Chapter 2
NEW YORK CITY
“Why don’t you just say it? I’m the worst toy-maker in the world? I am a cotton-headed ninny-muggins!”
— Buddy the elf, Elf.
A cotton-headed ninny-muggins — that was how Peters Aunt May had explained why his biological father was on the naughty list. She said that he was too self-destructive. That he pushed people away, and worked too much.
She also told Peter that he was a son of a nutcracker, and then thought him a string of lovely human curses that Peter was too afraid to use… because of how annoyed May had sounded when she said them.
He knew better than to contradict an angry May.
And so Peter walked away from the North Pole — through the arctic, and the seven levels of the candy cane forest, past the sea of twirly-swirly gum drops, and through a pine forest. Then, he walked through the Lincoln Tunnel. To New York.
May had given him a photo, before he left the North Pole — of his mother on the night that she met his father — as well as the snow globe.
Stark Tower — that was where she said he would find his dad. He had to find Stark Tower, in Midtown Manhattan, and ask for Tony Stark… or, at least, ask where the R&D (whatever that was) offices were. That was where Santa had said be would be. Tony Stark. His dad. His dads name was Tony Stark, and Peter had to find Stark Tower in Midtown Manhattan to find him.
New York City was like nothing Peter had ever seen before — but he somehow also felt ridiculously at home there. It was a weird feeling, of complete detachment, and yet strong belonging. He couldn’t really explain it.
Everything in New York was loud and bright and exciting. There were cars everywhere, billboards and stores and people handing out pieces of paper in front of stores. There were people walking though the streets and animals and trees, and —
— one particular store caught his eye. A coffee shop, claiming they had made the best cup of coffee in the world.
Peter had always wanted to taste coffee.
He burst into the shop, grinning and clapping. “Good job, guys! The best cup of coffee in the world! Congratulations — to all of you!”
Everyone in the shop just stared at him blankly.
Peter laughed awkwardly. “Uh — okay, well… I’ve gotta go find my dad, but good job!” He left the store quickly.
Peter wandered around the city basically aimlessly, occasionally stopping to take a pamphlet or talk to someone excitedly or stare at something that he thought was cool… and, eventually, he found Stark Tower — standing tall against the skyline, right in the middle of Manhattan.
Peter grinned up at it, taking in how amazing the building looked.
He took a deep breath, and went in.
The lobby of the building was huge and modern, full of people going back and forth between weird sliding metal doors, and people in suits with little suitcases and people behind the desks in the lobby.
Peter grinned, and followed a man to one of the sliding doors. He got in — and freaked out when the doors closed.
The man in the little room thing looked at him a bit weirdly — like most people were doing, for some reason — and Peter grinned at him. “Hi! Do you know which floor the R&D offices are on? I need to find my dad.”
“Eighty… seven…” The man said slowly, his eyebrows raised as he continued to look at Peter.
Peter pressed the button on the wall with the number eighty-seven on it, and jumped in excitement when it lit up. “Oh!” He exclaimed. “That’s so cool!”
He pressed more of the buttons — most of the buttons, so that all the letters were lit up.
“It’s so pretty!” He murmured, before turning to smile at his companion again. “It looks like a Christmas Tree!”
“Mm.” The man hummed, looking very not-happy, for some reason.
The thing they were in stopped on every floor after that, until the man got of on sixty four.
“Bye!” Peter called to him as he got off. “Oh, wait! I forgot to give you a hug!”
Before he could chase after the man, the sliding metal doors had closed again. He continued to stop at every floor until he also got off, on floor eighty-seven.
He jumped over the gap between the metal door thing, and the normal floor, and then went up to the fancy white desk on the floor, where a woman with red hair sat, looking very bored.
“Hi!” Peter said to him quickly. “Hi, Im — I’m uh, looking for Tony Stark?”
The woman eyed him, and then picked up a phone from the desk. “Yeah, hey Tony, this is Natasha — there’s some sort of Christmas Gram Elf thing here for you, I’m going to send him in — yeah. Of course — okay, I’m sending him in.” The woman — Natasha — put the phone down, and smiled at Peter somewhat awkwardly. “It’s the one right on the end of that hallway to the right — says Tony Stark on the door.”
“Okay, thank you!” Peter grinned, starting down the hallway.
“Wait, kid,” The lady paused him. “Shouldn’t you be at school? You still look — school age…”
“I’m home schooled.” Peter smiled — that was technically true. He then went down the hallway to Tony Starks R&D office.
Just like Natasha had said it would, the door at the end had Tony Stark written on a small plaque on it. Peter stood for a second, hesitant to knock, before a tired and irritated looking man opened the door.
“Right, lets get this over with — Nat said this is some sort of Christmas thing, so — go ahead. Sing, or whatever.”
Peter froze for a moment at the tight of the man — Tony Stark. That was his dad! He tried to memorise his fathers face, ingraining the mans goatee and his tinted sunglasses and his brown eyes and his eye bags into his mind.
His dad. That was his dad. He was standing in front of his dad.
His dad was staring at him with raised eyebrows, and a couple of other employees had gathered behind Peter. Peter grinned. “I walked all day and night to find you!”
“You look like you came from the north pole.” His dad said, looking at Peters elf clothes. He didn’t look overly impressed, but Peter ignored it.
“That’s exactly where I came from!” He exclaimed. “Did Santa call you? He must have called you!”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. Just got off the phone with him, actually.”
The workers that were gathered behind Peter as he slowly came further into his fathers office laughed.
“You did?” Peter asked.
“Yeah, sure. So… go on.”
“Go on with what?”
“You gonna sing a song or something, kid, or can I just go back to work —”
“A song? Right, right, yeah. Anything for you dad.” Peter laughed awkwardly, before talking in a sing-song way. “I — uh — I’m hereeee, with my daddd, and we’ve never met, and he wants me to sing him a songgg, and, uhh — um, I was adopted, but you didn’t know I was bornnn, so I’m here now, I found you, da-ad — and, guess what? I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love yooouuuu!”
“Well, that was — weird.” The man sat back down at his desk. “You know, usually you guys just, uh — put my name to jingle bells or something.”
“No, no, no,” Peter came closer to his fathers desk, shaking his head. “It’s me, your son! I — Mary Parker had me, and — well, May said you wouldn’t remember her, probably, but you met her on New Years Eve — in two-thousand, and, uh — and she didn’t tell you, about me, and now I’m here, and — and it’s me. Peter.”
“Alrighty, uh — Nat?” The red haired woman from the front desk looked up at the man. “Who sent this Christmas gram?”
Natasha shrugged and shook her head slightly.
“Whats a Christmas gram?” Peter asked excitedly, as Natasha went across to Tony, and the two started whispering about Rogers and Barnes, whatever that was. “I want one!”
“Good idea.” Natasha said properly, using back out to her desk.
A minute or two later, two very large, strong men, one with blonde hair, and one with brown hair and a metal arm — Rogers and Barnes, Peter assumed — entered the room, and restrained him. They dragged him away from the building, one they got back to the ground floor, and then finally let go of him.
“What — sir, sir, please, he’s my dad, and I — I just wanna talk to him! He’s my dad!”
“Look, kid, I’m sorry.” The one with the metal arm frowned. “We’re just doing out jobs. So you gotta come back tomorrow.”
“Okay!” Peter grinned. “See you tomorrow! I’ll be back then!”
Peter didn’t really know what to do, after that. He went into a huge store with a Christmas section, and then a bunch of old people yelled at him about how he should be at school — so, he went to find a school.
He walked for a long way, to a part of New York called Queens, and there — there, he found a school.
He snuck into the school. He went through it, until he found a room with a male figure on the door, with a bunch of lockers inside. Peter knew that his traditional elf clothing — the ones he had been wearing for as long as he could remember — were drawing attention to him. And he… he didn’t want to get changed, but — but he had to. If he wanted to successfully pretend to be a part of normal human society, and win over his fathers affections, he had to do this.
Peter stole some of the clothes from one of the lockers — a large blue sweater, some jeans and some running shoes — and then went out into the school.
He knew absolutely nothing about human school, but he had to pretend to be a part of it — hopefully he could get away with it, if he could fly under the radar.
He waited until a loud bell rang, like the one in Santas workshop that signified meal times, and then went out into the masses of people. He saw a kid walking alone, and so silently fell into step next to him.
“Hi!” Peter whisper-yelled, startling the guy slightly. “Hi, please don’t freak out. I’m Peter Parker, I’m not quite sure if I’m meant to be here or not, but I just need to blend in for a couple days.”
The kid blinked slowly, then shrugged. “I mean… alright. I’ll, uh — I’ll help you.”
“Thanks, man!” Peter grinned. “What’s happening right now?”
The guy laughed. “It’s, uh — It’s lunch break… have you not been to a school before, dude?”
Peter nodded. “Yeah! I mean, I went to school, but it was years ago, and it wasn’t here, and then I was home schooled, and then my uncle died, and then it turned out that I have a dad, and I don’t think he likes me very much, and —”
He and the guy sat down at a metal table in a cafeteria, and the guy looked at him. “Alright, uh — Peter.”
“Peter Parker!” Peter smiled.
“Peter Parker… uh, I’m Ned Leeds. How old are you? Like, if you’re my age, I could easily sneak you into my classes, uh… yeah. I’m fifteen, and you are…?”
“I’m fifteen too!” Peter exclaimed. “Wow, everything here is so different to at home!”
“Yeah?” Ned asked. “Where you from? You sound like you could be from around here…”
“Uh, I was raised in the North Pole.” He grinned. “By the elves.”
“You’re… an elf? Like, a Santa elf?” Ned asked in disbelief.
“Well… no.” Peter shrugged. “I’m technically a human, but I got taken to Santas workshop by accident, and so my Uncle Ben raised me, and he is — was — an elf. But then he died, and my Aunt May told me about my dad, so now I’m here!”
“O — kay.” Ned breathed out slowly. “Alright, uh… cool…”
Peter was actually really good at school. The teachers didn’t even question his presence, and so even when he got called on, they didn’t seem to realise that he wasn’t supposed to be there.
He actually felt like what he’d been told up in the North Pole his whole life, about him being a genius. All the stuff that they did was super easy, even though Ned had said that Midtown Tech — the school — was a smart person school.
He was on his way back to the Christmas store, so that he could sleep on one of the huge beds he saw when he was in there earlier.
On the way there, he ran into a man, who seemed to be… being mad at a woman, and he was following her, and Peter hated it, he hated it, he hated it, and — Peter attacked the man. He jumped on him, and pulled him away from the woman, and — at some point, he remembered yelling at the woman to go, and then he just started kicking, and punching, to the point where he and the man were full out fighting.
At some point, he and the mad were both taken to a police station. They gave him a phone call, and so he asked them to call his dad — Tony Stark, which the men all found very amusing — and they all told him that his dad wouldn’t show.
But, after an hour and a half, his very mad looking father turned up in the police precinct.
“Ha!” Peter said as loudly as he could, when the cops let him out and he was standing next to his dad. “You all said he wouldn’t come, but he’s here — he’d my dad, and he came to get me, and I told you so!”
“Okay, Peter, kid, we need to —”
“Okay!” Peter exclaimed.
They left that station, and his father stopped him half way down the stairs back to street level. “What do you want from me, kid?”
“What — what do you mean?”
“I checked out Mary Parker, New Years Eve in 2000, she had a kid August of 2001, she’s real.” He said quickly. “But that doesn’t mean that you’re legit, so you must want something from me. Is it money? Because if it’s money, I can just give you cash, and we can be done with it.”
“No, dad, I —“ Peter shook his head. “I just wanted to meet you. Because you’re my dad.”
“Because I’m your dad.” Tony muttered under his breath. “Alright, kid. We’re going to go see my friend Helen, and we’re going to find out if this is real, okay?”
“Okay.” Peter grinned. “Lets go see Helen!”
“Oh, and kid,” His dad said as they kept going down to the street, and got in a fancy looking car. “Where’d you get the new outfit? You seemed pretty certain that you were an elf before.”
“No I’m not an actual elf.” Peter rolled his eyes. “I was raised by elves. And they didn’t actually tell me that I wasn’t and elf until I figured it out — but I’m not an elf.”
“Still… doesn’t explain the clothes.”
“I got them from school.” Peter said happily as his dad started to drive. “They were in a locker, so I put them on.”
“School?”
Peter just shrugged.
His dad sighed. “Okay. We’ll, uh — get you some real clothes, and return those ones.” The man shook his head exasperatedly. “Oh, and kid?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you have like… breathing issues? Asthma or anything? Bad eyesight or something? Because if your story checks out, and you were born in August, that’s pretty damn early.”
“Oh, um…” Peter nodded. “Yeah, I guess so. I have this breathing puffer thing, and I used to have glasses, but they kept fogging up, so now I have contacts instead.”
“Huh.” Tony drummed his fingers against the steering wheel as he drove to Cho’s private clinic.
They had to get a paternity test.
“Yep.” Helen Cho told Tony as she looked over the results of the paternity test. “You’re his father.”
“Fuck.” Tony muttered. “What am I meant to do here?”
Cho sighed. “He needs a parent, Stark. A father. He needs love, and nurturing, and — yeah. Sending him to school seems like a good idea — he’s very smart for a kid that thinks he’s an elf.”
“Not an elf r — raised by them.” Tony sighed exasperatedly. “God, that’s the problem, Doc! He thinks he’s an elf! What am I meant to do with that? What do I tell Pepper and Morgan?”
Helen smiled at him sadly. “Look Stark, you can try deny that he’s your son all you want — and don’t try tell me you’re not doing that, I can tell — or you can look after him, okay? You tell Pepper the truth, you give the kid a place to stay and some love, send him to school, get him to make friends… He’s still just a kid, Tony. He needs you.”
Tony sighed, and opened the door to reveal Peter sitting on the floor against the wall outside. He took a deep breath. “Okay kid. Son. You were right; you’re my kid. We’re going back to my place, now.”
Shit, Tony thought as Peter jumped up and hugged him tightly, he’d just acquired a teenage son.