Chapter Text
There were a lot of things in life Tony Stark anticipated, having a long lost child, watching a shit ton of people die, dating a velociraptor trainer, and nearly getting eaten by dinosaurs? None of those things were things he expected, especially the kid part; the getting eaten by dinos was always a possibility, and who wouldn’t fall for his charm? Pepper Potts, oh he remembered her fondly, until she dropped a fucking kid on his doorstep and told him to parent. Bruce and Jane had nearly shit themselves laughing.
“Soo, ugh, what do you like?” he asks the kid who is either a hell of a coincidence or actually his kid because the resemblance is uncanny.
The kid looks at him like he’s grown a second head, which he thinks is offensive because hello? He was an absolute genius; he literally built dinosaurs and brought them to life basically by himself. Bruce and Jane helped, but still, he did most of the leg work and all of the funding. Jurassic World was a reality because of him and people fucking loved Jurassic World, even with a three part movie series that said this was a shit idea. “I like things that don’t include being dropped on some guy’s doorstep with claims that he’s my father,” she snaps, giving him the same tight smile that Pepper did when she didn’t like something that he was doing. Great, so she inherited things from her too. Well that meant anything fun was out.
“Well congrats kid, I didn’t want you either, but here we are,” he says, flinging his arms up. It wasn’t like he asked Pepper to hunt him down after nearly fifteen years with a ‘surprise, you’ve got a kid, take care of it’ before fucking off to do whatever. Bruce and Jane groan and wince in the background, the kid actually looks pretty hurt by his comment and he feels kind of shitty. It wasn’t like he meant that to be offensive, it was just true, he didn’t want kids and now he had one. It was an inconvenience… and yeah, alright, he could see how that was hurtful.
“Look kid, I never wanted kids, Pep knew that. I assume that’s why she didn’t bother telling either one of us about the other until now. Actually I don’t know why she thought that was a good idea, I’m shit at this kind of thing, which you already know because I’ve already managed to completely fuck this up and I didn’t even know you existed until yesterday soo,” he trails off, flapping his hands around.
She looks out the window, clearly pissed off, “well like father like daughter, I fuck everything up too. This is a last resort,” she mumbles under her breath.
“Well kid, I’m pretty well versed in being a disappointment to my father so like; we could bond over that or something. Not that I consider you a disappointment, I don’t even know you, I mean like I’m disappointed about your general existence but that’s different,” he says because Bruce and Jane are making some very sour faces at him.
“Wow, I can see why mom didn’t tell me about you, you clearly are as utterly boring and forgettable as she made you out to be,” she rolls her eyes and stomps past him, bumping into his shoulder as she went.
He had a comment about Pepper not finding even remotely forgettable when they were together but he recognizes that it was meant to hurt his feelings, not to be truthful. He sighs, “okay, I deserved that but come on, we’re in the middle of a dinosaur theme park, there has to be something here that you’d like?” Unless she hated dinosaurs, in which case he was disowning her and sending her back to Pepper. If he had to have a kid that kid had to be at least a little interested in dinosaurs, literally everyone liked dinosaurs, the whole human race would disown her if she didn’t like them so ditching his kid over a lack of shared interest obviously was not bad parenting.
“I hate dinosaurs,” she says and her hand automatically travels up to touch her necklace, which has a dinosaur on it, so did the bracelet she was wearing. Both were presents for Pepper at one point, actually. Huh.
“Okay, then I suggest you toss that necklace, and the bracelet, and the belt,” he says when he spies the belt buckle.
“Fine, I like dinosaurs but I hate you and I don’t want anything to do with you, okay? I was supposed to make a dramatic exit in a huff of anger but you can’t even manage to let me do that right. I haven’t even known you for twenty four hours and you’re already ruining my life!” she yells, throwing her hands up in frustration.
Behind him Bruce snorts, “oh yeah, she’s definitely his kid,” he says. Jane, the goddamn dirty traitor, laughs at that.
“I think it’s a little early for that, don’t you think? I mean I am really good at fucking things up, but not that good, usually it takes at least a week,” he rationalizes. That wasn’t exactly true; he hadn’t had a second date in… ever, actually. The closest to a real relationship he’d ever had was with Pepper and that was based off sex and dinosaurs so it didn’t exactly count for much.
“You literally just told me my existence was disappointing, how could that not ruin my life?” she snaps back, making that face Pepper made when he was being an idiot. This was going to be a very painful experience, he could sense it.
“Okay, but you don’t even know me, why should my opinion matter to you? As far as you know I’m some dead beat asshole who missed fourteen and a half years of your life for no other reason than my own selfishness, which isn’t even false soo,” he trails off with a shrug.
“Well if you knew about me would you have tried?” she asks. There were a whole lot of daddy issues behind that that he didn’t even want to explore; he knew plenty about daddy issues without adding other people’s experiences.
“Yeah I would have tried; I’m an asshole, not a savage. You’d probably be pregnant with your third kid and on crack by now but I still would have tried. Now can we like not do touchy feely stuff and go do, I don’t know, literally anything else?” he asks. Emotion always freaked him out, it was probably why Pepper ran off without telling him she was preggers and never told him about their kid. God, he was so fucked and not even in the way he preferred.
She shrugs, “fine, let’s go look at dinosaurs and stuff. They’re ok,” she says, feigning disinterest.
*
It turned out his kid was actually kind of a genius, though that was hardly a surprise given her genetics, his grandfather, father, and himself were all geniuses and Pepper was no idiot. Still, her understanding of genetics and gene splicing was advanced for her age, advanced for everyone else’s age too. Bruce was jealous, he could sense it. She seemed to enjoy the lab tour, especially Nat, whom she shamelessly flirted with. Guess his kid was a lot like him, the poor kid, that was bound to fuck her over. Thankfully Nat took fetus’ hitting on her better than adult men other wise she’d have a busted nose and he’d have some explaining to do to Pepper.
“So you guys have made, like, a whole new dinosaur by fucking around with genetics? That is so awesome. So what is it, exactly?” she asks, following behind him excitedly. Thank god she liked dinosaurs, maybe she’d spend her time with them instead of him, and they’d at least entertain her without scarring her for life.
“Not sure exactly, I didn’t ask Loki for the specifics, but it’s pretty fucking awesome. Just gotta get Steve to make sure it can’t escape, otherwise it’ll be a whole lot less awesome,” he says distractedly. He didn’t really like dealing with Steve, mostly because they had this weird on again off again sexual encounter thing going on and it confused the shit out of him. Still, it was that or let the dino escape and he wasn’t fond of option two, plus option one had the potential for him to get laid and that was never a bad thing.
He finds Steve with the raptors, as usual, only this time they were much better trained. Last time at least two out of the four weren’t listening at any given time. Now all four looked up at him, attention fixed on his hand, which he was raising and lowering to command them to do various things. Which, awesome, trained velociraptors, how cool was that? Pretty god damn cool if his kid’s face was anything to go by. He was around dinosaurs all day though, so as cool as they were they kind of lost their lustre after awhile, or at least the ones that weren’t new. Same went with the public, hence the new dino exhibit.
He lets Steve finish doing his thing, which has the added benefits of entertaining his kid and putting off what was sure to be an awkward encounter. He spies Zola lurking off in the corner, Steve pointedly ignoring the German idiot. Tony had told him several times that dinosaurs as war weapons was a shit idea, Steve even more times than him and he knew the raptors significantly better than he did. However they were somewhat stuck with the little fucker because he was part of the research team that measured things like intelligence. He was looking into finding a replacement, maybe he’d use his kid, she was pretty smart, smarter than Zola that was for sure.
Steve finishes with the raptors, feeding them their rats and Tony swoops in before Zola gets the chance. He may not know what the fuck was going on with Steve but they had an unspoken rule to save one another from Zola when necessary. Unfortunately Zola doesn’t get the hint, “great, and your both here at once. I think-” he starts but Steve cuts him off.
“The raptors are not war weapons, Zola, and they never will be. Get lost,” he snaps. Zola, most unfortunately, remains unfazed by Steve’s annoyance.
“Oh my god, what kind of idiot thinks raptors would be effective war weapons?” his kid asks. Thank god she had some common fucking sense, if only Zola could grow some too.
“Steve here has proven they can be controlled-” he starts but this time he’s cut off by Tony’s offspring, what was her name? This was embarrassing for him; really, he didn’t even know his own kid’s name.
“Ugh, trainable doesn’t mean controllable, you can train a human, that doesn’t mean you can control one and we don’t eat people. Usually, anyways. Still, dinosaurs are totally shitty weapons to use because they’d eat you, duh,” she says, her facial expression saying everything it needed to about what she thought of Zola. Well look at that, she got that facial expression from him.
Steve snickers, raising an eyebrow at Tony. He totally knew she was his kid, he couldn’t even pretend she was like, a cousin or something. Well this was ass. “It would be wrong not to-“Zola starts and is cut off again.
“No buddy, what’s wrong is those shoes with that sweater,” she says, making a disgusted face and walking off dramatically. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t going to claim she was a cousin now, that was hilarious. His genetics at work didn’t work out as badly as he though it would, that’s always nice.
They follow his kid’s lead and walk off before Zola can start his stupid sales pitch again, “so who is that?” Steve asks, leaning over a bit.
“Ugh, she’s… a kid… my kid, actually. And her name is… something I’m sure,” he looks over to his kid for help here but she looks utterly unimpressed with this development.
“It’s Spencer, Spencer Maria, not that someone paid attention when he was told that,” she says, pointedly looking at him. Okay, so he’d been freaking out about having a kid, sue him for being a little braindead at that particular moment.
“That sounds like a bad sauce option at a shitty Italian restaurant,” he says, automatically resorting to snark to save his ass.
“Oh go fuck yourself,” she snaps.
“I masturbate regularly, there is not need for my fetus to remind me to indulge in myself, thanks,” he totally doesn’t even realize how awful that was until it was too late. Well, if he was gunna fuck this up go big or go home, he guessed.
“So what do you need me for, exactly?” Steve asks, breaking the awkward and disgusted silence.
“Risk assessments mostly, just make sure the new dino exhibit is escape proof, they’re having some issues,” he says, shrugging. Steve already looks unimpressed with their encounter.