Spiral Anthology
Language: English
Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence Ambiguous/Open Ending Anthology Attempted Sexual Assault Blood and Injury Crossover Guilt Hand Jobs In-Progress Justin Hammer Minor Violence Nightmares Past Sexual Abuse Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD Safewords Secret Relationship Self-Harm Sexual Tension Slow Burn Survivor Guilt Thaddeus Ross Unhealthy Relationships Violence first time noted
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Published: Jan 29, 2017
this is my first starker fic, and boy what a doozy. ive never read anything less like a romance that could still be classified as a romance. i feel like i annotated this more than any other fic i've ever read. but man, just. bleak. hopeless. tony is not a good guy here but he's also human enough that you can sympathize with his terrible decisions. and peter is, i hate to say it, so accurately written as a 15 year old. which makes the whole story worse. better? i dunno. i loved it, but i kind of hated loving it.there were some weird writing choices that i couldn't look past (like the authors weird aversion to using characters' names to clarify who's doing what), but overall it was great and the voices for peter and tony felt almost uncannily in-character to their mcu counterparts.
| 460 | 4/24/2025 1:09:33 |
Tony stared around the sparse furniture: bed, nightstand, dresser, armchair. Floor lamp by the armchair. Low bookshelves. A laptop that he hadn’t taken with him. It looked like a room that was easy to leave;
| 960 | 4/24/2025 21:49:33 |
Peter waved his hand dismissively and reached casually for the water glass at his side. “I don’t know,” he said, “I just had this weird impression you could do math.” He took a sip, eyes already back on his work. The rain sliding down the window panes cast odd shadows around the room, gray and white streaks on the walls, the furniture, and on Peter’s face as well: shadows moving steadily down his forehead, over his nose, his lips, down his chin and neck into the glimpse that his partially unbuttoned shirt afforded of his collarbone and the little dip in his throat.
| 1237 | 4/25/2025 12:02:44 |
Pepper and Ross exchanged glances in a way that reminded Tony uncomfortably of the looks that his parents would give each other when he’d done something especially in-character.
| 1370 | 4/25/2025 12:25:39 |
Pinned there like a butterfly, dark eyes looking him up and down in a way that made Tony more uncomfortable than ever. His body roiled.
| 1820 | 4/25/2025 1:12:48 |
He’d undone the first four buttons of his shirt, and his clavicle shone brilliant orange in the streetlight; the hollow of his throat and the shadow of his open collar were purple-blue, the sort of contrast seen in comic books or Andy Warhol prints.
| 2558 | 4/25/2025 13:24:31 |
“But I know I should, and I know it’s not going to be good for either of us, but…” He didn’t finish, and the sentence seemed to do better that way. But, and yet, even so, nevertheless… It seemed to sum up their situation better than anything else could.
| 4304 | 4/26/2025 1:37:45 |
He picked up his phone again and, on impulse, began scrolling through his camera roll. One photo, just one, of Peter. Clothed, thank God, but seated on Tony’s bed in a way that spoke of familiarity, sprawling against the pillows. His hair was curly, the way it always got when it was wet. It looked like he’d just dressed after showering. Tony only dimly remembered taking it; the last two weeks had blurred after a while. Biting his lip, he scrolled back: photos from some press events; Rhodey, back when he was still in hospital, pointing at his cast with a look of cartoonish exasperation, mid-eye-roll; several before and after shots of projects; Dum-E with a sign hung on his proboscis that read SHAME; Steve, stretched out on the sofa in the compound’s den, asleep — he remembered that one perfectly, he’d sent it to Natasha with the caption grandpa’s napping. Seeing Steve again so suddenly had shaken him. He didn’t want to continue, but the masochistic impulse in himself had taken over. He continued to scroll. A video of Clint’s birthday, with Natasha and Sam signing the lyrics to Happy Birthday to him as Wanda brought out the cake. Steve in profile as he bent over a drawing. All of them squeezed into the frame — that had been New Year’s Eve, he could tell from the oversized sunglasses he and Rhodey were wearing and the now-infamous bottle of vodka that Natasha was holding (infamous because Clint had insisted on confiscating it later that night, and, true to form, Natasha had put up a fight). Another photo, also from New Year, of Steve and Sam opening the first champagne bottles of the evening. Christmas now, the tree leaning dangerously to the left. Clint lying in a pile of wrapping paper. Sam had given them all terrible holiday sweaters; Steve was wearing his, royal blue with snowmen grinning unsettlingly across the chest, and drinking hot chocolate. Wanda and Steve lighting their menorah together earlier in the month, his arm around her thin shoulders. A video of Natasha teaching a giggling Wanda how to tango in the kitchen while Clint sat on the counter and played a poor-quality version of La Habañera on his phone. Steve signing several little girls’ backpacks. A video of Steve doing the dishes and humming Glenn Miller. Steve seated on one of their beds, naked and with one eyebrow raised as if to say, are you ever going to put that thing down? Pepper at the bathroom vanity that was just a room away from where Tony now sat, doing her makeup. His stomach clenched; his heart began to beat faster as he remembered the look on her face earlier. The hurt, the disgust. Before he even realized what he was doing, he’d deleted the photo. Back to naked Steve. Deleted that too. Steve doing the dishes. Delete. Delete. Delete. Delete. It was a quick massacre of the last nine months, feverish and desperate, until Tony found himself once more looking at Peter, who grinned at him with a sweetness that was too sincere to be a sham, who sprawled so relaxedly for him, who several hours ago had panted his name where he was pinned beneath him, who’d readily curled up next to him a week before, who’d let Tony do whatever he liked to him and never once had seen him in any way other than as a hero. Tony wanted to be a hero. He so desperately wanted to be good. On the television, a man whom Tony assumed was Adrian Toomes was escorted by police from the courtroom. Tony glanced back down at Peter’s face. At Peter’s eyes, adoring and embarrassed and lustful all at once. He deleted the photo, tossed the phone onto his bed, and went in search of something more to drink.
| 4961 | 4/26/2025 2:23:05 |
It made Peter feel somehow bereft. You could have had a normal adolescence, he thought, where you date people, and hook up with people, and people tease you about it, and it’s not a big deal. And when he walked upstairs to third block English, it was with the reinforced feeling that he’d sacrificed his youth and everything that came with it for a chance at… what? He missed Tony — desperately, in the way you missed the bottom of the sandbar when you went swimming and the current pulled you out too far — but his losses didn’t feel proportionate to what he’d gained. Even Tony himself felt like a loss, a prize too fleeting to count.
Description:
Anthology containing:
And So We Spiral
Tony Stark knows he should be acting as a mentor, as the responsible adult, the referee. But if he can barely handle his own problems, how can he also juggle Peter Parker's, all the while pretending that he doesn't notice the way the kid looks at him?
He never was much good at following the rules.
Tags updated as the story continues.
Ash
“I’m sorry,” he said, and Tony wondered what Peter Parker ever had to be sorry for.
A continuation of "And So We Spiral."