Tony Stark
Tony was not in the best of headspaces as the Quinjet took off from the Avengers Mansion. Perhaps he was being a bit impulsive like Cap had said when he cornered him on the landing pad. That Super Soldier hearing meant he had heard the entire conversation with the odd wizard and was trying to convince Tony to think this through. To be smart about this. Of course, he had laughed in his face and got on the Quinjet anyway. Tony knew he was probably right, but this wasn’t something he could just sit and think about. It was something he just felt he had to do. It was, funnily enough, an emotional call.
If there was one thing Tony understood, it was machines. Machines and computers. Things that ran off of empirical facts and calculable outcomes. If he could touch it, and work out what made it tick, then Tony was able to deal with it. He thrived in the realm of the physical.
Emotions were nowhere near his wheelhouse.
Sure, he understood them. Tony understood what anger was, and had dealt with that from his old man. He understood what loneliness was, having spent most of his time buried in work that eventually would be used to hurt others all for his own profit. He understood that these and other, more negative feelings were emotions and those were ones he could understand. It was the positive ones that he had the most trouble with.
Tony was used to living a life on the edge, thinking everything he was and would ever amount to was just a flash in the pan. Knowing he would never earn his father's approval led to that. After all, what's the point in building up an empire if your own Dad won’t even acknowledge that you exist? If nothing Tony ever made was good enough for his dad, then why should he bother making anything that lasts forever? Why should he have a life that lasts forever?
Live fast, possibly die faster. That was Tony’s entire motto once he got out of school.
Even when his dad and mom died, thanks to the Winter Solider, he still carried that mentality when running Stark Industries. He made good weapons just so he could make more money to bury himself in booze and loose men and women with even looser morals. He made the weapons kill faster so those that would face them wouldn’t have to suffer. Live fast, die faster. Make fast money, and spend money even faster. He had no time for emotions beyond just chasing that constant buzz that pushed those pesky thoughts and feelings out of his mind.
Then Sirius Black had to waltz up and ask Tony to kiss him.
Sirius was not his type, even if the man was a good kisser, but he did have a group of friends that were his type. There was James, the rich boy with more money than common sense sometimes. It was easy for Tony to get along with him. There was Lily, a fiery little thing that was the only one that seemed capable of scaring the group into not doing anything remotely stupid. Sirius was obviously the bad boy, while Remus was his boyfriend that tried to temper his more impulsive moments. The four of them alone would have been great fun and a quick distraction while in London for a few days.
Around them, Tony didn’t want to live fast and die faster.
Tony just wanted to live.
The month he spent with Laci, Sirius, and the rest of the London weirdos had been one of the most fun he had ever had that didn’t end up with him splashed across the front page after wrecking yet another hotel. They insisted that Tony stay with them in one of the many properties James loved to boast about owning around London.
‘Muggle properties are just too easy to snag’ James had said once after the bar had gotten back from an impromptu pub visit. Tony had no idea what a Muggle was then, just assumed James was just a bit more drunk than he had thought.
It wasn’t all booze that he had enjoyed with them. Lily insisted on visiting as many art galleries as possible, desperate to see it all as if it may just vanish overnight. She had been utterly over the moon when Tony had surprised her with a particular piece she had spent hours just staring at. James had hung it up right in front of the door for all to see. More often than not, Lily would spend her morning just looking at the painting, clearly getting something from it that Tony would never be able to understand.
Sirius was a whole other monster compared to the rest of them. For one, Remus was always at a close distance from his boyfriend. Not that Tony had any ideas of stealing the shaggy-haired guy from him, it was just a bit hard to do the more reckless stuff that Sirius and Tony wanted to do with Remus warning them of the dangers. Siris had this brilliant idea to jump a river on his bike and Tony had been right there beside him, working out just how fast he had to go and the angle at which he needed to hit their makeshift ramp. Everything was mathematically sound and Sirius was adamant that his little bike could easily hit the speed that Tony said he needed to achieve. Just as Sirius was about to do it, Remus stepped in and talked his boyfriend out of it. To be fair, after some time thinking it over, the idea was utterly mad. Unless that bike could fly there was no way in hell that it was going to make that jump.
Remus wasn’t always a buzz kill though. Sometimes he did join Tony and Sirius on a few of their more…tame adventures. He insisted on coming along when Tony had managed to secure a place to go skydiving one weekend. The man looked utterly terrified on the way down, but by the time they landed, he was smiling from ear to ear. Remus was also the one that took them to a different hole-in-the-wall eater the entire money they were staying together. They weren’t all hits, but the man swore by at least one meal in every one of them. Of course, he had been right on the money every time.
Then there was Laci. Fucking impossible to understand or get out of his mind. Laci was probably the most put-together out of all of them, but he sure as hell was the most chaotic at times. The man seemed born to prank or piss off someone at least once a day. His mouth was smart, easily weaving together insults like a spider crafting its web. The barbs were biting and direct, sparing no feelings in their delivery. Not to mention his pranks at everyone's expense, but mostly Tony’s. How he awoke one day with pink hair still confused him, but the peels of laughter that came from Laci gave him a good idea of who was behind it. Tony should have been upset, instead, he was too busy getting lost in hearing that light laughter.
Laci beat back all of his advances, denying Tony every time he had asked him out on a date. Every time he’d respond with some sort of snark or scathing comment. At some point, Tony just started firing back. It became a dance for them. Seeing how could get the other one to bow out of their petty insult contest. Sometimes Laci would win. Sometimes Tony would win. By the end of it, the two of them would just stare at each other, clearly waiting on the other to make the first move.
Shockingly it was Laci who had cracked first.
He had been living with the group for three weeks at that point, artfully avoiding Pepper and Rhodey with their constant calls and demanding to check in on him. Tony didn’t want to deal with them. At least not when he was in the middle of planning on moving Stark Industries to London full-time. If not just give his company away and live with his newfound friends until the end of time. It had been that very conversation with Laci that had led to the man cracking.
He seemed insistent that Tony not uproot his entire life to move down there for them all. That life was far too short to just throw away all he had built in America to risk it all for them. That they weren’t worth Tony tossing away his legacy. That Laci wasn’t worth it. They started arguing, getting angrier and angrier, the entire reason for the fight vanishing as they just vented their frustrations to one another. Tony, lamented that he was tied to a legacy from a man he hated. Laci went off about being afraid to die fighting for something he felt was just nonsense. That he didn’t want to lose the life he had been building.
Tony had seen the tears forming in those bright green eyes and moved in to give the young man comfort.
Instead, Laci had kissed him.
It was messy but passionate. Care and clothing were tossed into the wind and the two of them made love that night. And the next night. And the night after that. They spent days in each other arms, not willing to let go. Not wanting to leave and go back into a world that demanded everything from them. Not wanting to risk leaving this sudden passion they held for one another behind. In that room all Tony and Laci had was each other, and that was all they needed.
Until one day Tony woke up to an empty house and an empty bed.
That had been the day that broke Tony. The day when he learned the emotions were pointless to hold on to. That the only thing that you could ever trust to be consistent was numbers and machines. He threw himself back into his old habits, even harder than before.
Live fast, die even faster.
It had taken almost dying in a cave to bring him back. Because fate seemed to have some sort of irony kick or something. Almost dying due to his own hubris had brought him back from his own spiral toward his end. It kicked him into gear and made him better. Made him a damned superhero by the end of it all. A superhero who had saved the world a number of times. Who sought to actually better the world instead of letting it kill itself. Someone who wanted to stop people from ever feeling like they had to die for a cause they didn’t believe in, or be caught in the crossfire of someone else’s battles.
Someone he thought Laci would be proud of.
Though now knowing that Laci was actually Loki the entire time was really throwing Stark for the largest of loops. Not to mention the whole thing about the kid they now shared.
All of these thoughts were just stewing in his brain as he sat at the front of the Quinjet, coasting across the skies and over to London.
“So,” he heard Lang whisper poorly from behind him, “Are we really not going to talk about the God-sized elephant in the jet,” his question aimed at Clint.
“You know, for a guy that can shrink beyond the size of an atom, you really don’t know what counts as small talk,” Tony turned his chair around, locking eyes with the only two people he wanted to tag along on this little road trip.
“I mean, Ant Boy,” Clint started, playfully punching Lang’s shoulder, “does have a point. Are we going to talk about the whole you screwing Loki thing? I feel like that's kind of a big deal,”
“Oh, and the fact that you two had a kid," Lang jumped in, "Wait, is that why you brought us along with you? Since we are the only Avengers that actually have kids,”
“And to think Natascha said you weren’t clever Scott," Tony looked back at his two companions with a smirk, "And no, we are not talking about that because as far as I’m concerned I’ve never done the twenty-toe tango with Shakespeare in the Park,”
Even if he couldn’t unsee Laci when he pulled up footage of Loki.
“Well if you aren’t going to talk about it, then I’m sure you wouldn’t mind Scott and I talking about it. Like were you a Top or Bottom? I can’t see Loki being anything less than a top,” Clint chimed in, earning a glare from Tony.
“Not that I know anything about this,” Scott looked nervously at Tony before turning away, “My money is on them both trying to see if they could out Top the other. I mean, no offense or anything Tony, seeing as you pay my bills, but you do just have that sort of-,”
“Lang. If you enjoy still being paid, do not finish that sentence," Tony's entire face had turned red as he held out his hand to silence Scott, "As for you Robin Hood, Loki was definitely the bottom. You saw how easily he went down back in New York,”
“So you never went down on him? Such a selfish lover Stark, not that I’m surprised,” Clint fired the quip so easily that Tony was honestly thrown for a loop. As luck would have it, a distraction came in just in time.
“Hey Boss, I got those files you wanted. SHIELD is not going to be too happy when they find out though. This stuff was buried deep in their archives,” chimed FRIDAY with her perfect timing
Tony turned back to the front of the Quinjet as a screen dropped from the ceiling, displaying reams of data and information FRIDAY had managed to secret away from SHIELD.
“FRIDAY, I know you might have a magical brother out there, but I just want you to know that you are my favorite child,”
“Thank…you Boss,” the A.I. stuttered, clearly not sure how to process that statement despite having one of the strongest processors on the planet running her functions
Tony paid it no mind as his eyes looked over the files, muttering to himself. SHEILD was clearly interested in Wixen, at least the ones in America. Tony had no idea what a MACUSA was, but it seemed Fury had a number of agents working within it. Flipping around he found files going all the way back to World War 2 about some Dark Wizard trying to take over the world. The closer he got to the 90s and early 2000s, the more he started to see information on Voldemort pop up.
Even then, the information was very light on details. Just enough to let Tony know that this guy was clearly bad news. A guy who had too much power and not enough morals to stop him from using it poorly.
“Alright FRIDAY, you got anything on my kid,”
The A.I. didn’t answer, instead, a new set of files came on the screen. Shockingly it was somehow smaller than the SHEILD files. There was one photo, a security camera at a zoo, of the boy being pulled by his arm by a man that was easily five times the size of his supposed son. Beyond that all FRIDAY could find were a few school records that suddenly stopped once he turned 11. That was it. It was as if the boy just stopped existing sometime after his 11th birthday.
“FRIDAY there has to be more than this,” Tony asked with a desperate plea
“No dice Boss, I’m sorry,”
Tony didn’t respond to the apology, still looking over Harry’s records. At least the kid seemed to be smart, apparently doing courses for High Schoolers before he turned ten. There may be no proof that he was Loki’s kid, but with a brain like that, he totally screamed Stark.
“Alright then. Adjust our path and land us close to the address you have on file for him. If I’m not going to get any answers from these files, I may as well meet his family. I’m sure Lily’s sister wouldn’t mind a quick reunion,”
Considering how bitter that woman was the one time Tony had met her, he was willing to bet she was going to mind a whole lot. Which suited him just fine.