Pepper was right (like always)
Peter Parker…
Tony’s memories of all of his encounters with the boy were now jumbled together in his head, and it was a spiral that the man wasn’t sure he even wanted to get out off.
There was something about Peter that bugged Tony, and if there was anything he hated, it was not knowing everything.
It was now the Saturday that Peter was due to officially start his internship, and Tony had found himself annoyingly unable to think of anything other than the kid since he had offered Peter his internship at the beginning of the week. And it was driving Tony insane.
So of course, in a typical Tony Stark fashion, he buried his humanity in an illegal amount of coffee as an unhealthy alternative to sleep before burying himself in his research.
It turns out that Peter Parker was about as average of a teen as your could get (not including his unspeakable high IQ of 250 and apparently resolute respect for every elder he encounters except Tony himself). He had a completely irrational fear of spiders and height, loves every type of science and went through a huge photography phase. He was childhood friends with Osborn’s spawn before the poor kid was shipped away to boarding school by his father (Tony could relate).
But the most interesting things Tony discovered revolved around Peter’s birth.
As soon as Tony recognised the name Mary Parker, he knew that he should have stopped searching, stopped looking for answers that he wasn’t sure he wanted. But he kept going anyway.
Websites and newspaper articles surrounded the now frantic man. Flashes of how Peter’s parents had dies in a plane crash in Algeria, and how Peter was born on the 10th of August in 2001 reflected in Tony’s eyes. An uncomfortable tightness swelled in Tony’s chest, and he sucked in a breath after doing the math.
The memory of his drunken hook up after a Stark Expo on October the 16th the previous year pushed its way to the forefront of Tony’s mind. That face- the one that was framed in the front page of the newspaper discussing Mary and Richard Parker’s deaths, was the same one that Tony now vividly remembered having taken to that day, taken home with him even. And they definitely hadn’t used protection, he remembered that detail at least.
“Fu-”
“Language!” A voice called from behind Tony, Peter’s voice.
A quickly as possible, Tony brushed a hand through the screen projections in front of him and turned around to face the kid.
His kid…
Tony felt like his heart was going to beat out of his chest, or at least stop beating all together. Seeing Peter’s smug yet innocent smile from where the boy stood at the entrance to his lab, Tony could already feel the guilt creeping in. How had he not noticed before. Sure, he had only met Peter a handful of times, and yes, Tony hadn’t exactly been able to get a proper look at him, but Peter had his eyes, the teen wore his smirk, and had that same air of confidence around him that Tony knew drove everyone insane. And the man almost stopped breathing altogether when Peter rolled his eyes and bit the inside his lip the exact same way Tony did before saying something clever.
“I know I caught you by surprise and all, but do you really have to look like a deer in headlights? Its actually making me feel a little guilty. Given your ‘old man’ heart condition and all.”
There it was. Tony almost had to pinch himself.
Pepper was right. His promiscuous past has come back to bite Tony in the ass.