close_to_the_ground | For Mr. Stark

For Mr. Stark - Construction

"Hey Mr. Stark!" Peter calls as he bounds into the apartment. It's construction day and painting day. Or something. Whatever, Peter's in clothes he doesn't mind ruining (that is all of his clothes, honestly) and a pair of sneakers and comes bearing chocolate croissants freshly baked by Greta. He knows Mr. Stark will bitch about the carbs but Peter knows he'll like them. Tony works way too hard not to let himself have something good. Besides, Peter more than owes him. He's responsible for Tony having to ruin a two million dollar suit, having to have his Porsche's interior redone, having to replace all his bedding again and not to mention how much all that medical equipment has to cost.

Anyway, Peter also realizes that with all the drama about The Gardener, Peter's not sure if Tony is taking care of his own health things. Once he'd felt like himself again, Peter couldn't shake that worry. He's not like Peter, he's not just gonna bounce back. Tony doesn't have a Tony to take care of him. He's just got Peter.

"I brought you some food."

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Peter looks up when he realizes Tony is having some kind of weird crises and grins, shoving at Tony's leg with his foot.

"I know you're really generous with your money, Mr. Stark. I mean, my suit alone has to cost more than I'll ever see but that's Spider-Man, you know?" he says, slumping sideways on the couch and stuff a fancy throw pillow under his head.

"Peter Parker just needs normal stuff. And trust me, a brand new graphing calculator that I didn't have to buy from some shady Chinese website is like, Christmas. Plus, used stuff is softer, anyway. Can't stand practically anything but soft cotton with the weird spider sense stuff."

"Please don't order from shady Chinese websites anymore," Tony said, cringing, despite the fact that Peter was, as always, raised too well. Practically all the work was already done, he could handle the future. Maybe.

It was supposedly what Tony Stark did.

"Explains why you like my bed so much." And the suit. It didn't have a weave at all. "God, you're a little weirdo. Never change."

"Ha!" Peter scoffs, not even bothering to raise his head because of how ridiculous Tony's statement is.

"You won't let people hand you things. And your soap costs like a hundred dollars and you won't let me use your knives. You are totally more weird and that is saying something. Because I'm part spider. But you probably shouldn't change, either."

"Yeah, well. When you're rich they spell it 'eccentric.'" He couldn't even argue. He knew he had some tics. What had Nat called it? Right. Compulsive personality traits.

"Pizza's here," PEGGI announced, and Tony nearly fell over himself reaching for his phone. He opened up a holo display window and positioned himself in front of the camera, nudging Peter with his foot to get in the picture.

The pizza delivery guy looked dumbfounded on the other end of the video.

"Yeah, hi. We're too comfortable to come down so I'm going to have to ask you to leave the pizzas with the robot, thank you. Your tip is in his drawer."

Tony had sent down his little white trundling cabinet on wheels, the housekeeping robot, to pick the food up.

Peter crawls over and snickers when he sees the guys face.

"Oh my God why are you like this?" he laughs, giving the pizza guy an apologetic wave. "Sorry, pizza guy. He's serious. Just like, put the pizza on the robot and it'll take it from there."

He ducks out of the frame, smothering his laughter in a pillow.

"Hey, does your robot have a name? It needs one "

Tony watched the confounded delivery guy try to make heads or tails of the robot for another minute, before shutting off the video feed and getting to his feet. He heads to the kitchen first, to get drinks and some Lactaid.

"It doesn't have a name yet. It's one of a series of six. They deliver intra-office supplies and things. Whatever's needed. Toilet paper. New pens. Coffee filters."

They were efficient, but not terribly speedy, and Tony listened fir the elevator to ding past the foyer. He handed Peter a Coke, had gotten himself a dry orange seltzer.

"I'm gonna call him Arthur," Peter decides, sitting up as he takes the coke and turning the volume down a few notches.

"He's a good little robot so he needs a name. Hey, have you ever had a pet? Or were your robots kind of like your pet? I think my parents had a cat but I don't know what happened to it after they died."

"Arthur?" Tony questioned, popping the Lactaid and heading to the elevator to intercept the robot. If it was Arthur, it was Arthur. Who was he to question the kid?

"Thank you, Arthur," Tony said to the little bot, hip height, with shiny white paint and cheery blue indication lights. The robot's readout read YOU'RE WELCOME.

Tony brought the food to the coffee table.

"No. I wasn't allowed pets. According to my dad, we traveled too much, and it would just become Jarvis' job anyway because I liked forgetting about my responsibilities. So no. No pets. But I had DUM-E and U after I headed off to MIT."

Tony didn't call them pets. Because that might be weird. Weird like thanking the robot. Weird like talking to an empty suit.

Edited 2018-07-24 00:43 (UTC)

"That's kind of sad," Peter says, jumping up to grab plates down. May always had strong opinions about Peter sitting around while she got everything ready by herself.

"Maybe you should get one if you want one. I mean, maybe you'd like to have one? You could get a cat and it could sit in the lab and judge you while you work. Or, we could get you a beta fish. Start like, super basic."

"Yes, it's. Very sad," Tony agreed, because when you laid it all out, god, his life sounded depressing and pathetic.

"I don't need a cat, Pete. Or a fish. There are fish in the bird exhibit if I want to see fish."

With a sigh, Tony settled back onto the couch and quickly dragged a slice of pizza onto his plate.

"I'm not cut out for it. I'm fine with robots. Arthur doesn't get sad if you forget to feed him."

"I mean, you're gonna have a teenager probably so it's pretty funny you don't think you can handle a fish," Peter points out, jumping over the back of the couch and plopping down with his plate piled high with pizza slices.

"But yeah, feeding me is gonna be way harder than feeding a cat. Poor May. After the Spider thing our food bill got kind of crazy. Sometimes I'd just have to pretend not to be hungry because she was getting weirded out by how much I ate."

"I can handle a fish. I don't want to handle a fish. In either permutation of that phrase, actually. It's called semantics."

Tony stared at the pile on Peter's plate with mild anxiety. Whatever the kid needed, that was fine, but just thinking about eating that much cheese in one sitting was going to give Tony a stomach cramp.

"And it's very difficult to weird me out. You're safe there."

"Cool, cool so I'll just start handing you things left and right to prove that," Peter laughs, shoving half a piece into his mouth, pulling his legs up just in case any drops.

He just can't imagine this white couch is gonna last long, no matter how hard he tries.

"Hey, you know someone asked me the other day how long I'd known yo so I was explaining but you know, I actually met you when I was a kid? At that Stark expo that went to shit?"

"OK. Don't? If you spazz me out I'm going to be very resentful."

He eyed Peter very seriously for all of a few seconds before he mentioned the Expo. Why would anyone mention the Expo to Tony, ever again. Or maybe it was just Pepper that had ground it in for over a year afterward. He leaned his head back on the sofa and groaned.

"I can't believe you were at Stark Expo on the night Hammer cocked everything up. Christ, you could have died."

"Oh, apparently I totally almost did die," Peter mumbles around a mouthful of crust as he remembers last second to wipe his greasy fingers on his pile of napkins and not like, his pants.

"Got separated from Ben when everything went crazy and one of those robot guys flew up and you or one of your suits showed up and blew the guy to hell. I was a dumb little shit and thought my Iron Man costume was real. But man, I talked about it non stop for a week at school and none of the kids believed me at all."

Tony remembered that, only vaguely, which did sting a little. For him, that day was a revelation and an embarrassment, too much good and too much bad and too many insurance copayments. There hadn't been any lives lost that he'd been made aware of, but that was only by chance. So many other disasters had ended more poorly.

Well, chance and Pepper. She always did handle it.

"The kids at school were snotty little brats. Is that why you put the pajamas on? Decided that was the thing to do?"

"Oh yeah, that really made the kids think I was cool," he snorts, already mostly through his pile of slices and thinking about going over for more.

"Teenagers are super impressed by secret identities you can't tell anyone about. Then you get to be a scrawny nerd but also a scrawny nerd who quit all his extracurriculars for no good reason. But hey, it's kinda cool you saved me when I was little, yeah? Ben and May were so mad but I just thought Iron Man was like, was just it. I was so star struck."

"Do you even taste your food?" Tony wondered, going slightly cross-eyed as Peter entered his fourth slice while he was still working on a first.

"Sorry I can't ... remember much of that. I was having a bad six months." Even out of a bad ten years. You had to pick me as a life goal, too? Sorry for your luck."

Tony gave a snort, chewing on his food, half-watching the television. He usually only half-watched, it was hard to fully engage when his mind wouldn't still.

"Don't be sorry, I didn't think you'd remember," Peter says with a wave of a pizza slice.

"I just thought it was cool. And hey, you're a big reason I wanted to start learning to build things. And I've got no game and no swagger so the bad bits weren't even a possibility. And I look stupid in sunglasses and don't have any facial hair so the building things was really all I could do."

For whatever reason, all of that put together made Tony laugh until his eyes watered a little. He wiped at his face and wheezed.

"You're right. You don't have an ounce of swagger. You're too like Bruce. Shrinking yourself when you should be strutting. Like you're waiting for the bully's fist to fall still, even when you're the bad-assest guy in the room. But you don't need sunglasses and a beard. You've got your own thing. And you're living it."

Peter rolls his eyes but can't help but laugh a little, even if he's pretty sure Mr. Stark is laughing at his expense.

"I don't think I know how to strut even if I wanted to," he agrees, setting his plate down on the coffee table and sprawling back onto the couch. Despite it's size he's managed to get up in Tony's space and knocks his shoulder as he settles.

"Man, I wish I could have met Dr. Banner. That guy was so cool. So smart. It's a toss up between Chem and Engineering for me but that really sweet spot is what you both did. All the crossover with Bio and Chem and Physics and Engineering you guys have in your head between you? Holy shit."

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For Mr. Stark - Construction

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