5 + 1 {tony and peter}

1.1

five times peter didn't know who had carried him and one time he did

The one thing that Peter could remember about Ben without having to concentrate was how unfailingly safe he always felt when his uncle would carry him somewhere. Ben was steady and strong and sure of himself. When Peter had first come to live with his aunt and uncle, he was plagued by such awful nightmares- planesfallingcrashingburningplanesfallingcrashingburning- that it became a Parker household norm for the three of them to fall asleep watching Tarzan on the couch and for Peter to be carried to bed. In the beginning it was May carrying him to his room as often as it was Ben, since Peter was only four (almost five as he liked to remind them) and easily lifted. At the end, it was always Ben. Ben and his strong arms and steady gait and huge, warm hands carding through Peter's curls as he hummed "You Are My Sunshine" the same slow way that Peter's mother had. Peter could faintly recall the rumbling of his uncle's chest as the man hummed, woefully off-key but trying all the same to give Peter as many moments of uninterrupted sleep as he could before he inevitably woke screaming. Eventually, the couch sleepovers happened less frequently, due to Peter coping and growing older and feeling safe in his unconventionally wonderful little family. On rough days, (one of his parents' birthdays or Christmas or the eighth grade science fair that he won after theorizing how the arc reactor in Stark Tower worked) they all just sort of ended up back on the couch, with You'll Be in My Heart playing on the small television and Peter drifting off between the two people he loved most in the world.

After Ben died, Peter threw out the Tarzan DVD and only felt comfortable sitting in the armchair when he and May watched trivia shows on Saturday mornings. 

The spider bite changed everything, but one thing Peter had noticed that was unnerving was how light he was now. He had been eating like an Olympic swimmer for months now after it took him over a week to even think about touching food after watching Ben bleed out on the sidewalk in front of him. Out of curiosity, Peter stepped on the scale that May kept in the small bathroom of the apartment and sucked in a harsh breath at the blinking number displayed on the small screen.

85.

Peter looked at himself in the mirror, at the toned muscles and broadened shoulders that had developed over the course of one of the worst weeks of his life and furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. How could he weigh less than what he had weighed before the bite?

He had some research to do.

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After the Vulture and after he turned down Mr. Stark's offer to be an Avenger, Peter worried that Tony gifting him the suit would be the last time he heard from the billionaire before Happy would go back to screening his calls. He couldn't have been more wrong. Peter didn't know what had changed, but now Mr. Stark was an active part of his life. May had discovered his secret, thanks to Peter being a dumbass, and she had called Tony to rain hellfire and damnation down upon Mr. Stark's mortal soul. One of her demands within the negotiations that followed that horrifying phone call was that Tony take Peter under his wing. 

Peter, May explained, would never tell Tony this, but he had looked up to the genius for as long as he or May could remember. In a later and much calmer conversation, May confided that Peter used to watch all of Tony's press conferences, his little face almost pressed against the TV screen and wearing his plastic Iron Man toy mask and gauntlets. Tony Stark had been Peter Parker's hero long before Iron Man was the world's superhero, May told him with a fond smile as she pressed baby pictures of her nephew into the hero's hands. Tony would never admit to asking May if he could make copies of the photos.