st_arkravinghazelnut | [Tony, Peter, Liz]

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[Tony, Peter, Liz] - Reunion

True to his word, Tony Stark made second contact with Liz well into the afternoon, following their first meeting the night before. After the whirlwind of the previous day's arrival, unsuccessful escape attempts, some drunken antics, and an entire five stages of grief regarding his room assignment, Tony had to really get his head in the game for this show he was about to put on.

"Remember the plan?" Tony hovered behind a clothing rack at the gift shop, clad in a souvenir hoodie (that wasn't there to hide his bed head) and an oversized pair of tinted sunglasses (that also weren't there to hide the bags under his eyes) for disguise. Lastly, he was armed with a mug full of coffee with the inn's logo printed on it in bright pink lettering. He motioned at Liz, or as he called her, his "Co-Conspirator for Operation Spider Ambush."

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Peter nods solemnly, then follows Tony's cue, lightly tapping his chest.

It reacts immediately. The suit expands out from that center point, just as it had for Tony a few minutes before. And before long, Peter finds himself encased in a hard, lightweight metal-feeling shell.

Peter holds arms out in front of him, moving them slowly but experimentally, as if to get a feel for it. Then, with the same tentativeness that he had when he first tapped his chest, he reaches out to tap Tony.

Tony observed the clothed skin of his shoulder indent softly as the metal prodded it. Standby Mode as the functionality by default with other users was clearly the wise decision, here.

"How's she handle?" He inquired, the way a father may when lending their child the car.

"It's amazing," Peter says, still experimentally moving around to get a feel for it. "It's like I'm just wearing my regular clothes."

Once he seems satisfied with his testing, he turns and looks over at Tony.

"Can you hit me?" he asks, and immediately afterwards, he realizes how absolutely ridiculous that must sound. "I mean, I can just hit myself," he says quickly, though that sounds just as ridiculous as the first suggestion. "Is it okay if I hit me?"

Peter wants to die of mortification right now. At least his embarrassment is shielded from Tony's eyes by the suit.

"Really gets the red-blooded fighter in you flowing, eh?? Good." Tony laughed over him. He was learning how to deal with Peter's frequent embarrassments by leaning into them.

"They got any dumb souvenir bats in here? Maybe a nine iron." He set about quickly perusing the offerings in the gift shop.

Peter's not 100% sure if Tony is being serious or not, but he still begins looking around the shop anyway.

Because he's 100% serious.

There's three things he identifies as potential test weapons:

1. the broom in the corner
2. the chair behind the cash register
3. one of the metal shelves

Probably not as good as a nine iron or a baseball bat, but one would probably work in a pinch.

"Um," he says, "you find anything?"

"Heads up!" That was all the warning Tony gave the boy before he was descending upon him with a bejweled chalice the length of a grown man's forearm.

With a mighty 'CRASH,' the head of the campy souvenir was shattered over Peter's own in a brilliant sparkling shower of rose-tinted glass and fake diamonds.

Peter doesn't even have a chance to react; he turns, and is just about to open his mouth to say something when Tony's mighty blow strikes true.

And after the glass and faux diamonds shower over him, Peter's reaction is still delayed because --

"I didn't feel anything," Peter says, awed.

He gives the Iron Man helmet an experimental knock. Nothing. Peter feels a bolt of excitement race through him.

"Hit me again," he insists. "With something harder."

"Ah, shit! Hah!" Tony staggered back, his face full of pained laughter as he held his wrist. "God, I felt that one!"

Hardly letting it put a damper on his fun, Tony disappeared behind a rack of sweaters before re-appearing with the abandoned shelf Peter had been eyeing. "Ready for round two? Of course you are--!"

Not one to await a confirmation in the name of Science, Tony swung it right at Peter's cheek, only for it to bounce off and reveal a noticeable warp in the metal.

Once again, nothing. Nothing. He can see it come at him, and his natural response to flinch triggers, but it's as if nothing has hit him at all.

Peter's pretty sure an entire moon could hit him and he wouldn't even register the impact.

"Mr. Stark, you're -- this is --"

Peter can't seem to stop sputtering.

"-- it's amazing, I can't believe you made this!"

Tony merely shrugged as he approached, as if his newest in a long line of technical marvels was not just that. "She's fresh out of the shop, this one."

Tapping the core mounted on the armor's chest, a few moments later and Tony was standing face to face with Peter in his hoodie.

"That's the essence of engineering, kid. You never stop." He tossed the shelf to the side. If he needed to apologize to someone later on, he would. It'd be half assed, but he would. "How's Karen doing these days?"

Peter looks down as the suit transforms back into hoodie. He gives it a light tug, as if testing its tensile strength.

He really hopes that he can be as good at engineering as Tony some day.

"Oh, Karen?" Peter looks up from the soft glow of the reactor. "She's great," he says. "I don't wear the suit much anymore, but sometimes I put on the mask just to talk to her."

"What you do all day if not spending it in the suit?" Tony shifted his weight to his other leg, lazily resting his hands on his hips amidst the wreckage. "Living out the life of a Friendly Neighborhood Captive High Schooler?"

He flipped his sunglasses open, pushing them back over his eyes. Even if he certainly felt more awake now, he wasn't confident he looked it.

"Yeah, basically," Peter admits. "I take lessons from some of the adults here. I run errands sometimes, work on projects, read... I watch a lot of really old movies, too. You ever see Bladerunnner?"

"Uh, only me and every other Gen Xer out there." Tony gave him a firm pat on the arm, nodding for him to strip. "I see you're discovering fine cinema. Some Norse Gods here haven't even seen The Shining. Can you believe that?"

His mind briefly went back to Thor and the night before. That line of thought made him ache, somehow, and he quickly shut it out of mind. "So errands, projects, reading, movies, dating... That's the life, kid."

Peter stops himself from admitting that he hasn't seen The Shining, either.

"Uh, yeah," Peter says. "Sometimes." He takes a breath. He should probably bring this up, right? Better for him to find out here than in the journal.

"I have a kid, too. She's new."

Tony drew back a step. If there was one way to get his one-track mind off of getting back his clothes, well, Peter had found it.

"...Uh-huh."

After he got out the initial 'YEESH' face to the adjacent air, he slowly crept back into Peter's space to give his shoulder another, weaker, pat.

"Alright. Girlfriend and a daughter. Congratulations. And, uh... ... Alright, full disclosure, I wasn't anticipating having this conversation with you for another seven, maybe ten years."

It didn't occur to Peter when he said it that Tony might take it to mean that he meant she was his recently-born child.

"No, it's not like that," Peter says quickly. "She's my daughter from the future. Or some other Peter's daughter. She showed up yesterday. Her name's Annie. She's eight."

Peter gives one of the drawstrings a nervous tug. He's just spit out a bunch of words at Tony, but still somehow, his mind is scrambling to fill in the silence that accumulated between the last long string of syllables and now.

"I haven't had vaginal intercourse yet and if I did, I'd wear a condom," he assures him. Peter may or may not have had several adults lay this into him the moment they discovered he and Liz were dating.

But like before, he doesn't realize what he's saying until it's already said. His face was already reddening before, but now even his ears are getting a little red.

Peter wants to drop dead right there.

"Oh, alright, well of course." Tony repeated over Peter's babbling, tossing up his hands. This was the reality they were living in now, and he was just going to have to accept it.

"Safe sex, very good. Kid from the future. Gotcha. Alright. That's... ...better?" His hands flopped back down at his sides. "Honestly, I thinking this hotel was a long fever dream, but I don't think my mind could have made this bit up."

The red in his face and in his ears is slowly beginning to subside.

"Until she showed up, I wasn't sure that I'd ever get to have a family," Peter says, nervously tugging a little more on the cord. "Now it kinda feels like maybe someday it's possible."

Peter's words resonated in the heart of Tony, whether the kid knew it or not. He wasn't certain how much of it showed on his face, but he felt a small ember of pride. Covetous, perhaps, but pride.

"You're about to get your practice in. That's for damn sure." Tony chuckled, but it was purely baffled. "Never a great way to ask this, exceptional circumstance aside. How do you know she's yours?"

"She showed up at my door and she asked if I was Peter Parker. And then when I said yes, she asked if I was Spider-Man. And when I said yes to that, she told me I was her father."

And if that's not evidence enough...

"She has the same powers I do," he says. "So if she's not actually my-my kid, there's a chance that any kids I have might have powers, too."

On paper, that was some pretty damning evidence. Without meeting this kid first, however, Tony somehow still felt doubtful. He merely shrugged.

"Fair enough. Follow up question." He suddenly took stock of their surroundings, nodding for Peter to follow him out. Somehow, a trashed souvenir shop didn't feel like the best place to have this discussion. "What are you doing for her now?"

"Well, I took off her inhibitor bracelet," Peter starts. "I know it's weird, but it was built almost exactly as I would have thought to build it." That'd been part of why he'd been pretty convinced Annie might have really been his-his. "I don't have that tech knowledge now, but looking at it, everything just kind of snapped into place for me."

Peter follows after Tony.

"She stayed in my room last night," he says. "She couldn't sleep and then she had a nightmare and she was up on the ceiling, so I went up there to get her down."

Peter thinks. "I showed her how to use the dishwasher and I'm going to help her with her laundry, too."

"Follow up to the follow up." Tony held up a finger in Peter's direction after hearing him out, stepping over a fallen decorative saltshaker display. "Ah. What are you doing for you?"

There was something darkly disturbing to Tony as writing off Peter's attempts at fatherhood as "cute." He was handling it with as much responsibility (and far less panic than he might have expected, dare he said) as he'd expect from the boy, but there were so many things that could simply get lost.

As they make their exit, Peter looks over at Tony, perplexed. "What do you mean?"

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