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Tony
It all started the way it usually did; with Tony doubting his own sanity.
“Happy,” he said, turning the paper over, then turning it back, squinting at it. “What the hell is this?”
Happy barely glanced up from his phone. “How should I know? I just drive you around, I don’t try to understand your designs. You’re the one who left it in the back of the car yesterday.”
Tony turned the paper towards Happy, tapping a finger against the scribbles in the margin. “I didn’t write that. I thought it, but I didn’t write it. What sorcery is this?”
“Oh shit, sorry,” Happy said, expression resigned. “I’m guessing the kid went through them when I drove him to school this morning. He has no regard for personal boundaries.”
“The kid.”
“Um— My girlfriend, she has a—“
“Your stepson did these calculations?”
“That’s not entirely—“
“Bring him to me,” Tony commanded.
-
Happy’s stepson was fifteen years old and about yay high. He wore a knitted sweater with elbow patches. There was a blue line of ink running down one of his cheeks, and a tattoo in a weird script on his collarbone.
“Stepson?” The kid repeated, with a glance to Happy.
“I— I didn’t say that,” Happy quickly assured him. He was definitely looking concerned. Like he thought Tony might eat this kid alive if he looked away for a second.
“Lab or workshop?” Tony asked.
The boy plucked at a loose thread in his sweater and said “huh?” in a distracted voice, instead of gaping at Tony in reverential awe like any normal person would do.
“You’re going to show me what you can do. Where do you want to start? Lab or workshop?”
“Hey,” the boy said. “Hey. Hey dude, do you even know my name?”
“Did you just call me dude?”
“Well, I don’t know your name either. Perhaps we could shake hands and do introductions? Is that an option?”
Tony took off his sunglasses and looked between the boy’s brown eyes for a moment, then poked his sunglasses at his own chest. “I’m Tony Stark.”
“Okay,” the boy gave a single nod. “I’m Peter Parker.”
“I’m Tony Stark,” Tony repeated, because it seemed like the kid wasn’t really getting it. Didn’t he know his stepfather worked for 2014’s TIME person of the year?
“I’m Peter Parker,” the boy said in the exact same tone. “And, uh. Workshop, I guess. Is Happy coming?”
“Yes, I am,” Happy quickly said. He still looked concerned, but perhaps more like it might be Peter who would be eating Tony alive.
-
“That’s pretty big,” Peter said, slowly stepping around the workshop. “You must be rich.”
“I do all right for myself.”
Happy rolled his eyes. He was following Peter around very closely; there was literally only about two inches of space between them at all time. “Don’t touch that,” he said when Peter reached a hand out towards Tony’s adiabatic cooling system.
Tony huffed. “Hogan, nothing in here explodes.”
“Don’t lie to me. I know that’s BS. Don’t touch that either, Peter.”
“It’s just a spectrophotometer, Haps,” Peter said. “They are only deadly when you stick your head in the meter like this.” He bent closer. Happy yanked him away by the arm and Peter chortled with glee. “Okay no jokes,” he said. “What can I do, Mr. S.?”
That was exactly the question Tony wanted answered, himself. “Who’s your favorite super hero?” He asked.
“Spider-Man.”
“No it’s not. Only little kids like Spider-Man.”
“You like Spider-Man,” Happy said. “You never shut up about him.”
“Who’s your favorite super hero on the Avengers team?” Tony asked. “Pick a real one. I’ll let you look at their tech.”
The boy crossed his arms, swaying a little on his feet as he gave Tony a measuring look. “Can I look at Iron Man’s suit?” He said it like he didn’t know Tony was Iron Man.
“Because you like Iron Man?”
“Because I like his suit.”
“Right this way.”
-
It only took the boy a staggering four and a half minutes to come up with a useful improvement on the Iron Suit. “What happens when the suit breaks during a mission?” he asked as he rattled at a chest piece of the suit in a way that made Happy wince.
“You mean because someone broke the chest plate?” Tony asked in a pointed voice.
“Uh-huh,” Peter said, not taking the hint.
“I take it down to the workshop and fix it.”
“Doesn’t it have a compartment with small tools, for emergency repairs on the road?”
“Um.”
Peter inspected the metal gloves, hands running along the seams in the metal. “For instance, I wager you could work a tiny screw driver into one of these fingers. That whole glove could double as a Swiss army knife.”
“Not bad,” Tony allowed. “Start by making some sketches.”
“What?” Happy said.
“What?”
“You said this would only take half an hour. I have stuff to do. There’s a new security guard I gotta show the ropes. I don’t have time for this, Tony!”
“Hey,” Peter took half a step back and poked his finger against Happy’s chest, a warning clear in his voice. “Haps. You know what happens when you act grumpy.”
“Don’t you dare, Peter, I’m at work.”
“You get tickled.”
“No!” Happy barked, stumbling back as he wildly mowed his arms around. “Fine. Fine. I’ll just pick you up later. I’m sure you two will be very happy together.” He locked eyes with Tony. “Stark. Keep. Him. Alive.”
He fled the room.
“That,” Tony said, “was grandiose.”
“I know who you are, by the way, Mr. S.” Peter said. “Like, big fan. I was just messing with you.” He grinned a huge grin.
-
“So,” Tony said, chin leaning on his hands. “So what’s your deal?”
Peter didn’t look up from his sketch. He sat in a desk chair, one leg tucked underneath him. “Do you have a scale ruler?”
Tony got him a scale ruler. “Are you in college yet?”
“No.”
“I was in college at your age.”
Peter tilted his head and looked up at him, and Tony realized he may have sounded like he was bragging. “That must have been lonely,” Peter said, and went back to his sketching.
“Doesn’t high school seem like a waste of time for someone with your capacities?”
“We all waste time,” Peter said. “I just waste mine wisely. Do you have tracing paper?”
Tony got him tracing paper.
“Eighty five percent iron,” Peter murmured as he copied his drawings. “Inoxidizable. Fifteen percent chromium. Can I make a test version?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. Can you?”
“Do you have any old versions of your suit for me to take apart?”
Tony did.
-
Happy very rudely interrupted them in the middle of test version three, and he wasn’t even bringing coffee.
“How is it rude that I want my own kid back? You’ve been down here for hours.”
“He’s not your kid anymore, he’s mine now. I’ll have a contract drawn up.”
“No he’s not,” Happy said. “I saw him first. Finders keepers.”
“Don’t forget the ‘Losers, weepers’ clause in that deal. You snooze, you lose. You hit your feet, you lose your seat.”
“Tony—”
“More importantly. Where is my coffee?”
Happy ignored that question. “Pete?”
Peter finally pulled his attention away from the mass of exposed wires under his hands. Apparently, being fought over like a kid in an ugly divorce hadn’t fazed him much. “Uh-huh?”
“How you doing, buddy?”
“What time is it?”
“Almost two.”
“When do you get off work?”
“Five.”
“Okay,” Peter said. “I’ll stay until five.” And he started plucking at the wires again.
“Did you have lunch?” Happy asked.
He only got a distracted “huh?” in response.
“Did he have lunch?” Happy asked Tony.
“Huh?”
Happy threw up his hands. “I’m in a nightmare. I’ll send some food down.”
“Send coffee,” Tony said.
“Can you please just look after him, Tony? That kid has no regard for his own wellbeing, it’s honestly frightening.”
It was cute to see Hogan’s fatherly side. “I won’t let him get hurt, Hap. And he’s having fun. C’mon. He’s doing great work, I’d hire him if I could.”
Happy looked half-way between skeptical and impressed. “Really?”
“Why have you been hiding him from me, you stingy bastard?”
“I mean. I knew he was smart,” Happy said. “But I must admit, this is beyond what I imagined.”
Happy
Happy was not having his best day.
The supply of coffee beans had apparently not been re-stocked in time which meant there was no coffee for anyone. Peter was down in the workshop, possibly still alive. Rick, the new security guard, was a bit over-eager to his taste. The whole thing was giving him a headache.
“I went out and got coffee for Mr. Stark.” Rick said, holding the cup in front of him like it was holy water.
“That’s not part of our job description.”
“Above and beyond, sir!”
Happy’s headache intensified by a factor of three.
“I’ll go bring it down to him, then?” Rick suggested, already slinking out of the office.
Seemed the young man just wanted an excuse to be up close and personal with Tony. “I’ll bring it down, give me that. You, sit there and watch the security footage.”
He returned once again to the workshop, where Tony and Peter were now sitting at a table, both scribbling endless notes on paper. It was almost disconcerting how similar they moved, eyes shooting back and forth across their own workings as they mouthed along to the calculations in their heads.
“Finally,” Tony said when he laid eyes on Happy. “Also, Thor left his hammer lying over there on my desk. He needs to come pick it up. It’s in the way.”
“You think I have an alien god on speed dial? Have your damn coffee.”
He handed the cup over to Tony, only for Peter to suddenly jerk out of his seat and slam the mug away. It flew through the air, splashing coffee over all their calculations and sketches. The mug clattered to the floor and broke in half.
“What the hell, Peter!” Happy spluttered.
“I mean,” Tony said. “Yeah, kind of, what the hell?”
Peter stared back and forth between them, his eyes wide. “Uh.” he said. “Uuuhh. You. You can’t drink that.”
The two men stared back at him.
“Shit.” Peter said. “Um. Well. Wow. I wonder how I’m going to explain this.”
“Peter.”
“It’s just a feeling, okay? Where’d you get that coffee?”
Happy never used to be the superstitious sort. He still didn’t like to say that he was, but having Peter in his life certainly had tipped the scales a little. He was, by now, all to familiar with the kid ‘getting a feeling’ about things, that usually turned out to be right. And why not? Why not, in a world with mind-controlling alien gods and astral planes and mirror dimensions?
He cautiously approached the broken mug and picked one half up by the handle. “Don’t drink anything until I checked this, not even tap water.” And, into his security comm system: “Bette, I need you on top of our new security guard, stat. Watch his every move.”
“Happy,” Tony said, and the Are you being fucking serious? was heavily implied in his tone.
“Peter, come with me,” Happy ordered.
It was one of those rare occasions where Peter obeyed without protesting or cracking jokes. He clearly didn’t want to be left behind with a bewildered Tony Stark any more than Happy wanted to leave him behind.
-
The test results came in soon. Tetrodotoxin. Extremely toxic. One sip, and Tony would have been a dead man.
“Uh. Close call.” Peter said as he read the results over Happy’s shoulder.
To call that an understatement would be an understatement. “You are going home. I’ll talk to you tonight.”
“I— Yeah,” Peter said.
-
“Isn’t this a bit much?” Tony asked as Happy ushered him into the elevator, back to his own private floor. “FRIDAY informed me that Bette is holding the new guy in a choke hold as we speak. And I’ve been held in a choke hold by Bette, so I can tell you from experience that we’re entirely safe.”
“Do you have any idea how rigorous our background checks for security guards are? Not to mention they also managed to screw with our food logistics. Jesus, Tony, this isn’t just some rando who took a chance. This was planned. You and Pepper are staying up here until I feel sure that I have everything under control.”
Tony casually twirled a screwdriver around in his hand. Happy hadn’t even allowed him to clean his stuff away before dragging him out of the workshop. “How rigorous was the background check on your new girlfriend and her son?”
“Excuse me?” Happy growled. “The kid saved your life, Tony.”
“I’m not saying Peter tried to kill me…”
“How else am I supposed to understand this?”
“You’re my forehead of security. Why doesn’t it concern you that a random kid knew my coffee was poisoned?”
Happy decided not to make a grumpy remark about the choice for the word ‘random’. “Look, Tony, the kid had a feeling. That stuff happens sometimes. It’s uh— your subconscious manifesting or some—“
“Are you claiming your stepson is psychic?”
“I’ve seen it before. He’ll hold out an arm to catch me before I trip over my own shoelaces. Stuff like that.”
“You are claiming your stepson is psychic!”
“You literally had a sorcerer over for dinner last week. Why does this seem so unlikely to you?”
“Touché,” Tony allowed.
“When did Bette take you in a choke hold?”
“Minor case of mistaken identity.”
The elevator doors opened and they stepped out into the living room. Pepper was already there, barely glancing up to acknowledge them as she tapped away at her laptop’s keyboard.
“Can you make me a vodka martini?” Tony said, dramatically sagging into the seat next to her. “Lots of olives. I’m terribly upset.”
“Do it yourself.”
“Hey, I almost just died!”
“Just another Tuesday,” she said.
-
Happy didn’t get off work at five. Rick was arrested and taken away by the police for interrogation, and Happy spent many long hours working out how he had slipped through their background checks, where he had gotten the coffee, and how their own supplies had been sabotaged in the first place.
It was nine o’clock by the time he finally stumbled into his own living room. It seemed Peter had heard him coming down the hallway, because he was already heating up leftovers.
May sat at the table. “Only the two of you can turn a meet and greet with Tony Stark into a disaster.”
“Having met him,” Peter said. “I feel pretty confident that anyone can turn a meet and greet with Tony Stark into a disaster.” He set a steaming plate down in front of Happy. “So what happened?”
“Corporate spying of the highest level. Possibly, Oscorp.”
“Really?”
“The IP address that was used to hack the system of our food distributor belongs to the husband of one of Oscorp’s board members.”
“Far out,” Peter said, like the hippie he was.
Happy rubbed his face. “Kid. How’d you know that coffee was poisoned?”
“Just a feeling,” Peter held up the fingers of both hands in a peace sign. “You know how I’m all in tune with my surroundings.”
“Cut the crap, Parker.”
“It was a feeling, though.”
“I’m gonna need more than that, kid.”
“Yeah, I figured,” Peter said. “Well. Maybe it would be more accurate to say I have some… minor enhancements.”
“Minor enhancements.”
“I got a weird insect bite. Had a trippy night. And now I’m just a bit faster. A bit stronger. And I sense danger. Very nifty.”
Happy stared. A glance towards an equally open-mouthed May confirmed that this was news to her, too.
“How long has this been happening?” she asked.
“About a year.”
“And you never told us!”
“I didn’t want to worry you. And it doesn’t really affect my life, anyways.”
“Weird insect bite,” Happy repeated.
“What if your health is compromised?” May asked. “Shouldn’t we… Shit, I don’t know. Talk to our GP?”
“Trust me, my health got entirely un-compromised. I’m not letting a doctor poke at me. It has to stay off the records. I don’t want secret agents from the, uh, Establishment to come kidnap me and erase my identity and train me in their secret underground facility, all right?”
“They do that?”
“I don’t know, but let’s not find out, shall we?”
“Happy,” May said. “They do that?”
“What? I’m still stuck on the weird insect bite, I’m... Are there mutant ladybugs flying around the city?”
“No doctors,” May said, slapping her hand against the table. “Honey, I swear, if the freaking government comes after you, I will pack our bags and move us to… to Kyrgyzstan tomorrow!”
“Huh,” Peter said. “Can I bring my microscope?”
“They have microscopes in Kyrgyzstan, I’m sure.”
“I’m in a nightmare,” Happy said.
Peter squeezed him just below the elbow. “Bottom line. That’s how I knew about the coffee.”
“Yeah,” Happy said. “I mean. I knew you had a… a gift. But I must admit, this is beyond what I imagined.”
May
May actually could have dealt with mutant ladybugs. She could have dealt with those just fine. But there were other creatures that really had no business existing outside of fairy tales and sci-fi movies.
Because it appeared that actual fire-breathing dragons were now a thing.
“Three more ambulances on their way, more incoming, all burn victims!” someone hollered down the hallways. “They’re flying in specialists from Johns Hopkins!” Their burn unit was already at max capacity and nurses were running up and down the hospital to re-designate any empty rooms available.
May had finished a long night shift, and had been ready to go home and sleep for an unreasonably long time when the first wave of victims had crashed down on them like a tsunami. And now, three hours later, she had done so much running around that they might as well just hand her the marathon medal right away.
But it finally seemed the situation in the city was under control. Sirens wailed fewer and further between. Doctors and nurses from Johns Hopkins arrived, looking fresh and awake. May could finally, finally clock out.
She came home to a blissfully quiet house.
But the second, the second she was about to collapse onto her bed, her phone buzzed. The display said Tony Stark, which was weird because May had certainly never saved Tony freaking Stark’s contact details in her phone.
She answered. “May Parker.”
He didn’t state his own name. “Yes. Where to begin.”
“Why does my phone know who you are?”
“Everyone knows who I am.” Tony Stark sounded genuinely confused that she even needed to ask.
“Why are you calling me? Happy’s not here, he went fishing.”
“What do you mean, why am I calling you? Haven’t you seen the news? Or, you know, looked out the window at all today?”
“Haven’t you seen the news? I’ve been working my ass off all morning, Stark, our burn unit was jam-packed.”
“Duh,” Stark said. “We were there. Spider-Man was there. He got injured. We had to bring him back to the tower. And, uh. Take off the suit.”
“Okay,” May said slowly. “And what, you need treatment? Don’t you have your own medical staff?”
“So you don’t know,” Tony Stark said. “Huh. I guess Happy doesn’t know either. I retract my earlier statement about kicking his— You know what, let’s not go into details.”
“What.”
“Your kid, Miss Parker. Spider-Man. He’s fine, by the way. Or he will be.”
May’s brain needed a few more seconds to understand what he was telling her. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she then said.
-
Peter was snoring softly, his mouth slightly open. A large bandage was wrapped around his shoulder.
“God, he looks like a moron,” May said. She was feeling utterly pissed off.
“This is nothing,” Tony said. “You should have seen him out there with the dragons, all gung-ho. I think he was convinced he could tame one. And then it bit him on the shoulder. He lost a lot of blood, but he’s doing fine now. He’s got a solid healing factor. Nifty.”
“Happy?”
“Yep. He’s on his way. He was rambling a little on the phone. Something about moving to Kyrgyzstan.”
“We’re not moving to Kyrgyzstan.”
“Good,” Tony said. “Because you should really consider Kazakhstan instead. They have no extradition agreement with the US. — That’s right, I know my escape plans.”
-
Happy arrived in a whirlwind of spluttering and swearing and flipping out. It woke Peter up.
“In my defense…” Peter started.
“Don’t.” May said.
“Okay,” Peter said, “well, the good news is I didn’t get eaten by a dragon. The bad news is, I didn’t get eaten by a dragon, because it would have been so trippy to get eaten by a dragon. But I got to fight one, which is almost as good.”
“I’m in a nightmare,” Happy said. “This is what you do every evening when you’re out? This is so, so bad.”
“I can take him under my wing, keep an eye on him,” Tony offered.
“That’s worse,” Happy said.
“Yeah, I second that,” Peter agreed.
“We could build you a new suit in my workshop.”
“Ooh, far out,” Peter said, expression doing a complete turn-around from recalcitrant to excited.
“I’m going to bed,” May announced. “We’re not discussing this any further until I can think straight. Stark. Where can I sleep?”
Tony waved at the white, plastic curtain separating Peter’s bed from the one next to it. “Mi med bay es su casa.”
May pushed through the curtains without another word, kicked her shoes off and crawled into bed. With any luck, she would wake up to find that all of this had been a hallucination.
“I mean,” was the last thing she heard Happy say. “I knew he was enhanced. But I must admit, this is beyond what I imagined.”
Peter
“I don’t want to fly, Mr. S.”
“Yes you do. Yes you do. Everyone wants to fly.”
“Not me. I’m perfectly happy swinging around.”
“Where’s your spirit for adventure?”
“Dragon ate it.”
Peter was pretty sure that the only reason May had agreed to let him build a suit with Tony, was because she knew it would keep him off the streets a little more. His aunt was a sneaky schemer. She could plot circles around someone like Natasha Romanoff.
Tony sat at the other end of the large table, an early prototype of Peter’s new suit lying between them. He was carefully stitching some wires into the fabric, a silver-colored thimble on his thumb. It looked really quite homely and zen. “Kid. Were you actually trying to tame that dragon?”
Peter used a pen to draw tiny flowers on the back of his hand as he waited for Tony to finish. “It was my plan B.”
“What was plan A?”
“I didn’t do plan A, because plan A never works anyways. And I don’t want to fly. Spiders don’t fly, Mr. S.”
“Spiders don’t swing either. Can you at least have a look at my ideas? The sketches must still be somewhere. I think over on that desk.”
Peter made his way over. There were tools littering every surface. A screwdriver with a glowing handle rolled away. A huge hammer sat right on top of a pile of sketches. Peter set it aside and leafed through the papers until he found one that looked promising.
“Well?” Tony asked when he sat back down at the table.
Peter scratched his chin as he took his time to study it. “I got eight legs.”
“Very observant.”
“I don’t know, Mr. S. ... Less is more, you know?”
“More is more,” Tony said. “Better to have it and never need it, etcetera.”
Tony still had a lot to learn. But Peter was happy to take him under his wing.
“What’s it mean, by the way?” Tony asked, pointing at Peter’s tattoo.
“It’s Sanskrit for ‘screw you’.”
-
Happy picked him up when his own work was done for the day. “C’mon. Let’s go cook dinner for your aunt; get you back in her good graces.”
“That is a high priority,” Peter agreed.
“We can stop by a gas station on the way back, you can buy her flowers.”
“Flowers are a symbol of consumerism.”
“Your aunt loves symbols of consumerism.”
Peter smiled. “Fair play.”
Tony folded the prototype away and started rolling up the sketches.
“Don’t work on it without me,” Peter warned. “Or I’ll make you undo everything next time, young man!”
“Oh, for the love of—“ Tony suddenly cut off, mid-sentence. He looked as if he had spontaneously frozen in place, eyes unblinking, mouth hanging open slightly as he stared down at the sketch in his hand. The old one, where Spider-Man had eight legs and wings.
“Boss? …Tony?” Happy asked, sounding alarmed.
“Holy shit.” Tony croaked and rose from his chair, his eyes shifting up to Peter’s face.
“Tony?” Happy repeated, one hand protectively hovering over Peter’s shoulder.
“Holy shit.” Tony took a step closer to Peter. “You moved Thor’s hammer.”
Peter leaned back. “What?”
“The large hammer over there on the desk. You moved it.”
“Well – yeah, the sketches were under it. Was I not supposed to? I can put it back.”
Happy groaned and dropped his head into his hand. Tony was still looking at him like he actually grew four more limbs. Peter wasn’t sure what exactly he did, but he had a feeling it would not help him get back in May’s good graces.
“I mean,” Happy said, voice muffled. “I know you’re something else, kid. I always knew you were something else. But this is just batshit crazy.”
“What did I do?”
Tony was still gaping like a fish out of water, so Happy explained instead: “That hammer was enchanted by an alien god, so that only a worthy person can wield its power. No one else can pick it up or even move it. No one. No one.”
“Oh,” Peter said, relieved, because that didn’t sound like something May would get upset over. “Far out. What can I do with it?”
“I don’t know. Hit people over the head.”
“I can do that with a normal hammer.”
“Well. Yes.” Happy said.
A beat of silence.
“Okay,” Peter said. “Well, it’s cool anyways. Shall we go then?”
“What?”
“The flowers. I’m thinking orchids. And butternut squash curry for dinner.”
“Yeah,” Happy said. “Why the hell not. Orchids and butternut squash.”
“Orchids and butternut squash.” Tony said. He shook his head and finally continued rolling up the sketch. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“See you next week?” Peter asked.
“Yup,” Tony’s head bobbed up and down. “Yup.” He grinned, then, and lightly punched Happy in the shoulder.
“I know,” Happy said. “I know. Okay, kid. Let’s go.”
-
“Oooh,” Peter rifled through the papers he had found stuffed under his seat. “What’s this? …’Nanite Materialization’.”
Happy glanced over. “I guess Tony left those in here.”
“Can I go through them?”
“You know what? Knock yourself out, kid. Knock yourself out.”