… The rumor is almost as old as Stark Industries itself. In the sixties, people were convinced Stark Industries was building mosasaurus-submarines, in the eighties it was triceratops tractors, and in the early two thousands there were entire message boards dedicated to a weapon called Veloci-rapid-fires.

The company denies that such projects exist. There are no official photographs. No confirmed prototypes. No employee willing to confirm or deny on camera. Not a single frame of camera footage of these dinosaur-themed robots has ever been found.

But today on Avery Investigates, we’re following the trail of leaked documents, strange sightings, and mysterious shipments to answer one unbelievable question: is Stark Industries actually building dinosaur robots?

Like and subscribe, please!

Very soon after the break-up, Pepper accepted a job in Malaysia and moved there for an entire year, during which she managed to clear her head beautifully. It therefore deeply annoys her that, the moment she steps foot on American soil again, the first thing her mind goes to is Tony.

She spends three days pushing that feeling away. And then Tony drops her a message. Heard you’re in NY huzza welcome back pop by compound for coffee any time open invite.

She was vaguely aware that the Avengers had moved to a new facility upstate during her absence. She looks up the address, spends entirely too much time viewing the building in street view mode, wondering behind which window Tony’s actual bedroom is…

She clears her schedule for Saturday.

-

There is a teenager in Tony’s kitchen, spreading cream cheese onto a cracker. Big toe poking out of his sock, and a shirt about three sizes too big, standing there like he belongs.

It is, by a long chalk, the strangest thing Pepper has ever seen. Stranger than aliens, flying robots, and those goats that fall over when they get scared. In her experience, Tony has always reacted to any approaching kid the way a cat responds to an approaching vacuum cleaner.

The boy’s eyes flit over to her and he freezes.

“Hi,” Pepper says, surprised.

“Woah,” the kid replies, though evidently less surprised. “I mean. Sure. Hi.” He puts the knife down, looks her up and down like he is sizing her up and asks, “Do you know how to fly a chopper?”

There is something very familiar about feeling wrong-footed while in Tony’s house, even if it’s not because of Tony himself. Pepper sets the box of chocolates down on the kitchen counter between them. “Can’t say that I do.”

“Okay. Worth asking.” He shoves the entire cracker into his mouth.

“I’m Pepper.”

The boy nods wildly and points at the fridge. It is covered in brightly colored Avenger-fridge magnets that she doesn’t remember seeing in Tony’s kitchen before. A few newspaper clippings, handwritten notes. Pepper spots what the boy was likely pointing at: a snapshot of her and Tony, being held in place by a green Hulk-magnet.

A whole year and a whole relocation, and Tony still has that picture up. “And you are?”

He signs five letters, presumably to avoid spraying bits of cracker everywhere.

“Peter?”

“Not bad, not bad,” he says, spraying bits of cracker everywhere. He wipes his mouth and swallows. “Where’d you learn that?”

“Hard-of-hearing nephew. How about you?”

“I was bored one day.” He flicks some crumbs off the kitchen counter. “Tony is going to lose his mind seeing you.”

“Is that right.”

He picks up her box of chocolates and gives it an appraising shake. “Do you want a cracker? Doesn’t have to be cream cheese, we got all sorts. We even got stuff only psychopaths would eat, like vegemite. No offense if you love vegemite, psychopaths can be real interesting people.” Disregarding all proper gift-etiquette, he slices through the seal of the box with one nail and pushes the lid open with his thumbs, shakes the box again and then pops one of the chocolates into his mouth.

The boy certainly acts like he lives here. Pepper can only think of one reason why Tony would tolerate a teenager in his house. And she can see the resemblance.

“I sense a disturbance in the force,” Tony’s voice booms from down a hallway. He appears in the doorway, stained trousers, stained shirt, stained hands, with something that most resembles a hosepipe slung over one shoulder. “Look who got kicked out of Malaysia,” he says, beaming.

“Hi Tony.”

He comes closer, the hosepipe bouncing against the back of his legs. “Can I give you a hug?”

“When’s the last time you showered?” she asks, but steps into his open arms without waiting for a response, squeezes a little.

“I see you’ve met Peter,” Tony says, stepping back, his gaze encompassing both of them. “If I’d known you’d come by today, I would have locked him in a cabinet, but I suppose we’ll have to put up with him.”

“Did you start without me?” Peter asks, affronted, pointing at the hosepipe.

“You literally took an hour to make yourself a snack. I was about to send Dum-E in for search and rescue. AKA, to spray you with a fire hose.”

“I have refined culinary taste, by which I mean I don’t eat mold, which basically rules out half the contents of your fridge. And you know damn well you’re not supposed to work on Terry without, you know,” the kid gestures at himself, “adult supervision.”

Pepper inhales. “Do I want to know what you are up to?”

The two boys exchange a look, and it’s so familial that Pepper is now officially beyond  a mere suspicion, so she asks, perhaps less diplomatically than she should: “Tony. Is he your son?”

“My god, the number of times I’ve been asked that,” Tony says, and then proceeds to go into a long-winded explanation that in no way answers Pepper’s question. And then he asks: “Hey Pep, can you fly a chopper?”

“I already asked her, she can’t,” Peter says.

“Worth asking,” Tony says. “Tour? Let’s give the lady a tour.”

Tony is how she remembers him. Eccentric. Verbose. Half the things out of his mouth are borderline insults.

Pepper had always felt like she could see through them to see the real Tony underneath, justify those words as just a layer of defense against a world he had never felt safe in. For many, many years, there was a lot about Tony that she could forgive, but then the things she couldn’t forgive started adding up.

The day she ended things, she hadn’t woken up with that intention. It was just another day, the Stark Expo was on their schedule, she and Tony would go together to give a few speeches. Tony had been leaving pieces of paper with scrawly handwriting all over their bedroom — people never believed her when she told them how he’d spent weeks agonizing over them and then end up throwing it all in the trash at the last minute and just winging it. Pepper, on the other hand, always wrote out her entire speech the evening before, perhaps reread it once in the back of the limo, and then stuck to it down to the last letter.

“What’s yours about?” Tony asked as they drove down, flicking the back of her papers as she read.

“The UN high seas treaty of 2013.”

Tony was sprawled across the backseat, taking up far more space than necessary, darkest sunglasses on. “Sounds like all the cool kids are gonna be there.” He tugged open his tie with one finger.

“Aren’t you discussing thermal energy? Hardly thrilling.”

“Yes,” he said. “But I’ll have fireworks.”

The Expo had an ocean theme that year, all about marine carbon dioxide removal, blue mussel aquaculture, and just a fair bit about turtles and dolphins to draw in the general public; the people who didn’t usually attend lectures in their free time but were willing to buy a ticket for a chance to see a giant hologram of a blue whale float overhead.

“We’re dumbing things down,” Tony had complained. Which was rather rich, considering he refused to give a speech if it didn’t come with fireworks.

“Or making our work more accessible,” Pepper pointed out. “Just think of dolphins as a gateway drug to algae and plankton.”

These sorts of events always made her nervous. Not because of stage fright or possible security breaches. But simply because it was always a risk to let Tony walk around any place where he could interact directly with people.

Incident one:

A nervous young woman approached them backstage, asking for a quote about Stark’s secret dinosaur robots, a ridiculous decades-old rumor that was refusing to die out. Her casual attire — ripped jeans and a Led Zeppelin-shirt — placed her more firmly in the ‘influencer’-category rather than any serious journalism.

“I don’t have time for poppycock,” Tony said.

“But the blueprints that popped up on Wikileaks—"

“You seem like a flat-earther. Do you even have a media pass to be back here?”

“Oh—yes sir.” She fumbled to take it out and show him.

Tony snatched it up and flung it away into some bushes. “Go fetch.” And he walked off, cackling.

Incident two:

One of the expo volunteers, a burly guy in his forties, came up to them; DVD player under his arm, hopeful expression. Holding out a picture of Tony, ready to be signed. Tony brushed him off with a sneering comment. Pepper can’t remember what it was, she just remembers the man shrinking in on himself like a little boy despite being a foot taller than Tony.

She berated Tony about it, but he flapped a hand. “If I don’t want to get bothered by the GP, I sure as hell don’t want to be bothered by staff.”

Incident three:

They spotted Ginny Wisbech, owner of a rival tech company, sauntering down the hallway and disappearing through an archway into the microplastics exhibition. Tony turned to a random young teenager nearby. “Avenger’s mission. I’ll pay you twenty bucks to try and steal that woman’s phone and bring it back to me.”

Before Pepper could intervene, the boy’s eyes had already lit up with mischief and he shot away.

“Tony. What if he gets caught?”

“He’s a kid, it’s not like they’d arrest him.”

She had spent years covering Tony’s shortcomings with a cloak of kindness. But this afternoon, incident after incident, made her see him in a different light. No longer a cynic with a secretly soft heart. The realization settled into her heart: perhaps, down in his core, he was just not a good person. Down in his core he was… a self-centered, irresponsible bully.

She smiled through the rest of the event, gave her speech, shook all the hands she needed to shake, and then broke up with Tony in the limo on the way home and turned in her notice the next morning.

That’s the memory she went to Malaysia with.

And now here she is. And here Tony is, with the same dismissive hand-flaps and louder-than-life personality. And, apparently, here Peter is. Fourteen, fifteen years old, with a casual sort of brazenness. He meanders after them as Tony leads Pepper down a hallway and keeps eating her chocolates.

This must mean something has changed, but what? She needs to make sense of it, so she tries: “How did you two meet?”

“When he stole my phone,” Tony says. “About five, six months ago.”

“I in fact did not steal his phone,” Peter says, “because he made me give it back.”

“He’s a shithead,” Tony says. “But he’s got a good brain. We’re working on— you’ll see in a moment.”

The compound is a maze of concrete and glass, echoing hallways and sliding doors, but Tony reserved a modest corner of it just for himself, with carpeted floors and pictures on the walls. There is even a patch of grass out back, encircled by bushes and trees.

“Do you garden?”

Tony flaps a hand. “Please. Of course not.”

The workshop is anything but modest. Bigger, even, than what Tony had at the tower. It frankly looks like a safety hazard epicenter, with tools and scraps scattered across every surface, cables snaking across the floor in every direction, unevenly stacked crates, and right in the center, towering over everything else—

“Tony. Is that a dinosaur robot?”

“Pterodactyl,” Tony says.

“Pterocopter,” Peter corrects. “Once we actually get it flying.” He finally closes the half-empty box of chocolates and chucks it on a nearby desk. He hops up on the platform where the contraption stands; a brushed-steel beak, wings folded up awkwardly. Peter climbs deftly up the side and starts tinkering around up there, somewhere halfway up the neck where a row of tiny lights blinks.

“I’m guessing you don’t want to attend the rest of the tour, then?” Tony asks, craning his neck. “Now remember—"

“Unplug before sticking anything inside anything, yes boss,” Peter says.

Tony leads Pepper up to the roof terrace. They stand under the overhang and oversee the expansive back lawn and the hangar in the distance.

“So this kid stole your phone,” Pepper says, attempting to drag another tiny piece of explanation out of Tony. “And then…”

“Then I gave him a job. He’s my intern.”

That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it’s a start, so Pepper says, slowly, “Okay…”

“But possibly. Caveated. I want to foster him.”

Pepper chokes on her own air and coughs.

“He doesn’t know that yet, so. Hush hush.”

Pepper rubs her chest with one hand, looking at him sharply. “Tony. Who is that kid?”

“You remember the day we mutually agreed to break up?”

Pepper doesn’t rise to the bait. “I’m not likely to forget.”

“You said I was being an asshole at the expo. You know. The woman with the Led Zeppelin shirt. The guy with the DVD player. The kid. And it’s not like I spent the next months lying awake thinking about it or anything, I was fine. But then this kid steals my phone, I trace him down to the group home where he lives and he shows up there wearing a Led Zeppelin shirt and carrying a DVD player under his arm. Three for three. You see?”

“Are you saying—”

“It was a sign from the universe.”

She leans back against the brick wall to get a better look at him. “You’ve never been superstitious.”

He shrugs, a bit stilted. “Sometimes a sign is just— what you make it. Because you’re looking for a reason, so you’re likely to find one. And the kid needed a challenge. He’s… His caregivers are at wits’ end, I’ve been told. He’s considered a hopeless case, I think.”

“He seemed all right.”

“He is, here. He doesn’t respond well to… authority.”

“You do realize you’d be the authority if you became a foster parent?”

Tony grimaces and nods. “Yeah. Gross.”

That doesn’t inspire much confidence. The idea of Tony having parental control over a kid is genuinely giving her anxiety. Self-centered. Irresponsible. Bully.

“I mean. You’ve seen him,” Tony says. He looks away. “He’s… People don’t understand him, you know? His brain is different. And he’s…” His eyes flick up at her and away again. “…enhanced.”

Pepper blows out a breath. “Tell me more.”

So Tony does. Prior to meeting Peter, he had known about Spider-Man for a month or two, ever since the superhero first appeared in news outlets. But he had zero plans to make contact. Negative plans, in fact. Especially once he found out it was a teenager. Especially-especially when he found out it was a recently orphaned teenager living in a group home. He wasn’t touching that situation with a ten-foot pole, yuck.

“Charming,” Pepper says dryly.

Tony runs a hand through his hair and smiles vaguely. “Well. You know me.”

But then Spider-Man dropped out of the sky on a random afternoon. Tony was in Queens to cut the ribbon for a new library he had apparently paid for. He was just taking a selfie with their very attractive mayor when the kid came out of nowhere, snatched his phone straight out of his hand and swung off again. Tony hid his bewilderment, just grinned, holding up two fingers, took a bow and managed to play the whole thing off as a publicity stunt.

And then he got in his car and drove straight down to the address he had pinned months ago. The kid hadn’t even turned the Stark phone off and FRIDAY indicated that he was still moving around somewhere in the west of Queens, but Tony preferred the idea of ambushing him at home over wildly chasing Spider-Man around town for everyone to see.

The group home just looked like a regular house on a regular street. No chain-link fences or nothing to keep these little shits from running wild. A tall, rather imposing woman opened the door for him. “Can I help you?”

“Your grass needs cutting,” he said, slipping off his sunglasses.

“Can I help you?” she repeated, slower, more irritated.

“Peter Parker lives here?”

She opened the door a little wider. “What’d he do now?”

“Stole my phone.”

She cursed. “All right,” she said. “Come on in. Let’s see what we can do.”

She sat him down at a wobbly table, made him coffee, introduced herself as ‘Etty’, shuffled around the cramped kitchen, grumbled under her breath. “Are you gonna report him to the cops?” she asked.

“Should I?”

She shrugged. “If it’s not you, it’ll be someone else sooner or later.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Haven’t heard of him stealing in a while, but let’s just say it’s not the first time. Pretty much the first thing he was known for, coming here. It just happened this afternoon?”

“Less than an hour ago.”

“Guess he’s not in school, then,” she said, deeply annoyed. “How did you know who he was, where he lived?”

“I’m Tony Stark.”

She squinted at him. “Oh. I guess you are.” She pursed her lips, studying him for a moment. But then the coffee maker beeped and she got distracted.

It took a good twenty minutes before Peter Parker walked in, scruffy jeans, scruffy coat, carrying something under his arm. He didn’t seem surprised to see Tony at all, just gave him a measuring look. Proof, if proof were needed, that this whole stunt was mostly a cry for attention.

“I smell weed.” Etty set one hand on her hip. “Want to explain why?”

“Oh sure,” Peter said. “It’s because I was smoking weed.”

Etty went into a whole finger-wagging speech that Peter seemed entirely unimpressed by. Tony didn’t take any of it in either because— the ‘something’ Peter had been carrying under his arm turned out to be an old DVD player. And when the kid unzipped his coat, Tony saw a flash of a Led Zeppelin shirt.

And no. He had never been superstitious. But he had been… pretty fed up with himself ever since the break-up. And looking for a way to shake up his life. So he stood up and cleared his throat. “Can I have a minute alone with the kid?”

Etty frowned at him. “Well, no, of course not.”

“Oh,” Tony said. And sat back down.

“Give this man his phone back,” Etty told the kid, swatting his shoulder.

Peter Parker stepped closer to the table and gently set the DVD player down. He took a chair and, giving Tony a challenging stare, took out the phone and pushed it across the table with two fingers.

Tony flipped it over, then back, turned it on. It looked fine, not a scratch on it. He checked the gap between phone and case. “There was a coupon for free coffee in here.”

“How about that,” Peter said. He slung one arm over the back of his chair and grinned.

“You want to end up in jail?” Etty snapped.

Peter gave her, and then the kitchen around him, a mock-confused look. “Am I not already?”

“Apologize to the gentleman!”

Peter sniffed and stared at her for a stretching moment. “I’m hungry,” he said finally. “What’s for dinner?”

Etty threw up her hands. “Do what you gotta do,” she told Tony. “I tried.” And she turned away to start clearing out the dishwasher.

Tony let the phone slide into his pocket and leaned back to look at Peter. Peter was looking straight back at him, his expression a mixture between amusement and contempt.

Tony hadn’t fully thought about where he wanted all this to go, nor did he really understand what the kid had wanted to achieve by getting his attention like this.  “Nice shirt,” he said.

“Charity.”

Tony hummed. “Nice DVD player.”

“Was just sitting there by a trashcan.”

“Can I interest you in a Stark internship?”

That finally got the kid off-kilter. He blinked. Etty turned to them with a handful of cutlery. She blinked, too.

“D’you want a crazy straw with that coffee?” Peter asked sharply.

Tony smirked.

Peter sat back in his chair, crossed his arms. His leg bobbed up and down as he studied Tony. “Is this a trap?”

“To what end?”

“I don’t know, you tell me.”

“I think I’d have better things to do.”

Peter set his jaw, and he really looked like he was about to laugh in Tony’s face and tell him ‘no thanks’, but then he said: “How much are you paying?”

Etty huffed but Tony just smiled. “I’ll have someone send you a contract. You start this Saturday.”

He was on his way back to the car when Peter caught up to him on the sidewalk. “Do you know who I am? Actually? Like, do you remember me?”

“Of course,” Tony said. “Spider-Man.”

Peter narrowed his eyes at him. “Right,” he said. “Looking forward to working with you.”

He went inside and slammed the door. And so. That’s how that all went down.

“Okay,” Pepper says. “That doesn’t sound like… I mean… He seems to like you just fine.”

“Well, sure.” Tony flaps a hand. “I’m a great person. I grow on people.”

Pepper says nothing.

“And he likes being here. Though I suspect he likes being anywhere that isn’t home.”

Nothing Pepper has heard so far is particularly reassuring.

“Coffee?” Tony suggests. “Let’s have coffee.”

Tony Stark. Self-centered irresponsible bully.

Does the ‘self-centered’ hold up, now that he is considering, however caveated, to foster a troubled teenager? Pepper wants to say it doesn’t, but a part of her — quite a large part of her — fears that Tony doesn’t fully comprehend what that would even mean; that he is perhaps looking at it as just a funny, meaningless thing. A loophole to keep a kid with a lot of snark and technical know-how around, just because it amuses him.

Back in the kitchen, she sips her cappuccino and watches him wipe down the counter, stare at the mess Peter left behind. “FRIDAY, tell the kid to come clean up after himself or I’m throwing out all his favorite crackers.” He sits at the table with her, swirls his own coffee around in its mug and looks at her. “Tell me about Malaysia.”

The question takes her by surprise, but she needs a moment to realize why: She didn’t expect Tony to show any interest in her life, because that’s just not what he ever did. He talked more than he listened, always directed conversations back to himself, got annoyed when he wasn’t the center of attention for a few minutes. That is Tony. That was Tony.

She tells him about the sunny mornings, stormy afternoons. Getting to see pigmy elephants and orangutans. How the work was great but she didn’t make many friends. He listens and even asks.

“Are you here to stay?”

“For now.”

“Where do you work?”

“Green Paths.”

He scrunches up his nose. “You could do better.”

“I like smaller companies. I can actually make a difference there.”

“Isn’t the owner that bold, wrinkly guy? Looks like someone stuck a mustache onto a testicle?”

“Tony.”

“You can probably push him out with just a bit of effort, take that throne. Call it Potts Paths.“ He chuckles.

Perhaps not self-centered. But still an irresponsible bully.

Peter returns and cleans the counter.

“Yes, merci beaucoup,” Tony says.

“Well, you bribed me with crackers.”

“That wasn’t bribe, it was blackmail, learn the difference.”

“I wasn’t joking about the moldy stuff in your fridge, by the by.”

“Okay, throw it out.”

“You throw it out.”

“Don’t you know how aspirin was invented?”

“You’re thinking of penicillin.” Peter gathers a handful of magnets from the fridge. “I’m gonna put these on your Iron suit.” He walks out.

“Don’t you just love him?” Tony says. He shakes his head, looks pensive.

Pepper sets her cup down. “Have you talked to someone… a social worker about your plans? Because they might not even let you…”

“Yeah, they know. In fact I got the paperwork in my office, I just haven’t…” He exhales, then flaps a hand. “They’ve put me in touch with a few other foster parents, so I could talk to them about their experiences. Pretty pointless if you ask me, every kid is so unique. And talking to people is boring, because, you know, most people are dull as ditchwater. But I’ll do it if I have to.” He scrubs his face with one hand, then shrugs, deliberately casual, and downs his coffee.

Perhaps not irresponsible. But still a bully.

He walks her back to her car. “Did you hate it?” he asks.

“Of course not.”

He hums. “Score.” He shoves both hands in his pockets and looks at her in that particular way of his. “Anytime. Open invite.”

She opens the car door but doesn’t get in yet. “I think I never really understood what you found interesting about me. You know. Speaking of ditchwater.”

“You’re not ditchwater, Pep. You’re… the opposite. Mountain fire.”

“I always feel like I am entirely too sane for you.”

“You do make me feel more sane,” he agrees. “I like seeing the world through your eyes. It looks better that way. Less… overwhelming.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you compliment me like that.”

“That’s depressing.”

“You can be a bully a lot.”

“Other times I’m lovely though, right?”

“I suppose so,” she says, and smiles.

To: Tony <[email protected]>

Subject: How are you?

Hi Tony,

Well, you’ve been in my thoughts. Just wondering if you’ve made a decision yet regarding your new ward.

Pep

-

To: Pepper <[email protected]>

Subject: Re: How are you?

Hallo M’Lady

Emailing me from work? Good to see the job is keeping your full attention.

Paperwork still unchecked and unsigned.

Thinking, thinking, thinking.

The thing is I never set boundaries, the compound is an anything-goes-zone. And that’s why it works. So now I’ve been thinking about what you said about me becoming his authority, and I’d have to set rules and he’ll rebel against them and it will just ruin everything.

Am I making a mistake?

The first few times the kid came here he was an absolute dickhead. A polite dickhead, that’s the funniest part about him. He doesn’t curse, you know? Doesn’t yell. He just ignores people when they tell him what to do or not do. Just aggressively blasé. (Real life example, eye witnessed by yours truly: E: “Peter go help your foster sister put on her shoes.” P, from his spot on the rug where he has been staring up at the ceiling for the past five minutes: “Can’t you see I’m busy?”)

Anyway, enough praise.

Bottom line is, I don’t tell him to do things and I don’t tell him not to do things, and that’s why he decided to tolerate me. I think he likes me just fine, now. Give me your verdict, did he seem like he likes me?

Only time I ever came close is this one time, he tried to bring weed into my compound but FRIDAY caught him. We had a whole discussion about whether or not it should be legalized. I told him it’s a gateway drug, just like dolphins, and that I’d shove his shoes down the toilet if he ever brought drugs into my home again. So he didn’t.

Is that setting boundaries?

Not sure if I can quote that as an example of good parenting in the interview. Have I mentioned? I’ll have to do an interview if I want to go through with this. Some government pencil pusher is going to decide if I can provide a safe and nurturing home. Which in all fairness I can’t. I just think I can challenge him in the right ways, you know, make sure he turns out okay in a world that just wasn’t really created with him in mind.

This is turning into a novel. Can you tell it’s keeping me up at night? God, that makes me sound lame. I’d better sign off.

Feel free to ignore this rainstorm of verbal diarrhea entirely.

T.

-

To: Tony <[email protected]>

Subject: Re: How are you?

Hi Tony,

Setting boundaries…

About to walk into a long meeting, but just wanted to send you an equation.

When we were in the workshop, he said (loose quote) ‘Don’t stick screwdrivers into electrical wires, yes boss’.

When we were in the kitchen, you told him to clean up after himself and then he came up and did.

When you told him not to bring weed into your home, he stopped doing so.

QED

Pep

Peter forgave Tony two months after starting the internship.

The initial plan had been so simple: Karma, bitch.

But then stealing Stark’s phone got him an internship, because the man was clearly mentally unstable. Which Peter could get on board with.

“I’ll have someone send you a contract. You start this Saturday.”

The compound was countless doors, and long hallways with nothing but art, and he spent some time wondering which painting he’d eat first if he ever got hopelessly lost in here. The compound was also very square. The most boring of all the shapes. The rhombic triacontahedron was his favorite.

“So,” Tony Stark said, greeting him at the end of one of those hallways. “Artful Dodger. Welcome.” He waved away the security guard that had walked Peter down.

“Have you heard of Feng Shui?” Peter asked.

“No, and neither have you. This is a house of science.”

“Very rectangular house of science.”

“You were hoping for geodesic domes? A klein bottle, perhaps?”

His respect for Tony Stark increased by a smidgen.

“So what are we supposed to do all day?” Stark asked as if this entire lunacy wasn’t his idea in the first place.

“We could redecorate your hallways.”

“Let’s go to my workshop,” Stark said, “and talk about your web fluid.”

So they went, and they talked, and that talk somehow lead to a pile of sketches of jellyfish robots, and Peter realizing far too late, and to his dismay, that he was having a good time. It became a weekly thing, jellyfish robots then dragonfly robots then dinosaur robots, while Tony mentored him, or rather, ‘mentored’.

At least Tony communicated like a normal human being. Don’t get anywhere near that machine, or Dum-E will spray you with the firehose. Don’t do weed or I’ll throw your shoes in the toilet. Clean up after yourself or I won’t buy your favorite crackers. After a year with nothing but mind-numbing ‘constructive talks’ at the group home, it was refreshing.

However, let it be clear that Tony Stark was still his arch nemesis.

Until two months in, when he woke up with a sore throat and a headache, but dragged himself to the compound anyway; when Tony appeared next to him at some point during the morning and he realized he had been staring into space for— probably too long. Because Tony laid the back of his hand against Peter’s forehead and got a stern look on his face.

“Don’t send me home,” Peter said, hoping it sounded mostly menacing and not pleading.

“Oh, kid,” Tony said. “Well, how’s about we get you down for a nap on the couch.”

Peter napped for two hours, only woke up to vomit all over Tony’s floor. And when all Tony did was clean it up, there was really nothing else Peter could say, except: “I forgive you.”

“For?”

“Being a dumbass.”

“Go back to sleep,” Tony said. “Dumbass.”

Peter wrangled the blanket around himself, pulled it up to his chin. “If you got lost in your hallways,” he said, “which painting would you eat first?”

“The one with the apples, obviously.”

Peter tugged the blankets up higher so Tony wouldn’t see him smile.

He wasn’t saying that he’d, at this point, rather be at the compound than at home, rather be around Tony than around Etty, Simon or Martha, but…

That’s exactly what he was saying.

He breathed out, resignation settling into him, because it didn’t change anything. Don't make it matter, don't make it more than it is, don't make it a thing, don’t ruin things by asking, don’t think about it.

And then today.

They’re outside on the patch of grass that Tony calls his backyard. It has been hot and dry and the grass has turned a bit yellow, but there should be a rainstorm tonight. Tony is reclined in a lawn chair, drinking lemonade, Peter is sitting in the grass, sucking down a neon-blue freezer pop. “So, win her back yet?” he asks.

“What? Who?”

“Don’t what-who me, you think I’m stupid?” The electricity in the air when Ms. Potts visited last week had pretty much made his hair stand up like he’d rubbed it with a balloon.

Tony stops pretending he thinks Peter is stupid. “I haven’t. I mean, I’m not. She’s not my main focus right now.”

“Nothing has ever been your main focus. You can barely stay on one project at a time for ten minutes.” He licks a loose freezer-pop-drop off the back of his hand. “So, what, dating someone else? Is this gonna be a love triangle? That’s the second most boring shape, you know, have you considered a love paraboloid instead?”

Tony looks at him, slowly brings his bright-pink lemonade closer to his mouth and sips through his crazy straw. His sunglasses have slid down to the tip of his nose and his trousers are cuffed on one side but not the other. All in all, he looks ridiculous.

“Fine, keep your secrets,” Peter says. He finishes his freeze-pop and scrunches up the plastic, flings it closer to the backdoor.

Tony sets his glass down in the grass next to his chair and takes the sunglasses off entirely. “I just filled out the paperwork to become a foster parent. You know what that means?”

“That you finally learned how to read?”

Tony leans back in the chair and twirls the glasses around in his hand as he looks at Peter. “Well, there is that,” he agrees.

“Guess you’ll need a little less adult supervision from now on.”

“But will you move in, though?” Tony asks.

“What?”

“Once the paperwork is through.”

Peter sits up straighter and holds up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. “Can we just clarify — Are you joking?”

“I’m not. I’m using my serious voice, aren’t I?”

“You use your serious voice all the time to say the dumbest shit imaginable, Tony!” Peter snaps, tears jumping to his eyes. “You better not be joking because this is the only place where I can just be myself, you better be s-s-s-serious.”

Tony sits up, slinging his legs over the side of the chair. “Come on, kiddo.”

Peter scoots closer and falls into a hug, burying his face against Tony’s sternum.

Tony rubs his back. “You’re impossible, you know that?” And Tony is the only person who would say that like it’s a compliment, like it’s Peter’s best quality.

“I’m not gonna be any nicer to you now,” he warns, in the interest of full disclosure.

He can feel Tony tremble with stifled laughter.

“I always thought no way,” Peter mumbles. “You didn’t seem like you’d ever want to. And I didn’t want to ruin anything by asking.”

“Break my heart, why don’t you,” Tony says.

Peter breaks the hug, sits back and looks away, tugging at the grass. “There’s something I should tell you.”

“Okay,” Tony says. “You are aware that I know about Spider-Man, right?”

Peter gives him a mild glare, before looking away again. “You know. I stole your phone for a reason.”

“Because it’s worth more than your average car?”

“No. Because a year ago I went to a Stark Expo and met you, and you told me to steal some lady’s phone. And then I tried. And then I got caught. And then the police drove me home, which was just great because it was literally my third week in foster care and people were still making up their minds about me.”

“Oh, shit,” Tony says, eyes wide. “Holy shit.”

“Karma, bitch.”

“Peter…” Tony looks actually sick and Peter takes pity.

“I forgave you ages ago. And anyway, it’s not like… You didn’t force me to do anything, I was the one stupid enough to actually try it.”

Tony pulls him back into the hug. “Let’s invent time travel next,” he says. “Go back and kick old me.”

“Let’s.”

“Let’s use all our powers for good from now on, never for evil.”

“Let’s.”

Pepper gets an invite in her inbox, in bright colors and an atrocious font, for the first test flight of Terry the robot pterodactyl.

That Sunday morning, it’s an odd clutter of people together on the roof terrace. A few Stark engineers who nod at her. There is only one single journalist: a young woman in a Led Zeppelin shirt who looks nervous but excited. Natasha pours drinks. Bruce and Rhodey are chatting under the overhang. Steve stands near the balustrade and looks at the enormous contraption on the back lawn with no little amount of consternation on his face.

“All right?” Pepper asks, pausing next to him. She can see Tony and Peter on the ground, pulling away the ground cables.

“I was the first one here,” Steve says, “and Peter asked me if I knew anything about fire safety. And when I said I didn’t, he said ‘I guess we’ll make it work’.”

“He asked me if I had access to body bags,” Natasha says from behind them. “I like that kid.”

Down on the lawn, Peter and Tony are backing away from the pterodactyl. Peter lifts the controls in his hand. Terry’s eyes start glowing and the head lifts towards the sky. Wings slowly unfold, engines hum. With low metallic groans, Terry rises heavily, gracelessly from the grass.

Peter and Tony watch, Tony’s hand on the kid’s back.

For thirteen glorious seconds, Terry climbs through the air, spiraling upwards with wings spread wide.

“Uh-oh,” Natasha says.

And then there’s black smoke spluttering out, Terry hangs motionless in the air for half a second before dropping straight down like a sack of bricks and crashing onto the lawn, metal pipes snapping off, parts flying everywhere.

Peter jumps up and down, pumps his fists, throws one arm around Tony. The wind carries his cheers up to the roof terrace.