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"You realize that this is a terrible idea, right?"
"You think everything is a bad idea. You're so negative, Platypus." Tony ignores Rhodey's look of disapproval for the umpteenth time in his life, choosing instead to continue packing. At one point he was loathe to call the backpack of Peter-related supplies a diaper bag, but if it holds diapers like a diaper bag, has pockets for snacks like a diaper bag, etcetera...at some point Tony had to give in.
The bag is bereft of diapers at Peter's age, and it's instead come to include toys and games that Peter likes and, currently, a shit-ton of tissues, cough drops, and children's medicine.
"Oh no, I think all of your ideas are terrible, specifically. Your track record speaks for itself, lest I mention a certain college party you insisted we sneak into despite it being for seniors only—"
"Are you calling your nephew terrible? Because Happy is ready and willing to be his new favorite uncle. First custody successor in my will, extra cuddles—"
"Tony," Rhodey interrupts, more serious. "He's sick."
"Yeah, and so is his babysitter, so here we are."
“A college campus isn't a place for kids."
"And yet they were so quick to accept me," Tony lets out with more bite than intended. There is resentment there, but it's about his father, and maybe MIT as a whole, but not Rhodey.
Rhodey takes a beat, which tells Tony he’s acknowledging that. "You think you can just walk into Nonlinear Mechanics with your germy five-year-old and Professor Griffith—who already hates you—will just let it slide?"
"What the hell else am I supposed to do?" Tony sighs, sitting on Peter's mattress with his head in his hands. "You're t-minus-10 from shipping out for god knows how long, Obie still can't find me an assistant that's worth a damn—the fact that I’m not actually CEO yet aside—and his usual babysitter gave me the distinct pleasure of listening to her cough up an internal organ over the phone. Peter and I have made it a long time on our own, Rhodey. We’ll figure it out."
Rhodey's responding look has a hint of hurt to it—Tony sure felt alone in Peter's first year with his parents dying on top of taking time off from school and caring for his newborn, but the truth is, Rhodey has been by his side since Mary Fitzpatrick put a positive pregnancy test under his nose, and his love for both Tony and Peter is firmly cemented—they are family, all Tony has left.
"You've skipped class before, Tones."
"Yeah, that’s why I can't anymore, or I can kiss my Master's goodbye." He's a son of wealth and connections with a company in his name. Theoretically it isn't an issue. But Tony knows the press—Howard had honorary Doctorates from multiple universities. If Tony doesn't get the diploma to back up his genius, rumors about his qualifications will come back into play every time they want to get under his skin and undercut SI's credibility. "Bring your baby to work day it is."
"M'not a baby anymore," Peter corrects, returning from a trip to the bathroom. Thankfully this sickness has avoided the projectile vomit of his younger years, but he still looks and sounds rough from all the time spent blowing his nose and hacking up gunk in various shades.
"I know, I know," Tony admits, the pandering in his tone only clear to Rhodey. "You're gonna grow up soon and make me forget."
Peter's been tiny since the day he was first nestled in Tony's arms—a combination of genetics and being a preemie, he's been told. Since realizing his stature in comparison to other kids his age, Peter's been on a kick of insisting he's going to hit a growth spurt soon, as if willing it into the world.
Tony doesn't correct his son, mostly to take advantage of the fact that he can still carry Peter around pretty easily, and if he gets sappy enough about it possibly being the last time, Peter will probably keep letting him for a few extra years to come.
"How are you feeling, tesoro?" Peter’s fever broke the night before last, but the other symptoms of this bug seem to be more persistent. Tony spent the last of his class absences bussing Peter food and juice while otherwise acting as the kid's personal pillow.
Peter, ever the bad liar, shrugs with a pitiful little snort. “M’okay."
Behind Peter, Rhodey makes a See? sort of expression before mouthing, Bad idea.
Tony holds out his arms and Peter easily walks into them, curling himself against Tony's chest the second Tony picks him up onto the bed. His hand against Peter's back allows him to feel the reedy nature of his son's breathing. He's pretty sure Peter would rather go right back to sleep against him than leave the house.
"I know you don't feel good, buddy. I don't need my five-year-old putting on airs for me, hm?"
“What’s that mean, Dad?”
"It means that it's my job to take care of you, not the other way around. Today that means taking you with me when all I want to do is stay here until you're all better." Tony presses his face to Peter’s head, kissing the top of his curls and rocking the both of them soothingly like he used to when Peter was a baby.
"There are other babysitters and daycares in the city, Tony," Rhodey tries. Which Tony appreciates, he does, but he's already thought this through.
"With Happy's security clearance? On short notice?"
"I wanna go," Peter butts in. He's always been an empathetic kid. For the short few months he knew his grandparents, Peter always had perfect timing. Any brewing argument ended up interrupted by turning their attention to a crying, suddenly fussy Peter.
While he's sure Peter's telling the truth—Peter has never been to the MIT campus despite living close by, and has had a tantrum or two about wanting to go with his dad instead of staying home with the sitter—Tony’s also sure he never wanted to go like this.
“See? Kid’s great.” Tony doesn’t believe the words as they come out of his mouth. Rhodey clearly doesn’t believe what Tony is saying, but puts his hands up reluctantly in surrender. Peter tries to smile convincingly, but a trickle of snot runs down his nose and onto Tony's collar at the same time and it comes off as more of a grimace.
Perfect.
Walking across campus with his five-year-old is a bit like walking across campus with a dog: people stop him, people take pictures, and at one point, a stranger tries to give Peter candy with a pat to the head like one might offer a dog treats. (Which, yeah, he lets the kid take it, because Peter's sick and Tony's a little soft at people cooing over his super cute child, and Happy’s not there to deflect it, whatever.)
Some of the attention is definitely because of Tony’s infamy, but he’s seen college students like himself in a manner of situations and also knows they’re attracted to anything mildly interesting to break up the struggle of a million tests and term papers.
He’s been carrying Peter on his hip since Happy dropped them off, and despite Peter’s size, it’s still making his arms go a little numb. He sits them on a bench outside one of the science buildings that Tony’s come to know far too well during his MIT tenure.
“Alright Pete, time to huddle up.” Peter gives Tony a searching look that Tony recognizes from his own face—inquisitive, gears turning, always asking why without actually voicing the words themselves. “Sports thing. Thank God I’m not one of those dads who want to live their high school sports dreams vicariously through their kids, huh?” He kisses the side of Peter’s head, thinking of his own father, the responsibility on his shoulders to be more weighing on him even now that Howard is gone. “You know I don’t care, right? You can do sports and be on the bench all season or robotics or art or—”
“Dad.” Peter tugs at Tony’s jacket, breaking him out of that particular train of thought. Tony worries about being too much like Howard, sometimes, of becoming the man one day without realizing.
(But there are times where beyond the strict parenting and sending Tony off to boarding school and college too soon, Tony remembers these looks Howard used to give him. A gaze less harsh that became more regular after Tony brought Peter home from the hospital and put providing for his own son above everything else. He’s wary to call the looks prideful or soft, but sometimes, often in the midst of his grieving, Tony remembers seeing his father instead of just Howard Stark and thinks that they might have come to a better understanding, if only they’d had the time.)
“Right, my point—getting there. Thank you, squirt, I’d be lost without you.” Peter giggles at the praise, but it morphs into a wet little cough that Tony frowns at. “I need you to be honest with me in there. I don’t care if you just need the bathroom or you’re thirsty or you’re about to puke all over my lap. I need to know. All of it. Write it on a note, whisper it into my ear, tell Professor Griffith to shut the hell up, whatever it takes.”
“Miss Macie says it’s bad to swear,” Peter says between his thumb in his mouth, probably an attempt to self-soothe at the idea of going into the classroom with Tony. They’ve been trying to prepare him for his first year of school, but it’s still a work in progress. God help them if Tony scars his child by skipping him straight into a college classroom. Peter ignores this worry crossing Tony’s face, babbling along with his cracked little voice. “I told her that you swear all the time and she mumbled a bunch of stuff she said she didn’t want me to hear.”
Tony can imagine the choice response of Peter’s babysitter. He hired Macie Shultz for her discretion and professionalism, as well as for her exceptional track record as a professional caregiver, but the older woman has made her dislike of Tony’s antics and missteps before and during parenting very clear. Still, she takes care of Peter well whenever they’re in Massachusetts so that Tony can finish his degree. That’s all Tony cares about.
“As always, Miss Macie is right,” Tony admits, gently taking Peter’s thumb from his mouth and letting Peter play with his fingers instead. Peter gets a weird little kick out of tracing Tony’s many lab-related scars and calluses, so it seems to relax him just as much as the seemingly harder-to-kick thumb-sucking habit. “But I’m serious, Pete. If for a second you can’t handle it in there, or you start feeling worse, we’re out, okay?”
“‘Kay.” Peter hooks his arms around Tony’s neck again, and they go into the lab building.
As expected, the moment Professor Susan Griffith walks into the classroom, she zeroes in on the exact thing Tony wishes she would simply ignore and let pass without comment.
They are kind of making a scene, so he can’t exactly blame her. In any other situation, Tony would probably be taking advantage of his cuter classmates cooing over Peter. Instead, he’s simply gathered a crowd around his desk, where Peter is wrapped in his Star Wars-patterned blanket from home and tucked a bit pitifully against Tony’s chest. It’s not exactly the ideal learning environment.
“Mister Stark,” the professor grinds out, pointing a finger and beckoning Tony to the desk at the front of the classroom. Thankfully it’s not a lab day. They’d be messing around with soldering and expensive tools, and convincing the professor to let his child being in the room slide would be ten times more difficult. (Though Tony has definitely allowed Peter on his lap for multiple only-sort-of-dangerous lab experiments before. He was never one to deny his son’s interests.)
In the hopes of Peter not hearing Tony get chewed out over him and making the kid feel guilty, Tony situates Peter in the desk chair alone. “I’ll be right over there, okay? I’m coming right back.” He brushes a hand through Peter's curls as a means of reassurance, but Peter's so out of it that he willingly shrinks away into the desk chair without protest.
To the gathered students, he makes a bit of a shooing motion. “C’mon folks, give him a break, you’re gonna give him a big head.”
His classmates back off a bit, but Professor Griffith doesn’t seem particularly impressed.
Tony knows she’s been waiting for a slip-up.
The reason she doesn’t like Tony is partially to do with his privilege—he’s gotten a lot of things handed to him via the money and power associated with his family. However, he knows that she knows he has the intelligence to back it up. The fact that he rarely tries—that he technically doesn’t need to be here but to earn a piece of paper—frustrates her. He can blatantly ignore her during the lesson and still ace her pop quizzes. He can leave the state to grieve his parents halfway through the semester and still break her final exam’s high score records all the way from California. He’s taken classes from her since he started his Undergraduate studies, and he knows she was hoping to kick him out of the class rather than shake his hand to put a diploma in it after he earned his Bachelor’s.
Still, she chose to teach for a reason, and by now he’s realized her tough demeanor towards the undergraduates and piles of reading is only to weed out the weaklings so that she can do the complicated stuff with students who care about the same things she does. She’s pretty effervescent once you get her started on something like Lyapunov’s stabilization methods or the nitty gritty behind liquid mechanics.
He might have a shot at convincing her. Maybe.
“Mister Stark,” she begins, at least with the respect to lower her voice so that Peter and the other students aren’t having to overhear. “I realize that you are in a unique situation. However, this institution has given you multiple accommodations—more allowed absences than any other student, exam proctoring across the country, advances within the Masters program—frankly, more chances than you deserve.”
“And I’m grateful for those opportunities. I’ve expressed that with millions of dollars in donations to the university.” Okay, so maybe that was his father greasing the gears for Tony, but still, it’s all under the Stark Industries banner.
“Yet you bring a child into my classroom after missing class for the last three periods—”
“He’s been sick for a week—”
“Mister Stark, you’re not the only person at this university with a child at home.” Tony thinks she must be talking about her own kid at first, but he knows that many adult students are among other classmates that took the more normal college route.
“I’ve vied for on-campus child care services since the moment I realized that,” he argues. He knows he’s special and privileged with the child care that he can independently afford. The university has just taken their time in jumping through the related hoops to establish anything to help other students in his position. “That doesn’t change the fact that my kid is the one sick right now, and I need to finish this damn degree to—” He shakes his head. “Sorry, that’s not—look, I know you’re not my biggest fan.”
She doesn’t deny this, crossing her arms and practically staring Tony down despite the few inches he has on her height.
“However, what you don’t know is that Peter is ten times better than I am. You’re painting him with the same Tony Stark brush when really, he’s the sweetest, smartest kid in the whole world.” Her look remains unimpressed. “No, seriously, if I didn’t know he was mine, I would doubt it. He’s practically an angel, and that’s after he’s been coughing his little lungs out for the past four days. Just look at him!”
He points to where Peter is curled up where Tony left him, leaning his head on Tony’s jacket on the desk-chair combo’s arm and doodling in one of Tony’s notebooks sideways, his arm sticking out of the little blanket bundle he’s currently wrapped in. At Tony's pleading gesture, Professor Griffith’s look remains flat, so he tries a different tack. “How much would it take? Seriously, you need your mortgage paid? Vacay to the Bahamas? You’ve really got me over a barrel here, you should take advantage of what I would do for that kid.”
“The entire world can’t be bought, Mister Stark,” she answers. Tony takes her few seconds of silence as an assumption that he should start calculating how long another semester of coursework will take him, but she continues. “But...I recognize that you care for him, which is more credit than the press gives about your situation, I’m sure. And I suppose your point stands true: he has received less chances than you. He deserves one.”
She interrupts his profuse, repeated thanks to say: “Just one. Never again, Mister Stark. Am I clear?”
“Yes ma’am. You’ll never see him in your classroom again.”
Tony controls his walk back to his desk to not show his relief, but he gives an unrepentantly loud smack of a kiss to Peter’s cheek. “Ugh, kid, you are perfect. I love you so much, you’re amazing.”
“Huh?” Peter answers, blearily wiping at the thin layer of moisture on his chapped little nose and swabbing it onto the desk.
“Nothing, bud, just—no, don’t do that, here, I brought tissues, geez.”
When Tony told his old engineering professor that she’d never see Peter again, he was pretty sure he was telling the truth. That semester was his last at MIT, and he’d moved on to getting more involved in Stark Industries and taking care of Peter. He rarely went back to the campus itself since SI was based in LA, and if he did reappear to do talks on subjects, hand out grants, or once, quite happily, cut the ribbon on MIT’s new child care facilities for students, he certainly never went to seek Professor Griffith out.
Life just has a very peculiar sense of humor, sometimes.
“I don’t know why you care so much,” Peter says, his mouth entirely full of pasta. “You did the whole college thing. You know how it is.”
Beside them, Morgan imitates her older brother by shoving a hearty wad of spaghetti into her mouth and dribbling most of it out of her mouth and onto the table. She looks between Peter and Tony for a reaction and gets a mixed bag of Peter’s similarly messy smile and Tony’s resigned sigh.
“That was me,” Tony responds to continue their discussion, wiping Morgan’s face of red sauce and resisting the familiar urge to do the same for Peter. “It’s different when it’s my kid. You haven’t been away from me this long since—” Tony stops, skipping over voicing The Blip in favor of scrubbing Morgan’s face a little too hard—she scoots away from him and insists she’s clean. “I’m just checking in. Making sure you’re adjusting okay. Missing my firstborn desperately.”
“We text at least once a day, Dad. I come home almost every other weekend. What’s to miss?” It’s true, Peter’s home more often than a lot of his peers so that he can still be a hero in the streets of New York. Still, five years. Five years where he didn’t come home to Peter lying across the couch after school, didn’t stay up late worrying about his patrol curfew, couldn’t look at his child’s face and think about how he was growing up too fast because he was gone.
Tony thought letting Peter go out with his friends unsupervised in New York City was hard once Peter became a teenager and started vying for his independence. Letting Peter go out as a superhero was something else, too—a lesson in boundaries and something no parenting book could’ve prepared him for, back when he fretfully read such things. Then he’d had Peter ripped from his arms, had his baby crumbling ash on his fingers, and he’d wanted nothing more than to keep Peter in the lake house indefinitely. Letting Peter out of his sight, out of his house, out of the state; always a new exercise in controlling his protective anxieties all over again.
There’s a beat too long of silence, Peter probably trying to figure out what maudlin things are going through Tony’s head and how he can fix them.
Tony clears his throat, squeezing Peter’s knee under the table in the hopes of offering reassurance. This is supposed to be a nice family visit to Boston, sadly sans Pepper. It doesn’t always have to be about the time they’ve lost, Tony knows that.
“There—exactly. You don’t tell me about your classes—which professors you like, who gives too much homework, lab experiments gone hilariously wrong…”
“Some of us don’t homebrew alcohol in the labs and use a cement gun to seal the Dean’s office door shut.”
“Ah, I see some stories about me have stuck around. At least all of that’s better than the other thing I made during college.”
It takes Peter a beat. “Hey!”
He tugs on Peter’s cheek a little, as if the kid didn’t already know it’s a joke. Maybe the timing wasn’t perfect, but Peter’s had Tony wrapped around his finger since he came out of the womb with all ten of them in perfect condition.
“Are you sure I’m the one in college?” Peter grumbles, rubbing at his thoroughly pinched cheek. Tony can see the smile tugging at his lips, though. Not so grown up after all.
“I don’t know, Morgan, what do you think? Do you think Daddy’s immature?” He pulls a face at Morgan—his tongue out, eyes a little crossed, just enough to get her started laughing. Then he picks up his daughter and brings her in for a barrage of tickles. Okay, maybe he’s a little immature. He and Peter both get in on tickling Morgan in the middle of a public restaurant, and Tony’s chair scoots back just enough to bump into someone.
“Oh, hey, sorry—” Tony stands to apologize, a still giggling Morgan against his chest as he turns around.
Directly into a face familiarly unappreciative of his antics.
“Oh my god.” He shouldn’t be that surprised. The restaurant is only a block away from MIT. It’s a hot spot for teachers and students alike. That’s why Peter asked to take them here for lunch.
“Oh, hey Professor Griffith!” Peter chimes in enthusiastically. Tony’s head whips to Peter behind them so fast his neck actually pulls a little bit. “Dad, this is my professor for engineering. I’ve definitely told you stories about her class, right?”
At hearing Tony be called Dad, he thinks Susan Griffith might just faint right in front of him.
It surprises a lot of people, to find out Peter Parker is actually Peter Stark. They borrowed Peter’s last name. An aunt from Mary Fitzpatrick’s side of the family found Peter’s birth certificate after Mary and her husband died and she got in touch with Tony, desperate to know when her sister-in-law had a child with him. Tony and May Parker weren’t the closest at first, but Tony figured Peter could always use more family since his own passed, and they got to know May and Ben better once Tony, Pepper, and Peter moved to New York after The Battle.
Tony got to keep Peter out of the media by having him use a different name at school, Peter got to live like a normal kid, and the Parkers got to keep a familial connection to Peter after the loss of Mary and Richard. Win-win.
But there are always people who get to know Peter as the wonderful, adorable, bright kid that he is and wonder how in the world his father is Tony Stark. (Not that Tony hadn’t asked the same thing in the beginning. Pepper has upped his parenting confidence a lot since those days.)
“No,” Tony responds, still staring at the face of the woman equally surprised to see him. “I don’t think you’ve mentioned it.”
“Oh, well, it’s all of the engineering stuff I have to learn before going into Biomedical. She’s been teaching for a long time so she’s super smart, and her lecture on nonlinear mechanics was amazing, you’d love it—” Peter realizes he’s been mostly talking to himself. Then, being Peter, he addresses the massive elephant in the room head-on. “Do you—has she been teaching long enough that you two—?”
"I'm well acquainted with Mister Stark," Professor Griffith replies with a bit of a frown. Surprisingly, though, she turns to Peter quite fondly. "I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised, should I? You did start him early."
"You better retire quickly, or this one's next," Tony jokes, bouncing Morgan on his hip for emphasis, making her giggle.
Peter tilts his head in that familiar, inquisitive way, and both the professor and Tony catch it.
"Wow, kid, for how much you like her now, her lessons on the engineering of old must not have made as much of an impression on you." Tony shrugs. "To be fair, he was on a lot of children's Tylenol."
Professor Griffith is less wry about it. "Your father brought you to one of my classes when you were younger," she clarifies. "I didn't think much of him then, but considering your brilliant mind, I suppose he hasn't done such a bad job, hm?"
Peter blushes at the praise, fiddling with the cuffs of his hoodie.
"Are you getting soft with age, teach?" Tony comments, shocked at the vague compliment.
"Hardly—and that's Doctor Griffith to you, Mister Stark. I'm just...giving you a chance, much like I did for Peter, back then." She shrugs. "After all, you did end up saving my life too, in a way."
The teasing smile drops from his face. "What?"
"My daughter, she—in the Blip. Forty-five years dedicating my life to teaching and then, suddenly, without her it all felt..." She clears her throat. "I just mean—you brought everyone back. I can't thank you enough for that."
Done with the moment of sincerity, she seems to collect herself, adjusting her jacket and clutching her purse, seemingly bursting with papers to be graded. "I'll see you Monday morning, Mister Parker. You shouldn't continue this streak of missing class—no sense living up to that part of your legacy."
There's a beat of silence, watching Professor Griffith walk away. Long enough that Tony thinks about her parting words. "What's this about missing classes?"
Peter groans, and through it speaks to his age, Tony relishes the sound of getting on Peter's case.