#what better way to cheer your octopus twin up then to pepper his face with smooches

[skumhuu]

Someone woke up on the wrong side of the clam 💛🖤💢🦪 #dreammare

(Crabby #leviathantale bingo prompt!)

[losingmymindtonight]

In which Tony learns what it’s like to be the one left behind.

--

Tony was, for once, entirely off-duty.

Or, he was as entire off-duty as a father could be. Which, admittedly, wasn’t really off-duty at all. Either way, it felt like being off-duty, which he decided was pretty much the same thing.

The summer sun was warm on his face. He could hear the lake’s lazy waves lapping up on the shore behind him, the creak of the dock bobbing in the breeze. Clint and Natasha were at the grill, bickering over the proper way to cook a hot dog, and the rest of the team, old and new, were scattered all around the cabin’s grounds.

“No kids, huh?” Steve said, sitting down gingerly in the lawn chair set directly beside his own. It still caught him off guard, every once in a while, seeing Captain America himself so old and fragile. He was getting used to it, though, was getting used to seeing Steve as Steve rather than the idol that Howard had spent a lifetime worshiping.

He spread his arms out, leaning back and taking a deep breath of the grass-tinged air. “I’m a free man, Rogers.”

Steve’s eyes darted off to the right, where Happy, Pepper, May, and Peter were all busy playing with Morgan and Clint’s kids in a makeshift slip-n-slide. “But for how long?”

He grinned. “For as long as some soap and water can keep them occupied, and that’s quite long enough for me. I’ll be missing them desperately in about,” he glanced down at his watch, “twelve minutes.”

“I’m sure Peter will come fuss over you long before then.”

“Oh, I hope not.” He watched the kid’s face, bright and smiling, completely removed from the horrors that plagued their in-between moments, and let the sight cradle joy in his chest. “He deserves to forget about all that for a while.”

“Mm,” Steve hummed. “How’s the arm?”

“Serviceable,” he said, holding up the prosthetic, admiring the way the sun glinted off the gray metal. “Pete’s already got some schematics drawn up for a replacement. Morgan wants to help him decorate it, so I’m sure that’ll be a disaster.”

Steve snorted. “Kids.”

“Yeah.” He smiled, love running through him as he listened to Peter and Morgan’s twin laughter drift over on the breeze. “Kids.”

Of course, that was a very peaceful moment, and peace wasn’t really the kind of thing that lasted around the Stark household. Usually, it was the shattering of a vase or the wailing of a skinned knee that broke it.

This time, however, it was the simultaneous screech of multiple emergency signals. Half of the gathered party scrabbled to silence them, reading through the alert with furrowed brows. Tony reached for his own, then realized, in a delayed reintroduction with reality, that he didn’t have one.

Iron Man was retired. Tony Stark wasn’t a superhero anymore. He was just a man. Which, really, was exactly what he wanted to be, most of the time.

Then his eyes fell on Peter, webshooters folding down over his hands, and he wasn’t so sure.

“C’mon, Spider-geek,” Sam shouted, fastening his shield over his arm, wings already engaged and unfurling in preparation for takeoff. “Your Octopus friend is trying to take over the world again. It’s all hands on deck.”

The Iron Spider suit was already crawling over the kid’s skin. It was quite a sight. Eerily beautiful, if he could forget that the technology had been born of paranoia and war. Tony had never really had the chance to appreciate the dance of the nanites before, had always been inside the suit or watching Peter plummet thousands of feet, limp and unconscious.

“Yeah, yeah,” Peter called, flexing his fingers as the nanotech settled over them. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

Morgan grabbed his leg, and the mask retracted as he looked down at her.

“Are you gonna go fight the bad guys?” She asked, eyes full of stars.

“Sure am.”

“Ooh,” she whispered, bouncing up and down in excitement, still clinging to the kid’s thigh. “Don’t let them catch you!”

“Don’t worry, M. Bad guys never catch Spider-Man.”

Tony pushed up from his chair, conscious of Steve’s gaze burning into his back. He didn’t know what he was trying to do. Stop Peter from going? No, not that, although that didn’t mean that he didn’t want to. He understood the call to war. Once you stepped into a suit, it was hard to step back out.

Tony had only done so because he’d been dragged, kicking and screaming. Because he was missing an arm, and a good portion of his lung function, and his entire right side was weakened and scarred. He hadn’t had a choice, and maybe that was a good thing. If he’d been given one, he probably would’ve died in the armor.

He was terrified by the very real possibility that that was how Peter would meet his end, too. That there would be nothing powerful enough to overcome the kid’s morals, his call to duty. He would die a hero, and people would call that a triumph, but Tony would still call it dead.

He saw May brush forward, cup Peter’s face, smile at him. There was fear in her silhouette: the same fear he’d seen in Pepper over and over and over again. For the first time, he felt it too. The fear of being the one left behind. The fear of waiting.

The fear of waiting forever.

Peter trotted over to him after he’d said goodbye to May, which left him a little warm and fuzzy inside. Before the kid could open his mouth, Tony leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead, then pulled back and grabbed his shoulder, shaking him a little as he fought back another wave of helplessness.

“Swing fast,” he whispered, because it was the only thing he could think of, the only words that weren’t too raw to say in front of so many eyes.

Peter smiled, and it occurred to Tony that he looked older, now. Less child, more man. His posture was confident, eyes sparkling. He looked like a hero, like the kind of person that always won in the movies.

He looked like the future Tony had been waiting for.

He’d finally passed the torch. He could see the bearer standing in front of him, and he was proud. 

“Save me some hot dogs,” Peter quipped, winking, “and don’t let Morgan eat all the cake. I need, like, at least two slices all for myself.”

“You come back safe,” he murmured, “and I’ll give you all the hot dogs and cake you could ever want.”

“Square deal.”

“Parker!” Sam barked, waving him over with a smirk on his face. “The longer you wait, the more likely it is that your old man’s gonna kick it before we get back. As it is, we’re placing team bets on Steve.”

“Very funny, Sam,” Steve drawled.

“I heard you the first time, Cap!” Peter called over his shoulder, then turned back to Tony to grin. “Love you.”

He patted the side of the kid’s face, swallowing to cover up how terrified he was by the prospect of Peter going to fight a battle without him. That had never happened before. They hadn’t faced a world-threatening force since Thanos. Despite logic, Tony had been hoping that the finale really would be the finale. That they could rest now.

“Love you too, kid. Now go on,” he made a shooing motion with his hands, metal prosthetic catching in the light, a permanent reminder of his final act as Iron Man, as a hero, “the world’s waiting for Spider-Man to save the day.”

Soft nostalgia sparked in Peter’s eyes: the remnants of the first day they’d met, when he’d tripped over his words, too starstruck to think straight. “I’ll never be as good at it as you.”

“No,” he agreed, physically spinning the kid and shoving him in Sam’s direction, because he knew that if he didn’t, they’d both linger there forever. “You’ll be better.”

Peter jogged away laughing, shooting a web to the base of the Falcon’s wings to hitch a ride, in the same way that he would’ve done with Tony’s suit, if the world had spun them into a different route that day. Right before they took off, the kid swung to face Morgan and offered her a dramatic solute, letting the mask fold over his face, only a few shades darker than hotrod red. She clapped for him, little voice raised up in a cheer.

Tony sank back down into his chair, sparing Steve a halfhearted glance. They were pieces of history, now. The generation moving aside, content to be left behind.

They’d left the world in better hands, there was no doubt about that. Sometimes, though, Tony really wished that it didn’t have to be the hands of one of his kids.