Chapter Text
As Tony descends the stairs to the mansion, he taps Peter’s foot in time.
“Giddy-up jingle horse, pick up your feet,” Tony hums along to his forceful tapping of Peter’s Christmas onesie covered foot, smiling when Peter’s response is to kick his other foot into Tony’s back completely out of sync.
“There’s my nephew!” May coos, walking over with open arms and a turkey baster in hand. “He looks so precious, Tony, look at him!”
“It’d be more precious if he would quit spitting up on his outfits. This is the third onesie today.”
“Aww, my poor baby!” May says as she reaches for the kid. “What did you feed him? Is he okay?”
“I tried giving him cranberry sauce! Apparently his stomach is not a fan.”
“Well I am a fan of all of this festive apparel. Did you buy one of everything in babyGap’s Christmas section?”
Tony shrugs, unashamed. It felt weird at first to go baby shopping when he was used to Mary making all of those kinds of decisions, but Peter needed new clothes and Tony had money to spare. Once he got started, it was hard to stop.
“I might’ve gotten a little carried away. Then again, they’re only babies once and all that. Thankfully he’s not growing out of things too fast.”
“‘Cause he’s a little runt,” Happy teases, coming up next to May and tickling at Peter’s stomach.
Predictably, Peter enjoys it, unaware of the dig and more focused on sopping up every ounce of offered attention from the party guests.
“The same could be said for that sad excuse of a mustache you tried to grow in ‘99, but I don’t point it out,” Tony quips, stealing May’s turkey baster and walking away from Happy’s wrath into the kitchen.
Rhodey is leaning against the counter with a beer in hand as Ben frowns down at the meat in front of him.
“Looking for this?” Tony asks, offering the proffered utensil.
“Yeah, but I was kind of hoping my wife would be with it,” Ben replies.
“You want her in here? You sure about that?”
Ben seems to reconsider. “The turkey baster is fine.”
“I think you guys are too hard on her,” Rhodey comments, taking a bite of the brownies she brought. Ben and Tony both watch as he chews his bite, then twists his face into something more familiar concerning May’s creations.
“What the hell is in that?”
“Pumpkin,” Ben says with a shake of his head. “She thought it’d be festive.”
“Jesus,” Rhodey huffs, pushing the plate away and swigging at his beer to clear the taste.
“Go for one of the pies. Ben brought them, and he’s a culinary god.”
“I dunno if I’d go that far…”
Ben returns his attention to the bird, and Tony sidles up to the fridge for a beer of his own. He’s mostly off of the drinking these days, but he’s setting a limit for himself for the occasion, and he’s mostly too busy not to follow through with it. Peter’s going to get tired the later the party goes, and he’s got a boatload of presents to open that he probably won’t appreciate based on how his 1st birthday party went.
“So, how long do we get to keep you for this time, Platypus? Thanksgiving wasn’t as fun without you eating half of a pumpkin pie in one sitting.”
“You’re ignoring the fact that you’re usually eating the other half with me.”
“And you’re dodging the question.” Tony points with his bottle. “Don’t want me to know? Special Ops?”
“The government doesn’t like when I tell you their business, no. But I’m home for a few more weeks. Through New Years, at least.”
“They’re keeping you guys busy these days.”
Rhodey shrugs. “Stark Industries too, if I’m not mistaken. Pepper told me your last quarter sales were off the charts.”
“Where is Pepper, by the way?” May asks, rounding into the kitchen with Peter on her hip. Before he was missing the plush reindeer antlers that are now adorning his curls.
“I wanted her opinion on some expensive lotion from Nordstrom I saw while I was out Christmas shopping. She’s so much more knowledgeable about that kind of thing.”
“I’m knowledgeable,” Tony retorts, making grabby hands for Peter until May relents.
“On women’s skin products?” May replies skeptically.
Tony shrugs. “I’m rich and eccentric. You don’t know what I know.”
Rhodey rolls his eyes. “He’s just mad because Pepper decided to go to her mother’s. For Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
“Pep-ah?” Peter asks, looking around the room and bouncing in Tony’s hold. “Dada, where Pep-ah?”
“No, that is why I was trying not to mention her.” Tony groans. “Pepper’s not here, buddy. Remember? She’ll be back soon.”
Ever since The Incident, Pepper has been taking her more professional stance in Tony and Peter’s life more seriously, clocking in and out on time. It’s given Peter some unexpected separation anxiety, and Pepper being completely out of the house for more than a day gets Peter started on asking for her to return unless Tony finds a way to distract him.
“Pep-ah.” Peter pouts, sadly leaning against Tony.
“What’d you do?” May asks, crossing her arms and looking at Tony with unearned derison.
“What—I didn’t do anything!”
“That woman is one of the most tolerant individuals on this planet. She deals with your nonsense every single day. It had to have been something to make her get out of town for the holidays.”
Tony looks off to the side of May’s stare. He really doesn’t wanna talk about it, but May’s a bit of a dog with a bone. Besides, if he doesn’t tell her, Pepper probably will.
“It was nobody’s fault, it was just...an accident,” Tony says, adjusting Peter on his hip and leaning back into the counter for comfort. “Peter made a mistake and we all kinda freaked out.”
“Peter doesn’t make mistakes. He’s too innocent. Aren’t you, baby?” May jingles the little antlers, making Peter squeal with delight when the hanging bells jingle over his head.
If only that were true. Tony sighs. “He asked if Pepper was his...m-word.”
“His m…? Oh. Wow.”
“Yeah. So she got upset, and then Peter got upset, and we had this whole conversation about setting boundaries so Peter doesn’t get confused anymore.”
“Would it be so bad? I mean, he needs mother figures, she’s always helping out…” May’s question is incredibly leading, and they both know it. She’s the kind to meddle in his affairs as much as he’ll allow, and he really doesn’t want to entertain what she’s getting at right now.
“That’s not—you know it implies more than that. If someone else heard it they might think that we were, that she was—” Tony feels heat traveling to his face and pretends it’s just the warmth of the kitchen they’re standing in.
“Alright, alright,” May waves the suggestion away. “I can see how she might be worried about it. So the solution that isn’t firing her is what? Keeping her as far away at all costs?”
Tony taps at the bottle in his hand. “No staying at the house, no bedtime routine, and apparently, taking off for the holidays for the first time in her life.”
Okay, so he is a little bitter, but only because it’s clearly a way of trying to create distance, and he doesn’t think it’s necessary. Peter will grow older and figure it out for himself as long as they keep correcting him that Pepper is Pepper and his mother is his mother. She’s being paranoid and careful in that particular way of hers, and it’s frustrating to try and fight against.
“You know, there are simpler ways to clarify things to Peter,” May says. “Like, I don’t know, making sure he knows who his mother actually is? Talking about her? Keeping her around in his life as much as you can?”
“He’s a little over a year old, May. I can barely teach him the word Mom, let alone get him to start associating it with Mary. He’s not as grown as we pretend he is at times, and I don’t think he’s going to respond to Pavlovian dog training.”
“I don’t know, there’s not much he wouldn’t do for some Teddy Grahams,” May jokes. “But seriously, Tony, it’s not that hard. You knew Mary. Just tell him a story or something.”
“If it wasn’t about Peter, I really didn’t know that much about her. I mean, hell, she kept the pregnancy from you for months. She wasn’t exactly the most forthcoming with personal details.”
May sighs. “That’s true, I guess. Richard was the person that knew her best, and unless he had a stash of secret diaries somewhere, he’s not exactly available to ask.”
“I don’t even have that many pictures of her to show him. Just the few you sent from our trips to New York.”
“Ah!” May snaps her fingers in a bolt of inspiration. “That’s perfect, come on! Present time!”
“I thought we weren’t doing presents until after dinner. That’s gonna be Happy’s nap time.”
“Hey,” Happy grunts from his place, already comfortably settled into the couch with a glass of Tony’s scotch.
“Leave the man alone, Tony. Let him enjoy himself,” says Ben, finally coming out of the kitchen, the turkey apparently taken care of for the moment.
“Thank you, Ben,” Happy replies forcefully, side eyeing Tony. “Finally, someone in this house sticks up for me.”
“Just for that, you get to take the wiggle worm.” Tony plops Peter into Happy’s lap, forcing him to adjust and hold the child against his chest.
“You know, Hap, I think that’s actually the best present of the night,” Ben comments, smiling and genuine, because that’s really his only setting. He gives a few pats to Peter’s head, who looks between both of his uncles as if there truly is no place he would rather be.
Nope, Tony’s not getting jealous, not even a little bit. He’s the dad. He’s cool.
“Anyway,” May drawls out loudly, drawing Rhodey into the living room as well with a piece of Ben’s pie already half-eaten on his plate. “This was actually a surprise for Ben and I at first, but we decided to make it into a whole present for Peter.”
May digs around under the tree for a moment, carelessly pushing aside a few boxes that definitely had Tony’s name on them to find a medium size box wrapped in green paper and a shiny red bow.
May places the gift in Peter’s lap. “Here, sweetie, open this one.”
Peter’s version of opening presents at this age is assisted, with Tony grabbing onto Peter’s hands and keeping them focused on the task when Peter becomes more interested in turning the paper into tiny little shreds rather than getting to the gift underneath.
Inside the regular cardboard box is a leather album, white and featuring a picture of Peter Rabbit. Clearly a baby scrapbook. He always meant to start something like this as soon as they got home from the hospital, but he wasn’t the most crafty person on earth, and he’s already working on a feature for JARVIS to digitize photos to Tony’s personal servers.
“Open it,” May commands more to Peter than Tony, who rolls his eyes. It’s also very clear who May’s favorite Stark is.
Tony takes Peter’s hand, placing it over the cover and kind of pushing it so that the first page is open.
The pages are made of heavy paper, with pastel designs and colors throughout the book. Little stickers are put on each page, along with borders around each photo and little captions under ones that need them.
The first photo is a reprint they’ve all become familiar with of Tony holding Peter in the hospital on that first day, but the rest on these particular pages also consist of a few others. Peter in different states of his growth in the NICU: with the PICC line, with the oxygen and without, finally ending with the one of Peter in his carseat, secured and ready just before they’d left on that final day.
Tony feels his eyes water at the sight. Peter has already grown so much. There was a time he worried Peter would never get past that three pounds mark, but now he’s at seventeen. Still a little less than some other babies at his stage, but healthy for a premie and getting bigger as they go.
The next set of pages are a mishmash from Tony’s collection and May’s. He sent update photos May’s way during the first few months that were mostly taken by Pepper. Peter in his carrier in the back of Happy’s car, Peter asleep on Tony’s chest on the lab sofa, the first feeding of baby food and its disastrous results that spanned across both Tony’s five hundred dollar suit and the kitchen.
The next page features Peter’s first visit back in New York at about six months old. May’s camera work leaves something to be desired, displayed by the tilted angle of Peter being held by Ben in their kitchen as he prepares some kind of red sauce over the stove. Ben’s is much better, displaying artsy angles of Peter crawling across their stained carpet in the living room.
“Now this is the good part,” May says, turning the next page for him.
The familiar face of Mary Fitzpatrick smiles up at him from the camera. It’s taken at some kind of bar, clearly before she was pregnant. She and May are arm in arm, tipsy but smiling bright at the camera. Another photo shows Mary covered in flour in her own kitchen. One of the photos even features Richard Parker, the familial similarities between him and Ben clear as they sit together on the floor trying to put some kind of furniture together while Mary laughs.
The page after that is during the pregnancy, some he recognizes with himself in them, and others that must have been taken once Mary reconnected with the Parkers. In one, her belly is displayed through the gap of her Oscorp lab coat. Another has her even further along, her feet on the Parkers’ coffee table and looking tired and sweating in the summer heat of New York.
“I didn’t realize...you have so many,” Tony says, a little stunned. It’s honestly a shock to remember what Mary looked like. Happy. Tired. Stressed. But in all of it, so much the woman he knew, even if it wasn’t for long.
“We have more,” Ben states. “These were just some good ones. We thought keeping a few to ourselves might convince you to bring Peter around more often so we can show him, sometime.”
“He’d like that,” Tony replies, knowing he means that he would like that. He likes that Peter has more family to go to, to learn from.
“This is the best part,” May says knowingly, flipping the last page over for him.
These are pictures that are more professionally taken. Mary in a sheer white gown, her stomach large and framed by her hands, one in a milk bath with flower petals. All of the photos shot are from an angle that flatters the curves of her pregnancy and shows off her curls. The lighting is low and soft, shadows making everything seem cast in some sort of magical veil.
They are absolutely stunning.
“Where the hell did you get these?” Tony whispers. He didn’t know she was doing any kind of photoshoot because...well, he probably would have wanted to be there, or vet the photographer, or pay for a new one or...no, okay, that’s why he didn’t know, that’s fair.
“We found them. We were going through some of Mary’s stuff in the storage unit, looking for this bib for Peter before he came to visit. It was in a drawer from his nursery furniture, still in the envelope.”
“Wow.” Tony’s a little breathless, still tracing one of the photos with his finger a little reverently. He’d forgotten how beautiful Mary was.
“Woooooow! Big belly! Big belly!” Peter cries, leaning away from where he had waddled to Happy and looking over Tony’s arm.
Everyone laughs, ‘cause Peter’s good at being cute as shit.
“Yeah, buddy, check it out. That’s your mom.”
Peter tilts his head a little, searching the pictures as if they hold some kind of secret and scrunching his forehead.
“She big?”
“Yeah, Petey, she was carrying you.” Tony taps at one of the pictures. “That’s you in there.”
Peter nods, though Tony hopes he doesn’t get too many specific questions about exactly how that works before Peter hits his teenage years.
“Can you say Mommy, Peter?” May asks of her nephew.
“Ma?” Peter replies, smacking his finger into Mary’s face a little clumsily.
“Good job, sweetheart!” May praises, a little teary. “That’s your mom, Mary.”
“Ma!” Peter parrots back, happy to be celebrated. “Dada! Ma!”
“Y-Yeah, that’s right, Pete. That’s your mom.” Tony swallows a ball of emotion, determined not to cry in front of everyone.
He presses the feelings into a firm kiss of Peter’s cheek, following by tugging his son close. Peter doesn’t know what he’s missing now, not really, but someday he will. These pictures are important. Mary’s existence was important, and this will be a way to honor her going forward that he didn’t realize he needed.
“Thanks for this, May. Ben. Seriously, this is—” He’s truly unsure how to describe it, this gift. It’s a lot of things, a lot of good and bad emotions all swirling together in his gut.
“Merry Christmas, Tony.” May says softly, dabbing at her eyes.
“Mer Chri-ma!” Peter cheers, destroying the word, but capturing the warm feeling of the holiday around them nonetheless.
They all laugh, and Tony hauls Peter into his arms.
“Alright—time to feed this little monster so he can crap it out later.”
“You really know how to ruin a moment, Tones.”
“Thanks, Honeybear.”