come join me in my trash heap

[FYI this is in reference to the botched marriage proposal deleted scene from Want for Nothing - which I suggest you read first!]

So, yeah -- it is such a bad situation for both of them. As I mentioned, I have no set thoughts on where this goes next, but let's give answering your questions a go and see where this lands.

First off, Tony would 1000% remember absolutely everything with painful horrific detail. As soon as Peter safeworded out of the whole situation, he came crashing down to reality and basically interpreted that as a breakup. After Peter left with Vision, he let Musk's strippers feed him never-ending shots out of a desperation to remember nothing at all. Or ideally to never wake again.

(He failed.)

When he's finally sober, though, he doesn't know what to do. Peter is gone, not speaking to him, gone off who knows where -- not officially breaking up with him, but also very much *not* in contact.

Sideline -- Peter would have told FRIDAY to tell Tony he needed space and told her to send Tony's personal doctor for a hangover drip.... because he can't not care. (He also sees the horde of strippers making their way into the Tower and, for a miserable moment, considers asking FRIDAY to keep an eye on that -- but he still trusts Tony. At least that far.) (But his mind niggles at him, you trusted Harry too, see how that worked out.) Peter is holed up with Vision in, like, Scotland for his whole breakdown, fwiw, so we skip over any potential "Tony ignores his boundaries" issues.

Back to Tony, once Peter does get back to the city, days will have passed and Tony will have had time to move away from hyper-self-destructive and back to anything-to-fix-this. So he'll do the right thing of pinging Karen and asking to see Peter when Peter has time -- and it will be Peter sets the terms of that meeting.

Tony will start spitballing suggestions, like they elope or Peter just takes all of his money, even without the marriage. How does full control of SI sound?

But Peter cuts him off -- because the problem isn't money. The problem is everyone else. "And, Tony, if you can't fix that, then there's nothing to fix between us."

Here we devolve into a much more confrontational version of their conversation in Ch9:They Deserve Nothing. Instead of trying to "fix" things with Tony's friends for him, he is asking Tony to do the heavy lifting himself. Which isn't quite fair of Peter, but considering the nightmare Tony just put him through -- and the horrible way he spoke about Peter to his friends -- now the burden is now on Tony.

Tony agrees to it all, and doesn't worry about any supposed "unfairness". He tries to initiate physical intimacy with Peter and Peter shuts it down. He's not ready yet. "I need time, Tony. I love you but I-- I need time."

("Tony", not "sweetheart".)

Tony had heard similar words from Pepper before she left him and he thinks, desperate, Not this time. He'll get them back to where they were, he promises himself. He'll go to therapy, he'll take Peter to therapy. He'll beat in every Avengers' head until they stay on straight.

Tony goes to leave and Peter tries to give him the ring back, and that? That cuts like a knife.

"No. It's yours. It's always been yours. Throw it away if you want to but... it's yours."

Peter stares at Tony, considering, and Tony hopes, desperate in a way he hasn't been since a cave in Afghanistan, that he won't be hurt again.

Peter slips the ring back on his finger, and Tony's heart un-clenches.

"I'll keep it, Tony. Always."

What he did do, was much worse: he loved Peter.

He opened up his lab, his penthouse, his heart to him. He makes time for him, he talks about his problems and listens to Peter's in return.

He works with Peter in the lab and after a few hours it's Tony who ushers them out, because he worries about Peter eating enough.

It's Tony in the kitchen, cooking his mother's recipes for his boy. Tony is the one to offer a movie night instead of going back to the lab, because any time with Peter is perfect for him and movie's are a great excuse to cuddle.

Tony is the one to fall asleep with Peter in his arms.

If it were sexual, if Tony was just having a midlife crisis and finding release in a sexy, younger thing that would've been - not acceptable, but not unusual for a rich, famous man. To be expected in a manner of speaking.

The fault would've been totally and entirely on Tony. She could've blamed it on her aging body and moved on.

The emotional infidelity is so. much. worse. Because even though she did everything right, even when she was the one being wronged she couldn't help wonder what she did wrong.

Because she never got that space in the lab; the consideration of a shared time; the intimacy of family recipes; the trust of falling asleep together.

And, oh, it burns.

(Tony firmly believes he is doing the moral and noble thing by not actually doing anything explicitly sexual with Peter.

Two Sides Peter/Tony, E, ~3,000 words In which Tony builds a superhero glory hole as a joke, and Peter spends too much time wondering if it's really a joke at all.

He makes a split-second decision, borne of too many late night fantasy scenarios to count. It’s easy to walk past the treadmill and cross to the other end of the facility, past the boxing rings.

Peter makes a full dinner, eats half as much as Tony, and excuses himself to spend the rest of the night in their bedroom, doing whatever it is he does when he’s avoiding Tony and Tony is pretending not to care. By the time Tony crawls into bed, exhausted, the entire room smells like bleach. Mating is miserable, but a dreamless sleep is bliss.

---

Want for Nothing (on ao3): Chapter 8 – On His Back

Peter Parker/Tony Stark | Chapter count 4k+ (Total 38k+)

Chapter summary: Tony reschedules a global summit because of Peter's electronics class. Pepper is, quite rightly, not pleased.

---

Want for Nothing (on ao3): Chapter 3

Peter Parker/Tony Stark | Chapter count 5k+ (Total 16k+)

Chapter summary: Peter hadn't worried about the press. That was a mistake.

Tags for this chapter: Press and Tabloids, Social Media coverage, Meet the Pepper, People are assholes, content warning for SA threat and homophobic language

The journey back to Earth will take decades, so Peter makes Tony use a stasis chamber. Tells him, “I can’t do this without you, and you need to live long enough to get us home.”

Peter wakes Tony every few years to fix whatever engineering issue needs resolving. And though Peter had promised he’d use a stasis chamber too – every time he wakes Tony, Peter is changed, aged. Even though he claims he slept too.

The last time Peter wakes him, he has gone grey and they are still 40 years out.

“Kid,” Tony feels on the verge of tears. He runs his hands over Peter’s thinning hair, over the crows feet at his eyes.

“It’s okay Mr Stark,” Peter smiles, wobbly. “I just wanted to catch up with you.”

Even though Peter is older than him now, has spent an entire life without him, living an insane lonely life watching over Tony. Even though Peter’s bones ache, and Tony has to help him around the ship now. Despite all that, Peter’s still his to protect. Still “kid” in his mind.

So before Peter can put him back into stasis, Tony destroys the system. Because getting back doesn’t matter if it means Peter won’t make it. And if Tony had gotten back in that box, the next time he would’ve seen Peter would’ve been the last.

“No-no you’ve got to make it back, Mr Stark.”

“Not without you.”

“Please, I-”

“No, you listen to me baby. You’re it for me. This ship, this life – I choose this. I want to grow old with you, while I still have the chance. So let’s just be together, please. For as long as we have left.”

sometimes teenage you from another universe pops up to cause problems and flirt with your crush love interest mentee friend Peter

@king-of-kaoss asked for the prototype protocol!tony of my choice but i can’t pick I love them both they’re terrible

Because, sure, now Peter has a PhD (just one like a normal person who doesn’t enjoy torturing themselves, looking at you Bruce Banner) and he's confident in his speaking in a way that's different. But he still loves LEGOs – he has a small room in his apartment totally dedicated to sets, alongside photos of the ones he'd sold. He's still a New Yorker and can't fathom the idea of living elsewhere. He still is Spider-Man, eating burritos on rooftops and webbing up purse snatchers and occasionally helping with bigger things when needed. He's the same as he was at 16 in so, so, so many ways.

Especially in the sense that he's still incredibly in love with Tony Stark.

That much is painfully obvious. And before, when Peter was a teenager, it was so easy for Tony to ignore that. But now Peter is a man, and Tony can’t pretend he'll grow out of it – because apparently 15 years passed and Peter didn’t change at all.

And honestly, neither did Tony's feelings. Those were there, 2 months ago, when Tony had died only remembering the ghost of a teenager he loved more than he should have. At the time, Tony had worried he was a pervert, and had shut that down, turned it off and completely ignored it. Because it couldn’t go anywhere. Peter wasn’t for him.

In a way, he’s relieved to discover that his own feelings were independent of Peter's age. That he would have fallen for Peter no matter what; even meeting him now, had he had the chance to revisit time travel.

But it is also terrifying, because now Peter is old enough to understand the looks Tony gives him, and understands that the feelings are mutual. He’s old enough to want to act on them. And that’s scary for reasons that have nothing to do with Peter, and everything to do with Obie, and Pepper, and Howard – and every other failed attempted relationship he's ever had.

Don't get me wrong, Tony saying Peter's name while he's in bed with someone else is *chef's kiss.* But I'm talking about a far more public level.

Tony mistakenly saying Peter's name instead of Pepper's during the vows at their wedding

Tony accidentally thanking his "beautiful spouse, Peter" during some presentation when he meant to say Pepper