a/n: so this is a new story I'm writing because I'm very sad that five times Peter Parker didn't call Tony Stark 'dad' is over and I really enjoyed that but I always felt.. limited? Like I set parameters and I hated that so this is just a collection of loosely related scenes w/ Tony and Pete and I hope y'all like it.

ALSO: for my friends on Tumblr... I recently created a Tumblr (idk what I've been doing all this time) and if y'all wanna go give me a follow, I would literally love you forever. There's not much there right now, but I draw and paint and stuff too and would love another creative outlet w/ my lovely supporters. My username is the same as it is here on FF: psychicchameleon.

"Are you ever going to tell me what happened after Germany?"

The whirring sound of the welder ceased for a second. Tony lifted up his mask to look at the boy who was across the shop, dry-erase marker in his mouth, writing out calculus problems on the glass wall.

"Kid, what did I tell you about hanging from the ceiling?"

"You're jealous that you can't do it?" he said, using his sleeve to correct an error in his math.

"No."

"That it looks like a lot of fun? Because it is."

"Try again."

Peter pouted his lip. "It leaves footprints on the ceiling."

"Bingo."

The boy flipped himself to the ground, frowning as he looked up at his homework. "It's all upside-down now. I can barely read it."

Tony set the welding gun on the table, stopping to write a few notes. "Good," he said inattentively, "maybe it'll take you more than two minutes to work out the equations and you can feel like a normal kid for once. Who does his homework right-side-up. And hates calculus."

"Hey. You like calc, too."

"Yea, well. It's too late for me to be normal."

Peter rolled his eyes, walking over to sit in the rolling chair next to Tony's. "I know you're avoiding my question."

Tony didn't take his eyes off of the graphics in front of him. "What question?"

The kid rolled his chair around to the other side of the bench, his elbows casually leaning onto the tabletop. His face was shadowed in the blue light of the holographic screen. "The same one I've been asking for weeks now. Ow," he complained, rubbing his forehead after Tony poked it.

"You're in my blueprint."

"I'm trying to get your attention."

"Can you try to get my attention somewhere else?"

Tony rolled his chair away from the table so that he could look at the other side of the suit and avoid the voice that was talking his ear off.

"Mr. Stark—,"

He took a huge breath in, squeezing the tiny screwdriver in his hand until he thought it was going to break.

"What?!"

Peter's eyes shot wide open, taken aback by Tony's red face and flared nostrils, before flitting shyly to the ground. His shoulders rolled forward, hunching over in the backless stool as he stared at his toes.

"Nevermind."

Close to twenty minutes passed, the room silent save for the Aerosmith album playing quietly in the background. Tony kept fiddling with the suit, his hands twitching just a little each time he thought about the look Peter had given him. He opened his mouth, trying to muster up an apology, but it died on his tongue. Instead, he kept to himself, anxiously glancing at the kid periodically.

Another ten minutes went by, meaning Peter hadn't talked in nearly half an hour. It had to be some kind of record. Tony had spent the better part of that time trying reconfigure some wiring, but now he was just absentmindedly cutting and twisting the copper connections. His hands moved in a mechanical rhythm, unconsciously, because his thoughts were focused a million miles away.

Well, maybe more like a couple feet away. On a brown-haired kid doing homework in the corner.

Every time Tony looked over he was huddled over his textbook, spinning his chair gently from side to side and distractedly tapping a pencil against the table. He didn't look up from his book once.

Tony was going to make it up to him. He'd add those roller blade things (what did Peter call them, Heelys?) into a suit. Peter had been begging for them for weeks now, but Tony said they were impractical.

Who cares about practical. He's a kid. If it makes him happy he can have the damn shoe wheels.

Maybe he'd get him an ice cream, or take him to a movie, or let him drive one of the horribly expensive cars collecting dust in the garage. That would work, right? Kids like that kind of stuff, don't they?

He made a mental note to ask FRIDAY or Google or Pepper later: how to say sorry without actually having to say sorry. Tony pondered for a second, then added: how to make a teenager not hate you.

The consistent tapping of Peter's pencil ceased, prompting Tony to snap out of his daze.

"AH—," he screamed, nearly falling over in his chair.

Startled by Tony's loud reaction, Peter let a small squeal of his own before quickly composing himself.

"Sh, Mr. Stark, it's just me," he said gently, hanging from the ceiling by a thin rope of webbing.

"Jesus Christ—what in God's name are you doing?"

Peter cocked an eyebrow, still dangling in front of Tony's face. "Well, I tried the whole 'silent treatment' thing but that didn't work, so I went with plan B."

"Which was try and give me a heart attack? And for the love of—can you get down now?"

The boy smiled sheepishly before attempting to casually flip onto the floor, but his T-shirt gave way and draped over his face.

"Oof," he muttered, dropping to the floor in a tangled mess of web and nerdy science fabric.

"I'm going to do us both a favor and pretend that didn't happen."

Tony reached down to help him up, and the kid jumped to his feet.

"I knew that would work," he said, a stupid grin plastered across his face as he brushed himself off. "So, now that you're finally paying attention to me, are you gonna finally tell me what went down with Captain America?"

"Nothing happened."

"Then how come Mr. Rhodes and I are the only Avengers that are ever here?"

Tony sighed, playing with the tools sitting on his workbench to avoid Peter's prying stare.

"First, kid, you're not an Avenger—you're a trainee on a good day. That was your choice, and I fully agree with that. And second, Cap just decided he needed a break. From me. Call it... irreconcilable differences," his face twisted into a sad, rueful smile, "and the kids went with him."

When Tony had taken Peter home after Berlin, he'd assured him that everything would be okay. There was still hope Tony's his eyes.

"I'm sorry we lost, Mr. Stark."

"Don't worry about it. He's my problem, not yours. And he'll come around. You just worry about that homework."

But nearly six months had passed and Captain America hadn't come back. Neither had many of the others. That small, hopeful light in Tony's eyes had dimmed into defeat.

"I thought you guys were friends."

A flat, drained laugh escaped Tony. "You and me both, kid."

Peter's face fell, almost imperceptibly, but Tony noticed. He knew that feeling. Peter Parker, shy but proud owner of Captain America pajamas and a replica shield, was beginning to see a side of Steve Rogers he had never known.

But as much as Steve had hurt Tony—and the hurt was still fresh and raw and utterly consuming—as much as he needed someone else to shoulder even a fraction of the anti-hero part he had played for so long, when he looked into the kid's eyes—he couldn't do it. Peter already had to come to grips with the flawed and messy reality that was Tony Stark. He didn't need to see him lose Steve Rogers too.

At the end of the day, Steve might have cut him in a way that he never saw coming, but he still hadn't forgotten the reason the whole mess started in the first place. He wanted to keep the Avengers together, not just to save the world. He needed them.

We all need a family. The Avengers are yours, maybe more so than mine.

Tony knew better than anyone that families aren't all they're cracked up to be.

But he also knew better than anyone that it was damn hard to give up on them.

"Sometimes the world forgets that, behind these masks and alter-egos and gaudy, god-awful costumes, there are people just trying to do the best they can in a job no one else wanted."

"You don't blame Mr. Rogers for the Sokovia Accords?"

Tony took a deep, labored breath.

"The Accords were a shit show with no perfect solution, that's politics. I did what I thought would protect the people I care about. Rogers did too. He can pretend to be the super soldier all day, but deep down he's still the scrappy kid from Brooklyn who lost his best friend a long time ago and will do whatever it takes to never feel that again."

Tony closed his eyes, remembering the haunting look on Steve's face as he bled out in the dream induced by Wanda. He felt that pressing need to do more—to do anything to save him.

"I know what that feels like," he murmured. "Heroes make mistakes, kid, it's part of the job. We continue to believe in them anyway, we have to, because the second we don't... I—none of us should live in a world like that. People like me will always need people like Steve Rogers."

Peter stopped pressing. Mr. Stark would give him more information, if he wanted to, on his own terms. Right now, it only mattered that Tony Stark still believed Captain America was a hero—a man worth protecting—and that was enough for him.

Tony Stark would always believe in Steve Rogers.

And Peter Parker would always believe in Tony Stark.

One day, he might just get Tony to believe in himself, too.