Nobody’s Child

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/51928723.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Fandoms: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iron
Man (Movies)
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Mary Parker/Tony Stark, Aunt May Parker &
Peter Parker, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Characters: Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Aunt May Parker (Marvel), Obadiah Stane,
Pepper Potts
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's
Biological Child, Kid Peter Parker, Teen Peter Parker, Tony Stark Has
Issues, Guilty Tony Stark
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2023-11-30 Words: 2,482 Chapters: 1/?
 Nobody’s Child
by Flurrbee

Summary

Mary Parker was beautiful, brilliant, and enjoyed an active social life. When she died
tragically, she left behind a young son with no known father. The boy goes to live with an
uncle and aunt.

Tony Stark adamantly insists he isn’t the father of Mary’s son and declines to take a paternity
test. Years later, Tony meets Peter Parker again and wonders if he’s been wrong all these
years.

Tags to be updated as chapters are added.

The first time Tony met Mary Parker was at a scientific conference.

He originally hadn’t wanted to attend, but Obadiah Stane had encouraged him to go. The
conference was on December 16, the anniversary of his parents’ deaths and always a difficult
day for him. Obie thought the conference would be a good distraction. Plus Tony had been
invited to give the keynote speech. To make Obie happy, he went and gave a presentation
about the future of artificial intelligence. It was a brilliant speech, if he said so himself.

Tony was immediately stunned by Mary’s beauty. She had dark wavy hair, sharp blue eyes,
and a petite curvy figure. Of course he had heard about Mary’s reputation, or rather both her
reputations - professional and personal. Professionally, she was said to be a brilliant scientist,
passionate about her work, and quickly rising to the top of her field. On the personal side,
Tony had heard that she was witty, kind, and promiscuous, enjoying the company of men. All
of which appealed to Tony greatly.

But all the gossip had failed to accurately describe just how incredibly gorgeous she was. He
tried not to stare too hard as he was introduced to her during the evening social hour.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mary. I’ve heard about your groundbreaking work in the field of
genetics.” He turned up the charm.

Mary gave him a smile that was both sweet and seductive. It took his breath away. “Thank
you, Tony. I enjoyed your presentation on AI. How long do you think it will be before your
monstrosities take over the world and enslave us humans?”

And she was sassy too. Tony was completely smitten. “Oh, probably a couple of years. I
still need to make some advancements to their programming.”

Mary laughed. It was a beautiful sound. “Well, it’s nice to know that we insignificant little
humans have some time left.”

Tony let his eyes rake over her body before he met her gaze. “I doubt anyone could ever
consider you insignificant.”

Mary looked pleased by his remark. “Shall we get a drink? I’m parched,” she asked as she
took his arm.

They ended up leaving the social hour early and didn’t make it to the banquet that night. But
that was fine. Tony much preferred the intimate evening they shared in his hotel room. She
was a very welcome distraction indeed.

————-

It was five years before he ran into Mary Parker again. They only had the one night together,
but Tony thought of it often. It had honestly been one of the best nights of his life.

He looked for her at other conferences over the years, but somehow it seemed like he always
just missed her. Still, he kept up with the news about her career. She was still brilliant and
successful at her work, even if she made the poor decision (in his opinion) to work for
Hammer Industries.

Her personal reputation was somewhat at odds. On the one hand, it was said that she was still
playing the field. On the other hand, he heard she was living with Richard Fitzpatrick, a
biochemist who also worked at Hammer Industries. Tony didn’t know which was right.

Finally he ran into her at a science expo in New York City. They met up during the party in
the evening. Mary was as beautiful as ever, maybe even more beautiful than years before.
She boldly greeted him with a kiss.

“It’s very good to see you again, Tony,” she said as she pulled away.

“It’s great to see you, Mary. Do you think of me often?” he asked flirtatiously.

Mary chuckled, “As a matter of fact, I do.” Tony beamed at that.

They grabbed a couple of drinks from a passing waiter.

“So, are you busy after this?” Mary asked suggestively.

Tony pretended to be aghast. “Mary Parker, are you propositioning me?”

Mary gave him that sweet, seductive smile. “Is it working?”

“I heard that you’re living with Richard Fitzpatrick. Is that true?” he asked carefully.

“Yes, it’s true. What about it?”

“You want to spend the night with me, but you’re living with another man. You don’t think
that’s a problem?” Tony asked. He generally tried not to break up established relationships.
That was always more trouble than it was worth.

Mary laughed. “Richard is gay. We’re close friends and roommates.”

“What? You mean like that TV show, Will & Grace?”

She giggled. “Something like that. Not exactly, but close. Richard and I have been best
friends since college. When we both moved to New York we found that we could rent a much
nicer apartment together than either of us could afford separately. So it just made sense to
move in together.”

Tony smiled widely, reassured by her explanation. “In that case, what are we waiting for?”
he asked as he offered her his arm.

“We’ll need to go to my place,” Mary said as they walked through the ballroom. “I have
something that can’t be left unattended all night.”

“An experiment?” Tony asked. “Do you have your own genetics lab in your apartment?”
Mary smirked. “Something like that.”

“Richard can’t keep an eye on it for you?”

“He’ll be out until late.” Mary nodded her head to indicate a corner of the room. Tony turned
and saw Richard Fitzpatrick with his arm around a very handsome man. They were
obviously very taken with each other.

He turned back to Mary and grinned. “No problem. We’ll go to your place.”

After a short cab ride, Mary led him into a nicely furnished modern apartment.

“Mary, you’re back,” a middle aged woman greeted them. “Did you have a nice time?”

Mary pulled some money from her purse and handed it to the woman. “Yes, I did. Any
problems here?”

The woman shook her head, “No. everything was great. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” She
glanced at Tony knowingly and added, “Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

After the woman left and Mary locked the door, Tony asked, “What was that about?”

“I told you, I have something that can’t be left unattended,” she reminded him lightly.

“Oh, yes. Your great experiment. So is she your assistant or something? Do you want to tell
me what you’re working on?”

An odd look passed over her face briefly. “You wouldn’t be interested,” she said lightly.

He was curious why she said that and about the strange expression he had seen on her face.
But then she kissed him passionately, and all other thoughts flew out of his mind.

Mary led him to the first door down the hallway, which was obviously her bedroom. “Why
don’t you get comfortable?” She kissed him again and gently pushed him onto the bed. “I’ll
be back in just a minute.”

Tony watched as she walked out of the room. He quickly undressed and got settled on the
bed. It was going to be another great night.

—————

Tony woke in the middle of the night, a bit disoriented. Slowly, he remembered where he
was. He rolled over and saw Mary. She was absolutely beautiful.

He knew he wouldn’t get back to sleep. For a moment, he thought about waking Mary and
going another round, but she looked so peaceful in her sleep, he couldn’t bring himself to do
it.

He quietly got out of the bed and made his way to the kitchen. To his surprise, the light was
already on. A small child was sitting at the kitchen table, eating cereal and playing with a half
dozen plastic dinosaurs. The boy had brown curly hair and brown eyes, with a fair
complexion. He wore footed pajamas with drawings of robots all over them.

“Hi,” the little boy greeted Tony in a small voice, just above a whisper. “Do you want some
cereal?”

“Sure,” Tony replied. It wasn’t really what he had been looking for, but it sounded like a
good suggestion. He sat down at the table.

The little boy got up, climbed on top of the kitchen counter and opened a cabinet to get
another bowl. He jumped down to the floor and grabbed a spoon from the drawer before
returning to set both items down before Tony.

A box of Cheerios and a jug of milk were already on the table.

“Who are you?” Tony asked as he poured himself a bowl of cereal and added milk.

“I’m Peter,” the boy replied, with his mouth full. He rearranged the dinosaurs while he
chewed.

“I’m Tony,” he told the kid. The boy just nodded. He didn’t seem the least bit alarmed by a
strange man appearing in his kitchen at two o’clock in the morning.

“How old are you, Peter?” Tony asked. He wasn’t even sure why he was interested. It just
seemed like a question adults were supposed to ask children.

“I’m four,” the boy replied.

“What are you doing up?” Certainly a child his age should be asleep this time of night.

Peter shrugged. He twirled his spoon around with his fingers, causing some milk to drip on
the tabletop. Tony watched for a moment. He had a sudden memory of his mother doing the
same motion with a pen. It was a nervous habit of hers.

Finally the boy said quietly, “Sometimes I just can’t sleep.” His brown eyes seemed huge.

Tony nodded. He understood how that went. “Yeah? Me too. What do you do when you
can’t sleep?”

Peter shrugged. “I eat cereal and play with toys.” He looked up at Tony and timidly asked,
“what do you do when you can’t sleep?”

“Same thing.”

“Really?” The boy’s eyes went wide.

“Yeah. But by ‘eat cereal’, I mean drink whiskey. And by ‘play with toys’, I mean rebuild a
car engine. But you know, same idea.”

Peter looked at him, fascinated. “How do you rebuild a car engine?”

Tony chuckled, “Well, first you have to take it apart. Then you put it back together, but with
improvements.”

Peter’s eyes were huge. “You can take car engines apart?”

Tony could see the wheels turning in the little boy’s head. Uh no. “Don’t…uh… don’t do
that. Start with something small, like a toaster.”

Peter nodded. “Okay. Or maybe the vacuum cleaner.”

“So, you like dinosaurs and robots?” He asked tentatively, hoping to get the kid thinking
about something other than destroying household appliances.

The child gave him a grin. “I like all sorts of things! Dinosaurs and robots and volcanoes and
DNA molecules!”

Tony chuckled, “So, just everything science?”

“I love science!” Peter agreed enthusiastically. “Do you like dinosaurs?”

“Uh, sure,” Tony replied. He didn’t think much about dinosaurs these days, but he
remembered being interested in them as a little kid.

Peter launched into a ramble about dinosaurs and the latest research on how they had gone
extinct. He knew a lot more than Tony would have expected from a four year old. The man
found himself actually enjoying the conversation. Something about it just felt right.

Suddenly the door to the apartment opened and a man walked in. It took Tony a moment to
recognize Richard Fitzpatrick. The other man looked tired, but happy.

“Hi, uhm, you’re Tony, right?” Richard seemed a little startled, but recovered quickly. Tony
nodded in greeting.

Hey squirt,” Richard looked at the boy with a genuine smile. “What are you guys doing up?”

Tony answered, “Oh, I was just having a late-night snack with… your son?”

The other man chuckled. “Pete’s not my son. He’s Mary’s bastard.” Despite his word choice,
his voice was affectionate. Richard moved around the table to ruffle Peter’s hair. “But I help
out when I can.”

Peter looked up at Richard and smiled. “Tony and I are having Cheerios and talking about
dinosaurs.”

“Of course,” Richard seemed amused. “But I think you should be heading back to bed now. If
the two of you are done, that is.”

Peter looked at Tony questioningly. Tony looked into Peter’s brown eyes and was
momentarily stunned by the familiarity of them. Then he recovered and gave a nod.
“We’re good here. We’re done.”

Richard agreed. “All right, off to bed then.” His words were directed to the child, but he was
watching Tony carefully.

Peter slid off his chair and scooped up his little dinosaurs, attracting Richard’s attention. He
shook his head. “No. Leave those here. You don’t need them in bed with you.”

Peter frowned. “But I had a bad dream. And there could be monsters under the bed.”

Richard gave the boy a sympathetic look. “I’ll be there soon to check for monsters. Leave the
toys. Go on, it’s fine.” His voice was gentle.

Reluctantly, Peter set the toys back on the table. He turned to Tony and scolded, “Don’t steal
my dinosaurs!”

Tony was completely taken aback while Richard laughed outright. Before Tony could even
reply, the child had disappeared down the hallway.

Richard cleaned up the kitchen. He put the bowls and spoons in the sink, put away the milk
and cereal, then wiped down the table. As he did so, he asked Tony about the latest research
in AI and the two had a brief, but friendly chat on the subject.

After a few minutes, Richard yawned. “I’m going to check on Pete and then head to bed. See
you in the morning.”

Tony murmured a noncommittal response.

“Oh and Tony, don’t steal Pete’s dinosaurs!” Richard joked as he headed down the hall.

Tony quietly went back to Mary’s bedroom. Suddenly he felt awkward about the entire
situation. He knew that Mary and Richard weren’t a couple. But they shared a functioning
household. And they were raising a child together. A child who apparently was Mary’s, not
Richard’s. So who was Peter’s father? It didn’t really matter - Mary was known for having an
active social life. The boy’s father could be anyone.

It was all too much for Tony to deal with. It was time to get out of there. He put on his
clothes, gathered his belongings and quietly headed for the door.

As he passed through the kitchen, he saw Peter’s plastic dinosaurs on the table. He
remembered Peter seriously telling him not to steal them and Richard jokingly repeating
that.

Normally, it would never occur to Tony to take a child’s toy. But somehow the command to
not steal them had the opposite effect. He had an overwhelming urge to take one of the garish
little things.

Impulsively, he reached out and grabbed a yellow and orange triceratops. He slipped it into
his pocket and left the apartment.
A quick cab ride had him back at his hotel in no time.

As he undressed, he tossed the little plastic dinosaur into his suitcase, along with his rumpled
suit. Then he laid down in the bed and stared at the ceiling until he fell into a fitful sleep.
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