20 for the Drabble prompt!
“I just, I know that it’s literally not a problem, it’s seriously, like, the smallest deal ever, but it’s just - Ned’s moms will both have the cars that day, and our car is broken down again and we’re supposed to go mini-golfing and…”
For a second, Tony doesn’t move or say anything, until the silence starts to drag just a bit. He glances over at Peter, prompts, “...And?”
“And it’s -” Peter shifts, because he knows he’s being completely ridiculous, and yet he can’t stop. “It’s...it’s embarrassing. I know it shouldn’t be because it’s just Ned and he’s been my best friend for eight years, but now that he’s my...my boyfriend, I hate that I can’t actually pick him up in an actual car to take him on a proper date and -”
“I - what?” Peter stares at him, confused.
Still tinkering away at...whatever he’s working on by now, Peter hasn’t fully kept track, Tony says, “I have plenty of cars, kid, you can just take one of mine.”
“Oh,” Peter says. His head is spinning a little, but that’s at least partly because he hasn’t eaten in three hours. Tony just wants to hand him, a sixteen-year-old who only got his license two months ago, one of his incredibly fancy, incredibly expensive cars? “You - you trust me with your car?”
It comes out a touch more vulnerable, more young, than he would’ve liked. Because what he’s trying to ask is merely whether Tony would trust someone so young with such expensive cars, but what he knows he means is Do you trust me with more than just lab equipment and Spider-Man suits? Do you trust me as a person, as Peter Parker, and not just as a smart kid who happened to get bitten by a radioactive spider? And he’s sure, with the way the words come out, that Tony hears the underlying question too.
Which is clear in how Tony looks up at him, eyebrows knitting together, and in how he actually puts his tools down on the workbench in front of him. For a long moment, they just stare at each other, Peter too antsy to look away because Tony’s staring at him as if he’s grown a second head.
“Of course,” Tony says, as if his trust in Peter was never in question. “I’ll take you down to the garage later and you can take your pick, alright?”
Peter’s sure he’s wearing that stupidly fond look that, according to Ned and May, he always gets when people so casually shoot down his insecurities, which happens...more often that he’d like to admit, but Tony’s already gone back to his work, so Peter lets it rest.
Maybe he’s reading too much into the literal Tony Stark letting him use one of his cars when, after all, he does have a lot of them and plenty of money to buy more, but…
Tony trusts him. And it feels really good to know that.
“Order Chinese food, would you? The usual.”
And Peter grins, because they have a usual and because Tony trusts him.
