“It’s a mental health day.”
Monday, October 22
“Kid, hey…” Tony flicked Harry’s light on and frowned at the lump on the bed. Usually Harry was up and ready, if not before Tony, then typically around the same time at least.
“You’ve got school,” Tony reminded him. “Remember? That magical place with a little less actual magic and more math?”
“‘M still sick,” Harry mumbled from beneath the blanket, barely loud enough to be heard over the emo-crap music he was listening to.
“Okay… I’ll call Dr Avery? See if he’ll make a house call?” Tony offered, wildly out of his depth.
For the right price, anyone would make a house call. And since Harry had been too sick to even take the dog out since Friday night, Tony didn’t think it would be dramatic to bribe the doctor to come to the tower.
Tony offered Harry soup and Sudafed all weekend, but the kid said he just needed sleep. Rhodey laughed when Tony called him about it and teased him for being a ‘worried mother hen’, but Harry went to school when he was nauseous and shaking from his medicine, so Tony figured Harry might now be at a ‘let’s go to the emergency room’ level of sick.
Or, at a minimum, a ‘let’s get your pediatrician here to look you over’ level of sick.
“I don’t need a doctor,” Harry mumbled, still buried under the blanket. “I just… I’ll be fine.”
Tony rubbed his jaw for a moment, debating with himself. He hadn’t actually seen Harry get out of bed once all weekend, aside from a couple trips to the bathroom, and Tony had basically set up shop on the couch where he could check on Harry regularly.
“Do you have a fever?” Tony asked hesitantly. Tony had two masters degrees, three doctorates, and no clue whatsoever how to treat a sick kid. Soup and Sudafed had been a hell of a lot more than anyone offered Tony when he’d gotten sick as a child.
“No.”
Maybe Harry didn’t know how to tell if he had a fever?
“Can I check?”
“No.”
“Are you nauseous?”
“No.”
Tony took a deep breath and counted to ten really slowly before continuing.
“Do you have a headache?”
“No.”
“Then you’re not sick!” Tony said, throwing his hands up in complete exasperation. Sure, kids were like little germ factories, but usually every illness came with at least one of those symptoms.
Harry tossed the blanket off his head and stared balefully at Tony while he coughed twice.
“See? Sick.”
“Then I’m calling the doctor,” Tony warned him when Harry pulled the blanket back over his head and burrowed down in a stubborn lump. “Come take your medicine, kid.”
Harry growled - his kid literally growled at him, like a freaking dog - but Tony heard his quiet footsteps following him to the kitchen.
So he was a feral dog, but obedient.
“Woah, not so fast,” Tony stopped Harry after he took his pill without any water or anything. Harry turned and had his glare on full blast, but Tony ignored it to look the kid over.
He wasn’t extra pale, or flushed, or bright red with a fever. His eyes weren’t glassy or bloodshot. Harry looked tired, but that was it.
“I need some symptoms if we’re playing hooky,” Tony told Harry lightly. “If not, Pepper’s going to storm up here and rip us both a new one and I personally don’t feel like dealing with that today.”
Tony was ninety-five percent certain that Pepper got Harry’s attendance record sent directly to her phone and her finding out Harry was sick from the receptionist at Midtown wouldn’t go over great.
“I have a cough,” Harry snapped. “See?”
It was really hard not to laugh when Harry coughed again, this one just as fake as the earlier ones.
“Right,” Tony nodded solemnly. “So aside from the fake cough, what’s the symptoms?”
Harry glared at Tony, Tony leaned against the counter and waited.
Harry’s glare deepened, Tony took a sip of coffee.
“I’m not going to school,” Harry finally said. “Goodnight.”
“It’s seven am!” Tony yelled when Harry turned around and went straight to him room. “I’M CALLING PEPPER!” he yelled after Harry just shrugged and shut his door.
“‘I wish he was more like a normal teenager’,” Tony mocked himself while he snatched his phone off the counter. “‘Why isn’t Harry messy or loud or EATING ALL THE GOOD CEREAL?!’”
Tony couldn’t quite hear what Harry yelled, but it sounded a lot like ‘piss off’.
Normal teenage boy, fun.
“Tony, I haven’t even made it to the office yet, what have you already done?” Pepper asked briskly when she answered Tony’s call on the first ring.
“You know the other good-looking Stark that lives here? The slightly shorter one?” Tony moved to sit on the couch, opening his laptop while he held the phone between his ear and shoulder. “Well he’s sick so he’s not going to school.”
“Harry’s sick?” Pepper asked, suddenly much more concerned. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Hormones, I think,” Tony said idly while he pulled up the research he had been working all weekend on the Winter Soldier.
“Plain English, Tony, what’s wrong with Harry?”
Tony tapped the screen a little harder than needed, frustrated in his inability to dig up anything recent or concrete on James ‘Bucky’ Barnes.
“I have no idea,” Tony told her. “He laid in bed all weekend saying he was sick, but today I said I’m calling the doctor and suddenly he doesn’t have any symptoms.”
“So he was sick and now he’s better? If he’s symptom free for twenty-four hours he can go to school,” Pepper said. “Unless- God damn, it’s green! MOVE!”
Tony grinned in the phone, poor Pep had the worst road rage in the morning rush hour.
“You know if you’d move in here full-time, preferably in my bedroom, you wouldn’t have to drive to work every day,” Tony reminded her.
“And if you’d use common sense you didn’t need to interrupt my Dolly and Dunkin’s time,” Pepper said sweetly. “If Harry’s been sick all weekend and still sick, call his doctor. If he’s not sick, send him to school.”
“Yeah… about that… can you come send him to school?” Tony asked hopefully. “I told him that it was the doctor or school and he said ‘goodnight’.”
“You did not seriously call me to come parent on your behalf,” Pepper asked, as if that were somehow surprising. “Tony, come on, go in there and be his parent. He’s comfortable with you now and he’s just pushing boundaries.”
“I don’t want to fight with him,” Tony whined quietly. “It’s been so good lately before the damn vigilante romance and assassin bestie.”
“Ooh, poor Tony,” Pepper whined right back. “Welcome to parenthood.”
“Pep…”
“For the love of God, Tony,” Pepper sighed irritably. “He will forgive you. He will not hate you for being the parent. And yes, you have to be the adult here. Time to grow up.”
Tony’s jaw dropped when Pepper actually hung up on him right in the middle of a Harry-emergency.
Some future stepmom she was.
Tony gave his computer a longing look - technology was so simple. Tony knew exactly what buttons to press to get the results he wanted - before heaving himself off the couch to go ‘be the adult’.
“Knock, knock,” Tony said brightly, pushing open Harry’s door. “Listen, I was fine with hooky, but Pepper said you have to either go to the doctor or go to school. Sorry, kid, I—”
Oh.
Harry wasn’t in his bed.
Tony heard the shower running in his bathroom, which hopefully meant Harry was planning on going to school. With nothing else to do at the moment, Tony plopped down on the foot of Harry’s bed and admired the chaotic mess of a bedroom while he waited.
There were owl feathers and what looked like the beginning of a nest in one corner of the room. The closet door was open and there were a couple of hoodies and shirts on the floor that the dog was sleeping on top of. There were books spread across his desk along with his laptop open - clearly he didn’t plan on going to school that morning when he went to bed the night before.
Tony liked seeing his son make his room as messy as Tony’s lab was. It meant Harry was all settled in, comfortable, and not worried that Tony was going to kick his ass for making a mess.
The mess meant Harry trusted him, at least some.
Plus, things that were too clean made Tony itch…
Tony had a whole speech planned in his head-
He’d talk about how important education was if Harry ever wanted to work for a living. When that failed, because it definitely would, Tony would remind Harry that kids at school would be more interesting than hanging out with him all day. And then when that probably failed, Tony would turn to bribes.
Teenagers loved bribes.
And then Harry stepped out of the bathroom with a pair of baggy basketball shorts, a white tshirt, soaking wet hair, and skin that looked like it had been burned.
“Jesus Christ!” Tony jumped up and rushed to Harry too quickly, causing him to flinch back, and then a little more tactfully reached for Harry’s wrist to judge the burn.
“Are you actually sick?” Tony asked. Harry burning head to toe from a fever made a lot more sense than the kid silently scalding himself in the shower.
“I’m fine,” Harry said harshly, ripping his arm away from Tony. He sidestepped Tony, making a beeline for his desk.
Tony watched, actually stunned to silence, while Harry sat down at his desk like his skin wasn’t glowing.
There was something familiar in the tick of Harry’s jaw, the way he clenched and unclenched his fingers in a tight roll, and how he avoided meeting Tony’s eyes.
For a genius, it took Tony an embarrassing amount of time to realize that Harry’s mystery sickness was coming from his head, not body. Which was exceedingly stupid of Tony considering Harry clearly inherited more than just his good looks, poor kid got his moodiness too.
Since Harry was sitting at his desk, Tony sat back down on the edge of his bed and studied his son thoughtfully. Harry was still glaring mutely at his desk, but some of the horrifying red was already fading from his limbs.
“What’s got you down, kid?” Tony asked when the silence became overwhelming and Harry didn’t seem likely to be the first to break it.
Harry flicked his eyes quickly toward Tony then back at his desk.
“Nothing fucking important, apparently,” Harry muttered quietly.
“Listen, as I’m the MIT graduate and you’re the high school student, why don’t you let me decide if it’s important,” Tony said. “I’m no Michael Morris, but I am a lifelong professional in Stark depression.”
He didn’t even get a grin for his efforts, just a slight lessening of Harry’s glare.
“I thought that if I took those pills that I’d be happy,” Harry said with a bite of accusation in his voice. “Or was that a lie?”
Tony rubbed his eyes and sighed. “It’s not foolproof,” he said, trying to sound gentle and not make Harry think an antidepressant was a waste of his time. “It increases the neurotransmitters in your brain which increases the serotonin levels in your body and—”
“I’m not a genius, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,” Harry cut in flatly.
“They increase the happy chemicals in your head,” Tony said with a shrug. “But that doesn’t mean you’re never going to have shitty days where your bed looks like a cozy little cave to hibernate in.”
“Ah.”
God, Tony really wished Sirius wasn’t on Harry’s shit list so he could figure out if Harry was always reticent and quiet when he was feeling down or if Tony needed to check the window locks and hide knives.
“Come on,” Tony said abruptly, making a quick decision. “Let’s go get supplies so we can effectively call in sick today.”
A mental health day was still a worthy excuse to call off and spend the day with his son. Sure, Pepper might bitch, but she did it from a place of love so it was easy to tune out.
Harry kept his face down, but Tony saw him raise an eyebrow in Tony’s own silent ‘I’m asking without asking’ gesture.
“It’s a mental health day,” Tony said excitedly. He jumped off Harry’s bed and went to steal a hoodie under the dog to toss to Harry. “We’ll go get a bunch of junk food, rent some movies, and seriously I don’t know any man alive whose blues can’t be cured by Charlie’s Angels, and if that fails then we’ll just go blow shit up.”
Harry caught the hoodie and slowly pulled it on. “I’m not going to get in the car and you drive me to school?” he asked once his head was poking out.
“Nope. You can even drive.”
It wasn’t a smile, the kid looked too beat down to smile, but the glare lessened to the point where it was nearly nonexistent, so clearly Tony was winning somehow.
“We look like children,” Harry said when they were at the closest supermarket an hour later.
The supermarket was usually a thirty minute drive on the two occasions Tony bothered to go himself, but Harry drove like an old man. Tony figured he was worried about hitting more lamp posts, and it wasn’t like Tony was going to encourage his son to drive recklessly, so the drive took longer than usual.
Not that Tony minded, he liked watching Harry drive. The kid was hysterical with his hands clenched on the wheel and his tongue poking out between his teeth. One day, Harry would drive as easily as he breathed and Tony would be running out of things to teach him, so it was nice while it lasted.
“We’re too tall to be children,” Tony said as he dropped an armload of various bags of chips in the cart Harry was pushing. “Okay, we’ve got pop, chips, candy, frozen pizza, what else? Oh! Ice cream!”
Harry looked like an exasperated parent while he pushed the cart back to the freezer section.
“I can push,” Tony offered.
Harry shrugged him off. “I don’t mind.”
When they passed the cereal aisle, Harry slowed down and Tony laughed before grabbing a couple boxes of stuff Harry liked.
“Okay- pick a tub any tub!” Tony declared when they made it back to the ice cream section.
Tony went straight for the gallon of brownie batter chocolate fudge and Harry looked them all over before choosing a chocolate and raspberry swirl flavor.
“Anything else?” Tony asked once he was sure they had all the necessary crap for a lazy day together. When Harry shook his head, Tony led them to the register.
“We spent more on junk food than some people do on a mortgage,” Harry said when they made it back to the tower and began carrying their bags up to their place.
“We make a hell of a lot more in a month than most mortgages cost too,” Tony pointed out. “I think the new janitor on night shift makes triple what we paid.”
Harry blinked at Tony and then rolled his eyes. Tony heard him mumbling under his breath about ‘cupboards’ and ‘Gringotts’ while they put away their frozen treasures and dumped the rest of it in the living room.
Tony kicked back on the recliner with a bag of chips and a coke while Harry sat on the couch with a bowl of cereal.
That kid could eat cereal like nothing else.
“Ready to witness the glory of Farrah Fawcett kicking ass?” Tony asked Harry cheerfully. Tony had about fifty things to do aside from watching movies all day, but if Harry was with him, then he wasn’t out hanging with terrorists or assassins and he was safe.
Tony still had finding both ‘Spiderman’ and Barnes as his top priorities, but they really sort of dropped to second priority to hanging out with his kid.
Harry shrugged with a mouthful of marshmallows in his mouth so Tony clicked it on and sent Pepper a quick text-
I was wrong, Harry had a fever. I think he infected me as well. No need to come play nurse, I’ve got it handled.
Tony always worked himself up over nothing; parenting was easy. He didn’t need Pepper or Sirius, he just needed to treat Harry like a mission- take it slow and wing all his decisions.
“You pick the next one and I’ll pop the pizzas in,” Tony told Harry, tossing him the remote, when the angels saved the world and looked damn good doing it.
Tony should have renamed the Avenger’s ‘Tony’s Angels’ and fired Bruce and found another Nat back when he had a chance.
“You’ll burn the house down,” Harry scoffed, tossing the remote right back. “I’ll put pizzas in, you pick a movie.”
Easy enough.
“What are you in the mood for?” Tony called while he browsed the options. “Comedy? Romance? Action? Horror?”
“Is there anything where a bloke loses his mind and kills everyone?” Harry drawled back from the kitchen.
There was, actually.
“The Shining it is,” Tony decided. He waited until Harry came back to press play. “What’s got you in the mood for murder?”
Tony didn’t actually expect an answer, but Harry still gave him a one word complete explanation.
“Peter.”
“Are we at the shit talking stage of the breakup?” Tony asked while the opening credits played on the TV.
Harry definitely sounded interested when he answered. “If I said yes, what would you say?”
“His hair is a disaster,” Tony said immediately. “And that skater chic style he’s got going on? It’s called grunge and the nineties did it better. His whole ‘I’m a sarcastic loner’ vibe? That only works when you do it, he doesn’t have the snark to really get through it.”
“And he’s a liar,” Harry added bitterly.
“And he’s a liar!” Tony cried dramatically. “A dirty, filthy, liar!”
When Harry laughed, Tony considered it another win.
Tony waited until the pizzas were done and they were eating and watching the movie to ask the question he was dyiiiing to ask.
“So what did that filthy and horrible liar actually lie about?” Tony asked super casually.
Harry took an overly aggressive bite of his pizza and Tony patiently waited to see if he’d tell him or give him a charming British curse.
“He said he loves me,” Harry said flatly.
Tony’s brows rose, but he kept his eyes on the TV to keep the pressure off Harry. Apparently geek boy was more attached to Tony’s son than he expected.
“Yeah?” Tony asked. “And what did lover boy lie about?”
Harry paused the movie just as Wendy went to knock Jack out with the bat and turned on the couch to face Tony.
“Peter told me he loved me,” Harry repeated. “That was what he lied about.”
When the punchline didn’t come, Tony just stared at Harry with a puzzled expression.
“He’s obsessed with you,” Tony said slowly. “He’s an idiot and I hate him, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.”
Or whatever passes for teenager emotions anyway. Tony hadn’t believed his first girlfriend that pulled the ‘L’ word on him after sex, but that was different.
It was different because… well, Tony wasn’t someone that people fell in love with. Hell, his own father had—
“Oh, for the love of God,” Tony groaned. He grabbed the remote off the coffee table and clicked the TV off. This was not Tony’s department of expertise this was… this was a problem for the overpaid therapist on his payroll.
There was no shame in admitting when someone was dramatically out of their area of expertise.
“Why’d you turn it off?” Harry asked warily. He put his pizza down and eyed Tony like Tony was a dentist with a pair of pliers coming straight for his mouth.
Bribes.
Teenagers loved bribes.
“What’s it going to cost to get you to go see Morris?” Tony asked, suddenly all business. “I’m willing to negotiate here.”
Harry’s eyes narrowed and Tony could practically see the wheels turning in his head. Then Harry asked the last thing Tony expected, which he seemed to be doing a lot lately.
“Can I invite Hermione and Ron here for Christmas break?”
That was so easy it seemed like a trap. Tony wondered if Harry had any idea how desperately he didn’t want to get involved in the sticky mental space he and his son seemed to share.
Talking about Harry’s issues felt uncomfortably like talking about Tony’s issues and Tony actually liked living in denial, it was incredibly comfortable.
Denial was a California king sized bed with feather pillows and Egyptian cotton sheets and naked models covered in chocolate begging Tony to lick them clean.
Tony liked it there; he thrived there really.
“Do you swear to keep Hermione from touching all the things in my lab?” Tony asked, he didn’t forget how the know-it-all girl had stared at him at Hogwarts.
“I can try,” Harry stressed earnestly. “But she gets a bit mad about knowledge and stuff.”
“Is that all you want?” Tony asked, looking for the loophole. “Just to bring your friends here over break?”
Harry bit his lower lip for a moment. “Can I convince you to leave Bucky alone?”
“Not even a little bit,” Tony said firmly. Yeah, maybe he didn’t care so much about Harry skipping school or bringing over guests from his school, but he did have some rules.
And not associating with dangerous criminals was right up top.
“Joey needs a friend.”
“You have an owl.”
“Can I drive to Michael’s office?”
“Absolutely.”
Harry twisted his lips to the side and tapped his leg with his finger for a moment, apparently looking to get the most from the deal.
“You’ll send your jet to go get Hermione and Ron?” he asked.
Tony scoffed, as if he could buy them tickets on a traditional airline since he doubted if Ronald Weasley - a legal nobody - had any sort of passport.
“Yep. Do you need this in writing or is my word good enough?” Tony held his hand out to Harry, a nicety he never bothered with in actual business deals.
“I would have gone anyway,” Harry said as he quickly shook Tony’s hand. “I like Michael, he’s a decent bloke.”
A ‘decent bloke’ that charged Tony triple rate to squeeze Harry in that afternoon.
Overpriced quack, in Tony’s opinion.