Epilogue
“Good lord Steve, you’re so white we could use you as a night light because you’d glow in the moon light,” Maria says, snickering. Steve sighs, having grown used to the light jabs Maria and Tony threw his way on a regular basis.
“The shorts weren’t enough?” he asks, gesturing the American flag shorts he was wearing because Tony and Bucky insisted, “every racial minority has fled because a white dude in American flag shorts means that he’s a racist,” Steve says, looking over the beach, upset.
“First of all the racial minorities are missing out on your fiiiine body,” Maria says, wiggling her eyebrows at his abs. Steve, Tony, and Bucky give her horrified looks but she doesn’t seem to notice, “also the American flag shorts were a must, like no one else knows be we do and it’s hilarious,” she says.
“Tony stop your fetus of a sibling from checking me out, it’s weird,” he says, shrinking in on himself a bit.
Tony smacks Maria in the back of the head, “stop making him uncomfortable you creep,” he says.
“Ugh, I’m just saying his body is a gift to the world, but in the interest of not being a creep I will keep my eyeballs to myself,” she says, walking off in the direction of someone who had caught her interest.
*
“Jesus Christ and I thought Steve was white,” Maria says, poking Grant when he and Howard show up to the beach.
Grant looks annoyed, “I’m not Jesus, but it’s flattering that you think so. Not sure why though, Jesus was definitely not white,” he says.
“Yes!” Rhodey says, giving Grant a thumbs up. Grant grins and flops himself down on the sheet Tony had spread out to sit on, he was not getting sand in his ass crack, it happened once when he decided beach sex was a great idea and he was not having a repeat of that incident.
“Wait, Jesus wasn’t white? What else has the church lied about?!” Maria yells melodramatically.
“You going to heaven,” Grant says without missing a beat. Tony bursts out laughing and high fives him for that excellent insult.
Howard frowns, “Maria, Jesus was from the Middle East, under what circumstances would a Middle Eastern guy be white? He was obviously born there so there is no reason to think he was a white man,” he says.
Maria rolls her eyes, “guys, I’ve never actually paid attention to church stuff, I just like the pretty statues and art and stuff and Jesus was always white. This is not my fault,” she says, placing her hands on her hips. Howard sighs deeply, probably figuring arguing with her isn’t worth it, she was far too much like him and Tony to start something with. It would never end is it started, they were still fighting over the Pokémon and it’s been nearly a year since the argument started. So far all they agreed on was that Rhodey was wrong and Geodude sucked.
They sit in the sun for a while, every once in a while laughing at Steve’s reactions to the book he was reading, some romance novel he obviously wasn’t enjoying. “Why are continuing you read something you clearly don’t like?” Grant finally asks some time later.
“It… it can’t possibly be this bad,” he says, frowning, “Bucky liked it.” Tony catches on immediately and starts laughing; receiving odd looks from Grant and Steve.
“You moron, he’s trolling you,” Tony explains and Grant snorts and laughs, Rhodey shakes his head. Bucky had conveniently taken off a while ago to do whatever it was Bucky did in his spare time, probably to avoid being stared at having a metal arm and such, leaving Steve to suffer with the offending novel
Steve throws the book down, “that fuck owes me hours of my life back for this. I’ve read instruction manuals that were more engaging than that,” he says, upset that Bucky had pranked him. He stares off into the distance for a few minutes and shakes his head, “I’m tracking him down for this and making him explain to why he has done this to me,” he says and picks himself up, walking off to track Bucky down.
“It’s payback for the minion porn,” Tony says, Bucky had been some scarred by that and was upset that Steve would ruin his life like that. A crappy romance novel was the perfect revenge.
Grant whips around, looking disgusted, “the what?” he asks, horrified.
“Google it,” Tony tells him.
“Do not Google it,” Rhodey says, giving Tony a look, apparently keen on not scarring Grant for life.
“Umm, okay then. I need some advice though and I’m hoping it will be better than telling me to Google minion porn,” he says, “so obviously Maria and I started in a new school, and you told me to be cool and aloof, like a cat, and people would want to know me and they do but like no one but the shitty people talk to me. So basically how the hell did your advice have me go from being the loser no one liked to the cool guy that everyone likes but no one actually knows or talks to and how do I go from that to a person with friends. Like that was my goal and you have failed me,” he says, raising his eyebrows, because he totally still had two.
It was Tony’s crowning achievement that year, he told that to Forbes when they interviewed him and they tried to say it was Iron Man or the element he and Howard synthesized a few months ago, it was not, and he made sure everyone knew that. Grant’s eyebrows were now listed as Tony Stark’s greatest achievement that year and that made him happy, everyone else was confused as to why he cared about Grant’s eyebrows. Actually he was pretty sure no one knew who Grant was and that made it all the better. He was so excited to see the headlines wondering who Grant was and why Tony cared about his eyebrows so much. He had a framed tabloid cover framed for Grant as a Christmas gift.
“Well kid, talk to the only people who haven’t bothered to try and get to know you, then you know they have no interest in your obvious wealth, and you know they don’t think your that ‘mysterious, interesting, probably abusive’ guy that shows up at the beginning of like every YA novel ever,” he says. It was a proven method, he’s tried it, granted it only got him two friends and a couple of boyfriends but he’d take regular threesomes and good friends. It wasn’t like it was a shit trade off.
Grant frowns, “so essentially these people think I’m their manic pixie dream guy?” he asks.
“Yeah, basically,” Tony says, people still thought that about him despite him telling the media several times that he was in a committed relationship, though he neglected the part where he was with two people. He didn’t really want to deal with that media shit storm. He couldn’t even imagine what the internet would do if they found out Tony Stark was dating Captain America and his best friend Bucky Barnes. He wouldn’t be able to leave the Tower for weeks; he doubted it’d be safe for Grant or Maria to leave safely either if they didn’t want to be harassed by people who thought they might know something. They’d be right but that was besides the point, no one actually knew about the Howard thing thanks to SH.I.E.L.D’s cover-up job.
“Wait, I remember when I first met you, you were basically swarmed by people but I left you alone, is that why you talked to me?” Rhodey asks, suddenly realizing this sounded familiar.
“Mhmm,” Tony says, “and it totally worked, Rhodey spent literally months tracking me down in a war zone run by terrorists just because he wanted me safe, ten out of ten, would recommend my methods,” he says.
“It’s true, when I first saw Tony I figured the poor guy was probably sick of being hounded like that and hung back even though I was curious,” he says, “I guess it paid off, I was the only one he ever talked to our age, other than that he always talked to the older kids because they could keep up with his genius. Kind of, half the time they couldn’t keep up either,” he says, “it paid off, I love Tony, I can’t even imagine what would have happened if he had died in Afghanistan,” he shakes his head.
“You would have gotten like ninety percent of my money and a giant share in Stark Industries, and like most of my stuff too,” he says.
“What? No! Leave the company to Pepper, she practically runs it anyways, and donate your money to charity or something. There are better causes than me,” he says.
“See? Great friends will be made following my advice, Rhodey could be a literal billionaire and he’d give that all up because other people need it more,” he says to Grant, “Also I would fully expect you would donate most of it to charity, that’s why I left basically everything to you. Guess I should rewrite that will though, considering Grant and Maria,” he tells Rhodey.
“Please don’t leave the company to me, I cry even thinking about business meetings, I’ve had nightmares,” Grant says quickly.
“Pepper can make an attempt at grooming Maria, she’s gunna fucking fail miserably and basically have another me on her hands but women are more reasonable so maybe Maria will come around at some point,” he says, “Grant, you can have my extensive belt buckle collection.”
Howard snorts and sits up, sun glasses sideways on his face from having fallen asleep, “you’re seriously going to give Maria the company but Grant gets belt buckles?” he asks and Tony bites the inside of his cheek trying not to laugh at the awful tan line Howard was going to have.
“No, that’s fine, I like his belt buckles,” Grant says happily, “they don’t give me nightmares and I don’t panic when I think about them.”
“Yeah, I know, don’t think I haven’t noticed my buckles going missing, I have,” Tony says, “put them back.” He ignores Howard, which he was probably fairly used to, they got along okay, better when they were drunk, but he mostly only liked Maria and Grant. Steve gave him disapproving looks sometimes but he was nice and let Howard live in the Tower when he could have let him move into that ratty apartment he found in New York, plus he paid for Grant and Maria to go to private school and bought them pretty much whatever they wanted. It irritated Howard because he wanted to teach the kids responsibility but Tony figured he had a free run with the family bank account and he turned out okay, Howard says so, so Grant and Maria would be fine.
Howard sighs and flops back onto the blanket, falling asleep basically right away. “You know what, there are a lot of shitty things about being black, like wondering if the cops are going to kill you if you wear a hoodie, but bad tan lines are not a thing. At least not with my skin tone,” Rhodey says, eyeing Howard’s face with a raised eyebrow.
“That’s a crappy trade off,” Grant says, wrinkling his nose.
Rhodey shrugs, “well, at least I get some joy out of white people looking like fucked up cherry tomatoes until they brown, then they just look like idiots. You should see this picture of Tony when he went on this crazy spring break vacation not long after Howard supposedly croaked, the tan lines were so embarrassing. He had to get a spray tan to even himself out,” he says, shoving Tony’s shoulder playfully.
“I deny any existence of that picture,” he says, “that picture of Steve with a sun burn though, everyone should see that,” he says, grinning.
Rhodey rolls his eyes, “so…” he says after a few minutes of silence, “are we going to take advantage of sleeping Howard and find some stuff to make a dick shaped tan line on his chest or what?” he asks, eyeing a rolled up towel that would make a great shaft.
“Oh my god, yes,” Grant says and starts looking for something they could use to make balls with, “he’s a heavy sleeper too!” he says gleefully.
*
“I don’t know what’s worse,” Howard says from the bathroom, “the fact that I have three separate sun burn lines on my face from my sun glasses or that you assholes managed to make three, three, separate dicks on my chest. As if the nasty sun burn wasn’t bad enough, and it’s only on one half of my body, you people decided that using various beach things to make these tan lines even worse was a good idea. I can’t even go shirtless now!” He says, outraged.
“Welcome to being a woman!” Maria yells back once she has regained her senses, everyone else was still pissing themselves laughing.
“To be fair we woke you up several times to tell you that you should put sun screen on,” Steve says. And by ‘we’ Steve meant ‘him’; he was the only one who had any moral dilemma with letting Howard fry. It wasn’t as if Tony hadn’t tried to use the spray on sun screen a couple times, but Maria decided that two dicks was better than one and Howard was grumpy with being sprayed so it was a win-win. Then Bucky came back and dick three happened and frankly he was pretty red, there was no saving him then.
“I don’t want to be a woman!” Howard yells back.
“Neither do I, free the nipple!” she yells.
“Not right now!” Grant yells back, covering his eyes.
“Oh my god Grant, your nipples are fine,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“That’s because my nipples are useless and not sexualized by the media,” he says, “still don’t want to see your nipples though, please remain covered.”
“Unless your nipples are sunburnt shut up,” Howard snaps, “does anyone have aloe?” Steve ends up getting up to give Howard the aloe lotion because everyone else was laughing too hard, the guy was a gift, really.
“Maybe we should have just continued trying to spray him down,” Bucky says, to which Steve gives them all judgemental looks so they all knew he approved of not letting Howard burn.
“Oh there was no sense,” Howard says, exiting the bathroom, “I probably wouldn’t have reacted well, and I always end up pretty sunburnt on vacations. This is a first occurrence on the dicks though, and this is the last,” he says, glaring hard at his children, including Tony.
“Nope,” Tony chirps, “this is just way too funny. Who wants ice cream?” he asks, cutting off Howard’s reply. Steve gives him a look but everyone was more interested in ice cream than Steve’s judgement so they all run off without a second glance.