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“Hey, Mr. Stark,” Peter says, his voice weak.
Tony sits heavily on the side of Peter’s bed, looking over at him. Peter’s face is wan and pale against the pillow, and when he tries to smile it wobbles at the edges. He looks unnervingly tiny and delicately built in the huge bed, propped up on a dozen pillows because he’s too weak to hold himself up for very long. There are dark bruises under his eyes.
“Hey, kid,” Tony answers. “How are you doing?”
He can hear the raw, tired edge to his own voice. He’s been trying to put up a good front when visiting Peter, hiding his own worry, but with every successive day with no breakthrough it’s been getting harder and harder.
When they’d first touched back down on Earth - over a week ago, now - Peter had still been unconscious, nearly thirty-six hours after he had first collapsed. He had been pale and still and quiet as the grave for the entire journey back from the planet they had been on, and if Tony hadn’t been obsessively monitoring his sluggish pulse, he might have even thought-
Anyway. Tony had carried him to the Tower, put him in a room in the penthouse, put FRIDAY on 24/7 monitoring duty, and started running tests.
(It wasn’t Peter’s room, because that would be weird, obviously. He just… always happened to use the same room when he crashed there, too tired to make the trip back to his own place.)
Test after test after test. Tony had spent endless, sleepless hours looking at the results of the battery of scans, locking himself in his lab until his vision blurred and he felt faint with lack of sleep – all while Peter slept for so long that his body fully healed from the wounds the alien creatures had given him, smoothing over without a trace.
And still there was nothing. There was no poison in his system, no venom, no parasite, no foreign substance at all. No bacterial or fungal or viral infection.
And then, finally, after three days, after Tony was starting to face the sickening realization that he had no idea what to do - Peter had woken up.
Peter had woken up, and in the days since then it had quickly become apparent that something was very, very wrong. Something that Tony couldn’t fix.
“Oh, you know,” Peter says, trying to smile, snapping Tony out of his anxious spiral. “A little hungry.”
An IV with the latest nutrient cocktail is hanging next to the bed, abandoned and useless, rejected by Peter’s body like every other one they had tried.
“Yeah?” Tony asks. “What do you want, that Thai place near your apartment? Bet if I paid them enough they’d deliver up here.” Peter laughs shakily.
“Man, I miss Thai food,” he says, wistful. “Is it weird that I- sometimes I can’t think about anything except not being able to go out for Thai with May. It- all I can think about is food.”
As soon as he had realized something was seriously wrong, he had begged Tony not to tell May yet, not to ruin her and Happy’s honeymoon.
It’s a toss-up which of them is going to try and kill Tony first, when he does tell them – but what was he supposed to do?
Tony reaches out to gently brush Peter’s bangs out of his eyes. He needs a haircut.
Peter leans into the touch, eyes fluttering closed for a second.
“We’re going to figure this out, Pete,” Tony says helplessly.
“Yeah,” Peter says. “Sure, I know.” He looks like his faith in Tony is so strong he almost even believes it.
“I’m synthesizing a new nutrient compound right now,” Tony says, trying to convince himself as much as Peter.
Tony had broken down and called in a fleet of doctors, all locked down under a barrage of NDAs, and they had run more tests, and more scans, and hooked him up to more IVs, and injected him with more drugs – and none of it had helped.
He’s starving to death in front of Tony’s eyes, and there’s nothing Tony can do to stop it.
“Okay,” Peter says. “We can try that. But I-” he takes a deep breath and snaps his eyes back open to stare directly at Tony. "Mr. Stark, I want- I need to tell you something."
He looks very determined, and a little nervous, tongue flicking out to wet his dry, chapped lips. Tony’s eyes catch on the movement, involuntarily, and he is all at once horrifically, painfully certain of what Peter's about to say. And he can't- he can't let Peter say it, especially not now, because he won't be able to say no.
Tony has been called many things, but a man with an excess of self control has not ever been one of them.
"How about you tell me when you're actually able to sit up straight again, huh?" Tony says, forcing a smile. Peter stares at him for a second, stubborn, setting his jaw. Tony can see the jut of bone when he does. Then he starts shakily pushing himself into an upright position, weak as a kitten.
"That is not what I- hey, come on, don't hurt yourself-" Tony says, rushing over to grab Peter’s shoulder as he starts to tip sideways. Peter grabs onto him with a weak, trembling arm, letting himself be manhandled up against the pillows.
“Mr. Stark,” he says again, when he catches his breath. “I- considering the circumstances-”
“What circumstances,” Tony bites out, “you have places to be, kid?”
Peter glares at him.
"Don’t,” he says. “Don’t pretend like-” he cuts himself off. Underneath the bravado, he looks scared.
Tony feels sick with impotent rage, furious at the fucking Guardians for even asking for their help, furious at the things that attacked Peter, and above all, always, always furious at himself and his own failures.
Peter had – he had looked so happy, before the mission had gone pear-shaped. Exploring the Guardians’ ship with gleeful awe, face pressed against the viewports to look at the stars. Disbelieving smile on his face as he had walked around an alien planet, tasting interstellar fruit under a bright purple sky.
But now – Tony’s failures have led to him, yet again, getting hurt. Worse. Every time he follows Tony it leads him into nothing but pain.
He wants to soothe away the fear and anger and hurt on Peter’s face, wants to kiss the sharp points of his knuckles and the hollows of his wrists and make him smile. But he can’t. Giving in would make everything so much worse, for both of them.
“Are you sure you’re going to like my answer to whatever it is you need to say?” Tony says, like a coward.
Peter frowns like he can see right through Tony’s bullshit, but he cuts his eyes away and ducks his head.
“Right,” he says. “Uh - could I have some water?”
“Sure,” Tony says as the moment breaks, relieved, turning to reach for the glass jug on the nearby table. He hears Peter shuffling behind him.
“It’s just, okay, um, if I’m going to die, I really feel like I need to tell you that I-”
“You’re not going to die,” Tony snaps. He slams the jug back down, too hard, fumbling it. It cracks open on the side of the table, glass shards spilling everywhere.
“Shit.” He drags his hand down his face. Amazing. He can almost physically feel this final, last straw landing on his back.
“Crap, I’m sorry, I didn’t-”
“Not your fault, kid. All me. I’ve got it,” Tony says, pulse still thundering. He leans down, trying to pick up some of the biggest shards off of the floor. He misjudges the angle of one, nicking his hand in the process. “Shit.”
“Mr. Stark, are you-” Peter cuts off abruptly, and Tony looks over at him. His eyes are locked dead on the blood sluggishly beading up from the tiny cut on Tony’s hand.
“Oh. It’s nothing, it’s fine,” Tony says. “I didn’t even feel it-” Peter’s not listening to him. He’s staring at the blood. His eyes dilate sharply, and Tony wonders, for a brief, absurd moment, if the sight of blood makes him sick, as if he hasn’t seen so much worse than this a thousand times over.
And, well. He doesn’t look sick.
He looks hungry.
“Pete?” Peter doesn’t react. He shifts forward, eyes locked on the tiny red smear. His hand lashes out, suddenly, snakelike, grabbing Tony’s wrist in an unbreakable grip, his super strength dredged up from some hidden reserve. He pulls hard, forcing Tony to slap his other hand against the wall to stay upright, and licks a long, straight line up Tony’s hand.
Peter makes a noise in his throat, low and pleased.
“Sorry,” he says, lips still against Tony’s hand, “sorry, sorry, I don’t know what-”
He shifts his head a little and sinks his teeth into the veins at Tony’s wrist.
“What the-”
Tony tries on instinct to yank his hand back when the first bright shock of pain hits. It doesn’t budge. Peter’s unnatural strength pins him in place, as Peter starts – drinking.
He’s sloppy about it, shaky and uncoordinated with hunger. Blood starts dripping down Tony’s arm, and Peter starts making these raw, hungry noises like an animal, nearly whimpering with pleasure. His nails dig into Tony’s forearm, hard.
The pain shooting up and down Tony’s arm slowly fades into a strange dark, throbbing sensation. He can feel – Christ, he can feel Peter’s tongue on his skin. He realizes, with a lurching start, that he’s half hard.
He shivers.
Nope. He doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t think about anything, doesn’t think about what is currently happening and how fucking weird it is. He just stands there in that hideously awkward position for an endless length of time, half crouched over the bed where Peter had pulled him down, feeling dizzy with relief.
If Peter is – Tony’s mind shies away from the obvious, ludicrous word – if this is what Peter needs, then Tony will give it to him.
Peter pulls him further forward, trying to change the angle, to sink in deeper, and Tony’s vision starts to wobble in front of him. Oh, he’s not dizzy with relief, he’s just dizzy. That must be the sudden, rapid blood loss.
“Pete.” Peter doesn’t respond, sucking harder with a desperate, feverish intensity. Spots start to form in front of Tony’s eyes. "Peter,” he says urgently, trying again, futilely, to tug his hand back, but he’s pretty sure Peter doesn’t even notice. The hold doesn’t give at all.
He’s wearing the nanite housing unit. He could activate the suit and force Peter off of him.
But he was starving to death, and it was your fault, Tony thinks, staring down blankly at the top of Peter’s head, and doesn’t move.
Eventually, his vision is swallowed up completely, and everything goes black.
Tony wakes up slumped sideways over the bed, Peter hovering nervously above him.
Peter looks wrecked. His eyes are huge and wet and red-rimmed, staring at Tony with a horrified expression. And his mouth – Jesus, his mouth is smeared with Tony’s blood, still wet, all over his lips and chin. When he opens it to speak, Tony catches the flash of tiny, pointed fangs poking out from below his lip.
“Mr. Stark, oh my god,” he babbles, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t, I don’t – are you okay?”
There’s a flush of color on Peter’s cheeks that Tony hasn’t seen since before the attack. He looks healthy and vital and alive, and Tony finds it hard to care about anything else.
“Yeah, kid, I’m fine,” he says, struggling to sit up. Peter helps steady him, grabbing his shoulder – barely a few minutes and he seems like he’s nearly up to full strength again. Amazing. “Next time you’ll just have to pace yourself, okay?”
“Next time?” Peter says, horrified.
“Unless you’re contagious, I guess,” Tony says absently, still looking at the way there’s a spark of vitality in Peter’s eyes again. He’s okay. He’s okay. How is he okay? His head spins with the whiplash – or, well, that might still be the blood loss.
Peter’s still way, way too skinny, though. Time to start eating more spinach, Tony.
“I don’t-” Peter presses a shaking hand over his wobbling mouth, getting blood everywhere. His eyes catch on something on Tony’s arm. “Oh my god, was that me-”
Tony looks down at his forearm and sees a huge, handprint bruise there, already starting to go purple. Peter looks sick with horror, and Tony abruptly realizes what an asshole he’s being. He grimaces.
“Shit. Sorry,” he says, reaching out for Peter. “Hey, Peter, look at me. Don’t worry about it.”
“How can you say don’t worry about it, I just attacked you-”
“Join the club,” Tony jokes, but it doesn’t land. He lowers his voice, touches Peter’s arm. “Hey. It’s going to be okay. We’re going to figure this out.”
“Yeah?” Peter asks, still a little in shock, big, trusting eyes staring at Tony. He still hasn’t noticed the blood. The effect is a little gruesome.
“Yeah,” Tony promises. “I know a guy.”
“I’m still unclear as to why you came to me for this,” Strange says.
“Isn’t that why we keep you around? Because you’re a magical knowledge deus ex machina we wheel out when there’s weird shit going on?” Tony asks. He pops a handful of mini Oreos into his mouth. Peter had demanded they stop at a bodega on the way over so he could buy orange juice and cookies, which he had immediately shoved at Tony.
(“They give you that after you donate blood, Mr. Stark! You need to keep your blood sugar up. Or something.”
Tony had opened his mouth to protest that he felt fine, but then he had seen the frantic, guilty look on Peter’s face. He shut his mouth, and ate his cookies.)
Strange looks like he wishes he’d pretended he wasn’t home.
“My knowledge of the ancient, mystical arts doesn’t translate to knowing anything about alien vampires.”
“Oh my god,” Peter mumbles at the word vampire, borderline hysterical. He buries his head against his knees, fingers clutching his hair. Tony instinctively reaches out to him, intending a comforting hand on the shoulder, but his hand somehow – completely of its own volition – tangles with Peter’s on top of his head, instead, thumb stroking through his hair, soft and intimate. It’s so far past the ‘platonic and mentorly’ vibe he was aiming for that it’s not even in the same galaxy, but Peter gives him a grateful look and twists his hand around to interlock it with Tony’s, so Tony can’t find the motivation in himself to stop.
Peter had changed clothes before they’d left the Tower, finally having the energy to do so for the first time in days, and now he’s wearing an MIT sweatshirt older than he is, faded and stretched at the collar. He’d stolen it out of Tony’s closet weeks ago when he’d gotten cold one day, and it’s been the bane of Tony’s existence ever since. It’s just a little too big for him, and it dips low enough to see his collarbones.
Tony is not thinking about what Peter had tried to say to him before everything had gotten weird and bloody. He’s very, very pointedly not thinking about it, and also pointedly not thinking about what Peter looks like wearing his clothes. He’s pointedly not thinking about either of those things in the same way he’s spent the last few months pointedly not having any inappropriate thoughts whatsoever about any barely legal mentees he may or may not know.
(Good. Peter looks good wearing his clothes.)
“Aren’t you an actual doctor?” he says, instead of continuing down the horrible, ill-advised path of self reflection. “Where exactly is your bedside manner?”
“The patients generally aren’t awake during neurosurgery,” Strange says blandly, but he looks like he unclenches a little when he sees Peter’s pale, distraught face. “Fine. Give me some time to examine him. I’ll see what I can do.”
They spend several interminable hours there, Peter getting endlessly poked and prodded like he’s been for the past week, but magically this time. Tony, feet kicked up on a couch that looks like it’s been salvaged from a crypt in darkest Transylvania (fitting), keeps up a steady running stream of mindless chatter the entire time – his latest project failures, how stupid Strange’s outfit looks, the fifteen episodes of Chopped he had watched last month when he was sick.
(That day Peter had swung by – literally - after his classes let out, with a container of wonton soup balanced in one hand from the hole-in-the-wall place they had discovered a few months ago after putting down a brief infestation of be-tentacled sewer monsters in Midtown. He had spent the afternoon doing his physics homework on the couch and acting as receptive audience for Tony’s running color commentary. He had never once commented on how pathetic Tony looked, laid up like that by the common cold, and the whole thing had been so fucking sweet Tony hadn’t known how to handle it.)
Strange keeps shooting him looks like he thinks Tony is being obnoxious just to annoy him, but that’s just a bonus - a few times it manages to get Peter to crack a smile.
Possibly in retribution, after a few hours Strange narrows his eyes and forces Tony off of the couch to examine him, too, just in case Peter actually is contagious.
Eventually, Strange looks up from his thick, ancient-looking tomes, and his glowing magical bullshit, and his actual medical equipment he had dragged out from god knew where, and says: “You’re a vampire.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Tony says, as Peter slumps into a miserable little pile on the creaking old desk doubling as an exam table. “Can you be a little more specific?”
“I’m not going to turn into one of those things that bit me, am I?” Peter asks, staring down at his hands.
“He’s a creature that requires feeding on the blood of others to survive, colloquially referred to as ‘a vampire’,” Strange says to Tony, flatly. He turns to Peter. “And no, probably not.”
Tony glares at him and makes a few meaningfully graphic hand gestures.
“Almost definitely not,” Strange clarifies. “You seem to be… stable, as you are now.”
“Am I going to hurt anyone else?” he asks the table.
“It seems like you were able to feed from Stark without any ill effects on his end, beyond the actual blood loss, so I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to find someone to feed on regularly to sufficiently sate your hunger, without harming them.”
Tony sees the blank, horrified look on Peter’s face and says “hey, hey, come on, Dracula, what’s this about feeding? It’s the 21st century. We have science. That doesn’t need to be our first option.”
Peter’s head shoots up.
“Am I undead?” he whispers, panicked, clearly finally surfacing from his self-recrimination long enough for his mind to race through all of the terrible possibilities.
“No.”
“Can someone kill me with a stake to the heart?”
“Only as much as they previously would have been able to.”
“What about sunlight-”
“Considering you managed to arrive here safely, no, and you won’t sparkle in it either,” Strange says.
“You read Twilight?” Tony asks. They ignore him.
Peter takes a deep breath and opens his mouth.
“You’re not contagious, you can still use mirrors, and you don’t need to be worried about garlic,” Strange ticks off. Peter snaps his mouth closed. He squeezes his eyes shut, hard. Finally, he says:
“Can you fix it?” He looks resigned, drawn in and muted in a way that’s unnatural and wrong looking on his expressive face. Tony thinks he sees a flash of real sympathy from Strange.
“It’s not like you’re under a curse,” he says. “Your DNA has been fundamentally changed – I couldn’t fix it any more than I could affect your other powers.”
After that, there’s not really anything left to say. Peter hops off the table and goes outside to the waiting car, shoulders hunched, arms curled around his stomach. Strange’s bizarre levitating cloak gives him a series of sympathetic pats on the shoulder as it escorts him out.
Tony goes to follow him, but Strange stops him for a moment.
“Whatever your ‘options’ end up being – one way or another he needs blood, or he will die.”
“Aww, you do care,” Tony says. And then: “He’s not going to die. You know I won’t let that happen.”
(Not again.)
Like Tony said – he has science.
He makes a few calls.
“Anything striking your fancy?”
Peter hovers uncertainly over the spread of open plastic containers on the kitchen counter, his face scrunched up in distaste. All of the blood does make a pretty gruesome sight, to be fair.
First up on the list of experimental options: animal blood.
“It all smells wrong,” Peter says, dubious. “But maybe…” he reaches out to grab the pig’s blood. He sniffs it, makes a face, tentatively takes a sip-
And immediately runs to the sink to retch it back up.
Plan B is a bust. The preliminary trials for synthesizing an artificial blood compound yield a few tentatively positive results, but after a few frantic days of experimenting – and of watching Peter’s initial feverish enthusiasm to help fade as he gets paler and paler and sluggish with starvation - Tony is forced to conclude that anything viable is months away, if it’s even possible at all.
Plan C: Tony makes a few more calls.
It’s probably fairly concerning that he can get a refrigerator’s worth of actual human blood overnighted to him in single serving size pouches, no questions asked.
“I wasn’t sure what would be the best so I just got, uh, all of the blood types. So, what’s your poison? Can I interest you in a vintage AB negative?”
Peter is staring.
It maybe wasn’t necessary to show him the whole fridge at once.
“I don’t, uh, I mean,” Peter stammers. “Whatever I had… last time… seemed okay?” It takes a moment for it to click in Tony’s head. He viciously smothers the urge to say oh, was it good for you too?
“B positive it is,” Tony said. He grabs one of the pouches and stabs a pointy ended straw through it. And then, because he can’t completely help himself: “Excellent taste, Mr. Parker.” Peter flushes, smiling down at his hands, and carefully takes the pouch.
“Like a Capri Sun, but gross,” he says, twisting his hand to examine it. “I guess if you think of it like that it’s not so bad.”
He takes a sip and wrenches the straw back out of his mouth with a disgusted look on his face, spitting the blood out onto the floor.
“Eughhhh,” he articulates. “Sorry, it’s just- it’s- congealed and-” He presses both knuckles against his eyes, face still crumpled in disgust. He looks like he’s rapidly descending into ‘inconsolable’. Tony does not know how to console inconsolable.
“…Maybe if we heat it up?” Tony offers.
They slice open the pouch and tip it into a bowl, making it resemble a deeply uncanny looking bowl of Campbell’s.
As they stand there, awkwardly listening to the hum on the microwave, Peter looks down at the floor and mutters “This is so fucking weird”.
“Well,” Tony says. He thinks for a moment. “Yeah, it is pretty weird.”
“Thank you, sir, you’re very reassuring,” Peter says, flatly, but with a reluctantly amused glance at Tony.
“Look, everything about our lives is weird. You just have to, you know, own it. Lean into it.”
“Lean into it,” Peter says. “Right. Update my theme?”
“Exactly. The petty thieves of Queens will need to watch out for Vampire-Spider-Man, the goth-est superhero of them all.”
It’s not his best work, but Tony thinks he can catch the hint of a smile at the edge of Peter’s mouth.
“You’re terrible at this. Though, there is actually something called a vampire spider in…”
The inane conversation starts to pull Peter out of his funk, a little, and the warmed up blood seems like it’s slightly better than before, or at least something Peter can tolerate. Though his face does scrunch up into an adorably displeased expression with every spoonful.
“I’m assuming I taste a little better,” Tony says after a minute, to break the silence, because he, again, literally cannot help himself. Peter laughs, slightly strained, staring fixedly at the bowl. His eyes dart up to Tony’s – neck. “What, did they send me the store brand blood bags?”
“No, it’s just… it’s old. Stale. It doesn’t….” He drops his head back down to keep staring down at the bowl, and after a moment Tony hears a wet little sniffle. Aw, hell. Clearly Tony is failing miserably at this, too. “I hate this,” Peter mumbles, very quietly. “I just want to be able to eat something.”
“Shit, kid, I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Peter says. He looks up. His eyes are a little wet, and he wipes at them frantically with the back of his hand. “Thank you for trying to help, Mr. Stark.” He stoically gulps down another spoonful.
Tony, looking at those big, wet, resigned eyes, feels like his heart has been stabbed in two. And he really just – he really just cannot handle seeing that look on Peter’s face any longer.
“It needs to be fresh, is that it?” he asks. “To not taste like crap.”
“Yeah. I mean. I think so?”
Tony’s pretty sure – no, scratch that, he’s definitely sure - that what he’s about to do is, by any normal person’s standards, incredibly inappropriate.
But the thing is – that’s basically his entire life, now. Somewhere, there had been a line crossed.
It might not have been the new laptop (after Peter’s old one had broken), or the new prototype Starkphone (just because). Maybe it had been the suits for graduation, a few years back. Or the other type of suits, every one a multi-million-dollar nanite work of art. Or the thousands of dollars spent on a new peacoat, cashmere sweaters, gloves and hats and mittens, when Peter had mentioned that the spider bite made him sensitive to the winter cold.
The freshman year spring break trip to Mexico for Peter and all of his friends. The- the entire left half of Tony’s private lab, reserved now entirely for Peter’s use, spare books and pens and hoodies of his casually lying abandoned for weeks in a place most people aren’t allowed to step foot in.
Picking up the phone when Peter called him at 3 am, drunk and lonely in his college apartment after a party, and letting him ramble until he passed out as Tony worked himself half to death. Letting Peter fall asleep curled against his side on the couch in the middle of a movie, not moving a fucking muscle in case it startled him awake. (Peter waking up against him hours later, groggy and hazy eyed, still caught in the last throes of sleep and nearly nuzzling against him, making an obscenely contended noise-)
The problem was that Peter always looked so fucking happy about it all, and it just made Tony want to give him more. The one time Tony thought he might have turned anything down, almost, was during the Coat Situation, but after a moment of wide-eyed staring he had slipped the coat on, remarked that it fit perfectly (of course it did, since Tony had all his measurements), and hugged Tony so hard he felt the air leave his lungs.
(After that hug, Peter had pulled back and said, a little awkward, “I just feel bad that you’re spending all this money on me.”
The correct, appropriate answer to that, of course, would have been don’t worry about it, kid, I can afford it. It most certainly was not what Tony actually responded with, which was “But I like spending all this money on you. You deserve it.”
Peter had flushed up to the tips of his ears, and stared, and stared, and stared, and bitten his lip, and opened his mouth, swaying in the tiniest amount – and his phone had rang, and he had stuttered out an apology and ran to answer it, and nothing had happened.)
The point is - the line is somewhere miles back, and Tony doesn’t know exactly when it got crossed, but it sure as hell had.
So. Fuck it. In for a penny, right?
Plan D it is.
“That’s what you’ll have to do, then,” Tony says. “Drink it straight from the source.” It takes a second for it to sink in, but when it does Peter’s head jerks up, whipping around to look at him.
“What? No, no, absolutely not, I can’t-”
“It doesn’t have to be me again, if that was weird. I know anyone on the team would be more than happy to help. Any of your friends too, if you explained it to them.” It would be incredibly pathetic of him to feel a pang of jealousy at the idea, so he doesn’t.
Peter makes an expression that Tony can’t quite place, shaking his head emphatically.
“No, I can’t, I- I nearly lost control the first time. You passed out.”
“Practice makes perfect, right,” Tony says lightly. When that doesn’t seem to make Peter feel any better, he says, “I’m just saying, you keep looking at me like I’m a particularly delicious looking filet. You need to eat. It’s not a big deal.”
Peter swallows nervously.
“I’m just.” He stops, swallows again. “I’m just so hungry. All the time. It’s only been a few days, but I’m so hungry I can’t think about anything else. And- it’s people that make me hungry. I went outside yesterday, and when I saw people walking around I had to – I just kept thinking about-” he breaks off, like he can’t even say it out loud. “How- how messed up is that? I hate it so much.”
“You keep thinking about it because you’re hungry. If you just- look, if I really think I’m in danger I’ll suit up and blast you unconscious.” And then, when Peter doesn’t look entirely convinced, he says, as gently as he can: “Peter. You’re starving, and you need to eat. It’s okay.”
Peter looks at him for a long second before he slumps in defeat.
“Yeah, okay,” he says.
It’s silent for a moment.
“So. Was there someone you wanted to-”
“You,” Peter blurts out, flushing immediately. “Please. Just you. If that’s. It’s already weird enough.”
“Good choice,” Tony says, ignoring the sudden pounding of his heart and the way Peter’s eyes flick up to his pulse again, like he can hear it, “I eat way healthier than a college kid. Get plenty of exercise. Only the best, free-range blood for Peter Parker.”
The fucked up thing is, he actually means it.
Tony clears his schedule for the rest of the day. Then he sprawls lengthwise on the couch, propping his head up on the armrest and beckoning Peter towards him.
“I know we did the hand last time, but the neck does seem the most traditional,” he says. He doesn’t say that Peter has spent the last twenty minutes staring blatantly at his neck looking like he’s about to cry with hunger.
Peter takes a few steps towards him, visibly shivering, eyes darting up and down Tony’s skin. When he gets close enough, Tony reaches out and grabs one forearm, gently pulling him closer. He coaxes Peter down to lean over him, cupping his head and pressing it towards his neck. Peter freezes, tense.
“Mr. Stark, I’m, I don’t think I can actually-” Peter protests, but Tony can see how his fangs are extending in his open mouth, how his pupils have blown wide with hunger as he stares at the vein. “I-” he blinks slowly. “I really shouldn’t-”
“Yes you should, sweetheart, it’s okay,” Tony murmurs, barely conscious of what he’s saying, and before he can think about it he reaches his thumb up to nick himself on one of Peter’s fangs.
When the scent of blood hits him, Peter makes a raw, uncontrolled little noise that’s going to be seared into Tony’s brain for the rest of his life. He grabs Tony’s hand, wrapping his lips around the thumb and sucking, tongue flicking against the cut.
It looks obscene, his cheeks hollowing like that, the tiny noises he makes. Tony pushes his thumb in further, pressing down against Peter’s tongue and watches the way his entire body reacts. Peter looks up, flushed and dizzy looking.
“Good?” Tony says, hoarse.
Peter makes a pleased, humming noise that Tony can feel vibrate into his skin. He’s still strung tight with tension, though, knuckles white where he’s gripping Tony’s wrist. Holding back.
Tony has to clear his throat.
“I know that’s not enough,” he says.
Peter hesitates for just a moment before letting go and crawling up Tony’s body, pushing him down as he goes. He presses his mouth to Tony’s neck. This bite is so much more careful, Peter slowly and gently sinking his teeth in until his lips are flush with the skin. Tony can feel every millimeter of fang as it presses into him, but it’s the opposite of ripping off a Band Aid - the sting of pain is sweeter this time, fading almost immediately to the same slow, throbbing pleasure from before.
Peter sucks slow and soft, the obscene wet sound echoing in the empty quiet of the room. Tony’s other hand reaches up to cradle Peter’s head, stroking through his hair, urging him to take more. Whatever he needs.
A small part of his brain wonders – is there some sort of analgesic in the saliva? A useful adaptation, for a predator species.
The rest and far larger part of his brain is shivering with indescribable sensation, hips shifting, hand clutching uselessly at a couch cushion, mouth opening on a silent gasp.
Peter shifts to fully straddling Tony, one hand clutching his shoulder and the other sneaking its way upwards to wind itself in Tony’s hair, holding him still - but still hovering over him, not actually touching him beyond that. Which is- good. Good, because Tony’s having the same physical reaction he did last time. He stares up at the ceiling, wide-eyed and unseeing, panting through the dripping waves of pleasure hitting him.
At his age he hadn’t expected to have much left in the way of enlightening sexual experiences. And yet.
When he starts to feel slightly woozy, Tony pulls on Peter’s hair a little and says “buffet’s closed, kid”. Peter pulls off with a gasp, panting hard. Tony can feel the sluggish trails of blood still dripping down his neck. Peter’s eyes fix in on it, and for a moment Tony’s genuinely concerned that he’s going to lose control and dive back in. The thought sends shivers up his spine.
“Oh, sorry, I think I can fix that-” Peter says, vaguely, still not fully with him, leaning in to start licking at the wounds with long drags of his tongue. Jesus Christ.
“Pete,” Tony says tightly. “What are you doing.”
“I noticed earlier – I think – I think I can heal them. See?”
“Okay, that’s- that’s very thoughtful- nnh-”
Peter pulls back again, eyes heavy lidded, lazy, sated expression on his face. He runs the back of his hand over his blood smeared mouth. When he pulls his hand down, his eyes catch on the blood on his hand, and his tongue flicks out to delicately lick it off.
Tony swallows. He swallows again. He can’t quite tell if the universe is trying to reward him or punish him.
Peter sighs. He leans back to sit down – right on Tony’s lap. He freezes, suddenly, like a startled deer, and flushes all the way from his neck up to the tips of his ears. His eyes finally focus.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Look.” Tony says. “Uh.” He flicks his eyes back up towards the ceiling. “Please ignore that. I think there’s probably, uh, you know- pheromones.”
“…Pheromones,” Peter says.
“To keep the prey docile?” Tony offers, and immediately regrets when Peter’s shoulders hunch up miserably. “Bad joke?”
Peter presses his lips together so hard the skin around them turns white. “Sorry,” he says, quietly, “sorry, I know this is so weird, you shouldn’t have to-”
“Pete, no, come on-” Christ. He’s actually going to have to say it. “Look, apparently there are some things I didn’t know I was into, okay? Adrenaline, you know, it does weird things to people.”
Peter absorbs that. He takes a deep breath and looks away suddenly, starts fidgeting with his hands.
“So- so is that the only reason why, or.” Tony doesn’t say anything. He can’t. He knows, with absolute certainty, that this is the time Peter’s actually going to ask, and he’s not going to be able to say no.
‘Not able to say no’ – well, that’s never actually been the problem, has it? The problem is he doesn’t want to say no.
“Did you- that first time, did you really not let me say it because you would have had to turn me down? Am I just, have I been stupid about this the entire time?”
“No, that’s not it- Pete. Come on. You know this is a bad idea,” Tony says, desperate. “Just- just look at what happens when you spend time around me.”
Peter looks at him, eyebrows scrunched together.
“You think this whole thing is your fault,” he says, slowly, like it’s ridiculous.
“Am I getting predictable in my old age?” Tony asks lightly.
“You know I’m not actually a kid anymore, right?” Tony is indeed painfully, acutely aware of that little fact. “I wasn’t up there because you gave me permission. The Guardians like me. I could’ve gone without you.” The Guardians do like Peter, most of them more than they like Tony. Everyone likes Peter.
Tony can see the flash of his fangs as he talks, tiny little points just barely visible above and below his lips. They’re adorable.
“You asked my permission-”
“No, I asked to go with you! Because I respect you!” Peter blurts out. “And I wanted to go as a team. You know. Together. I thought. I thought it would be fun.” He slumps. “And look how that turned out.”
Tony feels sick with impotent fury, with the knowledge that if he had just been a little faster, a little better, he still could have saved Peter from this.
“You’re not responsible for my decisions,” Peter says, annoyed, like he can hear Tony’s thoughts. “I chose to go on that mission. And- and I chose to follow you into space when you were chasing Thanos, too-” Tony flinches, automatically, but Peter’s too caught up to notice.
“You know, actually, if anything,” Peter continues, working himself up as he warms up to the subject, “You should stay away from me now. I could kill you! I nearly did kill you! I can’t keep asking you to do this when it puts you in danger-”
Well, that’s just ridiculous.
“You could already kill me,” Tony says. It draws Peter up short, staring at him, confused. “You could literally snap me in half without breaking a sweat, if you wanted. And, no, it’s never once crossed my mind to be worried, because you’re you.”
“But now that I-”
“That hasn’t changed because you get hangry a little more often now. I mean, if it makes you feel better, you know the suit is always with me. But it doesn’t matter, because I know I won’t need it. You’re Peter Parker.”
“You say that like it means something,” Peter mumbles, but the look on his face is luminous and grateful when he peeks at Tony out of the corner of his eyes.
“You think it doesn’t? Look. Peter. I will give you literally anything you need. This isn’t – it’s not a hardship. I literally figured out how to bend the space time continuum in half for you, what’s some semi-regular blood loss on top of that?”
“I mean. Not just for me,” Peter says, latching onto the part that had just kind of… slipped out.
“That is a technically accurate thing to say, yes,” Tony agrees. Peter’s eyes get very big.
“You-” he says, stuttering, pointing at Tony. “You, you- you can’t just say things like that after you keep turning me down. It’s not fair.”
Tony has an exhaustive list of all of the ways in which it would be a very obviously bad idea to ever, ever take what Peter has so openly been offering for so long. He always keeps it right there at the forefront of his brain, just in case he’s ever tempted to forget – and yet he somehow can’t remember a single one of his objections when he sees that look on Peter’s face, vulnerable and pleading.
Somewhere along the line, Tony has slowly lost the ability to ever deny Peter anything (and if he’s honest with himself, he knows the exact moment it happened, alone, covered in ash, millions of lightyears away from Earth).
He’s silent long enough that Peter starts to look frustrated.
“Sometimes I wonder if you’re just- if you’re just messing with me because I’m so obviously-”
“I’m not,” Tony says. “Messing with you.” His throat closes up, and he can’t seem to spit out the rest.
“Then why can’t you just-” Peter cuts off suddenly, hand fluttering up to half cover his mouth. “What are you- you keep looking at my fangs.”
“They’re cute,” Tony says, low. Peter blinks.
“Yeah?” he says, hesitant, optimistic. He shifts a little closer to Tony. Offers him a tiny little smile.
“You know they are,” Tony says, and it’s funny that this is what makes the final, dying vestige of his self control snap.
He reaches out, very slowly, telegraphing the movement so Peter can pull back if he wants. Peter doesn’t pull back. Peter tilts his face into it like a flower finding the sun. Tony touches his jaw, his lips, traces a cute little fang. He leans in and kisses Peter very gently, like he deserves. Peter shivers, curls into him, clutching his shoulders, kissing back so sweetly.
“You’re right,” Tony says against his lips, after an eternity. “I’m sorry, it wasn’t fair. I’m just an asshole.”
“Most of the time you’re not,” Peter says, absurdly. “But if you feel bad you could… make it up to me?” He’s clearly aiming for seductive and landing somewhere in what could generously be termed ‘charmingly eager’. It still works.
“Hmm, I wonder how I could do that,” Tony murmurs. He presses in closer, tilts his head to deepen the kiss, and –
-nearly splits his tongue open on a razor sharp fang’s edge.
“Okay, note to self, go easy on the tongue for a while,” he says, jerking back and poking his tongue to check if it’s still in one piece.
“Oh no, I’m going to have to completely relearn my blowjob technique,” Peter says. He looks absurdly happy about the prospect.
“What. What blowjob technique,” Tony says, narrowing his eyes as he has a sudden, vivid image of what said technique might look like. Then he catches himself. “…Not that you weren’t, uh. Perfectly free to… refine your technique however you-”
Peter smiles even harder at that, like he thinks Tony’s poorly tamped down petty jealousy is charming. That’s exactly why this whole thing is such a goddamn bad idea, but. Whatever.
“I mean, it wasn’t that much of a technique,” he says. His smile goes just a little sly. It’s a good look on him. “I’m sure I could use some hands on tutoring, Mr. Stark.”
“Could you now,” Tony says, raising his eyebrows.
“Maybe some… long term tutoring?” Peter says, hopeful, unable to hide the earnest, hopeful note underneath.
Tony finally gives in and traces the line of his eyebrow with his thumb.
“Mm, I think some remedial lessons might be in order. Lots of them. Very long term.”
Peter grins, and leans in for another kiss.
Then he blanches and rears back, sitting up straight, violently killing the mood.
“Oh my god, I had a Chemistry test two days ago,” he whispers in horror. “It was worth like- like half of my grade, I’m going to fail that entire class.”
Right. Literally a college student. Tony makes great decisions.
“Seriously?” Tony says. “I have so many doctors. I can get you so many doctor’s notes. You were literally dying, so I don’t think they’ll mind-” funny how he can manage to say it, now, “-or, you know, maybe NYU needs a few new buildings with my name on them, whatever. No biggie.”
Peter doesn’t seem to hear him.
“I’ve missed almost two weeks of classes! May’s going to kill me,” he says, panicked, running his hands through his hair in agitation.
“May’s going to kill me,” Tony realizes, staring into the distance at his rapidly impending death. That one gets Peter’s attention, his eyes snapping over to Tony’s as the reality of exactly what he’s going to have to tell May sinks in.
“It’ll be fine,” Peter says, nervously. “Probably. Right? If I just… explain-”
He trails off and looks at Tony. Tony looks at him.
“It was nice knowing you, kid,” he says.
Peter cracks a smile, and then starts giggling, and then breaks into full on laughter, slumping down against Tony’s chest. He sounds mostly giddy, and only a little hysterical. Tony strokes his hair through it, reveling in the fact that he’s allowed to do so.
“So. Vampirism,” Peter says, when he calms down, like the word is inherently ridiculous. Which it kind of is. “Definitely not dying. Maybe failing all my classes. Dating, or, uh-” he falters, darts a glance up at Tony, biting his lip.
“Dating,” Tony says, god help him.
“-Dating Tony Stark,” Peter says, smiling his new, overly-pointy smile, “Maybe we’ll just ease her into it one at a time? It’ll be fine. Eventually. We’ll figure this out.” He’s not just referring to May. That natural optimism of his must finally, finally be breaking through.
He turns his face up to look at Tony fully, and despite the horrors of the past few weeks he looks incandescent with happiness. Like now that they’re on the same page every other obstacle has fallen away before them.
In that moment, Tony suddenly doesn’t believe Peter at all. It’s not going to be fine.
The two of them, together? It’s going to be great.
(But he really needs to start taking some iron supplements.)