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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"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?"

Tony gestured as if the remark was self-explanatory. "Kid from the future? Who you're now the primary caregiver of? Kind of a bombshell."

That was putting it mildly. If one of the many nameless women from Tony's past showed up to drop that bomb on him, he would have no way of saying for sure how he'd cope. And he was a much older man of means.

"I don't think it's going to be just me looking after her," Peter says. At least he hopes so. And then he sort-of feels bad for hoping so. Alec and a few others had at least made the point that it took an inn to raise a child.

"I think it just helps her to be around someone she sort-of knows." Even if it's not certain that he's really her father. And even though he's much younger than he is.

Tony regarded Peter with naked concern as he spoke, their slow strides in time with each other as they created distance between themselves and their spot of reunion.

"Can you make me a promise? Right now."

Peter gives Tony his full attention.

"Mm?"

"This is not me trying to undermine you, before you start complaining." Getting the two around a lonely corner, Tony brought Peter back to face him.

"This is adult stuff, alright? So I'm going to treat you like one."

When Peter blinks at that, it becomes abundantly clear that he's perplexed. He's not really sure what's about to happen or how he should respond, but he still manages an uneasy "Okay" anyway.

Watching Peter shuffle so nervously, Tony had to sigh at himself. All that build up for what was quite a simple sentiment. So much happening, so little time, and he still hadn't found a way to take the edge off.

"Alright, not so much of a promise from you to me. Just a sentiment. Less pressure. I'm just saying...I'm here." Quite literally, now. And he wasn't going anywhere (for better or worse).

Peter smiles. It's hard for him not to feel relieved.

"I know, Mr. Stark," he says. And even though Tony wasn't explicit, he knew exactly what he meant. If he needed anything, he could count on him to help.

It was something Peter knew for a long time.

Peter shifts where he stands, and for a second it looks like his nervousness is beginning to resurface. Peter has to say it before he loses his nerve, and he knows that even though it may seem like it came out of nowhere, now was a good time to say it.

"Do you remember much about the time the Hammer Drones attacked Stark Expo?"

Peter's not sure if he does. In the heat of combat there were details he lost track of until he had Karen replay then for him. Even with his special goggles there were times where it felt like he had sensory overload, and all he could do was focus on his end goal.

"Queens. Yeah." Tony made no attempt to stifle the roll of his eyes, and even that felt too good for the likes of Justin Hammer.

"Weird question to ask when we were just having a moment. Let's keep it above at least fifty percent of a moment."

"Um," Peter begins. "I was there with my parents that day and I'd gotten separated from them. I was so excited about all everything that was going on that I just wandered off, and when things started going haywire, I didn't even stop to think about the danger I was in."

That was pretty par for the course for Peter, even now. Maybe he'd gotten a little bit better about it, but even now, Peter didn't stop to think about the danger until after the danger had already passed.

"You were looking out for me then too," he says. "Even before you knew who I was."

Peter looks down and runs a hand through his hair. He's not really sure why he said that or why it felt important to say it to begin with. But even though they butted heads sometimes (and probably would butt heads again in the future), Peter knew that Tony was watching out for him -- even if he didn't do it in quite the way Peter hoped he would.

That, Tony hadn't expected. He should have made a logical leap, considering the location and where Peter's interests fell, but somehow it didn't come together until the moment Peter said it.

"...Huh." He tossed Peter a half-smile that touched his eyes. "Classic Peter."

"I was... kinda a big Iron Man fan," Peter says, feeling embarrassed about saying it.

Though to be fair, who wasn't? In elementary school, almost everyone had a superhero-themed backpack.

Back then, Peter just wanted to be like him. That hadn't changed.

Tony looked between Peter's face and his chest--suddenly reaching out and tapping the arc reactor he still bore on his chest, letting the armor envelope his protege's form.

"And look at you now. A natural."

As much as Peter tries to hide his smile out of embarrassment, he completely fails at it. He's always been a bit of an open book, and now is no exception. He's just grateful right now that Tony can't see it.

Peter rubs his arm.

"Yeah, maybe," he finally manages to get out. "I think it'll be awhile before I catch up with you, though."

Peter taps the arc reactor, then thinks about the suit he wanted to make. He told Liz that he didn't feel like he could ever make anything up to snuff with Tony's tech and it should have felt like that now, especially after he showed him the nanotech. But now, he felt galvanized to try himself with whatever tools he found here.

"Well. Clearly." With another, firmer, pat on the chest adjacent to the arc reactor, Tony nodded expectantly. "I really will need that back. I've barely said hi to anyone and I've got a few people giving me the stink eye. No suit, and all this build up just for me to up dead and mounted over some guy with a grudge's fireplace?"

Whether that was true or not, he felt it. Aside from Peter and Thor, there were hardly any familiar faces, but he couldn't help the sense that he should have known more folks than he did.

Peter nods and pulls the hoodie off, then offers it back to Tony.

"Yeah," he agrees. "It'd be good for you to speak with everyone." When he first arrived here, he didn't have anyone. But he ended up meeting a lot of people and making a lot of friends.

"I'm sure a people have already answered your questions, but if you have anything else that comes up, you can come to me," Peter says, trying hard to sound casual.

Tony pulled his prized article of clothing right back over his own head, stroking his hair back into something resembling a presentable shape once it was ruffled.

"I'd ask if you got a spare bed, but far be it from me to intrude on your time with your cutie."

"I share a room with someone else already," Peter says, watching Tony groom himself. "He's been staying with me for a couple of months now. Sometimes, the rooms just decide to move people into other rooms."

Which was exactly what happened with Alec.

Tony squinted hard at that particular concept. While he was eager for a one-way ticket out of his current lodging, the idea of having to share a room to do it wasn't much more appealing. True, he had already made an appeal to Thor over this very issue, but he backpedaled just as quickly. There were some barriers of intimacy he wasn't ready to cross, even with longtime allies.

"I'll, uh, keep that in mind." He rubbed a building knot of tension out of the side of his neck.

Dear God, what if the hotel spontaneously decided he was better off making roomies with someone else? That spelled danger, especially on a primal level. He loved Pepper with all his heart, and he was growing lonelier by the day. He'd done some menu browsing since becoming happily committed, but never once ordered. For what precious scraps of integrity he had left, all external temptation was to be avoided.

Even now, there's some part of Peter that can't believe that this is happening. He'd been here for just over a year and suddenly, there were people here that he knew or knew him, and it was everything that he hoped for. Even before people started showing up, he hadn't felt as isolated as he did those first few days in a very long time.

But seeing Quill (who knew him, but who he didn't know), Thor (who he knew, but didn't know him), and Tony (who knew him and who he knew) made him realize how much he really missed home and the people in it. And while on some level, logically he knew that he missed Ned and May and Tony and all of his Decathlon friends, there was a part of himself that had to distance himself emotionally from that so it wouldn't be so painful. But now, seeing Tony again, Peter was suddenly realizing how painful it was to be without those people, even if he didn't acknowledge it.

Peter wanted life as it was to continue. He wanted to be Spider-Man, to meet Quill some day that wasn't in some bizarre pocket universe inn. He wanted to become an Avenger and then be one instead of being told by someone else that that he was. He even wanted to fight Thanos, because how else could he prove himself?

Peter points to the stairs. "I'm, uh, I'm gonna go up to my room," he says. He's not precisely sure how to leave this conversation. He wants to hug Tony again, but he knows that Tony isn't the huggy type and one teary hug already seemed like too much.

"See you!"

Peter jogs off, half-turning to give Tony one final wave right before he scrambled up the stairs.

Peter hoped that he wasn't too awkward.

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[Tony, Peter, Liz] - Reunion

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