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It had been a number of days since Peter Parker and Tony Stark had seen each other let alone talked to one another.
A revelation had put sudden distance between them, a revelation that had been sudden and shocking, enough so that both of them decided to pull back so they could sort out their own thoughts.
Tony almost wished that they never would address what was found out, that he could go on and pretend like it never happened, and he could erase the look of shock and panic that had filtered across the teen’s face when he had broken the news.
But, no, that wasn’t exactly the most adult response to the situation, and he knew that Peter would need to talk about it.
Hell. He needed to talk about it.
So there they were, in Peter’s bedroom, in the teen and his Aunt’s apartment in Queens, suffering through a long and awkward silence since they had closed the door.
“So,” Peter said after the moment got too long. The teenager was sitting on his bed, hands folded into his lap, looking at the floor.
Tony’s posture mirrored Peter’s, instead, he was sitting in a computer chair by the kid’s desk. “So,” Tony repeated.
“I um,” Peter started, fingers twisting, “I realized I never asked- I mean, when you told me I never asked-”
“What?”
“How- how did you find out? I mean, why did you find out?” Peter asked, though he was determinedly looking at the floor - Tony couldn’t blame him - it was easy to see him chewing his lip. “You just, decided on a whim or something to compare our DNA or-?”
“Yes. No. Sort of. A few things lined up. You know me, once I get an idea in my head,” Tony started to say, but trailed off with a wince, “I- uh, can’t help myself. I have to see it to the end.”
Peter looked up at him. “What lined up exactly?”
Tony swallowed, unable to read Peter’s expression. He couldn’t tell of the kid was sad, angry, disappointed, or any other number of emotions. All Tony knew was that Peter certainly didn’t seem happy about any of this. “I uh- a few things.”
Peter tilted his head, encouraging him to continue, so Tony did, “For one, you look nothing like your father.”
Peter surprisingly snorted. “Aunt May did tell you that my dad adopted me the day I was born, right?”
“Yes, she did,” he remembered that revelation, “But I only recently found out that particular tidbit about you.”
Tony remembered it happening because he had made an offhanded comment to May how Peter must have gotten some grandfathered in genes because he certainly didn’t get his dark hair and eyes from either of his parents.
“I just figured you’d already know. Like, I thought you’d do a whole background check on me,” Peter admitted.
“Sure I did, kid, but to see basic stuff about you. I had no idea that Richard Parker was not your father,” Tony said. He winced again, and wanted to rub his hand across his face. He was so bad at this. “I mean, not your biological father. He was your real father, of course.”
“Mr. Stark-”
Tony cut him off before he could say anything, “- Also you happen to look a lot like your Aunt. Big brown eyes, the same mannerisms - the whole nine yards.”
Peter hummed, almost fondly at the thought, “Huh. I never thought about that. I guess I do.”
“I mean,” Tony dithered, “I should have figured that out anyway. She’s your aunt by marriage and I’ve never met your uncle, and-”
“It’s okay, Mr. Stark. I get it. I don’t look like my parents. You don’t, like, have to apologize for that? But - it couldn’t have just been the fact that I don’t look like Richard Parker. Right? Like, being all, ‘shit that kid could be my son,’ isn’t exactly a normal reaction to finding out someone’s dad isn’t really their dad.”
“I dunno kid, I fooled around a lot years and years ago.”
Peter’s eyebrows crinkled. “Like with my mom?”
Tony felt a stab to his chest. “I- yes. Like... like with your mom.”
Peter looked at his hands again.
“Kid, look - I’m sorry-” He made to reach out to touch Peter’s shoulder, but retracted it. Coward.
“It’s not your fault,” Peter said.
“Well it is sort of my fault,” Tony tried for a joke - Peter didn’t laugh. “I mean- Kid. Peter. Look at me.”
Peter did.
“I can’t-” Tony wheeled his hand, “I’m not a mind-reader. I can’t tell what’s going on in that big head of yours. Speak to me. What are you thinking? What’s going on in there?”
Peter took in a long breath, his eyes flickering to the door where they both knew Aunt May was waiting patiently on the living room couch giving them space for this conversation.
Peter looked back at Tony. “I don’t know. A lot of things. Questions, maybe?”
Questions. Tony could do questions.
He could answer questions.
So Tony gripped onto that like a lifeline. “Okay shoot,” he leaned forward, scooting the chair closer to Peter. “Ask me anything. Anything at all.”
“Did you like my mom?”
Not a surprising first question, an easy one to answer, “From what I remember? Yes. She was a very brilliant and smart woman.” Beautiful too. But telling Peter how attractive that Tony found her might be the best tidbit to share with the teen about his late mother.
“Did you,” Peter paused, “love my mom?”
Tony cringed. “I- no.” God that was so awful to say. “Kid. Peter. I- I wasn’t a very good person back then,” He still wasn’t, “And-”
“You not loving my mom doesn’t make you a bad person Mr. Stark,” Peter said plainly, he didn’t seem offended. “I just- I want to get a picture. Did you know my Dad?”
“No. I think he and your mom met after her and I’s last um- er,” he twiddled his thumbs. “Interaction.”
Peter snorted. “That tracks. Aunt May told me that Mom and Dad met when she was about... three months pregnant with me? So yeah. That tracks.”
“Anything else?”
“Did you have any suspicions- never mind.” Peter shook his head. “It’s stupid. Of course you didn’t. You wouldn’t be sitting here having this very awkward conversation with me if that was the case.”
Tony followed Peter’s ramblings and replied, “Peter, if I had any idea - any inkling - a lot of things would be very different right now.”
Peter looked at him. “Like how?”
Tony opened and closed his mouth.
Would he have even tried to be a father if he found out back then? Probably not. Maybe? Honestly, Tony had no idea what his past self would have done.
There were many things that he could have done at various stages of his life. Would he have made a good decision? A bad one? Would the Peter he knew be sitting before him as he is now? Would he be the person he was right now?
“Honestly. I don’t know, kiddo. I can’t say. It’d just be different.”
Peter nodded, accepting that.
“So- you sure you didn’t, like, know? Like, secretly? I mean - subconsciously?”
Tony furrowed his brows. “Subconsciously?”
Peter looked embarrassed by his line of questioning. “Yeah - like. That’s the real reason why you took notice of me.”
Tony stared at him for a good long moment before replying flatly, “You think I took notice of you because of some secret subconscious paternal bond and not because you were a teenage vigilante swinging around in the city catching cars wearing naught but fabric and goggles?”
Peter’s ears turned red and he tugged at the collar of his t-shirt awkwardly. “Forget I asked. It’s was a stupid question.”
Tony barked a laugh. “I wish that were true kid - believe me,” He clapped his hand down on Peter’s shoulder. “I might not have fucked up so much if that were the case.”
Peter, whose eyes had drifted back down to his floor, snapped up to Tony once more. “You haven’t fucked up!”
Tony gave him a challenging look. “Oh really? Let me just give you a short list. I took you to Germany for a fight that a kid like you should never have been involved in -”
“- That situation was really complex on both ends,” Peter immediately argued. “I was happy to be there, and you had no idea it was going to turn out the way it did.”
“You were fifteen. Also - let’s just think to everything preceding your homecoming night, shall we? Do you want me to list all the things that happened? Oh and then there is homecoming itself-”
Peter groaned, covering his face. “Don’t remind me. Just - we’ve talked about that. Mistakes were made. A lot of them. On both sides- mostly mine.”
Tony opened his mouth to argue - but Peter was right, they had talked about it ad nauseam by that point, going around and around in circles, they likely would again too. Today was not the day for a rehash of that particular conversation.
“What I am trying to say, Peter,” Tony said, “I think I would have done a lot of things very differently if I knew - and - that’s pretty selfish of me now that I think about it,” Tony said, furrowing his brows. “Ow. Yeah, pretty selfish. Willing to protect my own kid but not some random kid that isn’t biologically related to me.”
“Don’t say that, Mr. Stark-” Peter argued. “You don’t know that - you didn’t even know I was biologically your son until a couple of days ago! Maybe you would have done everything the exact same?”
Tony blew out air and scrubbed his hands through his hair. “I don’t know. Maybe? Probably not. I- I don’t know.”
“I mean, you can’t really talk about a past-hypothetical, right? Like- that’s sort of impossible to know what could have happened. Because it didn’t. It never did.”
It was hard to think about how he could have been. Would he had been keeping Peter safe by lock and key? Would he have recruited him? Would Peter even be allowed to be Spider-Man? Or would everything happened the way it did, up till this moment.
Would it be different depending if he knew Peter when he was a toddler? What if he found out just a few years ago?
What if he had known but never confronted Peter, and just avoided him?
There were infinite possibilities and infinite possible times he could have fucked everything up.
A long silence followed, which was punctuated by Peter asking, “Are you okay, Mr. Stark?”
Tony chuckled, taking off his sunglasses so he could rub his hand down his face, pressing into the corner of his eyes with a forefinger and thumb. “Of course you ask me that. I should be asking you that.”
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
Tony raised his brow at Peter, “Really? You just found out I’m your biological father. Please - do tell me how you feel.” Tony might have said it with a bit too much exasperation, but the whole situation was. A lot.
It was a lot.
Perhaps Tony was scared that Peter wasn’t okay with this.
“I mean...” Peter worked his hands together, “I mean I don’t exactly know how I feel about it; but I do know I don’t feel bad about it,” Peter reasoned. “I just feel... weird. Also - I’m worried I’m somehow reacting to this wrong? I should be taking this differently? Should I be happier? Angrier? Sadder? Confused-er?”
Tony barked a laugh.
“What?” Peter tilted his head.
“Me too, Pete, me too. I have no idea how to feel about this - or how to act about this. What do I do now? Call you son? Do you call me dad? When do we do that? So we ever do that? Do we have to do that? Do we go and play catch now?”
Peter returned the laugh. “I never was athletic.”
“Neither am I.”
“But you’re Iron Man now so-”
“And you’re Spider-Man,” Tony countered. “So I think catch between us could be a cinch. Superb, actually.”
“A bit public though,” Peter said, “to have Iron Man and Spider-Man in the park playing catch.”
“Hmm, I never said anything about a park,” Tony leaned back scrubbing his beard with his fingers. “But. True. It’d be a PR nightmare. Or maybe a PR blessing? I’d have to talk to Pepper before we did anything.”
Peter chuckled.
They let the warm of the joke be followed by silence.
It took a while before anything was said, and it was Peter that got the courage to do so long before Tony could, “So what do we do now?”
Tony sighed. “I don’t know, what do you want to do now?”
“We could-” Peter looked around the room. “We could- try it out? I mean,” Peter chewed his lip, “I mean, it’s not a bad thing, right? It’s not a bad thing that I’m technically your son, right?”
“Fuck no kid, it’s not a bad thing at all.”
“Then - we can go with it. We don’t have to forget this happened. I mean, nothing has to change but like... I mean, nothing has to be ignored either?”
Tony felt a relief of tension that he never knew was being held tight in his chest. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I’d like that.”
“So. We could still do um - the Spider-Man stuff, the lab stuff, and just like, also be related. By blood. And - and if we want to do more father and son stuff, then, that’s okay too.”
Tony grinned, fondly looking at this kid - his kid, apparently. That was a thought he probably never would get used to. “That’s okay too,” he repeated in agreement.
Tony reached out and then ruffled Peter’s hair.
“So what do we do now?” Peter asked.
“How about I take you out for hamburgers - and we figure this out a step at a time.”
Peter smiled, it was bright and honest. “That sounds really good.”