Peter could not believe it.
How had he forgotten about them?
Well, he understood how.
But seriously—how did someone forget a meeting with the cast of Doctor Who?
All right, perhaps he had some fairly serious reasons.
Let us begin at the beginning.
First, on the day they were originally supposed to meet, Peter got shot.
Not the best excuse, admittedly, but what could he do?
Tony panicked and banned him from leaving the Tower for four days, which Peter did not forget to complain about on Twitter.
“I was only a little under the weather, and our dear Mr.
Billionaire locked me up like Rapunzel.” Peter remembered the following week only vaguely.
Bucky moved in, there was a board meeting, and someone might have tried to kidnap him.
Or had one of those things happened the week before?
It did not matter much.
Peter himself had become confused by his own life and no longer remembered what happened when.
Though, now that he thought about it, both the move and the board meeting had happened earlier.
So it must have been the kidnapping.
And Wakanda.
In general, he had been a little busy.
And then there was the ‘nightmare week’ when he nearly died under a mountain of schoolwork.
Right.
This was becoming unhealthy.
He should start taking memory supplements because he was genuinely losing track of everything.
The point was that F.R.I.D.A.Y., noticing Peter did not have a free second, had rescheduled his meeting with the Doctor Who actors and reminded him only on Friday.
One day before the meeting.
Peter still found it difficult to believe.
So when he returned home on Friday and the AI announced that, if he still intended to visit London, he should contact Ned and MJ and prepare for a flight scheduled for that evening, Peter was a little stunned.
At the same time, he understood that if he ignored such an opportunity again, he probably would not get another.
Tony laughed at Peter’s forgetfulness, allowed him to ‘borrow’ his private jet, and invited himself —agreed— to fly with them.
The lengths a man would go to avoid paperwork, right, Tony?
In reality, everyone knew Tony was far too overprotective to let his child fly to London alone.
Just do not tell him that.
MJ and Ned declared in unison that Peter was an idiot, then immediately agreed and ran off to pack, leaving Peter to negotiate with their parents.
Honestly, he had no idea how he managed to persuade them every time another bizarre trip came up.
Perhaps it was a talent.
Happy agreed to collect Peter’s friends only on the condition that they take him to London too.
Nobody objected, so everything worked out.
The important thing was that the Avengers did not find out and arrive as an entire crowd.
Actors were probably more resistant to shock than most people, but not that resistant.
These flights always broke Peter’s brain.
He simply could not process the nonsense of changing time zones.
His mind was too busy remembering the details of his life and solving every possible technical problem to understand that kind of thing.
They would leave at seven in the evening.
The flight took about ten hours.
Logically, they should arrive in London at five in the morning.
But no.
It would already be ten there, and the entire concept made Peter dizzy.
Tony was lucky.
He had flown so often that he accepted any time-zone change without blinking.
Tony found it very amusing that his genius child struggled so badly with time zones.
It was another strange but adorable Peter-trait.
Though Tony’s favorite fact about Peter was that he was afraid of spiders.
More on that later.
Once Ned and MJ arrived at the base and scolded Peter for being useless, and Tony received Pepper’s permission, they all finally climbed onto the plane.
The flight did not promise to be especially entertaining.
Pepper had ordered everyone to sleep, warning that if they disobeyed, her husband and son could forget about laboratories for the next several weeks.
No one dared take that risk.
Everyone except Happy slept all the way to London.
Peter was honestly shocked by how quickly an entire week of school and patrols could knock him unconscious.
Though there was nothing particularly surprising about it.
When they landed in London, Tony gave the children a very ‘subtle’ wink and allowed them to explore before the meeting.
Then he distracted Happy with, “Look, is that the Queen?” Peter was not entirely certain Tony had not actually gone to meet the Queen.
Because, let us be honest, he was fully capable of something like that.
F.R.I.D.A.Y.
thoughtfully supplied the address of the café where they were expected in two hours, along with a list of souvenir shops they simply had to visit.
Peter and MJ exchanged amused looks, remembering how their last shopping trip had ended.
Hopefully Tony had not made the list.
No one wanted to imagine what qualified as a souvenir shop by his ‘modest’ standards.
The most interesting place was a Doctor Who-themed store, which they could not possibly skip.
Peter even forgot his absolute refusal to spend Tony’s money and made it his mission to buy every piece of Doctor Who merchandise available.
He simply could not leave without it.
By the time they had bought approximately every T-shirt with a cool quote, TARDIS notebooks, sonic screwdrivers, psychic paper, bow ties, and roughly half the rest of the store, everyone was satisfied.
Peter’s favorite purchase was still a T-shirt for Tony that read: “Happily ever after doesn’t mean forever.
It just means time… a little more time.” He had wanted to choose a different, much sadder quote, but every one of them struck far too close to Tony’s life, and Peter had not dared.
Not that the words he chose failed to shatter his fanboy heart into a million tiny, sobbing pieces.
When they reached the café, Tony had not arrived yet, but Alex Kingston was already there.
Peter nearly burst into tears when he saw her.
Honestly, he had watched every River Song episode at least eight times.
Michelle quietly told him he should calm down.
Surprisingly, Peter listened.
She was the voice of reason, after all.
“Hello,” he said, and Ned and MJ could be proud of how calmly he managed it while piling their mountain of shopping bags into a corner.
Yes, they had gone a little overboard.
“God, I’m such a huge fan.
It’s a good thing Tony isn’t here yet.
He gets terribly jealous whenever I’m excited about anyone besides him.” “Hello.” Alex smiled brightly and hugged each of them in turn.
“I’m glad we managed to meet.
Thank you.
My colleagues are running a little late, as always.
Though it is strange that there’s no one in a café in the center of the city except us.
I was beginning to think I had the wrong address.” “Mr.
Stark probably arranged it,” Michelle suggested.
“He likes overdoing things.
All of you are too famous to sit somewhere unnoticed.
All right, while no one else is here, I have to ask.
Do you know the Doctor’s name?” Alex laughed softly.
Peter used the pause to order food.
Actors were actors, but his awful metabolism still existed.
About fifteen minutes later, after MJ had already drawn Alex’s portrait and Ned and Peter had asked what felt like every possible question in the world, Karen Gillan, Matt Smith, and Tony appeared at the door.
“Hello, sweetie,” Alex drawled at Matt, and Peter could have sworn he was about to die of happiness.
“Karen, your daughter is doing it again,” Matt complained theatrically as he greeted the children.
Ned’s eyes widened in delight, and he silently mouthed, “Dude.” Karen hugged everyone too, then smiled at Matt and Alex.
“Stop complaining.
My daughter is the coolest.” Honestly, all three teenagers were struggling to remain conscious because, damn it, they were incredible.
While the kids chattered excitedly with the Doctor himself and, God, Amy Pond, Tony calmly sat at the table and continued messaging someone.
Peter might have been interested if he had not been too busy asking Matt and Alex his one thousand and first question.
“Are you going to be in season twelve?” Honestly, when Peter made those eyes, nobody could say no.
Apparently Tony would have to buy the BBC so they could put River Song in the new season.
“I don’t know, but I really hope so,” Alex said with a smile.
“I think all of us would like to come back, even briefly.
Right, Karen?” “Arthur, Jenna, and I sometimes call Steven and tell him to let us storm into the show and save everyone,” Karen said, trying not to move because MJ was finishing her portrait.
“I think, at the very end of the series, they’ll call all of us.
Maybe an entire season will be spent gathering all the former companions and every incarnation of the Doctor, and then, I don’t know, we’ll save everyone and travel onward together.
That would be the best ending.” Peter nodded enthusiastically.
Then he and Ned began discussing how much of what the show portrayed was scientifically possible.
Nobody probably understood them except Tony and MJ, but the actors looked impressed.
It was not every day a sixteen-year-old casually announced that he had ‘almost worked out how to build a sonic screwdriver.’ “I actually ran some calculations, and time travel is possible,” Tony said, joining the conversation and startling everyone except Peter.
Peter had been in the lab at the time, hunting for mistakes in the math.
“Not quite the way it works in the show.
Right, Pete?” “According to my calculations, first, every trip would create a branch—something like a parallel universe.
Second, you could only travel into the past because the future isn’t predetermined.” Peter flushed slightly under the impressed looks directed at him.
“I got a little carried away.
Tony, stop typing.
When you message someone for this long, I start worrying that you’re buying something again.” Tony smirked in surprise.
Peter narrowed his eyes suspiciously, making everyone laugh.
“You’re not buying anything right now, are you, Tony?” “No?” Why did that sound like a question?
“I’m merely offering the writers of your show a few subtle suggestions about good creative choices.
And possibly providing a little funding.” “You’re impossible.” Peter sighed wearily and turned to Alex.
“How did River manage to make the Doctor behave even a little?
I could use a concise handbook right now.
Tell them to make more jokes about him becoming a woman.” Everyone burst out laughing at once.
Tony merely shrugged.
He had already done exactly that.
Happy appeared two hours later.
Rather bluntly, he pointed out that if they wanted to return to New York before nightfall, they did not have much time left.
Peter became confused by the time zones again while MJ handed everyone their portraits and tried to explain that it really was not so complicated.
When it was time to say goodbye, Peter probably hugged Alex alone at least ten times.
Because she was River Song, and do not even try to tell me you would not have done the same.
*** “Tony, one more time.
Repeat after me: ‘I will not buy everything Peter likes.'” “I will not buy everything Peter likes.” “Good.” “But I still don’t understand why you object.
You would never have to worry about your favorite show ending badly again.” “Tony!”