A Paternal Match
[2 days prior]
“Friday, do a full genetic work up and all that while we are at it. Might as well while we’ve got his blood, make sure there’s nothing else we should look out for that he may be susceptible to.”
The damn kid went and got himself sick. After some convincing, Tony talked him into doing some bloodwork once he was better to make sure the infection had fully left his system and to try and find out what had caused it in the first place.
The memory of Peter convulsing in his lab was still enough to make the man shutter. If there was anything he could do to prevent that from happening in the future, he was going to figure it out.
Tony slumped into one of his favorite chairs in the lab and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers while he waited for Friday’s diagnostics to appear on the halotable in front of him.
“Boss, I have found a match in my system that may require your attention.” Friday announced coolly.
Tony nodded, and sat up straighter, but before he even had a real chance to respond, a picture of himself and a picture of Peter were displayed side by side showcasing their similar DNA and possible relations. ‘90 Percent Paternal Match detected’ glowed in bright letters under their pictures, along with the proof that shined almost too brightly.
Holy Shit.
That’s not possible. He only had one child and he was dead.
Tony got to his feet, staring at the data like it might change at any moment. As Friday somehow got her wires crossed and was displaying the wrong information. But the data didn't change. The numbers matched up there in front of him, clear as day.
According to this, Peter Parker was his son.
Then almost as quickly as he'd gotten to his feet, Tony fell to his knees, and clutched his chest. There was a loud ringing in his ears as he desperately tried to remember how to breathe and his vision was quickly starting to blur. There was a shooting pain in his chest that spread through his shoulders. Distantly, he could hear Friday's voice again, and was able to focus just long enough to hear the last bit of her question.
"-- distress, should I alert Miss Potts?"
"No!" He barely bit out between gritted teeth.
"No, don't call anyone. I'll be fine. This isn't my first rodeo." He added after a minute of silence, aside from the sound of his shuddering breaths.
He needed to focus.
Still clutching his chest, he forced himself back into a normal breathing pattern after three very long minutes. Three minutes that felt like hours. Three minutes of his mind already racing and making connections in his head that only made it that much more difficult to normalize his heart rate and breathing.
"I didn't ask for a Paternity Test, Friday," he grumbled, pushing himself off the floor and wiping off his pants.
"You did ask for a full genetic work up," Friday reminded, her cool voice anything but calming as it normally was. "Considering the connection to yourself, I assumed that this result would be the most important. Was that an incorrect assumption, boss?"
“It’s fine,” He snapped, with only a slight tinge of guilt for snapping at his faithful A.I. “Anything else I should know about before I dive into figuring out how the hell this is possible?”
“I have also come to the conclusion that the cause for Mr. Parker’s illness was a severe reaction to mint.”
Ha. If it were any other day, Tony may have found humor in that conclusion. Because of course the Spider-Kid had a reaction to mint.
But instead, it was taking everything in him to not to fly into the Parker residence, guns blazing. He wanted to hate May Parker with every fiber of his being, but he needed to be sure first. He’d met May on several occasions. She was a good person. It didn’t make sense.
———
That was over two days ago now and several more anxiety attacks later. In that time, Tony had discovered that Peter was adopted. A fact that Peter himself didn’t even know. The couple that adopted him, the people who Peter assumed were his parents were SHIELD agents. SHIELD had apprehended Peter, a boy who was just a John Doe at the time from Hydra. Which would explain the wrong birthday.
All this time he had thought his son was dead by a freak accident and he’d been taken by Hydra and he’d done nothing about it.
His son had been right under his nose for years.
How had he not known? How could he look Peter in the eye all this time and NOT know!?
Now they were stuck in a space ship with a wizard, and if it looked like he was about to throw up, he could easily blame it on the fact that he was literally flying though space. Or even the fact that the were spiraling towards an alien who had been haunting him for years.
Definitely not because he’d once again failed to save his son, who definitely should not have been in that ship with them. And definitely not because at some point he was going to have to tell him the truth.