"Sometimes I wonder it"

"Is this the part where I ask you what you 're talking about? , right? And you answer something extremely sentimental!", the man smiled, raising a hand to pass it through his hair with an uncalculated delicacy.

Peter Parker's face was crossed by an amused flicker, then he folded his hands on Tony Stark's chest, and he settled down with his chin.

"How you looked like at my age? I don't imagine you so different from now ...", he murmured, letting himself be caressed again like that, with the shivers going through his back and the warmth of his feelings to warm his cheeks.

"I was a haughty, bored, touchy city kid. Extremely hateful", Tony said, then curled his lips and admitted," Not so different from now, yes. "

"And do you ever think about your young verion when we are together? Do I remember you a little? "

The man stopped his hand and then caressed it. He brought him closer and placed his head on his shoulder, leaving a kiss on his forehead, a gesture that Peter always connected to a sense of melancholy. As if he wanted to protect him in moments when he was more exposed and therefore vulnerable.

"No ... I was too different, Peter. I was not humble, first of all - and I'm not even now - nor so modest or quiet as you are. I was a little shit. I would have made false papers to get everything I wanted, even to lie shamelessly to anyone, no one excluded. "

"What made you change so much? You ... you're not like that, now. Not so much, at least. With me, not at all, "snapped Peter, raising an eyebrow first and then his head, looking at him, looking in his eyes for the answer, with a vein of bewilderment in his voice.

"So many things, many since I became an Avenger and ... I can't hide that a certain change was there even when you came into my life," Tony admitted, and bent over to give him a light kiss on his lips and one one the tip of the nose.

Peter felt warmed by that gesture, and crouched more against him, but not satisfied with the answer. He wanted to give him so many questions that he was already bursting with a big headache, and he was tired, because they had been a heavy day and almost wanted to let go and sleep but ...

There was a question, only one, that just could not keep sewed in the head.

"What have I done so special?"

Tony gave a short laugh: "Go to sleep, Peter."

"No, really! I want to know it. Please, Tony! "He pleaded, sitting up slightly on the bed, instinctively. The sheet slipped from his shoulders, revealing a partial nudity that Tony looked with some interest and a certain light in his eyes.

He studied it for a few seconds, then sighed and put a hand on his cheek, getting up to sit on the mattress to get closer to his face.

"You taught me that if you love something and desire it, you have to earn it," he replied, before appropriating his lips with passion and stealing his heart, inexorably, without any difficulty for the umpteenth time.

...

"Are you listening to me?".

You jump, and you come back to reality abruptly. Your new, distant, and confusing reality.

Exactly seven days have passed since you were there, in that twisted past, and after having occupied whole afternoons to put two words on the cross with Tony - who pretended to come to the headquarters just by chance, with too obvious excuses - at the end you gave in yet another proposal to get out of there and take a walk.

Exit a cage to enter another, according to your thinking. Free yourself from the oppression of the four walls, according to his.

You lost your mind - as you walk with him through the streets of New York - far away; one of the first times you started lying to Aunt May to stay with him, your present one; to spend the whole weekend watching trash movies and making love on the sofa at home.

There are too many things you miss, of those times and too many things that embarrass you, in the innocence that the young Tony reserves to you.

«Yes, I'm sorry ... I was absorbed for a moment», you answer and you give him a smile. A futile, stupid and fleeting smile.

Tony sighs: "If you continue to concentrate not to mention your time, you'll end up doing it. Come on, try to think of it as little as possible! If you don't stop this bullshit, i'm going mad".

You raise your shoulders, touched by his attempt to keep you entertained and have fun, but you both know that it will never go as you hope.

And the reasons are too many to get counted.

"Okay," you reply, then point to a store and he follows the trajectory of your finger intrigued. "We could jump over there. That place has space churros ".

You don't even finish the sentence. Tony bursts out laughing, tasteful. He leans his head back, and you don't understand.

Then you realize, and you would like to bury yourself.

"Not yet, I'm afraid. Now there's a call center for intercontinental calls! "

"Fuck!" You say, and you just got out of your mouth, that stupid imprecation that amuses the boy you have next to you.

"Don't Worry! The only damage you could have done is that it made me curious. Try it again, Peter! » , He tells you and puts a hand on your shoulder, which makes you shiver, makes you transparent. Too much to not let you understand that his touch is not indifferent to you.

Exposed. Again. Damn.

You look down: "I'm sorry, I didn't want to do it. As I told you, I also manage trouble from a standstill".

"And, as I told you, we are similar from that point of view," he says quietly, and you would like that same tranquility also belonged to you and that you stop harassing a strip of red sweatshirt, his , with so much energy almost snatch it. "Come on, let's get out of here. Come".

The air has cooled, now that the sky is dropping the sun behind some buildings, allowing the night to begin to make space.

You always have a certain effect, see the days get shorter. It seems like time is a tyrant and you want to rush, and you don't love when it happens.

"Where do you live in your present?" He asks suddenly, and you don't know what to do. As always, you don't know how much information can be harmful to what will come in the future. "I will not come looking for you, don't worry. You are not even born yet. "

"I'm from Queens," you answer and he nods.

"The accent does not lie, Peter."

"Is it really so marked?" You ask, and you laugh. Even the other Tony has pointed out to you, in some kind of occasion that you just don't remember now.

Tony chuckles: "Yeah, it is! I don't mind, though. Unlike others, that accent of Queens always sounds pleasant enough for me. "

"Thank you," you whisper, and you know you blush. And you know you did it for a stupid thing.

Tony manages to displace you there too, in that reality, with his way of telling you nice things without breaking down once. With that arrogance that is the reason why you fell in love with him.

The silence descends, still and the fleeting glance that you exchange, forces you to turn away elsewhere, pretending that attitude is not bewitching you, that you are not conquering.

He seems notice it, and stops. He stops and you don't, because the heart beats strong, because you are afraid. Because you don't want to show it.

Because you're so in love that you can't hide it. Because every moment when you try to distance yourself, something happens and that inexorably shortens it.

"Why are you doing this?" He asks, and if you did not know him well, you would say that the annoyed tone does not mean anything. Instead it means many things, including suffering for something you hope to have misrepresented.

You stop, finally, and turn around.

"Doing what?".

"Why do you act evasively?"

"You know why. Of course, I want to be provident because I'm afraid to tell you too much and n- ".

"Bullshit" He says and stops in the bud that your attempt to hide, for the umpteenth time, behind the excuse of your present, your non-existent attention to keep everything you know, secret.

It still displaces you. Open your eyes and you just don't go on. You don't want to, because you don't know what to say, and to remain silent means to confirm that he's right.

And he has it, and he has it.

Take a step toward you, and the smiling and carefree Tony of a little before disappears. His usual mask that tells everyone that everything is always good, collapses. It collapses even in that reality, it collapses again in front of you.

He tells you.

«You want to detach yourself! And this detachment you want only for one reason, Peter. And if the reason is not this fucking providence, as you call it, then it means that you are afraid. What am I doing so scary in the future that you have to be like this? "

"I'm not afraid of you. Never had. I'll never have it and ... please. Please, let us stop talking about the you of my present ... please. "

"So if it's not me, what's your problem, once and for all? Tell me, Peter, because if I know that we will continue to have a dialogue that is always and only one way, then I might as well stay here and take the distances you want so much . To insist on something that only me want is useless, "he tells you and continues to be right, this time only in part.

"I want it, really, I wish ... I wish it were all more natural with you, as it is in my present but ... Tony, I ... I'm afraid of myself . Only and exclusively of me », you admit, finally and you are sure, from the confused look that has thrown you, to have you displaced, this time.

"What are you afraid of ruining in the future? What are we doing so weird that can change things so much? "He asks, frustrated.

"It's complicated ... and I can not tell you. On other things I could skip, but on you ... and me, no. It's too important, I don't want to go back and find out that ... " I lost you.

"Agree. All right, look, let's go back. Definitely not the case to continue, if you have to be so bad. I was glad with your company, but if it's not the same for you, what can I do? "

"Why are you misrepresenting? That's not what I said. "

«It does not change the fact that between you and me there will never be a dialogue, as I had imagined ... so, let's go back just enough».

It hurts. It hurts so much that you remain dumb, and swallow a lump in your throat that looks like just the set of many sharp blades. They come down to the heart, they wound it and they break you.

The journey backwards is just the meeting of his shoulders. He don't turn around to look at you as before, trying to infuse confidence and confidence.

You feel disgusting, and maybe you only made the situation worse that you will find later. Tony is a man who does not easily forget, so he often surrounds himself with enemies and a few trusted people.

You Risk, to being no part of either category.

The arrival at the headquarters is only the balance that weighs the needle towards that unmanageable situation and, even if not having a single word, accompanies you to your room, where just before you opening the door, you turn to look at him hoping only not to see too much anger sparkle in the chestnut irises.

«Tony ...», you call him, on your lips, your forehead frowned. A boundless desire to make you an embrace and hear him says that in thirty years will be all unchanged, that when you come back the time will be as you left it.

"You are not afraid of me, you are not afraid of you either. You are afraid of us . Or not? ", He asks brusquely, and you back away. Your back meets the closed entrance of your room and you're trapped. "Or not?" He repeats, louder. He puts his hands on the door and blocks you there, forced to watch him looking for answers at any cost.

Bounce from fear; jolted because certain shots have never had them, with you. Bumping because he's right, again and again and again ...

"I'm afraid that we here can change too many things that we have earned too much effort, Tony ...", respond, tilt his head to the side, terrified, "I don't want to lose what I have ... the only certainty I have."

He comes closer, does not let you go, rather traps you still in that cage made by his arms stretched between you.

"Do you have a crush on me? For the me of the future?"

Something breaks and for once it's not your heart. It is uncertainty to crumble.

So it's all upside down, even emotions. You felt exposed and you are not anymore. You've never been, if all that he could understand from your looks is just that bland feeling. Only a ridiculous and childish infatuation? Just ... something so poor?

You raise your eyes, and you know they are burning. He thinks he has taken it, with his usual arrogance that sometimes you would like to eradicate from him because it hurts.

But this time it does not hurt. It only makes anger.

"No, Tony ... you did not understand anything at all," you tell him, simply, before turning your face to the other side and silencing you.

"So ... the certainty is not the feelings, the certainty is me,isn't it? I spare you feeling, and there is something between us and you are afraid to not finding the same thing when you return. "

You lowered your head, hit and sunk by that truth that has understood, that has thrown on you as if it were not so important and that, inexorably, is already changing things because you, after all, you have not even tried to pretend that it is not so .

"Say something, Peter!" He says, in the tone of someone who is about to lose patience.

"What?" You hisses, and looks up at him, to strike him, to block him, to let him die in the bud of his painful intention to denigrate your future, as if it were the least important thing in the world, when the Tony of your time has always proved that you, just you, are one of the few things that make sense in his life, "What do you want me to say? That it's true? Yes it is! There is something between us, something strong, that I don't want to lose! The only fucking thing I wish would remain unchanged forever ... and you have no right to- "

A kiss. Blocking your words is his kiss, fast and lapidary given by those who are afraid of losing the courage to do it. He did it.

Time breaks, and although it is a different and inexperienced contact on his part, his lips would be recognize in every universe. His kiss is unchanged because, despite being part of a different period, he is always him. And you're still you.

You lash out at him, and you're damn foolhardy to want to deepen that union, but to move it away you would not even succeed if you were aiming a gun at you with the intent to kill you.

It's his first kiss, you feel it. Like his, in your present, was the first for you. And it's yours, that's yours.

Over time it would have belonged to someone else but not. It's yours, and you're proud of it and at the same time you feel immensely stupid to have stolen it.

You violated it, and you violated the time. You challenged it.

Your lips are divided, between the sweet sound of broken breaths that try to stop being indecent and noisy.

"I have a crush on you ..." he admits, as he loses his eyes, he looks from your soul to your mouth as if there were no rules, "And it seems that the thing is unchanged over time."

"It is ... and that's why I'm afraid. In this time ... what do you know about me? "

He seems to be displaced by that fact, because after all it is the truth. What does he know about your, if you have only avoided that he could know you so deeply that he fell into that trap too?

"Does it really matter?"

It matter. Because, in that universe, there is not the same mutual feelings.

There is only you who love him, and he who just put the first piece to start doing it. Yet here you are, looking at you as if nothing, but nothing at all, mattered more.

You smile: "No, it doesn't really matter," and it's a lie, but it's sweet like that new kiss that he asks you with his eyes, banging his long eyelashes.

It kills you inside, yet it reassures you as always; as the Tony of your present would have done.

You give it to him, that kiss, because you want it and nothing in the world, not even the fear of what will come later, persuades you from crowning that common desire.