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Tony’s nightmares are dark. They possess him, send him back into the moments he tries his hardest to forget. The ones that are buried and large, beating like a telltale heart. And everything is louder, everything hurts more, the emotions building and building and building until they’re a wall all around him, crumbling, stifling. A prison of his own making. He hears Howard yelling at him, hears his mother screaming. Metal crunching and bending, unrecognizable. All the ways he’s pictured it. Last moments.
He hears Mary say you’ll miss this.
He hears a baby crying.
His baby. Like Peter is there, that fateful night when Tony became an orphan. Like Peter is there, watching as Tony falls when he hears the news. Crying, crying, crying. Shock eating away at him.
Tony hears Peter hollering. Yelping.
And that’s not part of the dream.
He yanks himself out of it as if he’s tugging on his own collar, and he blinks awake just as Peter yells again. Tony is laying awkwardly against his pillows, the way he does when he falls asleep staring over at Peter, and he cracks his neck before he realizes exactly what’s going on.
Peter is balancing on his knees in the bassinet, hanging onto the edge with anxious hands. His eyes are wide as he wobbles back and forth, looking at Tony, and he yells again, shaking his head. He breathes fast, blinking, and if Tony didn’t know better, he’d say his kid looks worried.
He’s been known to let his nightmares seep into the world. Tossing and turning with the horror of them. Tony hopes he didn’t scare him.
“Hey, bud,” Tony says, clearing his throat. His body creaks as he moves, and Peter reaches out for him, bumping up and down anxiously. Tony picks him up and Peter immediately clings to him as he lays back, settling into a more comfortable position. Tony holds him close as Peter hums a little bit, tucking his head up under Tony’s chin.
“Sorry about that, Petey. Didn’t mean to wake you up. Bad dreams, huh? They’re awful. You better not ever have one. You tell me if you do. I’ll knock it out, I’ll get rid of it.”
Peter hums again, letting out a soft laugh, and Tony can tell by the way his breathing is evening out that he’s already falling back asleep. Tony supports him, wraps his arm around him, and presses a kiss to the top of his head.
He’s becoming more of a sap in private. He’s a sap in public, too, because sometimes he can’t stop himself, but public usually consists of Pepper, Obie, Happy—and he doesn’t exactly care if they see him being affectionate with Peter, because they’re gonna be around no matter what. May and Ben—Tony legitimately wants them to see, and sometimes he lays it on a little thick. Ben he’s pretty much got on his side already, but May—May makes him feel like there’s a game to be won. And he’s gonna win it. Sometimes he watches himself when there are strangers around, employees, people he doesn’t know as well.
But in private, things are natural. He does them without thinking. Peter is his little shadow, his little hype man—and Tony is continually shocked by how much the kid genuinely likes him.
He feels like he’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“You tired now?” Tony whispers, rubbing Peter’s back. “Huh? After the three AM crying session? I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you. I’m tired too. When you cry like that it makes me feel like I’m running a marathon. Yeah. It’s true.”
Peter snuggles up a little closer and Tony sighs, smiling to himself. He realizes he’s not gonna be able to go back to sleep now, because May told him that he cannot, under any circumstances, fall asleep with the baby in the bed. She gave him all kinds of horrible images to work with, horror stories, and he held Peter close and told her to cease, desist and he’s had it at the forefront of his mind, since.
He holds Peter and stares straight ahead, wide awake.
Tony does love holding him. He thought he might get sick of it, but he’s only fallen more in love with it—Peter’s little language, right in his ear. His hands on Tony’s face, his jacket, little Morse code taps on his shoulder. How he reaches for him whenever he’s being held by someone else.
The kid makes him feel special. Necessary.
But, as Obie recently pointed out, he’s losing the use of his hands. He hasn’t worked on the Roadster in what feels like forever, and it’s as if the car is calling to him now that he’s a father. It was his project with his own dad, one of the only things that made them feel close, if that word could be applied to them at all in any form or fashion. He’s got three or four bots on the docket, loving new family members for DUM-E and U, and about a hundred pages of bullshit he needs to go through for SI. A hundred being a low estimation. He has to send the specs for the Hotspur targeters to R&D, he has to oversee the final testing of the Dauntless missiles, and he’s supposed to prepare a presentation for the next quarterly meeting. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to. He just wants to lay here, be this. Priorities have shifted. Way faster than he ever could have guessed they would.
But he knows he has to do all of those things, logically, and he has to do them all with Peter. And Peter can’t exactly hand him a torque wrench or sign off on payroll, but he’s gotta be there. Because Tony doesn’t want to hire a babysitter, because May and Ben are busy most of the time, and because...Tony wants him there.
He’s in private, and he acknowledges that he’s a sap. He holds his baby closer, and acknowledges, gently, without judgement, without overthinking, that maybe he wants his baby with him all the time. He wants to be Peter’s every day, most trusted, most recognized person. If it can’t be Mary, Tony wants it to be him.
And Peter gets weirdly pissed when he’s in the same room with Tony but not being held by him. May encouraged Tony to break that behavior, but attempts at that only make Peter start crying and Tony hates that even worse.
Peter makes a little noise in his sleep, and Tony blinks, rubbing his shoulder. He starts humming the tune to the last song he listened to that Peter seemed to like—One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer—and he doesn’t think about the lyrics.
(he’s been doing good, with that. without that. so far, so good. so good, so good, so, so, so good)
Tony can be a moron sometimes, he knows that, but he’s good at solving problems when he needs to. “Alright, monkey brain,” Tony whispers. “We’re gonna figure out this you and me holding issue.”
~
Pepper thinks about the developing California offices. She thinks about all the things Tony was saying about moving to Malibu. She thinks about the house he was already having built, the one she disapproved of but he ordered built anyway. Pepper thinks about all that, and whether Tony is thinking about it too.
She heads down to Tony’s favorite workshop on campus, only slightly concerned that she hasn’t heard from him yet today. She’s got a pile of papers in one hand, his favorite spinach smoothie in the other, and too many thoughts in her head. Everything is different now. Astronomically. She can’t imagine him moving himself and the baby out to California now. He can barely function without Ben and May, despite the fact that he’s getting better and better at the whole father thing.
And boy, is he getting better at the father thing.
She heads down the stairs and tries not to think about how sweet it is. She tries not to remember what her heart did when he opened the door that night, and she first saw him holding the baby. Now that sight is basically tattooed on the backs of her eyelids, she sees it so much.
Pepper isn’t complaining. She’s not. Not at all. She doesn’t talk about it out loud. Why would she? Who would she talk about it to? Happy would see right through her.
Not that there’s anything to see.
She sighs to herself and types her code into the door, and when she walks in—
Tony is standing in the middle of the room. He’s got some kind of—she narrows her eyes—soft material strapped to his chest that looks like a strange maroon vest or something, and Peter—Peter is inside the contraption, his head sticking out awkwardly next to Tony’s right arm, both legs slipping through a too-large hole at the bottom, and his arms trapped somewhere inside. He’s smiling and laughing, though, which is the only thing that stops Pepper from slamming her hand on the wall to get Tony’s attention, like her fourth grade teacher used to do when they got too loud.
She gasps instead, and he looks over at her immediately. His music is blaring and he raises his eyebrows like he’d forgotten about it.
“Uh, Jarvis, turn it down to about a two,” Tony says.
“What are you doing?” Pepper asks, letting the door close behind her. “Are you doing experiments on Peter? Don’t do experiments on Peter.”
The room goes much quieter, and she hears Tony scoff, and Peter laughs in response. He slips a little lower in the contraption and Tony catches him so he doesn’t fall out.
“I am not doing experiments on my son,” Tony says. “Pepper. Virginia Potts. C’mon.”
“Then what are you doing?” Pepper asks, her hands on her hips. “Why is he in there? What are you trying to do? Is this some kind of symbiotic thing?”
Both Tony and Peter laugh at the same time, and it’s like the same sound but in different octaves. It nearly knocks her back.
“Obie made a point of saying I—am holding the kid so much that I barely get anything done, and he’s right, but Peter doesn’t like sitting in any of the chairs or being in his playpen if I’m within eyesight, and if I’m not within eyesight he starts freaking out, and I’ve gotta be within eyesight or I can’t see him and God knows what he’d get up to, huh?” Tony looks down at him then, bouncing him up and down.
Pepper stares at him. There’s something about this man. She doesn’t know what it is. Everything he does with this baby makes her heart skip too many beats, but he—he’s supposed to be a genius. And he is an idiot a large portion of the time.
“Listen, it’s—I just started, it’s in its beginning stages, I can tell what’s working and what’s not working—”
“Tony, what you’re trying to invent here? Exists. It exists already.”
Tony narrows his eyes at her. Peter kicks his little socked feet.
“You have literally been in baby stores—”
“I blacked out,” Tony says, shaking his head. “I black out every time. That’s why I buy so much shit. You don’t notice? I thought it was obvious.”
Pepper closes her eyes for a long moment. “A papoose, a—a baby carrier. There are lots of them, it’s not—it’s not a new thing, you can wear your baby on the front or on the back and they’re well made and have the right amount of holes for your child’s head and limbs, unlike what you’ve done here.”
“Didn’t I say this was a work in progress?” Tony asks, gesturing to the contraption Peter is still stuck in. And with that, it collapses, and Peter falls right out the bottom, the material giving way all around him. Tony was still holding onto him, thank God, but Pepper’s heart still sinks.
Peter shrieks with laughter as Tony gathers him up with both hands, holding him against his side.
“Work in progress,” Tony repeats, holding his chin high. “DUM-E wasn’t built in a day, alright? Now look at him. He’s got three brain cells.”
“I’m calling May,” Pepper says, reaching into her pocket.
“What?” Tony snaps. “You’re telling on me?”
“No,” Pepper says, with a sigh. “We need to actually buy you a papoose.”
~
May always feels like she’s on a mission when she’s in a department store. She’s there for a reason, she has a purpose, she doesn’t shop for leisure. There’s nothing about malls that make her feel at ease, despite the fact that her first date with Ben was in a mall. But this experience in particular is not one she ever expected to go through in her life. One, shopping with Tony Stark. Two, shopping with Tony Stark for a papoose. And three, shopping with paparazzi following them.
Tony doesn’t even seem fazed. He’s pushing the stroller with one hand and holding Peter with the other, and Peter keeps staring at May over Tony’s shoulder, the only thing keeping her focused.
He smiles, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes just the sweetest thing in the world.
She waves at him, and turns, finally catching sight of the line of baby carriers she was looking for. She veers off in that direction.
“Oh, hey, let’s signal our turns,” Tony says, behind her now. She can hear him following, the wheels on the stroller squeaking. “God, I hate this thing. You hate this thing? I hate this thing.”
“Are you talking to me or him?” May asks, weaving in and out of the mass of onesies, trying not to get distracted. She’s purposefully not saying Peter’s name, because she doesn’t want these goddamn cameramen to know. They might know already, but they’re sure as shit not gonna hear it from her.
“Him,” Tony says. “Yes, him. Little crazy baby.”
Peter laughs, humming happily, and May can hear another camera click. Her head whips around and she sees the group of paparazzi standing over with the fucking maternity bras, the assholes. There are three of them, all men, and for a moment, she loses her mind.
As she often does.
“Do you guys need some recommendations?” she yells, gesturing over to them pointedly. “Because I’d stay away from the lace. Won’t go with your complexions.”
Tony snorts behind her but keeps on towards their destination, the stroller bumping through the carpet like he’s off-roading. May is about to say she can hold the baby when she sees Peter sigh, snuggling into Tony’s neck. She has these moments, sometimes, when she sees things like that. Examples of how much Peter loves his father.
It would have made Mary happy.
May clears her throat, wiping at her eyes.
“Don’t worry about them,” Tony says. “They’re—they’re like wall flowers to me now. If you talk to ‘em they’ll want you to ask them to dance.”
“Oh, they’ll dance alright,” May says, not even knowing what she means when she says it.
“Okay,” Tony says, parking the stroller when they reach the wall. “Task at hand. How many do I need? Which one’s the most expensive?”
May rolls her eyes. “That’s not always how it works.”
“Usually is over here,” Tony says, clearing his throat.
“And that’s why you have that shitty stroller,” she says, looking him up and down.
Tony stares for a second. “Fair point.”
She’s noticed that he always gravitates towards the color red. May has no idea why, and she also has no idea why they even carry these things in red, and she tries to sway him toward something decent in gray, maybe navy blue. They try on a lot—too many—and Peter seems to revel in it. Being passed back and forth, being placed in each baby carrier, on Tony’s front, on Tony’s back, on Tony’s side. In cotton, in nylon, in polyester. He sticks his hands in the front pocket of one of the purple carriers. He flails around and squints in bouts of joy.
The baby is a degree of preciousness May couldn’t previously imagine. She worried a lot, in the beginning of all this, that Tony would give up, that he wouldn’t be strong enough. That he would leave this angel without a mother or a father.
But he’s all in. More than all in.
She just doesn’t get it. It doesn’t seem like him. But he doesn’t seem to be the Him she had in her head, the Him that flickered in and out of Mary’s life like a dying candle. This is a different man. Ten shades brighter.
That baby. That adorable, angelic baby currently attached to Tony’s chest.
As soon as Tony held him, they were connected. May didn’t want to acknowledge it then, in her grief and jealousy and anger—but Ben did right away, as soon as there was quiet. As he usually does.
he’ll be safe with his father, honey—you can tell there’s something there. something cosmic. tony just needed—a moment.
“Oh yeah,” Tony says, looking down at Peter. Peter looks up at him and smiles, not at all done with this, completely wrapped up in all the attention. Tony is wearing one of the navy blue ones, and Peter looks snug as a bug in rug. Tony pats Peter’s sides, tugs on his feet. “Yeah,” he says again. “This one—it said it has lumbar support, and it—that was actually true.”
“Is it comfortable?” May asks, her hands on her hips. It’s strange that he’s a natural wearing a papoose. Who the hell would have thought? Not her. Surely not her.
“Yeah, barely feel like I’m wearing anything,” Tony says. He raises his eyebrows high onto his forehead and cranes his neck down, trying to look at Peter. “Is he happy?”
“He hasn’t stopped being happy,” May says, and she can’t help but smile too, looking at him.
Tony grabs the label of one of the identical carriers still hanging on the wall. “Comfortable. Adjustable. Maximum comfort. Oh and hey—I can wear him til he’s three. So we gotta find the one that’ll hold him til he’s six.”
May snorts, looking down at the ground. Peter yells something incomprehensible, kicking his feet and flailing his arms.
“He likes it,” Tony says, brushing a gentle hand over Peter’s head. “Winner.”
May hears a couple more camera clicks behind her, and once again, she feels like she’s gonna boil over.
“May,” Tony says, as she turns around. “Hey. Look at the baby. Look how cute he is. Look! You’re missing it.”
But she’s already on the warpath. They’re actually hanging out in the goddamn breast pumps now. And there are five of them.
“Hey!” she yells. “Assholes!”
~
Ben Parker wouldn’t exactly say he has friends.
He’s got coworkers. He used to see Dan Everton and Jack Morris at Neir’s, played pool with them there on more than one occasion, but he’s never had them in the apartment. They only met May because of all the times she stopped by the site to bring him lunch. Mary was his friend, Mary was important to him, but now she’s gone and his list of friends has narrowed again. May. Only May.
But May is all he’s needed. May is where the sun shines and where the birds chirp, May is every good feeling he’s ever had in his life—when she’s smiling at him, when she’s hollering, when she’s giving him one of her looks. She can read his mind and he can read hers, and he values the privilege of being the only person who can hold her back when she boils over.
So he can’t exactly say he’s been missing those nights at Neir’s, or the awkwardness of high school. Everyone liked him, sure. He’s affable and friendly, and he rarely made enemies. People have good things to say about him. But there hasn’t been anyone he’d call a friend. Not really.
So when Tony Stark asks him to get coffee on Ben’s only day off of the week, he goes in a daze and has no idea what to expect. May was at work when he was on his way out, but he could feel her energy. He knew she’d set this up.
Ben sits on the subway and thinks about how much he loves that baby. He and May have never been able to conceive, and they made their peace with that a while back. But Peter is like a little shining light, and as much as it grinds May’s gears, Tony is more than managing this. He’s doing well. That baby loves him, because that baby doesn’t have society’s Tony Stark in his head, the Tony Stark that May hates. May wants to try and change, wants to cultivate this relationship, and she constantly worries Tony will turn on a dime and kick them out of Peter’s life. So Ben is the peacekeeper.
Yeah, Ben likes Tony. He can’t really say why. There’s simply something behind all that gossip and Ben sees it whenever Tony’s in the room, and he’s real good with the baby. Peter didn’t like that pizza delivery guy early on and he wound up stealing their credit card number. Ben’s a big believer in the idea that babies can suss out the good from the bad. And Peter adores his father. So there’s gotta be something there.
He gets off the train at his stop and, to his shock, Tony is standing on the platform waiting for him. He’s got Peter strapped to his chest in the papoose May told Ben all about, the one Tony ordered ten different versions of in different colors. Ben’ll have to report back to May that he’s still wearing the navy blue one, because he knows she’ll want to be informed.
“I sent a car for you,” Tony says, throwing his arms up. “You didn’t see it?”
Peter shrieks happily when Ben approaches them, giving him that gummy grin. Ben smiles back, taking his outstretched hand, and he meets Tony’s eyes.
“You did?”
“I did.”
Ben scoffs. “Well. How could I have known that?”
“Do you often have strange Porsches sitting outside your apartment?” Tony asks, raising his eyebrows.
“Not before you came into my life,” Ben says. Tony scoffs and Ben grins, tugging on Peter’s hand. “Call ahead and warn me next time, I’m not prone to getting into random cars.”
Tony laughs. “Alright, yeah, I guess that makes sense. You good with grabbing coffee and running some errands with me? This thing has opened my life back up. This one even has the bottle holder attachment, I just gotta make sure he doesn’t squirt it out all over his face.” He runs the backs of his knuckles across Peter’s cheek in a loving gesture, and Ben smiles.
“That’s fine,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting to be wined and dined.”
“We’ll do that next week,” Tony says, heading towards the stairs.
They go to the Stumptown Coffee Roasters, which is one of the fancier coffee places Ben has ever been in, and he feels underdressed in his dirty work shirt and overworn jeans. But Tony, of course, walks around like he owns the place, and every single eye is drawn to him. Normally, Ben might worry he’ll be under scrutiny too, but Tony is Wearing The Baby. He’s Tony Stark with a baby strapped to his chest.
Ben’s been watching the news since Tony took custody of Peter, and they’ve reported on the situation plenty, but they don’t have anything from Tony himself or anyone around him. They somehow got a birth certificate with Mary’s name redacted, but Peter’s was out in full view for everyone to see. And they’ve been following Tony ever since. May had her own experience with them this past weekend, and Ben never thought he’d see paparazzi photos of his wife. She got pissed at him for laughing.
But Tony isn’t trying to hide. He waltzes up to the counter like he knows everyone is watching, holding onto one of Peter’s feet. Ben thinks it looks like pride. He is proud of Peter, and he doesn’t really seem to give a shit what anybody else thinks.
“I gotcha, what d’you want here?” Tony asks, looking over his shoulder at Ben.
Ben narrows his eyes at the menu. He doesn’t even recognize half of these things as coffee. “What in the world is a dirty chai?”
Tony laughs. “Miss Tanya, can you tell my friend here what a dirty chai is? He’s perplexed. That’s not just his face.”
Ben looks at Miss Tanya. She’s at least ten years Tony’s junior, but looking at him, she’s already blushing. Tony is holding Peter’s hands, tugging them back and forth, and he’s smiling at the woman behind the counter in a way that Ben’s only seen in the magazines.
Jesus.
“It’s a regular chai latte with a shot of espresso,” Tanya says, but she’s looking at Tony, not Ben.
Tony smiles, and Peter squeals, leaning his head back against Tony’s chest and beaming right up at him.
“Sounds like my son is interested,” Tony says.
Ben hears another woman aww behind him, and he turns and sees three of them looking. All of them enraptured.
Jesus.
For a moment, Ben wonders if Tony is using his kid for this attention, but then he catches another one of those looks between father and son—Tony smiling down at Peter softly, and Peter still looking straight up at him, with those big brown eyes. Peter is pure, unadulterated happiness, and moreso than when Ben last saw him, before Tony got the baby carrier. Peter seems to love being in it. Seems to love being so close.
No, Tony’s not using him. This is just how Tony is. And Peter accentuates everything everyone loves about him.
“So what are we looking at, huh?” Tony asks, rubbing Peter’s chest through the front of the papoose. “You looking for adventurous? You’ve got a lot of options. And they’ve got danishes too. I’ve seen you with danishes.”
Ben laughs, a little shocked that Tony’s even noticed what he’s been eating. “Uh, I’ll just have a small coffee with cream and sugar, I’m not picky.”
“And a danish,” Tony says, looking at the cashier.
Ben can’t help but smile. “I can pay—”
Tony scoffs, briefly glancing at him. “C’mon.” He looks at the girl again. “What he just said, a cheese danish, a dead eye for me with cinnamon and sugar, and—can I get one of those sprinkle cookies?” He cranes his neck down and kisses the top of Peter’s head, and Ben hears the women whispering. There are more people watching now, and their expressions almost look pained, they’re pouting so hard.
They get their orders and sit down, and Tony doesn’t seem to want to take Peter out of the carrier. He does it as if under duress, and Peter is frowning when Tony situates him in the high chair.
“Surprised both of you have taken to this baby-wearing thing so well,” Ben says, sipping his coffee.
“Yeah, uh, if I could have looked into my own future I never would have expected to see myself with one of those things wrapped around me,” Tony says. He digs Peter’s bottle out of the baby bag, a jar of mashed carrots and one of those rubber plates. “But he loves it, I love it, feels like it keeps him close to me and, uh—” He clears his throat, glancing up to look at Ben. “Yeah, we like it. It’s working for us.”
“That’s good,” Ben says, more excited than he sounds.
“Hey, can you grab me his toy possum out of the baby bag there?” Tony asks, starting to get Peter ready to eat.
Ben nearly chokes. “Possum?”
“Don’t ask,” Tony says, rolling his eyes. “Literally, he chose it, I thought it was for dogs at first, he wouldn’t stop crying unless I bought it, it was a whole big thing.”
Ben digs around in the mountain of toys, shocked at how it’s grown since he last saw the two of them. Every animal known to man is in here, some more outrageous than possums. “You’re really, uh. You really have a lot of toys, here. A good amount.”
“That’s like, one fifteenth of how many we’ve got,” Tony says, dumping out the carrots, readjusting Peter’s bib with his free hand. Peter is still frowning, not out and out crying yet, and he reaches towards Tony all teary-eyed. Tony kisses his hand, holding it against his own cheek for a moment.
Ben is staring just like everybody else.
Then he remembers his possum search.
~
They finish their coffee, Tony gets Ben a second cheese danish, and Peter cries after he eats, which Ben eventually reads as wanting to get back into the papoose. Then he’s happy again. He squeezes his possum and kicks his legs and is pleased as punch to be in that thing.
Tony’s errands aren’t like a normal person’s errands. He’s three degrees from everybody else, and he sends requests down the grapevine. Asks so-in-so to schedule a meeting with so-in-so. Asks what’s-his-face to speak to what’s-his-face for him. They head to the gigantic office park that serves as his company’s home base, and Tony signs contracts without looking at them in the hallways. He remembers some details that people bring up to him and forgets a ton of others. Half the time he’s lamenting that Pepper is already too busy to do these things for him. Ben isn’t really sure about how his mind works, and he’s almost hypnotized trying to figure it out.
But everybody. Everybody is watching him with that baby. The women practically swoon once he walks by, and none of them really question Ben’s presence. They’re far too distracted by the way Peter positively glows under all of this attention. Sometimes the kid screams like an alarm when people get too close, but he’s usually content and happy, all nestled in.
Tony brings Ben down to some kind of garage or workshop, and he seems to change into a different person than the one that was walking around in public. This is one they’ve seen glimpses of. The one that Peter surely gets to see all the time.
“And sometimes I have Jarvis just lie to everybody,” Tony says, holding Peter’s hand, walking around what’s clearly a familiar path. “I’ll be down here, doing whatever, and people ask where I am and he says I’m not on campus. Boom. Safe, happy, alone.”
Ben grins at him, crossing his arms over his chest. “Bet you could survive in here for a good week.”
“Oh definitely,” Tony says. “I’ve done it. So if you ever need to hide out, if May’s ever driving you too crazy—you’re welcome.”
Ben lets out a short laugh. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Tony shows him around more, shows him his cars, details the upgrades he’s done to them, tells stories about his near explosions and how he’s gotta be a lot more careful with all that now that he’s got Peter. He shows Ben the robots, and pointedly avoids talking about his company and the weapons they make. But he talks about the people who work here, and how much they’ve all taken to Peter.
It’s amazing how proud he sounds of this little tiny being, despite the things he’s accomplished in his life.
Ben snorts, looking down at his feet as they hover around the robot Tony calls DUM-E. “Wasn’t a normal day, but I, uh—I’m glad May put you up to this.”
Tony’s face changes. “Put me up to what?”
“I mean, I’m sure she told you to spend a half hour with me, tops,” Ben says, glancing back up at him. “Enough to get some Peter time in.”
Tony looks a little incredulous, and Peter is chewing on his possum’s head. “Oh, May didn’t tell me anything like that. She actually told me you wouldn't want to hang out and you’d pretend to be having fun.”
Ben’s eyes widen, and Peter giggles at him. “Come again?”
Then both Peter and Tony laugh.
“She didn’t put you up to all this?” Ben asks, his ears flaring a little red. “She didn’t—ask you to spend time with me?”
“Nah, it was my idea,” Tony says, swinging Peter’s arm a bit. “She literally told me my presence is a near torturous experience and she’d be making your favorite dinner later to compensate. I mean, Peter’s my only redeeming feature.” He looks down at him. “Huh? Yeah. You’re the best thing about me.”
Peter babbles up at him, smiling. Then he looks back at Ben and babbles too.
Ben laughs, crossing his arms over his chest. “Well,” he says. “Well. That’s nice. That’s real nice.”
“Did you have fun?” Tony asks. “I mean, day’s not over, we got the playpen setup and he’s starting to crawl so I’m doing that thing where I put his toys just out of reach and he crawls along to get them—love it, love it, you gotta see it. Just enough of a distraction to make him forget he’s not all cuddled up in his carrier.”
Ben doesn’t know why he’s feeling emotional. Might be a conglomeration of a number of different things, but he nods, smiling down at Peter.
He is having fun.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’d like to see that.”
~
Tony sits at the table across from Pepper, and he takes another bite of his burger. He watches her watching him. Peter repeatedly hits the elephant rattle on Tony’s knee.
“What?” Tony asks, his mouth full.
Her gaze flicks down to Peter.
“What?” Tony asks, swallowing, eyes narrowing. He looks down at him now too, and Peter looks up, smiling. He babbles something incoherent, and widens his eyes. “I don’t know,” Tony responds. “I have no idea what she’s looking at us like that for. Judging us.” He wraps an arm around Peter and raises an eyebrow at Pepper. “Yes, Miss Potts?”
“Do you ever—not wear him?” Pepper asks.
Tony lets out an exaggerated gasp, attempting to act scandalized.
Pepper rolls her eyes.
“He sleeps in his bassinet. Not in the papoose.”
“Tony.”
“And he has tummy time. Plenty of it. Not in the papoose.”
“You are literally sitting at a table, eating, and he’s strapped to your chest. He is almost always strapped to your chest.”
“No, no,” Tony says, absentmindedly taking Peter’s hand. “Sometimes he’s strapped to my back.”
Pepper sighs and looks away from them again, taking another bite of her kale whatever. “You need to free him, Tony,” she says. He starts to talk but she shakes her head, and he’s silenced immediately. “I know he likes it. I know you like it, and that’s sweet, but you’re gonna torture this baby into separation anxiety if you don’t stop literally trying to merge with him.”
Tony stares at her. Peter looks up at him again and babbles something that sounds like a question, and Tony brushes his hand through his hair, and continues to stare at Pepper.
She cocks her head at him. “Or, I mean, do what you want. You’re the boss. It’s not up to me. You just—I just don’t see the need in wearing him while you’re eating lunch. When he could be being active on his own in the playpen. He’ll get mad for a second but he’s a baby and he’ll take your cues if you act like it’s fine instead of behaving like you’re betraying him.”
Tony sighs. She always gets him when she talks like that, because he knows she’s smart and she knows what she’s talking about. “Fine,” he says, rubbing Peter’s chest reverently. “Just give me my last meal here and then I’ll try to—wean myself away.”
“It’s good for traveling,” she says, raising her eyebrows. “And when you’re busy. But when you’re just sitting around—”
“I get it, I get it,” Tony says. “He’s seven months old and I’m already overbearing.”
“It’s sweet.”
“It’s obnoxious.”
“It’s sweet.”
Peter shrieks and hits Tony’s knee with the rattle three more times. He does that fast breathing thing and bumps his head back into Tony’s chest, flailing.
“Well here we go,” a familiar voice says.
Tony turns, his heart in his throat, and sees Rhodey walk in through the door. He hasn’t seen him for a bit now, and it feels like a long time coming. Tony feels bowled over, for a second, with the idea that he’s actually here, someone that knows him inside and out and has seen him at his lowest. Seen him when Tony didn’t want anybody to see him. Pepper knows him, Pepper puts up with him, but Rhodey was there for all of it.
Pepper looks up and Tony gets out of his seat, one hand brace against Peter’s middle.
Rhodey is in full uniform, and his eyes go wide when he sees Tony. “Wow, wow, here it all is. Here he is in all his dad glory. Wearing a baby in a papoose.”
“Glad you found us,” Pepper says, smiling up at him.
“The two of you conspiring against me again,” Tony says, but he can’t help but smile at the surprise. His heart clenches a bit and he looks down—Peter stares at Rhodey for a moment and Tony panics, because sometimes he’s not good with strangers. The alarm screams still haven’t stopped, and he judges delivery men swiftly and almost always deems them worthy of tears.
But then he yelps, kicking his hands and feet, and breaks into a grin.
“You know I’m a friend, huh?” Rhodey asks, eyes trained on Peter. “You know I’m daddy’s best friend?”
“Oh, you’re calling me daddy?” Tony asks, raising his eyebrows as they get closer.
“Don’t make me kill you in front of your offspring,” Rhodey says, still not looking at him. “Hi, Peter. Hi, baby, it’s your Uncle Rhodey. Sorry I’m a little late but I’ve got a real job, unlike your daddy—”
“I love it, I love hearing it from you—”
“Tones.”
Tony snorts. “Alright, lemme—lemme free him, as Pepper was saying a moment before—”
“Yeah, she told me you were wearing him every second of the damn day,” Rhodey says.
Tony looks over his shoulder as he starts to undo the papoose, but Pepper keeps eating like she can’t hear them at all. Tony scoffs, and he’s become an expert at getting Peter in and out of this thing quick. But the crying usually starts pretty fast, because he likes being in the papoose, thank you very much Pepper, but this time his attention is entirely focused on Rhodey, excitement surging through his little body.
“Wow,” Tony says, unbuckling the last buckle and casting the thing aside. “He likes you.”
“He’s got good taste.”
Tony holds Peter against his side and maybe there’s something to that whole thing, about babies being able to discern what’s in people’s hearts. Maybe Peter can tell the connection here. Maybe he can sense Rhodey’s inherent goodness. And if he knows Rhodey is good after a second of being in the same room as him, it makes Tony feel more confident in Peter’s assessment of him. His complete insistence on loving him.
There’s that word. Isn’t it obvious what this is, what Tony feels? But it’s Tony’s fucked up brain, and he’s handling this well, yes, but how long is that gonna last? Will it break when he acknowledges how deep he’s in it? Because that’s all it needs. Acknowledgement. Using that word in his head or out loud.
Doesn’t he destroy everything he loves?
Rhodey distracts him, as he always has. “Alright, hand him over here,” he says, gesturing with anxious fingers. “Lemme see.”
Usually Tony gets nervous, handing Peter away, but there’s nobody he trusts more than Rhodey. Peter doesn’t reach out but he holds on once he’s in Rhodey’s arms, and he immediately starts touching all the pins on Rhodey’s jacket, intently.
“Gotta show off for my kid, huh?” Tony asks, feeling strangely like he’s missing something now that he’s not wearing the carrier or holding Peter. “Insignia out, honors—all over the place.”
“Gotta let him know who’s really in charge,” Rhodey says, through a soft smile. He watches Peter and Tony watches them both, glad it’s only Pepper in the room to see him get so sentimental.
Rhodey clicks his tongue. “Pictures don’t do him justice,” he says. “All six hundred of the ones you sent.”
“You know, angles are important,” Tony says. “But there’s nothing like the real thing.”
Rhodey smiles, and finally looks away from Peter to meet Tony’s eyes. “I wish I could have met her,” he says. “Because I see a lot of you in him but there’s—there’s a lot of his mom, too.”
“She was pretty cool,” Tony says, clearing his throat. He feels like she’s watching him constantly. Waiting for his inevitable fuckup.
Peter looks up at Rhodey and babbles something high-pitched at him, reaching out to pat his chin. Rhodey nods, scoffing when Peter is silent again, and Peter looks content, swinging his foot back and forth. He looks at Tony and smiles.
“Still so damn strange—you made a human,” Rhodey says. “Well. You didn’t do much.”
“I helped.”
“You contributed.”
Tony shakes his head, looking down at the ground. “It’s really good to see you,” he says, feeling closer to shore with him here.
“Yeah, man,” Rhodey says. “You too.”
~
“Look, see,” Tony says. He gestures to Rhodey, and feels a swell of happiness in his heart. “Look. Now we just have to get you a baby.”
“There’s one right there,” Rhodey says, pointing to Peter, once again strapped to Tony’s chest.
Peter shrieks, a shriek that sounds like what a question mark would sound like if it had a sound. He claps his hands together, happy to be pointed at, happy to be in the papoose again, happy that Uncle Rhodey is now matching his dad.
Because Tony had to prove his point. So he had Rhodey try on the red carrier that he plans to put in the rotation next. He had to fight for the red one, with May. But he won out in the end.
“Yeah,” Rhodey says, looking down at himself, adjusting the straps above his hips. “It is comfortable. Lumbar support.”
“Lumbar support,” Tony says, nodding, two arms around Peter now. “And he likes it.”
“You like it,” Rhodey says, walking over to him. Once he’s close enough Peter reaches out with pointed toes, trying to stick his feet in the leg holes of Rhodey’s papoose. “You’re head over heels. He’s got you wrapped around his teeny tiny pinky finger.”
“And?” Tony asks, looking up at him.
Rhodey gives him a particular look. He’s seen it a lot during the years, because despite the fact that Tony is difficult, Rhodey has always genuinely enjoyed him. “It’s just cute,” he says. “And insane. And out of this world. You’re—you’re you, you know? But this is the real you. I almost forgot what he looked like, man, I almost forgot what he sounded like. Who knew how long he was gonna stay in hiding if little guy here didn’t come along. And the bad circumstances.”
Tony clears his throat, watching Peter give up. But he swings his legs back and forth anyway. Tony’s heart is beating a little faster, because Rhodey could always see him. But can everyone else see him now, too? Is that what this means?
Is that something to be afraid of? That’s why he cultivated the whole persona to begin with. Fear.
“I’m glad to see it,” Rhodey says. “You should be too. It’s—unexpected, but it’s good, and you’re good and he’s good and it’s all gonna be good. It’s the right direction. You’ve got support. I’m gonna try to get back here more often. You’ve got Pepper and Obie and the aunt and uncle.” He clicks his tongue, shaking his head at him, fondly. “You love wearing that thing because that baby loves being as close as he can be to you and you love that and I love that for the both of you.”
“Alright, Mr. Love,” Tony says. Peter looks back at him, and stretches his hands up, making grabby fingers. He smiles wide, happily.
He’s the best thing Tony’s ever seen.
“Hey,” Rhodey says. “Where’s your camera?”
“In the office,” Tony says. “Good thinking, I need to get a picture of you in that thing.”
“Not a chance,” Rhodey says, already taking it off. “You’ve sent me ten billion pictures of the baby but you weren’t in one of them. Gotta change that.” He only unsnaps the papoose in two places, and it hangs off of him as he trudges out of the room and into the office. Tony snorts.
He doesn’t think about the real him, or any of that. Usually when he doesn’t acknowledge things they go away, or they resolve themselves, or they fall into someone else’s lap. Peter gurgles and starts giggling, almost as if he knows Tony is trying to ignore some responsibility.
He can’t really do that now. He’s a father. He’s a father. And he told himself he was gonna be a better one than his own. That’s not hard, but he wants to be better than better. Peter deserves the best.
“Right, monkey?” Tony asks, brushing his fingers through Peter’s mess of hair. “Right crazy pants? The best. You deserve the best.” Peter looks up again, still so joyful and happy, so much trust in his eyes. He exclaims, breathing fast, and reaches up, grasping at Tony’s chin.
Tony finds himself gazing. His son.
He hears a click and looks up. Rhodey is standing there with the camera and he pouts, dramatically wiping at his eyes.
“You know I’m not good candid,” Tony says, holding Peter’s hands. “All my worst photos are candid.” Peter starts sloshing around in the papoose, clearly excited about Rhodey’s presence.
“Nah,” Rhodey says. “That was some art, right there. That one’s going in the baby book. That one’s going in a frame.”
Tony shakes his head, but secretly, he can’t wait to see it.