a smirk, tilts his head to indicate the passenger side. "Get in, Parker. We're wasting daylight."
And when they slip out of traffic and hit the first stretch of unclogged highway, windows down and wind whipping through their hair, Peter still doesn't know why this is happening...
...but he's glad he's along for the ride.
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I may continue with this, it would be fun; something about grief and growing up and having memories that don't belong. And, of course, boys kissing each other in places far away from home. We'll see.
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