Pepper had decided the best way to spend a cold Thursday over Winter Break was to clean out the storage room at Stark Towers. Tony had rejected the idea immediately but Peter offered his help so the billionaire had no choice but to clean. Unfortunately, Pepper had a meeting so she didn't get to help. Her loss.

It took 3 hours to get through 8 boxes. Mainly because Peter would fanboy over the various items and Tony would explain them and let Peter test them out. Then Tony (being the genius he is) would let Peter keep them. So it was mostly Tony giving Peter presents instead of actually cleaning.

After a quick lunch break, the two returned and began opening more boxes. Another hour passed when Peter shouted in triumph.

"Mr. Stark! I think I found something!"

The OG Avenger walked over and found a cardboard box filled with the drawings and letters he had accumulated from fans over the years. Most were from people he saved but others were just people thanking him for the whole Battle of New York thing. The two heroes glanced at each other and nodded in agreement without so much as a single word between the two. They began to sort through the papers and pointed out the most interesting ones.

Roughly 30 minutes and thousands of jokes later, Peter found something. Something so surprising he stopped laughing. Tony of course noticed the change in attitude as he looked at his intern-mentee-unofficial son's expression.

"Hey, Pete? What's wrong, kid?" Concern was evident in his voice as he worried over the teenager.

Peter turned the paper around to show Tony a fairly decent drawing. In the crayon masterpiece, Iron Man and a smaller version of the hero fought off a robot in what appeared to be a hotel lobby.

Tony's breath hitched as he thought back to that day. "I remember that kid. Gosh he was stupid. He almost got shot by that robot. Geez if Jarvis hadn't told me he probably would've been killed or something." He looked up at Peter, who had tears in his eyes.

"Pete? Hey hey hey. What's wrong? Come on. Spit it out" Tony rubbed a soothing hand over Peter's tense and shaking shoulder as he waited for a reply.

"That was me, Mr. Stark. I was the stupid kid. The robot had just killed my parents and I don't know what I was thinking but you saved me and that was when you became my hero." The arachnid looked up with tears in his eyes.

"That was you?!" Peter nodded. "I-I'm sorry, Peter. I didn't mean to call you stupid. If I had known it was yo-"

Peter shook his head. "You have every right to call me stupid. I almost forgot about that." He looked up at his mentor. "I really miss them, Tony" he sobbed out.

Tony opened his arms and Peter practically fell into the embrace. Both of them reveled in the feeling of safety and security and family.

They never finished cleaning out the storage room. When Pepper returned from her busy day at work almost an hour later, the two were fast asleep in each other's arms, leaning against an abandoned box with smiles on their faces.

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