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ironspiderfics · 2 months

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this is supposed to be a vacation

for @meilz

by @iron--spider

Tony loves this kid.

It’s a montage at the beginning of a movie—Tony was crazy about Peter almost immediately, couldn’t accept it, his own damn daddy issues courtesy of Howard Stark, then he had to accept it because the kid kept trying to die, then things settled, they worked together, then they unsettled and the kid dissolved in Tony’s hands, and a year of heavy-drinking and nearly exploding himself in the lab wound up with all the dissolved people undissolved and the kid back and Tony in a hospital bed. Three-week coma. Whole screaming celebration when he woke up loud enough to bust his eardrums and restart his heart.

But Peter was there. Peter was there.

Time slowed to a crawl, sped up and slowed down again, and Tony tried to recover. He knew Peter and his friends went on that European trip—he encouraged it even though Peter was worried about leaving after everything. May and Happy chaperoned, and then everyone nearly died because Quentin fucking Beck decided to roll out of Tony’s past to try and kill off someone he loves. He failed, because Peter is Peter, and Fury and Happy shut down the false allegations Beck tried to put out there before he was arrested, and everybody came home.

It’s been about two months, since then. And Tony had just gotten back on his feet a week or so before Peter left, and he’s even steadier now. Getting steadier by the day.

But he loves this kid. More now, than ever. The son he never had. He loves May, he loves the kids that come along with his kid, he loves everything Peter has to say and everything he doesn’t, he loves keeping an eye on his missions, he loves the way he fits so snug into Tony’s little family.

And he loves him enough to know when he’s crashing. When his eyes are tired and his patrols aren’t as succinct and punchy as they usually are. When he needs a vacation from his recent vacation. As if nearly being killed by some asshole in London is the vacation any of them need.

So, Tony makes a couple decisions.

After all the shit they’ve gone through, what the hell could go wrong with a break?

Peter knew Tony was planning something, because he isn’t secretive when he’s excited, and he found out what he was planning when Tony asked if Ned and MJ’s families would mind if he took them out of the city for a few days.

And about a week later, they were heading upstate to Mohonk Mountain House.

And Peter hasn’t been complaining, at least not to Tony, but his tiredness has been bone-deep since he got back from London. Since before that, really. Coming back from the dead can do that to someone, and he doesn’t even like to call it dead, and apparently they were all tiny particle souls inside that infinity stone but it doesn’t matter because that’s a whole other can of worms and he gets more tired and more weary every time he even thinks about any of that.

He swung right into a wall the other day. Slap right into it. He almost broke his nose again. He feels like that might have been the moment Tony decided on this vacation—Peter could tell by the look on his face when he told him that he’d crossed some kind of line.

They walk inside the main lobby of Mohonk and Peter keeps hearing Ben’s voice in his head. You’re gonna catch flies, Pete. But he can’t stop gaping at everything. Like…he’s been in a Hilton and this is so much better than a Hilton.

“This place looks straight out of a Hitchcock movie,” May says, and she knocks Tony on the arm.

Tony laughs, and Pepper turns around, raising her eyebrows at May. “Let’s just hope we don’t have any Hitchcock-type events happen while we’re here.”

“What would that mean?” Ned asks, catching up to the group and trying to whisper in Peter’s ear. “You’ve seen Hitchcock movies. I remember you watched that weird apartment one a hundred times.”

“I love that movie,” Peter says. Rear Window. He never wants his leg to be broken. He knows he’d go insane just like that.

“You haven’t seen Psycho?” MJ asks Ned, hoisting her backpack higher on her shoulder.

Ned hums a little bit. “No. I know about it though. No crazy Grandmas for me.”

“That’s not what happens.”

Leather couches and tall ceilings and intricate carpeting and columns and everything somehow looks really rich but really comfortable at the same time—

“No,” Tony says, turning around and pointing at them. “No, no, and no.” He points at May too. “No. No Rear Window, no Psycho, no Vertigo—maybe a little bit North by Northwest—no, you know what, no. Not that either. This is going to be the lamest movie you’ve ever—this isn’t even gonna be a movie, there’s no—there’s no plot, this is just—a family video. A home movie. That’s it.”

Family video feels warm, and Peter grins.

“Of course, Mr. Stark—”

“It’s gonna be fine—”

“Absolutely nothing—”

“Listen, I’m hitting that buffet—”

“I’m just gonna sleep,” Peter says, as they approach the huge front desk. “Just the entire time.”

Tony smiles softly at him, and he winks. “You deserve it,” he says, and Peter can tell that he means it.

They hear crashing, something that sounds expensive hitting the ground somewhere behind them, and they all turn around and see a bunch of employees running around to try and take care of it. A whole big production and two guys trying to hold up a big bear statue that’s trying to fall over.

“Okay, step to,” Happy’s voice says, and Peter hears him before he sees him, and then he breezes by, striding out in front of them. “Let’s go, come on, follow me, let’s get this in the books—”

“Oh, there he is,” Tony says, patting him on the shoulders. “There he is.”

Peter and May could never afford a vacation like this. They could never even afford to imagine something like this. Peter feels like they would have charged him if he’d even looked at photos of this place. A big, historic, mountain resort in upstate New York, on the edge of a cliff overlooking a lake?

But now they’re here. They’re here with Tony Stark and Pepper Potts. Peter was able to bring two friends. Happy drove them all in a big plush rental van. They’ve got a line of suites on the sixth floor and they had steak and lobster for dinner on their first night.

It feels unreal. But things feel unreal a lot. Especially things involving Tony, involving Spider-Man. Any of it. Like he’s having a long, prolonged dream before Ben wakes him up for school.

Peter stands on one of the terrace balconies with Tony while the others are arranging activities for tomorrow, and he stares off at the lake and the way the moon hits it. Light rippling on the water.

“You really think you’re gonna sleep the whole time?” Tony asks, leaning on the railing. “Because nobody would judge you for it. Kayaks can wait. Ballroom dancing can absolutely wait, as can all of May’s Dirty Dancing comparisons, because I can feel them building up, like an aura around her—”

Peter snorts. “No,” he says. “But I probably will mostly just…relax. Take it easy. Just sleeping, no alarms—”

“You deserve it, like I said,” Tony says. “It’s thrilling to me that you’re even giving yourself a break.”

“Look who’s talking,” Peter says, giving him a look. “You were trying to get down to the workshop when your arm was still holding on by one string of muscle.”

Tony’s entire face contorts. “That is a terrible, disgusting image, Mr. Parker—”

Peter snorts again, choking on his laughter.

Tony knocks him on the arm. “You’re awful, a menace, making fun of an injured old man—”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but it’s true,” Peter says, swatting him back, and still laughing. “You’re the one who needs—needs this. Like Happy always says, I’m a ‘spring chicken’, I—I can bounce back.”

“I had enough bedrest for the next ten years,” Tony says, and he’s giving Peter that look again. Concern. Like he’s trying to read his mind. “You—I know you like to act like it all doesn’t affect you, but you were going through hell on the daily before that purple asshole snapped his fingers. Then there was all that, and the right after that, and the coming back from that, and me wasting away in front of you—and then Quentin Beck flaunting his dickheaded tendencies on your school trip—that was supposed to be your relaxing time and it got away from you too and I just—like I said, you deserve your time. You need it. Don’t—you’re not selling yourself short if you say you need some rest. You put everybody first all the time, yourself last—you deserve to relax, that’s all.”

Peter blows out a breath. He doesn’t even really try to deny it in his head anymore. He doesn’t try to compare himself to other people who have it worse. He’s tired. He’s beat. He feels older than he is.

Tony clicks his tongue and looks out at the lake. “I know this place is kind of old, kind of dated, rooms kind of look a little bit like grandma was head decorator, but—I, uh—I’ve got fond memories here. Mom used to bring me, when Howard was, uh…in some of his dicier moments. And sometimes we’d just relax, too. Recover from…knowing him.”

Peter is just kind of staring at him, because it always takes him off guard when Tony starts talking about Howard. They’re close enough now that he hears stories about his personal life all the time—his growing up, his insane college years with Rhodey, meeting Pepper meeting Happy and everything in between, but Howard is still…something they don’t really talk about, past flippant comments about Tony striving to be a better father figure than he ever was.

“Then I’m glad you brought us here,” Peter says, his voice cracking a little bit. “I’m glad you brought me here.” And in his head he hears I’m glad you brought me back. Because he thinks about that all the time.

Everyone’s back because of you, Peter. He never gave up on bringing you back. It was about saving you.

Tony looks like he’s about to say something else when there’s a bunch of rustling in the trees below them, and a loud thump, and more rustling. They both peer over the railing, and Peter can see the trees moving, but not anything else.

They share a wary look.

“Probably just a skunk,” Tony says.

“Oh, great.”

“Or maybe a band of feral cats.”

“Okay that’s better. Hopefully not too feral. Like, I hope they’re receptive to petting.”

They keep staring down at the trees, but it all seems quiet again.

Tony and Pepper have one room, Peter, MJ and Ned have the one in the middle, and May and Happy are on the end in a single room together even though Peter is refusing to acknowledge what that means or what might be going on in there. Tony mentioned that the rooms were dated, but they feel more like what a royal castle might look like inside, and for the longest time Peter is worried about wrinkling up the sheets. And then eventually it’s Ned’s snoring keeping him awake.

And then, when he’s finally mostly asleep—

“Peter.”

MJ’s voice. Peter’s in the bed with Ned and she got the other huge bed all to herself, but she sounds like she’s right next to him. He turns over onto his side, towards her voice, and then she’s—

On the ground right next to his face—

He startles a little bit, and she grabs his hand.

“MJ what—”

“There’s someone in the room.”

She’s whispering, and his heart speeds up a little bit. What the hell? There’s no way.

“Are you sure it’s not Happy?” Peter asks, as Ned lets out a rip of a snore. “Sometimes he likes to do perimeter checks—”

“It’s not Happy!” she whisper-yells.

Peter blinks, and she’s already pulling the sheets off him and yanking him out of bed, and he feels like he’d be more paranoid if something was actually happening, like he’d feel it pulsing and burning in his head, and she’s tugging on him and they’re stumbling over to the wall and—

“MJ—MJ—”

She flips on the light—

And Peter only sees him briefly—a man, standing over by the bathroom, and Peter barely gets to see what he looks like before the lights go out again.

But he wasn’t Happy he wasn’t Tony he wasn’t supposed to be here, and Peter’s heart rockets into his throat and he hears MJ gasp and he hears feet moving and Ned is still snoring, and Peter rushes towards where the man was and tries to catch him tries to fight, but he only meets open air.

MJ yanks the door open and she’s already running out into the hallway, yelling Tony’s name, yelling for Peter to follow her. And the hall light is streaming into their room now, and Peter looks around, breathing hard, trying to find the guy—

Nothing. Nothing.

Nobody’s here.

Ned is still snoring.

Tony stands next to Peter while the manager shows them the video footage. He watches their doors, completely still and closed from the hallway cameras, and then he watches MJ race out, and Tony and Happy run in a few minutes later. Followed by Pepper and May a few minutes after that. And then Ned finally looming out into the hallway, still half asleep.

“As you can see,” the manager says. “No one entered the room.”

Peter can feel Tony’s anger simmering beside him, and he takes it as a compliment that Tony is all-in on believing that they saw someone, even though he didn’t see him himself.

“Can I get the outside view again?” Tony asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Of course, Mr. Stark.”

They switch to the outside view again, which they’ve already seen about three times. The cameras aren’t great out there, and Happy found out they’re in the process of an upgrade. Peter can see their floor from a distance, he sees a little flash of light that they can’t identify, and then nothing else. No one scaling the building. Not in a way they can see, anyway.

“When will the upgrade be complete?” Tony asks, his tone clipped.

“After your stay, sir, unfortunately.”

Tony huffs, and doesn’t say anything else, and he turns and takes Peter’s arm and leads him to the door. They walk out into the hallway, where MJ and Ned quickly back up.

“Don’t need to listen through the wall,” Tony says.

“Uh, we weren’t,” MJ says. “We were just—”

“Looking at the wallpaper,” Ned says. “It’s—so cool.”

“Uh huh,” Tony says. He moves so they’re in a little circle, and he grips Peter’s shoulder. “Do you want to leave?” he asks, looking around at the three of them. “Because we can leave. We can go somewhere else, figure something else out. Or we can move rooms, we can go down to the Grove Lodge so we can all be closer together—we can do whatever we want.”

Ned’s eyes go wide. “I mean, I didn’t see anything, I was sleeping—”

“It’s fine,” MJ says, fast, glancing at Peter. “I feel like we—Peter and I must have been—I mean, we’re—everything that happened, we’re always thinking about it, and Mysterio was about like—making us think we were seeing things that weren’t there or were there but different—it’s fine. Joint hallucination. Or maybe I made him think he saw something because I was saying I saw something.”

That would normally be a Tony joke cue, but he just looks at her intently. “You don’t have to make excuses,” he says. “I don’t want you guys feeling…unsafe. Despite the presence of, uh—enhanced individuals. Unnamed.”

“It’s okay,” MJ says, and she looks at Peter and nods.

Tony looks at him too. And Peter knows that if he said anything about being worried, Tony would move them in an instant.

What the hell did he see?

Were they really just tired?

Did he think he saw something because MJ thought she saw something?

“It’s okay,” he says, slowly, because…he isn’t entirely sure. But MJ seems sure and Peter doesn’t want to blow up the trip if they were just in a PTSD-addled nightmare. It is their first real vacation since that shit with Beck happened, it still feels like a knife in his gut sometimes.

“You sure?” Tony asks, and he shakes Peter’s shoulder a little bit.

Peter looks at MJ, and she nods at him.

“Yeah,” Peter says. “I’m sure.”

They go back to bed after that without any more incidents, but Peter mostly stays awake, staring off into the darkness. MJ is awake too, through a lot of the night, and they text because Ned is sleeping and snoring like there’s nothing wrong and there’s never been anything wrong, ever.

I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.

I wouldn’t let anything happen to you either. Nerd :)

Over breakfast, Tony lets them know that Happy is setting up Friday to do sweeps and is doing his own personal perimeter checks.

“I want him to enjoy his break too though,” Peter says, pushing his waffle around on the plate.

“He’s enjoying it,” May says, through a mouthful of eggs.

Peter frowns at her. “I don’t like that. I don’t—I don’t need—”

She shrugs. “Well.”

“Okay, Miss Kiss and Tell,” Tony says, laughing as Pepper sits down next to him. “But it’s good. He’s on it, and I’m on it too.”

“Here,” MJ says, coming back from the buffet and sitting down next to Peter. She puts a cinnamon bun on his plate, smiling at him. “They just brought them out. Ned is trying to barter for more.”

“They can’t deny him,” Pepper says. “It’s all inclusive.”

“Exactly,” Tony says. “And after last night, we should be getting extra—I still think they sent someone in to check on something and didn’t want to admit it. I’m not gonna go all I’d like to speak to the manager on them, even though I did—do that—but either way—”

Peter hasn’t landed anywhere on it yet. He keeps trying to think back on it, trying to remember exactly what he saw. His spider sense, newly minted, is usually pretty bang on if something isn’t right, if he feels like he’s in danger, but he’d just woken up, he’s foggy in the mornings sometimes—

He figures his mind was just playing tricks on him. But MJ too?

She rubs his leg, like she knows he's agonizing over it, and he reaches down and holds her hand.

“Okay,” Ned says, walking back over holding a plate. “They let me take five of them. They’re all really warm and gooey, I feel like this is a promising start to the day.”

Peter isn’t exactly a spa guy, so he doesn’t join May and Pepper when they decide to go there, even though he feels like it might help him if he ever figured out how to relax. But going there is supposed to help him relax, so how can he ever relax enough to get to the point of going there—either way, he goes out onto the lake with Tony and Ned and MJ.

MJ and Peter both get their own kayaks, and Ned and Tony are in a canoe.

“He wouldn’t get into one of these,” Tony yells. “Honestly, if Happy’s not still doing security shit, he’s probably golfing. He’s terrible at it and he never likes to do it when anybody he knows is around. I’ll message him in a little bit and make sure but that’s probably where he is. Ned. You have to keep that thing on just in case we turn over.”

Peter snorts, looking back at them, and he sees Tony adjusting Ned’s lifejacket on his shoulders.

“Happy’s just afraid of racing,” Peter yells, cutting his oar through the water. “MJ remember when—”

“Yes,” she says, a little out ahead of him, and she’s already laughing. “I don’t even know why he was trying to chase you in New York traffic. While you were swinging in the air above him. You didn’t have any cars in your way, nothing was stopping you—”

Peter snorts again, bending over and laughing a little bit. “He was so mad. He didn’t talk to me for a week. He made me talk to Friday specifically.”

“I gave him shit for that!” Tony yells. “He shouldn’t have been trying to chase you. The gas leak had nothing to do with you. He’s always tossing blame around willy nilly.”

“Yeah he still blames me for the time those columns collapsed on that old garbage building,” Ned says. “A line of code can’t do that, that building was old I didn’t do anything there was no way he should have yelled at me at all let alone for twenty minutes—”

“He’s just dramatic,” Tony says.

“He just gets worried,” Peter says, glancing over his shoulder at their boat. And Ned makes big eyes at him, because yeah, uh, they’ve seen why he gets worried. They’ve dealt with why he gets worried. And now, after last night, Peter feels like he’s making himself worried. He needs to stop, they’ve already moved past it, they’re still here, it’s all fine.

“Yeah, I imbued him with a worrying virus that will never be cured,” Tony says. “And now the next generation has to deal with it. Here we are.”

Peter shakes his head, smiling. He’s gotta relax. The sun is shining on the lake bright and beautiful, and May is actually getting a massage for the first time in years and everything is fine. It’s fine.

He hears Tony chastising Ned again about his life jacket, gently, and Peter starts rowing out and around the outside of the lake. They’re the only ones out here right now, and he wonders how long that’s gonna last. He wonders if that’s something the resort set up, because it’s Tony, because of what happened last night, because Happy’s been intimidating people, and Peter simultaneously appreciates it and balks against the special treatment. But he’s with Tony, he should know it’s gonna happen.

He feels like he’s going a little faster than he should be going based on the way he’s rowing, like he’s really moving along. He glances over at MJ and she’s even further away from him, moving in the direction of the hotel.

“We’re not racing yet!” he yells, and he feels like Happy—constantly worried. But he’s worried about her in a different way and actually starting things with her in Europe made the whole thing worth it in a way, and now they’re together and it’s amazing but he’s just so worried all the time.

And now he’s stopped rowing all together, and he should be slowing down, but he’s still moving. Moving….fast. Maybe even getting faster.

Should that be happening? He doesn’t really kayak. He shifts around a little bit and looks down, and feels a little bit tucked in here.

“Hey!” Tony yells. “You’re moving like you have a motor on you!”

Peter’s brows furrow, because he is, and he’s not rowing, and he should have lost any propulsion at this point, and he looks up and he sees MJ looking back at him, and she’s not moving anymore, and he glances back and both Tony and Ned look concerned—

And he gets the worst feeling in his chest, like an alarm, like his spidey sense but more warped and panicked, and he tries to get up without toppling over, because the kayak is still moving for no reason, speeding along and it’s going faster and faster. He drops his oar, and balances precariously for a few seconds before he leaps into the water.

Bubbles all around him, and muffled calls of his name—

And he’s only submerged for a couple seconds, because of the life jacket pulling him back to the surface, and he comes up just in time to watch the empty kayak lift up into the air, careening into the forest and disappearing into the trees.

And he floats there, treading water, staring.

“What the fuck?” Ned yells. “Peter? Peter?”

“Peter!” MJ yells.

“Pete, we’re coming!” Tony yells. “Hold on!”

But Peter is just sort of. Staring. Staring off, at where the kayak disappeared. He stares over there. He stares.

No thoughts, just. Insane.

“Was that supposed to happen?” Peter asks, his voice squeaking. “Is that—MJ you should probably—you shouldn’t be in there if you’re not, uh, prepared to go—flying—did anybody see it explode? Did it explode? Or did it just shatter, uh, well, wooden—wooden kayak, was it wooden? Or plastic? Either way I bet it’s not a full kayak anymore—”

He feels himself being lifted out of the water, and it’s Tony pulling him into the boat. He doesn’t know how they got here so fast but to be honest a kayak just went full fighter jet on him so he can’t be that confused.

His shock has him gripped and he just sort of lays there like a rag doll as Tony and Ned pull him up, and he sees MJ rowing over to them. Thankfully, she’s still in her kayak, and it’s not—flying through the air.

“Hey, hey,” Tony says, once Peter isn’t in the water anymore. He’s got both arms around him, and Peter is laying against his chest, and Tony is patting his cheek and trying to peer around and meet his eyes. Ned has his hands on Peter’s knees and he’s just staring at him.

“I just got a defective one,” Peter says, pointing over at the forest. “It’s okay. It was just—a flying one, we didn’t make sure we didn’t get a flying one. I hope MJ doesn’t have a flying one and it’s just not like. On a time delay I don’t know. MJ, just—hurry over here—” He waves her over. He wants her to hurry up.

“Peter,” Tony says, and he pats Peter’s chest. “Are you alright? Did you twist anything when you jumped out, can you breathe—”

“Are kayaks supposed to do that?” Peter asks, feeling like he can hear his own voice echoing everywhere. “I didn’t think that was, uh, the case—”

“It’s not the case,” Ned says. “No. It’s not. It’s not the case.”

“Peter.”

MJ finally rolls up alongside them—

“I think you should get out of there,” Peter says, pointing at her. “It’s unsafe—”

“Something is going on,” MJ says, and she’s not looking at Peter. She’s looking at Tony.

Tony loves this kid, and this is supposed to be a fucking vacation. Tony loves this kid, and he believed him when he thought someone was in his room, even if the hotel was trying to sway them away from the idea. Tony loves this kid, and he just had to watch him abandon his kayak because said kayak was lifting off and destroying itself somewhere on the property. And kayaks don’t just fucking do that.

Tony stands close to Happy, well into his personal space. He’s got his hands on his hips, like a stern stance is gonna bring him any closer to an answer, and Happy sighs.

“I’ve done ten sweeps,” he says. “There’s nothing going on. There’s nobody here that isn’t supposed to be here. We even looked at the remains of the goddamn kayak and I didn’t find anything wrong with it.”

“There was something wrong with it,” Tony says. “It was flying. It was flying, speed wise, without Pete even rowing, and then it was flying, literally, after he had to abandon ship.”

“I know. It was in a million pieces.”

Tony sighs. They moved down to the Grove Lodge after it happened. Nobody told Pepper and May why, because Peter was insisting on not telling May, and he was also insisting on not leaving even though Tony wanted to leave, because if they left then they were leaving danger behind for the poor unassuming Mohonk guests. And if they leave, danger will probably follow them anyway, and Tony doesn’t know what move to make.

He’s upset, because this was supposed to be a relaxing break for all of them, but especially for Peter, after everything he’s goddamn gone through. He’s upset because this place felt like his place, his haven, a place where he could get away and be secluded and safe, and now something is pursuing them here. Something is trying to hurt them.

“You haven’t found anything?” Tony presses. “Nothing?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Happy says, and he glances back at the front door of the lodge again. “I’m still looking, I’m not giving up, and I think we should be better located down here because we rented out the whole house and I told them not to come in for room service or cleaning or anything. I know we lose the nice high-up view—”

“It’s fine,” Tony says, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s afraid to even be discussing this in public. Anybody could be anywhere listening.

He doesn’t like feeling like he can’t protect these kids.

“It looks like they’re targeting Peter,” Tony says, as quietly as he can. “And I can’t tell if that’s because of me, that they think—I mean the whole goddamn world thinks he’s my love child at this point, thinks May is my secret mistress or the sister of his secret mother, God knows, I don’t know what the most recent story is. But I can’t tell if they’re targeting him because of me or because of the other thing—”

“And the other thing is worse—the spider thing—”

“I didn’t specify on purpose, Hap,” Tony says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Right, right—the innocuous other thing—”

“We’re lucky we got out of Europe with the other thing intact—”

“Yeah,” Happy says, shaking his head, and Tony wishes he had been there with him, had been there period. He would have torn Beck in half had he laid eyes on him.

Why do they always target people he loves? Why not him? Blow him up. Kidnap him. But he guesses he’s been there already. He guesses they’ve done all that and it’s old hat to these assholes to go to him directly.

But this could be about Spider-Man too. There could be people that know who he is. People always find out, no matter how hard Tony tries, and Peter has made plenty of his own enemies. His own gallery of rogues looking to take him down.

“Just don’t tell May, if she asks,” Tony says.

“Oh, and don’t tell Pepper either?” Happy asks, in that stupid voice he uses to make fun of Tony. Tony glares, and Happy glares back. “They know by now something’s going on. They’re not dumb. They’re just not saying anything. But May will beat someone to death with anything she can get her hands on and so will Pepper, so maybe we should be sticking close to them.”

Tony sighs. “I just wanted—”

“I know—”

“And now—”

“I know,” Happy says. “We’re on it. We know it’s real, now, even if these people won’t cop to anything. I’m in their walls. Literally. Maybe I’m doing some things I shouldn’t be.”

Tony steps up onto the porch. “Don’t even tell me.”

“I won’t. But maybe I am.”

“Ned, why are you in here while I’m in the bathtub?”

“She’s in here!”

“I’m dating her.”

“Wow, that’s great,” Ned says, not making any move to get up from his spot on the gold lounge chair. “That’s great, I see how things are going. I see what direction we’re heading in.”

Peter scoffs. He warmed up a long time ago, and he’s getting really pruny, but he doesn’t want to get out just yet. He feels like something is gonna happen if he gets out. Like it’s all gonna start up again and maybe the house is gonna explode or their fridge is gonna grow arms and start trying to fight them or something.

And he isn’t lazy. He’s always ready to fight.

Maybe he’s a little lazy. But not usually. He thought Europe was gonna be a Spider-Man free trip and look how that turned out. And he thought this was going to be calm and relaxing but now it’s become suspicious. And worrying. And he’s torn between leaving and staying and telling May and not telling May and he doesn’t know if she’s in danger too and sometimes he feels like everybody would be safer if he lived out in Alaska somewhere and nobody knew him.

Peter sighs, and MJ rubs his shoulder. Ned is still giving him that look and Peter ignores that look. He’s never been in a little claw-foot tub like this before. Tony doesn’t even have these in the compound. And a bubble bath? He hasn’t had a bubble bath since he was a kid and Ben was still alive. It almost distracts him from… whatever the hell is going on here.

“We’ve got two more days,” MJ says. “And we’re sticking it out.”

“We’re sticking it out,” Peter says. “I got my webshooters, I guess I’ll wear them if we go hiking tomorrow.”

“Someone is gonna push you off a cliff,” Ned says, raising his eyebrows.

“We’re all going together, so nobody is gonna push anybody,” MJ says. She leans down and presses a kiss to the corner of Peter’s mouth. “Okay let’s leave so he can—get out.”

They both get up, and Peter watches as they argue.

“Oh, you’re not gonna help him?” Ned asks.

“Oh, you’re not?” MJ replies, nudging him as they move towards the door. “I thought that was your job, guy in the chair—”

They have dinner in the main building, and Peter watches his back. He only jumps once, when someone drops a tray full of plates, and he winces at the shattering and runs over there to help clean it up before they usher him away. They visit the horses in the stables, and Peter checks every nook and cranny to make sure somebody isn’t hiding in there. They watch May and Happy bust into the late jazz class that’s going on in the ballroom and Peter forgets to do anything because he feels like his face is going to catch on fire from all the blushing.

And he remembers to be paranoid when they get back to the Grove Lodge, and he can tell May is suspicious and they’re all watching him like hawks and he gets worried that Tony is the real target of whatever is happening here and he’s just a distraction.

He can’t let anything happen to Tony. He can’t let anything happen to any of them.

Or maybe nothing is happening. And nobody was in their room. And the kayak was just—Parker luck. Too much strength, or something.

He wakes up around three in the morning because he can’t stay asleep, and he sits down in the ‘great room’ and stares out into the darkness of the night.

“Don’t jump,” Tony’s voice says, but Peter jumps anyway, twisting around and seeing him on the stairs. “You jumped! I said don’t jump! You heard me, I said it—”

Peter snorts, shaking his head. “You can’t just tell me not to jump and expect me not to jump—especially if you’re stepping out of the shadows—”

“There’s no shadows,” Tony says, stepping off the landing. “No shadows. I’m fully illuminated—”

Peter sighs. “You can’t sleep either?”

“Nah,” Tony says, walking over quietly. “Sleep and I, we have a very contemptuous relationship.” He shakes his head. “I just feel like shit because you can’t have a normal vacation. Whatever the hell is or isn’t going on here. You just deserve—Jesus, a full day, at the least, without something happening you have to question.” He sits down next to Peter and lets out a sigh.

“It’s not your fault. At all.”

“I mean—it might be. We’ve seen Europe as an example of very much my fault.”

Peter narrows his eyes at him. “That wasn’t your fault either. You know it wasn’t your fault, idiots blaming you for their own stupidity is not your fault—”

A huge crash outside. It sounds like one of those big weird planters falling over and knocking into the other planters and then it sounds like a bunch of feet shuffling and this isn’t Parker luck, this isn’t a hallucination, this isn’t a kayak doing non-kayak like things—

They both leap out of their chairs. The noises don’t stop and Tony is immediately stepping in front of Peter and holding his arm out, as if to shield him.

“Kid, go back upstairs—”

“No,” Peter whisper-shouts, grabbing his arm as the two of them move forward very, very slowly towards the back porch doors. “You almost died recently—you’re wearing pajamas and a house coat—”

“You don’t even know what a house coat is—”

Another crash, more skittering feet, and Peter focuses—he can hear separate heartbeats from the hearts he loves in this house. Two of them.

“Tony I’ve got my webshooters on—”

“That doesn’t matter you’re wearing pajamas too you’re not prepared—”

And when they’re just close enough to open the door, there’s a flash of bright white light. And Peter closes his eyes against it, and he can feel Tony turning around, trying to block him from it, and it must be more than just light because he hears a loud bang and the windows are shattering and it feels like a cataclysmic boom is pushing them through the air. The two of them fly backwards, and hit the far wall, and the last thing Peter hears before his head snaps back too far is

GOD DAMMIT ALFIE YOU’RE TWO SECONDS TOO EARLY WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS JUMPING THE—

Peter gasps awake. His gasp echoes, and he sits up, and looks around, and he’s…nowhere.

He scrambles to his feet. He’s alone, and he’s nowhere, there’s nothing but blackness and his ears are popping like he’s high up and he sees—

He sees—

A kayak? Flying through the darkness?

He watches it, cascading like a majestic bird, and he stares at it, and then it just—blinks out of existence. Like it was never even there.

Maybe he’s just dreaming. Maybe he never even woke up and went downstairs and talked to Tony. Maybe none of that happened at all. Maybe he’s still asleep and Ned is snoring somewhere and MJ is saying not beets in the salad in her sleep again and maybe—

God dammit, Alfie, I swear. I swear I’m gonna whack you in the head.

Peter spins around, in the complete darkness. He can see himself, his own body and his hands and his pajamas and his webshooters, like he’s got a spotlight on him. “Hello?” he calls. “What the hell is—whoever that is—”

And then the London Bridge appears huge and massive above his head and he starts to duck, nearly collapsing in on himself, and there’s no way this is actually happening this isn’t real and he shoots a web at it and it goes right through it and it hits—somewhere—somewhere in the darkness, it sticks, it—

ALFIE I THINK THEY’RE BOTH—

I KNOW IT I CAN TELL OKAY I’M NOT MORONIC—

It clicks in Peter’s head. This is someone using Beck’s tech. It’s someone using Beck’s tech. That’s what this is. This is some idiots using his tech and not knowing how to use it properly and—

Peter starts yelling. “Whoever you are, you’re—you’re not good at this—this isn’t gonna work out for you—”

The bridge disappears, and Peter starts running. His spidey sense is going berserk, and he can’t tell where the danger is, what direction, how far. He can’t tell what’s underneath his feet, it feels—crunchy, and a little old, maybe? All he knows is he needs to get the hell out of this illusion. It feels unstable.

He starts shooting his webs everywhere, and most of them fly away without hitting anything, and that makes him wonder where the hell he could be with so much space—

STARK IS DOING SOMETHING WITH HIS AI—

Peter’s heart lurches.

“Tony!” Peter yells, still running, and he holds his hands out and tries to find something, anything, and he shoots webs fucking everywhere, and then—

SHIT—

He runs right into someone. And they push him off, and then he gets a brass-knuckled fist to the face before he can get a hit off of his own. He stumbles backwards through the sharp pain, wrestling with the instinct to just fight even though it’s only darkness all around him and he can’t see who the hell he’s fighting with.

Instead, he spits out a line of blood and keeps running.

Pulsing, face pulsing, beating with ripped skin and metal—

A massive kayak blips into the air briefly, and then it disappears.

Peter narrows his eyes, shaking his head, and what the hell is with the kayak—

He runs smack into something, like a train going accordion against a wall, and he stumbles backwards again, clutching at his crushed nose and trying to stay on his feet. The punch and the goddamn running into whatever that was has him dizzy, has him mangled and seeing stars in this manufactured darkness and then he hears Tony hollering his name at the top of his lungs—

“Peter! Peter!”

He sounds like he’s behind him—

“Tony!” Peter yells, all nasally. “Tony! Hey I’m over here—”

He turns around, changing his trajectory. And the darkness blips, breaking in large pixels, and Peter keeps running towards Tony’s voice and the darkness blips again, turns bright white, and then—

The illusion, or lack of one, breaks all at once, and Peter can see—

He’s on the roof of the main Mohonk building—he can see the lake, and the forest, and the mountains, settled in the calm of the night that feels decidedly not calm for him in particular, and he skids to a halt because he’s nearly running off the roof—

And he feels someone grab his arm and tug him back, and he spins around and it’s Tony, thank God it’s Tony—

“Hey!” Tony yells, and Peter looks at him and grabs his arm and they both look up and—

There are just two guys standing there. Two guys, both on the shorter side, definitely unkempt, and they’re holding a little gray box and they’re both just hitting it and hitting it and hitting it—

Peter aims his webs and just starts shooting. He feels like he shoots the most amount of webs he’s ever shot. The two guys fly backwards and get stuck to one of the upraised red parts of the roof, and they’re both gritting their teeth and trying to get out like they’re Scooby Doo villains.

“They must be associated with Beck,” Peter says, trying to catch his breath. His entire mouth tastes like blood. “They’ve gotta be.”

“I figured, with their shitty illusion attempts,” Tony says, and he sounds angrier than Peter’s ever heard him. He glances at Peter, starts to glance away, but then he looks at him again, fast, his brows furrowing severely. “Jesus Christ, you’re—bleeding everywhere—”

“Yeah, it feels—it doesn’t feel good—they didn’t hit you?” Peter asks.

Tony takes Peter’s chin gently, tilting his head and wincing. “No,” he says. “They didn’t goddamn hit me—”

“Well, the nose was from—running into something—I think that, uh, I think that’s a chimney over there, I think I ran into it—you didn’t run into anything—”

“No, I didn’t—”

“Oh, that’s great—”

Tony looks like he’s about to breathe fire, and he lets go of Peter and starts stomping towards the webbed bad guys.

“Why the hell would you be loyal to a moron like him?” Tony asks. “Beck? He couldn’t even keep a job at Stark Industries—”

“Yeah, buddy, because you stole his idea,” one of them hollers. They’re both still wiggling around, trying to get out.

Tony sneers. “He worked for my company executing an idea I designed and commissioned and decided to weaponize it when it was created to help deal with trauma and mental health—have you never had a job, an occupation—you know what, I don’t care, I don’t care—”

“Well he didn’t say that, he didn’t say any of that exactly,” the other guy says, the one with the longer hair. “He just said—”

“Nothing he says is true,” Peter yells, wincing when he touches his nose. “That guy is a liar, and a freak, and you believed him enough to follow us on vacation and—screw up every attempt you made to kill us—it was one of you guys in my room—”

“No, that was just testin’, that was just—we was just testin’, it was—you guys acted really dramatic—”

Peter scoffs. “Dramatic?”

And the two guys start giving each other nasty looks, even though they’re webbed shoulder to shoulder. “Maybe if you hadn’t dropped that dart gun in the lobby when they first got here—”

“Maybe if you hadn’t fallen out of the tree—”

“Maybe if you had made the goddamn kayak explode instead of fly—”

“Stop!” Tony yells, cutting his hands through the air like an angry teacher. “Stop. Stop. I’ve never wanted to hear Boston accents less. Stop. You’re arrested. We’ve arrested you.”

“You can’t do that, the Avengers aren’t cops,” the shorter one says. He’s got a tattoo on his neck that says GOLDBARES with a Haribo bear icon and Peter squints at it and he feels like his entire face hurts worse just from seeing it.

“You’ve committed several crimes,” Tony says, still pointing at them. “It’s—my personal security already—”

There’s a click. A very loud click. And both guys clam up real quick.

“What was that?” Tony asks.

Peter’s spidey sense is—ratcheting up, clear into his teeth—

“Tony!” he yells, because it feels like something is coming, and, just like in the Grove Lodge, there’s a big boom and they’re blown backwards by a seismic wave—

And they’re launched off the roof, and it feels like they’re moving in slow motion, through the dead dark of the night and the reflection of the lake, and Peter screams like a moron. He just screams, and then he shoots a web right at Tony and pulls him in with it, and then he shoots a web at the building and swings back around with him.

They don’t land well, because Peter’s brain is on the backburner and there’s nothing on the front, and they roll in a heap, Peter tucking his face into Tony’s shoulder. When they come to a halt Tony pulls back, sitting up and touching Peter’s cheek.

“You in there?”

“I’m in there. Here,” Peter says, and he feels like he’s bleeding worse, somehow. “Did they blow up? Did those guys blow up? It sounded like they blew up.”

“We didn’t blew up we’re still over here but maybe I wish we woulda blew up because—”

And they start shouting at each other, but Peter tries to tune them out.

“Thank God you brought those things,” Tony says, tapping Peter’s wrist. “Thanks, bud.”

Peter blows out a breath, shaking his head and still just. Laying there. “Oh yeah, no problem. All good, just—completely normal.”

Tony sighs, and his eyes cut to the side. “Any other late traps ready to explode?” he yells, over his shoulder.

They stop arguing with each other. There’s a brief silence.

“Uh. I honestly got no idea. We just brought the whole bag of tricks, I don’t know. There’s shit everywhere.”

Tony looks at Peter, slowly shaking his head.

“Fantastic,” Peter says. “Wonderful.”

“So, you weren’t in there watching us when we were getting our nails done in the spa?” Pepper asks. “I thought it was weird. I told May it was weird. That was these guys—”

Tony scoffs, and he feels like he instantly gets a headache, a migraine—

“Of course I wasn’t—of course—you thought I was just standing there? Staring at you in the spa? You didn’t think that was out of the ordinary—”

Pepper gives him a look, and Peter laughs from the hammock behind them.

“Yeah, when I went to get my nails done later you kept walking in and out,” Happy says. “But I thought you were just—I don’t know what I thought. But then you told me about the kayak thing later and I thought—well—I attributed it to that.”

“Happy went and got his nails done,” Ned whispers, somewhere behind Tony, too. “We could do that?”

“Who’s stopping you?” MJ says, quiet.

“Well, the whole—the whole situation stopped me, I guess, but I didn’t really think about it—”

“I’m glad it wasn’t you staring at us,” May says, standing near the railing and peering out into her binoculars. “Pepper said it was normal, but it was concerning me.”

Tony glares at Pepper, but she just bats her eyes at him like the picture of innocence.

“Sometimes Peter does that to me,” May says. “Just stares at me from behind a Lucky Charms box in the kitchen. That’s how I know something’s wrong.”

Tony snorts, and he turns around as soon as Peter starts protesting.

“I do not!” Peter says, shifting around in the hammock. “I do not do that.”

“It sounds like something you’d do,” Ned says.

“You’ve done that to me,” MJ says, clearing her throat.

Peter huffs, and everyone laughs at him, and Tony tries not to laugh too hard, because this started with his own wife acting like she thinks he’s capable of acting like some weirdo who stands around staring at people.

Tony sighs. He turns around, walking over and peering down at Peter. He braces his hand on the tree his hammock is attached to. “How’s the nose?” Tony asks.

“Broken.”

“It’s not broken anymore, we reset it.”

“It knows it was broken. I know too.”

He’s still got the butterfly bandages on the bridge of his nose, and it’s bruised and angry looking. He’s got a burst blood vessel in his eye, and the white part is dipped with red. Tony feels like shit because he got out of the whole ordeal relatively unscathed. Just a few bumps and bruises. Some whiplash. But Peter broke his nose again.

They hiked up to the Sky Top Tower, and the kids wanted to hang out once they got up here. They all thought Peter had earned the hammock. Happy refused to come, and he’s in charge of the security situation, anyway, so he couldn’t exactly abandon it to do a hike he didn’t want to do.

They had to clear the whole damn resort out to get rid of any remaining traps and illusions. Tony had to bring in a whole team. Rhodey made fun of him on the phone when Tony told him, laughing for a good five minutes.

And sure, it’s stupid. Those guys are stupid and they had no idea what the hell they were doing, they couldn’t even attack properly. But that’s what happens when stupid people follow more powerful stupid people. They hold grudges. They make up shit in their heads. They cause problems.

And it’s never really funny when Peter is bloody at the end of it.

“I feel like I’m sinking,” Peter says, his brows furrowing.

He reaches out his hand, and Tony takes it, and he pulls him out of the hammock as MJ and Ned push on his shoulders. Peter groans like he’s a hundred years old, and Tony claps him on the shoulder.

May looks away from her binoculars. “How you doing, honeybunch?”

“Fine,” Peter says, letting go of Tony’s hand. “Incredible. Amazing.”

“Just a normal day for a hero,” Pepper says. “MJ, you’ll get used to it, May, you’ll never get used to it—”

“And Ned,” Ned says to himself. “You will be there every step of the way.”

Tony looks at Peter, and he wants to apologize. For all of it, for being a hero at all, for the goddamn radioactive spider at Oscorp and everything that came after. For stupid morons like Quentin Beck, who know the quickest way to hurt Tony is to attack this kid he’s nearly adopted as his own.

He doesn’t know what the hell to say, because Peter wouldn’t accept his apologies anyway. He never would. Peter is just appreciative of every moment. Even if the moments aren’t ideal.

“We’ve got the whole place to ourselves,” Tony says. “How about we have a pie bar when we head back down there? I can tip the kitchen staff two hundred percent when I ask. I don’t think anybody would be pissed off.”

He sees May smiling softly at him over Peter’s shoulder. Trust in her eyes, even after all this bullshit.

“Can there be…at least four key limes?” Peter asks, raising his eyebrows.

“Four or five,” Tony says, ruffling his hair. “Or six or seven. Depending on the number of ovens in the joint.”

Peter grins at him, still bright and lively, despite everything.

Maybe they can salvage this vacation yet.

#iron dad #iron man #irondad #irondad fic #marvel fic #peter parker #spider-man #tony stark #iron dad fic #works by iron_spider

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irondadmadlads · 4 months

Text

The Shoebox Problem

A/n: For @call-me-coley . Thank you for talking through ideas with me @yes-i-am-happyaspie .

December was a busy month for Tony Stark. With the holidays on the horizon, the hero planned multiple galas and charity events. At least once a week balls were attended by Tony. Sometimes the man went by himself. Other times, Pepper would join him. Even Peter accompanied him once or twice.

Only those closest to him knew the real reason he made an extensive amount of plans during the winter month. As a distraction from his parents’ deaths.

But that’s neither here nor there. This story is about the shoebox problem. Underneath Tony’s tree were dozens of gifts. Every one about the size of a shoebox. And they were all addressed to the same person: Peter Parker.

Tony was overjoyed to learn Peter and May would be spending Christmas with Pepper and himself. The holiday was usually a lonely one for the billionaire. Sure, Pepper would spend the day with him. But while she received calls from her extended family wishing her “Merry Christmas,” Tony’s phone remained silent.

But this year would be different. With Peter and May Parker keeping the man company, there’s no way he could possibly feel lonely.

So when his phone rang with Peter’s contact, his heart skipped a beat. Did something come up? Did they have to cancel. Tony hesitantly answered it.

“Hello?”

“Merry Christmas Mr. Stark!” Peter exclaimed. Through the receiver, Tony could hear the boy coughing.

“Merry Christmas Peter,” Tony replied. “What time are you and May coming over?”

“Actually…” the boy trailed off and Tony’s anxieties began to return full force. Of course, spending Christmas with his mentee was too good to be true.

But the boy’s sentence surprised him. “I’m downstairs…”

“Downstairs?” Tony asked. It didn’t take him long to realize exactly what Peter was implying when he said “downstairs.” The teen had a tendency to end up in Medbay. Tony sighed, “What did you do this time?”

“Nothing,” Peter replied, before breaking into a coughing fit. “I have the flu.”

Tony frowned. He then looked back at the tree with dozens of boxes under it. Even if the boy was in Medbay, he could still make his Christmas a good one.

“I’ll be right there.”

Tony entered Avenger’s Medbay about half an hour later. He was carrying a few boxes in his hands. Peter gave the man a wary smile, despite being in the sterile hospital room.

“Hey Mr. Stark,” Peter greeted. “Thank you for the gifts… you really didn’t have to get me anything.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Tony replies. “There’s more than this.”

Peter’s eyes widen. And this is where the shoebox problem comes in.

About a month before the holiday, Tony asked Peter what he wanted for Christmas. Peter replied nothing big. “Think shoebox sized,” he said specifically. But that’s the only limitation the boy set. He didn’t give Tony a price limit. Nor a limit on the gifts themselves.

So that’s how Tony ended up carrying a pile of medium sized gifts into Peter’s hospital room.

“Mr. Stark…” Peter frowns. A shiver wracks his body and he pulls the sheet closer to himself. “How much did you spend on me…?”

“Nothing is bigger than a shoebox,” Tony deflected. And Peter could only sigh. The man had a point.

Seeing Peter’s defeat, Tony handed him a gift to open. It took him longer than usual due to the IV in his left arm, but he eventually got it open nonetheless.

Peter raised a brow, “I thought I said nothing big-“

“Nuh uh-uh,” Tony quickly could Peter off. “It’s shoebox sized.”

And unfortunately, the man was right. “Thank you for the Switch, Mr. Stark…”

Tony beamed, “Ready for the next one?”

Peter nodded and let Tony continue to hand him gifts. The boy realized he probably should’ve given Tony a gift limit. He definitely should’ve given Tony a price limit. Because he’d ended up with a new phone, new watch, tickets to Disneyland, tickets to Hamilton, video games for his Switch, and multiple gift cards.

“Okay buddy,” Tony handed a gift to Peter. “Last one.”

Peter opened it to see a teddy bear dressed in a little Iron Man suit. The boy beamed. “He’s my favorite!”

Tony chuckled. “Really? It was a gag gift,”

“It’s you,” Peter replied. “You’re my favorite,”

“Oh…” Tony glanced back at the sickly boy. He was ignoring his games and new phone to cuddle with a cheap teddybear that was dressed as his mentor.

The boy let out a yawn and placed his head on the pillow. The iron man teddy in his arms. “Thanks for the gifts,” Peter murmurs. “Merry Christmas, Dad.”

Tony’s heart skipped a beat. Peter called him “dad.” The man placed a kiss on the boy’s forehead as he drifted off to sleep. “Merry Christmas.”

#iron man #irondad #peter parker #tony stark #irondad and spiderson #spiderson #irondad prompts #spider man #irondad and spiderson prompts #spiderson prompts #sickfic prompts #sickfic #irondad fic #irondad & spiderson fic #christmas

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tonystarchive · 1 year

Text

Sleepy Peter Drabble 💤💤

"Wha—?" Peter inhaled sharply, his slightly sweaty forehead crinkling with confusion.

Tony was quick to soothe, mentally chastizing himself for disrupting the boy's slumber, "Shh. Just me, bud."

There was a time when the older man could carry the kid to bed without so much as disturbing a hair on his unruly head—but as Tony's clicking knees could attest, it had definitely been a while since.

Tony lifted the boy up off the couch in a bridal carry, bracing himself in case he fully woke up. Glancing down, Tony was relieved to find Peter's brown eyes had remained closed despite the movement.

Peter smacked his lips a few times, tucking his face into the space between the older man's shoulder and neck. Within seconds, his body relaxed in the familiar hold, breaths deepening with sleep.

A soft smile of victory crept upon Tony's lips as he made his way down the hallway, precious cargo in tow. It seemed that the man's magic touch with sleeping spider-babies hadn't completely worn off, after all...

#iron dad #irondad and spiderson #spider son #iron man #spider man #irondad fic #irondad fanfiction #drabble #fanfic #fanfiction #peter parker fluff #comfort

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yes-i-am-happyaspie · 4 months

Note

Hi! I love you! It’s finals season and I’m barely scraping by and suffering lots, so I could use a fanfic to live through! What about a mini fic where Peter is doing some homework in his room (compound/tower, or just Tony’s house but Morgan doesn’t exist) and he has a pretty bad fever. Tony notices he’s getting frustrated really easy and checks his temperature and then lots of cuddles?

Another mini-fic! This time staring a feverish, grumpy little rain cloud Peter and a very dad-like Mr. Stark. :) Very very very mild angst and some good old-fashioned fluff. Oh. And Peter gets a hug.

Finals Week Heat 980 words

Peter sat at his desk in Mr Stark’s workshop and grasped a fistful of his hair. It was only Wednesday, and he was already burnt out. Finals had been going strong all week, and he still had two more to go. His worst subjects. Spanish and world history. He released his hair in favor of rubbing his eyes and stared at his notes. As they blurred in and out of focus he slammed his fist down on the desk.

“Easy, Pete,” Mr. Stark called from across the room. “ What’s got you all worked up over there?”

“Nothing!” Peter snapped before he could stop himself. But he was so exhausted he ached and his head was starting to throb. It was making him unreasonably irritable. “I'm not worked up! I’m just tired.”

Mr. Stark arched a single brow. “It’s only eight o’clock.”

“Does it matter? I’ve been busy for days! I think I’m allowed to be tired.” Peter flourished a dismissive hand and directed his attention to his notes. “Just go back to your work and leave me alone.”

“Hey,” Mr. Stark warned. But for some reason, Peter didn’t take the hint, He visibly bristled and narrowed his eyes.

“What?” he aggressively shouted. “I know you’re in the middle of at least three projects and I have to study. Actually. You know what? I’ll just take this to my room. It’s whatever.” Immediately, he started haphazardly stuffing things into his bag, ready to flee the situation before it escalated further.

“Nuh-uh, no way, no how. Sit back down Kid.” Mr. Stark stood up, taking on an authoritative posture. “We need to talk about your attitude.”

Peter knew he should listen, and any other day he probably would. However, the tension in his body was wound so tight, he snapped instead. “I don’t want to sit down and don't want to talk to you. I just want to get this done.”

Mr. Stark's jaw clenched. “Sit. Down. Now.”

Knowing it was best to give in, Peter threw himself into his chair and crossed his arms tightly over his chest. Whether it was out of indignation or because an unexpected chill had consumed him, he wasn’t sure. Rather than contemplate it, he glared across the room.

“What are you studying for?”

“Finals. You know that,” Peter spat.

Mr. Stark’s face remained stoney as he regarded Peter with scrutiny. A few beats passed. He sighed and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “You’ve been at it for hours with the flashcards, Kiddo. Why don’t you just call it a night?”

“Because I happen to like my 4.0 GPA, Mr. Stark!” The sarcasm was thick but the sentiment was genuine. He was at the top of his class and the pressure to remain in that slot was high. “If I don’t study, I don’t get to keep it.”

Mr. Stark's head tilted to the side. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I'm fine,” Peter grumbled. “Why?”

“You’re not usually this snippy with me,” Mr. Stark casually replied. He spanned the distance between them and ran his hand through Peter’s hair, down to his neck. The contact Made Peter shiver. “You’re burning up, Buddy,” Tony said, his voice significantly softer. “FRIDAY? Get me a tempt, will you?”

“Mr. Parker’s temperature is at one-hundred and two point three degrees.”

Mr. Stark nodded and gave Peter’s shoulder a squeeze.“Well, that settles it. You’re definitely done studying for tonight. The good news is, you’ll have a few extra days to review the material because you are definitely not going to school to-’”

“I have to go!” Peter growled. “I have finals to take!” He wished he didn’t. Staying home sounded idea.

“Nope. Zip it. The adult is talking.” Mr Stark, sent him a look, daring him to say anything else. Peter snapped his mouth shut. “You’re not going to school with a fever of a hundred and two. Not happening. You can make up the test.”

Peter slumped in his seat. “I want to be done with them,” he mumbled.

“And I want you to feel better,” Tony replied without missing a beat. His fingers went back to Peter’s hair. “You’re clearly miserable, Buddy,”

“Yeah,” Peter agreed, his eyes beginning to water. He gathered a tremulous breath and closed his eyes. “Yeah, you’re right. I don’t feel good.”

“Okay, Kiddo. You’re going to be okay.” Mr. Stark wiped a stray tear from Peter’s cheek and hauled him into a firm hug. “Let’s get upstairs, hmm?”

Inside the elevator, Peter leaned into Mr. Stark. “Sorry, I yelled at you.”

“I’d say it’s okay, but I definitely don’t want you biting my head off like that,” Mr. Stark said. He paused to swipe the bangs off of Peter’s forehead. Probably gauging the fever again, in the process. “It would be much easier if you just told me when you were sick.”

Peter sighed, unsure of how to explain how difficult it was to satisfy literally everyone’s expectations. “I didn’t want to-” he began, but Mr. Stark cut him off quickly.

“Another time, Bud. We’ll talk about it another time.” They had arrived at the penthouse. Mr. Stark stepped inside first and gestured down the hall. “For now, go get in your pajamas and meet me on the couch. I’ll fetch you some meds, and we’ll watch a movie until you conk out on me.”

Peter huffed a small laugh, knowing that’s exactly what would happen. He’d arrive at the couch wearing his comfiest pajamas, soft blanket in hand. Mr. Stark would give him some pills and sit in the corner of the furniture. He’d allow Peter to burrow into his side and, together, they would pick a movie. Probably something science fiction. It didn’t really matter. Mr. Stark was right. He’d be warm and comfortable and sound asleep before they made it a quarter of the way in.

Super happy to see you again @yescaptainmarvel123875 I feel like it's been a while! Hope you are doing well and enjoy this fic!!

#happyaspie mini fic #<check out that tag #fic under 1k #tumblr mini fic #sick peter parker #fever #grumpiness #very very very mild angst #peter parker #tony stark #spider-man #iron man #irondad and spiderson #marvel #mcu #irondad #irondad fic

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starksvinyls · 7 months

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Title: Career Day Rating: Gen Pairing: Peter Parker & Tony Stark Tags/Warnings: Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Adopted Peter Parker, Dead May Parker (sorry not sorry it's for the irondad fluff), Irondad and Spiderson, Fluff, Family Fluff, Identity Reveal Summary: Midtown is hosting a Career Day, and Tony comes to speak as Peter's dad, revealing Peter's identity as his son to Peter's class. Notes: fills square B5 'identity reveal' on my @pparkerbingo card!

AO3 Link

Peter didn’t think anything of it, when he left the papers from school on the kitchen island. It was part of his new routine with Tony and Pepper, they liked to keep up with the goings on at Midtown, and if Peter didn’t immediately leave the papers for them when he got home, he’d forget them in his backpack. He wasn’t sure why the school didn’t just email all the parents and guardians with the latest news and reminders about parent teacher conferences, sciences fairs and band performances, it wasn’t like this was the really old days of dial up and checking your email once a week.

Midtown School of Science and Technology was hosting a career day for the juniors, as collage application deadlines would be upon them sooner than they realized, and had asked for parental volunteers in several different vocations to come and speak. That flier had been in the stack, however Peter didn’t think Tony or Pepper would have the time, but well…

There, in a line of other parents and guardians, sat Tony Stark in all his bespoke suited glory. He had one leg crossed over the other and his hands in his lap, fingers laced. The HUD glasses were perched on his nose, and he was smiling out at the group of awestruck teenagers staring up at him on the auditorium stage. There was a cacophony of excited whispers, too muddled for Peter to catch anything specific.

Next to him, Ned was hitting his arm. “Dude, your da-“

“Ned!” Peter hissed. “You know he’s not-“

“He technically is,” MJ rolled her eyes from the other side of Peter. “Those adoption papers aren’t just for show, loser.”

Peter could feel himself flush and he snapped his mouth closed, slouching down in his seat. It wasn’t that Peter didn’t think of Tony as his dad, but he had only recently gone from calling him ‘Mister Stark’ to ‘Tony’. It wasn’t even until May’s funeral that the man had hugged Peter fully. They weren’t there yet.

They hadn’t made any announcements (nor had Peter really said anything at school, it wasn’t like he went around talking about his family before. Plus, who would he tell?), though they weren’t hiding Peter away. Most everyone at the tower knew, the school knew, of course, as did the Avengers and Peter’s friends. Pepper had also planned a lovely little debut, of sorts, for Peter as their son and heir to Stark Industries at the next Maria Stark Foundation fundraising dinner. Huh, she had said “their son”…Peter smiled to himself. Maybe they were there.

Peter remembered the flier, then, it had asked for volunteers to come speak at “their child’s” school for a career day. That was definitely something parents did.

Principal Morita stepped up to the podium and cleared his throat. “Hello, students,” He waited for the room to hush before continuing. “We have some very accomplished and knowledgeable parents here today to talk to you about different college and career paths in STEM. I expect you to give each of them your full, undivided attention, as what they can tell you will be very valuable for your own futures.”

It was obvious the principal was implying that they needed to pay attention to all the parents and not ignore them because of Tony Stark, and Peter was kind of embarrassed. His classmates were definitely the type to fan-geek out instead of paying attention.

“Without further ado, let’s have our first speaker,” Principal Morita clapped, prompting some applause from the students, as he stepped back to his chair.

The first parent, a woman with dark skin and round glasses, adjusted the height of the mic. “Hello, I’m Rochelle Brown, Abe’s mother,” She was cut off by an excited whoop from a few rows in front of Peter, and laughed. “Hey, son…I’m a doctor specializing in cardiovascular health.”

Peter listened to her talk about med school and the skills and knowledge from non-STEM areas that were important as well. It was overall pretty informative. The next few parents followed the same formula; introduce themselves, as well as whose parent they were, and then talk about their work and college experience.

They went down the line, and the 5th chair held Tony. When it was his turn, he stood and made his way to the podium. “Well, you know who I am,” He flashed them a smile.

Peter noticed it wasn’t his media smile, it was genuine. A warmth spread through his belly at the realization that Tony was there as his dad, not as Tony Stark.

After a small smattering of chuckles from the audience, it went silent, clearly all waiting with baited breath to hear who his kid was.

“And I’m Peter Parker’s dad.”

The warmth in Peter’s belly exploded into a million butterflies and he could feel his cheeks pulled up into a wide smile. That was the first time he had said that. Sure, he called Peter “his kid” all the time, but he said…

Peter couldn’t stop smiling, even as everyone was suddenly turned, looking at him. The whispers were loud, and teachers around the room were trying to hush everyone and get them focused again. Flash could be heard loudly protesting as he was escorted out the doors into the hallway after a rather rude outburst. Peter snorted.

“Yes, yes, new gossip, I know it’s exciting.” Tony drawled, amused. “But I’m here to talk to you about engineering and MIT, the greatest in higher education for a budding young scientist, and I promise I’m only a little biased,” He winked.

Peter watched at Tony captivated a room full of teenagers and adults alike, with tales about building DUM-E at fifteen, and the non-proprietary aspects of engineering the arc reactor. He grinned and laughed at an anecdote about the one armed bot, and then reached into his pocket for his phone. He typed out a text and hit send, knowing Friday would display it on the screen in Tony’s glasses. A second later, his dad looked directly at him and smiled.

thanks for coming to speak, dad

#pparkerbingo23 #peter parker #irondad and spiderson #irondad #irondad fic #marvel fanfic #starksvinyls fic

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idk-bruh-20 · 2 years

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Irondad fic ideas #24

Irondad lab days but Peter comes straight from school, and on the days Happy doesn't drive Peter to and from school, he finds weirder and weirder shit to carry with him to the lab. One day he comes in with a cat he's watching for Ned, another day it's an enter sign he found on the floor at school (or any sign, really), it's rusty keys he found it the gutter on someone's roof, a really cool stone he finds when passing the Sanctum (It's probably not gonna kill us, Mr. Stark! Look how it glows! Isn't that cool?) And every time he brings something by Tony's just like "HOW DO YOU KEEP FINDING STUFF LIKE THIS??"

Peter walking into Tony's lab like "Hey Mr. Stark!" And carrying, like, a bench

This idea was submitted by @derpmallow !

Edit to add!!! Bonus:

Peter doesn't start it intentionally: he doesn't have the whole sticky-thing under control yet, so it just kinda happens. But after he finds Tony's reactions amusing he's just like, "I'm gonna go find the weirdest shit to bring over here"

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spagbol99 · 3 months

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Chapters: 70/? Fandom: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies) Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers & Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes & Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes & Peter Parker Characters: Tony Stark, Peter Parker, James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Pepper Potts, Natasha Romanov (Marvel), May Parker (Spider-Man), Ned Leeds, Michelle Jones, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Harley Keener, Happy Hogan, Clint Barton, Laura Barton Additional Tags: Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's Biological Child, Protective Bucky Barnes, POV Bucky Barnes, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Homeless Peter Parker, Foster Care, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Not Canon Compliant, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Child Abuse, Physical Abuse, POV Tony, POV Peter Parker, Swearing, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Parent Tony Stark, Kidnapping, Kidnapped Peter Parker, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Abused Peter Parker, Slow Burn, Slow Build, Character Death, Grief/Mourning Summary:

The Rogues are back; Tony Stark couldn't even be mad about it - it was his idea after all. He's an Avenger and that means protecting the Earth at any cost - even if he has to deal with a certain star-spangled man and his sullen sidekick. After all, he's been through worse in his life; the loss of his wife and the disappearance of his son 12 years ago. Compared to that, this would be a walk in the park.

Bucky Barnes is back on US soil as a free man. But freedom is more than just physical. On top of that, Steve is desperate for him to be the man he was before. The only problem is; that man is long dead.

Peter Parker has been through the mill but he knows he just had to adapt, roll with the (many) punches and keep going. Spider-man is his safe place now, the one time he could truly feel like himself. Like he is making a difference. He'd make sure no one would suffer like he has, even if he has to track down the perpetrator himself.

#irondad fic #irondad #tony stark #peter parker #irondad and spiderson

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rotfuchss · 9 months

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hi I just wrote a new oneshot and it's about Peter and Tony going to see the Barbie movie together, feat. a Tony Stark in a pink glitter suit and Peter losing it a little that this is his life

#irondad fic #irondad fanfiction #irondad oneshot #my fic #barbie movie #fluff #crack #peter parker #tony stark #irondad #irondad and spiderson

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parkerpenny · 8 months

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you said forever and ever (who knew?)

Summary: "If someone said 3 years from now, you'd be long gone, I'd stand up and punch them out, 'cause they're all wrong."

Staring out at the still water, Penny felt as if she was being mocked. How could something be so still, so peaceful, when she felt like she was being torn apart from the inside out? Penny has known loss, sections of her life, all land-marked by grief. Standing by the lake, at Tony's funeral, she refuses to face reality. A reality where she came back to life and Tony Stark didn't.

But while Penny grieves her father-figure, Pepper makes sure that Penny knows she hasn't lost a family.

Word Count: 3.4k

Relationships: Penny Parker & Pepper Potts, Penny Parker & Tony Stark, Penny Parker & May Parker, Penny Parker & James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Penny Parker & Happy Hogan, Penny Parker & Morgan Stark, Tony Stark/Pepper Potts

Read on AO3

Title from: Who Knew? - P!nk

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Staring out at the still water, Penny felt as if she was being mocked. How could something be so still, so peaceful, when she felt like she was being torn apart from the inside out? She remembered how it felt to turn to dust. Her whole body tried to fight it, tried to stitch itself back together. Tried to prevent the inevitable. It hurt like hell, feeling yourself crumble. Somehow, this hurt worse.

Penny has known loss. Her whole life has been marked by loss after loss. It defines her now. Sections of her life, all land-marked by grief. She isn't sure she would know herself without it. Her parents, her uncle Ben...

Tony.

A hand on her shoulder brings her back to the present. She wishes it hadn't. She wishes she was quite literally anywhere else, anywhere but where she was. The lakehouse... Tony's lakehouse...

Tony's funeral.

She half-expected herself to break down, waiting for clarity to pierce through her veil of blissful ignorance. It didn't. Truthfully, Penny wasn't entirely sure she was even in control of her own body. Maybe it was a trauma response, her brain's way of protecting her from what would likely be her undoing. She knew if she lingered on it for too long, she would have to face reality. A reality where she came back to life and Tony Stark didn't.

She turns her head slowly, glancing at the owner of the hand on her shoulder. Rhodey. The man looked as if he had aged about 15 years. He held a deep pain within his eyes, but the look of resignation on his face was enough to tell Penny that he had been mentally preparing himself for this day years before she ever knew him.

"Hey, kid. I'm glad you came. Tony would've wanted you here." Rhodey looked away for a moment, his eyes shining in the afternoon sunlight. "You meant the world to him, Pen. I hope you know that. He loved you so much."

Penny knew these words were meant to comfort her. She racked her brain, trying to remember how one is usually expected to respond to these types of things. Instead, she just blinks, mumbling a barely audible "thanks." Rhodey looked at the young girl with a sort of sadness, one that Penny couldn't decipher. She realized belatedly that she didn't care.

As Rhodey walked back towards the cabin, Penny took a brief look around at the crowd that had gathered while she was off in la-la land. All her childhood heroes gathered in one place, and she couldn't bring herself to feel anything other than the emptiness that had consumed her since she left the battlefield. All of her heroes, except one. The only one she wanted to see.

Images of that final battle flash in front of her eyes, and the girl doesn't waste her time trying to blink them away. She can't run from them any more than she can run away from the tragedy that seems to cling to her like a plague. The portals, the aliens, the bodies.

Mr. Stark.

She had run to the man, unable to believe that it had really been 5 years like the wizard had said. She barely had time to take in his appearance, but a quick glance at his face proved that time had indeed gone on without her. His hair had taken on more grey than she had seen, as well as a few new wrinkles. None of that mattered to her, not when she hardly had time to get a word in before the man had wrapped her up in a tight embrace.

Tony had hugged her as if his life depended on it, and maybe in some way it had. The way he looked at her as if her very presence was a miracle, as if he thought he would never see her again. He held her close, like a father would his own child, kissing her cheek and cupping the back of her head as if she would fade away from within his arms, telling her how much he loved her.

When she closes her eyes, Penny still sees the look in Tony's eyes. When he had the gauntlet on his hand, the flashes of inconceivable pain, the rage, the fiery determination. She also sees the aftermath. The blank, faraway stare that should never be associated with a man as full of life as Tony Stark. The way she knelt at his side, whispering to him, begging him to be okay, The way his lips tugged up into an almost unnoticeable smile as he heard her voice.

Nothing could drown out the haunting echo of Tony's heartbeat, slowing down steadily until it came to a stop. Penny didn't think she would ever go a day without hearing it.

Footsteps approached her where she stood by the lake. She could tell without looking that it was May. "Pepper is asking for you, honey, They're ready to start the service." May said gently, tucking a strand of Penny's hair behind her ear. Her aunt wrapped an arm around her shoulders comfortingly as she guided the girl towards the cabin where everyone had gathered.

Somewhere in her mind, Penny was screaming, crying, for a father that wasn't even hers. For the man who took care of her, who loved her like she was his own flesh and blood. On the outside, Penny looked like the poster child for indifference. She had run out of tears to cry, resigned to the cold feeling of numbness. She was so far away, she wasn't even sure it was worth her time to try and fight her way back to the present. It was as if she was watching her own life on a TV screen. She had no control. Penny decided to just surrender to it, and let her consciousness drift as it pleased.

She had done this before, she knew the drill. Funerals weren't an uncommon occurrence in the life of Penelope Parker. As she looked around, though, she spotted a small figure, clutching the hem of her mother's dress. Morgan Stark. Tony had had his own daughter in the time Penny had been gone, and Penny couldn't even bring herself to care. She felt for the little girl, who looked alarmingly like her father. The same curious, brown eyes and dark brown hair. She knew what it was like to lose a parent at a young age. She couldn't help but feel responsible. There had to have been something she could have done differently. Something that would have made sure Tony was standing here himself, right now, comforting his daughter.

As Pepper and Morgan walked through the group towards the lake, carrying a wreath with Tony's old arc reactor in the center, Penny felt nauseous. She didn't even get a chance to say a proper goodbye to Tony. Just like her parents. Just like Ben. Maybe it was the Parker Curse. Penny never having the chance to tell her parental figures exactly how much they meant to her before they were cruelly ripped away from her. She realized with a startling clarity that she barely remembered her own parents. Morgan was about the same age as she was when her mother and father died. Would Morgan even remember Tony? Would she remember his face? His voice? His laugh?

Tony deserved a happy ending, more than anyone else standing around. After everything he had been through, everything he had seen, he still managed to put everyone else before himself, while always taking the brunt of everyone else's blame and frustrations. She felt bitter. What right did Captain America have to be upset about Tony's death? Or any of his friends for that matter? Steve almost killed Tony in Siberia. Penny had seen the aftermath of that. She had seen the haunted look in Tony's eyes. The way he never seemed to fully let his guard down around them even after the Rogues were pardoned and moved back into the Tower. She saw how it had affected him, and Steve had the nerve to offer condolences to his grieving widow and daughter? When he could've prevented this from happening?

Penny ignored the burning hatred simmering in her chest, and focused instead on the water. As Pepper and Morgan set the wreath afloat, she didn't bother to watch it. She instead paid attention to the way the water rippled, the smooth, glassy surface of the lake disrupted.

The reflection of the trees began to warp, and Penny couldn't help but relate to that feeling. She felt as if everything was warped, because surely this was all just a bad dream right? She would wake up any minute in her bedroom in the Tower to the smell of Pepper's pancakes, listening to Tony cursing up a storm because she wouldn't let him have his 3rd cup of coffee at the ripe hour of 10am. Penny would smile to herself and make her way into the kitchen, a day with her found family ahead of her. Maybe her and Mr. Stark would work on her Spidergirl suit in the lab. Maybe they would order Thai food for supper. Maybe they would invite May over, and Happy and Rhodey, for a family dinner. Maybe they would end the night as they usually do, watching some sort of movie while Penny curled into Tony's side, drifting off as he combed a gentle hand through her hair.

But this wasn't a dream, and Penny wasn't that naive.

As the crowd of mourners began to disperse, Penny didn't budge. She didn't even react when Happy pulled her into a hug. She didn't move when countless Avengers gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. She did flinch as she heard Pepper's voice from her side.

"Penny, sweetheart, would you like to come inside? There's something I'd like to show you." The woman said in a soft tone, reminding Penny of how gentle the woman would be with her whenever she stayed at the Tower. Pepper became a second mother to her, and she hadn't had the courage to be alone with her for more than a few minutes since her return. Looking around slowly, Penny noticed Morgan's absence. She must've had a curious look on her face, because Pepper assures her that Morgan is with Rhodey, feeding Gerald, who Penny would later learn, to her surprise, is an alpaca.

Penny, unable to formulate a coherent sentence to refuse or get away from the situation, stays silent as Pepper guides her toward the lakehouse. Pepper doesn't say anything as she shields the girl from the other guests gathered in the living room and kitchen, but instead steers her up the stairs and into the hallway. They pass a spare room, a room with a child's drawing on it and a sign that says "Morgan" in what Penny assumes is the little girl's own writing, and a larger door that she assumes is a master bedroom.

They come to a stop in front of a door at the end of the hall, just beyond Tony and Pepper's room. The door is plain, but a small spider symbol next to Penny's name in that same child's writing has her heart hammering in her chest. She turns to Pepper, confusion lacing her expression. Pepper smiles encouragingly, nodding towards the door. "Go ahead, open it." She says quietly.

Penny lifts a shaking hand to the doorknob, turning it slowly. She opens the door, revealing a fully decorated room. A bed sits in the middle, decorated with a dark duvet and several Spidergirl and Iron Man plushies. There is a desk in the corner, a fully stocked bookshelf, posters lining the walls, Lego sets waiting to be built. It looked like it was all ready for someone to move into.

"When we were drawing up the plans for this house, Tony refused to build it unless we built it with enough rooms for the whole family. A room for us, a room for any guests, a room for Morgan, and a room for you." Pepper said, not bothering to cover up the emotion in her voice.

Penny looked at her questioningly, her ears ringing with the implications of what Pepper was saying. "I- What?"

"Well, we couldn't build a house if we didn't have enough rooms for both of our daughters, now could we?" Pepper placed a hand on the girl's back, rubbing circles in a practiced and comforting motion.

All Penny could feel was shock, and fear, and disgust with herself. "Ms. Potts, I- No. I can't- I can't stay here. You can't possibly want me to stay here." She said, her tone weak but bitter, avoiding eye contact with the woman.

"Of course I do, Penny, why wouldn't I? You're family. Tony always thought of you as the daughter he never had. So did I. Then when Morgan came along, the only thing he talked about was how much you would've loved her. Morgan grew up with stories about her sister Penny. You are just as much our daughter as Morgan is." Pepper said as if she was simply stating facts. Facts that Penny refused to let herself wrap her own head around.

The teenager could only think about Morgan having to grow up without her father. Knowing that Penny was the cause of it. Knowing that if Tony had never tried to invent time travel to get her back, Morgan would still have a dad. That thought brings in a new wave of nausea, and Penny isn't sure how much more of this she can take.

"You don't understand! This is all my fault! Morgan is going to grow up without a dad and you've lost your husband and it's all because of me! If I was faster, I could've grabbed the gauntlet from him. I could've been the one to-"

"Penelope May Parker, don't you dare finish that sentence, do you hear me?" Pepper cut her off with a steely edge to her voice, holding the girl in place by her two arms. Penny stared at her wide-eyed, shocked, but reminded of the way Pepper would sound on phone calls when using what Tony had called her "CEO voice."

"Yes, Tony invented time travel because he thought it would give him the chance to get you back. Yes, Tony knew that doing so would possibly cost him his own life. But Penny, you have to know how much he loved you. He would've moved heaven and earth if it meant getting the chance to see you again, to give you the chance to grow up to be the amazing young woman we both know you would be. And he did. He did what he did fully aware of the possible consequences."

"He wanted nothing more than to be here with you. To watch you be a big sister to Morgan, to watch you graduate high school and go off to college and lead a new generation of great minds. He wanted to see you change the world like he knew you would. But if he had to give up the chance to see it for himself, to make sure that you would have the chance to do it in the first place? Well, that was a no-brainer for him." Pepper said firmly as Penny continued to stare at her, tears welling up in her eyes.

The woman sighed before continuing. "Penny, you and Tony are so much alike it scares me. You're both crazy smart, you're both kind souls, but the two of you also have the most outrageous selfless streaks I've ever seen. I won't sit by and watch you drown in guilt and regret over this, and you know Tony wouldn't want that either. So yes, I do expect you to stay here. Whenever you want. You can visit on weekends, school breaks, hell, you can move in tomorrow if you wanted to. But May needs you, too. So I will be as patient as I can and wait for your visits whenever you feel like coming up, okay? Do you understand me, Penny?" Pepper finishes softly, cupping Penny's cheeks and wiping a stray tear from her face.

Penny struggles to form a sentence, so she does the next best thing. She wraps her arms around Pepper, hugging into her tightly and crying in earnest into the woman's black dress. Pepper rubs a soothing hand up and down her back, holding her gently and whispering words of comfort to her. As Penny's tears taper off, Pepper guides the both of them towards Penny's new bed, sitting them down on the foot of the mattress. She brushes Penny's curls away from her face and smiles softly.

"You know, when Morgan was born, we only had a first name picked out for her. Tony and I decided that we would choose a middle name when we saw her." Pepper said as the younger girl remained tucked into her side. Penny smiled softly, the image of Tony and Pepper holding their newborn baby heartwarming. She always knew they would make the best parents, after all, she had spent so much time wishing that they were her parents before she had been dusted.

"What did you guys decide on?" The girl asked. Pepper glanced down at the girl in her arms and smiled. "The minute Morgan opened her eyes, Tony started crying. I thought something was wrong, but he just looked at me and said that her eyes reminded him of yours. He said they were the same chocolate brown. We decided pretty quickly after that what her middle name would be," She paused.

"Morgan Penelope Stark."

Penny sat up so fast she almost fell off the bed, tears immediately springing to her eyes as she looks at Pepper with shock. "You- you guys- you named her after me?" She whispered, voice thick with emotion.

Pepper smiled and nodded. "Yeah, sweetheart, we did. We named her after her beautiful big sister. We told her stories about Spidergirl, and more importantly, the brilliant and kind young lady behind the mask. Her favourite bedtime story was one that Tony would tell her about Spidergirl and Iron Man's adventures in the big city. You can't even imagine how excited she is to meet you. I asked her to give you some space at first, until I had a chance to talk to you."

Penny didn't try to stop her tears from falling this time. She couldn't even explain how she was feeling. Tony and Pepper had truly loved her, they really did think of her as their kid, so much so they named their own daughter after her. They built her a room in their house even though they thought she was dead. They carved out a place in their new lives just for her, knowing that she may never have gotten the chance to even take that place.

Her thoughts are interrupted by a hesitant knock at the door. Happy pokes his head in. "Sorry to interrupt, but Little Miss wanted to say hi." No sooner does he finish his sentence, when a small face peeks through the gap in the door.

Pepper looks at Penny, an unspoken question on her face. Penny understands, and nods. Pepper turns her attention towards the door. "Morgan, you can come in sweetie."

Morgan pushes the door open and toddles in slowly, looking up at Penny. "You're Spidergirl, right? You're my sister?"

Penny glances up at Happy, and back to Pepper, who has tears in her eyes. Penny turns her focus back to the little girl, and nods. "Yeah, I am. I'm Penny. It's nice to meet you. Morgan."

Morgan doesn't take long in jumping into Penny's arms, clinging to her like a koala. Penny wraps her arms around the young girl and a strange warmth fills her entire body. She knows, in that split second, that she loves this little girl. That she would do anything in her power, anything at all, to protect her. She imagines this is how Tony must've felt about her.

"I'm so happy you finally came home, Penny. Mommy and Daddy missed you a lot." Morgan said innocently.

Penny saw Pepper wipe away a tear out of the corner of her eye. If Penny tried hard enough, she could almost see Tony standing in the corner of the room, gazing softly over at his two girls, right where they belong. With each other. She makes a silent vow to Tony, wherever he may be now, that she will keep Morgan safe.

"I'm happy too, Mo. Really happy."

And somehow, she can tell that Tony already knew.

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stxar-pvnk · 21 days

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I've been obessesed with Italian Peter and tony so here is ANOTHER prompt.

Tony and Peter arguing and Peter just gets so angry he starts yelling at Tony in italian

Peter: non sono un bambino, ok?! Sono un adolescente che sa prendersi cura di se stesso!

(I'm not a child, okay?! I'm a teenager who can take care of himself!)

Tony : NO! sei il mio bambino che non verrà gettato a 20 piedi da me in un fiume dove non puoi termoregolarti!

(NO! You're my baby who won't be thrown 20 feet away from me into a river where you can't thermoregulate!)

Peter: you think I'm your baby?

Tony: you can speak ITALIAN?!

#spiderman #tony stark #peter parker #irondad and spider son #iron man #mcu marvel avengers #irondad and spiderson #irondad things #irondad fic #iron dad #spiderman and irondad #we love irondad

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seek--rest · 9 months

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styrofoam plates

T | 7 chapters | collab with @weezly14

“Well, there’s really no way to sugarcoat this, no way to – so I’ll just say it. I should’ve said it – but we’re not here to rehash, the past, right? So, Pete. I’m your dad.”

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, trying to breathe, hands shaking, heart pounding, hands sweaty. It’s not true. It can’t be true. Peter Parker isn’t – he’s Peter Parker. Not Stark.

This is true: Peter Parker was born on August 10, in Queens. His mother was a grad student and his dad was—

His dad was—

Peter sits up. Takes a deep breath. His eyes are wet but he can’t remember crying.

You’re my kid, Peter.

He thinks he might be sick.

Five.

#irondad #irondad fic

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ironspiderfics · 8 months

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someone else living in his skin

by @iron--spider for @shoyzz-art

Peter slides up alongside Rhodey, and Rhodey startles.

There’s a cacophony of twinkling glasses and chairs being pulled out and whatever weird jazz music playlist Tony’s got playing, and all of it seems loud, in Peter’s ears. Shaking his nerves.

“Jesus Christ,” Rhodey says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What are you doing? I thought you were putting out table numbers—”

“Do you think he’s acting shifty?” Peter asks, calmly as he can.

He’s calm. Why wouldn’t he be calm?

His eyes are locked on Tony.

They’re in the middle of setting up this mini gala event, the opening for Stark’s new research facility in the Lower East Side. It’s gonna create hundreds of jobs and scholarships and internships and it’s gonna be a really good thing, partnering with the museums and businesses in the area. Peter’s actually really excited because he’s got the title of ‘Lead Researcher’ for the intern pool, whatever that winds up meaning from day to day, and he thought Tony would be really excited too. He loves celebrations, he loves new opportunities and helping people, but—

But for the last two days he’s been…different.

He’s been…off.

But Peter’s calm. He’s calm about it. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be calm.

His eye is just twitching a little bit.

Rhodey looks at Tony, and then he looks at Peter, and then he looks at Tony again. He narrows his eyes, like he’s trying to assess the situation.

“He’s just—I don’t know,” Peter says, blowing out a breath. He wrings his hands together and cracks his jaw.

“Is this a spidey sense thing?” Rhodey asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

Peter shrugs, still watching him. Tony is sort of looming around—straightening a table cloth here, pushing in a chair there, glancing over his shoulder like he thinks someone is watching him. He’s sweating more than normal.

“A little bit of that, a little bit of—just—he’s acting weird,” Peter says. “Not acting like himself, I guess ever since the other night when that guy tried to break in—”

“But we dealt with that,” Rhodey says, looking at him. “It was in and out—cops came, got the guy—”

“Right, I know, but it’s been since then he’s just been like—I don’t know,” Peter says, blowing out a breath. “Like he—the other night, he forgot that I already graduated, he was asking me when I was gonna graduate—”

“We all forget that,” Rhodey says, raising his eyebrow at him. “You’re perpetually twelve—”

“You didn’t even know me when I was twelve—”

“You’re twelve now—”

Peter sighs. “Well, he normally remembers, and he was the one at my graduation screaming and yelling and making a big scene so, that’s not really—easily forgotten, and he was being weird about Spider-Man the other day—”

“Weird how?” Rhodey asks, turning towards him completely, now. “Because he’s always weird about Spider-Man. Every other day he’s messaging me like how do we convince Peter to retire?”

Peter clicks his tongue. “Asking me things he knows. Like how I make my webs and which suit is my favorite and—I don’t know, stuff like that. Weird stuff.”

“You’ve been staying at the compound since that guy tried to break in?”

“Yeah,” Peter says. “Me and May both, the apartment has that infestation, everybody’s out for at least a week.”

He clears his throat. The guy trying to break in was weird—he seemed normal, no powers, no real intentions, he got pretty far but was taken down fast, and he didn’t seem at all—fazed, by any of it. He was even polite.

Maybe it got under Tony’s skin? A lot of stuff like that does. They’ve been through enough, with the dying, coming back again two years later, him nearly dying trying to fix it all—a petty thief trying to get into an Avengers compound is just the kind of irritation that might set him off. Last straw kinda deal.

Rhodey stares over at Tony again, and Peter looks too. Tony is being twitchy. He’s talking to waiters and he’s got his hands behind his back and his fingers are twitching.

“Has Pepper said anything to you?” Rhodey asks.

“Has Pepper said anything to you?” Peter asks, raising his eyebrows. “Because she’s more likely—I mean, with me, we talk about MIT, when I start, how my summer’s going, we talk about, um, TikTok recipes, we talk about MJ, and Tony in the capacity of like, Iron Man, and Spider-Man, or his birthday, or Christmas, but not like—I’m just saying, she’s more likely to—have said something to you, or Happy, than me.”

“No, she hasn’t, but now that you mention—and he is acting weird right now—and yesterday he did get off the phone fast, different from how he normally…” Rhodey trails off, shaking his head.

“Maybe he’s sick?” Peter asks, worrying a little bit more now. He thought maybe he was overreacting, he thought Rhodey would brush him off and he’d feel better and then Tony would magically start acting normal again after the conversation. “Nervous? He doesn’t usually—”

“No,” Rhodey says, shaking his head. “Not nervous, these things are—easy, like the back of his hand—sick, maybe, but I thought he was well beyond hiding sick from us, so I hope not—” He looks resolute, all of a sudden, and he claps Peter on the shoulder. “I’m gonna go talk to him. We’ve got an hour or so still, of set-up, so let’s just—just keep on putting out the numbers, doing everything on your list—”

“Okay,” Peter says, nodding, and Rhodey pats him on the shoulder again, moving past him. Peter watches, nonchalantly, as Rhodey walks up to Tony, taking his arm and sort of moving him across the room.

And it’s probably fine.

Rhodey’s gonna talk to him, figure it out, and it’s gonna be okay.

Peter keeps repeating that to himself, as he does his little jobs, and he marks them off his list in his notepad—table numbers, check, badges at the door, check, banners, check, taste test the hors d'oeuvres, mostly check, and he totally had that spelled wrong in his notes and it’s fine—

And when people start to arrive, he realizes that he hasn’t seen Tony or Rhodey since—Rhodey left to go talk to him.

And he gets a little nervous and he looks around, trying to scan the room—not completely full yet, and nothing’s started, but Pepper is here and he sees Happy—

—and May makes him jump when she shows up behind him.

“What’s wrong, honey?” she says, giving him that look, that look that’s gotten sharper and even more severe with every one of his near death experiences.

So he decides not to tell her what’s going on in his head. Which is usually the opposite of what she wants, but this probably isn’t anything, so. “Nothing,” he says, clearing his throat, still trying to scan around. But Tony and Rhodey aren’t here, not anywhere he can see.

“That’s not your nothing face,” she says, rubbing his arm. “Do you have a job you’re supposed to be doing? Is your brain tingling?”

He narrows his eyes at her. “No, it’s—no, it’s not—I gotta, uh, one second—can you make sure you get me one of those little wonton things? Or like three of them? I keep seeing them on the trays and I haven’t gotten to try one yet—”

“You’re concerned about that?” she asks, her eyes still worried and distrustful.

“Yes,” he says, grinning at her quickly before he starts to go looking.

Part of him feels like he should say something to Pepper, but he doesn’t want to stress her out—and like, it’s probably nothing, everything is probably fine, and he makes a beeline for the door that leads to the little backstage area.

“Tony?” he says, and the crowd noise goes muffled when he lets the door swing closed behind him. It’s so quiet back here—he doesn’t even see any of the employees or the guys that do the lights or any of Tony’s security—there wasn’t even anybody at the door when he scanned in.

He hears what sounds like something—brushing against the ground—

“Tony?” Peter asks again, glancing around. “Rhodey? Are you guys, uh—I feel like we’re getting ready to—”

Peter turns another corner and stops dead.

Rhodey is on the ground, knocked out, and Tony is dragging him by the arms. He looks up, and sees Peter there, and the look on his face—he doesn’t—Peter’s brain is going a mile a minute and he’s already surging forward to help but the look on Tony’s face—it registers somewhere in the back of Peter’s mind…

“Oh my God, what—what happened?” Peter asks, rushing over and kneeling down next to Rhodey. “What happened, what did—”

“Uh, he fell,” Tony says, and he kneels down next to him. He nods, and widens his eyes and shakes his head, and he doesn’t seem nearly as concerned as he usually would be. Tony normally loses his mind when Rhodey so much as gets a paper cut, so this is…this is…

“How?” Peter asks, looking at Tony and back at Rhodey again. “He was just—”

“I don’t think he ate enough,” Tony says.

Every alarm bell is going off in Peter’s head. They’ve been going off tonight, and for a couple days, honestly, if he really thinks about it, but it’s loud now. He feels like time is slowing down, like his vision is getting narrow, like all of his senses are on high and zeroing in.

And it feels wrong. The shift in the air and his own suspicion, it feels wrong. What would be wrong with Tony?

But that’s where this is going.

It’s focusing on him.

Peter looks at Rhodey, and there’s a bruise on his cheek—

And Tony is clenching and unclenching his fist—

“Tony?” Peter asks, slowly, glancing up at him. His brain isn’t working. It isn’t working and it’s working too fast and he feels like he’s trudging through sludge. Every move is the wrong move.

And Peter looks at him in a certain way. With suspicion. And he hates it, and he feels sick, but he can’t shake it—

And Tony doesn’t answer him. He just looks at him, and the light that’s usually behind his eyes is gone, and his expression is one Peter doesn’t recognize.

Like someone else is living in his skin.

And just as that thought takes hold and sends chills down Peter’s spine, setting off a whole new line of panicked questions in his head, Tony clicks his tongue. And he sighs.

“Shit,” he breathes. And it’s his voice, of course it’s his voice, but it sounds twisted, and different, and before Peter can even react, before he can pounce on the alarm bells and the way his senses are narrowing and signaling, Tony surges forward with a stiff arm to Peter’s throat, and knocking him to the ground.

Tony punches him, with his full strength behind it, and Peter is so shocked that he doesn’t even block, and he tastes blood immediately. He winces, gasping, and he blocks the next one, and then Tony is grabbing his forearms and tossing him across the room.

Peter hits a thing of shelving, and a bunch of buckets fall down on top of him, and through the pandemonium, he sees Tony running away from him.

“What the fuck,” Peter breathes, and he scrambles to his feet—

And Tony would never hit him, ever, not ever, and Peter’s head pounds, with the force of the punches, with the alarms going off, with fear and worry, and is this a clone, is it mind control—either way he has to get him, there’s a reason, but what is it, what is it—

And if he’s a clone it’d be different, but if it’s mind control, Peter might be able to get through to him, he might be able to break it—

And Peter scrambles to his feet, wiping the blood from under his nose with the back of his hand, and he starts taking off in the same direction Tony did—

And he can’t even call his name before he’s taking the full force of a repulsor blast.

He’s knocked backwards again, slamming into the wall, and he can feel it cave in against his back with the strength of the hit. He coughs, gasping, and his jacket is smoldering and his skin underneath it is too, and he sees Tony standing there with the repulsor aimed at him—he’s only wearing one, and Peter rolls out of the way, narrowly avoiding getting hit again and trying to catch his breath.

He’s not thinking, because nothing makes sense, and Peter just rushes at him and tackles him to the floor—

And Tony punches him again, with the iron hand this time, and Peter’s neck twists hard with the hit—his jaw cracks, blood in his teeth—

And everything in him is screaming to fight back, fight back, but it’s Tony, he—he can’t—he can’t hurt him he fucking can’t hurt him—

And he grimaces, metal in his mouth, and grabs both of Tony’s wrists, mid-flail, and pins him to the ground—

“Doesn’t fucking matter, it’s set,” Tony hisses, and he doesn’t even sound like himself, and the way his face is contorting, he doesn’t look like himself either. Peter’s heart is in his throat, and he dodges another repulsor blast that Tony manages to get off, and Peter covers the repulsor with his hand and twists Tony’s fist and focuses—

“What is? What is?” Peter knows it’s not him, not right now, not really, but he can’t help— “Tony, Tony, are you in there? Are you in there, can you hear—”

“It’ll still do damage where it is—they’d never scan Tony Stark himself at one of his own events,” Tony says, and he grins, manic. “Good way to get it done, huh? One big blast, kill him, ruin his reputation at the same time—”

And Peter’s mind drifts again, like a lifeboat at sea, and he remembers Tony saying earlier that he wouldn’t need his webshooters here, but he packed them anyway. He remembers him with a gym bag, a duffel, he remembers oh nothing, just a few extra lights, and May is here and Rhodey and Happy and people are starting to arrive and Tony himself—Tony himself, and he’s not a clone, he’s not, they’re—they’re trying to kill him, it’s—it’s mind control, it has to be, they used him to smuggle a device in, and they’re trying to kill him—

Peter’s mind drifts, and guides him, and every time it feels like a pull, like a bunch of arrows, but this is more powerful than he’s felt in a while—

And Tony knees him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him again—Tony grabs him by his shoulders and Peter wrenches away, and they both stumble to their feet again and for a minute they’re in a boxing match, except Peter keeps getting hit, because he’s pulling his punches, because it’s Tony, it’s Tony—

“Stop, stop, stop, you’re—”

Another blow across his cheek, breaking the skin, and he hears a high pitch in his ear, and Tony grabs him by the throat and shoves him against the wall—

And Peter gasps, and pushes him, hard, and Tony trips back and nearly falls and even the way he’s moving right now doesn’t seem like him—

And Peter rushes away and tries to run, his head drifting, pulling him, alert, alert—

Webshooters, backpack, the duffel—they were together, he left it—left it with their stuff, back here, when they—when they got here—

And there are arrows in his head and they’re pulsing and buzzing like neon signs, and he knows he’s going the right way—

But he’s being pulled back to the ground by his ankle, and his head cracks on the tile, and it’s stars and metal and arrows and buzz buzz, how much time is on the clock, we don’t know, we don’t even know it’s a bomb, we don’t even know if it’s counting down, but it sure as shit feels like it—

And he tries to scramble up again and his spidey sense can usually help him from all angles, but it feels off, here, and he knows it is when Tony hits him in the face again, when he grabs him and throws him—and punches him again, rattling his brain in his skull—

And it’s because it’s Tony, because he’s not—he’s not a threat, but he is, he is, right now he is—

“Tony!” Peter yells, because maybe he can get through, maybe he can— “Please—”

And he dodges out of the way of another hit, and stumbles up against the far wall in the narrow backstage hallway—

“Tony, this isn’t—it’s me, it’s Peter, Tony, you have to fight this!” he yells, and he starts running again—again—

“He’s not home!” Tony sing-songs, laughing. “Should have known you’d be fucking trouble, a stupid fucking kid is Spider-Man—”

And Peter runs from him, and sees the fire alarm on the wall, and he grabs it and pulls it as he passes it by—

And the alarm goes off in the real world now, in tune with the one in his head, flashing red and white. He hears Tony curse and yell behind him, and Peter has to—he has to—

Doesn’t fucking matter, it’s set—it’ll still do damage where it is—

It has to be a bomb, it has to be—

And he grits his teeth—Tony is still on his heels, and tears sting in Peter’s eyes along with the heartbeat thump of the pulp his face is turning into, and he sucks in a breath and dodges another repulsor blast—

He has to get him to stop, stop, stop trying to stop him—

And he turns around, and tries to hold back and focus at the same time—

“I’m sorry, I’m—I’m so so sorry—”

And he punches him once, and then again, directly in the face, and Peter knows how strong he is and he tries not to hurt him too badly, and Tony crumples and Peter catches him, guiding him to the ground—

And even though the arrows and the alarms are buzzing and jolting in Peter’s entire body now, he sniffles through the blood and makes sure Tony is still breathing, makes sure he still has a pulse, and he is, he does, and Peter squeezes his shoulder and he can’t think about after, not til they get there—

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, squeezing his shoulder again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

And he gets up and he doesn’t let himself look back and he starts running again—

And he’s limping now, and he doesn’t know where that came from, and he finds the place where they stored their bags—

And alarms in his head, and the fire alarm in the building, and lights flashing on and off and he can hear the insanity in the main ballroom, and he finds the duffel and rips it open and—

It is a bomb.

And it’s got a five minute counter.

Peter scrambles, his head pounding pulsing sick, and he gets his webshooters out and puts them on and grabs the entire duffel bag and slings it over his shoulder.

And he makes a break through the nearest emergency door.

And he gets a running start and leaps into a swing, and his whole face hurts and the emergency in his head is steeping him in a bubble now, because the source is with him, and the danger is still back there, because he doesn’t know if knocking Tony out broke the mind control or if he’s gonna wake up still trapped as an angry Terminator—

And Peter swings, trying to launch himself higher and higher, and he can hear the timer clicking and he keeps track of the count and he can’t be a second off or this is gonna go south—

And it might not work anyway—

And this is dire straits, but Peter finds himself thinking of normal things, and they rise above the noise in his head and the oncoming sirens and he doesn’t feel calm, exactly—his face is pulsing with the pain of the hits he took and he feels like he lost a couple teeth, and his shoulder feels like it’s not in the socket properly every time he swings higher, and his leg is in fire and his spidey sense is an orb of panic, encasing him in a snow globe, but—

He thinks of watching that African Grey Parrot with MJ and Ned the other day, for two hours straight, wiping out the entire YouTube catalog of all his antics. He thinks about the yoga class with May at Bryant Park they got with that Groupon and the seven chai lattes she had lined up beside her mat like bowling pins. He thinks about touring the MIT campus with Tony and the way he introduced him to everybody and said this kid is gonna be the best student you ever have. Sharing french fries at Sebastian’s Cafe. I’m so proud of you.

And he hears the beeping speed up, and he’s thinking of all of that and everything else and why did I wear these shoes why not the brown ones as he tosses the duffel into the air at the arc of his highest swing, and it explodes above him in a mess of orange fireball and knocks him right out of the air—

Tony wakes up broken apart.

He doesn’t open his eyes right away. He’s not in the vice grip anymore, not locked into some subconscious pit in his own body while some asshole takes the reins, but he feels like—he feels like the asshole could take over again at any minute, like he’s still in his head somewhere. Dormant, waiting for a moment of weakness so he can shove Tony back down in his cage—

His hands are cuffed together, and he’s—he’s cuffed to something—

He groans, rattling his hands a little bit, and he wakes up and—

Rhodey and Pepper are there. He’s on the floor, and cuffed to a pipe in the wall, and they’re sitting in front of him, and they both look wary and he doesn’t fucking blame them, and his head is pounding and his memories are slapdash watercolor but—

“It’s me,” he breathes, his throat hurting. “It’s me, it’s me—”

“There’s something wrong with you,” Rhodey says, and he exchanges a look with Pepper. He’s got a butterfly bandage on his cheek and Tony thinks that’s me, my fault and what else did he, what else—

“No, I know,” Tony says, squeezing his eyes shut, and his head is pounding and it feels like someone shredded him from the inside out, and—

Tony, you have to fight this—

He remembers, barely—the NYPD taking that guy away, laughing at the idea that they had to ‘save Iron Man’, and he was alone that night and still skeeved off over the whole thing and then he felt the pinch on his arm and felt the thing burrowing and he panicked and he couldn’t even panic for long enough before he seized, before he fell inside himself—

“Thing in my arm,” he croaks, still squeezing his eyes shut tight, because light hurts because voices hurt because everything hurts, and he’s trying to put together the puzzle of his memories and he feels like he might throw up because—because he’s here now but the other guy—he’s here too, he’s still in there, he’s still—and any moment he could— “There’s a thing in my upper arm, left arm—you need to—dig it out, I think it’s right below—right under the skin, it’s like—it made me—made me susceptible, created a link, I don’t fucking know, get it out. You need to get it out.”

“Tony, what—”

Pepper’s voice.

“Pep, he’s—”

“It’s me right now, get it out of my arm or it might not be me in—” He opens his eyes too fast, and really feels like he’s gonna fucking throw up, and they’re both looking at him like he’s the biggest piece of trash they’ve ever had the misfortune of knowing, and that makes him sick too, and what did he—what did he do, what—puzzle pieces, shifting, falling off a glass table—

And he feels his hands breaking skin—

“Jesus Christ,” Rhodey says, and he shifts around and moves over to Tony’s left side, pushing up his sleeve. Tony isn’t even sure where the hell they are right now—he was deep inside, dark and dank and paralyzed in his own body—

“Jesus,” Rhodey says again, and Tony cranes his neck a bit and sees it, feels Rhodey running his finger over a little bump in his arm about the size of a nickel—

“Cut it out,” Tony says, closing his eyes again. “I’m serious, find a knife, cut it out, that’s—”

“Tony,” Pepper says, and she’s rubbing his knee—

“Pepper,” Rhodey says, in that warning tone he has, and the fact that he has to warn Tony’s wife not to touch him is just—

“Cut it out, Rhodey, I’m serious—”

“Alright, Jesus Christ, alright—” And he scrambles away—

“Sterilize it, Rhodey,” Pepper calls after him, looking at Tony again. Her face is streaked with worry, and she looks at him with wariness and pity and love all at the same time. “Tony, why didn’t you—you couldn’t say—”

“I was here but I wasn’t,” he breathes, and the cuffs are hurting his wrists, and everything is fucking hurting, and what did he do what did he do how the fuck long has it been. “Someone—someone got me, I let my guard down and someone—”

It was so easy. The guy used himself as a distraction, as bait, and then he—he did whatever the hell he did and then he was in Tony’s head—

“Okay, okay,” Rhodey says, rushing back around the corner again. “Close your eyes, Tony, if you are—Tony, goddamnit—”

Tony swallows hard, nodding and closing his eyes, and he winces, holding onto the pipe as Rhodey cuts into his skin. He does it fast, and Tony grits his teeth, and he feels Rhodey take the thing out and then he hears him stomping and stomping and stomping—

Feels like plates falling and crashing to the ground inside Tony’s skull.

He doesn’t get it all, but he gets flashes—the bomb under his hands, Rhodey confronting him, Peter—

Peter.

He remembers hitting him. Over and over, and is that the same hit or—how many times did he—

Peter hitting the wall, and Tony recoils, a tremor running through him, and what did he, what did—

“Where’s Peter?” he asks, looking back and forth at them. His arm is throbbing, everything hurts, he’s frail and sick and he’s probably gonna fucking puke but he doesn’t care. “Where’s Peter, where is he?”

They both just stare at him, and kind of look at each other, and Tony’s heart sinks.

“What, did I kill him?” he asks, his voice breaking. He grabs onto the bar he’s cuffed to, feeling like he needs to hold on. He’s terrified. “What, what? Where is he?”

“Tony, you were…” Rhodey starts, shaking his head. “You—the kid knew you were acting weird and I went to confront you and you knocked me out—and I guess—Jesus, I guess you were—are, I don’t goddamn know—being mind controlled, and you brought a bomb in here—we’re at the gala, for the new facility—and Peter sussed you out and you two got into it and he knocked you out and I guess—knocked this guy’s control on you loose enough—but he—he took the bomb and—he had webshooters and he—”

Tony closes his eyes, white noise eating into his vision, and he feels like he’s gonna pass out. “Is Peter dead?” he breathes, shaking.

“We’re trying to find him,” Pepper says, and she rubs Tony’s knee again. “Some people got footage, he tossed it into the air and he was blown back and now we can’t—Happy is out there looking, Sam and Natasha are looking, we’ve got emergency deployment teams looking—”

“Uncuff me, please,” Tony half-whispers, because his voice gets caught in his throat. “I need to help, I need to—I need to help look for him—”

“Tony, you’re—”

“He’s not in my head anymore,” Tony snaps, looking at Rhodey. He doesn’t know how the fuck he can prove that, but he can feel it now. It’s different, he’s—he feels ill, and weak, but he doesn’t feel trapped. He doesn’t feel like the ground is about to fall out from underneath him. “And you need to find someone to get that dipshit, he was supposed to be in jail, but right now, I’m—I’m in here alone, okay? I wanna help look for Peter, I want to—please let me, please. You can stay with me, but I need to—just—please. Please.”

Pepper and Rhodey exchange a look, and Tony keeps getting flashes—his fist connecting with Peter’s face, grabbing him and throwing him against the wall—and he shakes them off, swallowing hard. “Please,” he breathes.

Rhodey heaves a sigh. “Lemme get the key.”

Tony watches the footage from the quinjet while they scan over the city. He was ruthless, relentless, and he watches himself grab Peter by the throat, toss him every which way, hit him and hit him and hit him again. He made him bleed, over and over, he shot him and burned him up and dragged him to the ground, and Peter barely fought him. He actively avoided it, and got worse because of it. Tony keeps watching, and before long Clint is walking over and taking the phone from him.

“It wasn’t you,” he says, giving him a pointed look. “Alright? You know that. It wasn’t you.”

“Sure looked like me,” Tony says, getting up and walking back over to Friday’s main control panel. Peter wasn’t in a suit, so this is harder than normal.

“It wasn’t,” Clint says, sitting back in the pilot’s seat. And he doesn’t say much else about it, but Tony knows he knows firsthand what he’s going through, what this feels like. And it helps a little bit, but not much. The images are imprinted in his head.

He loves Peter. May trusts Tony with her nephew, her surrogate son, the person in her care, and it’s gotten to the point that it’s just a given that Peter is safe with Tony, that Tony’s always gonna help him and protect him. But now there’s this. Now there’s Tony punching him and hitting him and choking him and making him bleed, and he looks down at his hands and they shake.

Nobody else was hurt, he didn’t do anything else, but that’s because Peter took the bomb. He took that on himself, Tony’s mistake, Tony’s problem, and he put himself in danger to solve it and save everybody. And now they can’t find him.

Tony wavers back down into the closest seat.

“Stop beating yourself up,” Pepper says, walking out of the back compartment and sitting down next to him. “It wasn’t you. You’re a victim here too.”

“I hurt him, whether it was…me in charge or not,” Tony says, his eyes straining with tears as he looks at her. “These hands hurt him. And I almost…blew up the goddamn gala, if it wasn’t for him noticing—”

“I didn’t notice,” she says. “I should have—Rhodey should have—”

“You guys are busy,” Tony says, looking at the screen again. He’s got a social media tracker up too, and so many people are talking about what happened. Peter didn’t have a mask on, but thankfully, there’s no good footage of his face.

Everyone is calling him a hero. Because that’s exactly what he is, what he always has been.

“You need people to look out for you too,” Pepper says, running her hand through his hair. “We should have done better, but Peter’s got that little…alert system in his brain, and he’s intuitive, and he knows you. He loves you, he worries.”

Tony shakes his head, looking down at his hands again. He knows May is with Happy, searching, and he can’t even imagine how she feels right now. He feels fucking sick.

“You need someone to check you out too,” Pepper says, still touching him gently, and he doesn’t deserve that either. “Probably have a concussion.”

“Not til we find him,” Tony croaks. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Tony,” she says, but he shakes his head. He’s supposed to be better than this. They defeated a fucking Titan, they defied death and time and saved the goddamn world. And he lets a petty thief mind control him? Take away his agency? Hit Rhodey, threaten an event with innocent people, hurt Peter, badly, put him in harm’s way—

“Tony,” Clint says. “I think we got something.”

Peter needs to get up.

He’s been laying here for forty five years he’s an old man now—

He needs to get back he needs to fix Tony so nothing else happens he needs to protect him and get that guy that did this it must have been that guy that’s when it started and he doesn’t know how he did it but he mind controlled him somehow—

Peter coughs, twisting onto his side, and he spits out some blood, and a tooth, and he hopes it’s his wisdom tooth that’s been bothering him the top right one—

He got exploded, that’s right—

And his face hurts, and where the repulsor got him is burning and he feels like he’s wheezing and he falls back on his back again and he feels like he’s on fire a little bit and is his left eye closed or welded closed or gone forever and his leg—twisted—

And just a second just a second—

Black again, in a wonder wheel of spiraling stars—

“Hey, hey. Pete.”

He opens his eyes. Tony is there, cupping his face in his hands, and Peter smiles a little bit, dizzy.

“Is it you?” he asks, or thinks he asks. He can’t hear his own voice. Tony sounded muffled too, but he nods at him.

“It’s me,” he says. He looks so sad. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Peter closes his eyes again, because they’re so heavy. “It’s okay,” he says, and he feels like he’s being lifted up, and he doesn’t remember anything else after—

He opens his eyes. He feels like he’s moving, and he recognizes the tiny medical room in the quinjet. Tony is right next to him, and he stands up when he sees Peter’s awake, and is Peter awake? He feels…crazy, he feels…

“Tony,” he says, and he tries to sit up. “Is it you? Is it you? Are you—”

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Tony says, stepping closer. He still sounds muffled, and faraway, and so does everything else. But he looks like himself. He’s not off anymore. “I’m not gonna hurt you again. Jesus, Pete, I’m so sorry—”

Peter shakes his head, blinking at him. “You didn’t, you—it wasn’t you, you didn’t—”

“I did, technically,” Tony says, and he just stands there and he’s got tears in his eyes and he isn’t really looking at him. He’s close, but he’s keeping his distance. “We’re on our way back, to the compound, May and everybody else is meeting us there—you, uh, you saved everybody, you’re burned in a couple places from the blast and my—goddamn repulsor, but Helen’s gonna—when we get back, she’s going to—”

He sighs, stops talking and rests his elbows on the bar of the bed, and hangs his head, like he’s ashamed. Peter hasn’t ever really seen him like this, and his brain still feels like it’s swiss cheese but he sits up a little bit more. He covers Tony’s hands with his own and squeezes them, and tries not to think about how much everything hurts.

“You wouldn’t be mad at me if this was opposite,” Peter says, staring at the top of his head. “You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t blame me at all and I don’t blame you either so. So. Just don’t even, I mean. Just don’t.”

“You can’t even talk straight,” Tony says, still not looking up.

“That’s most of the time,” Peter says, still holding onto his hands.

Tony sighs. “I put you in danger and I hurt you. I watched the footage, it was a fucking nightmare, and you let me keep hitting you because you know how strong you are and you didn’t want to hurt me so you just let me keep hurting you—”

“It wasn’t you,” Peter says, trying to be assertive, and he’s so tired, he’s so, so tired. He leans forward, resting his head on Tony’s shoulder, and he closes his eyes. “It wasn’t your fault. It isn’t. So stop. I know you won’t and you’re gonna live in this and punish yourself forever but like, don’t. Don’t do that.” He sighs, leaning into him. “Did you guys get the bad guy—”

“Sounded like it,” Tony says, and he’s still hanging his head, and Peter sighs. “I think so. I gotta check in with Rhodey again. Make sure nobody else got mind controlled.”

“So it all worked out,” Peter says.

“You nearly getting exploded is not it all working out.”

“I didn’t get exploded I only got slightly singed and nobody else got exploded and you are no longer mind controlled so. Win to me.”

Tony sighs again, and he gently, very gently, wraps his arms around Peter and hugs him. “I’m gonna jump off a fucking roof,” he says. “I never wanna hurt you. Never. I can barely remember it, I’ve got flashes—”

“Don’t try,” Peter says, reaching up and holding onto his arm.

“—but I saw the footage—”

“Forget it,” Peter says. “Erase it.”

Tony shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have ever—allowed it to happen in the first place, and I still don’t know how the hell it did, and I’ve just got—a lot of work to do, to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I can’t let myself get taken like that, used like a fucking goon against people I love. Jesus Christ. You’re hurt because of me.”

“Nope,” Peter says, because he doesn’t have the brain power to try and fight him harder, even though he knows it’s gonna be a guilt battle probably for the rest of their lives.

“Pete,” Tony says, still holding onto him.

“Nope,” Peter says again, and he drifts. Spidey sense is dormant. He’s a piece of raw meat but he’s—safe.

And Tony isn’t there when Peter wakes up again, back at the compound. May is there, and after she hugs him and kisses him about a hundred times, she breaks out the Tupperware, containing all the little appetizers from the gala that never was.

And Tony stays missing in action the next couple days, even though everyone else comes by to see how Peter is doing. Rhodey implies that Tony paid a special visit to the asshole that did this, but he doesn’t go into detail on what the encounter entailed. The guy did have hidden powers, clearly, and Doctor Strange even gets involved trying to figure out how he did it, what exactly that thing was that they pulled out of Tony’s arm.

But three days later and Peter still hasn’t seen him again.

“Maybe he’s busy,” Ned says, as he and Peter and MJ walk up and down the hallways. Peter broke his ankle, somewhere in all the insanity, and pulled a muscle in his calf. He’s been trying to walk around a lot during the day, even though he’s still on bed rest.

“He’s not busy,” Peter says. “He’s avoiding me.”

“Well, he beat the shit out of you, and he feels bad,” MJ says.

Peter sighs.

“I’d feel bad too,” MJ says, “even if I was mind controlled. It still sucks, I mean, when I saw him his knuckles were still all bruised. Just a constant reminder of what someone made him do.”

“You saw him?” Peter asks, looking at her.

She looks a little bit like she wants to take a back, but she nods. “Yeah, uh, earlier. When I got here, when I was talking to Pepper.”

“Did you talk to him?” Peter asks, as they turn around at the end of the hall. He’s trying to sound nonchalant and failing spectacularly.

“Not really,” MJ says, taking Peter’s hand. “He wouldn’t really even look at me, I can tell he—he’s just really guilty. He feels really bad.”

“Peter doesn’t want him to feel bad,” Ned says.

“Yeah, but once you feel bad, you feel bad,” MJ says, “it’s not like it magically goes away because someone says that it should.”

“Maybe we can magic him,” Ned says. “Doctor Strange, you know. He could do that.”

“Yeah, let’s just hack into his mind again,” MJ says, widening her eyes at him. “I’m sure that’s the right course of action.”

Peter sighs again. “I don’t know what to do,” he says. “He could do this forever. And ever and ever.”

“Well, definitely as long as you’re all bruised up,” MJ says, reaching over with her free hand and brushing her thumb over Peter’s cheek.

And two more days go by without seeing Tony, and it’s almost time for Peter and May to head back to their apartment, even though May said they could stay at the compound as long as he wanted to.

And Peter decides to do something.

“Friday is he still there?” Peter asks, making his way down to the workshop.

“Yes, Peter,” Friday says, in Peter’s ear.

“And you’re not lying to me?” Peter asks, rushing down the stairs, quick as he can with a bum leg.

“No, Peter,” Friday says. “I am not permitted to lie to you.”

Peter smiles to himself. He knows he still doesn’t look wonderful, but he looks a lot better than he did, and either way he can’t take this anymore. And he gets down to the workshop in what feels like record time and he scans in without trying to make a lot of noise, and when he opens the door he sees Tony at the back door as if he’s trying to escape.

“Stop!” Peter yells, his hands up. “Stop! Don’t leave!”

Tony whips around, his eyebrows furrowed. “Kid?” he says, already walking back over in his direction. “Are you okay?”

“No!” Peter says, a little more forcefully than he intended to.

“What’s wrong?” Tony asks, gently, weaving around the work stations and reaching his side.

“You’re ignoring me!” Peter says, and he sounds like a small, stupid child, but he doesn’t do anything to change that. “And I don’t like it.”

Tony’s face falls, and he nods, glancing away from him. “I’m not…ignoring you, I just—I felt like—”

“I know you feel bad,” Peter says, sucking in a big breath. “And I know me telling you not to feel bad doesn’t change the fact that you feel bad, but I seriously don’t want you to feel bad, because now this whole like—keeping yourself separate and out of my sight thing feels like you’re punishing me.”

“I’m not,” Tony says, fast. “I was just—”

“You don’t need to punish yourself either—”

“I wasn’t really…exactly…c’mere, come sit down—”

“I’m okay,” Peter says.

“I know, I know, I wanna sit,” Tony says, taking Peter’s arm and tugging him over to the closest workstation with two rolling chairs. They sit down, and they both sigh, and Tony keeps talking. “I was just, uh—I sent out messages to everyone involved at the gala explaining things a little bit, and I got everything rescheduled on my own, and I, uh—met up with the asshole at Riker’s and attacked him and nearly got arrested myself—”

Peter leans on the workstation, running his hands over his face. He can imagine that, and he doesn’t like it.

“—and I’ve been building some new security protocols, and working on another nano suit for you that’s a lot like my watch gauntlet that can—stay on your person, read your heart rate, come to you if you need it—but I’m trying to make sure it only comes in the correct instance, and not if you like, see a cute dog—”

Peter laughs a little bit, shaking his head at him.

Tony smiles softly. “But I’ve been doing all that, along with maybe, slightly punishing myself by—staying out of your way—”

“You’re not in my way,” Peter says, feeling a little bit too emotional, maybe. “You’re not. You never have been. Never will be.”

“You don’t know that—”

“Tony—”

“What I mean is…old man, long shadow, you know, I’ve been there—”

“You’re not your dad,” Peter says, shaking his head at him. “You’re a good—you’re a good father figure, you’re a…good father.”

Tony brightens up a little bit, and his nod almost looks like a question. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Peter says. “No matter what.”

Tony nods again, more solidly this time. “One more thing—”

“No more saying sorry,” Peter says, shaking his head. “You told me I can never say sorry again, well now, you can’t either so, how about—”

“Thank you,” Tony says, and Peter stops talking. “Thank you for—realizing that something was wrong, thank you for figuring it out, thank you for knocking me on my ass when I wasn’t me, thank you for—saving everybody and me too, in the process. Thank you, Pete, really. Thank you.”

Peter’s throat goes tight, and there are tears in his eyes, and he nods again. “You’re welcome,” he says, holding his chin high. “Any time.”

“And I’m sorry,” Tony says, fast, rolling forward and wrapping him up in a big hug. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Last time, I’m sorry. Okay I’m done. I’m so sorry. Okay I’m actually done.”

Peter snorts, hugging him too, burying his face in his shoulder. “No more mind control,” he says, letting the apologies drift into the air unanswered.

“Oh no, never again,” Tony says, rubbing Peter’s back. “And I figure, when you’re—when you’re tip top again, we can get into the ring, and I’ll feel better if you get a few good shots in, and I’ll forget about the whole thing if you break my nose—”

“No,” Peter says, shaking his head and still holding onto him. “I’m not doing that.”

“Too afraid to box an old man, huh?”

“My old man, maybe,” Peter says, feeling particularly sentimental.

And Tony laughs, in a rush of breath, and holds him reverently for a second. He pulls back, and pats Peter’s cheek. “We’ll see,” he says. “Might get Rhodey in there too, to make it fair—”

“He’ll probably take you up on that,” Peter says, getting to his feet. “Okay, lemme see the suit, remember I get last say in design decisions—”

“Oh, you aren’t going for bright yellow?” Tony asks, resting his hand on Peter’s shoulder as they head over to the main workstation. “You don’t like that?”

“Better than that time you tried to integrate green and made me look like a Christmas tree,” Peter says, grinning at him.

“Hey,” Tony says, typing in a few commands and bringing up the specs. “I thought that was very festive.”

And they start working, and Peter remembers feeling safe, before, when they were on the quinjet and his brain was still scrambled. But he feels like they’re on the other side of it now, for real.

Safe. Really, truly safe.

#irondad #iron dad #peter parker #tony stark #spider-man #iron man #works by iron spider #irondad fic #iron dad fic #marvel fic

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euphoric-melancholyy · 4 months

Text

Silent Night (Nothing Feels Right) - An Irondad Fanfiction

A/N: I wrote this fanfiction in December of 2020 and I guess…never posted it here? Maybe I did but I can’t find it. But since I can’t find it, here it is! I wanted to play with the idea of Christmas being really hard for Peter while Tony loves it. Title from The Worst Christmas Ever by Sufjan Stevens. Rated T for the use of one curse word. What's Infinity War and Endgame? We don't know her here. Also note that I remembered Peter was Jewish after writing this. I apologize - maybe I’ll write a more accurate version someday.

Summary: "It’s just I, I hate Christmas, okay? Like the fact that people buy you presents is nice and everyone talks about getting together with family but I don’t have that. I did and all Christmas does is remind me that I don’t. My mom and dad, they loved Christmas, lived for it. It was a two month holiday and it was so magical and perfect and then they died right before Christmas and now Christmas just hurts, it really, really hurts."

A look at grief during the holiday seasons throughout the years as Peter and Tony grow closer.

Also on Ao3

Peter’s first five Christmases are the best, though time has made them fuzzy and grief romanticized their imprint on his mind. He sees it in flashes: at the Christmas market around Rockefeller, where Richard and Mary would take him every year to buy new decor that littered the tiny apartment the week following Thanksgiving. In a classic clear lit Christmas tree whose top bends at the ceiling, it’s height too high for the space it’s confined, in science toys and loving looks, and “Merry Christmas, our little genius. You’re gonna change the world someday,” his mom would say. The tables were an explosion of glittered tinsel and forest garland, accenting the edges and corners. while Harry Connick Jr crooned “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” In the smell of gingerbread wafting from the oven after a hard day at school, after some kid named Rodrigo called him a four-eyed-freak and pushed him down, scraping his knee. In how he would curl up on the couch with his parents every evening the month of December, an old Christmas movie playing on the TV. Ben and May would join them every Christmas morning, and the five of them would spend the day drinking eggnog and dancing, May snatching the crimson ribbon from the tree and waving it around as her hips swayed. She’d reach out her hand to Peter until they were all dancing and singing, quite horribly, from the top of their lungs. He knows there were things he didn’t see, or his mind chose not to remember that might crush his idyllic five-year-old heart. But it was perfect, in his mind’s recollection. It was perfect.

Until it wasn’t.

Until a plane crashed in the Pacific and his world imploded and crashed with it. He went home with his Uncle Ben, and never returned to the apartment twelve blocks over in Queens. Dancing on Christmas felt wrong; everything, including Christmas itself felt wrong - a stabbing, overwhelming void he drowned in. (At least Rodrigo was nice to him now.) His sixth Christmas Eve, he cried until sleep claimed the remainder of his energy and Ben and May cried with him. The day was met with little fanfare, and he didn’t care about the presents under the too small tree, with colored lights instead of clear. Maybe if today didn’t happen, if he just laid in the Captain America comforter until it was dark outside again, it wouldn’t be real. He could forget the wet grass by the graveside where his parents' names were engraved into stone less than a month ago. The void hurt, his chest constricting with every breath.

“Peter, honey, it’s Christmas,” May said, her eyes just as swollen and red as his own.

“No, it’s not!” he protested, turning his face away from her and burying it further into the pillow. “It’s not Christmas without mom and dad. They...they loved Christmas. It can’t be Christmas without them.”

“You know..” May starts, choking on the words and letting it trail off.

“You’re right, Pete.” Ben said “It’s not Christmas without them. Come on, bud. Grab your coat. We’re going on a field trip.”

And that’s how it started, how they ended up stomping through the dark, gross, mush of snow, presents in hand, to spend Christmas morning with Richard and Mary once more. He didn’t know if he believed in heaven, but he hoped it was real, because it was very cold and sad there, Peter thought. But it’s the only way he knew to be with them.

It became tradition after that, and even on years that Peter didn’t want to visit, they’d brave the weather and sit around the graveside, exchanging presents and stories and highs and lows of the year. A morbid, oddly comforting reminder of everything he lost and everything he still had.

The year that Ben died, gunned down in a bodega over some petty cash, May didn’t sleep Christmas Eve. Peter stayed with her, curled up on the couch with a blanket and Ben’s favorite Christmas movies playing in the background. The grief eclipsed any remaining joy the “happiest season of all” supposedly carried. When morning came, it was Peter who coaxed May from her despair with hot chocolate and a sad smile.

“Come on May,” he whispered. “It’s not Christmas without the family.”

Ben was buried next to his parents. Neither Peter nor May did much more than cry and say “Merry Christmas” that year.

-/-/-

2016

Tony Stark loved Christmas, in a sort of nauseating, over-the-top way that Tony Stark does everything. He hired four dozen decorators to deck his house, the compound, and the rebought tower in different themes. It reminded Peter of his parents, in the way that you couldn’t turn a corner without seeing a tree, or garland, or some sort of Christmas memorabilia. And though the season brought a sharp sting with it, Tony’s joy and love for it was contagious. Peter couldn’t help but smile when he saw a Christmas hat resting on top of an old Iron Man suit, or an entire wall covered in high-tech Christmas lights. It reminded him of Christmas as a child, especially since he had started getting closer to Tony. Which was some whole other childhood dream, weird thing he was still figuring out how to navigate, come to life. After May had found out about Spider-Man, she called Happy, who called Mr. Stark and spent an hour ripping him a new one. Peter thought he would die of embarrassment right then and there. But to his surprise, it ended with Tony taking a more active role not just in the superhero antics, but Peter as well. Tony had even gone as far to invite Peter and May to his annual Christmas party a few months later.

Even May’s lingering fury was not enough to turn down the opportunity. The party is extravagance at its finest, overwhelming in its lavish embellishment. May abandons him three glasses of champagne in, leaving Peter to wander around looking for any familiarity with a growing sense of feeling out of place. He fidgets with his hands, adjusting the purposefully ugly Christmas tie May had bought him for the occasion, declining offers of the fancy cocktails, when he spots Happy. He basically sprints over to him.

“No, nope I did not sign up to chaperone you tonight kid. I’m security.”

“I’m 15,” Peter whines. “ I don't need a chaperone. Besides, May is here.”

“May, your single aunt May?” Happy inquires with a raise of his brow.

“Ew. No, no no no no. Do not ruin this for me. Please stop.” He covers his ears, as if that could help him unhear where Happy’s thoughts are.

Happy just shrugs. “Wanna be my, what do you call it? My guy in the chair.”

“As long as it doesn’t involve my aunt, sure.” Just then, Peter hears a crash, cringing as an ice sculpture shatters to the ground about forty feet away, onto the fake snow covering the floor.

“Okay kid, you’re on watch. Use that peter tingle of yours and super senses to make sure no one steals shit. We better split up though, it’s better for security if I cover one end and you the other. I’ve got Frozone over there.”

“Yes Mr. Happy, sir. Tha- Thank you!”

With Happy gone, Peter feels the loneliness return. It’s interrupted with the touch of a hand on his shoulder. “Ah, Underoos! You made it.” Tony says. “I see your aunt is hitting it off with Pepper.” They turn to the right and Tony waves. May’s head is thrown back in laughter and Pepper is pointing to her fiance. “Actually, wait this might have been a terrible idea.”

Peter laughs at that, and for the first time that night, he feels at ease. Mr. Stark’s hand on his shoulder is an anchor tethering him in this unfamiliar environment. As if he could sense it, Mr. Stark lifts up his completely unnecessary sunglasses, leveling him with a smirk. “You okay? I know these can be pretty overwhelming. I ordered some eggnog and apple juice just for you, you know since you can’t enjoy the adult beverages. I mean, I was at your age but this is why you are better than me.”

“I’m okay, Mr. Stark. Thank you for inviting me. And everything.”

“I couldn’t not invite my favorite young adult. Aren’t you youngins supposed to be the epitome of Christmas spirit and all that jazz?”

“I mean, look at my tie. It’s got Christmas spirit.”

Tony opens his mouth to respond, but closes it. “You know what, here.” He reaches into his inner coat pocket, pulling out a small, red wrapped package. “You seem like you could use some Christmas cheer.” Tony hands it to him, turns on his heel and calls out “Merry Christmas, Pete” as he walks away.

The following weekend, Peter sits on a ratty quilt in a deserted graveyard on Christmas morning. May is standing back, giving him some semblance of privacy. “Hey mom, dad, Ben. I...This year has been surreal. I saved New York. And Mr. Stark got me a Christmas present. It’s a watch that turns into web shooters and it is possibly the coolest thing ever and I think we’re like, friends? It’s nice, really weird, but…” Peter sighs, pulling at the grass around the stones. “I miss you all. And Mr. Stark really loves Christmas and sometimes it’s hard, because I don’t. But he makes me want to love it too. And this little girl told me that Spider-Man is better than Santa Clause, which is insane, right? I wish you could see me. May said you’d be proud of me, but. I just really wish you all were here.”

-/-/-

2017

When Thanksgiving rolls around the next year and starts off the holiday season, it brings the ache of grief with it. He doesn’t have the time to dwell in it like he has in years past, too preoccupied with AP tests, the SATs, Spider-Manning, and bi-weekly training and lab days with Mr. Stark. So when the billionaire invites him to his personal, small family, Christmas, he’s really confused and surprised when the main emotion that surfaces is one of overwhelming sadness for the family he’s lost. Ned would probably have a conniption if the roles were reversed, passing out on site of elation. And it’s not that he isn’t excited, it’s just…

A guilt, he’ll realize later. But naming it doesn’t make it any easier. He knows he isn’t replacing them, he knows that, but it feels almost paternal, how Mr. Stark looks after him, knows his schedule, and worries over his safety to an overbearing extent. And now he’s somehow a part of his family Christmas.

“Are you sure you want me to come to Christmas dinner, Mr. Stark? I don’t want to intrude on your family-”

“I wouldn’t invite you if I didn’t want you there, Peter.” He says. The use of his actual first name stops him in his tracks, only reserved for moments of seriousness. It’s enough to quell the insecurities for now. He’s not going to ruin anything about his mentor’s favorite holiday.

“Okay.”

It’s only Tony, Pepper, Rhodey, Happy May and Peter Christmas Evening, though the amount of food could feed triple that amount. Peter’s excited, but drained from the earlier holiday festivities, so he takes the time to admire the decor around the house. It’s elegant, obviously Pepper’s doing, and he tries to force some of the magic of the season into his bones. There’s a tree in the corner whose tip caresses the ceiling, and it unlocks a memory that Peter had forgotten:

Peter sits atop his fathers shoulders at age four, reaching as high as he can to put the star at the top of the tree. When he leans forward, his glasses slide to the tip of his nose. “Daddy, my glasses!” he calls, but it’s too late and they fall to the floor. In the commotion, he drops the star too, and it breaks. Peter begins to cry.

Richard bends down to retrieve the fallen items, and swings Peter back around to his front. “It’s okay, your glasses are fine.” He holds them out to him. “See?”

“But,” his lip quivers. “But I broke the star. I’m so sorry daddy.”

He shushes him gently, pulling him in a hug. “The star doesn’t matter. What matters is you’re okay. You didn’t fall. It’s okay. I’m gonna put you on the couch while I clean up this glass,” Richard kisses his head. “I think it looks better without it, anyway. It’s too tall for a topper.”

“You’re not mad?” Peter asks, voice cracking.

“Mad? No, of course not. It was an accident.”

Rhodey’s laughter brings Peter back to the present and he forces a smile. Peter looks around and even Happy looks happy, animatedly gesturing as he retells an embarrassing story from Tony’s past. He tries to focus on the story, fingernails digging crescents into his palm, but it only draws blood and heightens the constriction on his heart. Peter excuses himself, racing off to the bathroom and locking the door.

He expects it to be May who finds him, but to his surprise it’s Tony who is knocking on the door a couple minutes later. “Pete? You okay in there?”

“I’m fine, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to worry you.” Peter replies, opening the door and refusing to meet his mentor’s eyes.

“Care to talk about it?”

“About what?”

“Come on, kid. I know you. You’ve been off. And not just today, this whole month. What’s going in that head of yours?”

He feels a single tear roll down his cheek and the words spew fast. “It’s just I, I hate Christmas, okay? Like the fact that people buy you presents is nice and everyone talks about getting together with family but I don’t have that. I did and all Christmas does is remind me that I don’t. My mom and dad, they loved Christmas, lived for it. It was a two month holiday and it was so magical and perfect and then they died right before Christmas and now Christmas just hurts, it really fucking hurts. And I know you love it and I don’t want to ruin it for you because no one should have something they love ruined, you know? I’m just, I’m just so tired. And it’s hard every year and I try to pretend that it’s not but. I just. I miss my family. I miss Ben and my parents and I really appreciate all that you’ve done for me and I don’t want to make this about me because you deserve to have a good Christmas. I’m sorry. I - ” He sighs deep, closing his eyes tight to keep the emotions at bay, and slides down the wall to sit on the floor. Tony joins him, sitting criss-cross-apple-sauce in front of him.

“I, I’m not great with this emotional stuff, and I think, well my therapist would say my way of coping is doing everything in excess. My parents died just before Christmas, and my dad was not the ideal father and my mom, I don’t know how she put up with him, loved him even. But I have three good memories of my parents together, and one of them was on Christmas.” Tony pauses a moment, lost in the recollection. “And I love Christmas because I’m just trying to get that feeling back. Sometimes I can. Most of the time I can’t. You don’t have to pretend to like Christmas for me, or for anyone. But you do have to pretend to like Pep’s cooking.”

“She’s a great cook!”

“Your comparison is your aunt who I’m pretty sure destroyed your taste buds with her date loaf.”

“At least I don’t eat gross rich people food that no one can pronounce.”

Tony gently elbows him. “Tell me about them, your parents.”

Peter smiles, and it feels genuine for the first time in two weeks. He doesn’t usually talk about them, and he wonders now if it’s because no one ever asks. As he begins to talk, he feels a weight lifted from his chest he hadn’t realized was there. The grief is still there, but it’s sting is subdued, and he feels himself actually appreciating the holiday for the moment. Tony’s a better listener than Peter would have expected and it isn’t long until he’s sharing his stories with everyone. May’s anecdotes add character and details he only remembered from the times she would tell him. It feels nice, sharing this part of himself with the people he now considers family.

-/-/-

2018

It’s stupid how it happens really. One second he’s singing to himself to the tune of Jingle Bells “Thwipping through the streets of New York every night. Wrapping bad guys up in my web so tight. Crawling up the walls, making villains fight. What fun to make the holidays free from crime tonight. Oh-” And the next his body slams full force into a crane and through a building. He will never live this down, as Karen reminds him now that he’s conscious and recovering in the Tower’s medbay. Mr. Stark, sympathetic at first, has now played the video for all of the Avengers. This is death by mortification, and if he doesn’t live until Christmas, his obituary will read “killed by quick wit in an attempt at holiday spirit gone wrong. His untimely demise is the fault of mentor and fellow Avenger, Iron Man, who thrives off Spider-Man’s constant embarrassment.”

The super drugs Dr. Cho has him on keeps him wired and restless. In the three days since he has broken his leg and fractured his ribs, he’s eaten copious amounts of food, mostly cookies because “it’s Christmas. Don’t deny me these joys”, played hours of video games, Facetimed Ned, binge watched the first season of Chuck, and begged Tony to let him work in the lab. He’s met with a no everytime, with Tony, May, and Dr. Cho saying he needs to rest instead of work.

“I’m tired of resting. I want to do things.”

“You should have thought about that before you didn’t pay attention to where you were swinging, Tarzan.” Tony replies.

Peter groans, overly dramatic. Christmas Eve is tomorrow and he can’t even walk. May’s staying with them, both her and Peter not wanting to be separated so close to Christmas. She’s been burying herself in books, and Peter knows it’s just a distraction from the grief that resurrects this time of year. He couldn’t be more grateful she’s here with him though, her presence a balm keeping him from tearing at the seams. And no matter how energetic he acts, the seasonal anxiety still thrums just beneath the surface, worsened by his injured state.

He needs to move. He needs to do things. He needs -

“Tony, can I fly your Iron Man suit? I don’t even need to walk and-”

“Absolutely not.”

Christmas Eve is quieter than normal. They play Christmas movies all day, different Avengers rotating in and out. It’s the first prolonged period of time he’s really got to spend with them since Tony and Steve made up a few months ago. Things are still tense, especially between the aforementioned heroes, but Tony seems more content and Peter was more than ecstatic to meet everyone. Natasha is the one that’s surprised him the most: she’s kinder than he would have thought, taking an immediate liking to her “fellow Spider”. It’s still surreal to see her lounging around in her pajamas, eating cereal, doing normal people things. She’s made it a game to throw random things at him to see if he’ll catch or dodge it. He usually ends up getting hit with two pillows a day when he stays at the Tower.

It’s late Christmas Eve night when he realizes he won’t be able to visit his family the following morning, and the anxiety he’s been fighting explodes to the surface. Friday alerts Tony to Peter’s change in vitals and he’s there in fifteen seconds.

"Breathe with me Pete. Come on, you’re okay. In and out, feel that?” Tony grabs Peter’s hand, pressing it into his chest. “Mimic me. You’re safe. Breathe. You’re doing great.”

Minutes pass before Peter’s breathing returns to normal and he leans into Tony’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he whispers.

“Anytime. . .Wanna talk about it?”

“I-” He sits up and opens his mouth to refuse, but something stops him. Maybe this is something he can fix. “I spend every Christmas morning since my parents passed at the cemetery with them and Ben and I - I can’t tomorrow.” he gestures to his casted leg. “I just, it’s the only way I know to...honor them. Be with them. Christmas was their favorite day, I just, I have to spend it with them.” There’s a pause, the weight of Peter’s words syncing in.

“Wow kid, that’s really fucking sad.” Tony responds, squeezing his shoulder gently in a sign of comfort. “But, what kind of billionaire, philanthropist, superhero and mentor would I be if I ruined your depressing Christmas tradition because of a broken leg?”

“Wait, you - I can go?”

“Yeah, get some sleep. We’ll go in the morning.”

They wheel Peter to the headstones the next morning. He thinks it’s a little dramatic, but he knows that his fractured ribs will be thankful. It’s surprisingly warm for a December 25th, and Peter’s just thankful to have May, Tony, and Pepper there - the new and old truly blending for the first time. Pepper had brought three sets of flowers, and the gesture warms Peter from the inside out.

He tells his parents and Ben about joining the Avengers, defeating the Green Goblin, and how he’s about graduate high school. Tony even speaks up, talking of the more embarrassing moments on missions and in training. May talks about wine nights with Pepper, and the new office job she started in September.

Peter doesn’t realize he’s crying at first, not until May is bent down in front of him, wiping a tear from his cheek.

“I’m sorry. I don’t - I don’t know why…”

“Shhh, it’s okay baby,” May says, misty eyed herself. She grabs the handle of the wheelchair and turns him around. “Let’s go get some tissues from the car.”

It gives Tony a moment to himself and he sighs, sitting on the ground between the stones.

“Hi, I...I haven’t even done this for my own parents, so it feels a little weird.” Tony sighs, putting his hands in his pockets. “I just wanted to meet you and say that… God, I don’t know what I’m doing. But Peter is such a good kid. His heart is so kind and big. He makes me want to be better. To be a better man, maybe a father someday. He’s a little reckless at times, I blink and he’s injuring himself or doing some teenage superhero bullshit, which also makes me second guess the whole father thing…” He trails off, clearing his throat. “But I wanted to thank you for raising him. For making him the man is. He told me a little bit about you all last year. I wish I could have met you. All of you. . . I’ve made too many mistakes to count, some even with Peter. But I will do everything in my power to protect him. And I just wanted you to know that.” He claps his hands, rubbing them together to break the tension he feels. “Okay, well. . . Rest easy Richard, Mary, and Ben.” He touches their gravestones in farewell, and walks back to the car.

#tony stark and peter parker #spider man #my writing #irondad and spiderson #ironman #irondad fic #iron dad #Ironman and Spider-Man #the avengers #peter parker #tony stark #may parker #christmas #christmas fanfic

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