Chapter Text
Tony is up to his elbows in an Iron Man suit when his phone starts blaring the Spider-Man theme song.
(A theme song. Peter Parker has a fucking theme song. What the hell. When. How. Why. )
“FRI, could you answer that?” he asks absently, twisting a few loose wires together.
FRIDAY obliges, bringing Peter’s call up in hologram format. His vitals were posted alongside the call, letting Tony give them a once-over just in case. It was second nature by now--Peter could be just a tiny little bit extremely dense when it came to his own injuries.
“Hello, Santa’s Emporium, how may I help you today?” Tony says around the screwdriver he’s holding between his teeth, which falls out when he laughs at Peter’s prompt response: “Yeah, hi, do you have any gift suggestions for snarky old men?”
“Hey kid, what’s up?” Tony says cheerfully. The holiday season adds an extra layer to the innate joy he feels whenever Peter calls or visits. Or exists in general. “You’re not, like, bleeding out in an alleyway, are you?”
“Not this time, no,” comes Peter’s equally happy response. Kid loves the holiday season. He and May got their Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving, roping Tony in to help decorate it.
(“Oh my gods, it’s November , you absolute heathens,” he recalls saying. “You complete and utter madmen.”
“I know, we’re depraved animals,” May had responded cheerfully. “Now get your metal ass down here, Stark, before my nephew actually projects himself across the astral plane.”
“AAAAA IT’S CHRISTMAS,” Peter had shrieked in the background. “MR.STARKYOUGOTTAGETDOWNHERENOWIT’SFREAKINGCHRISTMASDUDE”
The tree had scraped the ceiling, and smelled faintly like oranges under the sharp, fresh scent of pine.)
“Alright then, what’s happening? Vulture break out? Nuclear crisis? Trouble picking out Christmas gifts?” Tony quips, threading a few more wires together and carefully soldering them.
“No-o-o, but you s-said to inform you when I was coming over,” Peter says, and now that Tony listens carefully, he can hear the faint whistle of the wind over the speaker.
“You’re coming over?” Tony says, unable to keep the happiness out of his voice. He loves it when Peter decides to come over without being invited--it makes Tony feel like Peter trusts him.
“F-ffair warning, though--I’m, like, re-really cold right now. Like, f-frigid,” comes the response.
Tony hums, pulling his hands out of the suit and stepping over to the sink to wash his hands. “Is your suit heater on?”
“Yeah, f-full blast, but it’s n-nnot even making a dent. It’s about 3 deg-grees out here,” Peter says.
“Alright, get here quick,” Tony says. He has a very good reason to be a little concerned--spiders apparently can’t thermoregulate, making Peter’s tolerance for cold drop like a brick. “I’ll get everything set up. Besides, I need to lecture you for calling while swinging instead of calling before you leave.”
“Alright, okay. Bye, Mr. Stark,” Peter says. His smile is almost audible.
“ Tony, ” the billionaire reminds him. “Who calls their pseudo-father-figure ‘Mr.’?”
“Oh, come on-- ”
“FRIDAY end call,” Tony says, smiling as Peter’s exasperated voice disappears.
--
Peter sticks his head out of the elevator and into the penthouse, shivering and peering around.
“Mr. St- uh, Tony?” he calls out cautiously. There’s no response.
His spidey sense is quiet so he steps out, which turns out to be a mistake as Tony lunges out from fuck-nowhere and ambushes him with a blanket.
“How many times--stop screaming, it’s just me-- how many times have I told you to have Happy come pick you up in the winter? Three degrees outside, and you with your shit thermoregulation, and you choose to swing down here?”
Peter chooses to ignore that in favor of watching Tony tuck all the corners of the blanket in around him. Barring the faux-annoyed rambling that streams from his mentor (constantly), Tony always acts like a downright mother hen whenever Peter is even remotely injured or sick.
Tony quits speaking finally, taking the opportunity to stare at Peter’s face; take note of his red ears and nose, the spots of color in his otherwise pale face, the melting snow on his shoulders.
“Alright, go sit,” Tony finally says, patting Peter’s shoulder. “Grab the blankets and leave space on the couch for me.”
Peter grins and hurries off, tripping over the trailing end of the blanket as he does so. Tony smiles and goes to grab the snacks.
“Aw, sweet! You made hot chocolate!” Peter whoops, making grabby hands at one of the mugs that Tony brings over. Tony sips from his own mug, nudging Peter aside with his hip. “I said leave space for me, Pete. I don’t--I literally cannot understand how such a small person can take up so much space-”
“Not the height thing again, can’t you just drop it-”
“ No I’m serious , you are short for your age--and probably underweight too-”
“Dude, I’m serious, I’m fine -”
“You know, maybe if you weren’t so skinny, you’d be better at thermoregulation-”
“Yeah, you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” Peter snarks back, laughing at the offended look on Tony’s face.
“How dare you even remotely imply that one of the sexiest men alive is fat, you little shit-”
“Okay first of all it’s not a bad thing to be fat,” Peter says, laughing into his mug. “Second of all, I didn’t mean fat , just, y’know…”
“No, I don’t know, what are you implying exactly, hmm?”
“You know, like,” Peter says, gesticulating. “Like. Fluffy. You know?”
“You are hereby banned from everything-- don’t put your head on my chest, we’re not cuddling after the insults I have just endured. ”
Peter grins and turns his head inwards, nuzzling into the space above Tony’s heart. After a few minutes, Tony gives in and Peter can feel his chest silently shake with laughter as he wraps his arms around his kid and pulls him in closer.
“You’re the worst,” Tony says into Peter’s curls. “Truly, you are the worst child ever.”
“Aw, you love me,” Peter says jokingly. There’s a short, soft silence, charged with something Peter can’t describe, before Tony sighs and kisses the top of Peter’s head.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
Peter blinks. He wasn’t expecting Tony’s voice to sound so serious, so soft and vulnerable. Like he’s admitting one of his most closely-guarded secrets.
“I love you too, Tony,” Peter says quietly. Tony’s arms tighten around him, pulling him in close, pressing his head into his mentor’s broad chest. Warmth seeps into Peter, loosening his joints and pulling a sigh from him.
They sit like that for a couple minutes, the boy curled into the older man. Peter feels very small, very young. Tony’s lips move, pressing kisses into the crown of his head, pushing his nose into Peter’s curly hair.
After a while, Tony pulls back a bit and gives Peter a crooked smile. “Wanna binge-watch Christmas movies?”
Peter smiles back, a little wetly. “Heck yeah.”
Of course, Peter falls asleep within the first few minutes of the first movie. Being cold makes him tired, movies make him tired, snuggling makes him tired, and besides that he’s exhausted from getting about 3 hours of sleep the night before (again).
When Tony notices that his kid is out like a light, he reaches over and snags a pillow from the end of the couch, settling it on his legs. Only then does he carefully lower Peter’s tired, curly head onto his lap, running his fingers through the fluffy hair and thinks for a bit.
He’s a billionaire, he’s a genius, he’s a former company owner (and playboy), he’s survived poisoning and shrapnel and heartbreak and about a million supervillains, he’s a literal freaking superhero.
Hell, his name is literally Iron Man.
Evidently, Iron Man’s not all iron, he thinks as he brushes Peter’s curls behind his ear and smiles as the kid nuzzles into his stomach. How could he possibly be, when this stuttering mess of a poor fifteen-year-old kid from Queens can make his chest feel so warm? What other person can elicit that particular swoop of pride and love deep in his belly?
Smoothing a thumb over Peter’s cheek, he’s suddenly glad that he’s not all iron.
Tony’s happy that his heart is human.