Peter hated sunscreen.

Specifically, he hated the way it smelled, and he hated the way it made him smell when he was forced to apply excessive amounts on his skin. He hated sitting in the shade under the canopy, hopelessly watching the empty pool in front of him while he waited the thirty minutes for it to bind to his skin.

And so when Peter saw Tony abandon his station behind the grill and come at him with a fresh bottle of it, he ducked his head under the water and sunk down to the bottom of the pool. Water filled his ears before Tony could bark out any words. Peter heard the muffled versions of his name being shouted from up above.

He stayed under for as long as his lungs could take it, and when he emerged, he immediately wanted to go back under. Tony stood at the pool's edge, staring down at him, both unimpressed and still holding the bottle of sunscreen.

"Out of the pool," he told him.

Peter lifted himself out of the water, crawled onto the concrete and slowly stood up to face Tony, wiping his hair around, violently, as he did. Like a dog trying to get dry, except with the intentional of getting Tony wet. He blinked away a few drops of water, unaffected by Peter's ploy to annoy him.

"You need a haircut," said Tony. He shoved a bottle of sunscreen at him. "Reapply. It's been two hours."

"Fine."

He slumped his shoulders, turned and walked away, trying to figure out if he really hated the sunscreen, or if it was the helicoptering that was driving him insane. He was fifteen, almost sixteen, and he definitely didn't need Tony hovering that closely.

Peter joined Pepper and Ned under the canopy. Pepper wore sunglasses, and had her head in a book, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world, while Ned watched him with a grin.

"He's worse than my mom."

"Dude, shut up."

Pepper snorted out a laugh and turned the page of her book, paying attention after all.

Peter ignored Ned, reapplied the sunscreen, like Tony told him, and let his eyes drift back to the pool and the bright, sunny, California day that framed it. It was a perfect kind of day. Not a cloud in the sky, with the most fantastic smell coming off the grill, and Tony's old school music playing in the background.

A day like this couldn't be wasted by sitting out in the shade, on the sidelines, so when Tony looked down to flip the burgers on the grill, Peter made a move to jump back in the pool He was stopped, in his tracks, shot down by a glare and a spatula being pointed at him.

"Skin cancer is real, genius," said Tony.

"I'm Spider-Man, though," said Peter. "Can I even get cancer?"

"We're not going to find out. Get back in the shade."

He slumped his shoulders again, sighed, and marched back over to sit with Pepper and Ned. He grabbed a Gatorade from the cooler, and sat at the patio table next to Ned, longing for the days when Tony and Pepper would be too busy with work to hover, for the days when him and Ned would be left to swim, or do whatever else, without adult supervision and helicoptering.

Peter had big plans for those days of freedom. He had the entire city of LA, and his Spidey suit, and his mission to get back in the swing of things as Spider-Man before returning to New York. By that time, at least he hoped, he'd be ready for his real mission, hunting down the man who shot Ben and avenge his uncle's murder.

Tony broke him from his thoughts by putting a plate full of hamburgers in the center of the table. Peter didn't realize he was hungry until at second. His stomach growled, and he piled his plate high with food, eventually devouring three cheeseburgers before Ned and the rest of his family could even finish one. They stared at him, looking an equal mixed between shocked and confused, leaving Peter to only shrug in response.

"What?" asked Peter, his mouth full. "I'm hungry."

"I forgot what you were like with the spidey metabolism," said Tony. He looked horrified. "You should've been taking breaks for snacks."

Great. That's just what Peter needed. Just another excuse for Tony to mother hen.

He had a fourth cheeseburger, washed it down with some Gatorade, and idly wondered if Tony would ever teach him to grill burgers the way he did it. For the moment, he was happy to be a consumer, but he wouldn't mind Tony hovering if it meant he learned to grill hamburgers as good as the four he just ate.

Thirty minutes later, both Peter and Ned were back in the pool, just in time to watch the sun go down. It cast an orangish, turquoise glow. Peter didn't know nature had so many fantastic and beautiful colors, and he was definitely paying attention to them. He thought back to a time when he couldn't convince himself to have the energy to care about sunsets, and wondered if that made the colors brighter now, if passing through all that suffering made them more stunning.

When it was dark, they ventured back inside, dripping wet despite their towels, and drop dead tired despite desperately wanting to stay awake. They lost their fights, fell asleep mid-conversation in the living room, and didn't wake up until the morning.


"Are you sure this is such a good idea?" asked Ned. He was sitting up on Peter's bed the next morning, watching him as he stuffed his Spidey suit into a bookbag. "I mean, Mr. Stark won't even let you swim thirty minutes after you eat, what makes you think he's going to be okay with Spider-Man introducing himself to the streets of LA?"

Peter zipped up the bag. "He's going to be fine with it, because he's not going to find out."

"Peter- "

"Him and Pepper are going to be so preoccupied with work, they're not even going to notice- "

"Notice what?"

Peter shot up from the floor and turned on his heel. To his absolute, vacation ruining horror, Tony stood in the doorway, with an arched eyebrow, waiting for him to finish the sentence. Peter cursed the universe, cursed anything and everything that was wired in his brain that made it impossible for him to keep secrets.

He stared back at Tony, stayed quiet, and started to believe that the longer he lived with Tony, the better he got at these interrogations.

"Notice what?" Tony repeated, with more emphasize, emphasis that demanded to be answer.

"Umm nothing."

"Yeah, no. Try again," said Tony. Peter looked down at the bookbag by his feet, and Tony moved on. "Ned?"

"Ummm… friendly Malibu Spider-Man?"

"Ned," said Peter.

"He was looking right at me!"

Tony's eyes shifted between the two of them, before resting on Peter. "Uh, Spider-Man. Conference in the hallway, please."

Peter marched off to join Tony in the hallway. He held on to a little bit of hope that maybe Tony wouldn't care, that he would take pity on him and consider that he hasn't gotten to be Spider-Man in months and let him continue with his mission. It was false hope.

"Absolutely not."

"Come on – "

"No," said Tony. "No Spider-Manning in LA. Spider-Man stays in Queens, or at least in New York."

"But Tony – "

"Did you stop think about this at all? Maybe stop to consider how easy it would be for all the online conspiracy theorists to connect the dots about your identity when Spider-Man starts appearing in LA during the same month Tony Stark and his son are there, too?"

"Well, no," said Peter. He hated Tony's no, but he hated that he actually had a good reason for it more. "I just want to get back into suit. I'm out of practice."

"There will be plenty of time for you to catch up with Spider-Man when we get back home, alright? This is a vacation for you. Relax," he told him. He gave his shoulder a squeeze, started to walk down the hall, only to turn around again. "FRIDAY's watching you, when Pepper and I aren't here, remember that."

Peter frowned at that, wondered if he could somehow fool the AI, as he watched Tony disappeared into his and Pepper's bedroom. He'd figure it out. He'd get to wear the suit and fly between buildings some time that month. Peter was determined, despite the threat of conspiracy theorists, or paparazzi with cameras.

And he was pretty confident that he'd be able to pull it off, even with Tony knowing he was up to something, up until breakfast. The table was quiet, just the clicking of silverware against dishes, as Peter tried to focus on eating instead of Tony's staring at him, looking at him in a way that suggested he was mentally scanning through his thoughts and discovered Peter had no intention of listening to him.

"Let's do something fun today," said Tony. "Go out, see some nature."

Pepper frowned. "We're here to work, Tony."

"We have plenty of time for that," he said. "Our first full day here should be a family day. We can take the kids out somewhere fun."

Peter knew what Tony was doing, knew he was just trying to distract him and keep hovering and stop Spider-Man from swinging through the streets of LA, but he liked the idea of a family day. Even with Ned around to hang out with all day, Peter admitted, only to himself, he would Tony and Pepper when they were inevitably tied up with SI work.

Pepper wasn't hard to convince, and instead of somehow hiking a ride into the city with his Spidey suit, Peter and Ned found themselves loaded into the backseat of one of Tony's more spacious sports car, ready for family day.


Tony took the kids, and Pepper, to a nature preservation, and spent the day subtly taking pictures of Peter feeding kangaroos and sloths. It was decidedly better than how his day would have been spent otherwise, in and out of meetings, signing documents he'd only pretended to have read trusting that Pepper did enough reading for the both of them. And besides that, his family needed more photos together, of them off doing family things.

They needed videos, too, and that was what Tony was doing when Pepper approached him. He had his phone out, recording Peter and Ned on the last activity of their tour. They were swimming around in a pool filled with baby sea otters, playing with them, and letting them lick their faces.

Needless to say, Tony was more than happy to sit out on the sidelines and be in charge of the camera.

"Could you look any more like a soccer dad than you do right now?" asked Pepper.

"It depends," said Tony. "Is it a good look?"

"Definitely."

"Then yes, yes I can."

Tony pulled her closer with his free hand, wrapping his arm around her shoulder while they shared a kiss. Splashing from the sea otter pool broke them apart. Peter laughed, loud and genuine, as one of the smallest otters climbed up his chest and sniffed at his face.

"That's adorable," said Tony, shifting his eyes back to Pepper. "He's adorable. We need to make another one- "

"-Tony- "

"Just hear me out," he said. "I figure your DNA's strong enough to supersede any of the obvious Stark defects the baby would get from me, then we would have two perfect kids."

Tony looked back over at Peter. Him and Pepper were the best things that had ever happened to him, and he was ready for one more.

"I love your defects," said Pepper. "But I'm afraid any child we'd have you'd smother in sunscreen."

He glared at her, and she returned it with a laugh and smile.

"Or just smother them, in general."

"So, what am I supposed to do? Let him get sunburned?"

"Yes, then he'd learn, and he'd realize he should trust you when you tell him to do something."

Tony straightened the camera, making sure Peter was back in the shot. He was smiling, having fun, happy. He wondered how long that smile would last if the entire world figured out Peter Parker was the boy under the Spider-Man mask. Stopping Peter from his plans would be tricky, but Tony was determined to achieve it with distractions and obstacles that would earn the least amount of whining from the boy.

"If we don't have a kid soon," said Tony. He pushed down on the red button to stop recording. "I'm going to have to adopt another one."

Pepper rolled her eyes. "You haven't even adopted Peter yet. Officially."

Yet. That was a conversation looming off in the inevitable future, and something that would hopefully happen, just as soon as Tony worked up enough courage to ask Peter if he actually wanted to be adopted. It was a conversation Tony dreaded, but also, at the same time, a conversation he felt needed to be rushed into.

Adoption was permanent. No one, not even May if she decided to, could take Peter away once they went through with it, and there was always this tiny shred of panic that existed within Tony that life was just waiting to snatch up and steal one of the only truly golden things to ever happen to him.

It brought Tony back to his need to create distractions and obstacles, to save Peter for making a mistake would probably cause the whole world to learn his identity. That might have been a stretch, but with Peter, Tony didn't take any chances.

"Make sure you get a few more pictures," said Tony. "I have to go make a phone call."

Once he stepped away, he called in a babysitter. One that he trusted with his own life, and one he would have to bribe with something better than a bonus to get him on a plane to California in less than twenty-four hours' notice. Happy Hogan.


A/N: This one was a long time coming! Thanks so much for all your guys support for this story! It means more than you know. And I hoped you enjoyed!

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