an: so I don't know about y'all, bu for these "five times" stories. And, let's be real, I wasn't going to sleep tonight anyway so I figured why not. For the newbies—it's just me and a computer and about forty-five minutes of word vomit (sans editor) so apologies in advance for grammar/typos/etc.

five times Peter Parker didn't call Tony Stark 'dad'

...and the one time he kind of did.

1. / The Cherry-Red Porsche 944 Turbo

It was the third Sunday in June.

Happy pulled up to Masy Parker's apartment, audibly cursing at the cars honking behind him as a grinning Peter slid clumsily into the backseat.

He'd offered to walk to the tower, but it was raining outside and Tony had refused.

He'd dealt with the boy enough to know that "walking" really meant putting on a certain red-and-blue suit and swinging across New York, and Stark made it abundantly clear that he would not be held responsible for a fifteen-year-old Spider-kid slipping down the side of the Chrysler Building.

"But Mr. Stark, that's not how it works," Peter had protested.

"How does that song go again? Down came the rain and washed the spider out?"

"But the adhesion means that I—"

"Unh-uh. The nursery rhyme has spoken kid."

Peter knew the rain wouldn't be a problem, especially in his high-tech suit. He also knew Tony knew that. It didn't matter, his mentor wouldn't budge.

He hadn't seen Tony's forehead of security in a while anyway.

"Hey Happy," he said, looking at the man through the rearview mirror.

"You know, I've worked for Tony eleven years now. What does it get me? It gets me put on pick-up duty. Do I look like a yellow school bus to you?"

He was shaking his head, but the barely-there softness in his eyes contradicted his annoyed words.

Peter laughed. "It's good to see you too buddy."

At the Tower, Peter waltzed into the lobby as a voice around him boomed, "welcome, Mr. Parker."

"FRIDAY, how many times do I have to tell you to call me Peter?"

A slightly drenched Happy strolled in behind Peter, shaking the rain from his clothes.

"Welcome, Mr. Grinch."

Happy stuck his middle-finger toward the camera in the wall. "One of these days, Tony, I'm actually going to kill you. And I mean it this time. I'll do it."

Peter followed the familiar hallways to the workshop where Tony was tinkering, a sweaty black tank tee clinging to his back and a welding mask covering his face. He waved at the older man through the glass, motioning for him to let Peter in, but Tony simply shrugged and pointed to the control panel next to the door in a way that said, sorry kid, it's protocol.

Peter rolled his eyes and placed his hand on the pad until it prompted, "voice recognition required."

He took a breath before muttering his password to the pad.

"Voice recognition failed."

He lifted his palm and placed it again before repeating his password, this time just slightly louder.

"Voice recognition failed."

Tony Stark lifted up the mask at this point, watching Peter expectantly.

He placed his palm one more time and stared at the ground as this time he said, audibly, "Itsy Bitsy Spidey."

Tony smiled triumphantly as the doors slid open.

"Glad to see you made it Pete."

Peter just gave a half-hearted glare, "Would it kill you to just open the door for me?"

Tony looked at his protégé incredulously, "what, and risk the security of this facility? You know better than that, safety first and all that jazz."

Meanwhile, Dum-E was still extinguishing a smoking pile of scraps in the corner of the room and about twenty-four different hazardous materials were strewn across the workbench.

He clapped a hand on the back of Peter's shoulder, "okay kid, let's get to work. You have to earn your keep somehow."

Peter remembered the first day Tony had let him into the shop.

"Ground rules: no breaking any of my fancy toys. Actually, scratch that, no touching any of my fancy toys. How about we just don't breathe on the toys, okay? Or me. Especially no breathing on me."

Those rules didn't last long, and gradually Peter had worked his way up from silent observer, to Tony's glorified page, to actually helping with the design and building process.

Not that he still wasn't a glorified page.

"Wrench," Tony commanded, as Peter smoothly slid the tool toward the pair of legs peeking out from under the car.

Peter had expected to work on additions to the Iron-Spider suit, or new webshooter combinations, or even new specs for the Iron Man suit. That was the norm.

So, when Peter saw the cherry-red Porsche 944 Turbo parked in the center of the room, he did a bit of a double-take.

"I needed a day off from the superhero stuff," Tony explained before Peter could voice his confusion, "and I figured that you could use some real-world instruction because, even though I know you'd sleep in that damn suit if I let you, the hero thing is more of a part-time gig. I don't care how many times you save Queens, if you ever have to call triple A, then I feel like I've failed as a mentor."

A few hours later Peter was laid out on a dolly right next to Tony as he pointed out and explained things like carburetors and fuel pumps. He taught him how to check the oil and change a tire.

They spend the rest of the time brainstorming ways to improve the engine.

"When I was your age, my dad came home with this old beater of a car. We spent about a week fixing it up—one of the only times he ever showed more than a passing interest in me. Or maybe he was just interested in the car. It doesn't really matter. Either way, for once in his life he cared about something related to me," he said, giving a half-wistful smile.

"He gave it to me on my sixteenth birthday. It had a big red bow and everything. God I loved that thing."

Peter smiled as Tony reminisced.

"Let me tell you kid, this car—this was the shit. You had one of these and you were guaranteed to be having se—" he stopped short, looking at the kids wide eyes, "you had instant friends," he finished instead.

Another hour later, the two emerged from the workshop with grease and oil on their hands and shirts and faces. Pepper passed them in the hallway and fought a smile before she chastised her fiancé.

"Tony, for God's sake, please tell me you're going to take a shower before we meet my dad for dinner."

"Yea, Pep, I'll take a shower. Remind me, again, why we're meeting with your half-estranged pops?"

"It's Father's Day, Tony. We do this every year."

"Right," he said, running his fingers through his hair. "Okay, I'll take a shower and meet you back here in twenty minutes."

As Pepper walked away, Tony turned to the kid and said, "Well, I'll have Happy take you home, as you're excused from the dinner from hell."

Peter looked lost, like he wanted to say something but wasn't quite sure if it was apropos. Tony wasn't his dad, and yet...

"Your face is somewhere between I-have-to-take-a-shit and oh-my-god-someone-kicked-Ned right now. What is it, kid?"

Peter hesitated another second before saying, "H—." What was he doing? If he said "happy Father's Day" to Tony Stark then he was opening up a whole new can of worms in whatever this relationship was that they had.

Tony raised an eyebrow at him.

Here goes nothing.

"Happy f— ...eels like a school bus driver," Peter blurted out, changing his mind at the last minute. It was too awkward, too delicate, too much.

Tony just chuckled and said, "yea, well, he'll get over it. Go home kid; I'll have the bus driver pick you up again this weekend and maybe we can work on that car some more."

They kept tinkering with the car for the better part of the next couple of months, and on a Wednesday afternoon when Peter walked out of Midtown School of Science and Technology—his mind distracted by the thought of May's famous store-bought birthday cupcakes and Chinese takeout—he saw the car in the parking lot. On it was a single red bow and a note that read, "Happy Birthday (and for the love of God don't make me regret this). –T.S."