TinCan Captain Handsome Iron Spider

Tony looks up from his work, corner of his mouth twitching. “Mister Parker-”

“Sorry!” Peter yelps, raising his palms in apology, but then immediately bringing them back down to paw his nose with a sleeve. He sniffles.

They’re sat tinkering in Tony’s lab on their various projects. Tony manoeuvres holographic blueprints with a master’s ease and an artist’s flair, while Peter works steadily at his station, head bent low over the table, hair brushing its surface. The only sound is the ongoing buzzing from the various devices around them, the scratch of Peter’s pencil, and the occasional exchange. It’s warm. Quiet.

Until now.

“Sorry, Mr. Stark. I just…” He drops his head back until all he’s staring at the ceiling, leaning back into his chair. Tony strongly suspects his eyes are closed. “It’s been that kind of day.”

“Why don’t you go sit on the couch, huh?” Tony suggests, jerking a thumbing the direction of the battered leather thing in the corner of the lab. “Take a five minute break.”

Peter’s already shaking his head, face still tilted upwards. The teen wraps an arm around his knees, and curls himself tighter, firmer, resolute in whatever he’s about to say. He drops his head back down, and it’s only then that Tony takes in the overly-pink cheeks highlighting the faint freckles, the rubbed-raw nose, the shiny eyes. “I -” he breaks off to cough into the crook of his elbow. “- I can’t.”

“And why is that?” Tony raises his eyebrows.

Peter flushes a deep, royal red, and his nails drag down his faded jeans. “I'll…” he mumbles.

“You’ll?” Tony waits.

“I’ll fall asleep! And I can’t do that in Tony Stark’s lab, because you’re you, and that would be embarrassing, and Dum-E would probably try to pour a smoothie on me and oh my god I have Spanish and-” Peter bursts out, hands dashing anxious gestures in the air. Tony observes as he rants, and then leans in to where he knows the nearest microphone is concealed to whisper:

“Check his temperature, Fri.”

“Mr. Parker is at 101.2 degrees fahrenheit presently, sir,” she responds in equally muted tones. He’d trained her well.

Tony winces. Yeah, that wasn’t good.

“Well, I’m taking a break,” Tony cuts him off, swiping away his work and heading over to the couch with a tablet. “You have fun.”

It takes five minutes for Peter to join him.

It takes ten for him to deteriorate into a clingy mess.

Somehow, at some point, the kid had fallen asleep jammed against his side, arm resting on Tony’s stomach, face in the crook of his neck, breathing evenly onto his skin. Tony forces himself to take a breath at the close proximity. The couch smells of motor-oil and faintly of liquor, a little of the aftershave he uses. The leather is worn and smooth.

“You’re an octopus,” he accuses the boy, mock-glaring down at him. “You’re one of those people that are octopus-es - o-octopi, octo- octo- Friday?”

“Octopuses.”

“Octopuses,” Tony plows on, “When they’re sick, and I didn’t even guess. This is a crime to me in particular.”

He loosens throughout his impromptu speech, losing some of his discomfort about the closeness of the boy. It’s just Peter, he tells himself. Then snaps back to the task at hand.

“Temperature?”

“100.8.”

“Fuck. Dum-E,” he calls, and the little bot rolls over. He comes to a stop in front of him and whirs in curiosity. “Can you get a cold flannel for Mr. Parker here, please?”

Dum-E seems to brighten, giving an affirmative beep before tootling off in the direction of a sink. Tony sighs, sinking into the leather. This was not the way he’d expected his evening to go.

He absent-mindedly twirls a hand in Peter’s hair, and freezes when the kid visibly softens, melting at the contact. He snuffles into his shoulder. He worms in closer to Tony. Oh my god.

“This is illegal,” Tony informs the empty lab. “You’re fifteen, you’re not meant to be adorable.” he told Peter pointedly. His hand comes back to rest in the teen’s hair.

Tony would like to say, later, that he resisted the urge to tease every single knot and their grandchild out of Peter’s hair. But then he would be lying.

In his defence, it was ridiculously soft.

The doors of the lab whooshed open, and Pepper strolls in. She’s beautiful as always - hair tied in a loose ponytail, freckles free without the guise of makeup, eyes a sparkling blue. Radiant. She pauses upon spotting the two of them tangled up on the couch, and opens her mouth to ask, but Tony beats her two it.

“This isn’t what it looks like.”

“Please don’t tell me you’ve taken in another one,” Pepper whispers back, taking care that her steps are silent as she makes her way over. “Tony, hon -”

“He has an aunt!” Tony protests. “Nobody is adopting anybody!”

Pepper ghosts a hand over Peter’s hair, and looks to meet Tony’s eyes. “What’s her name?”

“May Parker. I feel like you two would get on very well - although I’m not sure how well that would go for me,” Tony added.

She smiles. It’s perfect. “Did you eat today?”

“Late lunch,” he responds honestly, feeling a twinge of regret.

“Try to get something later, okay?” Her brows crease, and Tony presses a quick kiss in the middle of them.

“Yeah.” He smirks, “I’m sure you’ve got yourself handled.”

“Some of us have a company to run.”

“Some of us have a - a child to hug,” Tony shot back.

Pepper huffs a laugh out, and gets up to leave. The inventor catches her hand - “Hey. Love you.”

“Love you too.” She leaves with a shine in her eyes the wasn’t there when she came in.

Tony twists a gentle hand through Peter’s hair again, and smiles.

No, this wasn’t how he thought his evening was going to go. But -

Dum-E trundles into view, holding a frying pan and a bag of salted nuts, for some god forsaken reason.

Peter sneaks a glance at Tony’s back. 

His mentor is bent over a project that he’s been working on for weeks now, the gleam of metal visible through the gap between his arm and his chest. AC/DC blasts overhead, but Peter can still pick up the sound of Tony humming along, his fingers tapping and leg bouncing in time to the beat of the song.

Now’s his chance.

A little backstory: a few weeks ago, Tony snuck up behind Peter while he was listening to music, totally unsuspecting. His sixth sense generally picked up on things sneaking up behind him with malicious intent, but for some reason it almost never flared when he was around Tony.

Never. In fact, being around his mentor calmed the constant hum of dangerdanger in the back of his skull, made it fade to a low buzz, to almost nothing at all.

(Peter had always had anxiety, and whether the spidey sense exacerbated the disorder or vice versa, Peter didn’t know. All he knew was that he was constantly anxious and jittery, now. 

Except when Tony was around.)

So, he was walking with his earbuds in. Totally unsuspecting. Totally relaxed. 

And then Tony pounced and wrapped his arms around Peter from behind, lifting him into a great spinning hug. Peter shrieked and struggled to get free, but he’d been caught totally off guard. After spinning him around a few times, Tony planted a big wet kiss on the back of his head, eliciting a half-disgusted-half-affectionate groan from Peter, and set him back down on his feet, sauntering away as if nothing had happened. The big jerk had the nerve to whistle a tune while Peter stood there in disbelief.

No one, he vowed, sneaks up on Spider-Man like that and gets away with it.

So. Here’s his chance. Tony is totally distracted, and he can’t hear shit over the blaring music.

Peter sets down the homework he was working on, sneaks up behind Tony…

…then, with a yell, he jumps onto Tony’s back, wrapping his legs around his mentor’s waist.

The effect is electrifying. Of course it is. Getting jumped by a shrieking teenager when you’re that far in the zone is a scarring experience. Tony stiffens, his back arching as he leaps out of his seat, releasing a cry of surprise and spinning to try and find his assailant. Imagine his surprise when said assailant spins with him, clearly stuck onto his back, now giggling into his ear.

“What…what the hell…oh my fucking…what was that?!” Tony yelps, twisting his head to look over his shoulder at that thrice-damned baby-faced spider nerd. 

“Yeah, not so fun, is it?” Peter says, still laughing. “Kinda sucks when it happens to you, isn’t it?” He can see when Tony starts to realize it was a revenge prank.

“You…little…shit…you scared…the absolute…fucking…oh my lord…once I get my breath back…” Tony threatens, making no move to try and get Peter off his back.

“You’ll what?” Peter challenges, resting his chin on Tony’s shoulder and grinning at him when he turns to glare. “Huh? Whatcha gonna do, Mr. Stark? Wha-at.”

“Take your suit away for a month, that’s what,” he growls.

“Nnno you won’t.”

“Yeah? Why not, then?”

The kid smiles. “You love me.”

Tony rolls his eyes and tugs Peter off his back and into a gentle headlock. “You’re a little shit.”

“Yoooou looooove meeeeee~” Peter sings even as he squirms to get out of the headlock. He feels Tony’s chest shake with laughter. The headlock loosens, Tony’s arm coming to rest around his kid’s shoulders.

“Alright alright alright,” the mechanic murmurs. “Alright. I do. Happy now?”

“Say it,” Peter says.

Tony pulls back, gives him a warning glance. “Uh-uh, don’t you go making me voice my emotions now.”

“Say it.”

“I’m gonna put you back in the headlock.”

“Say it, Mr. Stark!”

“No.”

“Please?”

“…”

“Pleeeeaaase?”

Tony sighs, shuffles, mutters. “Using the puppy dog eyes on me is a dirty move.”

Peter pouts his bottom lip out, crinkling his eyebrows and widening his eyes.

Tony doesn’t react, turning his face away from Peter. Undeterred, the boy moves around him to see what’s wrong…only to get dragged into another fierce hug. Argh, sneak attack! Not again!

Tony laughs as Peter starts squirming again, pressing a long kiss onto the crown of his head. “I love you, kid. So much. You satisfied now?”

“No,” Peter grumbles. “You fight dirty, Mr. Stark.” He feels the closest person he has had to a father smile into his hair.

Bristol photographed a young crewman of a US Navy “Dumbo” PBY rescue mission, manning his gun after having stripped naked and jumped into the water of Rabaul Harbor to rescue a badly burned Marine pilot. The Marine was shot down while bombing the Japanese-held fortress of Rabaul.

“…we got a call to pick up an airman who was down in the Bay. The Japanese were shooting at him from the island, and when they saw us they started shooting at us. The man who was shot down was temporarily blinded, so one of our crew stripped off his clothes and jumped in to bring him aboard. He couldn’t have swum very well wearing his boots and clothes. As soon as we could, we took off. We weren’t waiting around for anybody to put on formal clothes. We were being shot at and wanted to get the hell out of there. The naked man got back into his position at his gun in the blister of the plane.”

#yes

This song is 100% Stony

|Song - Little Do You Know - Alex & Sierra |

Tony: ARE YOU SERIOUS?

Peter: …Is that a no?

Tony:

Peter: Cause it felt like a no

“Greasy 2.0”

The kid was a nerd. He’d been obsessed with films and the cinematography and directors. He knew all the trivia. And every night after their work in Tony’s lab, Peter had asked him if they could watch a movie. Pirates of the Caribbean or E.T or whatever. 

Every night, he’d asked, and every night Tony had said no.

Not because he didn’t want to spend time with the kid, exactly, he’d just been tired. Or busy. Or working. And to be honest, he could never really concentrate through long periods of time like that. Peter had looked a little disappointed, yeah, but he was over it the next day. Tony never really took it into consideration.

Then Peter died.

And suddenly it had been all Tony could think about. How much extra time he would have been able to spend with him. How it would have made Peter happy. Hell- the kid took some good ideas from the plots of a handful of them, maybe if Tony had done the same he might have been able to… he could’ve…

On the scale of possibility, him watching movies with Peter probably wouldn’t have actually counted much toward saving his life. But Tony didn’t care. It might have done, and that was the point.

So when they get Peter back- when everything has died down, and the world has returned to normal after long, painful work, Tony invites Peter back to his lab. They work like normal, tinker and discuss plans for hiss suit or a new design- Peter’s come on leaps and bounds since Tony began these little sessions, and Tony himself has actually learned one or two things from the kid, which is amazing, really.

At the end of the night, when they’re packing away, Tony looks up at Peter- at the face that now seemed so much more older and wiser than the one that Tony had used to know- and he asks:

tony: yes papa

howard: eating sugar?

A few hours later once Tony is done taking down every last enemy he goes to the safe location he programmed the suit to take Peter in cases like this. He finds Peter cradled, asleep in the suits arms which good because he programmed it that way and it’s practically rocking the teen back and forth.

steve, turning to the rest of the avengers: put your hand up if you thought peter was tony’s son

everyone: [raises their hands]

tony: