~Iron Family~

Merry Christmas, Ya Filthy A̶n̶i̶m̶a̶l̶. Arachnid

Peter woke up on a white Christmas morning to Morgan jumping on his bed.

"Wake up, big brother!" she shouted, lifting up one of his eyelids and yelling directly into his ear. He was pretending to be asleep at this point. "Santa came! Santa came!"

Peter excitedly hopped out of bed and raced downstairs with Morgan, Harley and Mr. Stark following tiredly. Pepper was somehow already on the couch with a video camera, and Happy was munching on Wanda's cookies, which were dwindling by the day.

The tree looked nice in the dark, glowing softly against the huge, echo-y compound. The garland Peter had strung up glittered proudly and the lights twinkled.

There were a lot of presents under the tree, even more than Ned's family had when all his uncles came to visit. There were about ten for each kid.

"Which one d'ya wanna open first?" Pepper asked, holding up the video camera.

"That one! No, this one! Oooh, Mommy look at this!" Morgan scuttled around, unable to decide. Peanut was having just as much fun and had already dug into her stocking they had hung up for her, munching on the horse treats. Someone had painted her hooves red and green, which hadn't been like that the night before. Peter wanted to blame Steve for that one.

Morgan ripped into her presents rather quickly, and she was finished in under half an hour. Harley opened his a bit slower, taking time to admire everything, and Peter sat frozen on the couch.

Every Christmas memory was flying through his head.

Here he was, sitting on Tony Stark's couch with presents to open, and where was May? Rotting in the frozen ground.

He imagined she was sitting right next to him with her arm tossed over his shoulder, sporting her ugliest Christmas sweater and sipping from her cinnamon hot chocolate no one liked except for her. Laughing at each other's chocolate milk mustaches and teasing one another. Gifting the other an empty box, just to see how they would react.

He brushed his sleeve across his eyes, hoping no one would notice.

Pepper did. She tossed her arm over his shoulder and gave him a reassuring smile, giving him a little squeeze.

"Do you wanna open a present?" she asked softly. Peter gave a little nod and Morgan ran up to him with a little box in her arms.

"This one's not from Santa," she explained sternly, pointing to the tag that read from Tony + Pepper. "Open it! Open it!" she cheered, clapping her little hands together. Peter smiled and slowly unfolded the paper, his breath catching in his throat.

It was a kind of wallet-sized album, containing old pictures inside. He took them out one by one, staring at the young kids smiling up at him--he hadn't even known half of these pictures existed!

There was May at Disney World when she was about six, making an angry-looking smile in the bright sun with Minnie Mouse ears perched atop her head. There were two little boys standing in a yard somewhere, the shorter one having wire-rimmed glasses and Peter's curly brown hair. The other had a boisterous yet kind look about him, the kind of energy only Uncle Ben could capture. One of the photos was his mother and May posing cheek-to-cheek on his parents' wedding day. At least, that's what he assumed: May was in a bridesmaid dress and his mother was wearing a long white gown and veil.

"I've--I've never seen these before. Where did you get all these?" Peter asked breathlessly, wiping away the unstoppable tears that were now streaming down his cheeks. Everyone was gathered around now, even Morgan, clutching her new unicorn stuffed animal.

Mr. Stark put a hand on Peter's shoulder from behind the couch. "There's a lotta things you can get your hands on when you're me."

"Thank you," he whispered. He glanced over at Pepper and was shocked to see tears welling in her eyes, too.