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Tony found out he was pregnant in an Afghani cave with a car battery hooked up to his chest. The last thing he’d remembered was his world erupting in fire and pain, a pain that had screamed on for an eternity before the darkness had taken him back down again. Months later, when he was free and back in his tower and working on converting his company away from weapons and into clean energy alternatives, he could almost see the irony in his situation.
Had anyone asked, and Pepper and Rhodey had, Tony wouldn’t have been able to give a name to the father. Most of what he considered of his life B.A. (Before Afghanistan) was a blur of alcohol and club lights and nameless faces. In hindsight, not a lot different from the nameless faces with their hands in his chest, holding him down by his shoulders, his hips, his head.
When he finally came to, car battery hooked to his chest, every muscle in his body burning, Yinsen waits until he’s calmed down, waits until they cannot be overheard, to tell him. “Mister Stark--”
“Call me Tony. You had your hands in my chest, the least you can do is call me Tony.”
Yinsen afforded him a tiny smile. Barely more than a muscle twitch. “Tony, I did not wish to tell you where we could be overheard, I fear what our captors will do should they find out, but I could not continue without telling you… You are pregnant.”
It was a long moment of silence, of thinking. A part of him wanted to laugh, to ask if the doctor was messing with him. He didn’t. He imagined he could feel it, the new life squirming somewhere below his navel. He lifted what was left of his tank top, looked down at the smooth planes of muscle that rolled just slightly if he leaned a certain way, imagining it growing with the thing inside him. He looked from his stomach, to the car battery, to the guarded door of their cell, and swore to himself he’d do everything within his power to protect the child growing inside of him.
Yinsen hadn’t been able to tell him how far along he was, so first thing he did when he’d escaped and been rescued and was in the hospital was swear the doctor to the highest degrees of doctor patient confidentiality. He was three and a half months along. Not yet enough to truly show, but approaching it rather quickly. He didn’t bother asking his options. The baby was healthy, if a little small. Yinsen had done his best to make sure Tony had food and vitamins, convincing their captors they were to help prevent infection and rebuild his fractured sternum. After everything they’d gone through in that cave, for the little thing growing inside of him to come out practically unscathed was its own form of miracle. A miracle Tony wasn’t willing to throw away.
As though he’d read Tony’s mind, the doctor nodded in understanding. “Congratulations, Mister Stark. You’re having a boy.”
***
He told Rhodey, he told Pepper. He swore them both to secrecy. He chose not to tell Obie. He wasn’t sure why, Obie had been a better father to him than his own, he should have been the first person Tony told. But something in the back of his brain rebelled against the idea. Obie would just make him get rid of it. Bad enough the heir to Stark Industries was kidnapped for three months, but for him to come back pregnant as well? The press would have a field day! No, Obie would tell Tony he had to get rid of it.
No. He didn’t tell Obie, and after the man he trusted stole his arc reactor and tried to leave him for dead, he was glad he’d kept his child a secret.
Testing the Iron Man armor was tough, Jarvis constantly reminding him to take extra precautions and Dum-E constantly after him. When the suit was finally finished, he made sure to include extra padding and shielding around his abdomen. He was grateful for it after Guilmeera, even if Pepper still gave him an earful and demanded Jarvis run a full health check.
***
He gave birth to a healthy, perfect, dark haired baby boy two months after he revealed himself to be the Red and Gold superhero. Peter Parker Stark, named for a classmate Tony knew back in university--brilliant, awkward, and one of the only people who had the respect and friendship of a twenty-something year old Anthony Edward Stark--was several pounds underweight, and smaller than average, but the doctors proclaimed him healthy, and prescribed formula brands that would help him gain weight.
Tony wanted nothing more than to keep his son in the tower with him, but it was quickly concluded that they needed some form of backup plan, someone to take care of Peter when Tony had to be away on business, and Pepper’s sister volunteered. It worked, she lived outside of the city, close enough for Tony to regularly be around, but far enough away from any dangers that may follow him.
Nine months after Peter was born, Tony Stark was dying. Pepper didn’t know. She thought he was losing his mind, reverting to his old ways now that he’d had his child. Some kind of Postpartum psychosis. After his disastrous birthday party, she threatened to stop letting him see Peter. He contemplated giving up so many times, to let the poison win, to end it himself before it took him slowly and painfully; the very thing that saved his life now stealing back his borrowed time.
In the end, the video of his father saved him. Not just in that it revealed the element Howard had created, but he was reminded of the way his father had treated him as a child, and made a solemn vow to never be the kind of father Howard Stark had been. Pepper’s sister continued to watch Peter. Tony didn’t dare so much as call. He didn’t trust Natalie, he didn’t trust Agent. He created Howard’s element, could practically feel it burning away the infection the moment the new element was placed in his chest. Coconut with a slight hint of ozone.
He regretted his hesitancy to call during his fight with Ivan, glad Rhodey was there with him. The words are on the tip of his tongue when his life-long friend just shoots him a look that says “don’t even try it.” He bites it back and keeps on fighting.
Iron Man accepted, Tony Stark, Not. The words sting more than they should, but Tony doesn’t let it show. Who is Fury to tell him whether he matters or not. When the Secret Agent Pirate has left, taking his collection of spies with him, Tony makes sure he isn’t followed and goes to visit the only person whose opinion matters to him. Peter is a year and a half now. He likes bugs and dinosaurs, and thinks his daddy is the coolest superhero in the world. He has Jarvis disable any spyware left in the Tower, has Pepper do one extra sweep just to be safe, and he brings Peter home.
***
Peter is nearly four when Fury approaches Tony about the Avengers initiative. Of course, Tony had already known about the events in New Mexico, having had Jarvis use SHIELD’s own spyware as backdoors into their system. The Nordic god of Thunder was an interesting development, though Tony surmised that stranger things were possible. What he wouldn’t do to get his hands on the kind of technology and knowledge Asgard contained… and of course, the discovery of Captain America was less of a surprise, seeing as it had been a Stark Industries expedition that had spearheaded the discovery, and the fact that his father had sworn until the day he died Rogers was still out there somewhere. The greatest invention of his career.
The way Fury looked at him sometimes, Tony had to wonder if the one-eyed man knew about Tony’s secret son, as though that eye could see right through any disguise, any cover. But when it was never brought up, and no amount of searching through SHIELD’s database could turn up anything, he suspected maybe not. Peter was, afterall, the best kept secret Tony had ever had, past the fact that he was capable of carrying a womb. So the second best kept secret. Howard would have chewed glass and called himself a fraud before he’d ever let anyone know about that specific aspect of his only heir’s anatomy.
The moment chatter started through SHIELD’s files about tracking down the jolly green giant, Tony sent Peter back to stay with Pepper’s sister. Iron Man recommended, Tony Stark denied. Except for being a consultant. Someone as brilliant as him? They needed all the help they could get.
Rogers was a lot more of an arrogant prick in person than he’d been expecting from someone with his reputation. He seemed to unconsciously press every single one of Tony’s buttons that he so carefully guarded, trampling through those barriers like a bull. “Big man in a suit of armor. Take that away, and what are you?”
“Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist” father. He’d bit that last word behind clenched teeth. Take away his suit, and he was still a father. There was someone in the world who thought he was amazing. He’d stopped being so much of a playboy after Afghanistan, though he still played it up for the media. Even with his billionaire status he donated as much as possible to charities and causes. Take it all away and he’d still be the father of a bright, clever, sweet little boy.
That first fight on the helicarrier had been brutal. Tony didn’t believe for a second that Agent was really dead, he didn’t trust Fury to tell the truth about that. Hell, he didn’t trust Fury to tell him the sky was blue and if his shoes were untied. He left the helicarrier sore from the bruises his suit couldn’t protect him from, stinging from the words the man he’d idolized in his youth had thrown his way. He went to Pepper’s sister’s. Let his little boy hug him and press sticky kisses to his bruises. But then he’d had to go. Because right now, staying too long around his son was dangerous. So he kissed him goodbye and left with a promise to see him later.
The climax to what was quickly becoming the weirdest, worst 72 hours of his life had to be when he locked onto that nuke and took off. He had Jarvis call Pepper, praying to deities he didn’t believe in that she was with her sister, was with Peter and could tell him he loved him one more time. That he was doing this for him. As the nuke disappeared into the stars, his thoughts were of a bright eyed, gap-toothed little boy grinning at him, and how grateful he was he insisted Peter stay as far away from the city as possible. Safe from every science fiction novel Tony had ever read in his youth coming to life and crashing down around them.
They ate shawarma, sent Loki back to Asgard, and then Tony disappeared for three months. He made brief appearances to go over plans for fixing his tower, having his architects add five extra suites into the ruined floors, making contact with Banner to make sure the scientist wasn’t going to run off to the Middle East again, helping with the cleanup and re-building as Iron Man, but as a public figure he remained out of the public eye. Instead he took Peter up to a little beach house he had in Maine, soaking in the time with his son, time he hadn’t thought he was going to get.
The tower was fixed and Tony moved back into his penthouse, bringing Peter with him. He knew Peter couldn’t stay, not with the promise of new roomies and the duties of both the head of a company and a founding super hero, but the tower was still first and foremost their home.
Bruce was the first to arrive, having traveled back to whatever hole he’d hidden in before the Great New York Debacle to clean up a few loose ends and make sure the people he’d been caring for would still be cared for (if Tony donated a little extra aid under a pseudonym, then Pepper and Jarvis were the only ones to know) before returning to New York, lured first by Tony’s top-rate labs, and second by a suite that would 100% be his, and no fear of The Big Guy. The spies came next, maybe a month after Bruce had moved in, appearing one morning in Tony’s kitchen eating his cereal and reading the morning paper. Tony had walked in, blinked once, twice, accepted the cup of coffee Natasha handed him, and then shrugged and went back down to his workshop.
Last to show up was Rogers. Tony had been tracking him; Steve had taken the time to travel the country, catch up on all that America had to offer after the last 70 years. He’d walked in late one evening, shield in one hand, duffle bag in the other, and an awkward look on his face that Tony found himself finding kind of adorable. He pushed the thought aside and motioned to an empty chair. “Have a seat, Rogers. You’re just in time for Star Wars.”
***
The Avengers had been living in the tower for close to a year now. It had started off a little rocky, none of them accustomed to living in such close proximity with others, and it had taken some time to work out routines and sand down rough edges. It had started with weekly dinner and movie nights, all of them deciding Steve--and on rare occasions Thor when he wasn’t in Asgard or with Jane Foster in New Mexico--needed catching up on the pop culture they’d missed, so they took turns picking movies, starting with the fifties and working their way towards the present day. They learned Bruce made amazing curry, and Natasha, true to her Russian roots, made some great pierogi. Clint could not be trusted to make Ice, but he did make an excellent sous chef, and could sometimes be trusted with kebabs and a grill.
It became like a bonding experience, something to help them get to know each other, to wind down, and after a particularly rough mission, a way to remind one another that they were okay. They were alive, they were in one piece, and they had won. It took them two months to realize that after these kinds of missions, Tony became scarce over the next several days, often returning looking more relaxed, and sometimes with a cartoonish bandage over whatever cut he’d manage to acquire. Clint had tried asking once, only earning himself a shrug and a vague comment, and they quickly began chalking it up to just Tony living up to his eccentric billionaire genius inventor status.
Seven months after moving in, Steve had come back from a run to find legos spread out on the living room floor. Clint and Natasha had been away for the last week on a mission for SHIELD, Thor was in New Mexico, and Bruce had gone to Connecticut for some scientific seminar on gene therapy or something. He stood there for a long minute just staring at the colorful bricks, some having been used to construct what looked like a robot, and what looked to be the start of a tower left unfinished, wondering where they’d come from and why they were in the team’s shared living room. He was still standing there when Tony emerged from the kitchen with a cup of coffee, a bandage featuring a little cartoon dog wearing a fireman’s uniform pasted over his nose.
“Tony, are those… legos?”
“Yup. You’d be surprised how well legos work when designing something, Spangles. I’ll get them cleaned up in a minute.”
As weird as it sounded, and as weird of an idea as someone like Tony Stark playing with a child’s toy was, it made an odd level of sense, so Steve let it go and went to shower. When he came back up, there was no trace left of the colorful building blocks.
***
Natasha was the one to find the stuffed rabbit between the couch cushions. Most of the team had been away on SHIELD missions for close to a month now and she happened to be the first one back. She’d come out of her suite carrying her knives, having just showered and was set on cleaning and polishing them while she watched terrible reality TV when she’d spotted one fuzzy brown ear sticking up over the back of the couch. She’d just freed the trapped creature when Tony stepped out of the elevator tapping away on his Stark Pad. She held it up and raised an eyebrow, only to have Tony shrug and take it from her hand. “You ever heard of computer programmers talking to rubber ducks? Sometimes it helps to talk to something who doesn’t talk back.”
Natasha had just watched him walk away, thoughts swirling in the back of her head, but a week later when she’d walked into the kitchen to find the rabbit sitting on the island while Tony bounced code off of it, she chalked it up to the genius just having a few screws loose, got herself some coffee, and went back to the living room to catch the latest reruns of The Real Housewives.
***
Bruce found the crayon drawing of Iron Man fighting a purple and blue villain under a set of blueprints for Clint’s new arrows. He raised his eyebrows, but said nothing, instead collecting the chemical equations he needed, and returning to the chemistry lab Tony had set up for him.
***
It was one of those rare occasions where it had been a quiet few weeks, nothing major to require the attention of the Avengers, and everyone had returned from their respective missions earlier than they’d anticipated. Tony had had to fly to Dubai for a business meeting, but had returned the night before and immediately hidden himself away in his workshop. It was one of their scheduled, mandatory team bonding movie nights, Clint having decided Steve and Thor needed to be introduced to Harry Potter, and the joint decision to order pizza as no one felt like cooking. They were just waiting on Tony to emerge from the lab, readying to draw straws to see who would be responsible for going down and dragging the inventor up when he inevitably forgot when the elevator dinged, drawing all eyes in its direction.
Where they’d half been expecting Pizza or Tony, what they hadn’t been expecting was for Pepper Potts to step out dressed in a pair of jeans and a comfortable looking sweater, a five year old boy with curly brown hair and big brown eyes perched on her hip. The child was dressed in blue jeans and a blue t-shirt printed with a big, cartoony robot on the front, red and gold sneakers on his feet, and was clutching the brown rabbit Natasha had found. Pepper stopped just outside the elevator, eyes wide in surprise as she took in the team waiting in the living room. The child’s eyes were big and round in awe, his open mouth showing off two lost teeth.
Before anyone could recover from the first wave of surprise, the service elevator that led down to the workshop dinged its arrival, Tony stepping out tapping out a text on his phone. All eyes turned in his direction as the child wriggled out of Pepper’s arms and ran to Tony with an excited cry of “Daddy!” The grin that split Tony’s face as he put his phone away to swing the little boy up into the air was one only Pepper had seen before on the bearded man’s face. “Hey Petey! How was school?”
Before he could listen to the child’s excited retelling, he apparently realized that there were several sets of eyes in varying levels of disbelief trained on him. He settled Peter against his hip and stepped further into the living room.
Peter was the first to break the heavy silence, innocently oblivious to the growing tension. “School was great! Miss Stanson loved my story, and we got to play kickball in P.E, and at recess I climbed all the way up to the top of the jungle gym! And then Aunt Pepper came and picked me up because you came home today and she said we could come see you! How was Dubai? Was it cool? Did you bring me anything? Are these the Avengers? Is that really Captain America and Thor from my mythology books?!”
The words came out in one big rush, leaving little doubt in any of the avengers minds that this was indeed Tony’s kid, the real question they all had was how? How had none of them known about this? How had Tony kept the fact that he had a kid hidden from all of them? How had they not met him before this point?
The man in question was watching them, reading reactions and calculating how to respond. The easiest to read was his red-headed CEO, who’s look practically screamed “what the hell are they all doing here?” and “you really didn’t tell your teammates you had a kid?!” He sent her back a look saying they’d talk about it later, which earned him an eye roll before she turned and strode off into the kitchen in search of coffee, or something stronger for having to put up with her boss.
Tony let the silence stretch on a moment longer while he watched the shock fade into a myriad of expressions ranging from confusion to irritation to a mellowed sense of understanding. “Everyone, this is Peter. Peter, this is everyone.” Peter waved excitedly. “Hi! Daddy told me all about you!” He pointed at them each in turn. “You’re Hawkeye. Daddy says you could nail a cheerio from a hundred yards away! Is that true?”
Clint visibly puffed in self-satisfaction. “You betcha, kiddo. Maybe someday I’ll show you.”
Peter’s eyes got big and he wiggled in Tony’s arms in excitement before continuing to prove his knowledge. “You’re black widow. I like your hair! It’s like Aunt Georgie’s but curlier!” Natasha smiled, the action softening her features. “You’re Doctor Banner! Daddy talks about you all the time! Do you think you could help me build a volcano? I bet you build the best volcanoes!” Tony noted the way Bruce relaxed slightly when Peter didn’t bring up his alter ego. Tony had told him about it, had told him about how the Hulk wasn’t something Bruce was proud of, like the stuff Tony had done before Peter was born, but it was a part of him, and he’d done a lot of things to try and make up for his alter ego. Peter had nodded in understanding before launching into a list of questions about what kinds of experiments Bruce might be able to show him.
Finally Peter’s finger landed on the remaining two blonds. He started with Thor. “I know all about you! You’re Thor! You’re the Thunder God! Aunt Pepper got me a story book for my birthday that’s all about you, and Odin, and Loki, and all of them! Can your brother really turn into a horse? Does Freya really have a chariot pulled by cats?!” Thor’s grin was big and toothy. He liked this Son of the Man of Iron, he was curious and bright and full of excitement.
“And you’re Captain America. Daddy’s told me all about you too. He even found me some of grandpa’s old comic books of you. Is it true you really used to fight Nazis? And that you carry a big shield that you can throw like a frisbee? Daddy showed me some videos and we worked out the calculations from your shield throws together. You must be really smart to be able to come up with those at a moment’s notice!” Steve still looked confused, his eyebrows inching their way up towards his hairline, and Tony knew the kinds of questions they had for him he didn’t want to have to answer with Peter right there.
He set his son down. “Hey Petey, why don’t you go down and say hi to the bots? Dummy was just asking about you the other day. Maybe you could play fetch with them a little? I’ve not had the time and I know they’d love it.” Peter let out an excited “Okay!” before he was running to the elevator his father had recently exited and with a ding he was out of sight. The silence that followed his absence was deafening and Tony shoved his hands in his pockets both to portray casualness and to hide the twitching of his fingers.
“Peter is my biological son. He’s five years old, he stays with Pepper’s sister most of the time to keep him away from danger and the media. I found out I was pregnant with him while I was in Afghanistan, no that is not something I am going into any kind of detail with so don’t even ask, and before now there were only five people in the world who knew about him, and one of them is dead. Pepper knows, Rhodey knows, Happy knows, and Pepper’s sister Georgia knows. And now you five know, though how Natasha never found out is completely beyond me. I mean, you were literally living here for nearly a year as Natalie Rushman, watching my every move and reporting back on me to The Great Pirate.”
“Does Fury know you call him that?”
“Yeah, probably. I’m sure there’s not much he doesn’t know, though whether he knows about Peter, I’m still not sure. He’s never mentioned him, and there’s nothing in my file, or my secret file about him, so there’s really no telling.”
He leaned back against the wall, watching his info dump sink in.
He was beginning to see the metaphorical light bulbs go off in heads. First was Bruce, who nodded, offered a smile and a quiet “I look forward to helping him with that volcano sometime” before he was rising and disappearing from the room, apparently having made the executive decision for all of them that their Harry Potter movie marathon would be postponed for now. Thor was next, giving Tony a wide smile and a hard slap to the back. “He is an admirable boy, man of iron! He will make a fine warrior in his time!”
Natasha spent what felt like hours staring him down, expression unreadable, while Clint was looking between them like a tennis match, clearly trying to figure out what he’d missed since his redheaded partner looked about three seconds away from killing someone. Finally, the redheaded assassin broke the silence. “Stark, you are a truly horrendous secret keeper, and you’re even worse at taking care of yourself, so how the hell did you manage to keep that kid a secret from everyone?”
Tony shrugged. “To be honest I’m not even sure myself. I just knew I needed to protect him from the absolute shit storm I was subjected to as a kid, and I knew it would only be worse with half the media still calling me the Merchant of Death. Like I said, he’s been staying with Pepper’s sister primarily for the past several years, keeping him away from media, suspicion, and threats.”
Natasha just nodded, a tiny smile once again softening her features before she got up and left, Clint trailing behind her with a clap to Tony’s shoulder and a casual “congrats, I think?”
Tony watched them leave before turning back to face the final occupant of the room. Steve was still watching him with a confused look on his face, puzzling over all he’d just been told and trying to make sense of it. He’d known people back in his time; gals with Adam's apples and men with soft features and higher voices. He’d learned through this new century the correct terms, knew how he was supposed to address them, even if it still made no sense to him, but he respected it and knew there was little room for him to talk. Hell, when he’d been just a kid more than once someone had mistaken him for a girl because of his size and stature, and he’d known a dame in the army with a low voice and an adams apple. She’d always been sweet and quiet, good to offer him a kind word or sneak him a mint when no one was looking, but there was always the shadow of terror on her soft face, and more than once when confronted by someone from command she seemed on the verge of running away. He often wondered what had ever happened to her.
“I can practically hear those gears grinding in your head, Rogers, so why don’t you try asking your questions before your face sticks like that.”
Tony was leaning against the wall, hands shoved into his pockets, but there was a tick in his jaw that said he wasn’t nearly as calm about all of this as he pretended. Steve cleared his throat. “He seems like a good kid. You must be proud of him.” Steve wanted to cringe at the awkwardness that just left his mouth, but Tony appeared to relax a little, the tight lines around his mouth replaced with a crooked grin. “Yeah, I am. He’s already in first grade, breezed through the placement tests with flying colors.” A muscle in his jaw jumped. “And before you ask, no I’m not, and that’s not something I’m going into right now.”
Steve flushed red, embarrassed that the genius had apparently read his mind. “Maybe someday, Spangles,” Tony continued, “but not right now.”
Steve nodded in understanding. Things were still sometimes a little rocky between them, even after all they’d saved New York and talked some things over. He knew Tony wasn’t a man who trusted easily, it had only been sometime in the last couple months that he’d started letting anyone but Bruce see past his media persona, and for all their differences that Steve could now see, that was one thing Tony and Howard had in common.
Silence hung between them for another long moment, Tony clearly running calculations in his head, the input and outcome only known to him, until finally his face relaxed into an easy grin and he pushed himself off the wall. “Come on, Rogers,” Tony said, starting for the elevator. “I’ve got work to do and Peter’s been dying to meet you. You can come be the one to listen to his endless questions for a change.”
Even though all he could see of the dark haired man was the back of his head, Steve could hear the wide grin in his voice. Climbing to his feet, he followed, the prospect of getting to see this new side of Tony too good of an opportunity to say no. Peter really did seem like an incredible kid, and he looked forward to hearing how the five year old boy had somehow managed to understand the calculations he used when throwing his shield. He hoped someday he’d have enough of Tony’s trust to know more, but for now he’d take what was being offered to him and treasure it for what it was.
~END~