Steve waited patiently for Tony to begin, it had been a week since he and the others had met Peter and it was finally time for the man to come clean. He watched the man pour himself a drink and turn back to face the others while leaning on the counter in an attempt to appear casual, “so, who’s first?”
Bruce leaned forward, “is Peter your’s biologically?”
Tony raised his glass to signal that the scientist was right, “sure is, I’ve done at least 15 different paternity tests to make sure of that.”
Bruce nodded, “and the mother?”
This made Tony take a sip of the brandy, “her name was Mary Parker, she went to MIT. I met her once after a seminar I did, bought her a drink and I’m sure you can all figure out what happened next. I left the next day and pretty much forgot all about her, Mary on the other hand dropped of MIT to have Peter and worked as some secretary making barely enough to scrape by.”
While Tony was trying to keep his voice casual anyone who was listening could tell his true feelings on what had happened. “Did the woman, Mary, ever contact you about Peter?”
Steve knew that Tony hadn’t always been the best person and that it was something he was trying to fix, but at the same time Steve didn’t want a person he now considered a friend to tell him he turned a blind eye to his own son when the mother was struggling.
Tony let out a huff of a chuckle and shook his head, “no, Mary had always been smart. She had known that if she came to me for help that the paparazzi would find her and the only money she would get was hush money.No she only told two people about who the father was, her brother and his wife.”
It was impossible to miss how the man referred to her in third person and Clint couldn’t help but ask about it. “How did she die?” Tony went silent for a few moments, his finger tapping the glass, before he finally took a long drink.
“She was murdered when Peter was 4, pretty gruesomely in fact. Whoever did it knew what they were doing because not a single clue as to who did could be found, my guess is she found out something that made someone else want to keep her quite.” Steve felt sorry for the kid, losing a loved one at such a young age was something no child should have to go through.
“How’d you find out about him?”
Tony shook his head, “hold on, not done yet. After Mary died Peter went to go live with his aunt and uncle, they were nice people and made a happy family. Until one day they were out on the streets going home when someone tried to mug them, long story short the uncle got shot trying to distract the man and the aunt got shot trying to shield Peter.”
Silence broke out between them and Clint frowned, “that’s fucked up.” Steve had to agree with Clint on the statement, that was a lot to throw onto one person much less a child.
“Well the aunt, May, had it written in her will that if both of them die that I would be alerted to Peter’s existence, I’m positive that she was just hoping that I would give him money every month but it didn’t work out that way.”
Tony couldn’t help but think back to the first time he met Peter; how shell shocked the boy was, how he barely responded to anything the doctors were telling him, it wasn’t until Tony sat down beside him and told who he was and that he was going to take care of him that the boy reacted. Tony could still clearly remember the way the boy had clung onto him, as if the moment he let go or loosened his grip the world would continue to tumble.
Clint brought him out of the memory, “how long has he been with you?” Tony knew how long Peter had been in his life to the day but gave a half shrug, “over a year now.”
Clint gave him a questioning look, “he’s been your son for over a year and he still calls you Mr. Stark?” His tone expressed that he found it more than odd that it was happening and Tony raised a hand.
“I’ve been trying to break that out of him since he first called me that, it took months for him to even call me Tony. He only recently called me-” Tony broke himself off before he could say anything that would used against him later and took another drink, draining the glass of its contents.
“In the past three months he only calls me Mr. Stark if something's gone wrong or he did something bad, in all honesty the kid is a terrible liar.”
Natasha raised an eyebrow, “barring the fire incident, Peter doing something bad?” Her tone was laced in amusement, she knew from the moment she saw him that Peter was the type of kid parents only dreamt of.
Tony tried to stifle a smile, “well the kids definition of doing something bad is pretty low. One day the kid avoided me like the plague and kept calling me ‘Mr. Stark’ when I finally corned him he broke down sobbing. Turns out he had broken curfew by an hour to watch Star Trek, he hadn’t even known how late it was because he was to busy freaking out over whatever the captains name is.”
Whatever smile Tony was trying to keep off found its way to his lips, Natasha let out a small cough that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle. Clint nodded his head and silently promised to not only find more dirt to tease the kid with, but to kill anyone who so much as looked at the boy wrong.