“I also have horrible nightmares when my head hurts.”
July 30
Tony slumped over the kitchen bar, his face buried in his hands, even the scent of coffee brewing not enough to pull him from his slump.
It had been a long night, and it was beginning to look like his day wouldn’t be any easier.
It started at ten with a text from Sirius, a simple and ominous thing:
Albus knows you have Harry.
Tony had called him, needing to know what the wizards knew, and Sirius didn’t know much past that.
“I’m being kept out of the loop now,” he grumbled, sounding as if he were grinding his teeth together. “It’s pretty damn obvious I was the one who spilled the ‘James isn’t your dad’ beans to Harry and now Albus isn’t telling me jack shit.”
Tony tried to get Sirius to tail the wizard who wanted his son to fight in a war (and for the love of God, Harry hadn’t even turned fifteen yet), but Sirius said ‘Albus’ went back to Hogwarts, where Sirius apparently couldn’t follow.
He did tell Tony that he didn’t think Albus would resort to kidnapping (or attempted, anyway, as Tony was confident he could take on a 100 year old wizard). Tony still sent an update to the team, putting them all on red alert.
If the wizards wanted the kid, they had a hell of a fight coming.
It was unfortunate that there was no way to contact Thor, but Tony still liked their odds without him.
Then, after barely just falling asleep, Tony got a rude wake up call in the form of seventeen phone calls from Rhodey a little after two.
“Someone better be dead,” Tony grumbled when he answered the eighteenth call. He didn’t even open his eyes, content to talk over speaker and hang up the instant he found out why his longest friend thought it was a good idea to irritate the hell out of him in the middle of the night.
“Yeah, you, you prick.”
Tony snorted, practically a snore. “Fantastic. I’ll just plan my funeral in the morning then.”
“There’s a good photo of you that’s going to be spread nationwide in the morning, I’ll use it for your obituary after I’ve snapped your damn neck.”
“Good picture, huh?” Tony asked, nuzzling his pillow, bored and ready to be asleep again.
“Oh yeah, you look great. So does your god damned son.”
Tony sat up immediately, wide awake, and snatched his cell off his nightstand so he could pull up a video feed. Rhodey looked pissed, but he usually did.
“They got a photo of Harry?”
Rhodey scoffed. “Nice name for the kid you never told me about.”
“Sorry, dear, he was a shock to me too,” Tony said with a roll of his eyes. “Let me see the picture.”
Rhodey sent it through immediately. “It already hit stations on the west coast, you’ll be swamped in the morning.”
Tony nearly smiled at the cell phone quality photo of Tony and Harry walking Harry’s dog down the sidewalk. Tony had one of his hands up, mid-explanation of something, and Harry looked much too patiently amused for a teenager.
It was a good photo, it didn’t explain how it uncovered the buried birth certificate that was created when Tony established his paternal claim though.
“Don’t you dare ask,” Rhodey warned him, proving that only someone who spent nearly thirty years as Tony’s friend could pluck a question right from his mind. “He looks just like you. Hell, if he wasn’t so skinny I’d think you just finally figured out how to clone yourself.”
“Not yet,” Tony said absently, reading through the article Rhodey attached with the photo. “Guess the cat’s out of the bag, huh?”
“You’re lucky nobody broke the news before now. How long have you known?”
“Couple months,” Tony admitted. He ignored the little angry face Rhodey was making at him and flopped back against his pillows.
“I am never talking to you again, Tony,” Rhodey said.
Tony rolled on his side and bat his lashes at the video feed hovering above his cell. “So you’re not coming to Harry’s birthday on Tuesday?”
Rhodey rolled his eyes that time. “Of course I am. I’m not missing my damn nephew’s birthday. Text me a list of shit he likes, you arrogant prick.”
“Will do, sweetheart, love you,” Tony grinned and hung up.
Rhodey had never been good at holding a grudge. And, yeah, okay, Tony should have told him about the kid before he found out in the news, but it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been busy.
Plus, as much as Harry wasn’t a fan of Tony’s other friends, the kid was going to love Rhodey.
Wide awake after that call, Tony went to check on the kid, paranoia plaguing him as he thought about the way wizards could just pop in and out of locations.
He nudged Harry’s door open, half his attention on the articles and video clips Rhodey buried his inbox in. He text his business manager, requesting they buy out the trashy tabloid that questioned Harry’s mental capabilities as Tony ‘was a well known drug addict’ who ‘supposedly recovered’.
It was more than a little insulting that Tony could save the damn world and nobody questioned his sobriety, but you have one secret kid and suddenly it was all ‘is he back on drugs?’
Tony poked his head in Harry’s room, a weight lifting off his chest when he saw Harry’s body beneath the white comforter on his bed. Harry was home, exactly where he was meant to be.
The weight he lost knowing his son hadn’t been kidnapped slammed right back at him when he lingered in the doorway long enough to see Harry suddenly thrash on his bed, his head turned toward Tony, and Tony could see the kid was drenched in sweat. Harry’s face was all twisted up and he looked like he was being tortured in whatever dream he was having.
It wasn’t that Tony hadn’t believed Sirius when he said Harry had PTSD and chronic nightmares, it was just that Harry looking utterly exhausted was a pretty regular look, so Tony thought maybe the kid slept just fine.
In hindsight, it was a pretty damn stupid thing to think.
Tony had taken a few steps in the room, his mind blank on how to deal with it. Did he wake him up? Hope it just passed? Call Pepper and have her figure it out?
The last idea had merit, actually.
Before Tony could dial Pepper’s number, Harry suddenly bolted upright, a strangled scream wrenching from his throat. Tony darted forward, a desperate urge to reassure Harry that he was fine, he was safe, he was at home, but instead the kid clocked his hand from the corner of his eyes, screamed again, and fell out of his bed.
“Woah, careful.” Tony offered a hand, wincing when Harry flinched away from it. Not his best idea, clearly.
Harry’s eyes were frantic, flickering around while Tony shifted uneasily.
Should he crouch down? Not stand so threateningly? Turn the light on? Call—
Woof!
A small little bundle of fur did a quick dive from the bed, landing on Harry’s bare chest where he was still sprawled on the floor, clutching at the bed frame behind him, searching the room for threats aside from Tony.
Tony watched as Harry immediately looked down at the dog nudging his chest and slowly shifted in to a more conventional sitting position while his glazed eyes focused on the dog. Tony had never been so grateful for the ever-shedding dog as he was when Harry buried a hand in its fur and began slowly petting him.
“So… that was fun,” Tony said after a long silent moment. The air was thick with the scent of sweat and fear, which Tony knew more than anyone carried its own specific odor. Harry’s eyes snapped up to Tony, but he didn’t flinch that time, he frowned.
“You want to talk about it?” Tony offered when Harry didn’t say anything.
Harry opened his mouth, then scrunched his nose and raised one of his hands to his forehead, pressing tight. “Headache,” he grunted, his eyes screwed shut in what seemed to be genuine pain. “Happens.”
“Yeaaah, I also have horrible nightmares when my head hurts.”
Harry looked paler than usual when he dropped his hand and grabbed the bed frame, his legs shaking as he got to his feet while ignoring Tony’s outstretched hand.
“Brilliant, go fucking cry about it somewhere else,” Harry muttered. He edged around his bed, moving to his closet where he snagged a tshirt and managed to get it on all without ever setting down the dog nuzzling his neck.
“I’m good.” Tony leaned against the wall beside the door and watched as Harry purposefully seemed to avoid eye contact with him. “Here’s an idea, you come take some tylenol and we can share our top three worst nightmares?”
Harry scoffed at his bare feet before raising defiant green eyes up at Tony. And Harry’s eye color and shape might be all Lily Potter, but that look in them was pure Tony.
“I said I didn’t have a nightmare.”
Tony hummed and figured it was late (early?), he was tired, they had a shit ton of problems to deal with, and maybe it wasn’t the time to push for a warm fuzzy conversation.
“Fine,” he said, reigning in his skepticism. “Tylenol and a snack then?”
Harry seemed to search Tony’s face for a moment, clocking his skepticism, but he still jerked his chin in a nod and gestured for Tony to lead the way.
Tony waited until Harry swallowed a few Tylenol and they both had a slice of leftover pizza in hand, the perfect three am snack, to broach the topic again.
“Get headaches often?” Tony asked when Harry rubbed his forehead, offering the perfect opening.
Harry dropped his hand immediately, giving Tony a brief glimpse of the inflamed looking scar on his forehead before he smoothed his hair down to cover it.
“No,” Harry said.
Tony had been pretty sure the kid was lying through his teeth. “How often?”
Harry picked a piece of pepperoni off his pizza, dropping it to the living room floor for the dog to snatch up.
“Every now and again,” Harry said vaguely. He waved his hand toward his forehead, “Cursed scar, you see.”
Tony did not see. He had been thinking migraines, maybe. He himself took pills for migraines on occasion, but a cursed scar…?
He was suddenly, and unhelpfully, reminded of what Clint said: “We can’t fight magic.”
“Ah.”
Harry smirked at him from the couch. “No brilliant plans for cursed scars then? Pity. Maybe that was why I didn’t mention it.”
Tony smirked right back at his son. “You might not know this, but I happen to be a genius, kid. Cursed scar, sursed car. I’ll find a solution, and in the meantime, Tylenol.”
How Tony was meant to find a solution for a magically cursed scar that gave his kid headaches, he had no idea. But he would.
He was beginning to think there was nothing he wouldn’t do for the kid.
After a couple of hours of watching a movie Tony was too tired to focus on, Harry had fallen asleep on the couch and Tony moved to the kitchen for some coffee.
And slumped over the kitchen counter, his face buried in his hands, was exactly where Steve found him an hour later.
“You look like hell,” Steve said bluntly. He had tiptoed past the snoring teenager on the couch, but didn’t hold that same kindness when he scraped a chair back to sit beside Tony, causing Tony to wince at the noise.
“Language, Cap,” Tony quipped, too worn out to even put his heart in teasing Steve.
“Long night?” Steve guessed.
“You’ve got no idea.”
Steve hummed and glanced toward the living room. “I saw Harry’s on the news, ‘Stark’s Secret Son’, it’s catchy.”
Tony snorted and drank some of his cold coffee. “They’re not even creative,” he said. “What about… ‘Clone or Kid: the Mystery Stark Question’?”
Steve didn’t look impressed, which was entirely fair because it wasn’t Tony’s best work.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m exhausted,” Tony defended himself.
“Kid looks rough too,” Steve said, looking at the snoring teenager again. “You guys fighting or something last night?”
“I wish,” Tony sighed. He scrubbed his hands over his face, grimacing at the scratch beneath his fingers which said he needed to shower and shave before he went down to his office for the day. “He had a headache,” he said evasively. He wasn’t going to discuss Harry’s nightmares with Steve.
“A headache,” Steve repeated, deadpan. He folded his hands on the counter and made his ‘I’m the good guy and you can trust me’ face. “You’ve got to get him in therapy, Tony. It can’t be healthy him just bottling all his past up on the inside. You can’t- can’t just love away the trauma. Trust me, I’ve seen some of the guys at the vet center after doing just that, it’s not pretty.”
“He’s my son, hence, everything he does is pretty,” Tony said. “And he’s a teenager, not a war veteran.”
The look Steve gave him would have been condescending if Tony didn’t know that Steve was perhaps the most genuine and guileless person in the damn world.
“PTSD doesn’t discriminate on experiences,” he said solemnly.
“That’s really inspirational, Cap,” Tony told him. He got up and stretched his back out. “Seriously, you should put that on your cereal boxes. Hey, you mind just…” Tony waved vaguely toward Harry, “standing by? Or whatever?”
“Sure.” Steve chuckled and relaxed in his seat. “Go shower, you stink and it’s weird seeing you in your fuzzy pjs.”
Tony raised his brows and quirked his lips up in a slight grin. “I’ll have you know these are silk, not fuzz, Cap. And I can get you fifty affidavits stating I look better without them on.”
Steve crinkled his nose. “Only fifty?”
“Fifty that live within fifty miles of me,” Tony acquiesced. “Alright, alright, I’ll be back,” he laughed when Steve looked like Tony had hurt his sense of purity and ‘waiting for love’. How the guy went through military training and still came out all pure and innocent was beyond Tony. Sure, he’d been a bit scraggly and thin before Tony’s dad tinkered on his physique, but even ugly guys could put on an army uniform and get laid.
Tony tried to rush his shower, knowing he did actually have a full day planned, but some things, like foreplay and hot showers, just couldn’t be rushed.
Neither could shaving. Or picking out clothes. Or any of the many menial tasks he completed for the sake of pushing off the workload he had waiting for him.
There would be media to address, a public statement to figure out. Tony had meetings with hopefuls who wanted him to invest in their inventions, a monthly occurrence that oftentimes bored him to drinking, but occasionally found an inventor with promise. There was also a meeting with the guys after lunch, scouting for another possibly Hydra base in Slovakia.
Then, of course, spending every minute trying to research cursed scars, headaches, keeping wizards from apparating in his house, and ‘how to convince your wizard son that he had problems he needed to get sorted out without pissing him off and getting stunned for it’.
Overall, a damn busy day.
After an hour of primping, stalling, and silently pouting, Tony returned to the kitchen to find Steve frying up bacon at the stove and Harry, still in his pajamas, frowning at his phone from his side of the kitchen counter.
“Morning,” Harry mumbled distractedly. He tapped aggressively at his screen, “Peter said I’m in the news.”
“You are,” Tony said, attempting to sound breezy and casual. “Pains of having a terribly famous dad, I’m afraid. Nothing to worry about.”
Unlike the wizards and the cursed scars.
Harry looked up from his phone, fixing Tony with an unimpressed expression straight from Tony’s own face. “Peter said the news is speculating on if I’m a bloody idiot because you were on drugs when you knocked up my mum.”
Steve’s lips twitched and Tony rolled his eyes up to the ceiling while he brewed two fresh cups of coffee for Harry and himself.
“Well tell Peter not to believe everything he reads in the paper.”
Harry snorted, “Story of my life,” he muttered before turning back to the phone and adorably typing out a message in the most angry manner Tony had ever seen. “Oh.” Harry looked up, “Do we have plans today?”
“Today? No,” Tony shrugged. He gave Harry the first cup of coffee and popped some of the bagels Pepper dropped off in the toaster while Steve took the bacon off the stove. “I have to work for a bit today.”
Harry raised a skeptical brow. “Work or building more owl chasing robots?”
“Owl chasing robots?” Steve asked. He divvied up the bacon on three plates, sliding one to Harry and leaving the second one on the counter for Tony before he stole an untoasted bagel, like a savage, and plopped down at the bar.
Tony rolled his eyes at Steve before turning back to Harry, “Hedwig loves her OWL.”
“Sure,” Harry drawled sarcastically. He picked up a piece of bacon and swung it around a bit, “Her, what was it? Owl whatever launcher?”
“An Owl Waking Launchpad,” Tony said with a smirk. “And she loves it.”
She did love it and it earned Tony both a grooming session from the OCD-seeming owl and a laugh from his kid.
“You’ve got too much free time on your hands,” Steve mumbled.
“But today I have actual work,” Tony said. He frisbee-style tossed a bagel to Harry, who snatched it with damn sharp reflexes, then put the second one on his place before he ticked items off his todo list as he said them. “One of the beta tested StarkCars we released blew a head gasket before the chick got it home, then I’ve got to meet with my inventors, and the team about a possible hydra base in Slovakia that’s trafficking humans, and I need to follow up on the whole possible sighting of Pettigrew, then—”
“What?” Harry, who actually always seemed to listen when Tony chatted about his work, startled in his seat. “Go back, explain,” he demanded curtly.
Tony wound him up a bit, if only because Harry gave out orders just as Tony did and they both seemed to suck at following them. “Hydra is a terrorist group and Steve had reason to believe—”
“Not that,” Harry scowled, interrupting him again. “Pettigrew? You found him?”
Tony held a finger up and waited to finish swallowing his bacon, ensuring that there was absolutely no confusion on the matter as Harry’s lips might have been turned downward in a frown, but his eyes were lit up with what seemed like hope.
“No,” he said firmly, feeling guilty for dashing that ray of hope in Harry’s eyes. Damn if it wouldn’t have felt better to say yes, just… just make the kid’s whole damn year with the news. “I’ve got facial recognition software running on every camera in the United Kingdom (and in the US, but he had those for all the wizards Sirius warned him about and managed to send photos of), I get alerts when there’s any 60% or above matches, based on the facial cues and a variety of programmed expression, and then I—”
“You know nobody aside from yourself cares about the technology behind what you’re saying, right?” Steve grinned.
Tony would have chuckled, brushed the reminder that he had a tendency to hyper-fixate on the minute mechanisms of something more than the big picture off his shoulder as he always did, but Harry didn’t seem to care much for Steve’s joke.
“Excuse you,” Harry said cooly, fixing his eyes unwaveringly on Steve, “I happen to care, so piss off.”
Steve raised his hands by his shoulders and glanced over at where Tony was sitting on the counter with a twinkle of laughter in his eyes. “My mistake, please, go on.”
“I will, thank you,” Tony said. He shot a wink at Harry, an odd warmth in his chest and the weight of his exhaustion lessening from his shoulders. “So here’s how it works…”
It was… incredibly validating, having Harry give Tony his rapt attention as he got caught up in the explanation. Steve looked bored, even began washing dishes while Tony still talked, but Harry asked questions, wanted terms he didn’t recognize clarified, and overall showed an interest that Tony very rarely got from others.
And, sure, Harry was probably just interested because he wanted Pettigrew found and his godfather’s name cleared, but still, it was nice. In fact…
“Hey, I’ve got an idea!” Tony had long since been standing on his feet, giving him more balance to gesture with his hands while he explained different things, and he rocked back on his heels with a grin. “This thing I’ve got today, with the inventors looking for investments, why don’t you come with me? Most of their shit sucks, but usually there’s at least one or two actually interesting ideas that Stark Industries invests in.”
Harry sat up in his seat, but twisted his lips to the side as he glanced at his cell. “What time?”
Tony glanced at his watch. “Five minutes from now. Lasts about an hour.”
“Tony!” Steve shook his head at him with the ‘I’m not mad, just disappointed’, exasperation only he could truly pull off. “You need to get going.”
“Can’t start until I’m there,” Tony said carelessly. “What about it, kid, want to come with?”
“Think we’ll be done by noon?” Harry asked slowly. “I was going to go over to Peter’s so he could help me with… with a project…”
Tony laughed, “If we aren’t done by eleven at the latest, I’ll ki— I’ll cancel the rest and reschedule them,” he said smoothly. “I, personally, don’t care if you wear your pajamas, but it’s up to you.”
Harry glanced down at himself, apparently not realizing he was still in his pajamas. “Er… right. Be right back.”
Steve waited until Harry closed his bedroom door to quirk a brow at Tony. “‘Kill myself’, right? That’s what you were going to say?”
Tony hummed. “Hey Jarvis, did you hear me say that?”
Jarvis, loyal robot assistance that he was, responded negatively almost immediately.
“That answers that,” Tony said brightly. He picked up Harry’s pup, figuring the kid would get a kick out of dragging his dog to meetings with him, and gave Steve a bland smile. “Sure was great to see you, bring cookies to the meeting later.”
Steve recognized the blatant dismissal and slowly made his way to the elevator. “Therapy, Tony,” he called over his shoulder. “For both of you.”
Tony rolled his eyes at Steve’s back. Unlike the kid, he didn’t need therapy. He needed to solve all his magical problems with nonmagical means, force the kid in therapy, perhaps sneak a bottle of bourbon down to the publicity meeting he had later, and enjoy spending time with his son while he worked.
And the pitches he sat through in his board room were a thousand times more bearable with Harry sitting at Tony’s side, making faces, writing down snarky comments, and occasionally asking important questions to the inventors.
“Isn’t that what a washing machine is for?” Harry asked the guy who pitched the idea of self-washing clothes using thermal technology and a frankly ridiculous amount of funding.
“Well… yes,” the guy admitted, “but this way there’s no strain on power grids or water supplies for it! It could reduce utility bills by thousands of dollars a year!”
Harry looked at the papers the guy submitted while Tony spun in his chair, perfectly content to let Harry inform the man that he was a moron.
“Why would it matter if they saved $1,000 on their utility bills if every shirt costs nearly $200?” Harry asked, pointing to a line on the paper where costs were outlined. “I dunno, mate, I’d rather just wash my shirts than spend that kind of money on them.”
While the man collected his items, and Tony assured him he could come back with a new invention in the future, as exploring recyclable thermal technology had a lot of merit in Stark Industries, Tony also tried to calculate how many items of his clothing cost over $200.
“You know, I’ve got boxers that cost more than those shirts,” Tony told Harry conversationally while they waited for the next inventor to come in.
Harry rubbed his eyes wearily. “Of course you do.”
They were both impressed with the woman who pitched the UV machine meant to be used in hospitals that reduced turnover time for sterilization through the use of UV rays.
“Less time sterilizing tools means more time saving lives,” she explained.
Tony read over her paperwork, combing each line carefully, while Harry got up from his chair to inspect the gun shaped sterilizer (a shape that would have to be changed before it could be marketed).
“This blue light really removes germs?” Harry asked her skeptically.
“It does. Here,” she handed the gun to him, unfazed by being questioned by a teenager, something Tony contributed to the gossip filling the business levels of the tower about the ‘breaking news’. “I’ll scan this chair to show the germs on it, then you clean it, okay?”
Tony watched the presentation, making a mental note to fire his cleaning crew when a disgusting amount of germs were shown on the chair they used.
Harry looked adorably excited when the sterilizing gun did as promised, and the germs were nearly indistinguishable after he scanned it.
“This is brilliant!” Harry told her. He gave her back the invention and then casually pushed the now germ-free chair down by Tony, swapping out the chair he had with it.
“I like it,” Harry whispered to Tony once he was seated.
Tony grinned and nodded at the woman. “We like it,” he said. He let Harry use Tony’s signature stamp before sliding the documents back across the table. “Take this to the girl at the desk, welcome to Stark Industries.”
“She seems happy,” Harry said after the woman left the room.
“We did just invest a million dollars in her invention.”
“We did what?!”
By ten thirty, when the list of inventors approved to pitch that day had been completed, the UV sterilizer had been the only invention actually approved. Not that it mattered one whit to Tony, as Harry had haltingly asked if he could attend the next months meeting before dashing off to get lunch with Pepper before Peter arrived.
As if Tony would tell him no; sitting there with Harry had been like.. like probably something Tony’s old man had always hoped for and Tony had never had the inclination to do.
Thank God Harry was a hell of a lot better son than Tony had been.
The rest of Tony’s day was a letdown after getting to spend the morning with his son.
The meeting with the publicity team was thankfully short, thanks to a statement Pepper probably prepared before Harry ever arrived at Stark Tower. The head gasket issue on the StarkCar prototype just needed reinstalled, recalibrated, and the codes cleared off the system.
Tony did suffer through nearly an hour of bullshit from his fellow Avengers as they went back and forth on how to best narrow down the possible Hydra base, assess for threats ‘before they arrived’ (as if they had ever done that before), and when they should tackle the mission. Ultimately, Steve decided that he and Nat would scout it out the next week, then return with information to ‘build a concrete plan with’.
And if they weren’t building concrete plans that day, then why the hell did they need a meeting?
The cookies Steve actually brought to the meeting were only a slight balm to Tony’s absolute disinterest.
By the time Tony drug himself up to the tower, sending Sirius a message, letting him know the sighting was just of an unfortunately hideous man and not Pettigrew, he had a headache of his own building between his eyes. He got all of the business related tasks checked off, and had no new information from Sirius on cursed scars or how to block apparation. Sirius’ only suggestion on the second was to take Harry to ‘Landfara Way’, a wizarding town hidden in New York City, and hire ‘a master in wards’.
Which just added a new item to the never ending todo list in Tony’s head. Tony thought maybe, with Harry gone, he’d grab a drink, kick back on the couch, and just relax before he tackled the rest of his projects for the day.
The kid, apparently, had other plans.
“Don’t be mad,” Harry said immediately when Tony stepped in their living room and looked around at the mess covering the floor. “I was afraid Arsehole would chew them up, so I locked him in my room and came out here to work.”
Tony stepped around the mess, playing an odd sort of game of hopscotch, as he tried to figure out what all the papers were.
“Moving pictures?” Tony breathed. He picked one up as soon as he realized what it was and watched in awe as Lily Potter threw a snowball at James Potter, knocking his glasses off his face, over and over. He looked around at the floor and realized they were all moving pictures, nearly two dozen of them, and they all featured the same two people.
“My parents,” Harry said shortly. He started snatching up the photos, moving quickly but handling the photos with enough care to show how much they obviously meant to him. “I’m making copies of these photos, for a new album, but I obviously can’t just bring a bunch of bloody magical pictures to Peter’s place, so…” Harry picked up his cell phone in one hand and wiggled it a little, “I’m making copies and he’s going to print them in his dark room.”
“Aah…” Tony carefully picked up a few of the photos for Harry, smiling softly when he found one with Harry as a newborn, being held by James who looked so proud that it made Tony ache with jealousy. “Hey, mind making me copies of a few of these? Tell your boyfriend I’ll pay him whatever it cost.”
Tony could have it done himself, but he doubted if Harry trusted him enough to relinquish a single one of those photos for even an instant.
“First off,” Harry narrowed his eyes and held his hand out, silently demanding Tony hand over his cherished photo, “Peter isn’t my boyfriend.”
Tony interrupted what was looking to be an excellent tirade with a grin. “You guys kiss again?”
Harry’s sudden blush and quick aversion of his eyes was answer enough.
“Second off,” Harry’s tone indicated the likelihood of him verbally confirming Tony’s guess, “why would you want copies of these photos? What for?”
Tony moved to the couch, swinging his legs up so he didn’t jostle any of the photos Harry still had scattered about, and reclined his head against the armrest. “Is it a crime to want childhood photos of my kid? See you in all your awkwardness before my genes kicked in and you became the good looking kid you are today? Show you off to my business partners like all doting fathers do?”
When Harry didn’t have a snappy comeback after a moment, Tony turned his head to see what he was doing and caught him chewing his lip and slowly replacing photos in a faded red album.
“I’m joking,” Tony said when Harry didn’t respond after another uncomfortable moment. “I’m sure you were a good looking five year old too, but it makes me sound like I need to stay fifty feet away from schools when I say it.”
Harry shrugged at that, his face blanking itself off quickly, all the odd apprehension melting away in to a mask of nothing. “I don’t know if I was,” he said lightly. “If you want photos I’ve got a couple baby photos and then a few when I started Hogwarts.” He lifted his head and gave Tony a challenging look, “Can’t really show off photos of your kid wearing wizarding robes to muggles, can you?”
Tony responded on autopilot as he puzzled over Harry’s response. “Sure I can, kid. I’ll tell them it’s the most elite boarding school in the world, it doesn’t even have a name, it’s so elite, and students dress up like wizards to prompt creativity and innovation. Wait, what the fuck?” Tony’s forehead creased as it clicked exactly what Harry just said, “You don’t have any photos for ten years of your life?”
“No.” Harry’s firm tone brokered no argument or further discussion. “You might have missed it, as easily as she signed me over to a complete bloody stranger, but my relatives weren’t exactly fond of the freak living in their house, were they?”
“You’re not a freak,” Tony said automatically, internally wincing as he recalled Harry telling him how much a freak he felt like for something as minor as his preference in partners. “There has to be pictures of you somewhere,” he insisted. “School records, field trips, hell, even in the background of someone else’s family photos.”
“There aren’t,” Harry insisted with a snap to his voice. He slid the last of the photos in the album and stood up. “I’m going to send these to Peter.”
Tony nodded absently, rolling back on his back and staring up at the ceiling. He waited until Harry’s door had closed behind him then began enacting step one of the plan he quickly put together.
“Jarvis, I need you to run new facial recognition software, go back to October 31, 1998. Focus primarily in Surrey, England, but scan the surrounding counties as well. Send me all stills of anyone that is at least a 65% match for Harry. Check CVT’s, social media uploads, news clippings, everything.”
“Very good, sir. I will send you my findings.”
“Thanks. Oh, hey, text contact Peter Parker, tell him Harry’s dad wants a copy of every photo he’s taken of Harry, even one’s Harry doesn’t know about, sent to me. And tell him he has until midnight or I’m sending Clint over with his bow.”
“Excellent, sir, I will threaten Mister Parker now.”
“Thanks, Jarvis.” Tony kicked his shoes off and closed his eyes. “Also tell him if he tells Harry that I’ll send Natasha along with Clint.”
It would look bad if Tony showed up in person to steal photographs from a teenager with professional photography aspirations, but he could send Clint and Nat and get excellent results, he was sure.
Tony was nearly asleep, dozing and relaxed in the silence of the living room, when Jarvis got back to him.
“Sir? Mister Parker said he isn’t scared of your friends and to bring it on, he knows karate.”
Despite himself, Tony chuckled. “Great, tell him I said that either he sends me the pictures or I’ll start inviting over the current Teen Vogue models to meet Harry.”
It took Jarvis less than six minutes to come back with confirmation that Peter had sent him nearly four dozen image attachments and a rolling the eyes emoji.
Harry had decent taste, at least the kid was witty. Peter would need to be, to keep up with Harry’s never ending sarcasm.
“Oh, hey, make sure he knows we’re having dinner here tomorrow at five for Harry’s birthday. Tell him to invite Harry’s other friend, Gwen, and I’ll send Happy to pick them up. Also, tell him it’s business casual.”
It wasn’t, since Tony hated anything that involved not wearing jeans, but he grinned to himself when he imagined the panic that Peter would have trying to decipher what exactly ‘business casual’, a term Tony still didn’t know the exact outline for, meant.
With that task taken care of, Tony set an alarm, rolled over on his side, and took what he thought to be an incredibly hard earned nap.