Chapter Text
“We’ve got another one, Boss.”
Happy frowned at the monitors, as though his displeasure could erase the image through sheer pique.
The kid didn’t look like much, slouched in the most uncomfortable chairs the building had to offer, staring down Reginald with a peculiar mix of earnestness, defiance, and pathetic exhaustion that made Tony itch to throw a blanket over the boy and stuff him with beignets and hot chocolate.
Not one of these, though, because the final one was already in Tony’s mouth as he scrutinized the latest in a long line of randoms pretending to be his sprog.
In the kid’s defense, and several others who’d come before him—especially as Iron Man’s popularity climbed—it didn’t look like an intentional grift. Something about the shine in his eyes, or the way he scraped his Chucks along the rug like he was burrowing in. No, this one didn’t come up with the idea on his own. More likely his mama needed a convenient scapegoat for her bastard and a PR-shined billionaire in hotrod red armor was a lot more flattering than Joe-the-out-of-work-stage-hand.
The kid sweet talked his way through the doors, past two levels of admin, and into the front desk guard’s office. If Tony was doing anything but dodging a shareholder meeting and waiting for F.R.I.D.A.Y. to compile her latest model, he’d have left this to Happy and been done with it.
But when the kid wrapped his hand around the edge of the desk and resisted Reg’s attempts to pry him away from it and back out the door, Tony knew it was time to lick off the powdered sugar (Pepper wasn’t there, she’d never know) and get his own hands dirty.
— — — —
Happy’s gripes the entire elevator ride down faded into the ruckus on the other side of the doors.
“Oh for the love of—hey, HEY. Punk, clear out. You’re disrupting everyone else in the building!” Happy barged ahead to help Reginald try to unstick the teen from his protest vigil that had been moved from the office back in full view of the front desk. With no luck, despite both men outweighing the shrimp by a solid buck fifty apiece. But despite vigorously yanking on both his arm and hoodie the kid remained stuck in place, desperation clear on his features.
“I just need to speak with him, please! It’s an emergency!” He peeled Reg’s fingers off his arm before pushing the man back, firmly but not aggressively, despite the tittering of the receptionist and another dozen rubberneckers Tony was apparently paying to gawk over their Starbucks instead of being productive at their desks.
Reg reached for his taser and that was Tony’s cue. He sauntered forward and the kid froze as he clocked the movement.
“Mr. Stark! Mr. Stark please, I need to speak wi—ungh! What the heck, bro? Did you seriously just—” The kid seized up with the taser’s shock and someone’s phone flashed with the snap that was sure to hit Twitter in about thirty seconds.
“Simmer down, Reg, and you too, Happy. I’m sure we can handle this without misdemeanor assault of a minor, hm? Put that thing away before we’re sued.” Another shutter-snap was the last straw. Tony raised his voice to the room at large. “The rest of you, vámonos. Go on, shoo. Back to it, lest your departments receive unscheduled audits from H.R.”
The rush for the elevator bank was truly satisfying to behold, especially if he ignored Happy’s eye-rolling.
The kid remained similarly unmoved, and looked remarkably unruffled given the twin jolts he received. He brushed shaking hands along his flanks before pinning Tony with his watery, excessively earnest gaze.
“Mr. Stark, I—I swear I don’t want to cause you any trouble. But I have to speak with you right away about,” the kid cast a wary glance around the lobby, and quailed a little, but cleared his throat, “about a family thing. Could uh, could we talk somewhere less public?”
“Hey, yeah, that’s fine. Give your information to Happy and Legal will contact you in five to seven business days with instructions—oh, and the kit. Hap, we got a kit somewhere to send with him?”
The kid paled. “Mr. Stark, this really can’t wait, I’m running out of time!”
“So am I, kiddo. And trust me, a rush on this won’t change the results we both know are coming.” Tony checked his phone and the noted the seventeen blinking notifications from both F.R.I.D.A.Y., nothing he truly wanted to deal with, but an easy enough excuse. He turned on his heel and waved vaguely to Happy, who nodded. But as he tried to walk away a hand latched onto his sleeve.
“Please Mr. Stark, I’m begging you. It’s been a really shit day and I’m out of options.” The kid’s eyes swam and fuck—that was some weaponized emotional blackmail voodoo right there. “If you’ll just—”
“Hands off, punk!” Happy yanked the kid’s hand back, which only succeeded in tearing the arm of Tony’s sports coat. What the . . .?
The kid blanched even more as tears spilled over. “Oh, oh crap, I’ll—I’ll pay for that s-somehow. Just please don’t toss me out. Mr. Stark, I have nowhere, there’s . . . if you’ll just let me explain, I know it’ll make the difference. You’re, you’re a hero, and I really need a rescue right about now.” The kid sniffed, more tears spilling over in mortification? Shame?—but didn’t release the half-ripped handful of bespoke wool suiting.
“Sir,” Denise, the head admin, called from behind the front desk, “I have our NYPD liaison on the line, if you want me to forward this to them.”
Happy grunted an affirmative and Reg kept his hand on his taser—they’d have to have a discussion about appropriate levels of force, his staff was entirely too zap-happy—but all Tony could see was pallor, a quivering lip, and big brown eyes that hadn’t released Tony from their grip since they first marked his presence.
“Why, kid? We can follow up with you, we will. You’ll be taken seriously and treated with respect by Legal. I promise.”
The kid swallowed, but forged on, “Because if I leave here today, I won’t make it long enough to talk to someone else. I’m out of time.”
And something about that rang true, didn’t it? The tone, or the scrunch of his brow. The shake in the hand still stuck to Tony’s sleeve . . . Or maybe it was just the appeal to his ego and need for heroics, he didn’t fucking know.
But the blaring notifications could wait, couldn’t they? What’s the point of being your own boss if you can’t blow off a meeting or three to cheek swab a rando. After zapping him, Tony supposed it was the least they could do.
Common decency, really.
“You’ve got ten minutes, kid. Hap, Reg, go get the supplies and meet us in the—” Tony considered the security office, then discarded it. Uncomfortable chairs really weren’t worth it. “—In the south lounge on ninety.”
“Boss?” He ignored Happy’s wide eyes in favor of tugging the urchin still attached to his person toward his private elevator.
“Come on, kid, you’re on the clock.”
— — — —
His sleeve was relinquished as the elevator doors closed, and the kid’s face had lost its misery as they reopened and his favorite meeting space had its intended effect.
“Woah . . .”
Tony smirked privately to himself as the kid goggled, and retrieved a water bottle for each of them. He gestured to the room. “Floor’s yours, privacy aplenty. Except for the security cameras that will catch you if you try anything.”
That brought the kid back to himself and his misery, scrubbing his eyes but not able to bring them back to Tony’s as he spoke somewhere in the vicinity of his sneakers.
“My aunt told me you’re my, well. Sperm donor’s probably more accurate than . . . I had no idea until three days ago. None. She could barely talk, and she used her energy to tell me my dad wasn’t my dad at all. It’s so messed up, Mr. Stark, and then everything went to hell and May couldn’t—”
The kid’s voice tremored with emotion, and Tony felt his heart squeeze in spite of being half lost in the ramble.
“—And this was the first time I could get over here but now I’m stuck and, and—I don’t know what else to do.” The kid trailed off in a broken, wet whisper.
“Well, first you could tell me your name.”
The kid blinked, cheeks gaining some color if only for the embarrassment. “Peter. Parker. Peter Parker, Mr. Stark, sir.”
Tony shuddered, “No sir, here. And your aunt, is she . . .?”
“Dead.”
The bluntness brought Tony up short. Gently, “I was going to ask why she was the one to tell you, and if there’s another adult I can call.”
“ . . . Oh. N-no.” Swallowing and scrubbing his palms on his thighs, Peter elaborated, “No one else. My mom and dad are dead. Uncle Ben, he’s gone too—he’s the one I was related to, or, or thought I was. Ugh, it’s so messed up.” Those hands clenched at his side, fumbling the water bottle, then fisted in his hair as the kid shook his head to gather himself or shake loose a reality that sucked slightly less.
Tony could understand either, at this point. But what he couldn’t square . . .
“Why now, kid?”
“Because she’s dead.” Tears hit the rug and Tony watched them soak into the berber beneath their feet, as he absorbed the quandary and Peter found more words.
“She’d been sick awhile, but it took a turn, y’know? Even knowing, even . . . it was so fast. And she dropped it all on me and now she’s gone and I had to leave her to come here. That’s why, Mr. Stark! That’s why you have to help me. The social worker lady was on her way back when I left, they were going to throw me in foster care. No legal guardians left,” Peter added, catching Tony’s eye with that fervent, determined glint he’d seen in the security monitors. “Except you.”
The kid wilted just as quickly, toe digging into the rug where the tears fell, as though the boy could erase the evidence like tracks in snow. “Or not, I guess. You could just toss me out like the security dudes tried to. But I had to come try, right?”
“Why not just let social services help you? Or track me down through them?”
“Are you serious? There’s no way they’d listen to some twice-orphaned kid claiming to be Tony freaking Stark’s. That woman was already circling like a buzzard along with hospital billing and the, the morgue person. Oh, god, May’s probably already been taken down there and stuck in a bag like Ben was—”
The kid was verging on hysterical now, clenching his hair in white fists and shaking his head like he could dislodge whatever shit show was playing in there. Tony, quite against his will, reached out to peel Peter’s fingers from his much-abused locks and tug the panicking boy over to the closest club chair. He sank, unresisting, into the cushion, more tears and miserable sniffles as he crumpled in on himself in a ball, knees pulled up to his chest.
Tony grabbed the forgotten water bottle from the carpet and twisted the cap off, squatting down and prodding the kid’s knee with it until Peter took the hint and drained the whole thing. Further talk was mercifully forestalled by Happy’s return with a white envelope and a lab tech Tony didn’t recognize, probably one of the interns Happy grabbed in a hurry, not assigned to anything crucial enough they’d miss it.
“As requested, Tony. Not that this punk deserves a single favor from—”
“Zip it, Hap.” Tony cut him off, unwilling to make the kid’s obviously shit day worse and already resolved to send him on his way with a ride and at least a check toward the funeral. Even if the rest of the story was too damned sad to be true (Tony hoped, good-fucking-night did he hope—) the tale with the aunt could be verified as soon as they got the kid back to the hospital and handed off to an appropriate authority.
The tech cleared her throat delicately, reminding him of the task at hand.
“Hi there, my name’s Laney,” she said softly, crouching down in Tony’s place as he shifted back to observe. “I just need to get a swab from the inside of your cheek, alright? Open.”
Peter dropped his chin as she popped open the sterile tube, but before Laney-the-intern-slash-tech could get the goods Peter wrinkled his nose and flinched away. “Ugh, what is that smell?”
“I—what?” she blinked.
Peter unwrapped on hand from his knees long enough to point at the swab with a glare. “What’s on that? It reeks like paint thinner and mothballs.”
“Oh, that’s just the culture medium we use for rapid assay, though I never thought it had much smell.” She took a subtle whiff from a few inches back, looked up at Tony, and shrugged. “It’s perfectly safe, I’ve used these on myself. Tastes a little bit like styrofoam but what can you do?”
Inexplicably the kid’s eyes lit up.
“What’s the formula of the medium? It’s not one I’ve seen before. Ringer’s, MS—that one’s my fave, White’s—”
“Ten minutes was over three minutes ago, kid, just let her get the sample and we can discuss the finer points of the biochemistry later.”
That the kid could rattle off culture media like favorite bands was absolutely not intriguing. Nope, not the slightest prickle of interest that his alleged-progeny had science smarts.
Peter cringed as the swab hit his cheek, plugging his nose and exhaling hard through his mouth as though he could blow the waft of it out and away. And when the intern finished, capping the swab and bustling away, Tony could have sworn the kid swayed dizzily back against the seat.
Odd.
“Tony, I can get him out of here for you.” Happy offered, arms crossed and his trademark surly face firmly affixed.
“No need, Hap, this’ll take her all of five minutes to confirm. Can you bring up a sandwich though? Club? No, reuben. You like reubens kid?”
“Uh . . .”
“Two reubens and some chips, good man. Thanks Hap.” To the kid, who was blinking at Tony like he’d never seen him before, he said, “The chef on today in the cafeteria makes my favorite version outside of this little delicatessen in East Village, but that wouldn’t be ready in five minutes. When was the last time you ate?” Tony finished, softer, eyeing the boy’s cheekbones, knobby elbows, and the shaking in his hands that only ceased when the kid wrapped them back around his knees.
The kid sniffed once and mumbled, “I dunno, breakfast maybe.”
“Today?”
Peter flushed but said nothing.
“Yeah, thought so.”
Brown eyes shot up at that, a hint of the earlier defiance coming back. “I had other things on my mind than food.” The pain followed like a shadow, “Couldn’t taste anything, couldn’t do anything other than just sit there as she faded away.”
What could he even say to that?
Fucking nothing.
Tony turned on his heel and went back to the fridge, fiddled around inside for want of something to do. Checked his notifications again, shot off an apology text to Pepper for missing the call with Hong Kong he didn’t actually intend to skip, along with the board meeting he absolute did.
And Peter Parker, miserable and too skinny and maybe smart and definitely determined and also possibly his son, closed his eyes in the silence that felt far too heavy for the kid’s years on this earth.
The silence was interminable and made Tony itch with all manner of impulses: to click his tongue and pop his knuckles, cue F.R.I.D.A.Y. to blast a playlist, start a game of random trivia and scientific theory and see just how bright the tragic little punk might be. But he did none of these things. Just sat in the stillness, eyes glued to his phone, until a grumpy Happy came bearing sandwiches and a wide eyed intern came bearing a file, clutched to her chest like it contained the secrets of the universe.
She tried to hand it to him—amateur—and Happy fumbled with the tray of sandwiches in his hurry to intercept it.
Tony’s fingers buzzed and his chest ached where the arc reactor used to be. The kid, for his part, didn’t so much as breathe, eyes pinned to the document that would shape his entire future.
Or, would it?
Well, no time like the present.
“You two, out.”
Happy blinked. Laney, to her credit, scurried right back out and was definitely due a solid offer once her internship concluded (he dashed off a text to Pep to that effect). When he finished, Happy was still standing there, expectant, until Tony made a shooing motion his direction and the man reluctantly shuffled out, too.
“Moment of truth, eh kid?”
Peter swallowed and squeaked, “I—I guess?”
Tony paused with his fingers on the seal, itching to rip it free but for the point begging to be made. “I’ll help you with your aunt’s arrangements, okay? No matter what this says, you’re gonna eat, and get a ride back, and work with one of my people to have a nice funeral. Least I can do. Capisce?”
The kid bit his lip, but nodded, eyes glued to Tony like a heat-seeking missile as he pulled the report from the manila envelope and scanned the contents.
And with devastating, world shifting force that surprised him less than it should’ve, the bomb dropped and remodeled Tony Stark’s entire fucking world.