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“Monkey, please,” Tony says, laughing and holding Peter around the middle as he leans towards the tree. “You’re not an ornament. No. We’re hanging them but you’re not getting inside the tree.”
“Dada tree,” Peter says, wriggling around in his arms and grabbing at one of the branches. He groans, irritated at being restricted, and he pushes against Tony’s shoulder. Tony has no idea what the hell he’s trying to do, because it really does seem like he’s trying to climb inside the damn tree, and that’s not exactly a situation Tony was planning for.
He knows Mary didn’t have a tree because Mary was Jewish, just like Ben and May, and Tony’s been spending every night of Hanukkah with the two of them since November 29th. Tonight’s the last one, and he always gets his tree on the first weekend of December. Always, since his mom made it a tradition.
And it’s blown Peter’s damn mind.
He gurgles out a bunch of nonsense, hollering and grabbing one of the branches and nearly tugging the needles off. “Tree red, Dada,” Peter says. “Red!”
He’s starting to become interested in what color is which, which is crazy to Tony, but red is the one that’s really, really stuck. The others he’s still teaching himself, but red is important. Truly his father's son.
“Monkey,” Tony says, laughing, peeling Peter’s hand off the branch. “C’mon. You’re an animal.”
“What’s he doing?” Ben asks, from the kitchen. “Tree in the house blowing his mind?”
“Uh, truly,” Tony says.
“Dolphin!” Peter yells, when Tony turns him back towards their collection of ornaments. “Monkey! Kitty!”
“Yeah, we’re gonna put them all on,” Tony says. “Yeah. You need to chill out. You need to take a chill pill.”
“Think you might need to just free him,” May says, coming down the hall from the bathroom. “We put up all the glass ones, we’ve only got plastic left so he can’t crunch them in his little paws.”
“And I doubt he’ll be able to truly take the entire tree down,” Ben says, coming back in too with the plate of roast beef sandwiches. “Littlest lumberjack or not.”
“He’s just incredibly hyped,” Tony says, as Peter breathes fast in his arms and claps his hands. “Right? Crazy.”
“A-zee,” Peter says, as Tony puts him down on the ground next to the pile of ornaments. “Dada pup on tree!” He grabs the golden retriever puppy ornament that’s soft to the touch, and holds it out towards Tony with a grin. He looks at the tree again and gasps like it’s still the most shocking thing he’s ever faced in his young life.
Tony and Ben had gotten all the lights on while May sat with Peter and gave out instructions. Tony usually does this alone, and every year it feels sad and lonely—stringing up garland while Pepper does work behind him, or while Obie gives orders on speaker phone. But this year he’s got Ben and May to help him. This year he’s got Peter, acting wilder than usual, and a whole pile of new ornaments that never would have found their way into his mother’s red and white tree.
But he figures she’d like this, too.
“Let’s put the pup on the tree,” Tony says. “Good idea. I like that one. He’s fuzzy, huh? Soft?”
“Off!” Peter says, patting Tony’s arm. “Off, off!”
“You need a hanger, baby,” May says, reaching over Peter’s shoulder and handing it to Tony. “Gotta hang it up.”
“Is he trying to say the word soft?” Ben asks, mouth full of sandwich.
“Think so,” Tony says, looping the hanger through the top of the ornament. “Okay, here we go monkey brain. Let’s go. Let’s get a low hanger in there.”
“Pup pup,” Peter says, toddling over to the tree. “Pup pup pup.”
Tony rushes over after him, terrified the tree is magically gonna grow intentions and fall over, despite how well they screwed it into the base. Ben laughs at him and Tony scoffs, shaking his head. Peter laughs to himself, wavering one his feet, he’s so excited, and he makes three attempts at hanging the puppy on the first branch he picks out.
“Mm puppy tree dada, puppy—on tree. On tree.”
“Yeah monkey!” Tony says, always thrilled to hear him making full sentences. “Puppy tree, kitty tree, dolphin tree. Stay Puft Marshmallow Man tree. We have a variety.”
“Tell me you’re gonna do twelve days of Christmas,” May says, standing over next to Ben now. She’s eating and putting together Peter’s plate, too. “With new outfits for Peter every day. I don’t know anything about Christmas past Santa Claus and the mistletoe Ben keeps leaving everywhere—”
“What? Hmm?” Ben raises his eyebrows, looking around. “Not me. Couldn’t be.”
Tony blows out a breath, laughing.
“—but I do know I want little munchkin over here in every baby outfit known to man,” she says. She looks over then, face crumpling with fake crying. “Because he’s growing so fast! He’s gigantic.”
“Don’t remind me,” Tony says, following a mumbling Peter back over to the set of ornaments. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do, weirdly, I haven’t even thought about it.”
“You’re doing it,” May says, pointing over at him. “But he’s wearing the dreidel onesie tonight. It’s the only one I could find at Penny’s.”
“For sure, you think I’m gonna deny you that?” Tony asks, kneeling back down next to Peter, despite the fact that the kid is gonna be moving again in the next couple seconds. “Christmas takes up all of November and all of December and a little bit of January too, so I figure he’ll be wearing that one more than once to stick it to the man. I’m loving the articles saying I’m converting to Judaism because they saw us buying gelt.”
May rolls her eyes, and she walks over with the plate of food for Peter.
Peter’s eyes go wide when he sees it, and he stomps up and down in excitement, clutching the sheep ornament in his hand. “My!” he says, rushing over when she sits down, putting the plate down by Peter’s feet. Peter pats her knee a couple times, grinning at her, and she reaches up and pinches his cheek, grinning right back.
“Who gave you the right?” she asks, as he sits down, leaning back against her lap and immediately grabbing a cube of cheese. “Honestly. Honestly, I mean, who said?”
“Are you listening?” Tony asks, raising his eyebrows at Peter and holding his hand out. “Are you listening to your Aunt May?”
Peter giggles and takes little bites out of the cheese, and then he hurls the sheep at the wall.
“Oh oh,” Ben says. “We lost one already.”
Tony snorts, crawling over and retrieving it.
“Is, uh, is Pepper coming over tonight for dinner?” May asks, and when Tony starts making his way back he sees her brushing Peter’s hair from his forehead while he concentrates on his cheese and apple sauce. He isn’t the biggest fan of utensils just yet, but there’s one of his little plastic ones in the plate, if he’s so inclined. They’re all pretty used to the mess.
“I don’t think so,” Tony says, clearing his throat as he retakes his spot. His mind goes to about a hundred different places whenever Pepper is brought up, and he malfunctions like a moron. “I gotta check up on her, she’s working on a rollout and—well, she might as well have my board position at this point.”
“Where’s your holiday cheer, huh?” May asks. Ben walks over and sits on the couch behind her, and hands Tony his sandwich over both May’s and Peter’s heads. “I hope you’re giving these people time off this month. Especially her, my God.”
“Don’t worry,” Tony says, taking the sandwich. “She’s gonna get plenty of time and she’ll hate it because she loves being busy.”
“Every woman loves to relax,” May says. “And that’s that.”
~
“I think he’s gonna be a fire baby,” Tony says, standing a couple feet away from the Menorah once Ben and May get it lit. His eyes are fixed on the nine flickering lights, and he doesn’t blink, mouth open in silent question. Tony snorts, and looks over at them. “You see that? Arson in his eyes.”
“Stop,” May snorts. “You’ll give him ideas.”
“Looks like he’s already got ideas,” Ben says, tickling Peter’s side as he walks by him.
“Boys, stop trying to make my nephew a felon,” May says.
“Dada?” Peter asks, patting Tony’s shoulder but still staring at the menorah. He seems smart enough not to reach out and try to touch it, but he’s sure as hell staring. “Dada red. Red over here!”
“Over here,” Tony laughs. “Yeah, right over here. Right here.”
“You’ve had brisket before, right, Tony?” Ben asks, uncovering the big pan in the middle of the table.
“Uh—I think so,” Tony says, walking over and situating Peter in the high chair. “I’ve tried just about everything you can think of.” Peter twists around to continue staring at the menorah, and he’s blinking now, his eyes narrowing just a bit.
“You think you have,” May says, putting all the aluminum foil aside. “That’s what you think.”
Tony laughs and sits down next to Peter, one hand still on the high chair arm. Peter peels his fingers up and leans over, pressing his face to Tony’s hand. “You’re probably right,” Tony says. “Maybe I’ll keep a food log whenever I go somewhere new and we can compare notes.”
“That sounds like something I’d enjoy,” Ben says, putting drinks out.
They eat brisket and kugel and latkes and rugelach, which Peter absolutely loves. Tony listens to their stories and feels something stewing in his chest, and once he helps with the dishes, he corners May in the hallway while Ben searches through the TV channels and plays bumper cars with Peter and his trucks.
“Oh, what?” May asks, looking up at him like he’s crazy. She’s holding a small present and she laughs, looking down at it. “I know. It’s just another car. I had to spread them out and it was painful for me. I don’t have anything else for you so you better not have anything else for me.”
Tony scoffs. “Just your presence is a gift.”
She gives him a look. “I know you’d rather be saying that to Ben.”
Tony grins, shaking his head. “I’m not judging you for your presents or any of that, uh, I was just—I’m sorta interested in showing Pete some pictures of Mary. I know he probably won’t, uh—understand, necessarily, but I feel like I should start—planting the seed, so to say.”
Tony doesn’t really know what’s gotten under his skin. Maybe family and tradition sneaking up on him. Maybe the idea of his own mother feeling like she’s everywhere this time of year. Howard never really cared about Christmas. Or anything else.
“Yeah,” May says, swallowing hard. “Uh, lemme grab a—lemme grab one of the pictures with him in it. I don’t know if he’d recognize himself but it’s—how she looked most recently.”
“Sorry to spring this on you,” Tony says, worrying about the way her voice changes. “I just—”
“No, no,” she says, handing him the present and walking back into her bedroom. He stands there and hears her rummaging around.
“What’s going on?” Ben calls.
“Nothing,” May calls back.
“On?” Peter asks. “On, Dada?”
“Vroom vroom, monkey!” Tony says.
Peter giggles from the living room, and Tony can hear him clapping his hands. “Big truck vroom! Big vroom!”
“Here we go,” May says, walking back out with a stack of prints. “There are some of the good ones. You don’t have to do it here, like, with us breathing down your neck. Just, uh. Tell me how it goes, yeah?”
Tony always considers May a hard woman. Not in a bad way, but more in the way that she’s like a bulldozer, and doesn’t let much trip her up. But there’s a softness in her eyes now, the same kind he’s seen a few times before, and almost always when it concerns Mary.
“Course I will,” Tony says. “I tell you just about everything.”
She scoffs at him. “That I don’t believe. Now let’s go give that little muffin a new truck for his collection. Happy Hanukkah, Peter Stark.”
~
Peter has this thing he does at night, when he’s not exactly ready for bed but he’s tired enough to cast aside all his toys and his need to be active. It’s Tony’s favorite, and he always knows it’s coming because Peter will heave a sigh, look around for him, and abandon whatever he’s doing to crawl over and demand to be held.
It happened a couple minutes ago, and Tony sits on the couch with Peter in his lap. Peter holds onto Tony’s thumb with one tiny hand, and Tony can’t tell if he’s actually watching the TV or babbling to himself about nothing.
“Baby,” Tony says. “Petey pie.”
“Petey monkey.”
Tony snorts. There’s a warmth in his chest, the kind that grows when he’s about to make a public appearance. The pile of photos is on the side table next to the couch, and he draws in a breath, reaching over and taking them gently. Peter shifts and leans into the crook of his arm, glancing back up at him, giving him a wobbly grin with a few new teeth.
“Look at this, monkey,” Tony says, wrapping his arm around him a little more securely. Peter readjusts his hold on his hand but looks where Tony is pointing.
The picture on the top is of Mary and baby Peter, maybe about a week after he was born, from the size of him, sitting in the rocking chair that Ben and May have in their apartment now. She’s smiling up at the camera, eyes tired but still shining, and Tony’s breath catches in his throat a bit.
“Baby!” Peter says, gently poking at his own self in the photo with his free hand. “Baby! Baby!”
“Yup,” Tony says, glad all that time Happy spent with Peter looking at baby magazines paid off. “But that there—that pretty lady, right there? That’s your mama.”
Peter makes the ‘m’ sound but doesn’t say the word, staring at the picture.
“Like, I’m dada, right?” Tony says, resting the picture on his leg and pointing at his own chest. Peter looks back at him and watches him do it. Then Tony picks the photo back up and holds it a bit closer. “That’s your mama. You remember her, right? You remember her? She took care of you for six whole months while dada was being a moron.”
“Dada,” Peter says.
“Being a moron,” Tony says. “But that’s your mama, Pete. That’s her. She’s—Jesus, uh—” He’s annoyed at himself because there’s no way to properly explain this to a kid that’s only a year and three months old, but he feels wrong hiding her, feels wrong acting as if she wasn’t the foundation, the reason. Probably the only reason why Peter is so good and smart and sweet. “She’s probably hanging out with my mom, hopefully. But she’s watching you because you were her favorite thing ever. And you’re such a lunatic it’s like you’re constantly putting on a one-man show, and I bet she just loves that.”
Peter takes the photo from Tony. Lets go of him and holds on with both hands, bringing it up to his face. The tree glistens and glimmers in the corner of the room, the red and green and gold lights flickering off the TV and the gloss of the photo. Tony leans over to the side a little so he can see the look on Peter’s face, and Peter is staring intently. He blinks and Tony can’t help but panic a bit—he wants him to know her, to remember, but he doesn’t want to upset him.
He cracks his jaw. “And look at this,” he says, picking up the next picture. “There’s you with the next door neighbor’s cat they said you were obsessed with. You and mama and kitty.”
“Kitty,” Peter says, reaching out for the photo while still holding onto the other one. “Kitty over there! Over there.”
Tony sighs and leans down, pressing a kiss to the top of Peter’s head. He’s not anxious to get him to say the word ‘mama’ or understand it, but he knows he’s gotta keep this up. For years, until he knows it on his own.
She’s important to who he is. Just like Maria is to Tony.
~
“You don’t want to take him to go meet Santa?” May asks, walking alongside him. Their boots crunch in the snow and Peter keeps pointing at everything, stringing words together that don’t exactly go together. He’s strapped to Tony’s chest in the papoose, though he barely fits in there with all his winter-wear on.
“No,” Tony says, scoffing. It’s getting darker and darker, and half of the streets around here are lit by the Christmas lights and not the streetlights.
“Why not?” May nearly yells. “You don’t want those pictures? Those memories?”
“He barely likes strangers, can you imagine me handing him off to some guy and standing far enough away not to be in the photo? If he wasn’t petrified of Santa himself, he’d be screaming for me to come back and it just—it wouldn’t be a good time.”
“You two need to deal with this separation anxiety,” May says. “Like truly, we need to handle it.”
“Uh huh, uh huh,” Tony says, looking both ways before they cross the street. “I’m never leaving him, so, it’s not gonna be a problem.”
“You’re going to school with him, then?” May asks, as they continue to head down the street. “You’re never gonna go on extended trips for work?”
“Dada oh! Oh no!”
Tony doesn’t have time to agonize over what May is saying, and he looks down in a panic. He can’t see Peter at all because they’ve got his hood up, but he’s pointing straight ahead. Tony sees all the lights and the people gathering and he knows they’ve finally made it to the display of lights at Dyker Heights.
“Oh yeah,” Tony says, patting Peter’s chest. “You’re gonna love this.”
“Love! Bright, tree! Tree lights and bright.”
May snorts. “I understand never wanting to leave him. Like, how can something be so precious? I don’t get it, I don’t know how it’s possible.”
Peter squeals happily. “My! My, kiss Petey monkey!”
May gasps and Tony does too, and they both stop in their tracks. Tony busts out laughing and nearly bends over, holding onto Peter’s leg.
“Well, I don’t mind if I do,” May says, swooping in and tickling Peter under his arms and peppering his face with kisses. Peter laughs and holds onto her and Tony grins, soaking in his happiness. May straightens back up and knocks Tony on the arm, smiling brilliantly at him and shaking her head.
“Yeah,” Tony says, as they keep walking. “I know. See? You see my problem?”
“Of course I do,” May says, with a sigh. They start to walk into the neighborhood and everything is a lot brighter than it was—shooting stars in lights, angels and big bears in Santa outfits and reindeer perched on rooftops. Peter gasps and oh’s and ah’s and kicks his arms and legs out.
“Dada, oh? Dada! See!”
Tony snorts, and can’t take it anymore, has gotta see his face. He starts to undo the papoose and May jumps in to help him, and Tony braces a very wiggly baby against his hip while they shove the papoose into the baby bag.
“Dada! Dolphin, oh! She—sheep! Sheepy!” Peter exclaims, once they’re done with the exchange and walking again.
“Just don’t go tossing those ones, monkey, they don’t belong to you,” Tony says. All the houses are lit up over here, blaring and gorgeous and enough to make Peter look like he’s looking directly into the sun. He babbles and points at everything and rocks back in forth in Tony’s arms, and Tony’s face hurts from smiling too much.
“Pepper said you always liked Christmas,” May says, when they’re in front of the little elf choir. They’re singing Silent Night and Peter is mouthing along, staring.
“You two chat buddies?” Tony asks, looking at her. “What else is she saying? She knows too much. You’re not allowed to talk.”
May laughs. A shiver runs through Tony because it’s so damn cold, and he holds Peter closer.
“Dada, they,” Peter says. “They.”
“That’s right,” Tony says, absent-mindedly.
“She just said you put up the tree every year and throw big parties at the company, but she feels like this year you’re happier than you usually are. For good reason.”
Tony doesn’t exactly acknowledge the emptiness of his life pre-Peter often, because he made it that way and it was his own mistake and he wallowed in his sadness and falseness for too long. It would have bothered his mother, he knows that, he didn’t think about it back then but he knew it then, too. Christmas always brought all that up, whether he wanted it to or not, but the differences are staggering. Peter lights up his world brighter than this street. He makes Tony appreciate what he did have already. All the possibilities in his life.
“Yeah,” Tony says, glancing at Peter again. “He makes everything better.”
~
Tony holds the SI party again on the 21st, but he only shows for a half hour, wearing a matching Christmas sweater with Peter that has light-up snowmen and snowflakes. He makes sure that all the bonuses go through, with a twenty percent raise from last year, and he shuts things down until January 15th.
He’s been trying all month to get the ‘mama’ thing going, but to no avail, and he worries that it’ll never happen. No fault of Peter’s own, of course, and he’ll obviously be able to tell him when he’s older and will understand better, but there was something lighting a fire under Tony to do it now, to give May something, and once again he feels his failure blaring and angry under his skin.
They go to Rockefeller Center and Tony sits with Peter and watches Ben skate around and make a fool out of himself, which gives him one of the better laughs of his life. Rhodey comes to town for a couple days and they go to Bryant Park, which nearly results in another paparazzi confrontation outside of the hot chocolate booth. And Tony spends a lot of time decorating his apartment, and taking pictures of Peter in front of each individual thing. Peter gets very attached to one of the glowing snowmen, to the point where he starts taking it to bed with him. It’s fine. Tony takes pictures of that, too.
“It kills me that they’re just in your apartment right now,” Pepper says, in the car after their last long day of work, on the 22nd. “Like, two years ago you’d barely let me in.”
“Stop. Lies.”
“I mean, you would look at me all wide-eyed and crazed—”
That has nothing to do with not wanting her in, but Tony doesn’t say that. He just scoffs and glances over when Peter hollers, pointing at some of the decorations that flash when they drive by. Happy laughs from the front seat, and Tony reminds himself to check that his Christmas gift won’t be late, since he hasn’t said anything about it arriving yet.
“I’m just saying,” Pepper says. “I like that you’re—I don’t know.”
“Let’s not go into one of our long end of the movie talks about family,” Tony says, raising his eyebrows at her. “I know. I know. The little monkey has molded me back into a real boy again.”
Pepper laughs. “I like May and Ben. I’m just glad you trust them.”
“Me too,” Tony says, patting Peter’s leg. “And I’m glad you like them.”
“And Ben can cook,” she says, rummaging through her purse and clearing her throat. “So we don’t have to hire those guys—”
“Okay,” Tony says. “I know you didn’t like them.”
“They were rude,” she says, giving up on her pursuit of whatever she was looking for. “And they didn’t like you. They said all kinds of things about your tastes and I didn’t like that.”
“I can attest to that!” Happy cuts in.
Tony scoffs. He was very aware the guys didn’t like him, but most people didn’t like him. And the ones that behaved like they did were bullshitting. The ones that actually liked him, like Pepper, had some kind of power, some kind of sixth sense that granted them the ability to see through him and the walls he was putting up. So they liked him because they were putting the work in. He hated himself for making them work at it. He hated himself for almost everything.
“Dada?” Peter asks, head swiveling around to find him.
“Yes?”
Peter strains, reaching out for the window, and Tony sees the display of snowmen outside the pizza joint on the corner. “Snow mans there,” he says, little fingers wiggling, too far from the window in his car seat. “Snow mans like home, bed with Petey pie.”
Tony laughs, ruffling his hair. “Not them, buddy,” he says. “Not those guys. That’s not Harrison.”
“Harrison?” Pepper nearly exclaims.
“Yeah,” Tony says, looking at her as Peter taps his fingers on Tony’s hand. “That’s the name of the snowman that Peter became obsessed with at the house.”
“Wow, what a name,” Pepper says. “Nothing cute like...Rocky, or...or Sparky—”
Tony laughs, grinning at her. “It’s not a dog, Pep, it’s a snowman that was supposed to go in a box at the end of the season but will now probably live in Peter’s room because I’m a pushover.”
Peter giggles. “Snow mans stay.”
“See?” Tony asks. “He knows.”
“Harrison,” Pepper says, rolling her eyes. “You’re insane.”
“You love me.”
He says it with ease but it pricks something in his chest this time, but she only hums her assent so he better stop acting like a fucking moron before he breaks something.
They get back to the penthouse a couple minutes later, and Tony promises to meet Happy for lunch so he doesn’t miss him too much over the break. He adjusts Peter in his arms and makes a mental note to send out the anonymous donations tomorrow, hoping they’ll all be available immediately.
“What’s Ben making tonight?” Pepper asks.
“Mac cheese!” Peter says, waving his hand in the air.
“Not that,” Tony laughs. “Uh, I don’t know, I never ask, I just eat.” He scans into the apartment and the three of them walk in to the sound of Ben yelling.
“Whoa, whoa, stop right there!” Ben says, standing over by the tree, with May at his side. “So weird, look, wow, what’s that?”
“What?” Pepper yells, staring down at the ground. “What? A roach? I’m not dealing with that.”
“No, above your heads!” Ben says, eyes wide, and he points. “Look at that. Where’d that come from?”
Tony peers up and sees it. Three little bundles of mistletoe, wrapped with red bows. They’re hanging above the door precariously, and Tony looks at Pepper just as Pepper looks at him.
Peter squeals in delight and claps his hands. “Yes, tree!”
“Okay, monkey, you’re getting a kiss,” Tony says, his heart in his throat and beating wildly.
“Perfect,” Pepper says.
“Oh no,” Ben says, wagging his finger at them. “No, no, we’re adults here. We’re all adults. If that was me and Tony I’d take one for the team.”
May laughs, bending over.
“Really?” Tony asks, raising his eyebrows.
“Yeah,” Ben says, rising to the challenge. “And May kissed the mailman the other day. This happens, this is….tradition, so I’ve heard. Not to be ignored or….stepped around.”
Tony sighs and meets Pepper’s eyes. He’s kissed a lot of women in his life but none of those women are her, and somehow all his confidence disintegrates into a fine powder. She cocks her head at him and Peter laughs again, gripping Tony’s shoulder.
“Is this, uh, is—fine, is this, uh, fine—”
“Fine, fine—”
Tony leans in and presses his lips to Pepper’s. She makes the smallest surprised sound, and he has enough time to think about how soft her lips are before he’s physically pulling himself back. She blinks at him and smiles and clears her throat, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. Ben and May clap and Peter shrieks again, reaching out for Pepper to take him.
“There you go,” Tony says, handing him over. “The most handsome Stark.”
“You’re right about that,” Pepper says, as Tony closes the door behind him.
He strides over to Ben and widens his eyes when he gets close enough.
“Whatever you’re making better be spectacular, matchmaker,” Tony says.
Ben grins, claps him on the shoulder. “You’re welcome,” he says, walking past him and into the kitchen.
Tony looks at May. “Let’s see how happy he is when me and you are stuck under the mistletoe,” he says.
“Don’t cry,” she says, grinning, reaching up and pinching his cheek.
~
Ben makes spinach and cheese stuffed ravioli and redeems his very ballsy move with good food, and Tony tries not to look at Pepper at all. What the hell is wrong with him? What’s going on in his head? He told himself this shit wasn’t viable. He told himself that and he buried it and usually he’s really good at burying things. But now there are more people in the sandbox. Peter is making sandcastles and the other two are kicking up sand.
Nope. Nope.
Stay steadfast.
She’s far too good for you.
“Look at that old man,” May says, from the table where she, Ben and Pepper are playing blackjack. “Falling asleep at eight at night.”
“Food nap,” Tony says, readjusting Peter in his lap. “I’ll be reenergized in half an hour. Gimme a break.”
Peter is holding the last truck May got him and he keeps hitting the front so it beeps, and he imitates the noise. “Beep beep,” he says, patting Tony’s knee.
“That’s right, wake him up, Pete,” Ben calls. “How are you gonna get through Christmas on Wednesday with everything you got planned?”
“He’s a planner,” Pepper says, gently. “He plans things and then he never gets around to them. He has good intentions.”
“Stop lying about me right in front of me,” Tony says. “I always do everything I want to do, every time, exactly when I want to.”
They all laugh, and he narrows his eyes.
Peter crawls around. “Beep beep.”
“Beep beep, monkey,” Tony says back, closing his eyes. Peter hits Tony in the chest and laughs, snuggling up to him for a second, the truck up by Tony’s neck. Then he tosses the truck away and he moves again, breathing fast and trying to get out of Tony’s grip.
“I’m not letting go of you,” Tony says, deadpan. “Don’t even try it.”
“Beep.”
“Nope.”
Peter giggles as Tony holds him around the middle, trying to push away. “Dada,” he says, trying to insist.
“Monkey.”
A silence. Peter stops moving for a second.
“Mama.”
Tony’s eyes snap open. Peter is staring at the picture of him and Mary Tony had framed and put on the side table. The one he’s been shoving in his face this whole month.
Tony doesn’t say anything and Peter holds the frame at the corner, pressing his palm over Mary. “Mama,” he says again. Tears immediately spring to Tony’s eyes when he sees Peter smiling, and he glances over and sees that the other three are very aware of what’s going on.
And the look on May’s face...that’s what he wanted. That’s what he wanted all along.
“That’s right,” Tony says, shifting a little bit closer and readjusting Peter in his lap.
“Dada,” Peter says, glancing over his shoulder and smiling at him. He looks back at the picture again. “Mama. Petey pie.”
Tony leans in and kisses him on the cheek. “That’s right,” he says again. “You’re completely right. As usual.”
His heart swells, and damn, he hopes she’s watching.