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The Invite
“May, you gotta come,” Tony argues, phone on speaker as he scrubs at something sticky on the countertop in his workshop.
“Peter and I always go out to eat,” May says.
“Yeah.” Tony presses the pad of his index finger against the spot. It’s still sticky. What the hell did Morgan get on here? “That’s sad though,” he tells May.
“Sad?” she says.
He straightens a bit at her tone, which is bordering on daring him to go on. “I mean, I’m sure it’s fun. It was fun. But Pepper and I are doing the whole thing with the turkey and stuffing and all. Green beans. Cranberry sauce. Pie. Friends and family. Everyone’s staying over because we built too many guest rooms in this house. And we want you to come.” He pauses. “Happy already said he was coming,” he adds. In fact, Tony had kind of assumed that when Happy had confirmed his attendance, he was also confirming attendance for May and the kid, seeing as that was a whole thing now.
But, evidently not. Given the way May is making him beg.
“Do you even know how to cook a turkey?” she asks.
“I’ve got a plan,” Tony says. “I need Peter to help me with it, actually.”
“Peter doesn’t know how to cook a turkey. He doesn’t know how to cook anything other than bagel bites.”
“May, come on,” Tony wheedles.
She sighs into the receiver. “Alright. But your turkey better be better than the nice Italian place I was planning on. And I want pecan pie.”
“Pecan pie. Got it. I’ll add it to the list.” Tony swipes at the spot again, ineffectively. “Hey, is it okay if I borrow the kid early? He can help set up.”
“You’re using my kid for child labor?”
“Is that any different than what I’ve been doing the past, uh…” He frowns, fumbling over how to calculate the years. Three, if he skips over the blip. Eight, if he includes it. Time still feels strange, a year after bringing everyone back.
“I guess not,” May says. “You can pick him up from school Wednesday. They’re letting them out at noon.”
“Perfect,” Tony says. “I love city traffic on a holiday.”
After May hangs up on him, Tony texts Pepper: Happy, May, and the kid are all coming.
It takes an hour, because she’s on a business trip and not due back until the day before Thanksgiving herself, but she eventually texts back: That was in question?
Tony: No. I handled it. Perfect thanksgiving plan still in place. 👍
Pepper: About that…
The Flight Delay
The day before Thanksgiving is notoriously the worst travel day of the year, and it appears that even Europe has not escaped the mess. Pepper’s been in Helsinki for the past week, and was due to fly back Wednesday evening. But a snowstorm has grounded everything.
“What do you mean grounded?” Tony demands, still scrubbing at the sticky spot.
“It’s a blizzard, Tony,” Pepper tells him. She sounds stressed. It’s Tuesday afternoon already, which is around midnight in Finland, and she’s supposed to leave Wednesday morning.
“Like… a blizzard blizzard or just–”
“Yes,” Pepper spits out at him. “A real life blizzard. No one can see more than ten feet ahead of them. Planes cannot take off. Not even the private jet.”
Tony grits his teeth. “I could send a suit?” he suggests, careful to pitch it as a question.
“No.” A pause. Then: “Okay, maybe if this hasn’t cleared up by tomorrow afternoon. With the time change I get home only an hour after I leave, so if I can get out of here by… four? Then I’d make it in time for dinner.”
Tony considers that. If she leaves at 4 PM, with a little over eight hours in the air, then he’s picking her up at JFK at 5 PM. They might be home by 8 PM.
“Maybe make it two?” he suggests.
“Sure,” Pepper bites out. “I’ll just go tell Father Winter.”
Tony is suddenly really glad that he’s on the other side of the planet from his wife. “I’m sure you’d terrify him into submission, honey.”
After Pepper hangs up on him, Morgan comes running into the workshop, holding her doll out to him and asking him to help unknot its hair. Tony frowns. “What did you spill on this counter?” he asks her, as he takes the doll she’s holding out.
Morgan shrugs. “I dunno. Are you sure it was me?”
“Yes, I’m sure it was you. I don’t eat sticky things, and the counter is very sticky now. And it won’t come off.” He pulls at the doll’s hair. This task is also looking impossible.
“Mommy uses the Magic Eraser for sticky stuff.”
“Magic eraser,” Tony echoes, wondering what game that was. “Okay. Well, that’s helpful. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome!” Morgan chirps.
The In-Laws
Tony’s not sure if Peter knows that he’s picking him up from school, so when he spots the kid on the front steps, he lays on the horn. Every person in the vicinity turns to look, including Peter, but Tony’s pretty sure Peter is the only one who will recognize the car.
Sure enough, the kid’s eyes go wide. He says something to the girl standing next to him and– Oh! This must be the infamous MJ. Peter gives her an awkward hug, and an equally awkward kiss on the cheek, then rushes towards the car and climbs into the front seat and before the door even closes is demanding, “What the hell?!”
“Was that MJ?” Tony asks.
Peter is slouching down as far as he can as he buckles his seatbelt. “Would you just drive?”
“She’s cute.”
“Oh my god.”
“You should invite her for Thanksgiving.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why?” Tony asks. “Are you embarrassed to introduce her to all of us? Does she have a bunch of family plans?”
“Yes,” Peter says. “I am. And…” he frowns, finally looking at Tony, brow furrowed. “I’m not sure, actually. She hasn’t talked about it. Should she have talked about it? Should I have asked?”
“You should’ve asked,” Tony tells him, feeling good about being the one able to impart valuable relationship advice for once.
Peter sighs heavily, but is then distracted by Morgan, and turns around towards the backseat to start talking to her. So distracted, he doesn’t even notice that Tony has driven them to La Guardia.
“Why did you drive here?” Peter demands.
“We’re picking up Pepper’s parents.” They’ve flown in from California. Pepper was supposed to be here when they got here, but, well. Now she’s not. So it’s just Tony. Which is… awesome. Because Pepper’s parents absolutely love him.
Which is to say that they tolerate him, and seem to sort of like him, sometimes. But they also seem to have never gotten over the fact that he was Pepper’s boss, first, nevermind that it’s been fourteen years.
He sends Morgan towards them first when he spots them on the curb. “Go on. Say hi to Grandma and Grandpa.”
She proves a sufficient distraction for a minute or two, but then Janet steps towards him, pulling him into a hug. And Charlie offers a hand to shake. And then they spot Peter, who neither of them have met before, and Charlie says, “Oh! And this is, um…”
Peter, who May has trained to be unfailing polite to adults, offers a hand to shake. “Hi Mr. Potts. I’m Peter.” Then he introduces himself to Mrs. Potts, and offers to take their luggage to the car.
Janet is blinking at him, looking surprised, but then says, “Well, it’s really nice to meet you too dear. Aren’t you sweet, offering to help?”
“It’s no problem!” Peter tells her brightly, before hefting all the bags under his arms and hauling them to the trunk. He even spends the car ride chatting with them about school and his plans for college next year, in between Morgan’s tales about kindergarten.
When they get home, Tony settles Charlie and Janet into the guest room, finally does the math on guests versus beds in his house, and then drags Peter away from their door to hiss, “Were Happy and May planning to stay the night tomorrow?”
Peter cringes. “Please don’t bring that up. We talked about this.”
Tony rolls his eyes. “Yes or no?”
“Yes. I think?”
Tony turns around, surveying the doors running down his upstairs hallway. Behind him, Janet appears in the doorway of the guest room and asks, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing!” Tony insists. “Peter’s just going to bunk with Morgan this weekend so that Happy and May can have his room.”
“I am?” Peter asks. “What’s wrong with my room?”
“We’re out of beds. Happy and May are gonna need it.”
“Really?” Peter asks, looking pained.
Morgan, having picked up on the relevant parts of the conversation, grabs Peter’s hand and starts pulling him towards her room. “C’mon Peter we can have a slumber party!”
Peter shoots Tony a desperate look.
“Tomorrow night, Morguna. He can sleep in his own bed tonight.”
“But I want to show him the outfits I got for Julie.”
There’s a pause. Peter asks, “That’s your doll, right?”
“Yes!” Morgan seems delighted that he’s remembered. “Daddy and I gave her a haircut yesterday, so she’s punk now. And we got her outfits to match her new look.”
Tony puts a hand on her shoulder, steering her back towards the stairs, and says, “Why don’t you go find a board game everyone can play? Peter can help you.”
Peter shoots him another look, less desperate this time, more annoyed. Tony raises his eyebrows back.
Peter holds out a hand to Morgan. “Come on Morgs. I’m not playing CandyLand with you again though. You cheated last time.”
Tony hears Morgan arguing as Peter leads her down to the playroom, then Janet comments, “He’s good with her.”
Tony turns towards her. “Yeah. He’s a good kid.”
“How old is he?”
“Seventeen,” Tony says. Then, for some reason, he feels the need to add, “But he blipped, so…” And he shrugs, because there’s not much else to say after that. Peter should be 23 right now.
Janet’s eyes widen. “Oh,” she says.
He smiles back at her, feeling awkward. “I should probably check on them,” he says, taking a step back and pointing over his shoulder. “Make sure we don’t wind up playing Twister or Monopoly.”
The Uncle
Rhodey lands on the front lawn Thursday morning in his suit and leaves it parked to the side of the driveway. Tony stands on the porch, arms crossed, and says, “Really?”
“This was faster,” Rhodey tells him. He holds up a bag of slightly squashed rolls. “I brought rolls.”
Tony blinks at him. “Did you have those inside the suit?”
Morgan darts past Tony’s legs and launches herself into Rhodey’s arms. “Uncle Rhodey!”
“Hey munchkin!” He hefts Morgan up onto his hip, following Tony into the house. The rolls wind up tossed onto the kitchen counter. “Did your dad mess up the turkey yet?”
“Not yet.”
“I’m not gonna mess it up,” Tony says. “I have a plan.”
Rhodey sets Morgan down, and she runs back over to join Peter at the coffee table, where she’s enlisted his help in making construction paper turkeys from cutouts in the shape of their hands to use as place settings. Which is really cute; Tony already took a picture.
Rhodey surveys the dining room, where Tony made Peter set up the extra tables and chairs from the basement earlier, and the kitchen, which is just waiting for Happy to arrive and start cooking. Happy has threatened them all with death if they try to make any side dishes without him. “You’ve really gone all out man.”
“We’ve got nine people. And one is Pete, who has superhuman metabolism and eats enough for three.”
“When’s Pepper get home?”
Tony winces. “With any luck, she’s gonna land at three, and I can get us back here before six.”
“Cuttin’ it close.”
“I live dangerously.” A pause. “Thoughts on taking the quinjet? I could make the trip back and forth in thirty minutes that way.”
Rhodey stares at him.
“Is that a, uh, misuse of government property or…” Tony raises a hand, wobbling it back and forth. “Because I paid for that thing, originally. And no one ever paid me back. So I think I still own it.”
Rhodey turns and walks away.
Charlie has been flipping through channels, but when Rhodey approaches and asks him if the pre-game coverage has started yet they start talking about football. Tony attempts to tune them out. “You don’t even like these teams,” he tells Rhodey. “Are the Eagles even playing today?”
“Not this year,” Charlie says. “You know,” he adds, “you’d think Philadelphia would wind up playing Dallas on Thanksgiving more often. But somehow they hardly ever do.”
“You’d think so,” Rhodey agrees, nodding sagely. Then, to Tony: “Football on Thanksgiving is a long-standing American tradition.” His tone is solemn, as if Tony has insulted everything about the entire holiday.
“He’s right,” Peter says, pointing at Rhodey, but not looking up from where he’s gluing together pieces of construction paper. “Turkey. Pie. Football.”
“See,” Rhodey says. “Your kid thinks I’m right.”
Janet looks up from the book she’s reading, finally seeming to register that there’s a conversation happening around her.
“You don’t even like football,” Tony tells Peter. “Do you even know the rules?”
“Do you?” the kid shoots back.
Touché.
Rhodey’s smirking at him, the smug bastard.
“Well, whatever,” Tony says. “The kid doesn’t have time to watch football anyway. He’s gotta help me with the turkey.”
“I do?” Peter asks.
“Yep. C’mon.” Tony waves a hand at him, gesturing for him to get up. “We’re gonna go to the workshop.”
“But Daddy, we’re not done making the turkeys!” Morgan protests.
“Uncle Rhodey is gonna help you make the rest of the fake turkeys,” Tony promises her. “Peter has to help me with the real turkey.”
Rhodey nods. “Hand me the glue, kiddo. I bet our fake turkeys will be better than their real one.” Then he adds, “And give me a blank piece. I need to explain football to you.” He starts scribbling with a marker. “Okay, so you’ve got the ball, right? That’s here. Now these guys are the offense–“
Tony pushes Peter out the door then turns back to point at Rhodey. “If she asks to play little league after this, you get to take her.”
Rhodey rolls his eyes. “Little league is baseball.”
The Turkey
As Tony explains his plan on how to cook the turkey, Peter’s face lights up with glee, just the way Tony knew it would. Sometimes, it’s nice to have someone around who appreciates science and innovation the same way he does.
“Are we starting with it frozen or thawed?” Peter asks.
“Great question,” Tony says. “Since this is sort of an experiment, and since I feel like we should document our results–”
“For science.”
“And for next year, so we can do it again. That’s why we bought three turkeys yesterday. So we can try both methods.”
“What’s the third one for?” Peter asks.
“Plan B.”
“What’s Plan B?”
“Martha Stewart.”
An hour later, when May enters the workshop, Tony and Peter have both donned safety glasses and aprons and have just sent the code to the nanobots they injected into the frozen turkey to get them moving, which will heat the turkey from within, cooking it to perfection.
At least, that is The Plan. What actually happens is that the nanobots heat the turkey internally so fast that the internal temperature exceeds the external temperature of the frozen skin, and the turkey explodes, sending tiny bits of turkey innards all over the workshop.
May screams. Peter screams. Tony stands stock still in the middle of the mess, hands raised, covered in bits of turkey.
Which is the scene everyone else stumbles in on.
“What the fuck?” Happy demands. Rhodey starts cracking up laughing. Charlie and Janet look stunned.
“You’re not supposed to say fuck, Uncle Happy,” Morgan tells him. “That’s Daddy’s word.” She starts walking across the floor carefully, collecting handfuls of turkey bits.
“Don’t eat that,” Tony tells her.
Peter picks a bit of turkey out of his hair and examines it closely. He nibbles at it.
“I just told you not to eat that!”
“You told Morgan not to eat it,” Peter says, as if this distinction makes a difference.
Tony rolls his eyes. “Excuse me if I thought seventeen was old enough to not have to be told not to eat things off the floor.”
Peter’s attention is still on the piece of turkey. He holds it up close to his face.
“So help me Pete, if you put that back in your mouth–”
“No, no. This is actually cooked,” Peter says. “I think we did it!”
“Oh,” Tony says. Then: “See, I told you it would work.”
“I think we just need to use the thawed one. It was the frozen flesh that made it explode.”
Tony nods, examining a piece of the turkey himself. “Go get it out of the fridge.”
“Are you–” Happy’s face is turning red. “Is this turkey?” He’s helping May pick bits of it out of her hair.
“No, it’s chicken,” Tony says. “Yes, it’s turkey. This is Thanksgiving.”
Peter has returned, placing the thawed turkey on the workbench.
“No,” Happy says. “Absolutely not.” He steps towards the turkey, hands raised as though to ward them off. “You two are not blowing up another turkey.”
Peter turns to him, eyes wide. “But… it’s for science.”
Happy raises a finger at him. “No.”
“But–”
“No.”
“Hap–” Tony tries.
Happy picks up the bird. “I am taking this to the kitchen. You two are banned. No more turkey for you!” With that, he spins on his heel, carrying his prize back towards the house. May trails after him, saying something about a shower. Charlie and Janet are still hovering in the doorway until Rhodey herds them back towards the house.
“Don’t worry,” Rhodey tells them. “Happy can actually cook. He was already in charge of all the sides, so this is gonna be better...”
Tony looks at the kids, still holding onto handfuls of turkey bits, then turns to give a contemplative look at the fridge in the corner of the room. “We still have a third turkey,” he says.
Peter’s eyes light up. Morgan grins widely. “Can I blow it up this time?” she asks. “Peter already had a turn!”
The Girlfriend
As Tony’s leaving to go pick up Pepper from the airport, he’s stopped by Peter, who stands in front of him, shifting from foot to foot.
“Spit it out, kid.”
“Right. Okay.” Peter nods. “So… Remember yesterday?”
“Vaguely.”
“And how you told me I should’ve been a better boyfriend and asked MJ what she was doing for Thanksgiving?”
Tony nods. “Yep.”
Peter starts to go on, “So I took your advice and–”
May, who’s spent most of the day perched on top of the kitchen island flirting with Happy while he cooks, twists around to demand, “Have you been giving my kid relationship advice?”
Tony turns to her. “Maybe.”
“You?!”
“What’s wrong with my advice? I’m happily married!”
May’s expression is skeptical. Tony’s not sure if she’s skeptical about his advice or the state of his marriage. He’s gonna go with the advice.
Janet, who’s been working on making a pecan pie, asks May, “Wait, Peter’s your kid?” And then, when everyone turns to look at her, she gives them a tight smile and says, “Sorry. It’s just, I thought you were Happy’s girlfriend.”
“She’s both,” Tony says, grinning, because he is still delighted by that turn of events.
“Oh,” Janet says, before turning back to her pie.
Tony tries to leave again, but Peter stops him a second time. “No, no wait. I was trying to tell you. I asked her, like you said, and it turns out she isn’t doing anything for Thanksgiving. Not really anyway. Because her mom is stuck on a business trip so it’s just her and her dad, and they’re not big on the holiday anyway. I guess they never have been because it’s just the three of them and it’s hard when you don’t have a big family thing which, y’know, we totally bonded over!” He grins, clearly pleased about this part. “Because May and Ben and I never had a lot of people, and then, well, it was just me and May. But they also don’t do anything because the reason for celebrating Thanksgiving is based on a myth about colonial saviors that our nation is continuing to perpetuate. So anyway,” Peter goes on. “Now we’re having this big dinner with you and it’s a whole thing and all.” He throws in some broad hand gestures. “And, um, I sort of… askedhertocomeover.”
He finally stops to take a breath, then asks, “If that’s okay? I can, like, call and tell her she can’t come if it’s not. But, uh, please don’t make me do that. Because you said it was okay earlier and she might kill me. Or break up with me.”
Tony stares at him. May stares at him. Happy actually stops cooking for a minute to stare at him.
“Let me get this right,” Tony says, one hand raised as if that will ward off the manic energy emanating from the kid. “You invited your girlfriend, who lives in Queens, to my house, two hours away, for Thanksgiving? Which she doesn’t celebrate?”
Peter presses his lips together in a tight smile and nods. “I mean, you did tell me to.”
“Right. I did.” Tony nods. “How is she getting here?”
“Well, see, I knew you were gonna go back to the city to get Pepper so…”
The kid is smiling at him now, big and hopeful.
“Uh huh. And how is she getting home after dinner?”
“I thought about that too,” Peter says, excited now. “And I figured that MJ could use the trundle bed in Morgan’s room, and I’ll sleep on the couch downstairs. Or, like, the floor. If the couch is taken already. I’m fine either way.”
Tony has to bite the inside of his lip to suppress a grin. He meets May’s eyes over Peter’s head. She grins and waves a hand at him in a gesture to go on.
“Well,” Tony says, “who am I to deny young love? Go get in the car so we can go pick up our women.”
“Yes! Thank you! Thank you so much!” Peter, in his joy, wraps his arms around Tony in a quick hug, before running off to grab his coat. Then he skids back around the corner a second later and says, “You absolutely cannot call MJ ‘my woman’ in front of her. She will kill me. And then probably you.” Then he’s gone again.
May points at Tony. “You will be the one chaperoning that in the middle of the night tonight.”
“Is he in love with her or terrified of her?” Tony asks, still staring at the spot where Peter disappeared around the corner.
“A healthy dose of both, I think.”
The Pick Up
They pick up MJ first. Peter jumps out of the car and stands at the door to her apartment building, bouncing on his toes as he waits for her. Tony sends a video to May. She texts him back and tells him to stop being creepy.
“Hi, you must be MJ,” Tony says, after they’re both back in the car.
“Michelle,” she corrects him.
Tony frowns. “Pete said–”
“Only my friends call me MJ.”
Peter’s eyes are wide as they dart between Michelle and Tony. “Um, sorry. I should have said something…”
Michelle leans forward and holds out a hand to shake. Tony has to twist around to grab it. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Stark. Peter talks about you all the time. Thanks for, like, saving the universe and stuff last year. And for letting me come over. Peter said there would be pie.”
Tony grins. “All the time, huh? And you are very welcome. We have both pecan and pumpkin. Call me Tony.”
“I do not talk about him all the time,” Peter protests.
“You sorta do,” Michelle says.
Tony leaves them to chat in low voices in the backseat, and makes his way toward the airport. They’re thirty minutes early, so Tony drags both teenagers inside to wait because at least inside there are free snacks.
They’re both looking around the private terminal with wide eyes, and Tony hears Michelle mutter, “This is nuts. There’s not even any security. You just… walk onto a plane. With full size shampoo.”
“Look,” Peter says, pointing. “Snacks!”
When Pepper arrives, she looks around at her welcoming party, bemused. “Let me guess, Happy banned you two from the kitchen and sent Peter’s girlfriend as a chaperone?”
“Pretty much,” Tony says, before giving her a kiss. “How was the trip?”
“Horrific. Let’s go home.”
On the way home, she asks, “Tony, why has my mother been texting me since yesterday saying that there’s something we need to talk about?”
“What?”
“What’s been going on? What did you say to her?”
“I–” Tony turns, blinking at her for a moment, before looking back at the road. “Nothing! Everything has been fine.”
“Well it must not be fine if she thinks we need to talk.”
“Absolutely nothing has gone wrong,” he says. “Peter! Back me up here.”
“What?” Peter asks, his head popping up between their seats.
“Tell Pepper about what we’ve been doing since we picked her parents up.” Then: “Where is your seatbelt?”
“It’s on,” Peter says.
“How are you up here then?”
“I just moved the shoulder strap–”
“Don’t do that,” Tony tells him. “Put it back. If we crash you could die.”
Peter sits back, rolling his eyes. Tony can see him do it in the rearview mirror. He narrows his own. “Don’t roll your eyes.”
“If you say they’ll get stuck–”
Pepper interrupts, “What happened with my mother? I need to know before I go in there. I cannot have a repeat of Christmas 2021, Tony.”
“Nothing happened!” Tony insists.
“What happened in 2021?” Michelle pipes up, curious.
“Yeah, we were dead for that,” Peter says.
“Don’t say that,” Tony tells him. “Jesus Christ kid. You are supposed to say you were blipped, not dead.”
In the backseat Peter and Michelle are now looking at each other and rolling their eyes.
“It’s a long story,” Pepper says. She twists around so she can look at Peter. “Now what have you guys done?”
“We played a card game?” Peter phrases it like a question.
“A card game,” Pepper says, tone flat.
“Sort of. It was Sequence. So like, sort of a board game too. And Morgan and your dad were on one team and your mom and I were on another because Morgan found out I didn’t have a grandma and said I could borrow hers. Which was super sweet of her.”
“Aww,” Pepper says. “That’s cute.”
Peter nods. “Tony was on his own team. He lost.”
“I was outnumbered,” Tony says.
“And today, we set up the dining room. Well, I set up the dining room, Tony didn’t help at all–” (“You have super strength,” Tony protests.) “–and your dad and Rhodey were watching football while Tony and I, um… cooked the turkey. Morgan helped. And then when we left I think your mom was helping Happy cook. I’m not sure what else she was doing all day, sorry. Morgan was with her though.”
Pepper sits back. “Well none of that seems worth texting me over.” She turns her phone on, tapping at it for a moment. “She’s sent several.”
“I mean it might have been–”
“No,” Tony says.
“But–”
“What did you do?” Pepper demands, suspicious.
“First of all,” Peter says, “you should know that we were testing a hypothesis.”
The Dinner
“Sweetie, you made it!” Charlie pulls Pepper into a hug as soon as she walks in the door, only to get edged out by Morgan, who then tugs her mother over to look at the construction paper place settings she made.
“Everything smells wonderful Happy!” Pepper calls over her shoulder, before greeting her mother and then cooing over the place settings.
“Did Tony tell you what he did to the first turkey?” Happy asks.
“Something about a science experiment?”
“We blew it up!” Morgan says, throwing her arms out wide to demonstrate.
Pepper spins around, pinning Tony with her gaze. “You didn’t say it blew up.”
“A very small explosion, honey,” Tony says. “You’ve seen me blow up much larger things.” He points Morgan in Peter and Michelle’s direction. “Why don’t you show Michelle your room, Morguna? She's gonna have a slumber party with you instead of Pete. In fact, Peter is not allowed to join the slumber party. At all. Girls only.”
Peter and Morgan both stare at him. “But we were gonna make a blanket fort,” Peter says, sounding upset at being excluded.
Tony stares back. “Oh. Um. Okay, well… I guess you can still… build a fort then. But you’re sleeping down here.”
May, helping carry dishes over to table, practically doubles over and nearly drops the dressing. When they turn to look at her she waves them off, lips pressed together as she tries to stop laughing.
Peter’s brow is furrowed. “Yeah, we decided that earlier,” he says, clearly confused that the topic is even being discussed.
“Right, okay,” Tony says. “Glad we sorted that out.”
Michelle is nearly smirking. “A blanket fort, Parker?”
He turns to her. “Oh, well. I kind of promised Morgan yesterday, before I knew you were coming, and–“
“It’s cool,” she says.
Peter smiles at her, looking relieved. “Yeah?”
“I mean, maybe,” Michelle says. “Do I get to see this fort or–”
“Oh, yeah! Absolutely. We haven’t built it yet so you can help.”
Morgan grins, and reaches for Michelle’s hand, tugging her towards the table. “Hi! I’m Morgan. You can sit next to me and Peter. I didn’t make you a name card but I have extra so I can make you one now.” She darts off and returns with an extra construction paper turkey and a marker. “How do you spell your name?”
“M-J.”
“Oh, that’s super easy,” Morgan says, scribbling it down.
Tony sidles up next to May and mutters, “Thanks for the assist.”
“You’re the one that told him to invite his girlfriend to stay the night,” May says. Then she shrugs. “It’s a house full of adults, what are they gonna do?”
They both pause to consider that. It should be reassuring, but actually, Tony got up to quite a lot as a teenager in houses filled with indifferent adults. So, not so much. “He’s a much better teenager than I was,” Tony says.
“Or me,” May adds.
They both nod.
Rhodey finally emerges from the living room, abandoning the football game. “Pepper, you made it!” He pulls her into a hug. “Does that mean we can eat now?”
“Yes!” May calls. “Peter, go get everyone.”
“That’s my job now?” Peter mutters, before getting up from where he’d already sat down with Michelle and Morgan to head off and gather the stragglers.
After everyone is seated there’s a moment of silence where no one moves, and then Rhodey says, “Happy, man, you outdid yourself!” Everyone else echoes the sentiment.
Happy leans back in his chair and nods. “Thank you. Thanks everyone. May helped–“ (“She did?” Peter asks skeptically.) “–and Janet made the desserts, so it wasn’t all me. And let’s all be grateful that Tony bought multiple turkeys and didn’t blow them all up, or we’d have nothing but side dishes today.”
“That was for science,” Tony repeats. “And the kid helped.”
Peter turns to him, looking betrayed. “It was your idea!”
Tony waves a hand at him to try and shut him up. Honestly he needs to teach the kid when to keep quiet.
“Happy, you do the honors,” Tony says, gesturing to the turkey. “You know, I think I have a prototype for a vibrating energy knife in the workshop you could use–“
“Wait, like a vibroblade?” Peter asks, voice rising in pitch. “From Star Wars?”
“Absolutely not!” Happy shouts, holding up the foot-long carving knife in his hand. “You two stay away from my bird with your crazy superhero shit.”
The Main Course
All of the food is delicious. Everyone is getting along with each other. The entire day has gone really well even with the hiccups of Pepper’s flight being delayed and the turkey plan not working out.
Tony leans over to Pepper halfway through everyone’s first helping to say, “See? I knew this was gonna be great. Everyone’s together.”
She tilts her head at him. “It really is.” She lifts her wine glass and clinks it with his before finishing it off.
Which is, of course, when the whole thing goes off the rails.
“I don’t know how to bring this up politely so I’m just going to say it,” Janet says, when there’s a lull in conversation, after they’ve poured a second round of drinks.
“Honey,” Charlie says, putting a hand on her elbow.
Janet shakes him off. She takes a large sip of wine before turning to Pepper and continuing. “I don’t know why you never told us about Tony’s illegitimate son.” She gestures down the table at Peter, who’s eyes widen comically.
Tony chokes on the sip of wine he just took, beginning to cough loudly. Pepper stares back at her mother, speechless.
“What’s illegitimate mean?” Morgan asks.
Rhodey starts laughing, but manages to tell her, “It’s a word to describe a kid whose parents weren’t married when they were born.”
“So Peter’s illegitimate?”
“What?” Peter turns towards them. “No I’m not!”
“So you were married to her?” Janet gestures at May now.
May’s eyes widen the same way Peter’s had. “I wasn’t married to him,” she says, pointing at Tony.
Tony, who’s recovered from choking on his wine, says, “Well there’s no need to look so repulsed by the idea.”
May rolls her eyes. “Tony, come on.”
“Come on what?” he demands.
“This is very progressive of you, darling,” Charlie says to Pepper. “Inviting your husband's ex to holiday dinners.”
“She’s not his ex,” Pepper tries to tell her parents.
Janet says, “Oh,” in that same tone she’s been saying it in all day. “Well then.”
“May and Tony were never together.”
“I just don’t understand why you never told us about him all these years,” Charlie says, sounding disappointed. “You two have been together for over a decade! Peter is seventeen! He told us he’s lived here in New York his whole life so I can understand if he wasn’t living with Tony when you were first dating because you were in California but you’ve been living out here since, what? Around 2014? That’s ten years!” He shakes his head. “He’s a very nice boy. You didn’t need to lie to us.”
“And Tony said he blipped too!” Janet adds. “That must have been devastating. You should have said something.” She is looking between Pepper and Tony now, clearly expecting them to start explaining themselves.
The rest of the table is staring at them too. Rhodey has his hands over his mouth, trying to muffle his laughter.
Michelle is watching them all like she’s trying to memorize their faces. She turns to Peter. “I wish I had my sketchbook. Every person at this table is in crisis.”
Peter seems incapable of speech, but eventually manages to sputter, “Tone– Tony’s not my dad.”
Everyone turns to look at him. He stares back like a deer caught in the headlights.
“Right.” Tony nods. “He’s not. I’m not. Not his dad.” He nods more vigorously. “Definitely not.”
Charlie and Janet both give him baleful looks. “We are not stupid, Tony,” Janet says.
“I would never call you stupid,” Tony says, because he values his life and knows better than to insult his mother-in-law. To her face. “But he’s not my– I mean… Jesus Christ.” He sighs, gazing heavenward. “Look, I’m not his father. But he’s…” Tony has no idea how to end that sentence. He’s never had to actually put words on what his relationship with Peter is, not in the past year anyway, since he literally invented time travel to get the kid back. Not in front of this group of people.
Not in front of Peter himself.
Peter, across the table, is watching him now, but Tony keeps his eyes on his in-laws as he tells them, “Look, he’s not my son, but he is my kid.”
They both still seem confused by that, but Tony doesn’t really feel like explaining it anymore. He reaches for his wine, taking another drink.
Across the table, May smiles and raises her glass at him. “Well, maybe you’re not so repulsive after all, Tony.”
The Dessert
After dinner, the kids have all decided that it’s time to start watching Christmas movies – baffling, when Thanksgiving isn’t even over yet, but Peter insists it’s a tradition, which means Morgan is insisting on making it one as well. Rhodey even agrees to turn off the football for it. So Tony gets sucked into watching Elf for god only knows what number of repeats he’s on. Everyone else is off… somewhere. Happy had mentioned something about playing cards, but Tony only really likes playing cards when he’s gambling, if he’s being really honest about it.
He’s not really paying attention to the movie either, having gotten sucked into a conversation with Rhodey about what the remnants of the Avengers team are up to and talking shop, when Janet approaches.
“There’s pie,” she says, smiling at him awkwardly. The atmosphere at dinner never had quite recovered from the conversational bomb she’d dropped on it. “Can I bring you all something?”
From the pile of pillows on the floor, Morgan, oblivious, asks, “Can I have pumpkin, Grandma?”
She’s claimed Michelle as her new best friend and dragged her down onto the pillow pile as well, and Peter, stuck in the armchair, is looking a little put out about it.
“You two?” Janet asks the teenagers.
Michelle asks for pecan, and rather than asking for one Peter starts to get up. “I can help.”
Tony stands, waving him back into his chair. “You, stay. What do you want?”
“Uh, pumpkin.”
“If you’re playing waiter, I’ll take a slice of pecan,” Rhodey says. “Fair warning, I’m not gonna tip you.”
Tony smacks him upside the head as he walks past.
Janet starts dishing up the pie while Tony digs the can of whipped cream out of the fridge. She looks over at him. “Oh, I forgot to ask if they wanted whipped cream.”
“I know my kids do,” Tony says. “I don’t know about Michelle. I figured I’d take it with me just in case.”
Janet nods. She looks down at the pie. “About earlier–“
“Yeah,” Tony says, drawing out the word. “You could have asked me about it. And not just made an accusation at dinner.” He’s not quite ready to let it go. Maybe if it had just been him that had been affected by what she’d said, but Peter’s been quiet ever since. And normally the kid never shuts up, so the difference has been noticeable. Or, it has been to Tony.
“We probably should have done that,” Janet admits. “It was definitely handled poorly.”
Tony hums in acknowledgement.
“I was just so certain,” she says, turning to look at him imploringly. “He looks a lot like you.”
“Really?” Tony asks skeptically.
“A bit,” she insists.
“If you say so.”
“And he has his own bedroom, and then Jim called him your son, and there were just so many little things…” Janet sighs. “I just got upset, thinking that you and Pepper had been lying to us all this time about having a child.”
When she puts it that way, Tony actually feels a little bad. “We probably should have said something to you before. Peter being around isn’t new or anything.”
Well, it still feels a little new, after losing the kid for five years. But it feels like Tony has gotten things back to where they’re supposed to be, finally. Like he can, actually, rest now.
“It’s not?” Janet asks.
“Nah.” Tony shakes his head, and then shakes the can of whipped cream and starts spraying a liberal amount onto several of the slices of pie. “He was, um… fourteen, when I met him.” Which was coming up on a decade ago now, even if Peter is only a few years older now.
Sometimes Tony thinks back to that summer and wonders what he was thinking, recruiting a kid that young. He didn’t know the kid then, he wasn’t a father himself, at the time he’d only really seen a recruit and an ally and not a child. And yet, he would not go back and change it. Because he probably wouldn’t have all the things he has now in life if he did.
Janet seems to consider him for a moment. “You’ve changed a lot, from back when Pepper used to rant about the crazy things she had to fix for you. Or the parties. Or the women.”
Tony gives her a tight smile. “Well, it’s been a long time.”
“Not that long,” she says. She hands him three of the plates of pie, then balances the others and follows him back to the living room.
When Tony gets back whatever conversation had been going on ends abruptly. He hands Morgan her plate and gets a “Thanks Daddy! You remembered the whipped cream!” then he reaches over to give Peter his.
“Thanks Dad,” Peter says.
Tony nearly drops the remaining plate of pie, and seeing as it’s his own that would be tragic.
Peter stares up at him, eyes wide and expression earnest.
Tony is honestly at a loss about how to respond. This was not covered in any parenting book he read. The kid doesn’t even call his aunt ‘mom.’ What the fuck is happening?
Peter breaks first, and starts laughing, followed by Rhodey, then Morgan, who might just be laughing because they are, and Michelle. Even Janet is grinning a bit.
“Your face, man,” Rhodey cackles.
“You little shit.” Tony swats at Peter’s arm, and the kid dodges with a smirk. He stalks past them all and back to his seat. “Just wait and see if I get you anything good for Christmas, son.”
Peter is still laughing too hard to answer.
“So what did you have to do to get adopted by a billionaire anyway?” Michelle asks.
Peter takes a moment to get ahold of himself, and then tells her, “It’s really more me that adopted Tony. When I met him, he was clearly in need.”
“In need of what, the ulcer I’ve gotten from worrying about all the shit you get into?” Tony demands.
Peter nods. “Exactly.” To Michelle, he explains, “You see, his life was not complete.”
Tony snorts, but doesn’t argue. The kid isn’t wrong.