“Romance is easy,” pops says like Arthur hasn’t been failing at it for several months. All he had to do was plan a better date than Tony and it never works out. First of all Tony shouldn’t even be in this competition, he’s too good at it and that’s not fair. It’s like Arthur wrestling a fourth grader and actually trying- it’s cruel and unusual. Tony thinks the whole thing is hilarious but Arthur doesn’t agree, especially when Tony happens to know some random marine biologist and Arthur ends up talking to some rare fish that really hates the tank its in. Granted the fish has since been moved and now they know more about its behavior thanks to a more natural looking habitat but still, that’s some surprisingly sweet shit.
Arthur though, he’s terrible at this. Try as he might he can’t manage to plan a decent date or even a decent outing. Best he’s gotten is drowning a few villains in Tony’s vicinity and honestly that hardly even counts that’s just regular hero stuff. Shit, that’s so regular that’s how they met. He can’t just repeat how they met when they didn’t meet cute. They met with Tony being smacked into him pretty good, poor suit suffered damage by Arthur, Tony had joked later.
Which is how they made the bet to begin with and okay he doesn’t really know when it became romance specifically but whatever point is he needs to win and he’s losing terribly at the moment. It’s sad and every time Arthur tells the fish about it they get sad for him. The fish feel bad for him now. He needs help from an expert and he happens to know spending twenty years waiting for your long lost love to come back at the end of a dock every morning is the most romantic shit ever. Hence asking his good old pops for advice.
“It is not, I suck at it,” Arthur mumbles.
The pained look he gets in response tells him everything he needs to know. “Okay, what does Tony like?” pops asks and Arthur shrugs.
“I don’t know, his kid? Machines? I think he likes cotton candy,” he says. He earns another pained look and Arthur wrinkles his nose, it’s not his fault he’s not good at this.
“You know what, bonding with kids is like catnip for parents. Try that,” he suggests.
Arthur squints, “how’s that romantic?”
“What, do you think having nothing to do with a person’s child is more romantic?” pops asks and yeah alright he can see where that comes from. Besides, Peter seems cool.
*
“Anything?” Arthur asks and Peter nods.
“Anything, I’ve tested it,” he says with a strange amount of pride in his voice though Arthur is sure he sounded similar when he first figured out his powers. The fish thing was especially cool, but talking under water without sounding like a garbled mess is his favorite. Doesn’t translate well to non-Atlantians but that’s okay, its still cool.
But if Peter says he can stick to anything Arthur is going to test it out himself because he’s got things he’s sure the kid won’t stick to. And also since when are kids superheroes? He’ll talk to Tony about it later but in the meantime he does a decent job at it considering he’s a fetus. Like father like son, Arthur guesses.
“Alright kid, stick to my trident,” Arthur says, picking it up from where its leaning against the wall and holding it out to Peter.
Peter looks at it for a moment before extending a hand to one of the spokes of the trident. He grips another with his other hand and in a surprisingly controlled way he shifts to bring his feet up to the spokes, clinging to the end of it efficiently. “See? I stick to anything,” he says.
Yeah, they’ll see about that. “Uh huh. This mostly just proves you can hold on to it- I’m going to spin the trident, see how well you stick then,” he says.
“Bring it on, fish man,” Peter says, grinning. Arthur twists the trident, getting a feel for it with the added weight of a teenager on the end of it before spinning it faster. Peter sticks fine so he spins it a little faster until its at tops speed and true to his word the kid doesn’t go anywhere. Arthur brings the trident to a stop and Peter wobbles around but keeps his grip.
“Damn, that’s actually pretty impressive,” he says.
“Yup, call me sticky boy,” he says and Arthur laughs.
“That’s a stupid name, I’m glad the media gave you a name before you did,” Tony says, appearing from inside the building.
“Hey, check this out,” Arthur says and spins the trident. Imagine his surprise when Peter goes flying from the top of the building.
Tony runs to the edge of the building, “my son!” he yells, which would be funny if a fifteen year old weren’t flying through the New York sky with nothing to grab hold of.
Thankfully he proves Arthur wrong and sticks to a building in the distance, grabbing hold of it as he goes by and clinging to it. He waves at them and Arthur gives a halfhearted wave back. Tony glares at him for his efforts and he sighs, “he didn’t do that the last time we did this,” he says in his defense.
“You threw my son off the building,” Tony snaps.
“In my defense, that was an accident and he stuck to another building, he’s fine. I think he might be stuck there in more than just the literal sense though,” he says, looking over Tony’s head at Peter stuck to the building.
Tony ends up grabbing a suit so he can go collect Peter off the building and bring him back. Even in his suit, which has a face that doesn’t even move, Tony feels extra judgmental.
*
“You threw his kid off a building?” pops asks just to clarify.
Arthur sighs, “that was an accident and the kid is fine, he stuck to another building,” he says. Tony has banned him from Peter’s presence, maybe for good reason, but come on. Its not like he threw the kid off Stark Tower on purpose.
“Wait, what?” pops asks and oh, right, without the caveat that Peter is enhanced that story is a lot more horrifying.
“Oh yeah, kid’s got powers. Got bit by a fucked up spider,” he says. “Now he can do spider stuff. Actually no, he can only stick to things like a spider he doesn’t do other spider things so his name is kind of a lie.” Aquaman- that’s short, sweet, and to the point and its accurate. Spider-Man is accurate the same way Batman is- technically its not wrong but also Batman only says he’s like a bat and dresses as his fursona, Peter only dresses like a spider and sticks to shit. The media did a bad job naming him. He should have been ‘Creepy Kid From A Horror Movie Man’ because he crawls on walls and sounds like a prepubescent child even though he’s well into puberty.
That nets him a sigh of relief. “Christ Arthur, I thought you killed the man’s child and wondered why the hell you were acting like that,” he says, shaking his head. “Wait, his kid’s Spider-Man?” he asks, catching on fast.
Arthur nods, “yeah. Not one of Tony’s experiments getting loose either, turns out that was some other asshole- there’s a lot of stuff to unpack there that somehow led so a criminal underground of people stealing alien tech and robbing people? I don’t know, but Tony found out about it at some point probably because Peter is as subtle as his father and now he’s not crime fighting in pajamas anymore.” Because that’s a real thing Peter had been doing and honestly he thinks maybe the Stark line of genetics got this far by stumbling around in the dark and getting lucky because for a bunch of geniuses they seem really fucking stupid.
“Shit, and I thought dealing with you was bad. At least Vulko covered half of that mess. So his kid got bit by a spider and now he has powers? What are the chances he’d have Tony Stark for a father?” What are the chances he’d get bit by a spider verses literally anyone else? Chance is a hell of a thing.
“I don’t know but that’s probably a good thing. I mean, kid was literally wearing pajamas to fight crime and now he’s got a fancy suit and some cool gear. And he doesn’t have to make that gross web fluid stuff in chemistry anymore.” How the hell he managed to hide that from school officials no one knows. Tony had tried to use it as a reason to send the kid to boarding school but his aunt argued that boarding school churned out kids that were maladapted and emotionally underprepared for life so that didn’t go anywhere. Didn’t help that Tony tried to argue that he went to boarding school, which really only proves May’s point.
Something tells him Tony didn’t feel better when Arthur told him he was pretty much prepared for any possible life event that could be thrown at him thanks to public school. He found everything from meth dealers, to people fucking on a mattress under that one stairwell, to knife fights, to how to deal with the overwhelming pressure of GPA expectations. In public school you’ve got it all, the whole range of the human condition and he feels like you only have the rich assholes on boarding school so really Peter is winning. Tony clearly didn’t think so but seems to give a lot of parental control to Peter’s aunt so she got veto power there.
“I have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into Arthur, but there is no coming back from throwing a man’s child off a building as far as romance goes. You are dead in the water,” pops tells him; clearly missing the fact that Arthur is technically a sea creature. Rude.
*
Tony almost feels bad for Arthur. Almost. May glares him down and Arthur looks to him for some kind of help but Tony lets him suffer because he threw his child off the building. Peter is fine, but that doesn’t matter to him he could have gotten hurt. “Okay, you know what, you two let him fight crime. Your worse parents, just saying!” Arthur says, throwing up his hands and oh that is so not the right thing to say.
May looks him up and down, “excuse me?” she says. Arthur shoots him another panicked look and this time May follows it to him.
“Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t encourage this,” he says, gesturing to Arthur.
“He’s only here because of you,” she points out and okay that’s not fair. Technically he’s here because of a bet that turned into a relationship but still not the point.
“He’s here because of his hot bod,” Tony corrects, getting an offended look from Arthur for it. “Don’t look at me like that, you know what you look like you’ve seen yourself in mirrors,” he says. Acting like he didn’t walk out of some particularly imaginative person’s sexual fantasies, yeah okay. No one who looks like that is under any illusions.
“I’m not just my body,” Arthur says and Tony rolls his eyes.
“Yeah I know, your personality is what led you to tossing my son off the roof,” he points out.
“It was an accident, he’s fine. Besides he got a whole building dropped on him one time and no one was concerned about that,” Arthur says like Tony hadn’t flipped shit when he found out. And he didn’t have a suit either, because Tony had been trying to teach him a lesson, and then that Vulture asshole dropped a building on him. Thankfully Peter is surprisingly durable and survived, obviously, but still. Fuck Vulture for nearly killing his kid to begin with.
“Can I kill him?” May asks and Tony sighs.
“I mean, you could go at him with a knife but its just going to bounce off. He’s got super skin,” he tells her. It played a good amount into why he didn’t toss Arthur off the building after Peter.
“You,” May tells him, “need better taste in men and you need to learn how to deal with teenagers,” she tells Arthur.
“You know what, I think I did okay, Peter thought it was fun,” he says and that’s not to right thing to say either because May threatens to taze him.
*
Peter is on the ceiling avoiding capture with the cookies and yeah he’s being yelled at by his currently in house parental unit and yeah he knows sugar screws with his system but the spider metabolism speeds things up a lot so he’s only a little messed up for a couple hours. Its fine. “Peter get your ass down here right now!” dad yells and Peter sticks closer to the ceiling because thankfully, as the public knows, Tony Stark is only like three feet tall. Peter’s glad he didn’t get that gene but he’s still kind of hoping for a growth spurt or two.
Arthur looks up at him and sighs before turning to dad, “you want me to get him down from there?” he asks and aw shit Arthur is like the size of a mountain there’s no way he can hide up here.
“Um,” he says intelligently, looking around for escape.
“Yes, please remove my son from the fucking ceiling.”
Arthur shrugs and walks over and Peter can’t move fast enough to escape on account of not wanting to drop the cookies he’s up here to eat to begin with. He should have crawled onto the ceiling in the living room, its got vaulted ceilings but no and now Arthur’s got his waist and-
He yanks on him but Peter sticks to the ceiling. “Oh come on, now you choose to stick to shit?” he mumbles. “Get down from-” he gives another yank except this time he pulls Peter and the dry wall stuck to his hands clean off the ceiling. “Uh, sorry…” Arthur mumbles and dad walks over, snatching the cookies off his stomach and returning them to the cupboard.
“You’re grounded,” he tells Peter and he groans.
“What about Spider-Man?” he asks.
“Don’t think I don’t know how to track that thing, if nothing else it costs millions of dollars and if some jackass stole it out of one of your backpacks that go missing every five fucking seconds someone would have to go find it. And I’m not stupid; I’d be able to tell if the tracker was tampered with so keep Ned out of the suit. Yeah, don’t look so surprised I know you and Ned were tampering with it I’m a damn genius, you think I didn’t think you’d be smart enough to figure out how to access the system? Give me some damn credit, kid.”
How the hell do parents seem to know everything?
“I’ll sneak you ice cream later,” Arthur whispers and Peter grins. Oh yeah, he’s going to milk Arthur feeling bad for throwing him off Stark Tower for life.
*
Mera watches from underneath as Tony swims around and Arthur laughs, “he looks fucking ridiculous, flailing his limbs around like that. Its adorable.”
Mera’s lip curls up a little, “I think you must be in love because that’s painful, not adorable. Please teach him how to swim,” she tells him before swimming off herself.
Arthur shrugs and makes his way to the surface, causing Tony to let out a loud shriek as he emerges from the deep. “Christ Arthur, give a guy a warning,” he says, hand pressed to his heart.
“You’re the worst swimmer I’ve ever seen,” Arthur tells him and Tony glares at him. “What? I live in the ocean; in comparison literally every animal that lives on land swims terribly. You ever seen a dog swim? That’s just sad.” A wave comes up from behind Tony and goes straight over his head, briefly burying him under water before he emerges again, dark hair stuck to his forehead. He doesn’t look impressed. “Yeah okay, let’s get you back to land,” Arthur says, ducking under the water for a moment and swimming under Tony. He swims up, grabbing hold of Tony’s waist as he goes and tosses him back into the dingy he used to get him out here to begin with.
Tony lets out a loud yelp as he flies, landing in the dingy with a loud splat before peeking out of it. “Remind me never to serve as a witness for some meeting I didn’t even see on account of sea water in my fucking eyeballs,” he mumbles.
Yeah, pretty sure a random human isn’t what Atlantis has in mind for a witness but whatever; Tony was here and knows what took place. They’ll be fine. “You might want to relax, I swim pretty fast,” he tells Tony.
“You swam my ass out here, I know how fast you go,” Tony reminds him but he really doesn’t.
“I took my time, gave you the scenic route. Now relax,” he says as he grabs the rope attached to the dingy.
Given that Tony goes flying overboard as soon as he moves he assumes Tony didn’t follow his advice.
*
“You threw Tony into the ocean?” pops asks and Arthur sighs.
“I mean, technically he did that to himself when he didn’t listen to me,” he says.
“Kid, it’s like your not even mine. If I didn’t happen to know there were no other Hawaiian lighthouse keepers around to father you I’d honestly wonder. You get this inept at romance thing from her,” he says, shaking his head.
Well yeah, she did eat one of his fish upon waking up after that storm. “Well come on, give a guy advice- I’m doing a bad job here,” he says. He’s done such a bad job at keeping up that Tony has let his own romantic ventures fall to the wayside in some sad attempt at letting him catch up and its not going well.
Pops shakes his head, “sorry Arthur, but you ruined it when you tossed his kid off Stark Tower. You really can’t recover from that,” he says.
“Vulko all but tossed me off a cliff and you let him come back,” Arthur says.
“Yeah, but I was never dating Vulko,” pops says and wait, dating? When the hell did that happen?
*
Arthur isn’t really difficult to please; the guy likes fish and water so a restaurant on the water serves its purpose if his gazing off into the ocean with a pleased look on his face is any indication. Tony has seen him in the water too and given that he’s obviously very human looking he doesn’t move at all like a human once he’s underwater. There he’s fast, darting around like any fish might though seemingly without the schooling thing. Arthur had laughed pretty hard when Tony asked if that was a thing in Atlantis, Atlantians schooling together to avoid whatever their natural predators are. Which appear to be mostly giant squids, though they rarely swim that deep apparently. Though they can, Tony asked.
Whatever Arthur is thinking about he shakes himself out of it and turns to Tony. “Hey so uh, I think I might be into you,” he says. “Like romantically.”
Honestly Tony would have sooner expected him to throw Peter off Stark Tower again than say that. “What the fuck have we been doing for months?” he asks, because he assumed this was a relationship. Arthur has bonded with Peter between throwing him off tall buildings and trying to ask the poor kid for romance advice he didn’t want to give. Though Peter’s ideas for romance are infinitely better than Arthur’s. Clearly he didn’t inherit his abilities to romance from his father given that Tony has heard his parent’s love story. It’s a lot better than ‘doom bot threw random human at Atlantian and caused damage followed by some weird interactions and a bet.’
Arthur frowns, “um, I don’t know?” he asks more than states and oh boy, he’s in trouble.
“Arthur, we’ve been dating for months,” he says. “We go on dates. Regularly,” he reminds him.
He swears to god Arthur acts like this is news to him and Tony really does need to follow May’s advice, his taste in men does suck. This is why he sticks with women- his taste in women is much better. They’re usually the competent types, the ones who will tell him what’s what. His taste in men? Might as well identify as someone who’s attracted to idiots given that his current boyfriend didn’t even know they were dating. Arthur, as Peter would say, has Dumb Bitch Disease.
“I thought that was the bet thing, who could do romance better,” he says and Tony lets out a long sigh.
“Arthur I had you beat two dates in that was obvious. You seriously thought you were still in the running? Honey,” Tony says, shaking his head. Arthur isn’t just bad at romance, he actively sucks at it.
“I wasn’t that bad,” he mumbles.
“I nearly fell victim to like five hundred jellyfish because you forgot that they sting people,” he reminds him.
“Oh come on, Mera has reliably informed me that jellyfish are pretty and that was an honest mistake,” Arthur says.
“Ah, so the date was Mera’s idea. I knew it couldn’t have been you,” he says, happy he caught Arthur out. It’s the only other decent date they’ve had minus Arthur nearly tangling him with the jellies so he knew it couldn’t have been Arthur’s idea.
“It was me! I was the one who found the jellyfish and stuff,” he says like that matters.
“Mera was the one who told you about the jellyfish. Which were beautiful before I got stung by one,” he says. But he’ll take a brief encounter with them over swimming into a fucking field of them and probably dying. Turns out they mostly just tickle Atlantians so Arthur hadn’t been worried.
“It was just one jelly, it was fine,” Arthur mumbles.
Tony shakes his head. “You so lost that competition and I thought it was obvious that it wasn’t a competition awhile ago. I mean you did make an effort to bond with Peter, who is far too fond of you considering you whipped him across New York using your trident once.” But then Peter seems to have questionable taste in people he spends time with too. Ned’s alright, but Liz’s father tried to kill him even if Liz turned out to be okay. He’s kind of hoping that Peter’s obvious crush on Ned will pan out because Tony knows Ned; he’s known Ned since he was in pre school. Ned is safe; Peter should just marry Ned and call it a day instead of maybe dating other people who have parents who might try and kill him.
“That was an accident! He stuck there just fine before you showed up, he probably let go on purpose,” Arthur says and Tony laughs. Christ, that’s funny. Wasn’t so funny when his kid was flying through the sky, but now that Peter is home safe its hilarious.
“He didn’t do it on purpose,” he says.
Arthur sighs, “can be graded on a curve or something?” he asks and Tony throws his head back and laughs again.
“Oh, even grading you on a curve of your own terrible dates you still fail. I mean, you didn’t even realize we were dating,” he points out.
“Oh come on, we haven’t even held hands- that’s like… the most innocent thing. Peter holds hands with Ned more often than we’ve done any kind of approximate hand holding,” Arthur reasons and Peter has been holding hands with Ned?
“Oh thank god, Ned’s parents are great- they don’t seem the type to turn super villain and try to kill the poor kid, they’re accountants. Awesome, that’s one problem down. And I thought you were shy, or there were some weird Atlantian rules I didn’t know about and I didn’t want to be insensitive,” he says.
“The weird Atlantian rules are to not date surface dwellers but since I already break that rule by existing I figured fuck it and since when am I shy about anything?” he asks.
“You could be shy about this, I don’t know,” Tony says. “Seemed reasonable at the time but now that you mention it that’s actually pretty weird.”
Arthur sighs, “okay, we need to go on an actual date for real, and I’ve got an idea,” he says.
“Arthur, no.”