Work Text:
“High heels, M&Ms and a wrench. That’s your answer. For the perfect murder kit,” Tony said decisively, looking incredibly pleased by his answer.
Peter spluttered. “What the hell would you use the M&Ms for?”
He was quite amused by the idea of seeing Tony kill someone wearing high heels. Not that it would be the first time he’d seen the man in high heels—there were dozens of images of him from his mid-twenties wearing various heeled shoes. He still favoured the occasional heeled boot if he had to go to a gala and wanted to seem tall.
It amused Peter to think that there was a genuine possibility that he could tower over Tony, height wise, at some point.
“Mid-murder snack,” Tony told him in response. “I’d assume it would take up quite a lot of energy, committing a crime like that.”
Peter raised his own suggestion again, circling the conversation back to what it had been ten minutes prior, before Tony had started on any of his suggestions for the three items to make up a perfect murder kit. “Okay but….you have to consider that a maraschino cherry might cause a lot of damage.”
Tony let out a sigh. Peter had already given his vision for that one, but Tony hadn’t quite gotten it. “I just fail to see how that would help you kill anyone—”
There was a decisive cough from the door to the lab and they both turned to see Pepper stood at the door, arms crossed, an incredibly unimpressed expression on her face.
Both of their faces turned guilty as they realised she’d been listening to their conversation. They’d both been supposed to be working on the most recent Stark Industries project, but their chatter had derailed slightly.
“Are you seriously plotting how best to kill someone?” Pepper asked.
Peter bit his lip. “It’s a game. What’s the perfect three things for a murder kit. To kill anyone.”
“To which I said there’s no way any three things can kill every single person, murder is subjective, and he told me that’s defeating the object of the game,” Tony retorted.
Peter turned to glare at Tony—they’d had this discussion, and it had taken half an hour to get to the point where Tony had actually given a suggestion. He’d taken that long to decide what the perfect combo would be, and apparently a wrench was all he would need.
But before he could launch into his tirade again, Pepper interjected.
“Okay. Yeah.” She was shaking her head, and pointed to the door of the lab. “Out.”
“But, Pep—” Tony quickly shook his head in protest. “We’re nearly done, it’ll only take—”
“No, if this is what you’ve resorted to talking about…” Pepper sighed. “Then evidently you need to, as the kids would say, touch grass.”
Neither of them could really argue against that.
God, Peter did love Pepper.
She was serious, as well. They packed up the lab for the day and tried to come into the kitchen to relax instead, but were then banned from even residing in there when they continued their murder discussion. She all but shooed them out the door and told them to walk to Central Park for half an hour before they’d be allowed back in the Tower. Pepper even got FRIDAY to agree to that.
“Do we have any M&Ms?” Tony jokingly asked Pepper before they left. “I might need them.”
She sent him another unamused glance, then calmly said, “If you even think about touching my high heels, you’re a dead man walking.”
As they got into the elevator and the doors shut, Tony winked at Peter and whispered, “Guess it’s a good thing I know how to run in heels.”
And then they were off toward the park, strolling down past the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue and into the 840 acres of greenery, chatting about everything from dinner plans for that night to the intricate details of various parts of the Avengers Accords. Peter had been more involved with them than he’d ever thought he would be, because Tony had fallen asleep during the time he was due to give a speech to the UN about it, and as it turned out, the UN staff seemed to like him quite a lot.
Peter frequented Central Park fairly regularly when he was in Manhattan. He liked to visit the turtles, see how they were doing. Wander up to Belvedere castle. Sit on the grass and ponder about life. Of course, it was a nightmare to swing through cause it was so low down, but if he ever wanted a stroll as Peter Parker, it was the place to go.
Besides, sometimes he went crazy living in a city even though it was what he’d been used to all his life, and occasionally you did actually need to touch grass just like Pepper had said.
They entered Central Park keeping their heads down and baseball caps on, every superhero’s favourite inexpensive disguise. Tony didn’t particularly enjoy the general public’s reaction to him, and there would be enough tourists in the Park that he wouldn’t get a second to breathe. Peter was the same—he would get enough people recognising him as the new heir to the company that it would become slightly stifling to deal with, so they kept it low-key. Neither of them had changed out of lab clothes, so they just looked like a pair of typical New Yorkers clad in oil-stained jeans and T-shirts.
It was pleasant, to take a moment to just stroll with Tony. He didn’t often get the chance to do that. Peter’s life had been bizarrely chill over the past few weeks, and he wondered for a moment whether this was what normal people lived like. There had rarely been a week over the past few months of his life where something bizarre hadn’t happened. Various Stark Industries emergencies popping up, trips to meet the President, phone calls in class, and of course the occasional superhero fight he had to attend to. His life had become a whirlwind of chaos ever since accepting the heir position.
So it had almost been like a vacation, the nearly two weeks of no incidents. Except of course he still had work and school. Not that those were particularly chores—-Peter enjoyed being productive. It was just in his DNA. Literally. He got antsy if he didn’t do anything, didn’t have a plan for the day.
“Fancy popping into one of the Museums?” Tony nodded as they walked past a sign for the Guggenheim. “We can get in for free, you know.”
Peter grimaced. “You don’t like museums.”
It was true. Tony had been dragged round one too many as a child to have appreciation for culture in that way. That was the reason that Pepper had been in charge of the Stark art collection ever since Tony had inherited it from Maria, his mother.
Tony sent him a silent nod back and they continued on with their outside venture. They were wandering slightly aimlessly, but that was alright.
It was nice to watch the happenings of New York, too. Dog-owners throwing balls for their pets, tourists with their wide eyes as they took in the size of the park, gawking over the big reservoir in the middle of the park. It was bigger than people thought. There were parts of it that Peter himself probably hadn’t explored completely, and again, he’d lived there his whole life.
They wandered onto the Great Lawn, as it was so called, which was essentially a large stretch of field that had baseball pitches on them for the general public to use. Peter naturally scanned the field for any sign of danger, watching in his peripheral vision as Tony did the same. They weren’t looking for flying baseballs like any standard person would be–they were assessing for deathly robots or the like. The mark of a superhero whose fought too many battles. Danger in every situation, however implausible.
Peter’s eyes locked onto a kid with a crop of blond hair who must have been about five, wearing a baseball glove that was obviously too big for him and a white sweatshirt, standing alone in the centre of one of the pitches. There was no parent in sight.
“He looks lost,” Peter pointed to the kid. Tony spared a glance, cocking his head slightly. He paused in his step and took a look around the field, scanning for any potential parents or guardians.
“Give it a few minutes,” Tony decided. “Might have run after their ball, or something.”
They were a good while away from the kid in any case. Best to leave him be if there was nothing wrong. Parents didn’t typically take too well to strangers approaching children, even if said strangers were Iron Man and Spiderman (not that they’d know that).
But as they got closer, and minutes passed by without anyone approaching the child, Tony changed course, evidently set on approaching him. Peter followed suit, sending him a silent query as to whether they were interacting.
“No harm in inquiring, right?” Tony deliberated.
Peter had good vision–he could see that the kid’s eyes were wide, the way one’s got when they were without their guardian and starting to panic, and that his bottom lip was quivering. He put a 50/50 bet that in just under a few minutes that kid would start having a full on meltdown, so, yeah, best to intervene before it got to that point.
Tony approached calmly, and when he got close to the kid he leant down so he was speaking at the same height as the small boy.
“Hey, kid,” He said softly.
Peter had always admired the way Tony dealt with kids. Tony Stark didn’t strike most people as a man that’d be able to interact with children, but he really knew what to say and how to act. It was impressive given how few children he’d had to interact with in his life and also given that he was an only child.
The kid was wary, though, even despite the niceness. “My mommy says I’m not allowed to talk to strangers,” was his instant response, clearly a learned statement.
Tony nodded approvingly. “And she’s very right to say that…but I’m not a stranger, I’m a superhero…do you know the Avengers, kid?”
If anyone else said that, it would have seemed like an incredibly suspicious ploy to get the kid to follow you home. Tony, however, was telling the truth. He was genuinely a superhero.
The kid blinked, seemingly quite perplexed.
“Yeah…” He said slowly.
“‘Well, I’ll let you in on a not very secret secret–I’m Iron Man,” Tony winked, and, for good measure and presumably to show proof, he tapped his watch to show how it could turn into a gauntlet at a moment’s notice.
Peter watched as the kid’s eyes went wide with awe. There was a real-life superhero in front of him. Tony had turned from just some random guy with a weirdly shaped beard to someone that the kid evidently looked up to.
Everyone knew the Avengers, of course. Even five year olds.
“‘Are you really?” The kid whispered.
“I am.” Tony replied gently. “So we’re going to help you find your mom.”
The kid’s eyes fixed onto Peter, slightly wider. “Is he a superhero too?”
Peter almost spluttered at being asked directly, but Tony had it under control.
“No…no, he’s my ward.”
Okay, maybe he didn’t have it under control. Peter shot him a ‘ the fuck?!’ glance.
“He’s my son,” Tony corrected, understanding that first, the kid wouldnt understand the term ‘ward’ and second, that Peter was decidedly not a fan of it. “He’s not a superhero.”
Wowww, Tony. Lying to a child. Such a good look.
“What’s your name, kid?” Tony asked, still bending down. He double tapped his gauntlet to turn it back into his watch again, as to be less intimidating.
“Cody,” the boy said, lip wobbling again.
Tony nodded. “Nice to meet you, Cody, my name is Tony and this is Peter. Can you tell me what happened? How did you lose your mom?”
“We–we came to the park together,” Cody explained. “I wanted to play ball, an’ I know where these ball games are played–so–so I went off to start playin’ but she wasn’t with me an’ now I don’t–I can’t–”
His comprehensibility had slipped rapidly as he started to explain how he’d lost his mom, and his eyes had started to water.
“We’ll find her, kid,” Tony reassured. His confidence was astounding, there was absolutely no wavering in it at all, and that seemed to stop Cody from bursting into tears immediately. “Hey, Cody, do you know your last name?”
“W-Warren,” Cody blinked.
Tony patted him on the shoulder gently and then muttered into his watch, “FRI, would you do me a favour and track the Central Park camera database for a Mrs Warren, preferably the one who’s missing a child?”
“Of course, Boss,” FRIDAY responded instantaneously and set to work hunting. Less than a minute later she’d responded with the location of Mrs Warren–0.3 miles away, about a five minute walk if they were speedy.
Tony took Cody by the hand he wasn’t using to hold the baseball glove and they walked off the Great Lawn toward Mrs Warren’s location. Cody seemed to comprehend that they were going to find his mom after Tony showed him the map of where they were headed and a live picture of his mom, but kept asking questions about where exactly they were going. Tony was very glad that the kid had been so well-trained against wandering off with random strangers.
Soon enough they found the blonde-haired lady who looked the spitting image of her son. Mrs Warren looked stressed, as if she’d lost something important (oh, wait).
Cody tugged on Tony’s sleeve when he recognised her. “That’s my mom!”
Tony called out to her. “Hey, Mrs Warren?”
She turned around to clock who was calling her name, and the relief on her face when she saw Cody was palpable. She rushed over to them.
“Thank you so much, oh, you’re a star. He said he wanted to play baseball but I didn’t think he knew where he was going and definitely didn’t think he’d wander off like that, he’s such a sweet kid, honestly-–holy shit you’re Tony Stark.”
Mrs Warren’s mental processing seemed to break for a minute as she took in the fact that her son was clinging onto the index finger of the billionaire superhero who spent half his life trying to save the world. She probably hadn’t been anticipating to meet Tony Stark on her walk in Central Park.
She blinked, once, twice, turned to Peter too, and the cog of recognition clicked in. “And you’re–you’ve been in the papers too, you’re his kid, the heir, right?”
Peter smiled fondly. “That would be me.”
That was who he was. Tony’s kid. It was nice that that was how people knew him. Just…sweet.
Cody got a few autographs from the pair of them on his baseball glove (there was nothing else to sign) and they played a quick game of catch before letting the Warrens on with their Central Park trip. Mrs Warren tried to insist on giving Tony cash as a thank you, but Tony ardently refused it and told her it was all part of the day job.
Which, in fairness, it kind of was. Peter had returned many a lost loved one to their rightful guardian. Granted, it was normally cats, but still.
Then, with the half an hour of required outdoor time well-up, the pair decided to return back to Stark Tower, hailing a taxi to get there to save them the walk.
“How was Central Park?” Pepper asked when they returned up to the penthouse.
Tony called back, “We helped a lost kid find his mom.”
Pepper raised her eyebrows in amusement. “You can take the friendly neighbourhood superhero out of the suit but you can’t take the duty away from the boy, I guess. Was it all okay in the end?”
Tony grinned. “You could say it was…a walk in the park.”
Pepper groaned at his quip, and shot a glare at Peter as if it was all his fault. “ Please tell me he hasn’t been planning that joke.”
“It was all he talked about on the way back. I can guarantee he’s delighted that he’s gotten to use it.” Peter told her. Tony had in fact spent the entire route back planning about twenty different questions he could use that as a response to.
Pepper just shook her head.
Peter took in a breath, grinning slightly as he turned to face Tony, who looked like he was walking away. “What about that maraschino cherry though?”
“I’m still making my case for the heels,” Tony rebutted, pondering still. “Perhaps the Louboutins that Pep wore for that Gala the other month…”
Pepper let out a sigh. “For the love of god —”
And that was how they spent that evening having an Oxford Style Formal Debate about the perfect murder kit. Tony kept breaking the rules and was therefore was disqualified, much to his horror. Peter had a sneaking suspicion that Pepper had rigged it so it was that way, much like all the debates the Stark family had.
But for once, Peter’s life was relaxing and uncomplicated.
Until of course he got banned from Peru the week after that, but hell, that was a separate matter entirely.