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Tony was in his element.
He had on his favorite glasses, his tunes pumped through the speakers, and the bedazzle gun was locked in his hand. He shot shiny stones onto the small jean jackets with all the precision of a skilled knitter, preparing both Morgan and Aidan’s dance costumes according to the pattern projected digitally into the air.
It was much easier than the booklets the dance instructors distributed.
“TONY!”
He ignored his wife screeching his name and continued stoning the dance outfits, moving onto the black shirt, where the pattern displayed a mini arc reactor.
It, surprisingly, hadn’t taken Tony long to convince the dance company stylist they should have an Iron Man theme. Turned out saving the universe came with a few perks. Someone should tell that to Jan.
“Tony.”
He turned, only because Pepper had entered the room, and stood scarily close to him holding out her suit jacket. It was covered in silver, shiny bedazzle stones.
“What have you done to my jacket?”
“I fixed it up with my Bedazzler 3000,” said Tony. “Do you like it?”
“Does it look like I like it?”
Tony shrugged. “I’m not a mind reader, Pep.”
“Fix it.” She threw the jacket at him. It bounced off and landed on the floor, where it might as well stay if Tony wasn’t allowed to add a little style to it.
She turned and left the garage, bumping into Peter on her way out.
“Really Mr. Stark?” said Peter. He held up his bookbag. Also covered in bedazzle jewels. “When is Ms. Potts gonna take that away from you? This is getting outta control.”
“It’s not.”
“Mr. Stark. There’s bedazzle stones on the shower curtains!”
“So what?” said Tony. He saw an opportunity and took it. Tony put the gun on Peter’s shoulder, and pulled the trigger, adding a sparkly jewel to his Star Wars shirt.
“Hey!”
“See? It’s better now.”
Peter grumbled under his breath and left the garage, trying to pick the jewel off his shirt as he went.
Tony grinned and went back to working on Morgan and Aidan’s costumes. His heart was content, and he felt fulfilled in a way he hadn’t before. That maybe looking after these kids, making sure they don’t smack into each other during rehearsal and kissing their bruises when they inevitably did, was what he was always meant to do.
After saving the universe, of course.
*
Friday nights were always the same.
They’d settled into a nice routine since Morgan and Aidan started dance.
Tony started dinner, usually something involving salmon and spinach and other foods that Morgan turned her nose up to, but would eventually eat after it was explained, for the fifth or eighth time, that it’d help her stamina and strength when she was on the dance floor.
Aidan and of course, Peter, being the human garbage disposal that he was, ate without complaining and grumbling which was more than Tony could say for himself. He longed for the days when they could go back to cheeseburgers.
After dinner, after their stomachs settled and the conversations died down, they were off the living room where Peter moved the furniture around and made room for a small dance floor so the kids could practice.
Sometimes it was serious. Sometimes it devolved into a free style dance party, but it was always a blast.
For Tony, though, it never came without guilt.
A strange, nagging feeling that sat in the back of his head and grew the more time Aidan spent at their house. He thought about Morgan, and how much he’d hate it if she spent weekends away from him, and as much as he hated it, felt a bit sorry for Jan.
His guilty conscience turned out to be foreboding, as the Friday before the big dance competition, when the kids were in the middle of their routine, Jan stormed into the living room and the music cut.
“Aidan,” said Jan, a tremor of anger in her voice. She looked back and forth from Tony and Peter on the couch, to Morgan, to Aidan, whose eyes had gone wide. “What’s going on here?”
“Um, I – “
“-We’re practicing,” Peter cut in. “For their competition tomorrow.”
“Competition?” she asked. Her eyes finally landed on Aidan and didn’t move. “What competition? I know you’re not about to say dance, because we’ve talked about this and I didn’t sign your permission form.”
Tony searched for something to say and, for once, couldn’t find any words. He hadn’t known Jan didn’t know and that Aidan wasn’t allowed to dance. He’d suspected she was just ignoring it, not approving but not preventing.
“Nothing to say for all your lying?” asked Jan. Aidan looked at the floor with the crushed face of a child who knew he was in trouble. “Get your things. We’re leaving.”
Aidan’s head snapped up, a sudden fury behind his eyes. “I don’t want to go… I – I have a solo tomorrow.”
“And we’ve talked about this. Dance isn’t for you. Now get – “
“-You’re a bitch!”
Jan opened her mouth, then closed it. Tony couldn’t ever remember her looking the way she did in that moment, like she’d been slapped by something invisible.
“Aidan – “
“No I’m not leaving. I wish dad would’ve taken me with him when he left you,” said Aidan. Tony felt Peter fidget next to him, and knew how he felt, like they were both intruding on a private family moment inside their own home. “I wish Coach Stark and Pepper were my parents!”
“Because they let you do whatever you want.”
“No because they actually like me.” Aidan took his dance jacket off and threw it on the floor, the sound of the jewels it was lined with seemed to echo in the silence that drenched the room as Aidan fled the room, going up the stairs of the Stark house.
The room felt still. Not even Morgan or Peter dared to move or fidget or speak. Tony felt like he should say something, but once again, no words came. Jan didn’t noticed, didn’t acknowledge them at all.
Her face twitched several times, she adjusted her purse strap, then turned and left their house without another word, and without her son.
*
Aidan was asleep on his sleeping bag when Tony went into Morgan’s bedroom to tuck her in. He stepped over him, feeling twice as guilty as he ever had, and sat on the side of Morgan’s bed.
“Dad,” said Morgan, adjusting her head on her pillow. “I have to tell you something.”
“All ears.” Tony wiped the hair from her face with his thumb.
“Um, I don’t really like dance.”
Tony laughed, withdrawing his hand. “I already knew that.”
“You did?” asked Morgan, her face crinkled up with confusion. “But I was so sneaky.”
“You’re not very good at dancing, kiddo.”
“Hey that’s rude.”
“You didn’t let me finish,” said Tony. “You’re always good at whatever you put your mind to, whatever you like. I knew you didn’t like it because your heart wasn’t in it.”
“Oh,” said Morgan. “I guess that’s less rude.”
“If you don’t like dance, why join?”
“So Aidan would have someone to help with costumes and stuff,” she told him. “I – I didn’t mean to cause him to fight with his mom.”
“Oh no – you didn’t,” said Tony. He smoothed out her hair and rested his hand on her cheek. Cursing his luck, cursing that somehow both his children had enormous guilt complexes. “You were just being a good friend. I’m proud of you. Suffering through all that spinach just so Aidan could do what he wanted.”
Morgan smiled up at him. “I’m glad you’re not like Ms. Jan.”
Tony bent down and gave her a kiss on the forehead. “Me too. Now go to bed, or I might turn into her.”
Morgan frowned, and crinkled up her face again, but Tony caught her smile shine through as she turned on her side and shut her eyes. He turned off the light and walked off to find Peter, who was sulking on the back deck.
He sat down beside him and patted him on the shoulder. “Let me guess. You have something to tell me.”
Peter out a heavy sigh. “They asked so nicely, Mr. Stark, and I felt so bad. He just wanted to dance. I didn’t think – I didn’t think it would turn out like this.”
“You forged Jan’s signature,” said Tony. “On the permission form.”
“Yeah.” Peter hung his head.
Tony hovered somewhere between proud and horrified. He knew the day would come that Morgan and Peter started working together, he just didn’t expect it to be so soon.
He supposed he should just feel thankful they used their chaotic energy for the good, or what would have been good, if Jan had just taken a second to listen to how excited Aidan was about his solo.
“It’s not your fault, Pete. Truth is, I guess I kind of suspected Jan wasn’t okay with it, and I’m the adult here, I should’ve talked to her about it, made sure she knew what he was doing and where he was spending his weekends.”
“I just feel so bad for him,” said Peter. “Just – the way she talked to him – May would never… I guess I’m pretty lucky. I’m never complaining about her meatloaf ever again.”
“Well,” said Tony, with a laugh. “Don’t take it that far.”
Peter laughed, but Tony felt his job was done for the night, having relieved the guilt of both his kids. He gave Peter one last pat on the back, stood up, and went to crawl into his own bed, where Pepper was waiting for him.
She slipped her hand into his as he sunk down into the pillows.
“It’s not your fault, you know,” she told him.
He stared at the ceiling. He guessed Morgan and Peter weren’t the only ones with guilt complexes.
*
Tony woke up to his cellphone ringing. He groaned as his hand assaulted the nightstand, blindly searching for his phone. When his hand finally found it, only to drop it right on his face. He yelled out, causing Pepper to mumble something in her sleep and turn over.
The phone stopped ringing just as he recovered and got a good grip on it. His missed calls told him it had been Jan waking him and although the thought of her waking him from blissful sleep made him want to punch his pillow, he slid out of bed and called her back.
Just twenty minutes later he parked his car in the parking of some karaoke bar and found her in a back booth, draining a bottle of Bud Light.
“I’ve always pictured you as more of a wine person,” said Tony, as he took a seat in the booth across from her.
“Why? You don’t really know anything about me, Tony.”
“Guess that’s fair,” he told her, although he didn’t really believe it. He felt like he did know, that he understood some things about her and Aidan that she couldn’t, simply because Tony’s past gave him the ability to see through Aidan’s eyes. “What am I doing here?”
“You’re here to give me a ride home,” she informed him. Even drunk, her voice possessed authority that didn’t belong to her.
“And you called me?” asked Tony, with an eyebrow raised. He leaned back against the booth. “Your sworn enemy? For a ride home?”
“Do I honestly seem like the type of person who has a lot of friends?” she asked, then laughed. Shook her head. “I’m a bitch.”
“You’re n- “
“Don’t bullshit me,” she said. “Everyone knows it, and now my son does, too.”
“He doesn’t have to. You can change it. There’s always still time.”
“Oh really? There’s still time? Tony freakin’ Stark is going to sit in a bar and lecture me about parenting? What do you even know about it?”
Tony stared at the table. “More than you think.”
Jan laughed again, shrill and fake and drunk. “Oh, sure. You know about hugs and cuddles and pizza after soccer games. You don’t know anything about the hard stuff. Everything I do for Aidan is for his own good. So he has a good future, so he’s not picked on, but I guess that makes me a bad parent.”
Tony didn’t say anything else, and neither did Jan. Once she was finished with her beer, they got up and left the bar, drove off to her house in silence. Tony pulled the car into her driveway and put it in park, something heavy and unbearable settling around in his chest.
He tried to ignore it. He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel and as Jan tried to gather her bearings and get out of the car. He couldn’t do it, though. He couldn’t just say nothing.
“Listen,” he said. “You should come to the dance competition tomorrow.”
“Lucky me. I’m being invited to my own kid’s activity.”
“Someone’s got to.” Tony put both hands on the steering wheel, gripped it tight. “It’d just – I think it’d really mean a lot to him. You know, Jan, I learned one thing about parenting, it’s that you can hold onto to your beliefs about who you think they should be, or you can hold onto to them, but you can’t do both. One day… he’ll walk out your door, and he won’t come back.”
She blinked at him and a look that reminded Tony of earlier, of when Aidan shouted at her, crossed her face. Then, the second passed, and her usual sneer came back. “Thanks for the ride. It’s been enlightening.”
She stumbled out of the passenger’s side seat and slammed his door.
Tony stalled in the driveway until she was through the front door and inside her home, then started his drive back to the lake house. His chest empty, something that’d be tangled up for far too long was coming loose, and he felt a little sad, but at least he’d tried.
*
“Coach Stark?”
Tony looked down at Aidan, who was already dressed in dance costume Tony had stoned, with his hair gelled back, styled by Peter during one of his many trips backstage at the dance studio.
The competition was set to begin any minute, but by the look on Aidan’s face, Tony knew he might have to stall them. That Aidan was having some doubts.
“Yeah kid?”
“I think,” said Aidan. “Maybe I shouldn’t dance.”
“Why? Do you not like it anymore?”
“It makes my mom really upset,” he said. “And – I called her a bad name.”
“Yeah, yeah you did,” said Tony. He one down on one knee. “You can apologize to her without quitting dance.”
“But she still won’t like it.”
Tony knew that was probably the case, that people like Jan and his father Howard didn’t really change their strips. That they were stubborn, in the very worse of ways.
“What do you think I should do?”
“I think,” said Tony, trailing off, and wishing Aidan hadn’t asked him. He felt like a parent traitor. He felt like, as a parent, he shouldn’t be going around and telling kids to disregard their own parent’s wishes, and yet, here he was. “I think you gotta do what makes you happy.”
Aidan smiled a sad and small sort of smile and nodded his head. “Okay. I’ll dance, then.”
“And you never know,” said Tony, wishing he could stop the words from coming out of his mouth, wishing he could stop giving the poor boy false hope. “She might change her mind.”
Just then, one of the instructors was on the megaphone, calling for everyone to get in place.
Tony clapped Aidan on the shoulder. “There’s your cue. I’ll be watching you and Morgan from the audience.”
Aidan gave him a high-five than ran off to get into position, and Tony rushed off towards the audience, bumping into Peter on his way.
“You’re like,” said Peter. “A family counselor now.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“But you’re really good at it though.”
“Just a dad doing his job, Pete,” said Tony, and it was the best job, one he felt content to keep doing for the rest of his retirement.
He guided Peter to the front seats Pepper saved for them. He’d been hopeful. He’d asked her to save four, leaving one for Jan, on the off chance she decided to come, but the competition was set to begin, and she was nowhere in sight.
It was a last second miracle.
Jan stumbled in, with messy hair and sunglasses and a large bottle of Smart water, just before the music started and the first company took their places. Peter got so excited he stood up and waved her to the front, and Tony had to yank him back down in his chair.
“I told you,” whispered Peter. “You’re really good at it.”
*
Their dance company took gold in the competition.
It was a given, really, with the costumes and the theme Tony had helped them design. How could the judges give them anything less than gold after their dance where they threw their jean jackets on the ground and revealed the black shirt underneath, stoned with an arc reactor pattern.
Tony supposed Aidan’s solo also contributed to their win, although the boy himself was happier to see his mom in the audience than he was the ribbons at the scoring ceremony.
Their reunion after their argument from the night before was a tearful apology, from both of them, and a promise from Jan to do better.
“So…. I can keep dancing?”
Jan shallowed thickly. “Yes, yes I think it’d be criminal to make you stop doing something you’re so good at.”
Aidan beamed and Jan hugged him and Pepper offered Tony a tissue from her purse, that grumbled about but took anyway.
Tony, Pepper, Morgan, and Peter celebrated by going to a local cheeseburger joint. They weren’t celebrating their win. They were celebrating the end to the dancer’s diet. Morgan stabbed her cheese fries with a fork, chanting death to spinach under her breath and Pepper told her, they would, in fact, still be eating healthy from time to time.
“So, Mo,” said Peter. “Now that you quit dancing what’re gonna do?”
“I wanna learn how to drop people.”
Tony spit out his diet coke. “What?”
“Yeah,” said Morgan, with her mouth full. “I want to learn kickboxing.”
Absolutely not, Tony wanted to say. He wanted to yell out in frustration to the heavens, asking the universe why all his children were called to violence. He had one vigilante, wasn’t that enough?
“Remember the advice you gave Jan…” Pepper whispered in his ear.
He took a breath. “Okay, fine, I’ll sign you up.”
“Yes!”
“I’ll teach you some of the moves I learned as Spider-Man,” said Peter, as Tony shot him an you-absolutely-will-not-look.
“Yeah!” shouted Morgan.
Tony closed his eyes, took a giant bite of his cheeseburger, and wondered when it would all end, then he stopped, listened to his two violent kids laughing, and hoped that it wouldn’t ever.
*
The only regret Tony had about Morgan quitting dance was being forced to say goodbye to the Bedazzler 3000.
He gave it one last joyride. He shot a few jewels into Peter’s Spidey suit as revenge for the boy leaving it lying around in the open, like he’d been told not to do. Truth was, the lake house was prone to visitors, mostly Morgan’s friends, and anyone of them could stumble about the suit and realize Peter was Spider-Man.
He pulled the trigger and shot a jewel into the back of the mask, smiling at his handiwork, hoping this petty revenge must teach Peter a lesson.
Once he was done, he packed into a box with some extra ammunition and drove it over to Jan’s house.
She needed it far more than he did, anyway.