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Two weeks after Tony Stark died, there’s a knock on May Parker’s door.
When she answers, there’s an unfamiliar man in a gray suit so bland he could only be a lawyer.
He gives her a small smile and says, “Ma’am, I’m here to discuss Tony Stark’s will.”
She slams the door in his face.
He comes back half an hour later, armed with coffee, pastries, and Pepper Potts.
“May,” Pepper greets warmly, a pained smile on her pale face. Her makeup is flawless and May feels guilty about the mascara tracks down her cheeks.
“Pepper,” she says, wiping at her face. “Come in.”
She calls Peter from his room, and knows by the look of dread on his face that he’s been listening in.
They settle in the living room, Pepper graciously dispersing the high-end baked goods on May’s chipped plates without any hesitation or distaste in her features. She hands Peter a raspberry Danish, his favorite, without asking what he wants, and May softens towards this intrusion. It’ll hurt, but it hurts Pepper, too, so she can’t complain.
The lawyer introduces himself as Robert Sharp, gets the formal jargon over with, and then turns to Peter.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Peter,” he says, and he sounds sincere. “Mr. Stark talked about you often.”
Peter nods shyly, burrows further into May’s side. She holds his hand and resists the urge to kick the lawyer out again. Couldn’t Pepper just tell them? It would be so much better from her.
“As such, he has several benefits for you listed in his will. First, a college fund set up in your name, sufficient to cover eight years at any college of your choice. Second, this collection of brochures to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” Peter snorts into May’s shoulder, reaching out and taking the stack of glossy MIT handouts Mr. Sharp had pulled out of his bag. Pepper’s lips twitch into a smile.
“Third,” Mr. Sharp continues, “twenty-five percent of Mr. Stark’s shares to Stark Industries. He has noted here that his stock portfolio managers will continue to handle these until you are twenty-one. Fourth, he has named you the director of the September Foundation, and all associated charities and scholarship funds. This is a position that you will take up at the age of twenty-five. I have quite a lot of literature and directions written up for you at my office, I’ll make sure you get them.”
Peter’s practically hyperventilating now. His eyes are so full of tears, May is sure he can’t see.
Robert hesitates, looking at Pepper for a moment. Her own eyes are a little glassy, but she nods for him to continue.
“Fifth, all the Iron Man suits that have not already been donated, as well as all the land, facilities, and materials associated with the team known as the Avengers. Again, these are to be claimed at the age of twenty-five, unless, and I’m quoting here, ‘unless he has need of them sooner, but he better not have need of them sooner.’”
Peter sobs. He buries his face in his hands, his shoulders shuddering. May rubs his back.
“Are we done?” she asks.
“Not quite,” Robert says, looking apologetic. “The last items listed for Peter are… DUM-E, U, and Butterfingers. There’s no explanation, but I’m sure Mr. Parker knows what he means.”
Peter sniffs, nodding.
“Great.” May stands, ready to shoo Robert the Lawyer out the door so she can comfort her mourning nephew. “Now that that’s all taken care of…”
“Actually, Mrs. Parker, you’re listed as a beneficiary as well.”
She sits. Mostly because she’s lost feeling in her legs. “I’m in there?”
Robert nods. Pepper smiles patiently.
“Ok, well… read on, then,” she waves a hand at him, feeling sick to her stomach. She doesn’t want anything. She doesn’t want to benefit from Tony’s death.
“Alright. To May Parker, the amount thirteen years of school in New York City costs.” May blinks at Robert the Lawyer, then at Pepper who’s mouth is pursed in a thin line to keep from crying, then back to Robert.
“What?” She asks, her face flushing.
“There’s a note he requested I give you upon reading that,” Robert adds, digging once again in his bag. It’s just a little slip of paper, with Tony’s handwriting on it, familiar from notes about picking up Peter, or dropping off Peter’s backpack when he forgot it at Tony’s.
I know Peter isn’t my son, but he’s as good as. If I had met him as a child I would have insisted on paying for his schooling—taking care of a genius is no cheap task. You’ve done so much for him, May. Let me do this much for you.
May clenches her jaw, pulls Peter a little closer to her.
“What if I don’t want it?” May blurts out. She doesn’t want any of it, knows Peter doesn’t either. They would turn down every cent if they could have Tony back.
Mr. Sharp smiles. “Mr. Stark was very careful. The money has already been moved into your account. You can choose to not use it, I suppose, but it is yours.”
There are a few more technicalities they suffer through, paperwork and things they’ll have to fill out at some point. Then Pepper is wadding up the trash from their, mostly abandoned, treats and taking it to the trash in the kitchen. She brushed off her pencil skirt, then smiles and May and Peter again.
“Just so you know, I’m renting out the floor just below the penthouse of the Tower. Just half of it, mind, the other half is Tony’s lab.” Her mouth thins again when she Tony’s name, and she takes a deep breath before she continues. “I thought you might be interested, now that you’re a little… more secure, financially. Here’s the listing information.” She hands May a paper with a web address on it.
“It was good to see you both,” Pepper says as she leaves.
Peter pulls out his second-hand laptop, types in the address.
The listed price is exactly the same as their current apartment’s monthly rent. May scoffs, pulls her sleeves over her hands and curls up in the corner of the couch, watching over Peter’s shoulders.
There are two other bids on the apartment, which they get to see because this is so obviously a ploy.
The names are Charlotte Webber and Sheila and Bob Tolkien.
Peter stays frozen for a second as he looks at the not-at-all-subtle hints that this apartment was for them and them only. Then he starts laughing. Then he starts crying.
May closes his laptop, takes it off his lap, and pulls him into her arms.
“We’ll go get moving boxes in the morning,” she says. Peter nods against her shoulder, shaking with sobs.
Peter doesn’t go into the lab that shares their floor for a month after moving in. It’s a big adjustment, from their cramped two-bedroom, seventh floor walk up, to the sweeping space of the penthouse of one of the tallest skyscrapers in New York.
When he does finally key in his code, the lab lights up. Tony’s bots wake up, beeping at Peter sadly.
“Peter,” FRIDAY greets. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Peter wanders around the space in a daze. He settles in his usual chair, leaving Tony’s space untouched.
“FRIDAY, do you… do you run yourself? Do diagnostics and everything?”
“Yes, though Boss usually goes through my code every month, just to make sure I’m running correctly and there are no security breaches.”
“Right.” He pauses. “I’m… I’m not that good at coding. You’d have to teach me what to look for.”
“I can do that,” FRIDAY says.
“And for my suit. I need to know how to keep Karen running.”
“I can do that, too,” she assures him.
Peter spends a lot of time with Pepper. They carry on with Friday night dinners, Sunday night movie marathons, just like they had when Tony was alive. They preserve his memory together, kept between the two people who loved him most in the world. Peter feels less alone on those nights.
May joins them most of the time, unless she’s working. It’s a bit like having two moms, sometimes. They both nag him about sleeping, being careful on patrol, they both feed him third helpings at every meal.
Pepper’s care is different from Tony’s. She’s quiet where he was loud, vocal when he would have been silent. But she does care, just like he had.
It’s not the same. But it’s ok.
When he goes to enter the lab, way past his curfew for the third time that week, FRIDAY doesn’t open the door.
“FRI?” he asks.
“I’m sorry, Peter. I am not allowed to let you in at night more than twice a week. It’s part of the ‘I want you to be better’ protocol.”
He goes on patrol instead. He’s sleep deprived and blinking back tears and sloppy. He mutes Karen, turns off his phone.
When he inevitably gets hurt, he swings one-handed all the way back to the tower. Instead of his open window, he climbs a little higher, crawls in through the bathroom window on Pepper’s floor.
That’s where Pepper finds him, sitting in his bloody suit in her bathtub, his mask off, one of her hand-towels pressed against his side.
He’s crying. As soon as she sees him, she starts crying too.
“Oh, Peter,” she sighs. She gets the first-aid kit, then climbs into the bathtub with him.
She takes care of his cut first, sniffling all the while as she dabs antiseptic through the torn suit. Then she pulls his head onto her shoulder and holds him.
“He wouldn’t want this,” she hiccups while Peter sobs into her t-shirt. “He wouldn’t want you going out and getting hurt like this.”
Peter gasps for enough breath to say, “I don’t know how to fix the suit. I ruined it and I don’t know how to fix it.”
He’s crying like a child, loud choking sobs ripping through him. Pepper runs her hand through his hair like she’s trying to comfort him, but she’s crying, too.
“It’s ok.” He can barely understand the words through her tears. “He would just want you to be alright. He never cared about the suit. It’s ok.”
Peter feels like Tony died all over again.
No amount of soothing can make him stop crying. He wants to cry until he falls asleep, and wake up with Tony in his bed, like he used to after a nightmare.
“Peter?” he hears May ask. FRIDAY must have woken her up.
“May,” he whimpers, holding out one hand. He wants her to hold him, too, wants the two of them to wrap their arms around him so tightly that he stops feeling like he’s falling apart.
She clambers into the bathtub, too, and there really isn’t room for her, but they sit there together, a knot of messy, crying people.
“I ripped the suit,” Peter confesses to May. She, like Pepper, understands what he’s really saying. This was the last thing Tony did for him, there were hours and hours of Peter and Tony in the lab built into that suit, and he’d damaged it.
“We’ll figure out how to fix it,” she promises him, pressing kisses to his temple.
Peter sobs again.
“Peter,” Pepper whispers. He looks up at her, her face blurry through his tears. “He loved you so much.”
May’s arm reaches across him, takes Pepper’s hand and squeezes it. Peter closes his eyes again and lets himself cry, held between these two women who love him.