Chapter Two: In Which Peter and Tony Get Ice Cream

Rolling onto his back, Peter opened his eyes and stared blearily at the ceiling. Sunlight spilled through the cracks in his blinds, casting slatted shadows across the wood- his wake-up call. He yawned and arched his back, loving the way his vertebrae cracked, and then glanced over at his alarm clock.

It read 12:09.

"Shit!" he rasped, stumbling to his feet and into the bathroom. He turned on the sink faucet, and the handle came off in his hand. Confused, he stared at it for a moment, and then gingerly screwed it back into place. He washed his face and brushed his teeth without incident, until he tried to kick the bathroom door closed behind him and the poor thing just came right off its hinges.

"Shit," he repeated through a mouthful of toothpaste. He poked his head outside his bedroom door and looked around. The apartment appeared deserted, and a note was tacked to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a smiley face. It read: Peter, I'm at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters right now. Tony is downstairs in the lab with Bruce if you need anything. You had a fever last night, so we let you sleep in this morning. Don't worry; we called the school to let them know you were sick. Feel better. Pops.

He returned to the bathroom at a more sedate pace, pleased with the way things had turned out. As far as he could tell, neither of his dads were suspicious, and now he had the entire day to himself. He spat in the sink and began to get dressed.

Five minutes later, he sat down at the kitchen counter with a bowl of Frosted Flakes and pulled up a holo-screen. "JARVIS, look up everything we have on spider bites." Although he tagged his search with every relevant piece of information- spiders, poisonous spiders, stripy spiders, purple spiders, Oscorp, Norman Osborn, and a list of all of his symptoms- there wasn't so much as a photo of the spider that had bit him. And it had to be that one, didn't it? Common house spiders didn't have that effect on a person.

The back of his neck prickled uneasily, and he closed the screen, suddenly aware that JARVIS was watching him as much as he was watching it. A second later, the elevator opened with a ding. "Hey, bud," said Tony, stepping out. "How are you feeling?"

"All right," Peter replied, trying for a smile. "Cereal's good. I mean, obviously." He shook his head, realizing that he had already dropped the ball.

"It popped up on the logs when you started using the computer," Tony explained, hopping up on the stool across from him. "Not that I was spying on you or anything. Spiders, huh? Are you doing a report on yesterday's school trip?"

"Yeah!" Peter almost screwed up again in his over-eagerness to latch onto the lie. "Yeah, it's for school." He cleared his throat.

Tony nodded slowly. "You must have gotten that work ethic from your Pops, because God knows I was a slacker of the first degree when I was your age."

"Just when you were my age?" Peter raised an eyebrow, earning himself a light smack upside the head.

"Cheeky bastard," said Tony fondly. "Listen, if you're feeling up to it, I was thinking we could go out and get ice cream or something. We haven't hung out since you started school again. Don't you miss me?"

Peter rolled his eyes. "Yeah, we haven't seen each other in forever." He set his bowl down in the sink and hopped off the stool. "I won't turn down free ice cream, but just in case you forgot- I'm seventeen, not seven."

"Could've fooled me," Tony retorted.

It was warm for late autumn, and the last golden leaves floated picturesquely to the sidewalk as the pair strolled down Park Avenue. There was nothing flexible about the hours of a career superhero. Sometimes Tony would be around for days, a static part of their living room as he did background checks on potential employees and modified old hardware. At other times, Peter had the entire house to himself, and all he could do was watch the television set with rapt, breathless attention for familiar masks instead of faces. In the timeless words of his father's favorite song: "The rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof to the night that our flag was still there." As long as the fight still went on, he knew there was still someone to fight.

He would never tell them, but it hurt growing up in a family of superheroes. It meant that he could easily lose everyone he had ever cared about in a matter of minutes.

"You look like you're thinking grim thoughts," Tony noted. "It's girl trouble, isn't it? Or is it boys? You know I won't mind either way."

"Neither. Trouble isn't even in my vocabulary," Peter replied airily. "Also, it's girls. I'm pretty sure it's girls."

Tony arched an eyebrow. "Yeah, I was pretty sure too- up until I had my very first fight with Steve Rogers. Then I learned the real meaning of trouble. Look, here's the ice cream truck."

Sure enough, there was Mr. Softee, the air around it thick with methane gas and nostalgia. An ice cream cone smiled down on them from the top of the truck, and a dark-skinned man in a white t-shirt leaned out of the sliding window. "What can I get you two today?"

"One chocolate-vanilla swirl in a cup and a vanilla cone with rainbow sprinkles," Tony replied without missing a beat. Peter scowled.

"You didn't even ask me if that was what I wanted," he complained, nearly snatching the cone out of the ice cream man's hand before he did the math- weak cone, strong fingers- and took it gently.

"But that's always what you want," Tony replied with an infuriating grin. "Shit, I've only got fifty dollar bills and up."

"First world problems," Peter muttered, pulling a few crumpled singles out of his jeans pocket. The ice cream man stared after them as they walked away. "You should really start carrying around real people money if you're going to go out in public. Speaking of which-"

A young blonde woman ran up to them, beaming and breathless. "Hi! I'm so sorry to interrupt you, but are you Tony Stark? Like, Ironman? I'm such a huge fan. Would you sign this for me? Please?" She held out a scrap of notebook paper and a Sharpie.

"Well, because you said please." Tony handed his ice cream to Peter and took the pen. "What's your name?"

"It's Shannon. Oh my God, thank you so much!" The autograph read simply: Shannon- don't stop believing in a better world. Your pal, Tony Stark. Beneath it, his signature was scrawled in loopy, illegible cursive. "I just wanted to say thank you for everything you've done," Shannon said, looking up at him with shining eyes as she took her treasured scrap of notebook paper back. "You know, you're not bad looking for a man who wears a mask all the time."

As she walked away, the two of them watched her hips switch hypnotically in her tight jeans. Peter was the first to snap out of it. He punched Tony in the shoulder. "Dad! You're a married man!"

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Tony answered, taking his ice cream back. "And you are going exactly where with this?"

Peter rolled his eyes. "Man, you must really have a thing for blondes."

"Just one." Tony winked archly.

Ten minutes later, they arrived at the playground where Peter had spent a good portion of his post-adoption childhood. He hadn't even realized where they were going until they were standing at the fence, gazing through the bars at small children playing hopscotch on the tarmac.

"I remember when you were that age," Tony said softly. "Heck, I remember when I was that age."

"Playgrounds must have been a lot less fun back then, you know, before they figured out wheels and inclined planes."

"Yeah, we mostly just hit rocks together and listened to the noises they made."

"Stone age recreation."

Shaking his head, Tony slung his arm around Peter's narrow shoulders, and the two of them turned away. "Seriously, though, you'd tell me if anything was up, wouldn't you? I'm the cool dad."

"You'd probably know even before I did. Eyes everywhere, right?" Peter smiled guiltily, and his dad ruffled his hair.

"I love you, kid."