#+ many more; i can make a whole list!! (seriously. i’m sick and couch-ridden so there’s not much else to do atm)

[sinterblackwell]

yay for my 2023 danmei era 🌟

you will never be forgotten because spotify decided to immortalize you in a playlist made just for me :’)

[madasthesea]

5 times Tony tries to tell Peter he loves him

+1 time Peter actually hears him

i.

“What’s going on with you, kid?” Tony asks. Peter jerks, looking away from the window for the first time since he got in the car.

“What? Nothing,” Peter says unconvincingly. His hair is rumpled from where he was leaning against the head rest.

“You sure? You look...” Tony searches for a word and Peter raises his eyebrow, “sick.” He finally lands on, because that’s the best way to describe Peter’s thin face, pale cheeks, and dull eyes. Peter’s hand shakes as he rubs at his forehead. There’s something about it that makes Tony think ‘bone-deep exhausted’ might have been a better choice.

“’m fine,” Peter insists. “I can’t get sick.”

Tony has a vivid memory of a sweaty, delirious Peter curled up in his lap that contradicts that statement, but he bites it back. He stays quiet for a minute, maneuvering through traffic carefully.

“You know,” he finally starts. Peter jumps again like he’d forgotten where he was and who he was with. “If you need something, you can ask me. I want you to ask me.”

“What would I need?” Peter asks, the curve of his mouth a smile that is almost bitter in its resignation.

“You tell me,” Tony challenges. Peter just looks at him, unimpressed. Tony sighs.

“I mean if you need a solid meal that isn’t burnt, I can cook. If you need a nap, I’ve got a bed with your name on it. If you need to, I don’t know, blow some stuff up in an adult-supervised, high tech lab, we can do that.”

Peter’s mouth thins like he’s holding back words that are desperately trying to get out. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he whispers.

They get to Peter’s block and Tony wonders if Peter is out of it enough to not notice if they went around a few more times to give him time to say what he needs to. But instead he pulls up to the curb, puts the car in park.

Peter unbuckles his seatbelt and Tony fights the urge to drive off, to go back to the tower and bundle Peter up where he can watch him and make sure he’s ok.

“Maybe take tomorrow off school,” Tony suggests.

“I’ve got a test,” Peter says with a small grimace.

“I’m on your emergency list, I can sign you out.”

Peter looks like he honestly considers it, which is both an admission of how much he’s struggling and a small victory that some part of Tony’s lecture is getting through.

“I’m ok. Thank you, Mr. Stark.” His hair is still sticking up. Tony fiddles with the gear shift to avoid reaching out and smoothing it.

“Ok. Well, you know where to find me.”

Peter gives him a slightly more genuine smile and opens the door.

“Take care of yourself, kid. I l—” Tony cuts off, stunned at the word on the tip of his tongue.

“I’ll see you later,” he chokes out as Peter stares at him.

“Ok,” Peter says slowly. “Bye.”

Tony sits frozen at the curb as Peter enters his apartment building, then mechanically puts his car into drive and pulls away.

Had he seriously just almost told Peter he loves him? On accident?  

He hasn’t done that since he was seven and he told his father he loved him. Howard had just stared at him for a moment and then shooed him from the room.

He had never pictured those words coming out of his mouth so easily in his life. It took him months of reminding himself to say it to Pepper before he became comfortable with it, and that was with the love of his life. What is it about this kid that erased all of his trauma, knocked down all of his walls?

He couldn’t place his finger on a single reason, but he knows, in a bone-deep way, that despite how unplanned the words were, they are true.

He loves Peter.

Even if he’s only just now realizing it.  

 ii. 

When their captors come, Tony presses Peter into the corner, his back against Peter’s rapidly moving chest, and snarls. The men just laugh as they grab Tony by the hair and drag him away. Peter’s yelling behind him, but as Tony twists and struggles, he can see that he’s being left in the glass cell, two men guarding the door to make sure he doesn’t get out.

Even as his hair is pulling loose from his scalp, Tony breathes a sigh of relief.

The door to Peter’s cage locks behind Tony.

The man holding him bodily drags Tony until he’s standing on his own two feet.

“Look at him,” he sneers, his hot breath reeking as it fans over Tony’s face. But he obeys, because he wants to look at Peter one last time.

Peter, who’s still raging against the walls, pounding both fists against the reinforced glass as he looks frantically around for some hope of salvation.

“You’re never going to see him again, Stark. Any last words before we kill you?”

He has a lot of words: Stay in school and it’s ok to mess up sometimes and don’t get yourself killed, Pete.

But most of all he thinks my dad never told me he loved me.

He swallows hard and the man laughs. “No? Alright then.”

Another hand seizes his arm and he’s being jerked backwards, away from Peter, whose eyes go impossibly wider, his gestures getting more desperate.

“Peter.” The name is jerked out of him before he can stop it. “Peter.”

Even with the rough, unbalanced motion of being forced away, Tony can see still the first tears fall down Peter’s cheeks.

And what does pride matter when compared to the look on Peter’s face. So he’ll be mocked even more as he’s tortured and killed. It’s worth it for Peter to know.

“I love you.”

The men around him laugh, jostle him further.

Peter doesn’t react. Tony only now realizes that he’s yelling, has been yelling this whole time. The cell is soundproof. Peter can’t hear him.

He needs Peter to hear him.

He can’t die when Peter doesn’t even know that he was unquestionably, unconditionally loved.  

“I love you! Peter, look at me!” he pleads, begs the kid to read his lips through the glass, but Peter is looking around too much, never focusing directly on Tony, still holding out for some last hope.

They reach the end of the hallway. Tony had been afraid to fight back before, worried that they would punish his bad behavior on Peter, but now he claws for just a few more moments with Peter in his sights.

“Look at me, Pete! I love you. I love you.”

Someone kicks his hand where he’s scrabbling at the wall. Another boot meets the back of his knee. He goes down hard, and Peter disappears as he’s dragged around the corner.

Later, when Tony wakes up in a hospital bed next to Peter’s, he watches the kid breathe and tells himself that he still has time.

iii. 

Getting thrown into a cement wall hard enough to dent it would have broken anyone else’s spine, but thank the gods above, Peter isn’t anyone else. He’s able to hobble away with some bruises and stiff muscles.

It’s still enough to leave him nearly bedridden for days. Or should he say, couch-ridden, since Tony and Peter have been camped out on his sofa for going on eighteen hours. And even Peter’s impressive movie-watching stamina is starting to wear thin.

Tony is pretending to watch the movie, actually watching Peter out of the corner of his eye as Peter tries to shift into a more reclined position.

The hiss of pain through Peter’s teeth is the signal Tony was waiting for.

“Ok, easy,” Tony says hurriedly, reaching for Peter’s shoulders. “Let’s try something else, alright?”

Peter nods minutely, his eyes clenched in pain.

Tony scoots forward, wraps his arm around Peter’s waist and carefully tips the boy back against his chest. Peter’s muscles are tense under his touch, still too wary of the pain to find comfort in it.

Tony gently rubs a palm against Peter’s chest and stomach. “Relax,” he murmurs. Slowly, Peter sags into him, his injured back warm and solid against Tony. “There we go.”

Peter’s head lolls against Tony’s shoulder and he squirms just a bit, nestling himself further into Tony’s hold. Tony has never really been one for prolonged contact, but he finds himself resting his head against Peter’s, tightening his arms around Peter’s stomach, relishing the warmth and steady rise and fall as Peter breathes.

This means something, Tony thinks. There’s a reason you don’t mind when it’s Peter. Tell him.

Tony swallows, anxiety ripping through him.

It’d be weird, wouldn’t it? To just say it. For all Tony knows, Peter is accepting their pseudo-cuddling simply because he’s tired and his back is making it hard for him to sleep.

And besides, Peter probably already knows. It’s been an unspoken thing for months. Tony doesn’t need to say it in so many words.  

Peter shivers lightly against him. Chuckling, Tony reaches out and pulls the blanket he keeps around for this very reason off the back of the couch, tucking it carefully around Peter. Affection is cutting through the hazy, fearful thoughts like a knife.

Tell him.

“I love you,” Tony whispers, his heart in his throat.

Silence greets him. Tony’s stomach twists in nerves and dread. Why wasn’t Peter saying anything? Should Tony take it back? Apologize?

He’s about to disentangle his arms from Peter’s and leave when he hears a soft snore.

Closing his eyes as he laughs to himself, Tony buries his smile in Peter’s shoulder.

“Yeah. I love you.” Even if you fall asleep when I’m trying to tell you.  

 iv.

Tony’s hands are covered in ash.

When Peter died, Tony didn’t say anything.

He didn’t say anything.

“Peter,” he gasps, hates that he’s addressing smeared dirt coated on bloody skin.

“Peter.” A tear drips onto his hand and he sucks in a breath. His heart is on his palms—he’s afraid it will wash off and disappear forever.

“I love you,” he confesses to the ether, the unreachable nothingness Peter is lost to. The red dirt shifts at his feet and there is no answer.

“It’s time to leave,” the daughter of Thanos says.  She hauls him to his feet and he sways.

“I never told him I love him.”

“There’s no use telling him now,” she hisses. “He’s dead.”

Tony flinches, his lungs failing to pull in air.

The woman pauses, her mechanical face shifting like a glitch.

“Do you? Love him?” she asks, her robotic voice almost quiet, and Tony blinks in shock. He nods. He tries to say yes but no sound comes out. “Then you are better than my father.”

She turns away, leaving Tony to catch up.

“I will help you save him. So you can tell him.”

v. 

The first thing Tony tells himself he’ll do when Peter is once again alive and in his arms is finally tell the kid that Tony loves him more than he thought he was capable of loving anyone.

The first thing he actually does is pass out.

When he wakes up, ripping the IVs and oxygen mask off without a thought, he stumbles toward the couch Peter is sleeping on in the corner of the room, his vision tunneling until all he can see is Peter’s chest rising and falling.

He wants to shake him awake, wants to tug him into his lap and feel his heartbeat under his palms, a constant reminder that Peter is alive alivealivealive.

Instead, he kneels on the floor next to him. He traces cold fingers over the delicate bones of Peter’s hand, the one that partially hangs over the couch cushion.

“I love you,” he breathes.

He presses Peter’s hand to his cheek.

“I love you.”

He leans his head against the couch cushion, watching Peter’s face, lax with sleep. He tries to memorize the way his eyelashes lay over his cheeks, the freckles across the bridge of his nose, the exact curve of his jaw.

“I love you,” Tony whispers, his voice breaking.

He stays until a random nurse finds him and forces him back to bed.

 i.

Tony isn’t sure why they’re playing chess, other than that Peter had found the old set while digging through a closet and started setting it up. Tony didn’t even know they had a chess set, suspects it’s Steve’s, from the War judging by how cheap and beat up it is.

“So this should probably be in the Smithsonian, is what you’re saying,” Peter says when Tony tells him that.

“Probably,” Tony admits. Peter doesn’t stop setting up pieces, though, so Tony just sits down across from him.

He’s not very good at chess, never taken the time to practice, though he’s delighted to learn that Peter used to be on his junior high chess team.

“I’ve forgotten everything, though,” Peter mutters, glaring at his white pieces scattered over the board.

Tony moves his rook a couple spaces forward, only realizing after he does so that it opens up his queen to Peter’s knight.

Ah, well. He’s already losing. He sits back, content to watch Peter think.

It’s January and the kid is bundled up in Tony’s MIT sweater with a blanket draped around his shoulders like a cape. He bites his lip while he considers his options, his eyes bright and intelligent.

The rushing warmth in Tony’s chest is familiar by now. He looks back down at the board, staring at his doomed queen.

He’s tired of fighting it. Tired of overthinking it and feeling guilty.

“Peter,” he says. Peter hums.

Tony doesn’t look up at him, just watches as Peter’s hand hovers over the bishop that will capture his piece.

“I love you.”

There’s a beat, and then Peter’s voice, “If you think that’s going to distract me from taking your queen,” he says, knocking the black piece over with a flourish, “you’re wrong.”

Tony huffs a laugh, rolling his eyes a little.

“That’s not why I said it, but it would have been a nice bonus.”

Tony finally dares to glance up at Peter, is happy to find a content smile playing at the edges of his mouth, his cheeks lightly flushed as if he’s pleasantly embarrassed.

Biting the inside of his cheek so his own smile won’t be visible, Tony pulls his bishop back toward his king.

Peter plays again, a quick decisive action. Tony considers his next move—the kid left his queenside castle open, but Tony’s trying to predict if it’s a trap or not. He’s just about to reach for his piece when Peter speaks.

“Tony,” he murmurs, voice low and warm.

Tony looks up, meets Peter’s eyes.

Peter beams at him.

“I love you, too.”  

And Tony melts. His heart is beating harder, his entire stomach erupting in ecstatic butterflies. A film of tears blurs his vision, and in an effort to distract Peter so he doesn’t see them, Tony quickly grabs a black pawn, moving it its designated space forward.

It isn’t until a moment later, after he’s blinked the tears away and can see the board again, that he remembers the undefended castle.

“Oh my gosh!”

Peter erupts into peals of laughter at Tony’s exclamation. Tony drops his forehead into his palm, exasperated at himself.

When he looks back up at Peter, the kid is grinning at him.

“That’s not why I said it,” Peter says, a laugh audible in his voice, “but it was a nice bonus.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony grouses fondly, shaking his head at his own idiocy, but his smile gives away how little he actually cares about the game.

As he watches Peter quickly put Tony into checkmate, all he can think about is that’s not why I said it. Peter said it cause he meant it.

And Tony meant it, too. More than anything he’s ever said before.