Chapter Text
Mary Fitzpatrick would always be the one that got away.
Tony had been at a conference in Berlin when he met the virologist. Despite the fact that her field was completely different from his own, Tony was captivated.
He wasn’t even drunk when he invited her to his room, only to be surprisingly shot down. That didn’t stop Tony as he looked her up and surprised her at her workplace.
(“Tony Stark? What are you doing here?” Mary asked, crossing her arms with a frown.
“Was in the area,” he replied with a grin. “Come have lunch with me!”
“Oh, so you’re going to be that way,” Mary growled. “Let me rephrase the question: what are you doing here, in Atlanta, 2500 miles away from California?”
“Lunch!” Mary buried her face in her hands.)
At first Tony just wanted her, to soothe his bruised ego from the rejection. Then it slowly bloomed to something more as they talked over lunch, bits and pieces of their life intertwining. A dinner date here and there, and soon Tony was captivated again, ego forgotten as he realized how brilliant and funny and human she was when Mary started to drop the wall between them.
He wanted to marry her right there and then. Tony figured Mary may be getting there as well, inviting him to stay at her apartment. Of course, he took up the offer, staying with her over the weekends. There were Saturdays when Tony brought her out to see the sights – and by sights he would fly her on his private jet to Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris, wherever. They managed to avoid the press because, after all, it was a one-day thing.
Then there were some Saturdays when Tony would arrive with an armful of takeout to find manuscripts all over the floor and the sound of Mary humming as she played the piano. Unlike Tony who tinkered and built new things to explode as a hobby, Mary was music. She would be scribbling tunes or lyrics, wearing either an oversize shirt or a band t-shirt as her other hand played out a tune.
(It was always his shirt. Mary had turned bright red as she admitted that it smelled like him. Tony started leaving a few more shirts just for her.)
Sunday mornings tended to have them being lazy in bed, Tony drawing up schematics on his next inventions while Mary would be figuring out the cure for some lethal disease.
It was funny how some of his greatest weapons came from looking at her research (it made Tony feel ill now after Afghanistan.)
And then Mary suddenly disappeared.
When Tony dropped by the CDC, he was surprised when they told him she left. When he went to her apartment it had been emptied, as though she was never there. For months he drowned himself in alcohol, maniacally searching for any traces of her. Eventually Rhodey managed to pull Tony away from his self-destruction, and in turn Tony drowned himself in work.
Then Afghanistan happened. Obie’s betrayal. New York, Sokovia, Berlin. The team was shattered and gone in the wind.
The only good thing that came out of all this was Peter Parker. Sure, he had messed up a few times – the ferry disaster came to mind – but the boy was smart and could mostly keep up with Tony’s thought process. After May had found out about Peter’s extracurricular activities as Spider-Man, Tony had nearly been rendered deaf as she screamed at him before making him promise to be a real mentor and to keep Peter safe. Of course, Tony promised and he kept his promises.
He just never meant for Peter to become such an integral part of his life. Peter’s eyes always shone whether in training or in the lab, and Tony would question if this is what being a mentor was like.
It didn’t take long for Tony to question if this was what being a father was like.
(“Any chance I can, you know, adopt him, May?” Tony asked over coffee one day. May raised an eyebrow.
“Sorry, he’s my kid, Tony,” May replied and took a sip of coffee. “Get your own.”)