"The Avengers get into the holiday spirit and visit group homes throughout the city on Christmas day." Pepper read aloud from the front page of the New York Times in her hand. She set it down on the kitchen table between Tony and Peter. "That was sure nice of you."
"Kid's idea." Tony mumbled, barely glancing at the paper as he slurped his disgusting green smoothie, face buried in his Starkphone. Peter wasn't sure what his dad was reading, but whatever it was had been distracting him for the past ten minutes.
"Of course it was." Pepper smiled at him, and Peter ducked his head down at the compliment.
"So besides handing out presents to the less fortunate, how was your Christmas?" Pepper asked.
"It was good." Peter answered, reaching out to grab the newspaper since no one else seemed interested and he wanted to see the article.
"Just good?" Pepper prompted, obviously fishing for more.
"It was great. Amazing. Best Christmas ever." Tony said, finally looking up with an amused smile and a knowing look.
"Oh? And why's that?"
"You don't have to play coy. The kid already told me you helped him."
"Helped him with what?" Pepper asked but even Peter could tell she was teasing.
"That's good. Almost believable. Do you use your skills for good or evil in my boardroom?"
"It depends."
Peter blinked and glanced up to study Tony and Pepper with a frown. He'd heard his fair share of conversations between the two of them but this one seemed different. Happier. Or more lighthearted. He couldn't put his finger on it exactly.
"And that's why I made you CEO of my company."
"Oh, that's why? I thought it was because of my impeccable negotiation skills."
"That's about twelve percent of the reason why." Tony's eyes glittered and Pepper let out a rough surprised laugh that Peter had never heard from her before. He didn't get it. It must be some kind of inside joke.
He suddenly realized what was happening right in front of him. Oh god. They were flirting. Peter scrunched his nose up in repulsion.
"Ew get a room." He blurted out before he could stop himself. He felt his cheeks heat, so he stared resolutely down at the paper in front of him to hide his blush.
"Excuse you. What did you say?" Tony asked, sounding surprised and exasperated at the same time.
"You heard me." Peter mumbled, pretending to be engrossed in the article so he wouldn't have to see the look on his dad's face.
Pepper let out an uncharacteristic snort and added, "He's definitely your son."
"Yeah." Tony agreed. "But sometimes I don't know whether to be proud of that fact or scared."
"I'd say you should be twelve percent scared." Pepper joked and they both laughed again.
Gross. Peter rolled his eyes even though neither of them were paying attention to him. As a distraction, he focused on the article. It was fairly bland, outlining which group homes they'd gone to, the pairs they'd split up into, and some examples of the presents they'd handed out. The writing was perfunctory. Mostly it was just pictures of them.
"No, but seriously, thanks for helping Peter out."
"You're welcome."
Peter studied the photos. There was a good one of Steve and Sam, another of Nat and Bruce, but Peter's favorite was the one of him as Spiderman, next to Tony, handing out elaborately wrapped gifts.
He tuned out whatever Pepper and Tony were talking about and skimmed the rest of the front page of the newspaper. There was something there about US weapons being used against Yemen by Saudi Arabia and another story along the side covering how bad New York landlords had gotten away with a slap on the wrist. He was about to turn the page, when a grainy photo at the bottom right hand corner caught his eye.
It was another photo of Tony, but it wasn't from their Christmas outing. In this picture, he was sitting in a booth at one of his favorite burger restaurants. At first it seemed like a fairly benign picture of him and Peter wondered how it had made the front cover. He looked to the headline above it for a clue.
The words, Different Day, Same Kid? met his eye and his breath caught. His attention snapped back to the photo and this time he noticed he was in it as well. He'd automatically glazed over himself before because he wasn't exactly a feature in it. In fact, he was barely in it. But he was in it. And his face was clearer than it'd been in the photo at the Accords signing. Whoever had taken it had obviously been trying to take a photo of Tony, but Peter had happened to be in the path of the camera, sitting opposite him in the booth. Tony was holding his hamburger and smiling at him, but luckily only a small part of Peter's face was visible in profile. The camera had mostly just captured the back of his head.
Peter held his breath as he studied the photo of himself, but even he couldn't definitively tell it was him just by looking at it. He only knew he was the one sitting across from Tony because he remembered that day. He closed his eyes and let out a short sigh of relief.
"What?" Tony asked.
"Um…" Peter looked over at him, his conversation with Pepper now on hold as he frowned at him.
"What's wrong?"
Peter looked back down at the paper and then at Tony. "You might want to see this." He winced and passed the paper over to him, already anticipating the kind of reaction it would get.
"Yeah I know we made the front page." Tony said dismissively after he glanced at it, brow furrowed in confusion. "Why does that have your panties in a twist?"
"No. That's not what I was looking at."
Tony looked at the paper again. "Then what—" The question cut off as he noticed the other photo.
"Shit." Tony swore. "Pep look at this."
He handed the paper to her, pointing to the photo. Pepper took it and echoed him after only a few seconds. "Shit."
"At least you can't tell it's me, right?" Peter offered quietly. He hadn't thought so, but after their reaction he was nervous maybe he'd been deluding himself.
Tony took it back and held it closer to his eyes as he scrutinized the photo. After a few long seconds, he nodded. "You're right. You can't tell."
"Are you sure?" Pepper asked, grabbing it and looking at it closer as well.
"I'm sure." Tony answered.
Pepper chewed on her lip and cocked her head to the side as she stared at the grainy photo. "Yeah…you're right. They didn't get a good enough angle."
"Jesus. I thought everyone had given up." Tony complained with a heavy sigh as he entangled a hand through his hair. "This is ridiculous. That picture had to have been taken months ago."
Peter nodded. It had been. Back in September.
"What are people doing? Going through every possible old photo of me to try to find evidence of Peter?" Tony pursed his lips.
"Apparently." Pepper quirked an eyebrow at him. "Are you telling me you're actually surprised?"
Tony glanced over at him and for once Peter couldn't read the expression on his face. It was an uncharacteristic mix of sadness and worry and…regret?
"No. You're right. I'm not." Tony rubbed his eyes. "I guess I'd just hoped we'd gotten lucky. I mean, we haven't heard a peep in weeks and nothing new since that first picture."
Pepper nodded.
Tony shook his head in resignation. "This is going to start everything up all over again."
Pepper nodded in agreement. "It is."
Peter's eyes widened. What? No.
"It is?" He asked tentatively.
Tony and Pepper both looked over at him before sharing a meaningful look with each other.
"We'll take care of it honey." Pepper was the first to speak, breaking Tony's gaze to give him a soft and reassuring smile. "It'll be ok."
"Are you sure?" His brow creased. They didn't seem very sure.
"It's going to be fine." Tony said but Peter couldn't tell who he was trying to reassure, Peter or himself. "We're just going to have to keep a low profile for a little longer."
"How much longer?" He already hated how they hadn't been able to go out in public together since this whole thing started.
Tony and Pepper shared another look.
"Just tell me." Peter huffed in annoyance. "I'm a big boy. I can handle it."
"Forever." Tony answered.
Peter's face went slack in shock. No. That couldn't be right. He looked to Pepper for some reassurance, some renunciation of the claim, but she stayed silent and stony faced.
"But— I can't… Forever?"
"At least until we're ready for your identity to become public knowledge, which I for one don't want happening anytime soon. For your sake. And my sanity's."
"So not forever." Peter clarified with relief. Forever meant until after he was old and white haired.
Tony pursed his lips and reiterated, "Not anytime soon."
"After I graduate from high school?"
"No. No way. Maybe after college, but preferably after grad school." Tony answered.
"Who ever said I was going to grad school? Actually, who ever said I was going to college?" Peter argued.
Tony shot him an unimpressed look.
"What?"
"You're going to college. It's not negotiable."
Peter scrunched his nose in annoyance. "I don't want to fight about that right now. It's not even related to what we're talking about."
"Uh excuse me, yes it is, and since when do you not want to go to college?" Tony's eyes widened in surprise when he realized Peter wasn't just yanking his chain.
"I didn't say I didn't want to go. I just said I didn't know if I wanted to go."
"Jesus." Tony pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes, something he only did when he was stressed or had a headache coming on. He took a deep breath and let it all out in a short huff before checking his watch. "I'd love to give you an earful right now but I have a meeting I'm already late for." He downed the rest of his coffee and stood.
"But don't think this means you're off the hook. We're tabling this discussion for later." He said, pointing at him as Pepper tried to repress a smile behind him.
"Fine." Peter gave a one shouldered shrug. He hadn't wanted to talk about it anyway. He knew Tony wouldn't understand how conflicted he felt over the decision to go away to college or stay in the city to be Spiderman. Tony wouldn't understand the duty he had to his city, to Queens. His dad looked at him too much like a little kid still.
"Good. Great." Tony replied, still seeming irked, but he walked out with Pepper without commenting any further.
Peter waited until they'd left to let out a heavy sigh. Who scheduled a meeting for the morning after Christmas anyway? Hopefully that meant it was important. Maybe then he'd get lucky and Tony would get distracted by whatever the meeting was about and forget about the whole college thing. He hoped so anyway. He really didn't want to argue about it when he hadn't even made a decision yet.
Peter finished his cereal and put the bowl away in the dishwasher, his eyes drawn almost magnetically to the newspaper sitting on the table as he walked past it into the living room. He tore his gaze away and threw himself onto the couch. It was just one stupid picture. One more picture. It didn't mean there'd be more. It'd be fine. He didn't have anything to worry about. He didn't.
He took a breath and tried to unfurl the tension in his neck as he pulled out his phone and tapped on Ned's number. His best friend always knew how to distract him.
Ned answered on the second ring.
"Hey man, what's going on? How was your Christmas?"
Peter rubbed at his tired eyes before picking up the unappetizing sandwich in front of him. He'd stayed up way too late last night playing a new video game with Ned. It'd been awesome at the time, but now he was paying for his meager three hours of sleep. At least it was a Friday, the first day of February, and they got a three day weekend because the following Monday was some kind of teacher workshop. He'd be able to recover some sleep over the weekend. As long as he didn't keep staying up late playing the game. They still hadn't finished it. On second thought, he was probably going to be tired all weekend.
"Dude, did you see what's trending on Twitter right now?" Ned asked, sounding breathless as he plopped down on the cafeteria bench next to Peter. He didn't know how his friend could be so energetic. He'd gotten as little sleep as he had.
"Uh no." Peter answered, barely understandable around a mouthful of sandwich.
"Dude." Ned's eyebrows shot up and his eyes widened.
Peter finished swallowed the food in his mouth and since he knew it was what Ned wanted, he asked with a sigh, "What?"
Ned glanced around, trying not to be obvious about it but utterly failing. Luckily no one ever paid any attention to them.
"What?" He asked again.
"I can't say here." Ned whispered and Peter quirked an eyebrow at him.
"Just…check Twitter."
Peter rolled his eyes and took another monster bite of his ham sandwich before he pulled his phone out of his pocket. He thumbed to the home screen and pressed the Twitter icon. It didn't take him long to figure out what Ned was talking about. He set the sandwich down and gave the phone his full attention.
"Shit." He mumbled.
"Yeah." Ned echoed in agreement.
He scrolled through more tweets, all with the same picture on them, but with different comments. He was surprised to see even celebrities chiming in.
"Like literally everyone's talking about it." Ned added, and Peter glanced around. All the students in the cafeteria were huddled together in groups looking at their phones and Peter didn't know how he'd missed the charged murmur in the air before.
"You don't think anyone's recognized me, do you?" Peter whispered, keeping his head down as he kept scrolling through all the tweets.
"No way." Ned shook his head. "If they had we'd definitely know by now."
Which was true. He'd be getting swarmed if anyone in his school had actually recognized his face in the picture that seemed to be splashed all over Twitter.
He winced at the current tweet in front of his face. 'Is anyone really surprised Tony Stark has a secret love child? I mean I know he's Ironman but did everyone collectively forget the 90's? He was no saint.'
Peter couldn't even remember when the photo could've been taken. It showed his back as he was about to climb into the passenger side of Tony's Audi. Tony stood, face fully visible, about to get in the driver's side of the car. It could've been any day in New York that they were out together. Thankfully the photographer had cared more about getting a good picture of Tony, so only the back of Peter's head was visible. Again. He knew he should feel relieved about that, but he wasn't.
He chewed the inside of his cheek. At this rate, it seemed like only a matter of time before someone unearthed a past picture of him where you could see his face. Maybe it'd be better to just fess up and get it over with sooner rather than later.
"Hey losers." MJ interrupted his thoughts as she sat down across from them with her packed lunch and a book that looked more like some ancient tome than a piece of popular literature.
"Hey." Peter mumbled back, eyes still glued to his phone. He ignored the crinkling as MJ unpacked her food.
"So…how's it feel to be secretly famous?" She asked.
His head snapped up at her as she took a huge bite of her apple.
"Dude." Ned said in reproach. "Someone could hear you."
"Calm down." She said with a roll of her eyes at their overreaction once she'd finished chewing. "You can't tell it's him."
"Yeah but what if people start putting two and two together with Peter and the Stark internship?" Ned asked.
Shit. Peter hadn't even thought of that.
MJ shook her head. "No one believes that's real." She took another nonchalant bite of her apple. Peter left his half eaten sandwich untouched on the table in front of him. His appetite had evaporated.
"That's true." Ned agreed.
Usually it annoyed him that his entire class thought he was a liar about the Stark internship, but at least it would work in his favor now.
"It'll blow over." MJ said once she finished her apple and he still hadn't said a word, busy scrolling through Twitter on his phone.
"Maybe." He wasn't so sure anymore. After the first couple he could believe it, but this was the third time in the last six weeks. It seemed inevitable at this point.
"What does Mr. Stark say?" Ned asked in a whisper so soft Peter wasn't sure if MJ could even hear him.
"Nothing yet." Peter shrugged. His dad hadn't so much as sent a text message.
"Maybe he doesn't know."
MJ scoffed.
"There's no way he doesn't know." Peter said, but he decided to send him a text anyway.
Have you seen Twitter recently?
His response came back seconds later.
Shouldn't you be studying, not twittering?
It's called tweeting.
Don't worry kid. We're on it.
"He says they're on it." Peter mumbled.
"What does that mean?" Ned asked.
Peter shrugged. It wasn't that he didn't want to answer. He just didn't know.
Even though he'd figured more pictures were inevitable, Peter had secretly hoped that picture was the last one. But of course it wasn't, and for some reason it seemed to have opened the flood gates. More and more pictures surfaced of him with Tony. Every week there was a new one with a piece of Peter showing every time, but never enough to identify him. Each one came with more speculation, which meant more anxiety for Peter and stress for Tony, who'd become more and more short tempered as the weeks of close calls dragged on.
"I don't care. Don't we own most of that newspaper? Yeah? So explain to me how the hell that photo got run." Tony snapped, voice progressively getting louder. "You don't know? Isn't it your job to know?"
Peter watched from the couch as his dad paced with his phone pressed against his ear.
"Yeah? You're sorry?" Tony had a pinched expression on his face that meant he was probably fighting another headache. "You bet you're sorry. You're fired."
Tony hung up and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. Definitely a headache.
"Did you really just fire that guy?" Peter asked, feeling sorry for whoever had been on the other end of that call.
"Since he didn't do his one and only job? Yes." Tony responded in a no nonsense way.
Peter felt bad for the guy, but he knew his dad well enough to know when he'd be open to discussing something and when he wouldn't. This was definitely the latter.
Tony gave his head a small shake before walking to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee from the pot. His third of the afternoon. Peter was keeping count.
Peter turned back to the TV but the show couldn't keep his interest for more than a few seconds. He turned it off with a sigh and made his way into the kitchen, taking a seat at one of the stools along the counter. He chewed on his bottom lip as his dad's eyes narrowed at him.
"What?"
"I've just been thinking." Peter said hesitantly.
"Uh huh. Care to share with the class?" Tony prompted after he took a long sip of his coffee.
"Maybe we should just tell people." Peter suggested.
"No." His dad answered instantly and definitively.
"You didn't even think about it."
"Because I don't have to. It's a bad idea."
"Why? We both know they're going to figure it out eventually, and don't you miss being able to do things together?"
"Wanting to go out and get pizza together is not a good reason to blow your identity, trust me. And we don't know they're going to figure it out. It's been almost three months already and they still don't know who you are, and that means they probably never will, which is how I'd like to keep it."
"But why? Do you really never want anyone to know I'm your son?" Peter tried to keep the slight hurt he felt out of his voice, but his dad's face fell all the same.
"That's not it at all."
"Then what is it?"
"You have no idea how bad it will be for you if the public finds out who you are."
Peter made a face at that. "How bad could it really be?"
Tony's eyebrows practically flew to his hairline. "How bad could it be? How bad?"
He hated when his dad repeated things. It meant he'd reached the point where he was going to rant and once that happened, it was game over.
Tony set his coffee cup down on the counter and held up a finger. "First, the privacy you love so much? Gone. And not just for a week or a month or two. Forever. Every time you step foot in public you'll be hounded by the paparazzi and by every average joe on the street."
Tony paused a second to let that sink in.
"Sounds fun huh? But that's not all. No, I'm just getting started. Second, I have enemies. And not just average enemies. Powerful ones. Remember Ross?"
Peter couldn't hold his dad's gaze at that.
"Exactly. You starting to get it now? Some people would stop at nothing to hurt me and with your identity compromised, you'd be an easy target."
Peter's head snapped back up and he frowned in offense. "No I wouldn't. I'm Spiderman."
"That didn't stop Ross."
"But Ross knew I was Spiderman." He argued. Some random person would've never stood a chance of kidnapping him.
"Exactly." Tony said with an intensity Peter hadn't seen from him in awhile. "And how did he know? Because he found out you were important to me, so he watched you like a hawk, and it didn't take him too long to put two and two together."
Peter inhaled sharply at that. He hadn't even considered the risk to his superhero secret identity if he was outed as Tony's son. He'd taken his ability to go back out as Spiderman for granted over the past month after his dad had finally relented on his punishment.
"People already know Ironman and Spiderman are close. If they found out about you, what are the odds someone would figure it out? It wouldn't be that big of a leap, and it only takes one smart ass with a big mouth looking for a quick buck for the entire world to know. So outing you as my son carries the risk of eventually outing your superhero identity. Understand?"
Peter swallowed hard and nodded, feeling appropriately chastised. Spiderman had enemies of his own, and even though most of the people he was close to were superheroes, he still had his friends. They didn't have any powers. They were weaknesses Spiderman's enemies could exploit.
Tony let out a heavy sigh and dropped his head, rubbing his forehead. "I don't want to scare you. I just want you to understand why it's so important to keep your identity as my kid a secret. Being a Stark is hard enough without the superhero aspect. Add that to it, and it's even harder."
"You would know." Peter tried to joke, giving his dad a thin smile.
Tony scoffed and shook his head in exasperation, but he returned the smile. "I do. So trust me when I say it's absolutely vital that people don't find out who you are."
"Ok. I get it. I'll keep being careful." Even though it sucked. He could handle it. Tony was right. It was probably better than the alternative.
"Good." Tony came around the counter to ruffle his hair. "You're still my kid. You know it. And I know it. That's all that matters. And maybe someday far far in the future when you're much older and way more mature-"
Peter rolled his eyes at that.
"-we'll tell the world who you are. That you're my son and the heir to Stark Industries. But until then, we'll keep it quiet, so there's plenty of time for you to live a nice normal life. For a masked vigilante anyway." Tony smirked.
"Ok. That sounds good." Peter smiled again, trying to banish his secret doubt. His dad seemed so certain no one was going to figure out who he was, but he couldn't shake the feeling that as nice as it would be to stay anonymous, it was only a matter of time before it all came crashing down.
A/N: Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! I tried to get this posted by Christmas, and that didn't work, so then I thought I'd be able to post it for New Year's but clearly that didn't work either, but I finally got it done, so here you are! Sorry it's taken so long but at least it's a long chapter. I thought about cutting it into two but you have all been waiting so patiently so I just decided to post it as one. Thanks so much for all your support and all your lovely comments! I read and appreciate every single one of them!