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Tony’s not unfamiliar with complicated, confusing things.
He’s handled intricate concepts and complex ideas for most of his life. From earning his degrees to creating his suits to all the technology he’s developed over the years, he likes to think himself intelligent enough to understand the mass majority of convoluted notions he might happen to come across.
Until today, that is.
Today, there is a very real, very terrifying possibility that Tony is going to be bested by none other than a fictional space franchise, because the order of Star Wars movies is, completely and undeniably, one of the most confusing concepts Tony has ever had to grasp.
Tony gets the originals, considering they were released back when he was young and nerdy enough to be unabashedly interested in them. But the new ones are anyone’s guess. The prequels are about as easy to understand as music theory. The sequels somehow manage to be even worse than the prequels, which is a feat to be accomplished. Kudos to anyone who can legitimately remember what movie comes first, because Tony now knows that the release dates are completely and utterly irrelevant. It’s only unnatural memory abilities and truthfully unhealthy obsessions that allow people to genuinely understand this fucked up cinematic timeline. Tony’s coming up empty.
“FRIDAY?” he calls, not looking away from the TV and the mocking amount of titles currently crowding the screen.
“Yes, boss?”
“Google Star Wars movies order.” Then, his thoughts returning to his struggles up until this point, “For dummies.”
“Yes, boss.”
God, the things Tony does for this kid.
He lets the remote hit the couch cushion beside him as FRIDAY begins her research, and, carefully, eases himself back into a reclining position, suppressing his grimace of discomfort. A little over two weeks and a round with the regeneration cradle after the failed warehouse bust, the pain of Tony’s gunshot wound has diminished, but the stiffness and the distinctly irritating feeling of being shot hasn’t yet faded. Not that he’s letting anyone know that. He’s fine for the most part, really; it’s just the lingering aches and pains that have been giving him trouble, and even those aren’t bad.
That’s why he’d like to think himself ready to entertain a super powered teenage boy for the weekend.
Just as soon as he figures out this dumbass franchise.
“According to the website I’ve found, you should start with The Phantom Menace for sake of plot clarity, or A New Hope for release date consistency,” FRIDAY says, apparently finished up with her internet investigations. “However, the choice between the two is left up to you.”
Tony groans and lets his head drop back against the pillows. “You’re absolutely no help at all at times, FRI, you know that?” he asks, eyes flickering up to the ceiling.
“I’ve been told, boss.”
Sighing, Tony shoves himself back into a decently upright position, kicking socked feet down from the ottoman in front of him and bracing himself to stand. “I’ll just ask Peter which one is better when he gets here,” he mutters, mostly to himself. “He knows more about this shit than I ever will.”
“That sounds like a good judgement, boss.”
“As much as I appreciate the sentiment, I’d appreciate it more if you shut up now, FRIDAY.”
With May being gone on a business trip for the weekend, Peter’s being dropped off with Tony for supervision purposes and as a favor to May’s paranoia. As a kid raised in the city and as a vigilante cheating death at every corner, you would think Peter’d be able to take care of himself for a few days, but as last time May left town proved for them, that’s no longer the case. After Peter had forgotten to eat for twelve hours straight while he was left alone, his blood sugar had plummeted into the scary zone with no one around to catch it. Tony found the kid passed out and concussed from slamming his head on the counter on his way down his fainting spell hours later, when Peter wouldn’t pick up his phone and Tony’s anxiety got the best of him. It had taken a solid hour to scrub up the blood from May’s kitchen tile.
So, Tony’s on Spider-Baby duty until May gets back from Chicago.
The kid should be getting here any minute now, and Tony thinks he’s got everything planned and prepared for the next handful of days. He’s stocked the pantry with an unholy amount of snacks, the TV’s already cued up and ready to go for a Star Wars marathon, and there are several half-finished projects sitting out in the workshop with the freshly cleaned tools waiting patiently beside them. If anything goes wrong, it’s gonna have to be something impressively destructive, because Tony thinks he’s got pretty much everything else covered. And with Pepper out of town this week, he could probably use the company too. He’s been told he also doesn’t do well alone.
Tony isn’t even sure why he’s so keyed up over this weekend, honestly. It’s obviously not the first time Peter’s spent the weekend with Tony. Shit like this is pretty mundane by now. They’ve got a routine established. Peter’s even got his own room in the compound. This is normal. Tony shouldn’t be worried about it at all, really.
Unfortunately, nerves don’t listen to reason.
Because this is the first time Peter’s spending the weekend with Tony since the DNA crisis and the warehouse mission fail. The first time they’re spending an extended amount of time together since everything went down. The first time they’re going to have the opportunity to talk through the events of those handful of weeks where shit happened, and the first time Peter’s gonna get the chance to ask questions and The first time Tony’s going to have to answer those questions.
Forgive Tony for beginning to panic a little here.
Maybe more than a little.
He knows everything’s going to be fine from a logical, reasonable stand point, but there’s still some shit they’re working through and he’s not sure what to expect from this weekend. He’s seen Peter a handful of times since the bust, but they haven’t gotten into any deep stuff yet due to time constraints and general avoidance of the topic on both of their parts. But now, with two and half days in front of them with no one but each other around, some kind of conversation is basically inevitable. This is a good as chance of any to work some of this heritage crap out.
And really, honestly, truthfully, they’re going to be fine. Tony knows that.
In the meantime, though, Tony’s just going to fret like a nervous old lady and do his best to keep this unpredictable situation firmly under his control.
He shoves himself to his feet and starts for the kitchen, leaving the TV cued up to the Star Wars titles. Knowing Peter, he’ll want to get an early start on their marathon, and knowing Peter’s metabolism, they’re going to need snacks for that. This would be when the family sized bag of Doritos Tony bought is going to come in handy.
He’s just set foot on tile when FRIDAY announces, “Peter Parker has just arrived downstairs.”
“Send him up,” Tony tells her as he heads for the pantry.
He busies himself with grabbing the bag and snagging a plastic bowl from a cupboard until there’s the ding of an elevator arriving at his floor. He hears the doors of the cab slide open, then the distinctive sound of Peter’s gait, even if it sounds slightly more weighed down than normal.
Less than a second after the elevator doors open, there’s a yell of “Tony, we’ve got a problem!”
And with that, the fragile assurance Tony’d established over himself splinters.
He ducks out of the kitchen with the plastic bowl still clenched in his hands, instantly bracing himself with images of Peter bruised, bloody, attacked. It’s a short journey between Peter’s apartment and the compound, but this kid attracts danger like metal to a magnet, and despite the fact that Peter shouldn’t be in his suit right now, Tony wouldn’t be surprised if he managed to run into some kind of trouble in those handful of blocks.
It sure as hell wouldn’t be the first time.
But when Tony turns the corner, Peter looks remarkably fine. There’s no bruises or bone or blood immediately visible, and save for the pink flush over his cheeks and the way he’s currently gasping like an overheated triathlon athlete, there doesn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with him. There’s his backpack slung over one shoulder and a bulky equipment bag hanging off the other, and he stops when he sees Tony, nearly slumping from the combined load of the two bags. He lets the equipment bag slip down his shoulder and fall to the tile with a clang of metal and a thunk of weight, panting.
Tony, standing a few feet away with the chip bowl still in his hands, raises an eyebrow. “Peter?”
“I have a robotics project due in three days and I haven’t even started,” the kid says in one breath.
Well, at least he’s not bleeding out. The two of them have already seen enough blood in these past handful of weeks to last them lifetimes.
Peter drags the equipment bag behind him as he heads for the kitchen, the display possibly more dramatic than necessary but, hey, Tony can’t really judge. “I’m dead,” Peter says empathetically, before Tony gets a chance to respond. “I’m so, so dead. My teacher’s super into this project, but I got paired with a bunch of kids who don’t even know what a gear is and I didn’t get the chance to start on it earlier because I had a giant spanish test earlier this week I had to study for and I was supposed to stay after school on Tuesday to work on it but then Ned basically had a breakdown because he used WebMD again and convinced himself he had cancer so I had to talk him down from that and—”
“Peter,” Tony says, setting down his chip bowl. Peter collapses into a bar stool, his backpack dropping onto the floor to join the equipment bag as the kid shoots him a miserable look. “Kid. Listen to me here. It’s a project. The mass majority of projects do not determine the fate of the world as we know it, and I’m willing to bet that this project fits into the mass majority. Take a breath.”
The kid inhales obediently, but he still looks stressed out nonetheless. “It’s just a really big project, Tony,” he says, and there’s something in his voice that makes Tony think that this project actually does mean something to the kid, even past the melodramatic displays and tragic performances. “I can’t fail it, and I— I don’t think I can do all of it alone. Not that fast.”
And oh.
Suddenly, it clicks.
When Peter gets stressed, he gets weird, and something like this definitely fits the bill. The odd drama. The sudden concern with some random project. The way he’s currently shooting quick glances at Tony like he’s trying to gauge his reaction without making it obvious that he’s watching him. When there’s something he’s trying to put together or figure out, Peter’s very sensitive to the way other people react to his attempts, and the kid sucks outright at being subtle, so the situation they’re in abruptly makes a lot of sense. And, with a growing sense of surprise and fierce, alarmingly present fondness, Tony understands.
The kid set up a fucking bonding experience.
Seems like Tony’s not the only one who planned for this weekend.
Tony has to duck his head to hide his smile, because god, this kid. He’s simultaneously the most ridiculous and most disarming human Tony’s ever met, and it’s shit like this that makes it land. He’s so stupid but so incredibly smart, and Tony wonders, not for the first time, how he managed to find him.
And how he managed to make him, honestly, but that’s an issue for another time.
Hopefully keeping his revelation from showing on his face, Tony slides the bowl of chips across the island to Peter. “Need any help with it?” he asks, casual like.
Peter catches the bowl reflexively, but his gaze stays trained on Tony, his shoulders relaxing just slightly, as if something uncomfortably tense in his posture just got some slack. “Yeah, actually, that’d be great,” he says, and relief bleeds into his tone even more than it does his expression. “Are you gonna have a couple free minutes this weekend? Because if you don’t, that’s totally okay too—”
“Peter,” Tony says, firm but gentle. He opens the fridge to grab drinks, his hand finding Peter’s Arnold Palmers almost automatically, but when he turns around again, his expression is determinedly decided. “I’m free all weekend, kiddo. I’ve got nothing to do but sit around and help you with your high school homework and a whole ass lab to do it in. We can spend the entire weekend in there, if that’s what it takes, you hear me?”
The kid smiles, catching his drink when Tony slides it across to him as well. “DUM-E would be thrilled if we spent the entire weekend in the lab with him,” he says, already hopping to his feet. “He’d probably break something expensive out of excitement.”
“DUM-E doesn’t need an excuse to break something expensive, kid. Trust me, I would know.” Tony grabs the bowl of chips with one hand and his can of Coke with the other, leaning his hip into the counter as he glances at Peter. “Should we get a head start now, get a couple hours in early and see what we’re dealing with? The Star Wars marathon can always come later tonight, if you’re up for it.”
“You planned a Star Wars marathon? Oh my god, you really do love me.”
***
The project ends up being a watered down version of a Rube Goldberg machine, something that’s actually possible for a bunch of teenagers to complete within a handful of days and without incredibly expensive equipment or weirdly specific parts. Most of the other kids were apparently able to get it done before crunch time, but Peter wasn’t kidding when he said the other kids in his group were essentially worthless when it came to robotics, and he couldn’t knock out the assembly on his own.
That’s where Tony comes in.
“Well, we’ve got a plan, at least,” Tony says, arms crossed over his chest as he surveys what they’ve got to work with. They have all of Peter’s progress spread out across one of the lab tables, everything from sketched blueprints to the feeble beginnings of construction. There’s still several kinks they’re gonna have to work out from here, of course, but they’ve got a start. “We’ll just smooth out the multi-view drawings first, and then we can start putting all this together and see what we end up with, okay?”
Peter nods, standing beside him with his hands braced on the edge of the table. DUM-E’s got himself positioned beside the kid, his claw hovering over the papers as if he’s studying them himself. However, his sporadic beeps of excitement at being included blow his sophisticated cover. “Sounds good,” Peter says. He looks over at Tony, bottom lip between his teeth. “You really think we can pull this off?”
“Definitely.” Tony pulls one of the sketches closer to him, sliding it across the smooth surface of the table to study it in more detail. “Remember that I put together a whole ass suit in the middle of the desert with basically zilch resources, kid. This is nothing.”
They fall into an easy, practiced pattern of production, with each of them tackling different parts of the project as Black Sabbath blasts over the speakers. They talk occasionally, but mostly work in companionable quiet, perched on lab stools with tools in hand and papers wordlessly being passed between them whenever one of them needs a closer look at a specific detail or note.
It’s kind of nice, actually. They haven’t gotten the chance to just sit and work together like this in a while, between Tony’s recent bullet wound and Peter’s sudden onslaught of schoolwork with midterms coming up, and Tony’s missed this. Working on a high school robotics project isn’t quite the same as working on suit upgrades, but the process is similar enough.
And, most importantly, it confirms to Tony that they’re still capable of having normal brainstorm sessions like this, even with the whole hey kid, I’m your dad! thing being out in the open. That relief alone is enough to launch Tony into an instantly good mood.
DUM-E seems to have missed situations like this too, if the absolute ecstacy currently exuberating out of the bot is anything to go off of. He’s been hovering beside Peter for the past half an hour or so, handing him tools whenever possible and beeping supportively every time Peter so much as glances in his direction. Sure, Peter doesn’t actually need 90% of the tools DUM-E gives him, but he accepts every random wrench or screwdriver anyway with a smile or a pat of thanks and the bot’s practically glowing with praise by now. Tony’s really gotta give the poor thing more attention.
After a while, though, Peter’s expression turns from focused to frustrated. It’s subtle, but enough to catch Tony’s attention, and he finds his own focus wavering from the project to check on the kid. He glances up briefly from the sketch he’s studying. “You okay over there?”
Peter looks up quickly, his forehead creased even as he smiles automatically. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” he says, setting down the mechanism he’d been fiddling with. He braces his hands against the edge of the table, expression flickering back to vexation and eyebrows drawing together as he looks at the mechanism again. Black Sabbath automatically lowers in volume now that they’re talking again. “These pieces don’t really seem like they want to work together, but it’s okay, really. I’ll figure it out.”
“Let me see.”
Peter obediently hands over the pieces, a huff of breath escaping him as he rests his chin on his fist. Tony takes a second to look them over, fingers skimming the metal and plastic and quickly seeing where the problem is. “Oh, I see what’s happening.” He leans across the table, mechanism in his hand. “You see this band here? It’s just a smidge too short, I think. You’ve gotta length it a bit,” he says, pointing out what he means. “That should loosen everything up.”
“Oh. Oh. Yeah, I see what you mean.” Peter takes the pieces back, offering a quick, sheepish smile Tony’s way as he goes. DUM-E offers a cheerful beep of celebration when Peter finally takes the yankee driver the bot’s been trying to give him for the past five minutes. “Thanks. I don’t know how I missed that.”
“Hey, offering guidance and wisdom from my endless supply of random mechanics knowledge is what I’m here for,” Tony says. He picks up the orthographic drawing he was working on earlier and settles back onto his stool, Pepper’s Cheater reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. “You said your group mates are basically deadbeat parents to your project, right?”
Peter laughs. “Yeah, basically.” He tugs the old band from the mechanism in front of him, and DUM-E bustles off to find another useless tool to force upon the kid. “Usually Ned and I would work together for something like this, but groups were assigned, not chosen. I got stuck with a bunch of science geeks.”
“Isn’t everyone in that school a science geek?” Tony asks, not looking up from his paper.
“Well, yeah, but it’s the school of science and technology,” Peter says. “Some kids are better at tech while others are better at science. The kids I got paired with can list the entire periodic table in, like, ten seconds flat, but you ask them to take a look at a bot and they’re clueless.”
“You’re pretty great at both, though.”
Peter laughs, looking a little embarrassed yet still pleased. He hooks the new, lengthened band onto the mechanism, and DUM-E beeps softly in celebration, now returned to Peter’s side with a broken wrench held faithfully in his claw. “Yeah, uh, I guess I’m just weird.”
Tony hums thoughtfully. “I was okay in chemistry, but I was way better with robotics,” he says, squinting at the notes in his lap. “You must get those scientist genes from your mom.”
It takes a fraction of a second for Tony to realize what he just said.
His gaze snaps up to Peter, half panicked and half stunned by his own dumbass inability to filter his own thoughts. He’d been planning on letting Peter approach this whole thing, let the kid make the first move with this conversation and not bring it up unless Peter wanted to first. He had a plan, dammit. And now—
Damn, now Tony just threw that casual bombshell into the conversation without even trying.
He swallows hard, taking off the tortoiseshell framed glasses and letting them hit the surface of the lab table. “Shit,” he mutters. “Shit, kid, I didn’t—”
“No, no, it’s okay,” Peter says quietly. He doesn’t look up from the mechanism he’s fiddling with, but he doesn’t seem upset either, just vaguely uncomfortable. “You’re fine.”
Tony takes a breath, folding his hands on the table. “I’m sorry, Peter, I—”
“Seriously, Tony,” Peter says, looking up. He offers a brief smile, nothing all that strong but reassuring and real nonetheless. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”
Exhaling, Tony nods, turning back to his notes and letting Peter break eye contact. A moment passes in quiet, broken only by DUM-E’s occasional beeps and the soft sound of Black Sabbath still playing in the background. Tony resists the urge to look at Peter again, just to judge on how serious he was being when he dismissed it, see what they’re dealing with here with topics like this. The atmosphere has very quickly turned uncomfortable.
But then Peter asks, “How well did you know her?” without looking up from his work, and Tony realizes that they’re starting this conversation now.
He glances up briefly as he reaches for a piece to work on, snagging the glasses again with the motion. “Your mom?”
“Yeah.”
Tony lets out a slow breath as he settles back on his stool, keeping his gaze firmly on the mechanism in front of him. He grabs a screwdriver from the tool stash and starts separating the pieces; one of the robotically clueless kids must have done this, because it’s a shit patch job. “Not very,” he says. “I only met her once, at a bar during a night that was fuzzy at best and a conscious blackout at worst. I spent the night with her.” He pauses, lets his gaze flicker up to Peter for just a second. The kid’s got his eyes glued to the pieces in front of him, even if his hands have stilled. “Did you know that already or did I just ruin your childhood?”
“Yeah, um, I kind of figured.”
Swallowing, Tony nods as his gaze flickers back down. “Fair enough,” he says. There’s one screw that refuses to come loose from the metal, so Tony jimmies it the best he can with the screwdriver, trying to loosen it up enough to come free. “During that part of my life… let’s just say that there were a lot of nights like that one, Peter.” It’s taking some real elbow grease to get this damn screw to come away, seriously, but it offers a distraction, and Tony’ll take what he can get. “I… I don’t know if—”
“You don’t know if you remember her.”
Tony’s gaze snaps up to see Peter watching him again, hands lax over the parts he’s working on and soft smile easy and understanding across the table. “I get it, Tony,” the kid says. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it, seriously. I was just curious.”
Suddenly, the stuck screw doesn’t seem all that important anymore.
And sitting across the table from each other, working on a robotics project and avoiding eye contact, abruptly seems like an inappropriate setting for this conversation.
“Come on, Pete. We’re taking a break.”
Tony gets up from his stool and starts towards the couch they have shoved against the far wall of the workshop while Peter follows a moment later, hesitant but curious of what Tony’s planning, and DUM-E rolls along behind. The couch, an ancient old thing Peter dragged home from a garage sale a few months back that now sports a basic AI, beeps softly in greeting as Tony sits down. Peter pats the cushions as he joins him. “Hey, Seatheart,” the kid says, and the couch beeps again.
Now in closer quarters, Tony can see how hard Peter’s working to keep his expression neutral. The kid’s probably been dying to have this conversation for a while. Peter’s the kind of kid to keep things close to his chest until he finds a fitting situation to introduce it into, and Tony doesn’t even want to think about how long he’s been sitting on this one.
Because, really, it’s natural for him to wonder. The kid lost his mom before he really got a chance to remember her in the first place, and even aside from the whole orphan thing, it’s understandable for Peter to want to think through the situation that would have produced him, especially with the awkward and unprecedented predicament they’re in with Peter’s heritage coming as a bombshell announcement months after Tony and Peter met. Honestly, Tony just wishes he has a better story to tell him, with more conclusive endings and decided impressions. But he doesn’t, so he’s going to have to make do.
“Listen, Peter,” Tony says, leaning forward on the couch. His hands clasp between his knees as he glances over at the kid, gentle but honest. “I don’t remember your mom. I don’t. I wish that I did, and I wish I could tell you exactly what she was like and exactly how you’re like her and all the details of the night I spent with her—”
“Ew.”
“—but I can’t. I’m so sorry that I can’t, but I can’t.” He takes a breath, and nudges Peter’s shoulder with his own, offering a small smile when the kid glances up at him. “But to produce something as absolutely amazing as you, your mom must have been one badass woman. I didn’t know her, but I know myself, and I know you, and considering she managed to balance out all my hellish traits and still create the perfect kid, I think she was amazing. I would have loved to know her.”
Peter takes a breath as well, mirroring the smile with a kind of weak bashfulness, like he’s a little embarrassed by the praise while being surprised by it, being the stupidly, cluelessly wonderful kid he is. “Your traits aren’t hellish, Tony,” he mumbles, gently bumping Tony’s shoulder in return.
“They are, but I appreciate the denial, kid,” Tony says. “But seriously. From what I’ve heard from May and what I know from you just being you, your mom was fucking awesome. You got that? Do you officially have that drilled into your head?”
“All drilled and cemented,” Peter confirms, still smiling faintly. “Thanks, Tony.”
Tony squeezes Peter’s knee gently, watches the kid shoot him a look that’s half sheepishness and half gratitude, and he knows that there’s some serious truth to what he just said, because that part of Peter definitely isn’t from Tony. That’s Mary, and maybe some May, the women who made this kid who he is. He’s them, and he’s also Ben and Richard and Tony, carved by his parents and polished by his family and made into the incredible person he is today by all of them.
He’s their kid.
He’s their kid, but he’s also Tony’s, and god, he got so fucking lucky.
“C’mon, back to work. Let’s get this project aced,” Tony says, shaking off the lingering sentiment and clapping Peter on the shoulder roughly, snapping them both out of it. The kid looks glad that the atmosphere is being brought back to casual, shoving himself up from the couch and starting for the lab tables. DUM-E follows along with the cheerful stupidity only DUM-E seems to possess.
“Yep, let’s get this bread,” Peter says brightly, tossing a grin over his shoulder as he settles himself back on a stool.
By now, Tony’s given up on asking.
***
The rest of the night passes in a blur of screws, metal, plastic, and DUM-E’s occasional supportive yet earsplitting alarms of excitement whenever they figure some difficult component out. The conversation about Peter’s mom, for as awkward as it was in the moment, actually did a great job of breaking the ice, and with both of them loosened up, jumping back into the project is easy as routine.
Hours fly by as they exchange notes and ideas and concepts, developing plans further and beginning actual assembly on the parts they’re positive about. There’s something distinctly fun about working on a project like this, and Tony actually begins enjoying himself as they work. The beginning awkwardness is more or less dispersed, they’re getting shit done, and Peter actually seems to be having fun too, which is admittedly reassuring for Tony’s wariness about this weekend.
It’s nearly midnight by the time Peter even takes a break, shambling off to Seatheart with a long abandoned water bottle in hand and his eyes already half closed. Usually, Tony would join him, but he’s only got a little more to do before the mechanism he’s working on will be perfected, so he holds off for a second to finish up. DUM-E tries to follow Peter over, but Tony sends him over to the corner to charge instead. The bot’s been going all day, and Tony doesn’t want to drag him back to his charging port when he finally dies. Tony’s way too old for that shit.
Ten minutes and a completed apparatus later, Tony turns to Seatheart to find Peter sprawled out across the cushions, fast asleep.
“Not tired my ass,” he mutters.
The kid put up a good effort to keep himself going, but the past half an hour or so, Tony could tell his defense against exhaustion was splintering. The way he suddenly dropped off from the conversation was a good indicator within itself, but Tony didn’t know it was serious until the kid started his serial yawning.
That’s always a solid sign that the end is near.
Tony walks over to the couch and crouches down next to Peter’s head, planting a steadying hand on the armrest to keep his balance. Seatheart beeps impossibly quietly at his touch, like she knows there’s a sleeping kid on top of her and is afraid to disturb him but wants to say hello anyway. He can tell just from the armrest that she has the seat warmers on, which probably didn’t help Peter stay awake. It occurs to him that she may have done that on purpose.
“Good girl, taking care of him,” he whispers, patting the armrest. “He needs the interference sometimes, the dork.”
Seatheart beeps again, soft as a breath, as if she agrees.
Peter looks younger now than he does in consciousness. The lab is dark save for the few lights they still have turned on at this hour, and the dim lighting shadows the kid’s face, blurring his features, taking a few years off his expression. He’s grown up fast, Tony knows. This kid’s seen more shit in his sixteen years than most people have seen in their entire lives. But he handles himself so well anyway, in a way that’s impressive on the surface and honestly kind of inspirational when you dig deeper.
But he’s still a kid.
Not for the first time, Tony realizes how fiercely grateful he is for all the people looking out for Peter these days. Him and May are the main ones, sure, but Rhodey and Pepper and Happy, and even the other Avengers, they’re all there to keep this moronically perfect kid safe. Even the bots know to look out for him.
They’ve got Tony’s back with this whole parenting business.
Back in the beginning, Pepper told Tony that he wouldn’t be alone with this, during that first phone call when he sat her down and told her what he’d just learned. It’s nice to know that she was right.
Tony just kind of wishes someone was around now to help him, because the kid’s passed out and Tony seriously doubts his own ability to carry him up to bed.
God, Tony’s getting old.
He hates to wake Peter up, but he honestly doesn’t know if there’s any way to go about things. He could try to manhandle him upstairs, he guesses. But really, that would just wake the kid up anyway, and it would be easier to do that here and have him walk upstairs himself and cut out the whole manhandling part entirely, really. And carrying is an option. Not a good one, but an option nonetheless. The Iron Man suit is always possible, but it seems like a hell of a lot of work and Peter would probably wake up in the process anyway. So that leaves just flat out carrying, sans suit. If he hadn’t been shot two weeks ago, Tony might actually consider it, but with his still healing bullet wound and the lasting stiffness, he really doesn’t know how well the attempt would go. He’ll probably drop Peter if he tries.
And here he was, thinking he had safely missed the accidental brain damage part of parenthood.
He’s just about to try and scoop Peter up, just to see if he actually can, when—
“Don’t you dare pick me up, you’ll hurt yourself.”
—the kid talks without opening his eyes and Tony loses his balance, falling back on his ass.
Over in the corner, DUM-E whirs at him in a way that can only be described as mocking.
“Oh, shit, Tony, I’m sorry—” Peter says quickly when Tony thuds onto the concrete. He sits up with wide eyes, and although he does look genuinely apologetic, he’s laughing through his words. “I— oh my god, are you okay?”
“Sweet Jesus, child, are you trying to give me a heart attack? You want the inheritance that bad?”
Peter’s laughing in earnest now, shaking his head even as his shoulders shake with him. “No, I—oh my god, Tony, your face—”
Tony scowls up at him as the kid continues laughing, but there’s no malice behind it and Tony’s honestly trying not to laugh himself by now. The situation (and this damn kid in general) is just too ridiculous to keep a straight face. He shoves himself to his feet with a hand up from the armrest again, and cuffs a soft hand around Peter’s head, a chuckle escaping him when the kid’s laughs only increase. “Go to bed, you hooligan.”
He can hear Peter laughing all the way upstairs.
***
The next morning starts early, when Tony rolls out of bed hours before he’d usually be up to find Peter already bustling around the kitchen, throwing fruit in a blender with a Queen song blasting from his phone. The kid looks up, already grinning, when Tony stutters to a stop in the doorway.
“Morning!” he says cheerfully where he’s cutting up strawberries at the counter. He’s still in pajamas and he’s got enough bed head to put an exceptionally scruffy Yorkie puppy to shame, but his eyes are bright and it’s obvious he’s been up for a while. “Any smoothie requests? I was just going to do strawberry and banana for both of us because that’s the one I make best, but I was thinking about adding spinach to mine, or maybe something else I don’t usually do. What do you think? Yay or nay?”
Tony blinks, his right hand braced on the doorframe. He threw on sweatpants and a t-shirt before he left his bedroom, but he still feels grossly unprepared and disheveled when comparing himself to Peter at this hour. He’s not what you would call a morning person. “I didn’t even know we had fruit in the fridge, kid.”
“I think Pepper ordered it for me!” Peter says brightly. He turns to grab the spinach out of the fridge, the counter already covered with smoothie ingredients but apparently not enough. “We were talking about good smoothie recipes last time I saw her, so I guess she thought ahead before she left on her trip, but she went all out with it. Seriously, there’s fruit in here I don’t even know how to use. We’re talking that fancy.”
”Yeah, well, Pepper’s cool like that,” Tony says, making a beeline for the coffee machine. “That’s kind of why I’m marrying her.”
Peter smiles, dumping a handful of sliced pineapple into the blender. “All these options are encouraging me to branch out with my recipes. Not sure how this is gonna taste together but we’re gonna try it anyway.” As he secures the lid on the container, he glances up again, expression bright. “So. Spinach or no spinach?”
Tony takes a long sip of his coffee. “Spinach. I want to drink my salad.”
Nodding, Peter opens up the blender once again and dumps in a shit ton of green. “Good choice.”
***
“Did you ever have pets as a kid, Tony?”
Tony doesn’t look up from the plastic he’s melting together. “Nah. My dad thought animals were pointless as companions and my mom wasn’t a fan of the fur.”
“Not even a fish or anything?”
“Nope.”
Peter frowns, his fingers tracing swirling designs on DUM-E’s flank as the bot loudly hums his appreciation. “Do you ever think that’s why you made the bots?” he asks thoughtfully. “Like, as a replacement for the non-verbal love you missed out on when you were younger in the form of pets?”
Tony raises his eyebrows, glancing up from his pieces. “If that were true, DUM-E would bark.”
DUM-E beeps in agreement.
Since they headed down to the lab and started working this morning, random questions have been coming at irregular intervals without a breath of warning. Tony doesn’t mind them, really. The questions have all been harmless, and it makes conversation.
Besides, Peter’s been asking about things that Tony hasn’t really thought about in years, and it’s resulted in some interesting treks down long forgotten paths off memory lane. They’ve mostly been questions about Tony’s past; basic, trivial things like Tony’s first girlfriend, his favorite subject in school, how he met Rhodey. He’s sure that Peter could probably find the answer to most of the things he’s asking just by doing a bit of digging on Google, but it’s kind of nice that the kid is asking him face to face instead. It’s lighthearted and easy, and a nice break from tougher topics like Peter’s mom and how, exactly, Tony came about to be his father.
“Alright, now for a project-related question,” Peter says. He’s sitting on the concrete floor of the lab with his back against DUM-E, working on the track part of the machine with the miniature PVC pipes scattering around his legs. DUM-E still tries to give him useless tools from time to time, but he seems even more ecstatic with his new task of being a solid surface for Peter to lean against, frozen to the spot as if he’s terrified of disturbing the kid. “How are we gonna get the ball from here to there? Gravity can only do so much.”
Tony puts down his plastic to walk over to the semi-assembled project, and when he looks at the part Peter’s referring to, he can see the problem. “Oh, shit.”
Peter nods, and DUM-E beeps in agreement. “Yeah. Any ideas?”
Taking a step back, Tony crosses his arms over his chest, trying to figure out how to patch this up. It’s not a huge issue within itself, but if they don’t find a fix, it might mess up the other stuff they have going on with the rest of the machine, which would seriously suck. “Well, yeah, but it beats me if any of them are actually feasible.”
The kid sags against the bot behind him. “If this project is bested by a bunch of awry marbles, I’m going to scream,” he mutters.
“The project is not going to be bested by awry marbles,” Tony says firmly, already tugging his phone from is pocket. “I’ve got an idea, but we’re going to need another part to do it. Rhodey was already gonna swing by tomorrow, so I’ll just have him pick it up for us on his way. Problem solved.”
“What kind of idea?”
Tony flaps a hand at him dismissively as he sends the text. “It’ll be cool, trust me.”
Peter looks suspicious, but lets it go. He starts working on his PVC pipes again, DUM-E beeping softly in encouragement behind him.
Tony returns to his plastic, and ACDC turns back up automatically, filling the workshop with melodies.
***
By the time Saturday night rolls around, they have the machine almost completely assembled with the exception of a few last minute parts they still need to form, so Tony calls break and drags Peter upstairs to start their Star Wars marathon.
Peter, unsurprisingly, is incredibly easy to convince into joining.
Within ten minutes, they have the couch set up with blankets and pillows, the coffee table covered with bags of chips and cans of soda, the TV cued up to A New Hope, and their asses planted on the couch cushions for the long run.
Within two hours, Peter starts to nod off.
Tony can’t say he’s surprised, really. The kid’s been pushing himself like crazy these past few days to knock out this project, and the stress has to take its toll somewhere along the line. With a late night last night and a day full of working today, Tony’s kind of impressed that he’s lasted this long.
When Peter gets to the point of slumping against Tony’s side, Tony decides that the kid will probably be better off falling asleep in his quiet bedroom instead of nodding off to the sound of lightsaber battles. He tightens the arm he has around Peter’s shoulder to keep him steady as he reaches for the remote, and he turns off the TV in the middle of Luke’s sentence. The living room is plunged into near darkness when the screen blacks out, and Peter stirs beside Tony, the kid’s head settled on Tony’s shoulder.
“Hey, buddy,” he whispers, running a hand through Peter’s hair. “Wake up so that you can go back to sleep.”
“I’m awake,” the kid mutters, half yawning through the words. There’s a pause as he curls up again against Tony, burrowing into the blanket. He actually is awake, Tony thinks, but just barely, and probably not for long. “We can keep watching, I’ll be fine.”
Tony chuckles softly, still working his fingers through the kid’s curls. “You’re tired and overworked, Peter. A couple extra hours of sleep won’t kill you.”
“But I’m comfy.”
“You’ll be comfier in bed.”
Peter sighs, the sound more huffy than defeated, but its edge is softened by how tired it sounds. “I offer a deal,” he says, voice half muffled by the blanket. “Five more minutes on the couch, and then I’ll move. It’s cold out there beyond the blanket. I need time to brace myself for the frostbite.”
Tony snorts. “Alright, drama queen.”
There’s a moment of quiet, the lights low and the silence filled by their breathing. Tony continues mindlessly messing with Peter’s hair, his guard lowered by tiredness and the late hour, his head resting back against the couch cushions behind him with his gaze leveled on the ceiling. The blanket covering both of them is heavy with warmth and fluff, soft and comforting.
Peter shifts a little, his head pressing into Tony’s shoulder. “Hey, Tony?” he says, voice soft.
Tony hums in acknowledgement.
“What was it like finding out I’m your son?”
His hand stills for just a moment, but continues in its ministrations a second later, playing with the curls that rest against the back of Peter’s neck.
“Terrifying,” Tony says honestly, his voice just above a whisper in the quiet of the living room. “I had no idea for all that time, so when I did find out, it was like my mind just couldn’t process the level of crazy coincidence, and I had no idea what to do. It was weird. Like the best day of my life and the worst day of my life all rolled up into one confusing 24 hour period.”
Peter nods against his shoulder. “Yeah, for me too.” He pauses, fiddling with the blanket, before he sighs. “I’m sorry for getting so upset in the beginning. I just… didn’t know how else to react, I guess.”
Tony withdraws his hand. “Hey. No. You don’t get to feel guilty about that.” He shifts to get a better look at Peter’s face, his expression firm. His arm, tucked around Peter, tightens slightly, both to comfort and to further his point. “Don’t apologize. That was a totally understandable and totally fine reaction, you hear me? You’re good, kid.”
Peter tips his head back against Tony’s shoulder to meet his gaze, his eyes reflective and dark in the dim lighting. Dark brown eyes, scarily familiar and currently apologetic, sincere as all hell and about as disarming, level on his. “I didn’t mean to make things harder on you,” he whispers.
Tony shakes his head, squeezing Peter’s shoulders again. “No, Peter. You didn’t.” He holds the kid’s gaze for a moment, eyebrows drawing together. “Listen to me here. You didn’t. Alright?”
Exhaling through his nose, Peter nods slightly. “Alright.”
“Good.” Tony sighs, letting his head fall back against the pillows again. Peter settles back down, breaking eye contact, his temple pressed to the flat of Tony’s shoulder. “Seriously, though. It was my fault way more than it was yours. I did all that shit to myself.” His hand finds its way back to Peter’s hair, running through soft curls and gently working out the loose tangles with distracted fingers. “I should have told you sooner. The moment you were awake, as soon as I found out, I should have told you. It’s just tough to tell somebody something you barely believe yourself, I guess. I had to come to terms with it first.” His eyes trace the ceiling. “But that’s not an excuse. I should have told you. You should have known from the—”
He’s interrupted by a soft snore.
Pulling away from the couch slightly, Tony looks at Peter’s face again to find that the kid’s actually fallen asleep for real now. He’s soft and limp against his side, lips parted, eyes closed and his hair mussed from Tony’s ministrations.
A soft smile comes unbidden at that, and Tony carefully resettles himself back against the couch, careful not to disturb Peter. The kid’s always been good at falling asleep on cue, and it was no secret that he was tired, so Tony’s just glad that he’s finally getting some legitimate sleep. His hand still works through Peter’s hair, gentle and soft, as his arm resettles around the kid’s shoulders. “You’re good, buddy,” he whispers, his voice barely audible. Before he can think better of it, he presses a kiss to the top of Peter’s head, lingering just a moment longer than strictly necessary. “Don’t worry about a thing. You’re good.”
It’s been longer than five minutes on the couch, Tony knows, but by this point it’s just go big or go home and, honestly, he doesn’t want to get up either.
He settles in for the night.
***
“Oh my god.”
Tony’s eyes snap open.
Rhodey stands in front of the couch, his phone held in front of him in a way that suggests he was just using it for photography purposes, with his expression reminiscent of a child on Christmas morning. Tony’s neck hurts like a bitch as he squints at Rhodey, disoriented and still half asleep, just barely registering the light streaming in through the windows and the fact that he’s definitely not in his bedroom.
“Good morning,” he mutters, the words half a question.
“Hell yeah it is,” Rhodey says, looking positively gleeful in a way that makes Tony instantaneously nervous in a deeply ingrained, nearly instinctive way, carved into his reflexes from years of experience and decades of embarrassment. He squints again, trying to figure out exactly what he did to make Rhodey this sadistically delighted and how bad the consequences are going to be because of it.
Then there’s a small movement against his side, and Tony abruptly remembers the weight slumped against him. He instantly knows what happened, but he glances over anyway, a sigh escaping him.
God, no wonder Rhodey’s having a field day.
Peter’s curled up half in his lap, his head resting above his collarbone and drooling slightly in sleep. He and Tony both are sprawled out across the couch, the blanket still flung over them and one of Tony’s socked feet hanging off the cushions with his arm still protectively curled around Peter’s shoulders.
He looks up at Rhodey with a look that’s both resigned and hardened, an empty glare mixed with an expression of utter defeat.
Rhodey snaps another picture. “And there’s this week’s blackmail,” he says, grinning, as he drops his bag on the coffee table in front of the couch. He turns for the kitchen, shrugging off his coat as he goes. “How do you want your eggs?” he yells over his shoulder.
“I will revoke your key,” Tony calls after him, “like a pissed off landlord.”
“Scrambled it is, then.”
***
Rhodey ends up burning the eggs and setting off the fire alarm, which is how Peter wakes up for the first time this morning and Tony wakes up for the second. But once cereal is passed around and Peter and Tony change into legitimate clothing, they find themselves back in the lab, this time with Rhodey standing beside them.
“Damn, high school standards have really shot up over the years,” he says, facing the organized mess of partially constructed components and machinery spread out across the lab table. “Back in our day it was just essays and shit.”
Peter makes a face. “Yeah, the essay part hasn’t changed.”
“And for that, I pity you,” Tony says, bracing his hands against the edge of the table, “but let’s stay on topic here. What’s the verdict, Rhodes? Is a tiny but mighty fan gonna work for this?”
“I think it’s got a shot,” Rhodey says, pulling the device in question out of his bag. It’s neatly packaged in a small, colorful box, and although Peter’s eyebrows shot up at the mention of a fan, he still hasn’t said anything in protest yet, which Tony counts as a win. Rhodey starts ripping through the tape. “Hopefully it’ll be powerful enough, but if it’s not, we’ll just figure something else out.” He pulls out the fan, turning it over to the find the panel in the back. “I bought batteries for it, so once we—”
“You really had to get pink?” Peter blurts out.
Tony looks at the fan again, and would you look at that, it’s the color of a summer sunrise. Rhodey smiles in a way that’s half amused and half apologetic. “It was all they had in stock,” he says, and although Tony highly doubts that, Peter lets it go.
It takes a minute to position the fan in the gap in the machinery Peter found yesterday, but once they have it situated, Tony finds himself beginning to doubt the idea he had. While the bubblegum colored plastic does add a much needed pop of color to the machine, it’s shrimpy blades are suddenly looking far weaker than they looked a few minutes ago, especially when compared to the challenge they’re facing here. Tony’s always had a soft spot for the underdog of a situation, but even this is a bit of a stretch.
When he glances at Peter, the kid looks like he’s having a similar thought process, but he reaches for the power button of the fan anyway. “Here goes,” he says, voice torn between hopeful and bracing for the worst.
The blades begin spinning, slow at first but quickly gaining speed, until they blur together to form a blindingly fuschia mass that seems to be expelling a lot more high pressure air than Tony was expecting. The marbles it’s aimed at go flying down the pipe and into the cup they’re meant to reach, exactly how they weren’t doing before.
Peter grins at Rhodey. “For that, I’ll forgive the pink.”
“Oh, come on, kid. You know you like it.”
Peter just shakes his head, but he high fives Rhodey anyway, and Tony can’t help the smile that comes at that.
***
“God, kid, look at this. It looks fantastic.”
Peter grins beside the finished machine, mounted on a cart for easier transportation. Monday morning came quicker than Tony was prepared for, but between the two of them and Rhodey’s brief yet impactful interference, they somehow managed to get the project done in time anyway, in an act that was half hard work and half what had to be divine intervention. With his backpack slung over his left shoulder and the now empty equipment bag sitting faithfully at his feet, Peter’s set to go to school and knock the socks off his teacher with this kickass project.
Because seriously, this project is kickass.
By some marvel of modern technology and luck, they actually managed to keep it within the perimeter requirements given for the assignment, but just barely. It’s about the perfect size for Peter to carry without looking cumbersome and without tipping anybody off about his spidersona, at least a couple feet in length and height a solid foot in width, and the smaller scale of things just further the coolness factor, because for as much of a struggle as it was to make intricate factors work with everything being this damn tiny, it ended up looking fucking amazing.
The idea they started with was a Rube Goldberg machine with the end intention of setting off it’s own smaller robot, which would then roll about half a foot away on it’s own engine before popping up with a brightly colored flag reading YAY! in block letters. Tony didn’t really get the flag, but apparently Peter found it in the trash on patrol last week and felt bad for it, so he wanted to include it. Tony couldn’t think of an even halfway decent reason to say no.
In the beginning of the machine, a bouncy ball is set at the mouth of a miniature PVC pipe trail, which leads to a paper weight being knocked into a button which then sets off a high power fan which moves a handful of beads into a small cup which then lowers with the added weight which then sets off the next part, and so on and so forth. Eventually, an arm of the machine that’s more or less reminiscent of DUM-E’s claw in basic design lowers onto the start button of the tiny robot (it’s literally an engine on wheels, seriously), which then does it’s thing. The entire thing takes a solid minute to run its course, which is within the allotted time, but Tony just can’t get over how fucking cool this thing ended up as. He hasn’t done a high school project like this in years, especially considering his high school experience was more of an extended tour than it was a career, but he suddenly gets the appeal.
Evidently Peter does too, because the kid currently looks prouder than a new father who’s newborn found the cure to cancer within the five minutes it’s been alive.
Tony gets the feeling, watching him.
“Yeah, I know,” Peter says, standing beside the machine with a protective hand set on the edge of the cart. “My group partners aren’t gonna know what hit them. We’re gonna ace this project.”
“Hell yeah you are.” Tony claps a hand on Peter’s shoulder before stepping back again, tugging his phone from his pocket. “Hold on, I’m getting a picture of this. Say cheese, kiddo.”
Peter grins obediently as Tony snaps the photo, and he shoots the image off to Pepper, May, and Rhodey. May and Pepper have both told Tony that they like seeing pictures of what they’re doing, and while Rhodey says it makes him feel like the overly involved uncle to get spontaneous photos of the kid in random situations, Tony knows he likes them deep down.
“Alright, Happy’s waiting downstairs, and you’ve gotta get to school on time if you want to turn in this project with the sophisticated flourish of punctuality,” Tony says, already steering Peter and the cart towards the elevator with his phone still clenched in his hand. “Make sure to text me your grade as soon as you get it. I’m too involved in this shit now to miss out on our success.”
Peter laughs, but lets Tony push him into the elevator cab anyway. He keeps the cart securely beside him with a hand still settled on the handle, but then he turns fast and steps forward again, hugging Tony quickly and before either of them can think better of it. “Thanks so much for the help, Dad,” he says quickly, thoughtlessly, before ducking back into the elevator cab.
The no problem, kid is on the tip of his tongue, but then what Peter just said registers, and Tony falters. His gaze snaps up to look at the kid, expression flickering from fond to stunned in a fraction of an instant.
He just catches sight Peter’s stricken face before the elevator doors slide shut, and Tony is left alone.