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Tony wakes up to Peter nearly climbing onto his back. Tony is facing away from him, which isn’t how they usually sleep, and he hears Peter shifting closer and flinging one arm around his waist. He grabs his shoulder with his other hand and then he sighs, heavily, and he stays like that for a few long moments before he gives up, arms sliding away, simply burrowing closer and pressing his cheek to Tony’s back. Tony smiles to himself, his eyes still closed, and he remembers what it was like to wake up in that cave. Cold, dank, lonely.
This is infinitely better.
“Chicken nugget,” Tony says.
“That me?” Peter asks.
“Yes sir,” Tony says, smiling wider.
“You are awake now,” Peter says, drumming his fingers on Tony’s back.
“No, I’m still asleep.”
“Awake awake awake.” Peter grunts, and he grabs Tony’s shoulder and tries to tug on him. Tony sighs dramatically and rolls onto his back, careful not to bowl Peter over, but Peter just giggles and helps him roll. His tiny hands scramble.
“There we go,” Peter says. “Because you turned around.”
“Not on purpose,” Tony says, eyes still closed.
“Because I big snore when I’m deep sleeping.”
Tony snorts. “Yeah that’s true.”
“You’re supposed to say no it’s not!” Peter exclaims. He climbs on top of him and leans over, hands squishing Tony’s cheeks. “Open your eyes daddy open your eyes! I’m here not in dream land and you said I am the priority over everything else that includes laying in bed pretending to sleep!”
Tony lets out a big pretend snore, and Peter gasps.
He leans down, nuzzling their noses together. “Dad-dee. Today is the day Auntie May and Uncle Ben go home so you have gotta wake up so we get all the time we can get. Because I don’t want them to go but I’ve cried enough that I can’t cry again ever until I am 37.”
Tony groans and finally opens his eyes. Peter is hovering there above him, still gently holding onto his face, and Tony wraps his arms around him.
“They’ll be back again soon,” Tony says. “Or we’ll go there. For Christmas, maybe.”
“Mhm.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“I know, you never lie.”
Tony does not want them to leave. He doesn’t. He wishes they’d just move here, but he’d never bring that up because he’s the one that left to begin with and he’s sure it would turn into some kind of passive aggressive argument, because May is still trying her hardest not to argue with him. His gift, for being gone for so long.
He’s been back for six days. Stocks are in an out of control free fall, Obie isn’t happy with him, the board is dead silent, the press have tents set up here and at SI. And Ben and May have to go home. Tony feels like he’s been on pause, almost, and he knew Ben and May leaving would break the spell.
He can feel it breaking.
“Okay, Petey,” Tony says, patting Peter’s sides. “Let’s go spend some time.”
~
They’ve only got a couple hours, but they make the best of them, with a brunch in the park, some pool time, and then a lunch down near the airport.
Ben hugs Tony while May swings Peter around and around and around.
“So you’ll be available for me to call,” Tony says, patting Ben’s back. “To call for—advice.”
“You better not be saying you need to call for help with Peter,” Ben says, gripping Tony’s shoulder. “No sir.”
Tony snorts. “Just for help with. Life.”
“You know I’m always there for that,” Ben says. They pull apart and Ben gives Tony a look, one he’s familiar with, furrowed brows and questions in his eyes. “When you coming back to New York, huh?”
“May ask you to ask that?” Tony says, raising his eyebrows.
“Just want my favorite people fifteen minutes down the road again,” Ben says.
“Never say never,” Tony says, patting him on the shoulders.
“I didn’t and I won’t,” Ben says, raising his eyebrows.
Peter rushes over and Ben seems to know before it’s happening, because he scoops him up immediately. Tony watches as he presses kisses to Peter’s cheek, teary-eyed, and once again Tony hates himself for moving across the damn country. And now he’s got eight hundred fucking things going on and moving back in the middle of all that—feels like too much.
But every time he thinks about it, it feels like the right thing.
He just has to figure out when.
How to right a mistake that big that he never should have made in the first place? Jesus.
“We need to schedule phone calls now more than before because I like the schedules,” Peter whispers to Ben.
May rubs Tony’s arm, and he glances down at her.
“Take care of that heart of yours,” she says, raising her eyebrows at him.
“I will,” he says, knowing from the way she says it that she’s genuinely worried.
“And I know someone else who will, too,” she says, reaching down and holding his hand. Her eyes cut over to Peter.
And that’s just—
Tony sighs, looking at him.
The best person ever. The best person ever.
~
Peter is the best person ever, but what kind of person is Tony for keeping him from his family and friends? He goes through this shit daily, and worse when anything happens where they have to part from Ben and May, but he knows that even though the two of them want to be as close to Peter as possible, they wouldn’t want Tony doubting himself or giving himself a hard time. Especially after what he’s been through.
And he doesn’t want to be a little bitch about that. About what happened to him. Sure, it was fucking awful, sure, he almost died, sure, he has a huge hole in his chest now and shrapnel forever threatening to end his life at a moment’s notice if he doesn’t keep the arc reactor up to date.
Which reminds him, he needs to replace it. And soon. Maybe like, today. The updated one is all set and ready to go, he made sure of that the other night. But he’s just been so damned scrambled-brained.
But sure. Sure, to everything, how horrible it was, sure. But he’s enough of a wreck as it is, before all of that, and if he gets too into his head about it he’ll fall to pieces. He feels like he’s always inches from falling to pieces, and he was good, for a while, he was good, because he had Pete and Pete gives him strength, Pete keeps him level, Pete is his priority and he can’t be a dickhead and a drama queen when a little angel needs his love and care.
But this whole experience had him in his head. And he’s trying to get the hell out of there.
Tony and Peter are walking out of the airport to meet Happy in the garage, and there are a couple paps here because they’ve been tracking Ben and May’s plane tickets and Tony sort of wants to kill them. But he can’t do any killing in front of his son, so they just try to behave like things are normal.
Normal.
He needs to come up with a new definition of what that is.
“I um,” Peter says, walking very fast, and Tony tries to slow down so he doesn’t have to struggle. Peter squeezes Tony’s hand. “I um.”
“Yes,” Tony says, gently.
“I, uh, I,” Petey says, and he wets his lips and glances up at him.
“You got this,” Tony says, smiling down at him.
Peter giggles a little bit. “I know.” He looks away from him and his eyes go a little wide, and he blinks a bunch of times and breathes hard through his mouth. “I, uh...I…”
“Monkey, you don’t have to tell me whatever it is,” Tony says, as they turn and head for the door.
Peter giggles again, smiling, but he doesn’t look at him this time. “Uncle Ben and I did tons of activities when you were gone,” he says. “Because he wanted to distract me from missing you and make me not be a big blob in the bed because that was what I wanted to do, because I was so sad.”
Tony squeezes his hand now, and ignores the camera flashes from God knows where.
“But uh, he did that, and we did that, and we did so much stuff but one of the things was painting,” he says. They walk outside and Happy peels around almost immediately, and Tony picks Peter up into his arms. “Um can you sit in the back with me?” Munchkin asks, quickly.
“Course,” Tony says, pulling the back door open. “You painted?”
“Yes,” Peter says, crawling over to the big boy chair, which is in the middle because he was stuffed between May and Ben when they were in here. “Hi Uncle Happy.”
“Hi Squirt,” Happy says, as Tony gets into the car and shuts the door. “Straight home, Tony?”
“Yep,” Tony says. “And run over a couple photo-ogs on your way out, if you’re so inclined.”
“Oh, I’m inclined,” Happy says.
Tony snorts, strapping Peter into the seat. “So I’ve got a little Da Vinci in here, amongst everything else,” he says, leaning in and pressing a kiss to Peter’s forehead when he’s done, sitting back and buckling his own seatbelt.
“Is that a painter?”
“Yes sir,” Tony says, smoothing his hair back. “And what did you paint? Why are you just now revealing this very exciting fact? Or maybe you mentioned it before but not in full detail—”
“Because,” Peter says, with a smile on his face, and Tony can see him and Happy make eye contact in the rear view, like Happy already knows about this. “Because uh I’m not the very best—”
“Oh, but you are—”
“No—but I thought you would see them or find them one day anyways because it’s our house and you’re always going in all the rooms—”
Tony snorts.
“So um I painted you,” Peter says, and he says it with a smile, but he’s not looking at him, and his cheeks are all rosy like he’s afraid to be saying this at all. “A bunch of times. And sometimes I did random stuff like animals and the beach and stuff from my brain but we did this a lot and I did you a lot of times. You and me.”
Tony’s heart feels like it’s about to burst. He’s smiling so big his face hurts, and once again he can’t believe, he can’t believe, he cannot believe he’s been blessed with someone so incredible. As his own child? He doesn’t get it. How did it happen? He will question it forever.
“Mr. Pete, I love that,” Tony says, reaching over and grabbing his hand. “I can’t wait to see them. I can see them right? Because I wanna see them. But only if you want me to see them.”
“Yes,” Peter says, grinning, holding Tony’s hand. “Yes you can see them but just be nice because I know they are not the best but I worked very hard and focused hard and that’s why it was good because the painting never made me sad because I was focusing too hard on it to feel the sadness.”
Tony cups Peter’s cheek and leans in, kissing his face. “No more sad,” he says, between kisses. “No more sad ever.”
“Ever ever ever,” Peter says.
~
He’s got all the paintings piled up in the den downstairs, and there are at least twenty of them if not more, in all varying sizes, and Tony is just half baffled when he lays them out and takes a look at them, completely speechless and touched and already sweating.
He’s in almost all of them, and some are soft and sweet like the two of them in a field of flowers, the whole family at dinner, Tony’s face with hearts and stars all around it. Then there are others, like him on a rocketship, the two of them in what looks like a flying Disney teacup, the two of them literally flying in a big, blue, cloudy sky.
Tony bends down in front of the flying one, just gaping at it, and Peter slides down next to him, leaning on him and wrapping an arm around his shoulders.
“See they’re okay.”
Tony scoffs, and he can’t even look at him because he’s transfixed. “Peter.”
“I can’t believe you what you are gonna say because you like me too much to say that they are bad.”
Tony winds his arm around Peter’s middle, eyes still scanning over them all. “Monkey, I need to get your head examined.”
“My head is the right size,” Peter says, patting Tony’s shoulder.
“Not the size of it,” Tony says. “The contents within.” He shakes his head. They’re genuinely good for a seven year old, with all the details and the brushstrokes and the use of color, and the way each person looks individual and like the person they’re meant to be, and the amount of love he’s loaded into each painting is almost enough to swipe Tony’s legs out from under him. He sees some sadness but thankfully, not a lot, and he wants to tackle Ben in a hug again for figuring out things to distract and soothe his child in his time of need.
“You’re a natural,” Tony says, rubbing Peter’s side. “They’re incredible.”
“They are OK.”
Tony tickles him and Peter buckles, giggling. Tony sits all the way down on the ground, and Peter sits on his leg, smacking at his hand to stop the tickling.
“They’re amazing, Pete,” Tony says, his voice breaking as he gets choked up, and he swallows hard. “Amazing. You’re not allowed to stop this, okay? If you like it. Because you’re too good at it.”
“We will see because I am a busy guy,” Peter says, shrugging.
Tony snorts, and finally pulls his gaze from the paintings to look at him. “Oh, forgive me, I forgot.”
“It’s okay,” Peter says. He sighs. “I have to wear my reading glasses when I do it to make sure I get all the small stuff the right way which is kind of dumb for me but it’s okay.”
“I like your glasses,” Tony says. “Everybody likes your glasses.”
“Everybody but me!”
Tony kisses his cheek. “I’ll look into how old you gotta be to get contacts, okay? I don’t know if that would bother you but if we can figure it out, we can try it, okay?”
Peter smiles at him and nods. Tony sighs, overwhelmed, as usual, and looks at the paintings again. He feels Peter move in and cup his hands around his ear. “I didn’t know that you’d really be able to fly when I did the flying one so I guess I can tell the future I guess,” he whispers.
Tony snorts, those waves of excitement rolling in his chest again as he remembers the suit, the specs, the possibilities.
“Yeah,” he says. “I guess you can.”
~
They head to Stark after that, against a long line of paparazzi along the road, and tons of celebration and clapping when they arrive that makes Tony feel a particular type of way that he can’t really put his finger on. Is that gonna happen every time he shows up here?
And Obie knows about the arc reactor, somehow, and Tony watches Peter’s face when Obie asks to see it. He watches his face when he unbuttons his shirt and reveals it, and he wonders about that look. Peter has always been pretty good with strangers, but Obie isn’t a stranger. Their conversations have been a little icy since the press conference, which feels like yesterday and months ago at the same time, and this is the first time they’re truly alone. Is that why Peter is acting strange?
Tony gets distracted from the thought when Obie clears his throat.
“Alright,” Obie says, covering it up almost as soon as Tony shows him.
“It works,” Tony says.
“It saved his life,” Peter adds, retaking Tony’s hand.
“I’m sure it did,” Obie says, looking down at him.
Tony sighs. “I know you still might be—a little, uh, sore—”
“Is that the word you’d use?” Obie asks, laughing a bit as he walks around him, back over to the tray of drinks in the corner.
“—that I didn’t give you a heads up about what I was gonna do,” Tony says. “But things are just—they’ve needed to change for a long time, and this is more—this is more me, after what I’ve seen now, and dealt with, and been through. I know this is the right thing. And I know the stocks are falling—”
“Plummeting,” Obie says, making himself a gin and tonic.
“—but I think we can recover,” Tony says, and Peter squeezes his hand. “Our future it—it lies elsewhere, now, new technology, more open business—”
“Just let me take care of this, okay, Tony?” Obie asks, turning around and looking at him. “Alright, speedy Gonzalez? You and I are a team, let’s—let’s tag in your other team member here, okay, son? Let me take care of this, and I want you to lay low. Both of you, because nothing gets the public stirred up more than seeing this sweet face, and especially the two of you together.”
Peter squeezes his hand again.
“We’ll see what we can manage,” Tony says, fully intending to continue to outline the company’s future direction, whether Obie wants him to or not.
“But I’m proud of you, Tony,” Obie says, already heading for the door. “Just like your dad would have been—even if you do make rash decisions. He was good at that too.” He holds up his glass in a toast and walks out before Tony can respond, and Tony sighs, his frustration rising.
“How did he know about the reactor?” Peter asks, with some bitterness in his tone.
“Guess Rhodey told him,” Tony says, looking down at him. “Or maybe Pepper or Happy. You okay with it?”
“I mean I guess,” Peter says, his brows furrowed. “Nothing to do about it now it’s done and over with.”
“You wanted to keep it our family secret?” Tony asks. “For now?”
Peter seems to consider that. Usually Tony is really good at reading him, but he feels a bit of a wall up, right now. “Yeah,” Peter says, gently. “As long as he does not tell anybody that should not know.”
“He won’t,” Tony says. “He’s family too.” He pauses, for a second, as they both think about that. Then he looks down at his kid. “You wanna go see the big one that runs the building before we go?” he asks.
“Yes,” Peter says.
They start to head for the door too, and Tony remembers what he was thinking earlier. “And, baby boy, I’m gonna need your help with something. Something important.”
“I am good with important stuff!” Peter declares, hopping a bit as Tony reaches for the door knob.
~
“Okay, monkey, you can see well, right?” Pepper asks, her voice taking a much higher pitch than normal. “Because this is. Because. This is.”
“You’re malfunctioning, Pep,” Tony says, grinning. “He’s got this.”
“I have...got this,” Peter says, his tongue caught between his teeth.
“This isn’t like playing doctor when you pretend that Uncle Happy has a broken ankle,” Pepper says, her nervous energy filling up the room. She looks up at Tony and glares at him. “You know he didn’t have to help. He didn’t. You have total control of this.”
“I do have to help because I’m in charge,” Peter says.
Tony snorts, and tries not to jar Peter’s workspace too much, which is—Tony’s own chest.
The arc reactor needed changing. He knew that. And who better?
He tries to cool Pepper down. “Listen, I knew I’d hit a snag and my big ole hands wouldn’t be able to take care of it quick enough, and look, we needed him—”
“Uh huh,” Pepper says, eyes fixed on Peter in Tony’s lap.
She’s holding the old reactor and Peter is staring down into the damn hole where the new one is about to go, and he carefully, oh so carefully, lifts out the wire in question that Tony needed to get out of there without causing a short. Tony was ready and waiting for some kind of emergency, for alarm bells and insanity, but Peter lifts it out without incident.
“Okay there it is,” Peter says, eyes wide, bracing one hand on Tony’s stomach as he hands the wire to Pepper.
“Okay,” Pepper says, taking one side of it. Her eyes are wide too. Both of them look so funny and Tony’s face hurts from smiling.
“Okay and we do not yank out the magnet we are gentle,” Peter says, reaching back in again to pull it the rest of the way out.
“We are gentle,” Pepper repeats, and she puts down the old reactor, finally, and takes hold of the new one to quickly hand him.
“That’s my baby in a nutshell,” Tony says, watching the top of his head.
“I am the best at Operation I win every time,” Peter whispers, and Tony feels the magnet disengage. Peter swaps it out with Pepper for the new reactor, fast as lightning, and DUM-E and U move in closer.
“Because you are a tiny cheater,” Pepper says.
“You did not even know what it was before I told you,” Peter says, eyes focused. “Attaching to...base plate…”
“Careful baby,” Pepper whispers.
Tony just watches, because he knows he’s got this. And it feels like a bit of an electric punch when it connects, and both Peter and Pepper jump, but Peter pulls his hand out and seals the reactor in, and that’s that.
All done.
“You okay?” Peter asks, hand on his shoulder.
“Tony?” Pepper asks.
Both of them are looking at him with heaps of concern and he nearly chokes in the face of it, once again staggered and struck by the kind of beautiful people he has in his life.
“Perfect,” Tony says, blowing out a breath. “Thanks guys.” He beams at them.
“It was squishy in there,” Peter says, as Pepper lifts him up off Tony's lap and puts him on the ground.
“Wasn’t me!” Tony says. “That’s all the reactor’s fault, not mine.” He swings his legs over the side of the chair, grabbing the hand sanitizer for Peter and pumping some into his hands.
“What should I do with this old one?” Pepper asks.
“Whatever you want,” Tony says. “Sell it? eBay’s a good market. Technically a body part though, if they’re getting technical, so maybe use an—an alias.”
She snorts, giving him a look. He absolutely one hundred percent wants to kiss her, because they haven’t kissed since they first time they kissed when he got back (which is technically their second kiss considering the trick Ben played on them years ago) but they haven’t discussed what’s going on between them and they aren’t exactly introducing it to Peter yet. Which is fine.
He still wants to kiss her, though.
“Okay, I’ll consider it,” she says, brushing her hand through Peter’s hair before she starts heading for the door.
“Going back to work?” Peter calls out, reading Tony’s mind.
“Yeah,” she says, apologetic. “Got about a hundred things lined up—”
Peter sighs.
“But I will be back for tacos tonight,” Pepper says, pointing at him. “Promise.”
“Better be the biggest promise, Miss Potts,” Tony says, grabbing his shirt from where it’s hanging around DUM-E’s neck. “The biggest one. We have a jar of jalapenos with your name on it.”
“And I’ll be back to claim it,” she says, raising her eyebrows. She gives them both a small smile before she heads out again, old arc reactor in tow. They watch her go up the stairs and disappear, and then Peter turns around and looks at Tony.
“We only have a couple more hours until dinner,” Peter says, blinking up at him.
“It’s been a long day,” Tony says, finding it strange that Ben and May were still here this morning. Sort of feels like eons ago, already, and he misses them.
“You think she’ll actually make it back?” Peter asks.
Tony stares down at him, feeling a little twinge in his heart. She shouldn’t have so much to do, why the hell does she have so much to do? Happy too.
“If she’s not back in two hours I’ll call over there and feign an emergency over here and get her to come back,” Tony says. “Deal?”
Peter grins. “Okay deal.” He keeps staring up at him, his expression changing a bit, like when he was trying to gear up to talk about the paintings. “You know you’re a superhero for real right?”
Tony scoffs. “Petey.”
“You are,” Peter says. “And um you said you were thinking of rebuilding the suit. You said that.”
Tony cracks his jaw. “I did say that.”
Peter stares up at him still. “So you should rebuild the suit.”
Tony stares back, feeling something shift in the air around them.
“Because now you have the new arc reactor the more powerful one that we just put in that will last longer and be able to power a more better suit the kind you can make here with lots of technology, like even better than your cave suit because you have more stuff to use. And stuff.” He nods and nods, breathing hard through his mouth. “And we don’t even have to make any promises right now about what you’ll do with it, or you know, yeah, and it will be a fun activity for me and you and for me to learn and for you to learn and it will be important to both of us and um I love you and I wanna do this with you so we should do it. If you want to.”
It’s felt like something since it happened. Felt like something in his heart and in his soul and he sees it in Peter’s eyes, too. He has since he told him.
Can he actually do something? Can he do something right with this technology in his hands?
“And maybe if we start making it we can tell Miss Pepper or you could tell her or maybe us together or just me, whatever, because I know it’ll be okay.” Peter nods and smiles and nods again, and then he leans in and hugs Tony around the middle.
Tony laughs and hugs him back, running his hand through his messy curls. “You’re getting too tall.”
“I’m not I’m still small I’m short for my age.”
“You okay with that?” Tony asks, looking down at him.
“Yes I’m me and it’s all good with me and who I am,” Peter says, squeezing him tighter.
“That’s what I wanna hear,” Tony says, his heart filling up with happiness. He sighs, and makes a decision, rubbing Peter’s back.
“Jarvis,” Tony says. “Open up a new file on my personal, private server, and import the blueprints and schematics I loaded in the day I got back.”
“Yes sir,” Jarvis says. “What shall I name the file?”
Peter grins up at him, his chin resting on Tony’s stomach.
“Label it Mark II.”