Three times Tony couldn’t feel Peter, and the one time he didn’t need to

Tony thought that he understood his mentee -the young and forever curious Peter Parker- fairly well by now. The teen was a natural in the lab. He soaked in every bit of knowledge, searched tirelessly for any answers he had yet to discover, and asked questions that no one other than Tony could keep up with. As the months went by, Tony started to forget a time where the boy hadn’t been there to begin with. It was like he had always meant to be there.Peter was everything that Tony wanted to be, and everything he never knew he needed.So after all those months of getting closer to the spider-themed vigilante and feeling like he had learnt everything there possibly was to know, he was surprised to say the least when Peter walked into the lab one day with a clouded expression. No bright smile, no stressed hunch of his shoulders. No sign of what the storm behind his eyes could possibly be relating to. The boy that was usually such an open book had suddenly been closed, and Tony found himself floundering when he realised just how lost he felt without it....(Platonic Soulmate AU. Remix of 'A Wound in the Mind' by Sahiya for the Irondad Remix 2021)