middle of it the avengers alarm goes off. The argument spills over during the battle (and of course everyone can hear them and is trying to ignore it) and it ends with one of them saying they should just break up. Then something happens and they make up lmao
So there seems to be a part missing to your ask, but I pretty much got the gist! I hope this is okay, and that you enjoy! Ages are ambiguous so let your imagination run free. Its mostly angst but at the end there’s hopefulness for a brighter future. Tony is kind of portrayed as a bit of an ass in this, but we all know he just struggles with relationships and emotions so I hope you won’t judge him too harshly.
TW: Angst | Fighting | Temporary break up | Very brief note of minor injury.
Tony’s words still ring like Church bells through his head, even hours after they’d been spoken. That harsh spitfire tone, the broken fury in his eyes as he spat the words in the midst of battle, launching that anger against their enemies. Tony’s eyes, normally rich brandy that made him think of warm nights in front of a fire, had been been inferno and rage all day.
“We’re better off without each other”.
He flinched at the echo memory, staring dully off into space as he held the pack of cooling gel against his bruised side, the taste of copper drying on his tongue. His bruised sides were his own fault; his blind rage and anguish at their fighting had transgressed into the battle. His hits had been sloppy, unkempt, and it had fallen to the rest of the team to try and hold together their splintered edges.
Even now, the rest of the team are as sullen and awkwardly tense as the seething, newly un-coupled pair. Even Steve, normally so brazen and uncowed, sits grim in the pilot seat, jaw set and gaze on the miles of clouds before them. Clint, nursing a leg and his checked pride, is a comforting but ever silent presence at his side. No warm jokes, no lopsided smiles.
Tony is the worst. Cold and impassive at the rear of the jet, working on his Gauntlet with silent fury. Peter wondered what would happen when they got back; he’d more or less moved into the penthouse with Tony by this point, their lives entangled. Peter had no idea about post-breakup protocol. Tony had been his first real relationship, the first one to have any true weight and meaning.
The aching tiredness of war had settled in. His body felt leaden and tender, and on any other day he would have curled up against Tony’s side and napped the journey home away. Now, he leaned back on the bench and closed his eyes, focusing on keeping his breathing measured and even. The battle he’d just fought seemed nothing in comparison to the fight that had began this morning and had broken like a storm on the battlefield.
“You’re unseasoned! You’re a child. Our worlds have been nothing alike and neither are we!”
“You’re half a lifetime behind me, Peter. Sometimes, I think that’s how it should be. Apart.”
“If you hadn’t been bitten by that spider, me and you? We wouldn’t ever be in the same circle”.
When he opened his eyes again they were wet and they stung, and they were home.
No. Not home. Not for him, anymore. Peter accepted the hand that Steve offered him, and followed the rest out in stony silence. He wondered if this would be the end of it; the legacy of his time as an Avenger. His entire relationship put on blast over the comms, his friends and childhood heroes unable to look him in the eye.
Medical cleared him with two cracked ribs and his own teeth imprints on his tongue. Two painkillers and a glass of water later, and he itched to be out of the suit, to be clean and to curl up in a soft bed. His only clothes were in the penthouse, however, and he reluctantly shuffled to the elevator, head low and arms wrapped around himself for comfort more than to relieve the pain.
He crept cautiously into the open space, ears perked and eyes alert. He couldn’t see Tony anywhere, though, and by the time he reached the small staircase that led up to the balcony-style second floor, he was relaxed.
A fool’s act. No sooner had he rounded the corner, light-footed on the plush carpet, he stopped. Perched on the edge of the bed, with one smartly dressed Pepper Potts between his splayed thighs, was Tony. He had his head tucked down against her stomach, arms loose around her waist, and though he could see only her back, he could tell she was running her fingers through his hair.
Heart clenching, Peter turned away and fled before they could notice him, taking the elevator down to the foyer. It was easy enough to ask for a car to drive him home, the wide eyed receptionist sympathetic and astounded by his presence. The driver who pulled up was not Happy, but he was soft and cheerful, and roused Peter gently from where he’d fallen asleep against the window on the ride home.
His bed was cold and empty, a sore trade-off from where he would normally be. But the shower was warm and a balm to his aching muscles where the painkillers had stemmed the pain but not cut it off completely. When he was dressed and beneath the sheets he turned his cheek to his pillow, and let his mind wander.
“I’m - Not - Helpless!” He snarled, kicking furiously at the robotic figure that tried to swing for his jaw. He obliterated it, pieces flying in all directions as he waded through the outburst and onto the next, his partner’s bitter tone a soundtrack to the splintering of metal before him. He lashed out again, ducked, used a web to throw the sentient steel away from him.
“You’re untrained! You’re green! You’re a fucking colt amongst stallions and I won't stand by and watch you get hurt!” Tony’s eyes were wildfire like his voice, and any other moment his appetite for war would have made Peter’s thighs squeeze together and his teeth catch his tongue. Then, it terrified him, enraged him, and saddened him. They spat fire at each other and used it to fuel their defence, and they both steadfastly ignored the pleading protests of their colleagues over the comms, tuned in to their every word. The shame had only made Peter angrier.
He awoke with it burning inside him, smothered quickly by the sight of the bare pillow before him. No sleep-warm brown eyes looking back at him, just the residual stiffness from his injuries and the bitter taste of loneliness. Peter shifted and pushed himself to his feet, forcing his morning routine. He dreaded the text that would ask him to pick up his things, or the call that would tell him Happy was on his way with his stuff.
It never came. But neither did any other call. His phone was silent from any Avenger, none of the usual post-mission calls to fill in paperwork or check-ins from the others. No Steve asking if he wanted to jog together on Wednesday, no Tony asking him to come to the lab with sexual emojis.
Only Ned, MJ, Aunt May, even Flash. Though the latter was just another request for Tony's attention. No matter how many times Peter secretly prayed each time he picked up his phone, it was never the name he wanted. By the 6th day, he'd well and truly come to realise that was it.
It was over.
They were over.
He sniffled into his ice cream. The past six days had melted into scrolling through his old messages, bawling, and watching Elle Woods get her happily ever after. He'd taken her example in the first film and had stomped silently to the grocery market to buy several litre tubs of ice cream in varying flavours. He'd put the Spidersuit under his bed and hadn't looked at it since.
Except by the next Saturday he'd run out of emotions to cycle through and messages to cry over and the itch to be out in the nightlife, sailing between the stars took over.
Putting on the suit felt like a punch to the gut and a glass of cold water at the end of a desert.
He stood on the roof of the apartment complex, swept his gaze slowly over the cityscape, then stepped off the ledge. The drop made his heart skip a beat and the adrenaline crash through his veins, and flicking his wrist with a web at the next building felt like salvation. He dropped, swung, pulled and sailed until he was panting behind the mask, arms quivering as he roamed steadily from the lower city level to the skyscrapers and business buildings, towering above the rest like sentinels and watchmen.
He ignored the nagging memories of doing this with Tony. The two of them laughing through the comms, of clinging to each other above the clouds where nobody could see them. He focused on the ache of his muscles as he climbed higher, higher. The Stark Tower was the tallest building in New York, but the Reach Building was a close second, and empty at this hour.
He threw a web and let the momentum take him, swinging a steep arc and letting go so that it tossed him high into the empty darkness, the cool breeze buffering him as he raced in the sky, baring his stomach to the stars above, arms spread and head tipped back on a delighted, breathless sigh.
One moment, he was gazing at stars, twinkling and careless above him. The next he was rolling backwards, over, and what should have been cityscape became two slats of neon blue, surrounded by peony red and rich gold. He startled, jerked, and they fell in graceful tandem. Peter's heart thumped behind the bars of his chest, and he was left breathless as he stared, the fall ignored for the jarring reality that Tony was here.
The cityscape rushed up towards them and solid arms slid around his waist, driving the breath from his lungs. The firm press of metal was something Peter had resigned himself to feel only in his memories and dreams, and he couldn't remember how to breathe in at the feel of plated fingertips digging into his hips.
They free-fell down, plummeting fast. A shift of Tony's leg and they tipped, rolling gracefully until they were upright and then Peter's entire body tingled as he heard the thrusters of the suit engage. Falling became flying upwards, held safely against warm, solid metal, though he didn't dare to lay his cheek against Tony's chest as he might've before.
He did turn his head away and close his eyes though, relishing in the feel of their bodies together last he suddenly wake up and realise, not for the first time, that it had all been a dream. It was only a cluster of seconds, but it felt like an eternity before he was being set down as gently as if he were glass, held tight by an arm around his waist as Tony's reached up, tugging off the mask as his own faceplate flipped up.
"I can't ". Tony's voice broke over the word, breathless and agonised as he clung to Peter, holding him tight. Shock rendered him speechless and he simply stood lax in Tony's grip, on his tip-toes and leaning back into the solid arm around him. Tony's eyes were dark and red, glossy like he'd been crying mere moments before they landed. He looked sleepless, exhausted.
"I can't do it" he repeated, slower, weaker. "I can't be without you. I hate myself for it, because you deserve better. Because being with you automatically means risking losing you. But I can't lose you like that". He slumped at the end of it, defeated, and Peter finally managed to swallow the knife that had lodged itself in his throat, robbing him of his words and leaving tight pain in its wake.
“You don’t get to dictate what I am and aren’t capable of doing anymore. You don’t get to keep comparing me as weak or useless against the rest of you” he breathed, tears stinging at his eyes and turning Tony into a large, red blob. A red blob that hesitated, before nodding. “And you don’t get to break up with me because you’re being a selfish ass” he added after a pause wherein both of them were too afraid to say or do anything else.
“I can’t promise I’ll be perfect. I’m undoubtedly gonna fuck up again at some point. But... Fuck, I want us to be able to fight about it, and stay together. I want you to tell me I’m wrong and I want to fall asleep next to you in the same night, because I haven’t slept since you left. And-”
Peter sucked in a breath on a sound between a laugh and a sob, wiping heavily at his eyes before he reached up and pressed his palm over Tony’s mouth, muffling whatever tangent he was about to spiel off into. The prickle of Tony’s signature stubble against his palm was a sensation he wouldn’t trade for the world in that moment.
Tony stopped, breathed in a puff of warm air, and watched him with docile hope as he leaned forwards, slowly and carefully, ducking his head out of the way of the faceplate. Tony’s eyes shone with broken adoration as he removed his palm and tipped his head, pressing a brief, weak kiss against Tony’s mouth. His legs felt weak for it and he moved his hands to Tony’s shoulders, clinging to the burnished metal.
“Come home” Tony whispered against his mouth, fingers flexing into Peter’s sides, and he nodded immediately, ducked his head down to Tony’s chest as the faceplate snicked shut and they soared towards the stars.
It wouldn’t be perfect. But that was okay, because they’d work through it and keep loving each other anyway.
