Hello all!
Oh my gosh, folks. I'm pretty sure I've never had such a dramatic response to a first chapter, to say nothing of 95% of what I write! Thank you all for the incredibly warm and supportive welcome into the fandom!
The theme for tonight's chapter is "Ordinary Day" by Vanessa Carlton.
Between last week and this week, I diagrammed what I think will be the ultimate end of this whole series. I have many words to write, but the part I have written thus far will carry us to the end of 2022 with weekly posting. The unwritten part is about…30 weeks past that? Thereabouts.
(Here's me really, really crossing my fingers that movies coming out between now and then don't completely train-wreck my plans. I mean, I'll post anyway. But I'll feel a little sad.)
Thank you all so much for reading! Enjoy!
Chapter 2: That Ordinary Boy
Tony pushed into his apartment, shutting the door and hearing it lock behind him.
"What the actual hell am I doing?" he asked aloud.
"Problem, sir?"
"Just being myself as usual."
"A problem, indeed. Do I need to ready the Emergency Flare Protocol?"
"No, nothing like that, J." Tony pulled off his stained over-shirt and tossed it with the pile of laundry that had migrated out of his bedroom and into the main area again. "Told somebody to call me Tony today."
"Oh. Is that the first time since your relocation?"
"Yeah. Not sure what I was thinking."
But he did know what he was thinking. He was thinking about a kid who liked science, who was polite to a fault. And who used his mother's maiden name with such respect even not knowing a thing about him.
He'd questioned the choice of identities just about every day since coming here, not as Anthony Edward Stark, son of Howard Stark, but as Mario Anthony Carbonell, son of Maria Carbonell. Today, hearing that name in Peter's gentle voice, he questioned it no further.
Though meeting the kid did remind him of the other one.
"JARVIS, do me a favor and check in on Harley for me, will ya?"
The screen on the wall lit up with recent footage at once while JARVIS's voice narrated.
"Harley Keener is currently engaged in planning a midnight attack on some friends spending the night in their clubhouse. His supply of snacks is stable, but he has bent another set of pliers beyond usability. I detect no injuries nor unusual behavior of any kind."
Tony dropped onto the couch and sighed. "Pepper always called me a packrat, said I would collect anything I saw if she didn't stop me."
"Are you implying that your collection of unusual friends and allies is growing again, sir?"
Tony smiled. JARVIS was smart enough to infer the connection between his earlier comments and asking about Harley. Sometimes even he was surprised at the depth of his AI's humanity.
"Apparently. Get me everything on the Parkers who just moved in on seven. I know we approved them before they signed the lease, but I don't remember the details."
Immediately the screen switched to a set of information more thorough than what May Parker had submitted for her background check. Besides social security numbers, birthdates, and credit scores, he could see Peter's grades, May's bank accounts, her work shifts, even the text of the obituary for the late Ben Parker.
"This kid's got a track record as bad as mine," he said.
"It does appear that young Mister Parker has suffered rather a lot of tragedy in his short life," JARVIS agreed. "I take it he is becoming a person of interest."
A line in Ben Parker's obituary stuck out, suddenly. Tony's throat went tight.
"J, buddy, tell me I'm reading this wrong. Did Ben Parker really die on the way home from…?"
"From a wake held in your honor, sir," JARVIS said. Then, "You appear to be in distress."
"In distr...no shit I'm in distress!" Tony ran his hands through his hair. "Even pretending to be dead I get people killed."
There was a choking black hole of despair making itself known in his chest, and Tony pushed it away. It was either that or drown.
"Sir, you could not have known it would happen. I cannot calculate any way in which you would rightly bear responsibility for this, and I believe, were I to ask, Miss Potts and Doctor Banner would agree with me."
That was a comfort. And JARVIS was probably right, too. Tony fought the urge to wallow in blame and made himself move forward. It was something he had a lot more practice doing these days.
"Maybe it's just the loneliness talking." Tony drew in a deep breath. "Rhodey told me he thought I couldn't lie low for more than six months without causing some kind of drama."
"As of today, you are past that deadline by three weeks. Do you believe your time away from your regular life is proving beneficial, sir, in spite of its isolation?"
"Weirdly, yeah. But if that guy on four calls me Luigi one more time, we're evicting his ass." And joking was normal, and it helped.
"I'll make a note of it, sir."
Tony shut his eyes and leaned his head back, letting the couch catch his skull even if it lacked quite enough stuffing to support it.
Going off the grid after the Mandarin-slash-Killian had been a spur of the moment choice, but every day since he had found it to be the right one. At first, it had been because he needed time to prepare for his own chest surgery; coming that close to losing everything (to say nothing of an extremely hard fight) made it mentally if not medically necessary to hurry the timetable on removing the arc reactor once and for all. He'd told Rhodey and SHIELD to take Iron Man off the official roster for the time being and had settled in to focus on healing. Pepper was dealing with her own feelings after her abduction and appreciated the space to process her own feelings — and Tony gave it to her without hesitation.
After his successful surgery, he had tried to get back into things quietly, spending a little time in the lab and tinkering with Extremis. Shortly thereafter, Bruce summarily kicked him off that project, reminding him once again that Tony was not a biochemist, and to leave the squishy internal bits to himself and his hand-picked team dealing with Pepper's situation. It wasn't meant to be cruel; Bruce pointed out that not only had Tony gone through a difficult experience, but his body had been shocked by the removal of the arc reactor and shrapnel, and he needed to let himself recover for more than a few weeks.
At which point, since he was also still giving Pepper a wide berth for her own healing, he discovered he had no real reason even to stay in his Tower.
In fact, Tony thought maybe what he needed was a sabbatical from being himself a while longer.
"Like going on walkabout," he'd said when he explained what he planned to do. "Other people take a year and go to Europe before college or whatever. This is the first time I haven't had to be anything to anybody. And I'm going to take advantage."
After that, he'd vanished off every official radar. Setting up in Queens allowed him to be close to the Tower, close to SHIELD if they needed him, and close to Pepper when she was ready, but far enough away for them all to breathe. Transferring ownership of a couple of apartment blocks and storage warehouses to himself had been simple; it had taken longer to build the secret lab under the garage without tipping his hand to the locals.
Tony wouldn't have thought himself the type to appreciate the quiet life, but something about not being Iron Man, not being CEO of Stark Industries, not being Tony Stark proved to be downright addicting. Nobody wanted interviews with him, nobody needed his signature or updates on the newest development of the next miracle. Nick Fury wasn't calling at all hours with possible missions or reports about equipment that SHIELD would like to request.
By the time July rolled around, Tony had been out of the picture for months, known only as the maintenance guy for a building of low-income folks, quietly tinkering when he felt like it, and otherwise living like a regular person. Nobody looked twice at a guy who bore a scruffy, passing resemblance to a fallen hero, so he had fallen into complete, delightful obscurity.
Though the shine had very much come off doing his own chores like grocery shopping and laundry. He hadn't liked it at MIT and he didn't like it now. But that was part of the deal, and as tedious as he found running errands, there was a deep pleasure every time he walked the streets of Queens or went through a checkout line as a totally anonymous stranger. Even for New York City, where nobody looked at faces in public, the heavy beard and Astoria neighborhood made him as good as invisible.
He had no idea how long he would stay here. But, right now, he was sleeping through the night with minimal nightmares, hadn't had an anxiety attack in months, and the only pressing business he had to think about was whether or not he wanted to find a way to install an elevator in the seven-floor walkup somehow.
The weight of the world was off his shoulders for the first time in five years, and the weight of the Stark mantle was gone for the first time ever.
Tony intended to savor the freedom, because even he knew it couldn't last forever.
But, while he was here, maybe he could do some good anyway. Even if he didn't single-handedly rewrite the future of the planet, that didn't mean he couldn't change the world for just one person.
May seemed sensible and tough enough, and he felt no real need to interfere with her — in spite of her uncommon attractiveness. If she were on her own, she would never have pinged on his radar as anything more than another kickass woman making the world work for her. But the boy with the pair of innocent, shining brown eyes who had tagged after him chattering away wouldn't get out of his head. And that list of 'dates of death' in the file sitting right next to the middle school picture of a kid smart enough to memorize the periodic table and friendly enough to want to spend time with Tony made something in his chest twist in a way he hadn't felt since swapping out palladium cores from his arc reactors.
And not just because Tony would probably never see Ben Parker's death as anything other than his fault. It was, even if he couldn't change it or undo it now. But that's not what really mattered. Peter was what mattered in this equation. No kid like that deserved what he'd been given, and if Tony could build the kid a happier future, well, he wasn't the best engineer in the world for nothing.
"Hey, JARVIS? Let's make a new building protocol."
"What are we calling it?"
Tony considered for a moment, then smirked. "PLUMBER protocol. For 'Parker Lost Uncle, Maintain Backup Emergency Resources.'"
"Creative, if I may say so, sir. What is the protocol for?"
"I want you to keep track of May and Peter Parker. Not the way you keep half an eye on Harley. He can handle himself. But those two need actual backup. If something happens to May at work, if their bank account is drained too far, if somebody looks at Peter wrong in the street, I want to know about it. And in the case of a real emergency, an injury, a mugging, anything, do whatever you have to that keeps them safe."
"I will sketch up the protocol and have it on your tablet shortly," JARVIS said. "Anything else?"
"Yeah. Route their internet through my system, not the normal building lines. The kid deserves to have decent speed when he's browsing the web. Might do more stuff later, so you might as well make a folder. File it under the name Mendeleev, highest encryption."
"Very good, sir."
-==OOO==-
July in Queens was hot, and Peter found he missed their old house with its central air conditioning and the basement that never really got warm. They'd moved in on the first, and by the Fourth of July, even looking outside was enough to make him sweat.
Not that he had anything better to do on Independence Day.
"I'm sorry, sweetie," May said. "If I'd called the Leeds sooner, you could have gone with them to Ned's cousin's house for the picnic. But I forgot, and now I've got a full shift. And we could really use the overtime."
"It's okay, Aunt May." It wasn't, but there was no other right answer.
"Will you be all right here on your own?"
Peter infused as much enthusiasm into his voice as he could. "Yeah. I have more posters to hang up, and I had to take apart the X-Wing for the move, so I can always put it back together."
May nodded, hesitating on the threshold of his room. "Okay. You have my number, and the hospital can always page me if you need something. There's plenty of snacks and we still have that cut watermelon in the fridge, too."
Peter looked up and gave her his best smile. "I'm okay. Really."
"I'm sorry we'll miss the fireworks."
That bothered Peter, too, but he shook his head anyway and shrugged. "Maybe somebody will shoot some off in the street like they used to over by the park. I'll keep an eye out."
"Oh, Peter." May moved to where he was sitting on the floor, stacking books, and put her arms around him. "I love you so much. And I'm so proud of you."
"I love you too, Aunt May. Please don't be sorry."
She visibly swallowed the urge to tear up and nodded, rising. "All right. I'll check on you when I get in tonight. It'll be late, so go to bed when you're tired."
"I will. Be safe, Aunt May."
"You be safe, too, Peter."
The door shut behind her, and Peter ducked his head. As long as May didn't actually see him cry, that's all that really mattered.
-==OOO==-
As she reached the parking lot, May paused. She knew Peter would be fine — he had always been self-sufficient, and she knew she could leave him without concern for his safety. He never got himself into too much trouble, and definitely not when he was alone, and the apartment was safe.
But a wild, ridiculous, possibly irresponsible idea had popped into her head. And that, compared to the look on Peter's face as he tried so hard (and failed just as hard) to keep her from seeing his disappointment, was worth a little risk.
Because maybe he didn't have to be alone for the Fourth of July after all.
May picked up her pace and followed the sidewalk around the garage building as Peter had described, finding the little screen door with the fix-it sign. She knocked.
"Just a minute," came Tony's voice.
After only a few seconds she heard movement inside and soon the man was pushing open the door. "May? Something else broken already?"
"No, nothing like that." She let out a breath. "I wasn't even sure if you'd be working today. Don't you get the holiday off?"
"Every person in the building is partying, and there will definitely be some less-than-legal explosions that go off after dark," Tony said with a smile. "So, no, I'm on duty." He looked up and down her scrubs. "Looks like you, too."
"Yeah, I have the holiday shift." May swallowed. "Look, you can say no, and I won't take offense. But Peter's never been on his own for the Fourth before, and it's his first without Ben. My late husband," she clarified, not sure if either of them had said something to him.
But he just nodded, unsurprised. "Is he okay being alone?"
"He says he is, and I know he isn't going to get into trouble. But that doesn't mean he's...okay."
"Hmm." He peered at her. "Are you asking me to babysit?"
"No. Not if you don't want to. But, if you checked in on him, I'm sure it would cheer him up. That's all I care about. He doesn't need someone to watch him. I just…"
"Hey." Tony's dark eyes were serious. "I get it. It's hard to be a kid alone in a strange place. I don't mind dropping by. But lay me some ground rules so you don't come back after and kill me. My experience with kids is only slightly more than the plumbing date we already had."
May laughed and felt steadied. "Okay. Well, I'd feel better if you didn't take him anywhere or have him spend time with anyone I haven't met. I don't mind if you sit with him in the apartment or if he comes down here. And if anybody starts setting off fireworks where he can see them and you're still with him, I'd appreciate it if you could help him find a good spot to watch from, as long as he's safe from any amateur mishaps."
"Wow, that's a lot easier than I thought. No rules about no candy before dinner or anything?"
"Just make sure he eats. He's got some growing to do." May glanced at her watch. "I've really got to go. And...Tony. Please don't feel obligated just because I came over with a guilt trip. Peter's sensitive. He'll...he'll know if you don't actually want to be there."
"Something you should know about me, May Parker. I never do anything I don't want to." Tony made a shooing motion. "Now, go do doctor things. Nurse things? Whatever. Medical things. The kid will be fine. I promise not to crush his spirits in one day."
And May's gut, once again, eased. "Someday, I'm going to figure you out, Tony Carbonell."
"Not soon," he replied, smirking. "Get outta here. Have a nice day and all that stuff."
May huffed a laugh and did just that. And if she got into her car and drove away leaving her nephew behind in the hands of a virtual stranger and still felt more relief than guilt or worry, then that was just one more point in favor of the gut check.
-==OOO==-
Tony watched her go, then ducked back into the shop.
"Close it up, JARVIS," he said. "Full stealth mode."
"Done. And, sir? If I may suggest, I believe the shopping delivered yesterday includes some hot dogs. I understand they are a traditional food for the Fourth of July."
"I don't have a grill, J."
"When has that ever stopped you before, sir?"
Tony grinned. "Valid point. Okay. I'm on my way to...apparently babysit a budding chemist and make hot dogs on whatever we've got lying around the shop. If you need me, ping my phone."
"Yes, sir. Enjoy yourself."
"You know what? I think I will."
He stopped by his own apartment long enough to pack a bag with whatever stuff he thought would work, including the hot dogs from the fridge, buns, a mishmash of condiments — who knew what the kid ate? — the box of chocolate cookies he was absolutely certain he didn't order but JARVIS was creepily perceptive like that, and the bag of chips he had meant to bring down to the lab anyway. Then he started the climb up to seven.
"Really starting to think about an elevator now," he muttered to himself around the fifth floor.
But soon enough he reached the door and knocked. "Kid? It's me — Tony."
He heard the sound of small feet approaching the door. But it didn't open, and there was no sound of the deadbolt sliding back.
"Um, I'm not supposed to open the door unless I'm sure it's someone I know," came Peter's voice.
"Anybody else likely to call you Underoos around here?" Tony asked.
Almost at once, the door swung open and Tony was greeted by the joyous, flushed face of one Peter Parker. "Mister Carbonell!"
"Still not going to call me Tony, huh?" he teased. Peter's face fell and Tony rapidly switched topics. "How's it hanging, kid? Gonna let me in?"
Peter immediately moved out of the way. "What are you doing here?"
"Your aunt came by the shop. Let me know that you were gonna be on your own for a while and said it was okay if I came to hang out with you." He looked around, feeling the silence and stillness of the apartment — and hating it as much as he'd hated his own solitary and silent childhood. "And I figured, since today is all about having fun, maybe you could help me have some. Otherwise I was just gonna be alone trying to fix a ceiling fan."
"Oh, Mister Carbonell, I can definitely help with that," Peter said. "I was just going to build Legos all day anyway."
"Hmm. Legos are tempting, but I bet we can save that for a rainy day." He eyed the kid. "Do you know anything about grilling hot dogs?"
"Nope."
"Good, me neither. Let's go do some experimenting. Grab anything you want to eat or mess around with and let's get out of here."
Peter dashed down the small hallway towards his room. Tony opted to follow him, partly in case the kid needed help with anything and partly out of unabashed curiosity.
What he did not expect was the half-open door to reveal what could only be described as a miniature and apparently only half-completed literal shrine to Iron Man. The kid had posters, figurines, stickers, and Legos piled together waiting to be spread across the walls and shelves. He even had one of the limited edition helmet toys propped up on the tiny desk in the corner.
"Wow," he said.
Peter, busily packing things into a backpack, froze. "Oh. Do you like Iron Man, too?"
"Uh, yeah." He swallowed. "I bet you miss him."
"Yeah." Peter's eyes fell. But, almost as quickly, they brightened. "But...Mister Stark was always brave even when things were bad, so I'm going to be brave, too. I think...he would like the attention of everybody missing him, but he wouldn't like the crying. We sang one of his favorite songs at the vigil, and it was loud and stupid."
"I think he would have liked that a lot," Tony said. Trying desperately to clear the lump in his throat, he reached for the helmet. "Haven't seen a lot of these."
"Yeah. It was a present I got right before the Stark Expo." Peter held it up — it was too small to fit him now, but he cradled it as though it was precious. "I was wearing it when the robots came out. I was dumb enough to think I could help fight them, but, you know, the repulsors that came with it were just plastic flashlights. And then the real Iron Man came up behind me and blasted one right in front of me."
Tony just about had a heart attack then and there.
He remembered that moment all in a flash. Remembered one of the military drones locking onto a masked kid in the crowd that fled the carnage from Hammer's stupidity. Remembered diving to the ground just in time to take it down while a tiny child who seemed like they barely came up to his knee stood unflinchingly before it. Remembered saying "Nice work, kid," before flying off.
That kid was Peter.
"Are you okay, Mister Carbonell? You look funny."
"Yeah, no, I'm good." He hauled in a breath. "The Expo was pretty scary. I'm glad you were okay."
"Iron Man saved us. Of course we were okay." Peter shrugged and turned back to his backpack. "So, I have some of my books about experiments you can do with adult supervision, some Legos, and a book in case you get tired of me so I can just read for a while. Is that good?"
The smile that came to Tony was easier now and he willed his irritating feelings to just chill out and stop being so distracting. "Perfect. Let's go make some food."
Down in the workshop, Tony cleared off an area near the big table for Peter's stuff, carefully shoving away anything connected to his projects downstairs in the process. Peter, for his part, seemed content to chatter about some of the experiments he'd read about in his books. Finally, Tony felt relatively certain that he wasn't going to cause the kid to lose any fingers in the immediate future or give away his big secret. He dug out the food from his own bag and set it on the table.
"All right, Doctor Parker. How would you go about grilling hot dogs without a grill?"
"Well...you need something to suspend them over fire on, right?" Peter glanced about. "Can we even light a fire in here?"
"No. Nooooo absolutely let's not do that," Tony realized all at once what a bad idea that was. "But I think there's a barrel around here we can use outside."
"That'll work! As long as there's nothing toxic in it that we shouldn't burn."
"Crap." Tony paused to think. "Okay. I'll find a different way to improvise a fire pit. While I do that, you figure out the suspension part."
"Should I look for, like, a stick? Like for marshmallows? Or more like a flat thing on a normal grill?"
"Tell you what. With anything you can find on this end of the room," he waved away from the leftovers of his downstairs projects, "find me three options. And we'll pick the best. Can you do that while I worry about the fire part?"
"Yes, sir!"
Tony found himself grinning at the eager expression on Peter's face, and at the racing of his thoughts he could see perfectly reflected in the kid's enormous eyes. He wondered, momentarily, if this is what he looked like sometimes. But if he stood here and got attached, they wouldn't have any hot dogs. So he turned to the other part of the shop to look for an appropriate fire pit container — minus the toxic chemicals they should probably not be ingesting.
Tony came up empty, so he resorted to his phone. He typed the question to JARVIS. "What sort of thing can we use for the fire?"
JARVIS's answer was immediate, and better than Google for sure. "A hole dug clear of any brush or overhanging branches is the simplest and safest option. Be sure to line it with stones or bricks to contain any sparks."
Tony managed to only roll his eyes at his obliviousness and grabbed for a shovel. "Heading out to dig us a fire pit. You good, kid?"
"I'm good, Mister Carbonell!"
Outside, there was a clear strip of grass between the back of the garage and the fence that separated this property from the warehouses — which Tony owned, so, technically, he didn't need the fence in the first place. But the grassy area was plenty big enough. He dug a pit, conferring with JARVIS on size just in case. It came out about a yard across and eight inches deep in the center. The ground was still soft from some of his recent construction anyway, so it was hardly a back-breaking enterprise.
"Okay, Underoos," he called as he finished and headed back into the shop — and the shade. "Let's see what you've got. Also, how do you feel about carrying bricks?"
Peter looked up from where he had an assortment of items spread on the table. "I can carry normal bricks. The big cement ones for holding up a deck are too heavy, though."
Tony snorted. "Okay, you get the little ones, then. What did you come up with?"
One by one, Peter showed off his finds.
"First is this...I don't know what it is. But it's not rusty and it doesn't smell like anything really bad, so if we could prop it up we could probably cook the hot dogs on top of it."
It was not a bad choice at all, though Tony couldn't swear for its cleanliness. "It's the front grill from a big wheeler. Okay, solid pick. What else?"
"For the marshmallow thing, these could work." He pointed to a set of extra-long screwdrivers. "They were under some other stuff and they're, like, way too long for anything useful, so I thought you wouldn't mind if we burned them a little."
"You're right, and I don't, but they might be too fat. We'd end up with holes like a paper towel roll through the hot dogs."
"Oh, you're right." Peter pushed them aside and grabbed the last thing. "I remembered that my...that we make hot dogs on the stove, too, by boiling them in water. So if we didn't want to try to grill them, you just need to hang this over the fire and we could cook them that way."
Peter had chosen one of the big metal drip pans Tony used for everything from oil in cars to paint, but he'd sensibly chosen the new one that hadn't been used yet.
Tony considered. "I think it'll be easier to prop up the truck thing than hang the pan. It's so flat, it might tip if we get a breeze. But it's a workable backup. Good job, doc."
Peter beamed.
Tony dispatched him to start carting bricks from a pile over in the junky corner of the property to their fire pit. The bricks were leftover after some of his renovations, and Tony hated to throw away anything useful, so they had clearly been waiting for this purpose. He supervised the transfer of the first two, just in case they were too much for tiny, not-quite-twelve-year-old hands, then ducked back into the shop.
"Hey, J," he whispered. "What do I have around here that I can use to sanitize that thing?"
"Red cupboard, third shelf, the one that says "food safe," not the one for insects," JARVIS answered just as quietly.
Tony grumbled under his breath, threatening to put JARVIS in charge of toilet regulation in the apartment complex, but he did find the intended cleaning solution. He might have gone a little overboard actually using it, but since this was a leftover truck part of indeterminate origin, he definitely didn't want to eat food off it if it carried road germs or whatever the hell semis picked up. Half a deer, maybe.
That done, he carried it outside and checked Peter's progress.
Peter had lined the edge of the fire pit with bricks stacked two high, and surprisingly neatly — or maybe not too surprising for a kid into Legos — and was currently playing some kind of brick version of Jenga on either side of the center depression. He looked up, eyes landing on the grill.
"I think it will reach across," Peter said, considering. Then, suddenly, he started to laugh.
Tony hauled it over, also mentally judging the width. "What's so funny?"
"Well, you said we didn't have a grill. But that is a truck grill, right? So we kind of do!"
Tony grinned. "Well, you're not wrong. Okay, kiddo, let's get this thing set up."
It took both of them and several iterations before they stacked the bricks in the right places to create a base for the truck grill that would hold it steady, keep it high enough above the flames, and probably not tip over. Only then did Tony go grab some scrap wood, pile it under their improvised hot dog grill, and attempt to light a campfire without physical or structural damage.
Of all the lessons from Afghanistan, lighting fires was one of the easiest.
He did end up using Peter's long screwdrivers to push the hot dogs around on the grill, and his longest trowel, also disinfected, as kind of a ladle thing to get the hot dogs off when they were done. They'd forgotten plates, of course, so Peter ate his off the lid of a box, and Tony used the inside of the same box. It was cardboard, so it got soggy, and Peter kept spilling his chips — though that was no fault of the box lid, after all — and the first two rounds of hot dogs were more burned than cooked, and Peter remembered too late that they had watermelon in his apartment and ran to get it while Tony tried to figure out how to add wood to the fire without tipping over their entire contraption.
It was, without a doubt, the best meal Tony had eaten in months. Maybe years. And well worth the tiny burn on one hand and the face full of smoke when the light breeze changed direction and the general makeshift lack of dignity of the entire proceeding.
Tony was absolutely sure Rhodey would have laughed himself sick over the whole thing, but Rhodey wasn't here and would never know. And Peter was too polite to laugh.
When they had eaten their fill, Tony asked, "What do you want to do now, Underoos?"
"Um." Peter glanced at where he had brought his backpack out onto the grass to lean on while they ate. "Maybe some of my experiments?"
"Let's see what you've got here." He held out his hands for one of the books Peter had brought. He saw at once that the 'experiments' included were fairly simple and largely harmless, but something about them made his chest feel warm where the arc reactor had been. It definitely wasn't the illustrations of kids and parents working together on them, though. Nor the little paragraphs addressed "To the parents/guardians before you begin."
Must be heartburn from overcooked hot dogs.
"Okay. Here's what we're gonna do," he decided. "You pick the experiment and we'll follow all the instructions, but when we're done, you have to help me figure out how to make it better. Okay?"
"Better?"
"Bigger, more exciting, more complex, whatever floats your boat. These are a good start, but I'm willing to bet you can handle the next level."
Peter's eyes got huge and round and his smile went nuclear.
As they worked through the book, Tony also made Peter take notes in the provided blank spaces, reminding him that "the difference between science and screwing around is writing it down." The kid, unsurprisingly, could spell most of the chemicals they ended up using, even if Tony was fairly sure the Hulk with Bruce's doctor's handwriting would have been more legible.
He also insisted on full safety measures, and ignored the silent smugness he could just feel radiating off JARVIS for it. But the kid needed goggles and an apron and gloves, even if he was drowning in them. Tony wore his own, because otherwise the kid made sad puppy dog eyes at him.
And those sad puppy dog eyes? Where the hell were those when the Chitauri attacked? Peter could have turned them on Loki and the asshole would have surrendered immediately.
They did completely shatter two beakers from his supplies, and they set the grass a little bit on fire in one spot, and that pipette was never going to not have some trace of the weird particulate they accidentally made stuck in it. But Tony could not care less, not when every result, good or bad, expected or not, made Peter's eyes light up like the sun.
Also, the kid had a damn steady hand, better than most of Tony's lab partners-slash-assistants-slash-helpers in his entire professional career. His aptitude was nothing short of terrifying, and this with only a standard public school education, supportive guardians, and books. Tony could hardly fathom what more Peter could do given the chance.
Almost before he'd realized it, he'd decided to give him that chance.
To distract himself from the feelings that brought up, he declared an end to Science Time so they could clean up in time to make a second meal of yet more hot dogs. This time they tried grilling some of the watermelon, too, but neither liked the results.
"Too weird," Peter declared, and Tony could only agree.
By then, the sun was starting to go down.
"Okay, kid. We gotta clean this all up and get inside pretty soon."
"How come?" Peter asked. Just as suddenly, he froze. "Oh, Mister Carbonell, do you have to do something else today? I'm really sorry if I made you late or something. I can clean up without you if you need me to."
"Easy, Pete," Tony said. "Nothing like that. I've got nowhere better to be, but you do."
"I do?"
"Yup. So clean this stuff up. Chop-chop, mini me."
Peter's face went a little pink at that and he bent to carry stuff into the shop almost a little too quickly. Tony grinned. Getting under people's skin was just about his favorite pastime, and it extended to kids, too. Peter was too sweet to tease the way he had Harley, but he was glad to know he could get the kid to react.
Even if it did hit a little close to home.
They left the fire pit alone but got everything else washed up and put away just as the sky was darkening. Then Tony grabbed Peter's bag as well as his own, significantly-lighter one, and led the way inside.
"The advantage of being the maintenance guy around here," as well as the building's owner, "is I have the keys to everything. Now, I gotta ask. How do you feel about fireworks?"
Peter bounced, almost missing another step. "I love them! They're great!"
"So, not at all interested. Got it."
"Mister Carbonell!"
Tony led him all the way up to the seventh floor where they dropped all the stuff in the Parker apartment before he gestured for the door that very clearly said "Maintenance Only." Through there, he unlocked the stairs to the roof.
"Any time you and your aunt want to come up here, let me know and I'll unlock it for you. But no hanging out up here on your own," he said, pinning Peter with a stern look. "There's no railings."
"Okay!"
The air on the flat roof felt cooler than it had been on the ground, and quieter, too. Tony led the way to the clear area that faced west, looking out past the warehouses to the river and the Manhattan skyline in the distance. Even from here, he could just make out the faint "A" glowing on his building.
"I have it on good authority that there will be a lot to see tonight," he said. And he willed himself not to startle at the explosions, not to have bursts of color and fire dredge up other, uglier memories. His anxiety had been doing so well.
Please just stay in your little box for tonight. The kid deserves better than for me to ruin his night.
Peter blinked at him. Then his smile went big and also just a little sad.
"The last time I watched fireworks was last year on the Fourth and Aunt May and Uncle Ben were with me. We skipped New Year's Eve because...stuff."
Tony sucked in a breath. But he didn't dare interrupt the babble this time.
"We went down to the park near our house. They weren't anything special, just stuff some of the neighbors were doing. Uncle Ben and I climbed a tree to see better, but then one of the rockets came kinda close to us and Aunt May made us get down." His voice wobbled. "Uncle Ben promised we could try them ourselves someday. That we could...light them together."
Tony suddenly remembered when Harley had told him about his father leaving his family in Tennessee, about how he'd blown the kid off, told him there was no point in crying about it. He hated that, suddenly, hated his answer, his flippant, unkind response. Even though he felt pretty sure that Harley hadn't expected anything different. That, in fact, Harley wouldn't have wanted sympathy.
But Peter was gentle in a way that reminded Tony of...well, he didn't know anyone quite like this. The nearest was his mom, or maybe Aunt Peggy. They were both strong, too, but their emotions sang in their hearts for everyone to hear, and they didn't hide from them or silence them. And when they gifted those emotions to him, Tony had known it was just that — a gift.
Peter's were a gift, too.
Tony cleared his throat.
"I'm sorry...I'm sorry if this makes you sad," he finally said.
"It does, and it doesn't," Peter said. "I miss...I miss Uncle Ben. A-all the time. But...but I also...I know he...he would be sad if I didn't...if I just stopped. Because of him. So I'm trying. I...I can't hate everything that reminds me of him because...because...everything reminds me of him. So…"
He trailed off and Tony realized he was crying.
He put a hand on Peter's shoulder and let the kid lean against his side. It wasn't a hug — he couldn't, not yet, not right now — but it was close. And Peter took a few shuddering breaths against him, and almost too soon went still.
"I'm sorry if I made you sad, too, Mister Carbonell."
"Oh, kid. Don't apologize for something like that. You're allowed to feel whatever you gotta feel," he said, mentally giving the finger to Howard who was probably rolling in his grave at such a statement. Hell with that and everything to do with him. "Just tell me if I screw it up. Okay?"
"Okay. But you won't."
"I dunno, Peter. I screw up a lot of things."
"It's okay, Mister Carbonell. I trust you."
That simple statement would haunt Tony forever, he just knew it. But he didn't have time to think about it, because a moment later, the first fireworks began out over the water dividing them from Manhattan. Shortly thereafter, the display from the tower began as well, two riots of color and fire that were spectacular on their own and breathtaking together.
The last trickle of Peter's tears vanished at the sight of the fireworks, but he kept leaning on Tony anyway and Tony's hand continued to anchor him to his side.
They heard other explosions throughout the neighborhood, and at least one went off on the other end of the building and Tony just knew he'd be issuing a fine for that tomorrow.
But Peter never startled, nor showed any fear, even at the unexpected explosions. And, somehow, his courage bled into Tony. His anxiety seemed a million miles away, his memories of battles and gunfire and bombs replaced with the weight of a small shoulder against his side.
Still, he had to ask. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Peter said. "It's just...nice to feel it. The vibrations."
"They don't hurt your chest?" They had certainly hurt Tony's when he had a hunk of metal embedded there.
"No. It's like...a bunch of other heartbeats. All with me at the same time. We're all alive together. Even if it feels weird, that's a good weird."
Tony knew right then he would never look at fireworks for the rest of his life without thinking about Peter and his view of the world.
He was surprisingly okay with that.
-==OOO==-
When May got home only an hour or two before dawn, she immediately noticed the more-than-half-finished box of cookies sitting on the counter with a note on top.
"We ate too many. The rest are for you. — TC"
She smiled and made her way to Peter's bedroom.
Peter was fast asleep, tucked tight in his bed with his arms around a spare pillow. On his nightstand, she could see one of his books of experiments open to a page covered with scribble. Only years of practice let her read his handwriting enough to see that he and Tony had attempted the experiment, and, according to his notes, broken a beaker doing so. She paged back through the book, taken aback by how many they had done and Peter's responses to them. It must have taken them all afternoon.
May leaned down to kiss Peter on the forehead. He was a heavy sleeper and didn't even flinch.
"I'm so glad you made a friend, buddy."
Just before she fell into her own bed for some badly-needed sleep of her own, she wondered how Tony Carbonell might feel about a regular play-date.