“I am fucking NAKED!”
Harry was furious and embarrassed and his stomach flipped with shame until he tilted his head down and everything he’d managed to eat for dinner came right back up and slowly went down the drain with the hot water and proof of Harry’s embarrassment.
The water stung as it rinsed over his left hand, but Harry ignored it as his eyes stung much worse.
It felt like the longest day in history.
Harry left Hogwarts - left his friends behind in a war he started.
Tony made you leave. You didn’t have a choice.
Even so, having the proof of his own damned cowardly weakness brandished in front of a room full to the brim of people brave enough to stand and fight for others didn’t exactly feel great.
And… and there was Peter, but Harry was trying not to think of him.
And Sirius, who Harry was also trying not think of.
Except Harry’s mind was a worse traitor than Sirius was and kept circling back to them.
He didn’t understand why Sirius would immediately betray Harry’s confidences when Harry had always held his. He didn’t understand why Peter told his aunt he was sick when he’d looked fine - better than fine - when they saw him behind a building a few blocks from his house.
Harry was beginning to think he understood nothing and would always feel like he was drowning as he tried to figure out everyone’s motives for everything they did.
Not only was it the longest day in history, but it was definitely top ten for worst days as well.
Once Harry felt as clean as he could feel, considering his insides were shriveled and coated in shame, he wrapped a loose towel around his waist. He’d no more than grabbed another towel to dry his hair when the bathroom door was thrown open and a very wet and half-naked Harry was faced with a very cold and mechanical Rhodey.
“What the fuck?!” Harry yelped. He, rather stupidly, used the second towel to cover his chest and backed up until he stumbled into the toilet and sat down on the closed lid. “GET OUT!” he yelled.
Harry liked Rhodey well enough, he was funny and a nice guy who decided that flying would cheer Harry right up, but Harry didn’t expect that to turn into chats in the loo when he was starkers.
Rhodey’s face was hidden behind his mask, but Harry reckoned he sensed a bit of embarrassment in his voice when he finally spoke.
“Grab your cloak and broom, let’s go,” he ordered. “Come on, quick.”
“Are you mad?!” Harry yelled. He could tell there was an undercurrent of something in Rhodey’s flat robot voice, but as Harry was the naked teenage boy, he ignored it.
“He did say quickly.” Pietro dashed in the bathroom with Harry’s broom and cloak in hand, even though Harry definitely didn’t give him permission to go rifling through his trunk.
Harry couldn’t even properly begin a tirade before the cloak was tossed over his head and the broom shoved in his hand.
“Come on, Harry,” Rhodey urged him. “I’ll explain while we go, but we need to go.”
Harry moved on autopilot as Pietro all but shoved him, causing him to snarl in irritation, out of the bathroom and toward the finally opened windows in his bedroom.
“Wait! What’s going on?” Harry saw the uneasy look on Pietro’s face and recognized the urgency that Rhodey was moving with. Something was wrong, something major, something dangerous.
“Experiment gone wrong,” Pietro quipped. “See you soon, Wizard Boy.”
Rhodey flew out the window with little jets blasting through his boots and Harry couldn’t even turn his head to yell for Tony before Pietro gave him a harsh shove.
Oh Harry was absolutely going to blast a hole through Pietro’s head when he got back.
As it was, it was all Harry could do to wrangle his broom beneath his body while keeping the cloak on and cursing his lack of pants. If anyone had ever tried to purposefully ride a broom in the nude, they were completely mad.
Harry grit his teeth against the discomfort and leaned forward to catch himself out of the plummet and shoot after Rhodey. Rhodey wasn’t flying for fun, as he had when they took a leisurely fly earlier, but was fleeing and kept twisting his head to check if Harry was fleeing with him.
Apparently heat sensors built in the lifeless masks could sense Harry, even if they couldn’t see him.
“Where are we going?” Harry hissed when he caught up beside Rhodey. “And what the hell is happening?”
Rhodey’s voice was just loud enough that Harry could hear it over the wind that whipped past them. It was bloody cold out too and the cloak was good for invisibility, not warmth.
“Long story short- your dad made a super robot, they were trying to dismantle it and he told me to get you out while they did it,” Rhodey told him. That didn’t really sound too dangerous to Harry, considering Tony made robots rather often. Harry’s worry that he’d left Tony behind with something dangerous diminished slightly and he felt his breath come easier.
“Do you want to grab a milkshake or something while we wait?” Rhodey asked. “My treat.”
Harry blinked incredulously at him and then remembered Rhodey couldn’t see his face.
“No!” Harry shouted hotly. “I don’t want a bloody milkshake, I am fucking NAKED!”
Rhodey chuckled and continued flying in a straight path away from the Tower and toward the city lights.
“I forgot,” he admitted shamelessly. It was easy for Rhodey to forget, he wasn’t the one straddling a broomstick with only a towel around his waist. “Follow me,” he ordered before tilting downward and flying directly toward the ground.
Harry cursed Rhodey out clear to the ground. Stupid Avenger with his stupid suit and his warmth and his lack of a broom and a cloak being his only cover. Stupid Pietro and his stupid hands digging through Harry’s trunk and shoving him out windows.
Stupid windows.
Stupid life.
By the time they’d hit the ground, Harry had moved on to vilifying Tony and his stupid robots. Stupid genius parent with his stupid protective streak when Harry didn’t need protected from a robot anymore than he’d needed protected from Umbridge.
“Hang tight,” Rhodey told Harry quietly beneath the gasps and cries from the New Yorkers who were taking a million photos of Rhodey with their cameras. “I’ll be right back.”
Harry scowled and backed against the alley mouth when Rhodey strode away in full iron suit to a nearby tourist shop. He held his Firebolt tightly, wishing he’d grabbed his wand.
Or pants.
They were equal desires at that point.
Rhodey wasn’t gone long, and he returned with a plastic bag bulging with clothes.
“I guessed at your sizes,” he said, shoving the bag toward Harry who grabbed it gratefully. “They didn’t sell boxers, but I grabbed some sweats.”
Harry murmured a quiet thanks and leaned his broom against the wall so he could jump around and pull on the baggy blue sweat pants and matching hoodie without knocking his cloak off him. Once he finished and stuffed the towels in the bag, Rhodey was speaking in his mask.
“Clear, we’ll head back,” he said. He turned to where Harry stood, quietly and curiously waiting to hear what had happened, and nodded. “Ready?”
Harry sighed. They’d been gone for less than ten minutes. He was fairly certain that shoving him out a window in the nude had been more than a bit of an overreaction, but he agreed to fly back all the same.
And ten minutes had apparently been enough time for a fight to have broken out and Tony’s sitting room to get trashed.
Harry’s jaw dropped at the massive amounts of damage done to the flat when they flew through the open windows. What was a busted telly when the furniture had been flipped and the table was in splinters and some of the windows were shattered?
“Damn,” Rhodey muttered as he too took in the mess. “Tony and his brilliant ideas…”
Harry gave him a sharp look that the man missed as they edged around the mess and moved toward Tony’s lab where raised voices could be heard.
Rhodey kept his suit on, though he dropped the mask, and Harry laid his cloak and broom against the wall before they opened the door and Harry’s blood was immediately boiling.
Thor had Tony held by his neck up against the wall and was screaming in his face. And the rest of the so-called ‘heroes’ were doing nothing but watching.
“Oi!” Harry grabbed the first thing he could, a metal wrench just inside the door, and chucked it at Thor’s head. “Put him down!”
Thor deflected the wrench with nothing more than a lazy wave of his hand, and he dropped Tony and let him land on shaky legs, but he didn’t stop glaring in Tony’s face.
“You are a fool,” Thor snarled. “You have no idea what things you meddle with!”
Harry looked over toward Rhodey, but he didn’t look very worried about the massive God snarling in Tony’s face. Rhodey was frowning and moving over to stand by the others who all had their arms crossed and variously displeased expressions on their faces. Except for Pietro, who was smirking, and Bruce, who was worrying his lower lip and rubbing his eyes.
Which left Harry to square his shoulders and insert himself beside Tony and scowl up at the God. His heart was hammering in his chest and his blood was singing with the idea of a fight, something to do, someone to scream at. Someone to take a swing at Harry and let Harry release some of the frustration that was always burning through his veins.
“Back the fuck up,” Harry hissed furiously. Thor’s eyes flickered to Harry for a split-second before he took a deep breath and backed up enough that Harry could look over at Tony.
Tony looked upset with the lines around his mouth, pronouncing his deep frown, but there was a glimmer of something warm in the back of his brown eyes when he caught Harry looking at him.
“Why are you wearing a tacky tourist hoodie?” he asked, causing Harry to look down at the sweater Rhodey had gotten him.
It was blue, like the sweatpants, but it had a photo of Stark Tower across the front that had Harry scowling over at a quietly laughing Rhodey.
“Why did you trash the sitting room?” Harry asked instead. He turned enough so he could keep an eye on the others while focusing on Tony and waiting for an explanation that rationalized having one of his friends burst in his loo and then push Harry out a window.
“That wasn’t Tony, that was his project,” Steve said furiously from beside the window across the room. “His project which is now on the loose and ready to destroy the world.”
Harry raised interested brows at Steve’s short tirade. Tony didn’t seem like the evil genius sort, but clearly Harry had misjudged him. Or, what Harry actually suspected, was Steve was an idiot. Either way, Tony hadn’t lied to Harry before, so he waited for him to explain rather than one of the fuming Avenger’s.
“It’s a bit complicated,” Tony hedged as his eyes skirted over Harry’s and stared sightlessly at the wall over his shoulder. “Ultron was meant to be a shield to protect the earth, a super-powered shield that would keep invaders away…”
Harry listened and tried to focus on Tony’s brief explanation, but a lot of the scientific terms went right over his head. He summarized the gist of what he did understand once Tony finished though.
“So it’s a robot that thinks humanity is the thing the earth needs protected from?” Harry asked with a pinch of his brows. It was a familiar sentiment to Harry, one that he figured Voldemort shared. ‘Ultron’ wanted to destroy the human race, Voldemort wanted to destroy muggles.
Harry didn’t know why the concept of ‘live and let live’ was so bloody difficult for everyone else to pick up.
A surge of emotion swelled in Harry’s chest when he remembered who had first said that phrase to him.
Sirius.
“In very basic terms, yes,” Bruce told Harry.
Harry looked around the room and wondered if he was the only one who was seeing the obvious answer. Maybe it was because Sirius was already on his mind, or maybe it was because they were all busy blaming Tony for accidentally making an evil robot, but surely Harry wasn’t the only one seeing a way to end it.
“So call your best mate, have him come hit the robot with some spells or grab it and apparate, and magic’ll destroy it, right?” Harry told Tony slowly. “Like my phone that one time?”
Tony grimaced and glanced toward a staff with a green glowing end, the staff that Thor’s brother Loki had used in the video Harry watched of them.
“There is a… 94% chance that Ultron is ‘magic proof’,” Tony said without looking at Harry. “My arc reactor,” he tapped his glowing chest, “this Tower,” he waved a hand around idly, “all my tech is based on a Tesseract which is powered by almost the same thing that powers that,” he nodded toward the staff.
“Which was never yours to play with!” Thor thundered. “You meddled with forces you cannot control and this is the result!”
“Bruce did too!” Harry told him loudly, pointing toward where Bruce stood staring at a screen made of electronic mist. “Why isn’t anyone pissed off at him?!”
Harry liked Bruce, but he liked Tony a lot more. And it was bollocks that they were all glaring at Tony like Bruce hadn’t admitted to helping him sneak off with the staff to study it.
“Because Tony is the one who refused to fill the rest of us in on his project,” Steve said cooly as he glared daggers at Harry’s father.
“And you never keep things to yourself, ever?” Harry asked since apparently Tony wasn’t going to defend himself against baseless accusations. “It wasn’t like he was trying to make an evil robot, maybe you lot acting like fucking prats is why it decided humanity sucks,” Harry added spitefully, missing Steve’s tiny twitch at his accusation over keeping secrets.
“The kid’s right,” Clint said abruptly. “Fighting over whose fault it is isn’t going to end it any quicker.”
It wasn’t an apology, but Tony perked up anyway.
“You’re right,” he agreed quickly. “Why don’t we all grab a couple hours of shut eye then tackle this first thing in the morning? I can have JARVIS track any odd surges in the meantime and we should be able to find Ultron easy.”
Harry drifted to the background while they began making plans and discussing tactics that he didn’t understand. Harry slumped down on Tony’s stool with the wheels on it and scooted around a little and tried to follow the conversation that was quickly getting too technical to understand.
“You will not be joining us?”
Harry blinked and then scowled tiredly at Pietro who was now leaning against the counter beside Harry with his arms crossed and his lips curled in a half-grin.
“Course I am,” Harry said stoutly. This was his opportunity to show Tony that he could be like him. He could help him and be just as brave as Tony was.
It would finally give Harry an opening to start to earn the life he had. He didn’t care what Sirius said about not having to earn love - nothing came for free, not for Harry. And Sirius was usually right about things, but Sirius understood love just as much as Harry did.
Not at all really. But Sirius probably understood it even less than Harry, so he didn’t have great advice on the matter.
“You’re not coming.”
Harry turned his scowl toward Tony who was drawing something on an electronic map filled with millions of blinking lights.
“Why not?” Harry asked harshly. “I can help.”
Psycho snorted, which had Harry curling his hands into irritated fists in his sweater pocket.
“You’re fifteen, you stay here,” Tony said distractedly as he continued using his finger to draw connections between the blinking lights. “I’ll be gone two days, max.”
Harry’s jaw dropped and he had to quickly snap it closed as everyone was watching him.
“I can help,” Harry repeated. He got to his feet and tried to stand tall, like a man. “Let me come.”
Tony looked away from the map and frowned at Harry. “Kid, you can’t,” he said in a pitying way that Harry didn’t appreciate at all. “This is dangerous.”
“I’ve been in dangerous situations before,” Harry insisted. He crossed his arms and squared his shoulders. “I want to help.”
“You can help by staying out of the way,” Psycho said, as if Harry would listen to anything she said.
“I will stay behind with Harry,” Wanda offered swiftly. She stepped forward with a smile toward Harry.
Tony turned and must have given Wanda some sort of look that had her stepping right back against the wall.
“Nat can stay with Harry,” he told her sharply.
“Nat bloody well cannot,” Harry said. If he couldn’t go, then he wouldn’t be stuck behind with a babysitter either. “I’m perfectly able to stay here alone.”
Tony pinched the bridge of his nose when Harry began bickering with Psycho and Wanda over his ability to stay home alone.
“Enough!” Tony barked. He pointed at Pietro and quirked a brow. “Can you stay here? Call me if there’s any problems?”
Pietro smirked smugly. “I can.”
“Great.”
“You’re going to trust him with your kid?” Clint asked disbelievingly. “He was trying to kill us a few hours ago!”
Harry furrowed his brows. He’d been under the impression that Pietro and his sister were new members of the Avengers Team…
Tony shrugged and went back to drawing on the map with his finger. “He was on team murder, I think he can keep an eye on things for a couple of days.”
Harry gave Tony a look both betrayed and furious and then scowled at Pietro.
“He pushed me out of the fucking window,” Harry informed Tony. “I’d rather have Wanda.”
“Wanda gives out headaches, so she goes with us,” Tony murmured. He frowned at the map for a moment then shook his head. “Sorry, kid, time to make new friends.”
Harry was halfway out of the lab when he heard Tony yelp.
“Did he say you pushed him out a window?!”
As soon as Harry had his broom and cloak safely put away once more, he threw himself on his bed and pulled his phone out. Earlier, he had ignored Sirius and text Peter, this time he ignored Peter to text Sirius.
I’m still mad at you. How soon can you get to the US?
To Sirius’ credit, he was quick to reply even with the time difference that Harry was too tired to puzzle out.
Depends on if I have Tony’s posh jet. Why?
Tony’s going to hunt an evil robot. He’s leaving me with a bloke that shoved me out a window.
Sirius sent back a picture of a robot then a dog emoji and before Harry could even begin to roll his eyes, a message from Tony popped up on his phone.
I’ll have the jet in London in five hours to get Sirius.
Harry’s brief moment of deep gratitude was washed away as he blinked slowly at his phone.
ARE YOU READING MY TEXTS?!