“Wait, why are you hanging out with my kid again?” Tony questioned as he followed his wife out of their bedroom.
“Our kid, sweetie,” Pepper corrected, “And we're having a Christmas movie marathon with Happy.”
“I go away for one night and suddenly I'm splitting custody with yet another person,” the man grumbled.
Peter popped his head out of his bedroom door, frowning, “Mr. Stark, I thought you wanted me to get to know Pepper?”
“Pepper?” The billionaire shrieked, “Pepper? Why is she Pepper and I'm still Mr. Stark? The betrayal!”
Peter grinned while Pepper rolled her eyes. She turned to the teenager, “Are you ready, honey? Happy is meeting us at the penthouse.”
“And now you're hanging out with my head of security. Great, I have to share custody with him now, too,” Tony's voice was verging on whining.
Peter grabbed his jacket and followed Pepper downstairs, “He's engaged to my aunt, Mr. Stark. That was going to happen anyway.”
“And he proposed on a cruise. How lame is that?” Tony helped Pepper into her coat.
“Not as lame as proposing at a press conference you called because you were going to make a fifteen-year-old an Avenger,” his wife retorted. She kissed her husband and then pulled away, “By honey. We'll be back in the morning. Have fun with Morgan.”
“This could be considered kidnapping.”
“I'm pretty sure it isn't,” Peter replied.
Pepper grabbed his arm, “Don't try to reason with him, Peter. It's not worth the effort when he's like this.”
“My proposal wasn't lame. You loved it,” her husband called after her as she climbed into the car.
“I really didn't,” she responded before closing the door.
“Is he going to be OK? I don't want to do this if it's going to hurt him,” Peter questioned hesitantly, “I just thought he'd be happy we were spending time together.”
“He'll be fine,” Pepper replied, “He just hates sharing. When Morgan was born, he threw a conniption every time I fed her because he wasn't able to hold her. He wanted us to get along because we're both important to him, but I don't think he thought through what it meant.”
Peter nodded, his fears quelled for the moment. His relationship with Pepper was new, tentative still, and while he had enjoyed bonding with her over cheesy Christmas movies and Broadway musicals (and their mutual experience of post-Thanos-Tony-snapping nightmares), he didn't want to cause friction in the Stark household.
Happy was already at the penthouse, pizza and popcorn in hand, when the two arrived. He looked up from where he was sitting on the couch, grinning wide when he spotted Peter.
“Selfie time!” He declared patting the seat next to him to indicate Peter needed to join him. Peter plopped next to the man, his bewilderment evident.
“Selfies?” the teen questioned in confusion.
“Say cheese,” Happy held out the phone snapping a photo before beginning to type on his phone.
“Um, Happy, what are you doing?” the boy questioned.
“Sending pictures to Tony so he knows what he's missing.”
A giggle escaped from Pepper, who had grabbed a few beverages from the fridge. When she saw Peter's befuddled expression, she shrugged, “Told you he would rub it into Tony.”
“Did you explain to the kid how this works?” Happy questioned.
“Not yet,” Pepper said, leaning over and digging through a drawer on the side table before triumphantly producing a stack of cards, “Voilà!”
She handed one to Happy and one to Peter. The boy stared at the card for a second. It was a BINGO card with things like “snow”, “hot cocoa”, and “family business in trouble” written on it.
“We're playing BINGO?” he asked.
“Yes,” Pepper confirmed, “Mark the card as you see each thing. The goal is to get the entire card covered.”
“I thought the goal of BINGO was to get a row?”
“Too easy,” Happy answered, reading over his card and marking the free space, “We wanted a challenge.” The teen went back to studying his card as Pepper had FRIDAY start the first movie.
“This is harder than it looks!” Peter complained about halfway through it..
“I had FRIDAY make it. She used some common tropes, but then she ran some algorithms to develop some more obscure references. Like Happy said, we wanted a challenge,” Pepper murmured as she marked a square on her card.
The teen frowned, “Does Mr. Stark know you used his AI to make holiday movie BINGO cards?”
“Meh,” Happy shrugged, “It's one of the more legal things she's been asked to do.” He, too, marked another spot.
By the end of the second movie, Peter was lagging behind. Happy had the most spots covered, but Pepper was giving the man a run for his money.
“Here, Kid,” Happy said when Pepper paused the movie to make hot chocolate, holding out his phone and snapping another picture. He studied it and frowned, “Peter, lean close and look like I'm the best uncle in the universe.”
“You're engaged to my aunt. You're, like, my only uncle,” the boy argued.
“I'm telling Rhodey you said that,” Pepper said as she sat a tray filled with mugs of hot chocolate and a plate of Christmas cookies on the coffee table.
“What?” Peter turned towards her, “Why would Mr. Rhodey care?”
“Peter,” the woman said patiently, “He's been gunning for favorite uncle status since before the blip.”
“Uncle?” Peter sputtered, “Why would Mr. Rhodey think he's my uncle?”
Happy whirled to look at him, “You're kidding, right?”
“No?” Peter stammered, turning red at the scrutinizing gazes he was getting from both Pepper and Happy. He leaned back into the cushions, trying to shrink away from their gaze.
“You cannot be serious!” Happy burst out, swinging now to face Pepper, “I start dating his aunt and basically have my life threatened if I try to take dad status and the kid doesn't even know?”
“Know what?” Peter stammered.
“You're his kid,” the man replied.
“But Morgan-” Peter started.
Pepper placed a hand on his shoulder and glared at Happy, “Honey, Morgan is his kid. But you are, too. Just as much as Morgan. You'll always be there first, and I owe so much to you.”
“Me,” the teen motioned to himself, “Why me?”
“You're the reason he finally agreed to settle down-”
“Well, that and you turned down his offer to be an Avenger, so he needed some excuse for having a press conference,” Happy muttered. He winced as Pepper's glare intensified.
Peter laughed at that. He'd figured out pretty soon after the engagement announcement that his mentor had been serious about the Avengers offer. Peter remembered the shock he felt a few days afterwards, when the engagement was announced. He asked Mr. Stark about it not long after beginning his official internship, and the man had sheepishly admitted the truth. In retrospect, both were glad Peter turned it down, Tony even more so than the teen.
“He was always afraid of being like his dad, but after you came into his life, he knew he didn't have to be,” Pepper explained gently, “And when Morgan was born, he wasn't afraid to be a dad, because he'd already been acting like one.”
Peter's eyes watered, and he blinked to hold back the tears that threatened to fall. He knew that the man was important to him, he just didn't know he was also important to Mr. Stark.
“You ok there, sweetie?” Pepper asked, her voice this with concern.
Peter wiped his eyes, “Does he know he's also important to me?”
The woman wrapped her arms around the boy, “Yes, Peter, believe me, he knows.”
Peter pulled away and swiped at his eyes again, whispering, “Good.”
“Do you want us to restart the movie?” Pepper questioned after a moment. At Peter's nod, they resumed the film. The teen settled back, his BINGO card ignored for the time being as he processed what Happy and Pepper had said.
The next morning, when they arrived back at the lake house, Tony was just returning from feeding Gerald. Peter bounded out of the car and slammed into the man, wrapping his arms around him.
“Whoa, there, Roo,” Tony took a step backwards to maintain his balance after the unexpected armful of spider-teen.
“I love you!” Peter blurted, burrowing closer.
Tony shot a confused look at Pepper, who just smiled at him and entered the house. He then looked down at the spiderling in his arms, his heart melting, “I love you, too, Pete. So, so much.”
After a few moments, he cleared his throat and asked, “So Happy didn't manage to steal custody of you?”
Peter shook his head, saying fiercely, “You stuck with me forever, Mr. Stark. And I'm staying here until break is over. You know this, Mr. Stark.”
Tony chuckled, “Yeah, kid. I do. So, lab time?”
Peter pulled away, a hopeful expression on his face, “Can we?”
As he followed his mentor into the lab, Peter realized that he didn't need to rehash all his feelings with the man. Mr. Stark knew he was important to Peter, and Peter knew he was important to Mr. Stark. Maybe someday they'd talk in more depth about their feelings. And maybe they wouldn't. But they both knew their places were firmly cemented in each other's lives, and at least for right now, that was enough.