“Angry redheads are terrifying.”
“Anthony Edward Stark, you have got to be kidding me!”
Tony groaned and rolled to face his bedroom door, blinking blearily until the very angry lady made sense to his hungover brain.
“Pep, hey.” Tony propped himself up on his elbow and rubbed his eyes with his hand. “You’re home?”
Pepper slapped her hand on the wall, sending a bright light to flood Tony’s room and cause him to wince and groan.
“Tony, tell me why your son called me last night nearly in tears because you said his brain was wired wrong and a magic hammer said he’s a bad person and then you can tell me why Sirius Black is asleep in your bed?!”
Tony turned his head and looked at the messy head of black hair beside him and grinned when he looked back at Pepper.
“Slumber party,” Tony said innocently. He sat up and stretched, paying no mind to his complete nudity. Pepper had seen him naked more than once, unfortunately Tony was certain she was immune to the sight by that point.
Pepper kicked the door shut behind her and approached Tony like a lion stalked its prey. A very sexy, angry, lion that looked like it was starving for a bite of Tony… and not in the fun way.
“I leave you alone for a couple of weeks and you unleash some robot monster, you move some random enhanced adults in the house where your son lives, and you sleep with his godfather?”
“Wha’?” Sirius groaned and rolled around, his pale arm landing heavily against Tony’s legs that were still on the bed.
“Rise and shine,” Tony told him, prodding him in the side. “Cops are here to bust the party.”
Sirius blinked heavily, his eyes unfocused until Pepper actually growled and Sirius looked guiltily up at her.
“Do you morons have any idea what time it is?” Pepper asked. “It is ten am,” she hissed, answering her own question. “Which leads me to wonder why the hell Harry isn’t at school?”
Sirius nodded slowly, properly cowed by Pepper as all men with more than three brain cells were.
“If you’d just turn around so I can put my pants on I’m sure I can think of an excuse by then,” Sirius told her charmingly. “Unless you’d rather take your skirt off and climb in?”
Tony smiled up at the ceiling when Pepper growled at them again and stormed from the room.
“Good attempt, bad timing,” Tony told Sirius. He leaned back against his headboard and gave Sirius an appreciative look when he literally rolled out of Tony’s bed and jumped up. Sirius was a good looking guy, a wild ride in bed, and damn if he didn’t have a filthy mouth on him, but…
“We can’t do this again,” Tony said with a twinge of regret. He got up as well and tossed Sirius’ boxers to him. “Harry, well, you saw how he was last night.”
Apparently Harry had a snarky little jealous streak and boy had that kid not liked Sirius’ date one damn bit. Tony wasn’t a fan either, any guy who ran away with his tail between his legs wasn’t worth much anyway.
“Yeah,” Sirius nodded and caught his boxers easily. He smirked at Tony when he saw Tony eyeing a tattoo he had on his rib cage, some sort of poetry in Latin. “Wanna not do this again after we get a quick shower?”
Tony considered for a moment.
“What Harry doesn’t know can’t hurt him,” he quipped.
Tony snuck out of his room nearly an hour later, waiting to make sure the coast was clear before he shooed Sirius away to go back to his own place.
“Good morning,” Tony sang to Harry and Pepper when he made his way to the living room where his son and his future wife sat. Tony glanced at the clock and amended himself while he took a seat on the couch beside Harry. “Afternoon, really.”
“We all need to chat,” Pepper said, ignoring Tony’s attempt at nonchalance. Harry already looked like he’d been verbally whipped into submission. He had his head bowed and his hands were twitching nervously on his lap.
Tony took the chance to be a reassuring parent who stands beside his kid when they were facing down enemy fire. He stretched his arm behind Harry, letting it rest just behind him. Harry glanced over at him and his cheek twitched like he was trying to smile but wasn’t exactly sure how.
Point, Tony.
“Why are you not at school?” Pepper asked Harry, much more snappily than she usually spoke to the kid.
“Senior skip day,” Harry said tonelessly.
“You are a sophomore.”
“Sophomore skip day then.”
“Tony, your son has to go to school.”
Tony shrugged and smiled winningly. “But it’s sophomore skip day.”
Pepper’s eyes were narrowed so much that Tony wondered if she could even see through the slits.
“Tony, you are an irredeemable man-child with more brains than common sense.”
Tony tilted his head in recognition. “Thank you.”
Pepper looked toward Harry who actually cringed in Tony’s side. Not much, but enough that Tony knew he was finally an ‘ally’ and not enemy to his kid.
“And you are a wonderful child who is going to see a pediatrician, a dentist, an optometrist, and a freaking therapist today.”
Harry licked his lips and held Pepper’s gaze evenly for a long moment while they seemed to weigh each others determination.
“I thought I had school,” Harry finally said.
Pepper’s death stare cracked then and she finally smiled, proving she was human after all.
“And since you decided to skip, your dad’s going to prove he’s a responsible adult by taking you to your appointments,” Pepper told Harry firmly, all business. “Isn’t that right, Tony?”
“Hm?” Tony nodded when Pepper and Harry both looked at him. “Oh yeah, yeah, I am absolutely the responsible adult who will take Harry to all those appointments.”
Sorely overdue appointments, even to an irredeemable ‘man-child’. Kids had germs and diseases and cavities and even magical kids needed to have their eyes examined and their teeth professionally cleaned.
“And now I am going to go figure out why we have three new houseguests, news reports about the Avengers blowing up foreign villages, and then I’m going to find Happy and chew his ass.”
“What’d Happy do?” Harry asked when Pepper stood up.
Pepper rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “He didnt call me the second Tony started letting everything fall apart.” Pepper snatched her phone from her pocket and pressed a few quick buttons. “Harry’s first appointment is at one, Tony, don’t be late.”
Tony sat on the couch beside Harry while they watched Hurricane Pepper strut from the room with her heels clacking loudly.
“I’m going to convince her to marry me one day,” Tony sighed happily, admiring the shape of Pepper’s ass through the tweed skirt she wore. Damn if Tony could ever stand to have anyone else whip his ass when it was needed.
Harry snorted and shoved Tony’s arm off him so he could get up and hopefully change from his scruffy pajamas to normal clothes.
“Not if you keep shagging Sirius she won’t,” Harry said lightly. “Can we at least get lunch before I’m fucking tortured?”
Tony wasn’t caught by surprise often, but he was then. It was one night, it was discreet.
“Sure, kid, lunch then torture,” he agreed faintly. “Whatever you want.”
Hurricane Pepper had left nothing but destruction and casualties behind and Tony wasn’t actually sure that he was the man to play the role of the Red Cross.
As an olive branch, Tony let Harry take control of the radio while he drove them around town. The two of them got burgers and fries for lunch and had to move their asses quickly if they wanted to make it to the dentist Pepper set Harry up at.
“Hermione’s parents are dentists,” Harry said when they pulled in the lot and the two of them were staring up at the building with the smiling tooth on it. Tony glanced at Harry and saw that he had a distinct look of disgust on his face.
And just beneath the disgust, Tony thought maybe there was a touch of fear there.
“I see a dentist every month,” Tony said casually. He smiled widely, showing his pearly whites off to his kid. “You think these babies are just immune to coffee stains? I know I make looking good look easy, but dentists probably do at least ten percent of the work.”
Harry didn’t look impressed while he studied Tony’s teeth, but he did nod.
“Does it… is it…”
“Completely painless,” Tony assured him, guessing at his question. He turned the car off and flicked his sunglasses down to cover his face. “The quicker we get this over with the quicker we move on to the pediatrician.”
“I’ll be sure to take my time then,” Harry grimaced. He rolled his shoulders and then opened his car door. “If they try and yank my teeth I’m going to get violent.”
“They aren’t the tooth fairy, kid,” Tony laughed. “It’s a dentist, easy-peasy.”
Harry’s middle finger seemed to disagree, but aside from some flirting by the receptionist old enough to be Tony’s mother, their appointment went smoothly enough.
“Seems like I’ll never have to shell money out for braces,” Tony told Harry while they made their way to their next appointment with the pediatrician. Even though Harry had been short and evasive during his appointment, a few x-rays and exam later had dubbed him with perfect teeth. “Your mom had nice teeth too, James were a little crooked.”
“Were they?” Harry turned down the god awful emo crap he’d been trying to bust Tony’s speakers with to talk. “They don’t look crooked in photos.”
Tony squinted while he drove and tried to remember precisely what James Potter’s teeth had looked like.
“Yeah, his… his front teeth on the bottom… one of them were twisted over, overlapping on the one beside it.”
“Peter has a crooked tooth,” Harry said abruptly. “He should get fucking braces.”
Tony chuckled at Harry’s acidic tone and eyed him thoughtfully. “Things not going so great with your geek?”
“No,” Harry said. He reached out and turned the radio back up to full volume so Tony assumed their charming little father-son moment had ended.
The pediatrician Pepper found had Harry a red-faced mess almost instantly.
Tony had no problem with Dr Avery, and he was a big fan of the way he pretended to not recognize Tony’s name at all, but Harry’s reactions were the funniest thing he’d ever seen.
“He’s hot,” Tony quipped when Dr Avery left the exam room they were in so Harry could get changed. Dr Avery was young, but he had dark skin, bright blue eyes, and a knack of speaking teenage boy.
Harry scowled at Tony. “Maybe you should shag him next,” he said. “You already shagged my godfather, what’s my doctor after that?”
Tony leaned against the counter and grinned at his son. Harry was sitting on the exam bed in a green gown, his cheeks still glowing red from the list of questions Dr Avery had asked him.
As humiliating as Harry thought it was to have some young hot doctor asking about his sexual history, Tony was just relieved to know that his kid was a self-reported virgin. Which was completely wild because Tony used to think that if he had a son that he’d want him to be a player like Tony used to be.
But being faced with his own actual kid, Tony had been whispering prayers of thanks that Harry had stuttered his way through claims of innocence.
“Doctors make terrible lovers,” Tony told Harry with a smirk. “They’re know-it-alls, they think just because they took a couple of anatomy classes that suddenly they’re the experts.”
“He is the bloody expert,” Harry scoffed. “Or he better be.”
Avery knocked on the door and poked his head in, “All ready?”
“Sure,” Tony called cheerfully. He glanced at Harry. “I can wait outside for this part if you want.”
Tony sure as hell wouldn’t have wanted Howard around when he got a physical from a hot doctor, but Harry shook his head so Tony hung around.
“Vitals are good, blood pressure’s a little high though,” Avery said pleasantly after checking Harry’s vitals. “Under some stress?”
Tony coughed to cover a laugh and winked when Harry glared at him with promises of death in his eyes.
“Yes,” Harry said curtly, a brand new blush burning his face. “A lot of stress.”
“And hormones,” Tony added, unable to hold his tongue. He smiled at Harry when Harry gave him a deep look of betrayal. “Lots of hormones.”
‘I will kill you,’ Harry mouthed over Avery’s shoulder.
‘Bring it on,’ Tony mouthed right back.
“So, Doc, what’s the current trend for treating ADHD?” Tony asked the doctor when he was finishing up Harry’s physical exam.
“Is that a concern?” Dr Avery asked. He looped his stethoscope around his neck and looked at Harry closely, hopefully noticing the nonstop fidgeting the kid did with his hands.
How Tony didn’t notice it in his own kid was beyond him. He couldn’t count how many times he’d had doctors saying he had attention disorders and needed medicine.
Tony always shot them down; he’d built a fortune on his hyper-fixations and mind that didn’t sleep. But Tony had also went to traditional schools and didn’t need any help focusing on studies, so he firmly moved himself to a different category than he placed Harry’s needs in.
“It is,” Tony said pleasantly. He ignored Harry’s pissed off face and tried to be the adult in the room. “I had a consult with a neurologist, Stephen Strange, and he said we should try a low dose of Adderall and Lexapro.”
“Stephen Strange, the neurosurgeon who invented the Strange Method, recommended Lexapro for ADHD?” Avery asked, those blue eyes suddenly sharp.
Tony kept up a polite smile, hoping like hell that the good doctor remembered who was footing the bill for the appointment.
“Stephen Strange, the neurologist who made his recommendation after I gave him an extensive history on my son, recommended that Harry take both medications.”
Harry looked between the two of them, his head bouncing side to side like a spectator at a tennis match.
“And Harry is sitting right here, wondering what the fuck Lexapro and Adderall is,” Harry interrupted the stare off. “Or does it not matter what I want?”
Avery turned away from Tony to give Harry a wide smile.
“Tell you gentlemen what, if Doctor Strange made the recommendation, I’ll coordinate with him to get a full history.” Avery grabbed a script pad from his lab pocket and wrote a couple prescriptions. “And like I tell all parents,” Avery turned that winning smile to Tony, “I’ll write the script, but it’s up to you to ensure compliance. I’ll have the nurse bring in a list of side-effects and things to watch for when she comes to do the blood work, alright?”
“Sounds good.” Tony accepted the scripts then shook Avery’s hand. “Thanks, doc.”
Avery gave them both a smile after he shook Harry’s hand and swiftly left the room. Tony looked at Harry, preparing for the inevitable argument against the medicine, and instead was faced with a pale faced and trembling teenager.
“What’s blood work?” Harry asked Tony in a faint whisper, his eyes round and definitely, inappropriately, terrified. “They’re going to take my blood?”
Tony wracked his brain, trying to figure out if Harry had always harbored a fear of needles.
“They just want to check for shit like your blood count and thyroid levels,” Tony explained. He moved closer to Harry and leaned against the bed instead of the counter he’d been holding up. “It’s just a quick stick, kid, I swear.”
“No, they can’t.” Harry slid off the bed and grabbed his jeans and began pulling them up with his hands shaking. “Please, they can’t take my blood.”
“Woah.” Tony reached out and grabbed Harry’s shoulder when he tried pulling his gown off. Harry jerked from Tony’s grip so Tony held his hands up placatingly.
“Kid, it’s one quick stick,” Tony assured him soothingly. “Nothing weird, it’s routine.”
“I cannot,” Harry snarled, spinning and glaring at Tony. “I cannot.”
“Okay, you can’t,” Tony sat on the abandoned exam bed and tried to stay calm if Harry was going to have some sort of panic attack. A doctors office was a good place for a panic attack, peak placement, really.
Harry seemed to settle some when Tony spoke and he took a deep and shuddering breath while he twisted his tshirt between his hands. His eyes were still flicking around the room and he was more pale than Tony thought the situation really called for, but he wasn’t stripping and redressing himself anymore.
“I’m not scared,” Harry said firmly. “I’m not.”
“I believe you,” Tony said. He crossed his legs at the ankle and watched his son with as much calm as he could. “You’re not scared.”
Even though the kid clearly was. He looked like Steve when he was confronted with too much technology, he was all twitchy and sweaty.
“Is it important? The- the blood work?” Harry asked Tony hesitantly, sounding so childlike.
Tony nodded, “Did I mention it helps screen for things like cancer? Because it does.”
“Fine.” Harry took a few deep breaths and then climbed back on the exam bed beside Tony. “Fine.”
Tony didn’t say anything, he just thought about the scripts in his pocket and the pale kid beside him. When the nurse came in with a tray of blood vials and a needle, Tony continued not saying when Harry’s right hand twitched just before the nurse stuck him.
And neither of them said anything when Tony slid his hand over and placed it on Harry’s and let Harry squeeze the feeling from his fingers while the nurse took his blood.
“One more stop!” Tony said bracingly when the two of them finished up at the optometrist and Harry was diagnosed with perfect vision.
Harry was quiet and moody since they left the pediatricians office, but he groaned in the passenger seat then.
“Or we could just skip and tell Pepper we went there?” Harry suggested.
Tony laughed and shook his head while they flew down the highway, headed to their final stop.
“Sorry, kid, I love you, but she terrifies me,” Tony said honestly. “What do you want to do afterward? Got plans with your friends or do you want to do something with your old man?”
“I don’t have any friends,” Harry said flatly. He turned and looked out the window and Tony felt for him, he really did.
“What about that perky blonde? Gwen?” Tony asked.
Harry snorted. “I’m one of her fifty closest friends.”
“Pietro?”
Harry rolled his eyes, Tony could see him in the windows reflection. “He pushed me out a window, we aren’t friends.”
“Fair point,” Tony acquiesced. He cleared his throat before trying one more. “And your geek?”
Harry was quiet while they kept driving and Tony waited to see if he’d be told to fuck off or if Harry would just ignore him completely. What Tony didn’t expect, was for Harry to shrug his shoulders up and actually respond.
“I think we’re over,” Harry said. He coughed and kept his face turned from Tony, but he sounded pretty damn devastated. “He came over last night and we talked and he said- he said he needs time. Time to think, I guess.”
Tony looked over where Harry was slumped in his seat, sounding miserable, talking about his first breakup. And it was Harry, his son, the same kid that had to deal with his dad sleeping with his godfather and a recent mugging and getting his blood drawn even though he’d been completely terrified.
It was Harry, Tony’s kid, that had been through hell lately and everyone kept expecting him to act like an adult - go to school, take a prescription, learn chemistry and magic - and it seemed to slip past them that Harry was just a fifteen year old kid.
“Fuck it.” Tony spun the steering wheel of the car, pulling a U-turn in the middle of the highway, and began speeding in the opposite direction on the 278.
“What are we doing?” Harry asked, sounding entirely too lifeless for a freaking teenager.
Teenagers were supposed to be energetic and annoying and loud and eat all the food in the house. That’s what the teenagers on sitcoms did, the ones with the normal families and problems that were solved in twenty-five minutes or less.
Those were the teenagers Tony wanted to be and those were the teenagers Tony wanted his son to be.
If not all the time, then at least for one god damned day.
“We are turning our cell phones off, keeping our heads low, and avoiding Pepper for the next week,” Tony told him cheerfully. “That therapists office will be there tomorrow, but you know what won’t be?”
Harry sounded excited, even just a touch. “What’s that?”
“Luna Park,” Tony declared. “You can’t call yourself a New York citizen if you’ve never seen Luna Park, kid. I know, it’s my fault,” Tony shook a finger in his own face. “Bad, Dad, bad!”
“So we’re skipping therapy, probably pissing Pepper off, and going to a park?” Harry asked. He laughed, quietly, but still a laugh, when Tony nodded. “She’s going to be furious,” he said happily.
Tony winked at Harry. “That’s why we’re lying low after this. You’ll take these pills and go to school every day and I’ll go to work and not have Sirius come over for naked slumber parties and she’ll forgive us in a couple of days.”
Harry stared blankly at Tony with his eyebrow raised.
“Yeah, we might have to change the locks,” Tony agreed with his son’s silent judgement. “But hey, what’s one angry redhead against us?”
Harry grinned at him and relaxed in his seat. “Angry redheads are terrifying,” he said. He turned the radio up when a rock song switched on. “Remind me to tell you about Ginny Weasley sometime!”
Another point, Tony. He really was on a roll with the whole parenting thing.
Take that, Sirius.
Tony wasn’t a big fan of Coney Island or Luna Park, too many people and too much noise, but he’d never went with his own kid before.
Harry shed his leather jacket and tossed on a Knicks cap that Tony gave him when they arrived. Tony hit up an ATM on their way in and then let Harry loose.
And, surprisingly, Harry actually let loose.
Tony let Harry drag him around while they threw darts and tested their strength and won stupid prizes that they handed off to little kids that kept shrieking for toys. They got corn dogs and cotton candy and Harry laughed his ass off when fed some of his corn dog breading to a pigeon and got crap on his shoe in thanks.
They played putt-putt golf and laser tag- which Tony totally kicked the kid’s ass. Harry rode his first rollercoaster and Tony bought two prints of Harry’s face when they had been riding down the slope. They also took pictures at a photo boot- Harry had been scowling in the first photo, then he’d been rolling his eyes in the second, and finally smiling in the third one.
“This was way better than sitting in a therapists office and talking about our feelings,” Tony grinned when the park announced they were closing and the two of them were headed to the car. Tony had his arm around Harry’s shoulders and Harry had two large bags of cotton candy in his arm.
“I think that roller coaster was as good as flying,” Harry said. For probably the first time since Tony met him, Harry actually looked like a teenager. He had a grin on his lips and a little twinkle in his eyes that made Tony have the warm and fuzzies.
“Nothing beats flying,” Tony said seriously. He unlocked the car with a click of his keys when the two of them got close enough and he had a sudden idea when he looked from his keys to Harry. “Hey, you want to drive?”
Harry tripped over his own feet and looked at Tony with hope written all over his face. “I don’t know how.”
“We had a lesson once,” Tony waved off Harry’s concerns. “Come on, you’ll be old enough for your permit soon, might as well get some practice in.”
“What if I wreck the car or scratch it or pop a tire?” Harry asked.
“Then we call the insurance company and get it fixed up or we go car shopping this weekend,” Tony said. He dangled the keys temptingly. “What do you say?”
Harry reached out then pulled his hand back. “I googled Lexapro.”
“Did you?” Tony asked, surprised.
“I text my friend Hermione.”
Tony grinned. The kid had the whole internet at his fingertips and he relied solely on one bushy haired daughter of dentists, there was something to be said for codependency.
“And?” Tony asked.
“And…” Harry clenched his jaw from side to side and looked at the keys Tony still held out for him. “And it might be a nice change of pace if I wasn’t always thinking about jumping off rooftops,” Harry said quietly with a quick glance to Tony.
Tony’s heart soared with pride. He looked at his kid, his son, who was already three times the man Tony himself was. Tony was an arrogant bastard who scoffed at modern medicine and drowned his demons in booze and bodies. And his kid - his incredibly messed up kid with the shittiest luck - was facing his head on.
“Good.” Tony pressed the keys in Harry’s hands and opened the drivers side door for him. “I’m proud of you, Harry.”
Harry rolled his eyes, the sentimental moment passed and he climbed in the drivers seat. Tony laughed, feeling on top of the world, and climbed in the passenger seat.
Sure, Harry immediately backed in a light pole and dented the trunk of the car, but when they stood outside and inspected the damage together, Harry also gave him an apologetic grimace and a quiet, “Sorry, Dad.”
And he didn’t even take it back.