Chapter Text
The funny thing is -
The funny thing is, whenever things got really bad and Peter let himself indulge in stupid daydreams - daydreams of everyone he had lost, of them coming back as miraculously as people had come back from the Snap, of all of his worst fuck-ups somehow getting fixed-
Whenever he had pictured it, he had always just assumed Mr. Stark would remember him.
Actually, it’s not funny at all.
It’s like a bucket of ice down his back when he hears it, an hour into an interminably long reception at one of Oscorp’s corporate events.
“You look annoyed.”
“What?” Peter asks, voice faint. He turns to look, bracing himself, and sees -
Tony Stark, in the flesh, wearing those stupid looking purple sunglasses of his indoors like no one else could ever get away with and - and smiling at him, not the slick, megawatt smirk he gives the cameras but something small and secretive, like they’re in on the same joke.
Fuck.
“You’re glaring at that,” Mr. Stark nods towards the sleek holodisplay in front of Peter, showcasing Oscorp’s designs for a new hydrogen powered car, “like a hydrogen powered car ate your baby.”
“Well - uh-” Peter swallows, turns back over to the display for a moment of relief. Hopefully he just looks like he’s starstruck. “Yeah. It’s- the design is completely nonviable on a larger scale, right? Obviously they’re assuming no one here cares enough about the fiddly details to tell, but-”
“But you did,” Mr. Stark says, not quite a question, and Peter thinks that if he looked he’d see his eyebrows raised in interest.
“Yeah. I. I think the new Stark fuel cell prototypes have more promise if we’re talking about… scale…”
He trails off, mouth dry, staring at the tiny text in one corner of the display until his eyes burn. He flexes one hand, digging his nails into his palm. Even hearing Mr. Stark’s voice hurts, and he feels like if he turns to look again he’s going to throw up.
He’d known Mr. Stark was here, of course. It had been impossible to miss, the rising murmur of voices as he had entered that had made Peter immediately throw back the rest of his champagne and bolt for the far side of the reception, pulse hammering in his throat.
But there’s knowing, and then there’s-
It’s been months. Months, since Tony Stark miraculously came back from the dead, since Peter had sat alone on the floor of his apartment and cried his eyes out when he saw the news on Twitter.
Months, since that week of rapidly fading hope as Mr. Stark didn’t come to him and didn’t come to him and didn’t come to him, even though he’d be able to find him in minutes if he only remembered that he was supposed to look, and Peter eventually had to accept that the spell had done its job, and he would never be coming.
(And, after all, isn’t that what Peter had asked for?)
So. It’s been months, and by this point Peter had kind of been hoping he’d never have to run into Mr. Stark. Or if he did, it would at least be as Iron Man and Spider-Man. Something he’d probably at least be able to handle - or if not, if he ended up being completely embarrassing about it, at least his face would be hidden.
Not this.
It’s worse than the handful of times he’s broken down and gone to the coffee shop to nurse a cup of black coffee in the corner and watch Ned and MJ, home for the summer or winter breaks, to hear tiny snippets of news about classes and parties and their families. At least they hadn’t been dead-
“If you’re trying to butter me up it won’t work,” Mr. Stark says, vaguely amused voice dragging Peter back from his rapidly spiraling thoughts. “Due to a brief, unfortunate case of being dead I can’t take any credit for that one.”
“No, no, I’m - I just think the advances in efficiency are really cool!” It’s amazing how normal his voice sounds.
“Really cool, huh, all the nerds come out to these things, don’t they?” It’s gently teasing, and Peter just. He can’t. He can’t-
Really, Parker, you really can’t look at him just because he came back from the dead and doesn’t remember you? Just a little thing like that?
Since he doesn’t have MJ in person to tell him these things anymore, the MJ-like voice in his head has to do it for him.
And since he doesn’t have anyone else to hype him up enough to get through this, he’ll just have to do it himself.
Come on, Spider-Man. Come on, Spider-Man.
Peter braces himself, and turns around.
Mr. Stark looks-
Well. He doesn’t look good, exactly.
He looks hot, definitely. He’s wearing a suit, but no tie, and there’s an extra button unbuttoned on his shirt, showing the hollow of his throat and just a little bit below that. There’s gray in his hair, now, streaked at the temples, and Peter might be a cliche but it’s really working on him.
But he doesn’t look good. He’d pushed his sunglasses up onto his head to look at Peter, sometime while he was talking, and it’s exposed the dark bags under his eyes and the new lines of exhaustion at the corners. His right arm is still in a brace, hanging awkwardly at his side, and Peter can see the silvering crosshatch of burn scars on his hand, creeping up under his sleeve. Below the open collar is the telltale outline of the nanite housing unit. There are people darting glances at him, whispering, but he’s alone.
They’re the same height. Somehow Peter’d never noticed that before.
…What had they even been talking about?
“Not really,” Peter says, steadily, sliding on his work face. “I think most people are just here for the free food.”
“I can’t resist the siren call of tiny plates of cheese, it’s true,” Mr. Stark says.
“And tiny little crackers to put the cheese on,” Peter says.
“I see I’m dealing with an hors d'oeuvres connoisseur.”
“Yeah, you know. Comes with the territory.”
“So, what company are you with?” Mr. Stark asks, head cocked. “Not Oscorp, I’m assuming. Here for a little corporate espionage?”
Oh.
Of course he wouldn’t already know.
Peter doesn’t know what his face is doing, but he thinks it’s probably not good.
“Oh. No, um, I’m not-”
“Derek!”
It’s Martin, spotting him from a few feet away with absolutely awful timing. He comes over and claps a heavy hand on Peter’s shoulder. He always does that, grabbing too tight, hand so high it’s half on his neck instead. Peter watches Mr. Stark’s eyes dart down to the hand, then back up to Peter’s face, and he sees the moment Mr. Stark puts it together, Peter’s youth and the obscenely expensive, overly fashionable, slightly too tight suit he’s wearing and the mascara he put on earlier because Martin’s into it.
And tonight was already going so great.
“Hey, Derek, got a call from the wife, gotta head home early,” Martin says, ducking down for a kiss that Peter returns on complete autopilot. “Take the rest of the night on me, I’m sure you don’t want to stick around with these nerds any longer. I’ll text you about next week.” Peter thinks he manages to smile and thank him.
In the grand scheme of things Martin’s really not that bad - Peter had blown him in the car on the way over, so Martin's given him a long leash tonight, not like the ones who spend the entire evening feeling him up to get their money’s worth. Peter really shouldn’t hate him as much as he does.
At least he’s too distracted to notice Mr. Stark, a few steps to the side and now staring at the exhibit so intently it’s almost funny.
After Martin leaves, Peter turns back to the exhibit. He can’t concentrate on anything, just lets the cool blue of the schematics wash over him, lulling him into a different world than the one he lives in.
“He doesn’t seem like your type,” Mr. Stark says, lightly. Still here.
“He pays on time. That’s my type,” Peter says, suddenly too tired to keep up any sort of pretense. There’s no response, and when he glances over Mr. Stark is - looking at him.
Looking at him.
Peter can’t quite describe it, except that he’s pretty sure Mr. Stark has never looked at him like that before.
“I just meant it sounds like you’re the one actually excited to be here,” Mr. Stark says.
“Oh, yeah, well,” Peter says. “That’s true. He doesn’t know anything about any of this, but his company’s looking to get acquired by Oscorp so they want the executives to make appearances at these things.”
“And you saw your chance to go look at something cool? Or not cool, as the case may be.”
“Pretty much.” Peter smiles and shrugs, feeling awkward. He shouldn’t have said that. He never talks about his clients with anyone, or he’d never get hired again. His stupid brain just forgot that this isn’t - like how they used to be. “Job has some perks.”
Mr. Stark shifts, moving his right arm awkwardly like he was going to do something with it until he remembered it was still in the brace.
“Have you seen the display on their new smart home yet?” he asks, abruptly.
“Yeah, don’t waste your time,” Peter says. “It’s lame, and their voice recognition is awful.”
“Yeah? Tell me more,” Mr. Stark says, smiling slightly, offering, and- what? What?
Peter doesn’t understand any of this. He doesn’t understand why Mr. Stark even noticed him at all, much less struck up a conversation with him, much less is still talking to him, especially after he found out that-
Wait. Unless he’s-
“There’s no catch,” Mr. Stark says, and Peter quickly schools his face. “I have nothing else to do tonight, and you’re the person here that’s clearly the least impressed with me, so.”
Surely he’s not-
“Pretty low bar, huh,” Peter says, forcibly pushing that completely insane thought out of his mind.
“Kid, a woman asked me to sign her baby,” Mr. Stark says, and oh, oh no, Peter shouldn’t get a thrill out of hearing him say kid again, he needs to stop this before it starts- “She had a Sharpie with her. You have vaulted over the bar.”
He’s not doing this. He’s going home and never talking to Mr. Stark again, he’s-
“I have been told I’m pretty acrobatic,” Peter hears himself say, and Mr. Stark throws his head back and laughs.
They roam around the hall for an hour, and… it’s nice. It’s really nice, actually, almost like things are normal. Mr. Stark is just like he always was - mostly - quieter, a little (not objectively quiet, but like. Quiet for him.) - but mostly himself. Every time someone looks like they’re going to talk to him, he grabs Peter’s arm and starts talking intently about the nearest display - or, once, when they’re too far away from any exhibits for that, about the charcuterie board in front of them.
The best display there is one half in a corner, about advances in using algae to produce cancer drugs.
“-Which is actually pretty cool! I think they really have something going here - see, they lifted the genes from a species of slime mold and codon optimized the plasmid for algal-specific promoters to increase production of…”
He trails off as he realizes Mr. Stark is giving him another look, but all he says is: “Never had much of a hand for the messy organic stuff, myself,” and Peter can’t help his half smothered laugh.
“That’s not what I’ve heard,” he says, and, shit, he’s flirting. Why is he flirting?
“I’m not sure I want to know what you’ve heard,” Mr. Stark says, and he’s - he can’t possibly be flirting back.
Eventually Mr. Stark shakes his sleeve back, looks at his watch, and says “That should be enough of an appearance to make sure I don’t get yelled at. Probably.”
“Oh, right. Yeah,” Peter says, digging his nails into the palm of his hand behind his back, resisting the urge to beg him to stay. “Uh, well. Nice meeting you?”
Mr. Stark pauses. He rocks up on the balls of his feet, restless, like he’s done a thousand times before in front of Peter. There’s a considering look in his eyes.
“So, what’s the going rate for high-class escorts these days?”
Peter feels, vaguely, somewhere beyond the pounding in his ears, the world tilting off of its axis.
“You. I. What?”
Mr. Stark can’t - he’s not - he can’t want to hire him.
“What what?” Mr. Stark asks back. “I don’t know if you heard, but I just got divorced. I feel like this is the sort of thing I’m supposed to do.”
Yeah.
Peter had heard.
“Since when do you do what you’re supposed to do,” he says, instead of what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck. “I didn’t think you were the type to…”
Mr. Stark barks out a startled laugh. “Kid, I’ve never had to pay for sex before and I don’t plan on starting now. I meant - just to talk.”
“Just… to talk,” Peter repeats, like an idiot, and even as he’s relieved that Mr. Stark isn’t actually trawling corporate functions looking for sex to buy, it hits him with a sickening jolt, with a horrific, pathetic certainty: he still would have said yes. To anything.
“That’s the cliche, right? Lonely old man pays a hooker to sit and listen to his bullshit?” Mr. Stark says it with a wry smile.
It wouldn’t be the first time Peter’s been hired for it, that’s for sure. He knows the response here, in the easy banter they’ve been having all night, is something like you’re not that old. But his throat seizes up suddenly, because - because, actually, he wants it, wants it more than anything, would pay for the privilege of getting an hour to sit and listen and have Mr. Stark talk to him, because Peter is pathetic and lonely and tired.
“Okay,” he says, too serious, and Mr. Stark blinks. “Sure. Just to talk.”
“Great!” Mr. Stark says, abruptly clapping his hands together. “So, what do you say we blow this popsicle stand?”
This is going to hurt. This is going to hurt so, so, so bad. Maybe not immediately, but Parker Luck guarantees it: Peter is going to be torn into pieces by this, the last bloody shreds of the person who is Peter Parker and not Spider-Man destroyed beyond recognition.
“Lead the way,” he says.
The first thing Peter does when they get to the penthouse hotel suite that Mr. Stark’s staying in (“- just until I buy my buildings back, though honestly, I’d just stay here, but housekeeping gets cranky when you leave motor oil on the couch cushions -”) is lock himself in the nearest bathroom.
He looks at himself in the mirror, staring into his own too-wide eyes.
He’s already regretting this.
The ride over had been silent, awkward, Mr. Stark spending the whole time compulsively drumming his fingers on the armrest.
Peter doesn’t really get tongue tied anymore, but in that moment he had felt like a stupid fifteen year old again, with no idea what to say. Where to even start? Hey, remember that first time we were in a car together? You had just seen your best friend get paralyzed and still took the time to make sure a kid in over his head got home safely, and- oh, you don’t?
And the idea of treating Mr. Stark like a client - cuddling up and saying so I hear you’re a free man now-
He wasn’t going to touch that minefield, so he didn’t say anything.
God, what is he even doing.
He takes a deep, fortifying breath. He runs his hand through his hair, swears, and then anxiously pats it back in place to get back to what’s supposed to be ‘artfully tousled’. He smooths down the front of his clothes.
Come on, Spider-Man. Just talking. Just talking with a man who’s been dead for years, who doesn’t even remember Peter’s name, doesn’t remember that he was there when Peter crumbled into dust, and when he came back, and when-
Just talking.
When he comes out of the bathroom, Mr. Stark is shrugging off his suit jacket. He throws it on a chair without looking, rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt. Peter looks at his exposed forearms and his heart makes an odd little stutter, mouth going dry, which is just fucking absurd considering how many men he’s fucked at this point.
Childish crushes will do that to you, he supposes.
Mr. Stark looks up, notices him, and says: “Okay, wait, wait, I can’t believe I even have to ask this, but - how old are you?” Peter’s internal dilemma must show on his face, because Mr. Stark follows it up with “and don’t even think about lying, kid.”
“I didn’t know there was an age of consent just to talk,” Peter says, and then, after a moment: “nineteen,” settling on the truth. Mr. Stark winces. “Pretty fitting for a midlife crisis though, right?”
“Point,” Mr. Stark says. He sighs and rubs his hand over his face, just for a moment. Then he looks up, wry. “Well, that was my burst of morality for the night. Hungry?” He picks up the room service menu and starts idly flipping through it.
“Starving, but only if it’s free,” Peter says with a grin, as he sits down on the couch, because he knows it’ll make Mr. Stark laugh.
“You know I love a complete lack of shame,” he says. “The surf and turf, then. Side of caviar and Krug Grande Cuvée.”
Peter puts his feet up on the armrest and lets himself flop backwards. He does it because he wants to, but also because there’s a watchful, calculating thing inside of him now, that knows what clients want and how to give it to them, and he doesn’t know how to turn it off. He hired you just to talk. He hired you because you’re ‘not impressed with him’. He’s rich and paying for the illusion that he’s a normal person, that you’re just hanging out, that you let your guard down around him and are showing him something authentic that other men don’t get.
Is it less fucked up if it’s also true?
“You know, there’s this really good hole-in-the-wall taco place that delivers here.” He’s had it on more than one occasion after a client had passed out in bed, sitting at a table in an anonymous hotel room, staring out onto the lights of the city below and thinking about nothing at all.
“Huh,” Mr. Stark says, with interest, putting the menu down. “They do barbacoa?”
“Yup,” Peter says. “And they have churros.”
“Well, hell, I’m sold.”
When the food comes Mr. Stark tips what must be a few hundred bucks, judging from the stunned squeak from out in the hallway, and drops the takeout bags on the table.
“So, Derek-”
“Peter,” Peter interrupts, like an idiot. He wanders over, opening the closest bag and rummaging through it. He’s eating his churro first. He thinks he deserves it.
“What?”
“That’s my actual name,” Peter says. “Peter. I don’t, um. I don’t normally give my real name out.”
Not that there’s any reason not to. Not that there’s any other hint of Peter Parker out there in the world that could be connected to the Peter Parker who fucks rich men for money. He just can’t stand the idea of his clients having that part of himself, of knowing that one tiny thing about him when there’s practically no one else on Earth who does.
Mr. Stark, though- Peter’s just giving him back something he already had.
“Peter, huh? Pete,” Mr. Stark muses. He tilts his head, studying him. Eyes dark, intense, searching his face, almost like he might-
“You look like a Peter,” Mr. Stark says, finally, and Peter can feel his last tiny bit of hope get crushed like glass under a shoe.
“I see they didn’t get the motor oil out of the couch cushions,” he says.
“I might just have to buy the couch, at this point,” Mr. Stark says, unwrapping a taco, and then: “So, Peter.” Peter still likes how it sounds in his mouth, even when it doesn’t mean anything. “Talking. You know, I’m supposed to be pretty good at it. What should we be talking about? You?”
“I’d really rather we didn’t,” Peter says.
“Well, you definitely don’t want to hear me talk about me,” Mr. Stark says. “So. Hmm. Algae?”
“I can talk about algae,” Peter agrees.
They talk about algae. They talk about algae, and green energy, and nanophysics (all promising), and the Mets (less so), and where to find the best pizza in lower Manhattan, and Star Wars, and how Mr. Stark once tried to build a working lightsaber at the age of ten (“the technology wasn’t really there yet, obviously, but I could probably knock it out in a few days now-”), and it’s just - it’s even better than earlier. It’s like they’re back where they were before, like nothing ever happened, like Peter had dropped by Mr. Stark’s lab after school to work at the lab bench that had somehow ended up as his, and Mr. Stark was there, not working on anything important, maybe just fiddling with one of his old cars, small talk flowing easy between them for hours. He can practically see the tension seeping out of Mr. Stark’s shoulders, can feel it mirrored in himself.
It’s easy to forget himself, and he keeps almost - giving up too much - especially after Mr. Stark does end up ordering champagne and they split a bottle or two between them.
“-and I just think it has a lot of potential as a medical adhesive, you know? I think my formula’s right, but obviously I don’t have anywhere to try it out, so who knows - but if I did-”
He gestures with one hand in excitement - too much excitement, and the last of his champagne sloshes onto the coffee table. “Shit, sorry-” He tries to fumble for the napkins, all already repurposed by them both to jot down scattered diagrams and formulas, but Mr. Stark beats him to it.
“No problem, they’ll just add it to my cleaning bill,” he says, grabbing a handful and wiping up the spill. When he’s done he frowns down at the table for a long moment, and says the one thing always guaranteed to ruin Peter’s mood.
“You ever think about going to college? You’re brilliant, any school would snap you up with a full ride, no problem.”
“Yeah, brilliant with a sob story, they’d love it,” Peter says, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice and probably failing.
He’s - well, he can’t say he’s happy with his life. He’s not sure what that would even feel like anymore. But he’s content, mostly. He’s got a one bedroom apartment where he almost never sees any roaches and the hot water always works. Work is fine, most of the time. He’s got some - not friends, exactly, but he’s got people around. Even other street level people - they don’t hang out, or anything, but there’s a two in the morning coffee break with Matt here, and a rooftop hotdog with Kate there, and none of them ever try to push, to get too close, to ask more than he’s willing to give.
And, of course, by far the most important, the only reason he has this job in the first place, the only reason he gets out of bed every day - there’s Spider-Man, and the city he protects.
Any time someone tries to start this conversation, though - and for some reason it’s impossible to avoid - it threatens to peel away that content and expose the black, gaping chasm underneath, the one that goes down and down and down with no end, the one he almost hadn’t been able to crawl out of.
“Sorry,” Mr. Stark says, clearly seeing it on his face. “None of my business.”
“No, it’s, uh, it’s fine,” Peter says, and then, in a rush: “I can’t- I don’t have any documents, okay? No school records, no identification, nothing. It’s not possible.”
Mr. Stark frowns, brow furrowing, and Peter immediately regrets it, because if there’s one thing he knows about Tony Stark, it’s that once he sinks his teeth into a problem he thinks needs to be fixed he will never let it go.
“Well, that’s a shame,” Mr. Stark says. “Because you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.”
His approval, like this, should be gratifying, but - it’s like something out of one of his nightmares. Tony Stark seeing what’s ended up of his life, being disappointed, thinking to himself that Peter had had so much potential-
“What a waste, right?” Peter says, trying not to choke on it.
“That’s not- sorry,” Mr. Stark says again, and Peter doesn’t think he’s ever seen him quite this off balance - or maybe he just didn’t know how to look for it, before. “I didn’t - I’m really bringing the evening down, huh?”
“I’m not some sort of charity case, okay, so if that’s what you-”
“Kid,” Mr. Stark cuts him off.
He looks - exhausted. He looks the way Peter feels, all the time.
“Kid,” Mr. Stark repeats, rubbing at his eyes with the palm of his hand. “I’m divorced, on the wrong side of fifty and paying a hooker to talk to me so I didn’t come back to an empty hotel room and drink myself to sleep, you’re not the charity case here.”
For some reason it startles a laugh out of Peter.
“Well, when you put it like that, you’re kind of a mess,” he agrees, instinctively sitting next to him on the couch, closer than he ever would have when - before. “Guess we deserve each other.”
“Guess we do.”
There’s a pause. Mr. Stark tilts his head so it’s resting sideways on the back of the couch, looking languidly in Peter’s direction. His eyes are dark as they trail over Peter from head to toe.
So. Peter definitely hasn’t been seeing things. Mr. Stark wants him. The words feel bizarre, even to think inside his own head, but they’re true. And - is it - is it really so awful if Peter likes it? More than likes it?
It’s like he’s empty, entire body gnawing with hunger, looking back at him and wanting with such a sudden, sickening lurch, and he can’t tell if it’s lust or love or loneliness or-
Peter leans over, puts a hand on Mr. Stark’s upper thigh. He’s good at this. He knows how to do this. He uses every trick in his book, biting his lip, looking up through his lashes.
The kiss is chaste and quick, and when he pulls back there’s an odd look on Mr. Stark’s face.
“If you want a raise you can just ask,” he murmurs, eyes darting away from Peter’s. “I meant what I said. I’m not interested in paying for it.”
“But you do want it,” Peter says. “Otherwise why’d you even start talking to me?”
“Maybe I just thought you looked like you needed someone to talk to,” Mr. Stark says.
“Is that a no?” Me. You want me. Whatever’s still left of me. Mr. Stark turns his head to the side, jaw working.
“It’s not a no,” he says. “But I’m pretty sure your interest here is mainly financial. Never really been my thing. Ruins the mood.”
“I can’t just like you? It can’t be about something other than money?”
“In my experience?” Mr. Stark says, with a sardonic smile. “No, not really.”
“Well, it is, and I do.”
When Mr. Stark turns his face back, Peter can see that he doesn’t entirely believe him. And why would he? He has no idea who Peter is, thinks he’s just some guy trying to make rent for the month. He has no idea how it rips Peter to pieces, just being in the same room as him again.
The thing is, though, Peter’s gotten pretty good at reading people.
He can see that Mr. Stark doesn’t entirely believe him -
- and that he still wants it anyway.
Peter leans back in. And it might be the most awful, selfish, self-defeating thing he’s ever done-
But he’s right. This time, Mr. Stark kisses back.