Chapter Text
Tony was pretty sure that Manhattan would go down in history as “Worst Fucking Day Ever”.
After flying into space with a nuclear missile on his back, falling to earth, waking to the Hulk’s roar, manhandling Loki and watching Thor devour an entire restaurant’s worth of shawarma, it sure as hell felt like it to him.
And to top it all off, Pepper had called and immediately broke up with him, citing his “extreme suicidal tendencies” as reason. As if he had been the one to launch a missile at New York.
Now, three months later, Tony had effectively managed to throw himself entirely into his work. Effective by his standards. At least somewhat.
He wasn’t dead from alcohol poisoning or starvation, so that was a start.
“Tony, it’s been three days since I even saw you. I don’t even want to know when the last time you slept was.” Bruce called from the door to the workshop. Tony continued his scans on the latest armor and swiveled around to face his newest roommate. Bruce had showed up two weeks after the attack claiming that he needed to borrow Tony’s computer system and had never really left. Two and a half days later an entire suite had been built, complete with a padded room designed to contain a herd of rhinos or one very angry Hulk. Tony considered it one of his prouder achievements.
“JARVIS, inform the good doctor when the last time I slept was,” Tony gestured vaguely towards the ceiling and swiveled back around to face his work.
“It has been exactly 49 hours since you last slept, sir, for a total of 3 hours and 17 minutes. You ate half a banana and drank three glasses of scotch afterwards.” Tony was pretty sure that if AIs could emote, JARVIS would be oozing a mix of sarcasm and contempt.
“See? I’m nourished and everything.”
“Tony, you need sleep. And food. And basic hygiene.” Bruce sat down next to him and leaned against the table. “I know it’s been hard since Pepper and you… well, you know…”
“Since she waved goodbye and left for Malibu to run my company?” Tony offered.
“Whatever you want to call it, sure, but you have to take care of yourself. If you want to keep inventing and being Iron Man, you have to find a balance or you’re going to run yourself to the ground.”
“Fine, I can take a hint. But I'm not cooking.” With a groan, Tony pushed himself up and ushered Bruce towards the elevator.
“I took the liberty of ordering Thai food,” Bruce replied.
“That’s why you’re my favorite.”
The elevator dinged for the top floor and Tony and Bruce entered the newly complete penthouse, following the smell of noodles. Tony collapsed on one of the sofas and an exhausted sigh rushed from his lips without warning.
“I said you needed a break,” Bruce said as he pushed a carton into Tony’s hands. Tony muttered something that could have been considered a comeback 16 hours ago and dug into the food with a groan of pure ecstasy.
Several hours later there were four different empty cartons strewn around the suite and Tony was lounging on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. Bruce had gone to bed after forcing Tony to promise the same—he really had planned on sleeping, but there were a million ideas rattling in his head refusing him any rest—and the city outside was annoyingly bright and restlessly bustling.
From somewhere in the apartment, a phone buzzed loudly. It had been doing that for a while now but Tony couldn’t find the motivation to answer it. Now, he rolled over and stumbled off the couch and to his feet. “JARVIS, locate my phone. It’s gotta be around here somewhere, damnit…” he muttered.
“Your cell phone is currently on the counter in the kitchen, sir. As it has been for the past two hours.”
“One of these days I’m gonna totally rewire you, hear me?”
He grabbed for his phone and pressed at the buttons until it stopped buzzing. “Do you have any idea what time it is right now?” he groaned into it, not bothering with any greeting.
“Um… it’s 10 am? Sir?” Huh. No wonder the sun was bothering him.
“Who is this?” he asked, turning to the coffee pot and pressing buttons. Might as well get a head start on the day.
“You probably don’t know me, but my name is May Parker. I… I have something I need to tell you, Mr. Stark.”
“Whatever it is, can it wait for a few hours?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I really need to tell you this now. There’s… there’s someone you need to meet.”
“And who is that exactly?”
“It’s… your son.”
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After a very minor panic attack (“No, it really wasn’t minor” “Shut up Bruce, I’ve had worse panic attacks in my sleep”) and four cups of coffee, Tony managed to redial the number saved on his phone and have a halfway- sane conversation with the woman (Meg? Mabel?). Apparently her husband’s brother had a wife who had a kid that wasn’t biologically his (or something along that line, Tony had sort of glazed over that part), and no one had really known who the father was because she had refused to talk. In fact, they probably wouldn’t have known for years, except that the two parents had died in a plane crash that occurred during the Chitauri attack and they had taken in the infant. While cleaning out the house, the woman (who Tony now remembered was named May) had found a letter addressed for a Mr. Stark, which detailed the whole one night fling and her subsequent pregnancy, as well as her decision to “hide the child from the spotlight”. It was dated for 10 years from now.
This was very bad.
For one thing, it was pretty clear that the woman had never wanted her child to find out about Tony. The letter had clearly stated that he was never to make contact with the child and was purely for informative purposes should an emergency arise, such as some family disease or—hey, wouldn’t you know it, a freak plane crash over the ocean. In fact, the letter also contained a second copy of the woman’s will, which read that the child would be placed in the care of May and her husband. May had only called because she had felt guilty about hiding a child from its rightful father or something along those lines.
And that was only the first problem. Tony had no idea what he was supposed to do now—did she want money? What was her motivation behind this?—and, more importantly, he was still kind of reeling over the whole oh-my-god-I-procreated-this-is-terrible shtick. Hell, he didn’t even know the kid’s gender.
“Boy or girl?” he asked suddenly, cutting off whatever it was May was trying to say. Something about safe environments or something.
“Oh, forgive me, I completely forgot to mention. It’s a boy. He’s three and a half months old. Mary named him Peter.”
Mary. He searched through his memories for someone of that name but came up blank. If the kid was three months now, it would have put the time of conception right before he started dating Pepper, so at least he wouldn’t have to put adultery on his ever growing shit list.
“Okay, here’s my next question, and this one’s a kicker: why exactly are you telling me this?”
“Well, I just thought that you would want to know. I know that if I had a child out there I would want to know about him. If you’d like, you can see him.”
Well. That was probably a terrible idea.
“I… I’ll have to think about that, thanks. Listen, I’ve got a… thing, very important thing, crucial really, but keep this number and I’ll… call. Later. I just—”
“Mr. Stark, you can take as long as you need to think this through. I know this is all very sudden. And it’s a big change. Just call whenever you figure things out and we’ll be here,” May replied. She really was a sweet lady. She’d never once blamed Tony or anything, and that was saying something considering how incredibly at fault he was in all this. On so many levels.
Tony hung up the phone and collapsed face first into the couch. Bruce, who had woken up and made tea, was sitting in a nearby armchair and casually watching him.
“So?” he asked simply.
“Fuck my life,” came the muffled reply.
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It took three days for Tony to sit down and work things out. He avoided it entirely before that, throwing himself into work and booze and drawing up designs for hundreds of tech pieces that he would probably never develop and thinking about anything but a miniature him wandering around New York. It took Bruce’s constant reminders via Post-It to finally slap some sense into him.
You have to talk this through with someone, even if it’s just JARVIS.
If you don’t confront it you’ll feel guilty for the rest of your life.
Tony, I swear to God if you don’t get this together I will Hulk out and re-destroy the tower.
Okay, maybe it was that last one especially that did it.
So he sat down in his workshop and locked the door and blared AC/DC as loud as he possibly could and talked. He could do that. Talking was easy for him.
He made a list, entitled “Reasons Tony Stark Would Fucking Suck as a Dad”. And then below, in big bold words he wrote:
1. Because Howard Stark fucking sucked as a dad.
Which was true. Genius though he was, Howard had drank too much and cared too little and pushed Tony too hard all his life. Tony was already too much like his dad—adding a kid might just send him over the edge.
2. StarkIndustries is already my baby.
It was sort of true. Granted, it was the baby he had passed on to Pepper, but that should speak volumes about how incapable he was of handling any sort of child-related responsibility.
3. Workaholic. Alcoholic.
Yeah, that one was pretty obvious.
4. I am unorganized and messy and would probably forget to feed the kid and it would fall down the stairs or something.
5. Pretty sure “playboy” is not a great qualifier for a father.
6. Iron Man is unsafe.
7. Billionaire heir to company= big chance for kidnappings.
And so on and so forth. By the end of the list he had 23 reasons to never make contact with the kid.
And then he made another list and titled it “Reasons Tony Stark Might Be an OK Dad”.
And he sat there. And sat. And stared at a blank page. And then he called Bruce.
“Tell me I’d be a horrible parent.”
“You wouldn’t be a horrible parent.”
“You’re really not understanding the concept of this, Bruce…”
“Tony. I know you’re sitting down there making lists or whatever and you’re doubting yourself, but trust me when I tell you that you wouldn’t be terrible. Look at StarkIndustries. You managed a multi-billion dollar company for 20- some years and it’s completely successful. The only reason you gave it up is so you could save the world.”
So he wrote that down: 1. StarkIndustries hasn’t fallen under yet. That has to show some responsibility. Also, world- saving.
After that, it flowed a little easier.
2. All of my flaws are because I am alone. Maybe they can be fixed?
3. Genius Tony= genius kid.
4. Kids make life a little more bearable.
That one surprised him. He’d never actually known a kid himself—he’d been an only child and a genius to boot, playing with other kids had never really worked well—but he had seen parents with their sons and daughters, and he’d met a few couples at galas and family friendly functions who had brought their kids along. They’d laughed and run around and one kid had played a prank with Tony on some stuffy board member. He remembered those kinds of functions a little better than the others, the ones where he plastered on a smile and a gorgeous blonde and kissed the ass of every person in the room while schmoozing it up for the media.
Now that he was being honest with himself, he wrote whatever came to mind.
5. I have really nice brown eyes. Bet they’d look cute.
6. I make really good mac and cheese.
7. A reason to stop drinking.
8. Robot toys?
9. Disney movies are awesome.
10. It’d be nice to have someone else around the house.
11. Would force order into my life.
12. Cherry flavored medicine would be an acceptable thing to keep in the house again.
By the time he ran out of energy to write, he was at reason number 56 and still had others floating around in his head.
So he called May.
“I’d like to meet him. Peter. Soon.”