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There’s a long list of things that Tony would rather be doing at six in the morning that don’t involve carrying his seven year old daughter across MIT’s campus in his pajamas and a hoodie from the university that’s older than the student he’s visiting.
However, when Peter calls in the middle of a Wednesday night, Tony answers. That’s the gig, the only one left that matters now that he’s out of the superhero game.
The Great Tony Stark: father/father-figure of two, cares about working for SI when the mood strikes or his wife asks, savior of the universe, otherwise retired at the ripe old age of fifty-four.
Tony was up to his arms in soapy dishwater when he got the call.
He could have designed a million dishwashers that were ten times as efficient in the time it took to do the task by hand, but he’d grown accustomed to the routine of it. When they first built the lake house, there had been a wait for a few of the appliances to be delivered. Pepper was eight months pregnant and determined to move in on the exact date she had on her digital calendar and not a moment later.
They were hand-washing dishes and clothes like heathens for a week, and that was long enough for Tony to realize—as he had many times since leaving the Avengers and their seemingly relentless search for the Stones behind—that he didn’t actually mind taking the slower route these days.
Chores gave him time to reflect or distract himself from things he didn’t want to do or think about while still being technically productive. Win-win.
It’s just, in particular, when one gets The Call—so different from Peter’s calls asking for help with homework or begging for the license to try a risky suit upgrade without Tony’s help—it’s extremely unfortunate to be holding a plate that slips from his slick hands directly into the floor with a resounding crash.
Tony has heard stories about parental instincts—terrors stopped by gut instinct, a feeling barring on prescience. He actually has a few himself, though Morgan tests their limits every day of her burgeoning little life.
This is how he knows the call from Peter is abnormal—it’s not just a call, but The Call that all parents dread. Tony, initially unaware of this, answered the phone with a jaunty, “Hey, Pete. Up late studying for that…ah, what’s it called—the class about how people die all the time from everything? You know what I’m talking about, I always forget.”
“Macro-epidemiology,” Peter corrected, but it was a quiet answer instead of his usual boisterous whinging about how Tony was growing old and senile. He lacked the usual joking air or the excitement of a jittery caffeine high. In fact, Tony thought his voice might have cracked a little, which wasn’t abnormal per se, but Tony knew it didn’t just happen for no reason.
“Peter? What’s wrong?” Tony switched tracks completely, scrunching his brow and clutching at the dish in his hand instead of actually scrubbing it.
“I—“ The sniffle from Peter was audible, coupled with a muffled noise of movement. “I woke up and I can’t—“ He lost the rest of the sentence, or he was speaking so quietly the phone didn’t pick it up. “Mister Stark, I’m not—you’re not—“
That was about when the plate dropped, all of Tony’s attention on Peter and far away from the task once in his hands. It was a familiar enough jumble of sentences for him to recognize. “Okay, okay, Pete. Easy. I’m right here. We’ve gone through this before, remember?”
Peter said he doesn’t really remember being dusted. He certainly doesn’t remember not existing for five years. Ever since he returned, however, Peter had more problems with disassociating, with waking up and finding both new and familiar places foreign.
The first week after coming back, Tony recuperating and Peter and May without an apartment for the time being, Peter had woken up every night screaming and terrified of the lake house’s guest bedroom. The effects were something akin to night terrors. He’d wake and have a feeling of wrongness, of not knowing where he was despite knowing Tony and his aunt were right there with him. He’d only been able to describe the feeling as displaced in the aftermath, an embarrassed tint to his cheeks when he admitted sleeping next to Tony, May, or even Morgan, once, helped.
Sometimes doing every panic attack tell of describing the room around him and every single thing his enhanced senses could latch onto brought him back to awareness. Other times it didn’t, and they could only comfort him and wait for the spells to end. Sometimes they happened multiple times a week, but within the past two years they were rare enough that he’d gotten through his first Freshman semester at MIT without having one until that moment.
It’s not something Tony found reported by any other dusted individuals. His own therapist could only give him tips for calming Peter and a recommendation to one of her colleagues that the kid has so far refused to take him up on.
“I don’t know. I don’t know, Tony, I can’t tell—I don’t know where I am, I don’t—“
Tony held back a sigh. Peter would see that as pity or belittling, and he didn’t need that right now. This was always a multi-step process. Usually he was physically there to be more effective at it.
“You’re in your dorm at MIT. I bet you can see your A New Hope poster from where you’re sitting. It’s a classic, not a reprint, thanks to yours truly. You’re in your bed, right? Hard ass mattress, cotton sheets?” He’d only visited Peter’s dorm the once on Moving Day, but he’d pretty easily committed the box of a room to memory. Peter had pretty quickly shooed the Stark family and his Aunt off in the hopes of them avoiding his new, randomly assigned roommate, and it had worked. “And I bet you’re talking softly because Jason is there tonight, and he’s usually not, so you have to be quieter.”
Despite not having met Peter’s roommate, Tony heard stories from Peter occasionally. He was nice and kept their room decently clean, but he was kind of aloof, often out with friends that he didn’t share with Peter and apparently fond of sleeping at his boyfriend’s apartment instead of their dorm.
Peter also often came home on the weekends for Spider-Man-ing, so he supposed there was room for privacy on both sides, even if it meant Peter wasn’t getting the best-friends-and-roomies experience that shoved Tony and Rhodey together in their formative years. Peter had made some new friends at MIT, he’d be able to request roommates the next year, and Ned was still around the campus too, so Tony wasn’t too worried about it. The roommate just made things like this a tad inconvenient.
God forbid Peter be impolite enough to wake his roommate with his panic attack.
“M’ in the dark. I wanna go home, Mister Stark, please, please, I want it to be real again, I don’t wanna be here.”
“It’s real, Pete. You’ve got me, I’m right here.”
“You’re not here,” Peter insisted, whined, and that was it, Tony lost his sense and his self control as he hopped over the shattered glass with the grace of a much younger and less injured man. His car keys were in hand as he muttered promises. “I’m coming, Peter, I’m right here, I’ll stay on the phone until I get there, okay? I’m putting shoes on right now, I’m—“
“Daddy?” came a small voice. As always, Morgan Stark, at only seven years old, had the capability to bring sense back to Tony in a way Pepper oft dreamed of. “Where’re you going?”
The sight of his daughter in her pajama pants, hair askew from sleep, and likely woken by the smashed dish-was enough to slow his thoughts.
Peter didn’t need Tony to panic too. He had to be stable and calm for both of his kids. Morgan would freak out, and Peter would probably get upset because Morgan was agitated, and then Tony would have two upset kids and he’d lose his freaking mind.
He took a deep breath, holding it in and letting it go a few times until it settled.
He looked down. He had one snow boot on in the middle of October, was in only his boxers and a hoodie, and the keys in his hand were for one of his classics—something more fit for a quick joy ride than a few hundred miles to Massachusetts.
On top of all that, he’d nearly forgotten Morgan would be alone, because Pepper was in Prague for meetings all week. He’d nearly abandoned one kid for the other in a fit of pure panic, which would have in turn made him feel like he was playing favorites, which was something he resolved never to do between his found and biological children.
“Give me a sec, Peter. Just hold on,” Tony looked up to the ceiling, always a cue to his AI for attention. “FRI, mute me for a second. Talk him through anything he needs, okay?”
“Got it, boss,” FRIDAY answered. Peter either understood or didn't have anything else to say. Tony heard a quiet cry, though, so he wasn't exactly comforted.
“Peter doesn’t feel well,” Tony summarized, still ignoring the mess on the kitchen floor and instead opting to hoist Morgan up on his hip so that he could rush up the stairs and go put on some pants. “He needs me, and I’ve got you, squirt, so that means he needs us.”
“I have school tomorrow,” Morgan answered, spawn of Pepper Potts, cutter of all bullshit. It’s not that she didn't care about Peter, but that she was handling things in her own order, being more practical than Tony himself was being, bless her.
“I know. You might be a little late,” he fibbed, knowing the time it would take to get to MIT and back because he’d checked, filed the information away in case of emergencies such as this one. 287 miles exactly from their lake house up in the Catskills to Peter’s campus. He placed her on the floor and dug through the dresser for something to put on over his boxers.
Morgan studied him for a moment—he assumes she saw the fumbling mess of her father jumping into a pair of flannel pajama pants and about to fall on his ass and took pity on him, but she could have just not actually wanted to go to school that badly. She shrugged, either in defeat or acceptance, turning off to her room.
(She left to pack herself a bag—headphones, her tablet, a few books, and her little pillow pet cat. She truly is her mother’s daughter, and it’s little stuff like that which makes Tony want nothing more than to cuddle the crap out of her just for being half of him too.)
He watched her go before snapping to the realization that he was still only half dressed. Shoes, shoes—house slippers, same thing, whatever, he grabbed what was at hand.
“Patch me back in, FRI,” Tony commanded, digging around in the bedroom before realizing his wallet and car keys were still downstairs where he started. “How’re we doing, kiddo?”
“M’tired of this—“ Peter sounded tired, still crying, gasping in irregular breaths. “I still can’t—I want it to stop, Mister Stark, why does this keep happening?”
“I don’t know, Pete. I don’t. We’re gonna—I’m coming right now, and we’ll figure out the rest.”
Tony would like to say that he’s no stranger to not sleeping. It is the truth—stretching the human body’s limits for sleep deprivation was practically a part-time hobby for him at one point.
However, since having Morgan he’d gotten pretty good at realizing that sleep, when uninterrupted by nightmares, was kind of awesome. In fact, he’d gotten really, really good at sleeping anywhere and everywhere—most often with his little bundle of joy against his chest. Mid-feeding could be nap time if you adjusted your arm a certain way. Morgan’s nap time was Dad’s nap time. These days, Tony often found himself back in bed directly after dropping Morgan off at school. His body realized retirement was meant for excessive sleep, and Tony wasn’t fighting that.
It also meant that the drive to MIT was a long, exhausting thing. Obviously modern technology meant the car would yell at Tony for a number of reasons—dangerous things like lane drifting, sleeping at the wheel, his eyes being off the road—but it didn’t make the call of sleep any more fun to avoid.
Podcasts made him sleepy. Morgan’s muffled coos against her pillow pet made him sleepy. Metallica made him sleepy—he knew the songs so well they were almost droning.
It didn’t help that via FRIDAY, Peter had been on the phone with Tony for almost two hours before he’d finally been lulled enough by Tony’s voice and assurances that he fell asleep without being able to fight it anymore. Obviously, that didn’t mean Tony was going to turn the car around—they were getting close, and the kid could wake up and start all over again. It did mean that Peter and Morgan were both relatively safe and asleep, and he couldn’t be since he was driving.
He’d never wanted a car seat for the Iron Man armor more in his life. He’d spent…a decent amount of time sleep-flying in that thing from country to country. Morgan would be absolutely thrilled.
This sleep-deprived argument concerning creating the suit-seat and attempting to convince Pepper to let him use it with their child kept him awake for the rest of the drive.
Now, he’s striding towards Peter’s dorm in the brisk weather of the early morning, guided only by the light of the streetlamps and his vague memories of the campus from his own college years. He’d only lived in a dorm with Rhodey for his freshman year before it was heavily suggested by the Dean that he live off-campus. (Probably something to do with setting off the fire alarms from his tinkering in their dorm room and his sloppy underage drinking habits.) He was a rich kid genius from a household name, but a volatile one, and the university switched between being shameful and prideful of his attendance depending on the week and his fits of public debauchery in the media after he’d graduated.
Despite all of that, Tony knew the way to Baker House. Helping Peter with the move-in had meant squeezing Peter’s belongings into the elevator or up the stairs with all of the other students and parents trying to do the same thing. Surprisingly without being recognized, he’d spent part of the afternoon with a group of other, older fathers whinging about their aching backs and quietly fighting the masculine emotional constipation of wanting to cry about their kids growing up.
He’d lived farther across campus in a building with only stairs during his MIT years, and he was grateful for the opportunity to use an elevator instead on this particular night, due to the child sleeping against his back.
Except there’s one snag in his plan: he can’t get into the building.
That’s the thing about college campuses these days, he supposes. The old buildings got renovated to replace dated carpeting, to add elevators, to cut students’ smoking habits…but that also means they added a host of features to keep the new students safe and protected in a way that inhibited someone like him from trying to come in the door in the middle of the early morning without an ID badge.
The parent in him is conflicted on the matter, considering his current situation.
Peter’s screening his attempted calls, so he’s staring at the closed glass doors wondering if he can break them or use FRIDAY to hack the card reader somehow without putting Morgan down when someone walks through.
The doors let out an electronic whirr as they unlock and separate, revealing a young man dressed in joggers and a hoodie, music blasting through his wireless headphones. He appears more put together at twenty-whatever than Tony has ever been in his entire life, and a streak of envy and sleep deprivation takes over long enough that the doors once again shut in his face before he can take the opportunity the universe clearly attempted to present him on a silver platter.
He sighs, making enough of a movement that it attracts the unknown student’s attention despite his earbuds. He looks Tony over for a second, probably more absorbing Morgan’s odd presence and his pajama-clad appearance when he asks “Is she okay? You know, the hospital is only a little farther down Main Street, I’m sure they could help—“
The student tilts his head in that way that Tony’s used to and often runs from rather than invites these days: recognition.
“There’s no way—“ The kid shakes his head, as if clearing himself of the daze of sleep, before settling into a mixture of excitement and shock. “I—you’re T—“
“Yep, that’s me, Tony Stark, standing in front of you with the possible future heiress of Stark Industries herself on my back at six AM,” Tony tries to put on his charming smile, but it might come off a little more crazed than he wanted. “Wanna, um. Buzz me in? I’ll autograph literally anything, take a million selfies, etcetera, etcetera. Anything but my first-born, for obvious reasons.”
“Why—what are you doing here, Mister Stark?”
“My kid—well, he was my intern, now he’s not, but we’re still close. It’s a whole thing. Anyway, yeah. He lives on the third floor and he asked me to come, so here I am.” Tony tries to shrug it off, no big deal, but it’s clear that one of America’s future innovators isn’t exactly convinced despite being a little starstruck.
“…Don’t you live in upstate New York?”
“Who told you that? Seriously, if those vultures are stalking my house, you tell them I still have the iron suits and also lawsuits—no, never mind. Not important. I swear I’m not—I don’t know, whatever you’re probably thinking. Crazy? Who brings their seven-year-old to do crazy stuff anyway, am I right?”
The kid looks like he’s not far from calling up campus security and ending the conversation, but then Morgan sleepily perks up her little head and mumbles “We seein’ Petey?” at Tony.
“Trying, baby,” he replies, bouncing her a little. She’s always shared his penchant for avoiding bedtime in favor of her own pursuits, and he’s probably running out of time before she gets alert enough that she won’t go back to sleep until much later.
The interaction must convince the kid of something, because he digs around in his hoodie and slaps his wallet against the card reader, opening the doors again. Tony nods to him in thanks and dismissal, but the kid follows him inside instead.
At his raised brow, the student shrugs. “My card won’t get you into his floor, but I can get the RD.”
As much as Tony isn’t trying to make a big deal out of all this, he can see it’s sort of unavoidable. That’s why they have all of these levels of personnel—RAs and RDs and Deans of everything under the sun—to protect the young adults and make sure they’re okay when things go bad.
He follows the kid around the corner to the RD’s apartment, submitting to Morgan’s wakefulness when she tugs on his arms to be put down.
The kid—Derek, apparently—introduces Tony to the RD, nicknamed JD, like the Scrubs character, though the name behind the initials isn’t revealed to him. The younger man is still in his pajamas and crabby at the interruption, but still kind enough to lead Tony up to the third floor while Derek finally goes off on his run with a newly taken selfie and weird story to post along with it.
“I’ve had a lot of late night calls, Mister Stark,” JD says, breaking the silence of the elevator slowly going up to Peter’s floor. “Professional hazard. This honestly isn’t the weirdest.”
“You know I have to ask, right?”
“Multiple feet stuck in one toilet.”
“Oh, wow.”
“Yeah.”
JD scans them through the main door for floor three of the building, walking them past the small communal area skillfully decorated with a few futons and a billboard of student events to the seemingly endless hallway of dorm room doors, only separated from each other by the colorfully decorated name tags to denote the students living in the doubles.
Peter’s little plaque is handmade out of construction paper, the blocky letters of his name sharing space with a crudely drawn DNA strand, likely to denote his bioengineering major. Jason’s little paper has a bubbling beaker, probably to represent some form of chemistry.
JD knocks on the door firmly, shouting “JD, RD, open up!” It’d be a pretty sing-song-y little chant if the mood were less dire, and Tony can imagine it going over well as a tool to make the students feel more comfortable with coming to their RD in times of distress.
Not that Peter ever would. How could he, with something like this? With Spider-Man stuff? Tony’s tried his best to enforce normal college life on Peter, but the weekends are all Peter’s to superhero up, and Tony can’t stop the kid from coming if something big happens with the Avengers and he thinks he’s needed. He’s not officially part of the team, but he’s not far from it, considering the way Sam and Bucky seem to get along with Peter when they’re working in New York.
He can make Peter experience normal as much as he wants—the kid is anything but, and Tony’s always known and encouraged that, in any positive ways. The negative ones just come with it as a fact of life.
There’s no answer to the knock, so JD goes in for another. “Anyone there?”
The RD is getting out his presumably universal keys when an unfamiliar face opens the door. Matching both Tony and JD, the student at the door—presumably Jason—is in pajamas pants and no shirt. He’s tall and lean, practically looking down at both Tony and JD, a contrast to Peter’s shorter spider-bulked form, along with his blonde bun of hair.
“What’s up?” Jason asks, miffed but mostly respectful of the RD. Then he turns to Tony, his tired eyes wide and awake in an instant. “Holy shit. Holy fucking shit, that’s Tony Stark. I mean—hi, sir, wow, I don’t—what—“
“Watch it. Little ears here,” Tony corrects out of habit, but the small presence once latching at his hand has taken the initiative to shove Jason out of the way and find Peter.
“Petey! Peter, wake up, Daddy’s here!” Her little voice carries into the hallway.
Over Morgan’s calls, Tony coughs awkwardly, extending his hand. “Sorry to meet you like this. Peter asked me to come down last night, but he wasn’t answering his phone, so I got worried.”
“Um,” Jason replies, limply shaking Tony’s hand.
“Morg’n,” comes a familiar groan. Usually Tony hears it at eight in the morning on weekends at the lake house, but he’ll take hearing it now and knowing Peter’s okay. “I was sleepin’.”
There’s a beat, and then a loud thump of young adult falling onto tile. “Morgan? What are you doing here?! Did you run away? Does Tony know? Oh God, he’s gonna kill us, Mo, you can’t just—“
Peter walks the few steps towards the doorway with Morgan on his hip and then stops dead in his tracks. “Tony? What—“
Peter looks to Tony, then to JD, then to Morgan, then goes back to Tony again. “Oh. Oh no.”
“You asked me to come down here, Pete.”
“I didn’t mean—God, Mister Stark, you can’t just—“
“You were freaking out, kid, did you think I wouldn’t come?”
“Well, I mean, you’re in New York, and you have Morgan, and—“
“Dude,” Jason growls, interrupting with a punch to Peter’s arm and wringing his fist out when the strike was more firm to him than he was probably expecting. “You didn’t tell me your little sister was—Tony Stark is your—“
“He’s not—this is just a huge misunderstanding, I didn’t mean—“ Peter sighs, seeing the idea of explaining it all to everyone present is a losing battle. “He’s okay to be here, JD, if you wanna leave. I guess…I asked him to come, and he’s on my emergency contact sheet and all.”
“I can’t believe all this time I thought it was just some dumbass friend who legally changed his name to Tony Stark,” JD grumbles, putting his keys away and turning with a long sigh of, “Freshmen.”
“Are you sick, Petey?” Morgan asks, placing her hand to his forehead. “He’s all warm, Daddy!”
Tony can tell that’s from sheer embarrassment, but he takes pity not to mention it and make things worse. “Not that kind of sick, honey.” He thinks some version of homesick must have come out as implied, because when he looks to Jason, the kid is throwing on a t-shirt and unplugging his phone from somewhere by his dresser.
“We’re going to have words, Peter,” Jason declares, ending the statement with a pointed finger at Peter. Then he turns to Tony and shakes his hand a little more aggressively than before. “It was so nice to meet you, Mister Stark.”
With the slam of the room door behind them, the room lapses into a moment of silence—Tony staring at Peter, Peter himself resolute to look anywhere else.
“You mind talking to Karen for a minute, Morguna?” Tony asks, taking control of the situation, pulling out the parent card for A Talk.
Morgan rolls her eyes, old enough now to know a dismissal when she hears one, but she complies, easily finding Peter's Spider-Man mask—in his backpack, honestly—and crawling up on Peter’s bed to quietly talk to Peter’s AI, who’s probably aware enough to block out the sound and give Peter and Tony a moment.
“Are you okay?” Tony starts with, closing the space between them and pulling Peter closer by the shoulder.
“I’m fine.” Peter crosses his arms, petulant. It feels like a regression to his teen years not so long gone, but Tony’s okay with it. He needs to practice for Morgan anyway, right?
“You weren’t,” Tony responds, tone firm. He’s never encouraged Peter’s habit to deflect his pain and problems. Tony did it for years and he’s realized how frustrating it was for the people who cared about him. “You had one of those night terror attack—things,” he says, unsure what else to call them. “And were all by yourself in a place you didn’t recognize. You were scared and crying, and you wanted me, so I came.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I guess I didn’t have to change Morgan’s diapers either, but I didn’t want to deal with the shit that came after if I didn’t.”
Peter just sort of looks at him a little sideways.
“You know I’m bad with metaphors.” Tony waves it away with his hand. “I’ll always come for you, Pete. After everything I did to bring you back, I can’t—I love you too much not to come, understand? It was gonna happen no matter what.”
Instead of replying, Peter seems to soften at his words. He tucks himself into Tony’s chest, wrapping his arms around Tony’s stomach in a hug.
“It’s…hard,” he admits, eagerly accepting Tony’s hand as it tames his sleep-messy curls in a familiar gesture. “I don’t know anything but that I don’t want it to be happening, but I can’t make it stop."
“I know.”
“I just wanted to go home, and I hate myself for still wanting it. I feel like—like some baby. I’m almost nineteen, Tony, and I can’t be away from home for a couple of months without freaking out, how stupid is that?”
“It’s not stupid,” Tony replies, but Peter looks up at him with the belief that it’s just a platitude. “It’s not. Pete, I went to college at fifteen. I was homesick all the time. All I wanted sometimes was to get on a plane back to California and never come back.”
“Did you?”
“Only for the breaks. Sometimes not even then.” At that Peter tries to interrupt with some form of Tony making his point, probably, but Tony continues. “But Peter I wanted to. My father was against it. He thought all of that tough guy stuff was real too, but it’s not. Not for anyone. I drank and partied my ass off to avoid the fact that I was feeling what every kid in the world feels when they’re away from the people at home they care about for the first time, and it sucked.”
He pulls back from their hug, putting his hands on Peter’s shoulders to make himself clear. “Peter, you can want home: the lake house, your apartment, Delmar’s. Anywhere in New York that you miss. You can want me and May and Ned and MJ and any of the Avengers, if you want. And we will let you come home every single time, with open arms, no matter what.”
“But I also know that you love it here, Peter.” Peter looks around them, at the dorm room—at the piles of clothes hanging out of the laundry hamper, at the textbooks and doodles covering the surface of Peter’s desk, at the pictures of Tony, May, Ned, and so many more pinned close together on a cork-board. “You aren’t running away or weak for missing the place you’ve lived and personally protected for most of your life. You can go there and come back here and pick up right where you left off. You can have both, because you have people who are going to be there for you, no matter where you go—physically, mentally, whatever it takes.”
Peter sniffles a little, wiping at his eye casually before saying, “You’re becoming a real sap, Mister Stark.”
“Jesus, ruin the moment, kiddo.”
“Thank you,” Peter says more seriously, hugging Tony again quickly before separating. “Seriously, I don’t—it might not help to know that during…you know, but I appreciate it.”
“If it doesn’t, you call, and I’ll come. We’ll go anywhere you want, or I’ll stay until you’re okay. Next time, though, answer the phone when I get here. I’m convinced your RD not-so-secretly hates me.”
“He’s more of a Captain America fan.”
“Are people still picking teams like that?”
“Daddy, can I be done not listening now?” Morgan asks, her voice muffled by the mask’s fabric. “I’m hungry and Miss Shaw is gonna give me extra spelling homework since I missed class, so I deserve chocolate chip pancakes!”
“Oh, you do, huh?” Tony gives Peter a smile, his tone playful and recovering from their more serious discussion. “What do you say, Pete? Wanna take Miss Morgan out for breakfast? Show her around the city a little like the well-worn college man you are?”
“Yeah,” Peter smiles back, clearly understanding of Tony’s emphasis of his college life and becoming more at home here in Massachusetts. “Yeah, I do.”