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Tony will blame Rhodey for this idea, later. Rhodey is the one who’d texted him and mentioned he had some leave coming up for a long weekend, and that he wanted to get out of D.C. Tony replied and told him to come stay with them in New York.
Rhodey: I was thinking of something that didn’t involve a toddler
Tony: why call me then I’ve got 2
Rhodey: one of yours is old enough to drive now
Rhodey: who’s driving your car for monaco this weekend?
Tony: some new british kid
Tony: we could go
Rhodey: now you’re talking
Tony hasn’t been to the Monaco Grand Prix since he’d decided to fulfill a dying wish and drive in the race himself and then had been attacked by Vanko. Pepper never had liked Monaco, probably because Tony used to spend the weekend there gambling and drinking with models.
But this will be fun. He hasn’t gone on a trip with Rhodey in years that didn’t involve the end of the world. And he can take Peter. Peter will love it.
He finds Peter in his room on Thursday afternoon and says, “Pack your bags, kid! Mostly casual but bring a jacket and a suit too.”
Peter turns over, nearly falling off the beanbag chair that he’s slouched in with a book for school. “What? Why?”
“Do you have a passport?” Tony asks. “Did we get you a passport?”
“What?”
Tony turns, heading back down the hall. “Pep?” he yells. “Did we get Peter a passport?”
Peter gets up, following after him. “Why do I need a passport?”
“Yes,” Pepper yells back. Then: “Why does he need his passport?”
Tony finds Pepper sitting at the kitchen table, still dressed from work and with her laptop open in front of her. Morgan is settled on the living room rug surrounded by a pile of toddler-friendly LEGOs.
Tony crouches down, reaching for the box to see what she’s building. It’s supposed to be an ice cream truck, but currently looks more like… honestly, he has no clue.
“What are you building, Maguna?”
Peter stops next to him. “Is it a motorcycle?”
Morgan nods, not looking up for her hunt for another block. “A princess motorcycle,” she says.
Tony wouldn’t have guessed that in a million years. It doesn’t even have wheels.
Peter drops down to sit cross-legged next to her, and hands her a small white block. “Try this one.”
Morgan fits it into place. “Nice!”
There is a very soft feeling in Tony’s chest right at this moment. It hits him, sometimes, when he sees Peter and Morgan together, and he is just so goddamn happy . After Morgan was born he’d been a bit of a mess, because the joy of having a new baby had been tempered by the fact that his other kid was gone, and that he’d wasted so much of the precious little time he’d had with Peter not willing to acknowledge exactly what the boy meant to him. He’d sat up with Morgan at night and wondered if he was doomed to lose her as well. If he was cursed.
And, during those dark, quiet nights while Pepper was asleep and it was just him and the fussy baby, he’d told her about her older brother.
Tony turns away, heading into the kitchen and towards the coffee machine.
“Don’t make coffee this late,” Pepper says. “You won’t sleep tonight.”
“I need it,” Tony argues. It’s only four o’ clock.
“FRIDAY,” Pepper says, “don’t turn the machine on.”
“Yes, Ms. Potts.”
Tony turns to look at her, but Pepper’s eyes are still on her laptop, nails clicking as she types.
“Why does Peter need his passport?” she asks again, still not looking up.
“Monaco Grand Prix is this weekend,” Tony says.
Pepper looks up. “No,” she says, pursing her lips at him.
Tony smiles at her. “Yes.”
“You’re banned from the country of Monaco.”
“I am not!”
“The prince banned you after you destroyed the circuit last time you were there.”
“I was attacked,” Tony argues. He points a finger at her. “And I paid for all of those damages. It was a decade ago. I’m sure he’s forgotten about it.”
“They ran a special on the news in Monaco today commemorating the ten year anniversary of the rebuilding. SI was asked for comment.”
Tony crosses his arms and leans back against the kitchen counter. “Okay, so he remembers. I still own one of the racecars. That means I can go.”
“Does it?” Pepper asks, tone mild.
“This is a father-son bonding activity,” Tony tells her. “I’m taking my son to his first Formula One race.”
“Did you even ask him if he wants to go?”
Tony opens his mouth, then closes it again and looks over at Peter.
“Honestly,” Peter says, looking up from helping Morgan with her LEGO creation, “this sounds awesome.”
“See,” Tony says. “Kid wants to go.”
Pepper shakes her head. “Don’t call me if you get turned away at the airport.”
- - -
Tony texts Rhodey before they leave.
Tony: two rules for this trip
Tony: don’t let Peter out of your sight
Tony: don’t let him do anything Pepper would get mad about
Rhodey: that second one doesn’t leave many options
- - -
It’s the first time Peter’s been on the private plane since his trip to Germany back in 2015, and he bounces around the cabin, holding his phone out in front of himself and narrating in a deeper voice than normal.
They stop in D.C. to pick up Rhodey, who watches Peter for a minute and then asks, “What is he doing?”
“Making a travel vlog or some shit,” Tony says.
“Are you posting this on youtube?” Rhodey asks.
“No,” Peter says. “It’s just for fun.”
Rhodey settles into his chair. “Okay, sure.” He throws up a peace sign at the camera.
Halfway through the flight, when Rhodey has had to fix his own food in the galley and had two glasses of wine, he says, “Remember when you used to have those hot flight attendants?”
Tony glares at him. “No.”
Peter has settled into the seats across the aisle, dozing and pretending to work on the homework he brought. “Why would you need flight attendants on a private plane?”
Tony points at Rhodey. “Don’t answer that.”
“To serve food and drinks. Bring you hot towels,” Rhodey says.
“Oh,” Peter says. “I guess that makes sense. You can just do that yourself though.”
“Yes, you can,” Tony tells him.
“The flight attendants were kind of nice,” Rhodey says. “Some of them were good conversationalists.”
“Hire them yourself then,” Tony says. “At your hotel.”
Rhodey smirks at him.
Tony rolls his eyes.
Peter, sounding like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, asks, “Why would you need flight attendants at your hotel?”
The smirk drops off of Rhodey’s face. His mouth opens and closes, before he finally says, “To… book you a return flight.”
Tony wants to smack him.
“So how does that work?” Peter asks, still looking like the picture of innocence. “Do you like, hire them to come help you book this return flight when you meet them on the plane? Or is there an app, or—”
“No one is hiring any flight attendants,” Tony says. “There are no flight attendants allowed on this trip.”
Rhodey has his hand covering his mouth, hiding his grin.
Peter blinks at him. “Wow, Mr. Stark, that’s a really firm stance to take against flight attendants. They’re just trying to earn an honest living.”
“Kid, shut up. Do your homework.”
Peter smirks at him. “I finished it,” he says. “Well, physics.”
“Do whatever’s next then.”
“Just a book report.”
“What’s the book?” Rhodey asks.
“The Kite Runner.”
“I think I’ve heard of that one.”
“It’s about kites?” Tony asks.
“Not really,” Peter says. “It’s these kids, in Afghanistan–”
“Ah, my favorite country.”
Peter grimaces. “Yeah,” he says, drawing out the word.
Tony waves a hand at him. “Let me see it.”
Peter tosses the book to him, and Tony reads the blurb on the back. He hands it to Rhodey, who scans it as well, then hands the book back.
“We got nothin’, Pete,” Rhodey says. “Ask us about math or chem or something with numbers.”
“Ask us about rocket science,” Tony says. “We’re good at that.”
“That’s okay,” Peter says. “I’m sure I’ll think of something for the essay.”
After a beat, Rhodey asks, “Hey, did you rent a yacht?”
“A what?”
- - -
Peter stares around the yacht with wide eyes behind the phone he’s still filming everything on. “This is insane. Is that a pool?”
“Yes,” Tony says.
“Wow.”
“You know we have a pool at home.”
“It’s not on a boat,” Peter says. “This is a pool, on a boat, on the ocean. It’s like water inception.”
Rhodey’s already hit the bar, laughing at them from across the room. “Look at the yacht next to us, kid. There are models on it.”
“Jim.”
Peter has turned to look. “Oh my god.”
“You know what Monaco’s like, Tony.”
“He’s seventeen.”
Rhodey shakes his head, grabbing another drink from the bar and handing it to Tony. “Exactly.” He clinks his glass against Tony’s. “You need to lighten up. Remember what you got up to at seventeen?”
“Yes,” Tony says. “That’s why I’m like this now.”
Later that afternoon, they’re lounging on the deck while Peter is balancing precariously on the railing in his swimsuit, taking more video with his phone. It’s too cold to swim, but that has not stopped the kid. Tony thinks he might be using his sticky power thing to hang on with his feet, or he hopes he is, because otherwise he looks like he’s about to topple over the side and they’re three stories up.
“They’re gonna overload Wilson if they keep handing everything off to him,” Rhodey’s saying, halfway through a rant about the military brass not wanting to get involved in the less PR friendly operations.
“Isn’t that his job now?” Tony asks.
“Yeah, but the only help he has is Barnes.”
Tony frowns, tilting his drink to swirl the lime around. “They could try calling Lang up. He always seemed… eager.”
“Last I heard he was writing books.”
“About what?”
“Himself.”
“Well, that sounds boring as fuck,” Tony says.
Rhodey knocks back the last of his drink before asking, “What was the last thing you read?”
“The Princess Bride,” Tony responds. After a look from Rhodey, he explains, “I’ve been reading it aloud to Morgan. Why, what did you last read?”
“A report on anarchist activity in Europe.”
“That also sounds boring as fuck,” Tony says.
Rhodey snorts, and knocks back the last of his drink.
It’s several minutes before Rhodey says anything else. “Where did Peter get abs like that?” he asks, frowning at the kid.
“It’s part of whatever mutant superpowers the spider DNA gave him,” Tony says.
Rhodey shakes his head. “I can’t believe you adopted a mutant teenager.”
“Mutate,” Tony corrects. He sighs. “On the plus side, he never gets sick and he can just pick the car up and move it around.”
“And the downside?”
“He wants to be a superhero.”
“Chip off the ‘ol block.”
Tony groans.
There are some shouts from a passing boat that they can’t see, high-pitched and female, and Peter waves, smiling. It’s probably the third time it’s happened.
“Do you think he knows why they’re shouting at him?” Rhodey asks, tilting his head.
“Not a fuckin’ clue,” Tony says.
- - -
Tony has occasionally thought about ending SI’s sponsorship of a Formula 1 race car, especially since he hasn’t been going to any of the races, but at the end of the day he just likes racing, so everytime it comes up on the budget he keeps it another year. And this year, he’s glad he’s done so, because right now his kid is standing next to the car—still with his phone out, filming everything like a tourist—saying, “Oh my god, this is awesome!”
The driver, who’s probably less than ten years older than Peter, smiles, pointing out something on the car to him.
“Not gonna drive this time?” Rhodey asks, hands in his pockets as he looks at the car.
“Funny,” Tony says. “See, I enjoy having a wife, and I suspect that if I drove this race again that would no longer be the case for me.”
Their assistant, a young woman named Céline, overhears and says, “They’re going for hot laps now, if you’d like.”
“Peter,” Tony calls. He has to call him over twice before the kid jogs over. “Want to go for a ride around the track?”
“We can do that?”
“Sure.”
Céline says, “I just need his ID.”
“I’ve got my permit.” Peter digs his wallet out and hands it to her. Tony had forgotten he even had that.
She takes the ID and scans it before giving it back. “The driver will be by with the McLaren shortly,” she says.
“Are you learning to drive?” Rhodey asks Peter.
“My aunt took me once, right after I got my permit,” Peter says. “But, uh, I kind of crashed into seven and half shopping carts in the Trader Joe’s parking lot. So she never took me again.”
“Seven and a half?”
“One of them was a kiddie cart, so I’m only counting that as a half,” Peter says.
Rhodey stares at him, then turns to Tony. “You haven’t been teaching him to drive?”
“I’ve been a little busy,” Tony says.
“With what? You’re a stay at home dad now.”
“I still work on R&D stuff.”
“Part-time.”
Tony rubs his hand over his jaw, shrugs.
“It’s okay,” Peter says. “I didn’t ask or anything. And it’s not like I really need to drive. I mean, we live in New York. No one drives in New York.”
“You own like fifteen cars,” Rhodey says.
Tony turns to Peter. “We’ll start when we get home,” he promises.
“Make sure he lets you drive the Jag,” Rhodey says, grinning.
Tony shoots him a look. “I’m sure I’ve got an Audi that’s a year or two old that will work.”
“Oh, wow,” Peter says. “That’s… You don’t have anything older?”
Rhodey looks like he’s about to ask more about that, but a sleek, bright green sports car pulls up next to them.
“There’s your ride, kid!” Tony says.
Peter gets outfitted in a helmet before climbing into the car with the driver, asking nervously how fast they go.
“Not that fast,” the driver says.
“Oh, okay. Good,” Peter says, relaxing.
The car takes off around the corner with a squeal of tires. Tony’s betting the video of this is going to be hilarious.
After it’s out of sight, Rhodey says, “I’m proud of you. I didn’t think you were gonna let him out of your sight except to piss this whole trip.”
“Last summer he went on a school trip to Europe and wound up fighting a crazy ex-employee of mine across 5 countries. I’m allowed to be paranoid about taking him abroad.”
Rhodey slaps a hand on his shoulder. “What are you gonna do when he goes to MIT?”
“Move to Boston, probably. You wanna come with me?”
“Absolutely not. I’ll come back to go for a beer though. You think that bar is still there?”
“I don’t think an alien invasion could shut that place down.”
They’re still reminiscing when there’s a sudden commotion in the pit, lots of raised voices, and then a nearby gate opens to allow a firetruck onto the truck. Its lights are on, but sirens are off. An ambulance is close on its heels.
“What’s going on?” Tony asks, a sinking feeling already settling in his gut.
The firetruck and ambulance have taken off around a curve in the track.
He taps his watch. “FRIDAY, anything?”
“Hooking into their communications network, Boss.”
Céline, the assistant, comes running toward him. “Mr. Stark! Mr. Stark!” She’s out of breath. “There’s been—”
“One of the cars driving a hot lap was wrecked by a sedan who’d managed to make it onto the track going the wrong direction,” FRIDAY says, before the assistant can.
“Peter’s car?” Tony demands.
Céline is nodding, which is all the confirmation Tony needs. He looks towards where the firetruck and ambulance were headed, but there’s no sign of them now.
“Where are they?” he asks FRIDAY.
“They’re in the tunnel,” she says.
Opposite side of the track from where he’s standing.
The only nearby car is the actual race car, and Rhodey keeps pace with him as Tony jogs towards it.
Tony grabs the driver by the arm. “Give me your helmet.”
“What?” the driver asks, startled.
“Helmet, now.”
The driver still isn’t producing the helmet, Tony turns to demand it from one of the pit crew, who scrambles to find it for him.
“Are you really driving this?” Rhodey asks.
“Do you see a faster method of travel?” Tony demands.
Someone puts a helmet into his hands.
Then Tony’s in the car, barely strapped in properly, and screeching around the corner.
He’s raced this track before, and knows intellectually that it’s one of the harder tracks. It’s tight, it’s twisty, when there are multiple cars on it, it’s cramped. He’d raced it that time not entirely caring if he lived or died because, well, he was dying anyway and wouldn’t dying in a race car crash be a cooler way to go than slowly being poisoned by palladium.
But his kid is not allowed to die in a race car crash, not after Tony’s only had him back for a year. Not when he’s got his entire life ahead of him.
Not when Tony can’t reverse time and fix it.
He also can’t afford to crash this car on the way there, so he takes the corners slower than he really wants to and arrives at the tunnel with a screech of the brakes. There’s no fire, thankfully, but the green sports car Peter had been riding in is crumpled against one wall, looking like it tried to swerve at the last minute. Another car has crashed into the opposite side of the tunnel.
Tony hauls himself out of the car, stumbling onto the road, and yanks the helmet off.
The man who was driving Peter around for his lap is up and walking around, near the ambulance. He looks fine.
Tony grabs his arm. “Where’s my kid?”
The driver looks startled, then seems to recognize him. He points towards the car. “He’s still—”
Tony doesn’t hear the rest, already running for the car. He’s stopped by a fireman, who says something to him in French. “That’s my kid in there,” Tony argues, shoving past him.
“Sir! Sir!”
The window of the passenger seat is broken, and he can see Peter inside, slumped over. “Peter?” He shoves another man out of the way to get closer to the window. “Hey, Peter. Can you hear me?”
Peter turns toward him, a wince on his face. “Mr. Stark?” he asks, words slurring.
“Yeah, hey kid. It’s me. How are you doing?”
“Uh… not so good,” Peter mumbles. “We crashed.”
“Yeah, I noticed. How are you feeling?”
Peter shrugs, wincing again. “I think my arm is broken.” He starts to hold it up, but then clearly thinks better of that and keeps it tucked into his side. “I was… I was holding onto the dash.”
The dashboard that’s now several inches further forward than it had originally been.
“Okay, broken arm. Anything else?”
Another shrug and a wince.
Tony turns around, towards the crowd that seems to just be standing around, and demands, “What are you all waiting for? Get him out of here!”
The man nearest him starts explaining, in French, “We’re waiting on tools to cut him out. The door is jammed.”
They need the door sliced open. Well, that Tony can do. He taps his watch, the nanoparticles of his gauntlet forming around his hand.
“Lean away from the door, Pete. I’m gonna cut you out.”
Peter blinks at him through the broken window, a frown set deeply on his face. “With, like, the jaws of life?” He looks past Tony’s shoulder. “Isn’t that really big?”
“No, I’m using my gauntlet,” Tony explains. “Lean away.”
“That’s not as cool,” Peter mutters, before leaning away an inch or two.
“Cool?” Tony asks, as aims a narrow repulsor beam at the seam of the door. “Cool would be not getting into a wreck the moment I take my eyes off you. Cool would be not needing to be pried out of a car. Cool would be not having a broken arm.” He slices along the bottom of the frame. “But if you really want I can leave you here until they go get the giant machine that might accidentally crush you as it tries to save you.”
“It’s the… the name that’s cool. Jaws of life.” Peter is still mumbling.
“Rescued by Iron Man. That’s cool.” Tony finishes slicing around the door, and grabs hold of the edge of the window, yanking it forward. The falls to the ground in a loud crash.
Peter looks at the sliced open side of the car, eyes wide.
Tony leans forward. “Okay, what else hurts?”
“Uh… I dunno.”
“‘I dunno’ isn’t an answer. I was looking for a list of body parts.”
“My arm.”
“We covered that one. Next?” Tony prompts.
Peter still looks stumped by the question.
Some of the paramedics are approaching now, with a gurney. They try to pull him away. “Mr. Stark, please. Let us work.”
“Okay, okay,” Tony says, stepping back.
Later, at the hospital, Tony is handed the helmet Peter was wearing. He turns it over in his hands. It had been pristine when the kid put it on, but now there’s a dent on the top, likely where he hit the window or door during the crash.
No head injuries though, they’ve already ruled those out. Peter has a broken arm, whiplash, and bruising across his upper body from the seatbelt. With his healing factor, he’ll be recovered from everything but the broken limb in just a day or two; the arm will take at least a week.
Tony might have to put a helmet into Peter’s Spider-Man’s costume.
Rhodey arrives after they’ve given Peter a cast, and leans against the wall next to their little section of the ER. “Hey, how’s it going in here?”
Peter holds up his casted hand. “I lived, bitch.”
Rhodey blinks at him. “Did you just call me ‘bitch?’”
“It’s a meme,” Tony explains. “And I hate that I know that. What have you done to me, kid?”
“Kept you up to date on modern culture.”
Rhodey rolls his eyes. “Okay, sure. So are we ready to blow this joint?” He turns to Peter. “That’s not a meme. That’s slang. It’s from before your time. It means—”
“I know what it means,” Peter says. He jumps down off the bed. “We haven’t missed the race, have we?”
“Not yet.”
“I thought you were injured,” Tony says, eyeing the way Peter’s moving around critically.
“I’m fine Mr. Stark! I can still go.” Peter waves his casted arm and manages to only squint a bit rather than full on wince at the motion. “It’s just a broken arm.”
“And whiplash. And bruising. We could go back to the room—”
“Mr. Stark, please.”
“Yeah, please Mr. Stank,” Rhodey says.
Tony sighs. He waves the helmet around a bit for emphasis as he says, “I just want it noted that the only reason you’re not lying here with brain damage right now is because of this inch of plastic and that’s a little bit of a close call. Some of us care about that. Some of us have a heart condition that was put to the test today. Some of us aren’t seventeen and don’t just bounce up out of hospital beds ten minutes after being treated.”
Peter blinks at him. “Mr. Stark, are you feeling okay?”
“Am I— I’m peachy,” Tony says. “I’m just in awe at witnessing the resilience of youth.”
- - -
Later, on the balcony watching the race, Tony is also in awe at witnessing the obliviousness of youth.
“Youth is wasted on the young,” he tells Rhodey, watching as yet another girl approaches Peter, who’s leaning over the edge watching the race, and starts cooing over his broken arm and asking what happened.
“Is he even trying to make this story sound good?” Rhodey asks.
“No, doesn’t sound like it. I mean I’d embellish a bit. Emphasize the fact that I was on the most famous race track in the world. Make it sound good. He’s acting like he was in a fender bender on 6th Avenue.”
“And it’s working,” Rhodey comments, as the current girl asks to sign Peter’s cast. “I think she’s leaving a phone number instead of her name.”
“Wasted,” Tony says again, before taking a sip of his drink.
His watch starts buzzing then, and he glances down to see that Pepper is trying to call him. “Uh, hang on. The missus is on the line.”
He steps away into a quieter corner before answering, and a hologram of Pepper’s face hovers over his watch. She looks… unhappy.
“Hey honey, how’s the homefront?”
“It’s fine,” Pepper says. “How’s Monaco?”
“Going good, going good,” Tony says. “We’re actually in the middle of watching the race right now, so maybe I could—”
“Really? Nothing interesting about this trip you want to tell me?”
He pauses, staring down at the screen.
“Nothing like, oh, say, you let Peter get into a sports car and race around the track and it crashed and then you drove the Stark race car again?”
“Well,” Tony says, “I was trying to get there fast. The car seemed like the best option.”
“A crash Tony! When were you going to call me?!”
“He’s fine, he’s fine. I mean, he broke his arm, but you know the kid, that will heal up in like a week, and he was bouncing up off the gurney ready to go back and watch the race so he’s completely unphased by it. I had it under control. I was gonna tell you tonight, really, I didn’t want to worry you and we had to get back to the race and—”
“It’s on the news!” Pepper says. “And Peter’s been posting about all of this on his Instagram.”
“He has?” Tony looks up, finding Peter still talking to that girl.
“He has also been posting selfies with all the models you’ve been introducing him to,” she says, tone clipped.
“Oh, good for him,” Tony says, before he can stop himself.
Pepper’s eyes narrow. “No, not good for him. I don’t know what kind of trip you and Rhodey think this is but I have had to kick enough models out of the house in my lifetime and I’ll be damned if Peter ever dates one.”
“Well, he’s not dating any of them, he’s just met them…”
“Tony!”
“Okay, right. I will put a stop to that immediately. You have my word, honey.”
Pepper is still glaring at him.
Tony decides to risk it all and asks, “On a scale of one to ten, exactly how much trouble am I in right now?”
“Twelve,” Pepper says, decisively. "I'm banning Monaco after this. I hope you have fun because you're never going back again."
After a few more assurances to tow the straight and narrow for the rest of the trip, Tony finds Rhodey and Peter again. “We’re in trouble, boys.”
He gets two confused looks in return.
“Pepper has been checking up on us.” Tony pokes a finger at Peter. “You posted everything online, rookie mistake of a guy’s trip. This is supposed to be like Vegas. What happens here stays here. Now we’re all in trouble.”
Peter tilts his head, consideringly, then asks, “Am I in trouble or are you in trouble?”
“I’m in trouble because you are trouble,” Tony declares.