“You’re here, that counts.”
Tuesday, November 28
“Good morning, gorgeous, how was your weekend?”
Tony grinned to himself as he spun around in his desk chair at Pepper’s exasperated sigh. The woman really hated to have her morning drive interrupted by phone calls, but some things couldn’t wait for eight.
“What did you do now, Tony?” Pepper asked him.
Tony chuckled as he continued to spin and talk. “What did I do? Nothing. I’m an innocent party here, Pep. The real question is, what can you do for me?”
Marry me.
Give my son a sibling.
Love me like I love you.
“If I ask you that then you’re going to send me ninety different sex positions,” Pepper said, Tony could practically hear the eye roll from over the phone. “Get to the point, please.”
“Fine.” Tony huffed dramatically in his earpiece. “I need you to send out an email that says all important information needs to be sent to you as you are officially the head of Stark Industries until at least the new year.”
Possibly longer.
Maybe forever.
Who knew?
Pepper didn’t seem surprised; she was a smart woman, she probably knew it was coming. Between the new treasure hunt from Gandalf, Harry’s new schedule, and finding time to breathe, Tony didn’t have spare time for the company.
“Okay,” Pepper agreed easily. “Do you still want the monthly investors meeting?”
“Yes,” Tony said quickly. “Harry loves those.”
“And are we making any official release on Harry?”
Tony hummed while he considered it. As much as Tony would love to just lock his son in the tower, keep him away from reporters and sociopaths alike, it wasn’t realistic.
“What do you think?” he asked Pepper. “Get in front of it now, or wait for it to get out and then say something?”
Pepper hesitated, clearly as torn as he was on it. “Maybe something brief? Mention that Harry had an accident, he’s fine, and you’re stepping away from the company to focus on your son?”
“Sounds good to me,” Tony said. He looked at the alert on his watch that said Harry’s shower was on. It was a handy tab to have, since apparently the kid was prone to scalding his skin off when he was in a mood.
“Alright, I’m off to get ready for ensure absolutely going to be a fun filled day of physical therapy,” Tony said as cheerfully as he could. “Oh, before I go, what are you doing this weekend?”
“My sister is coming to visit.”
“Perfect! Bring her to vegas with us to elope?”
“Goodbye, Tony,” Pepper laughed.
“That wasn’t a no,” Tony said quickly, getting the last word in before Pepper hung up on him.
One day it would be a yes. Tony just had to be the man that Pepper deserved before she found someone else.
Tony was whistling merrily while he laid out breakfast.
Two cups of coffee, Harry liked cream and sugar in his.
A bowl and a spoon for Harry and a box of the marshmallow cereal he liked, a bagel and cream cheese for Tony.
Medicine for Harry… Tony hesitated when he went to grab them… Strange had been working yesterday with Harry on healing the phantom pains with whatever magic he used to heal the tremor in his fingers, but…
Tony went ahead and grabbed a pain reliever, if Harry didn’t need it then he might want it after physical therapy.
“Good morning, favorite son of mine,” Tony sang when Harry eventually wheeled himself from his room. He looked better than he had over the weekend, less exhausted and miserable.
It was a shame that Tony got lectured by Harry’s friend’s mother about overusing Dreamless Sleep potions because those were a guaranteed way to help the kid sleep through the night.
Damn Harry’s predisposition to addiction; Tony’s fault, probably not Lily’s.
“I’m your only son,” Harry said.
“Only son that we know of,” Tony winked. He waited until Harry was at the new counter to slide him his cup of coffee. “There could be dozens of little Tiny Tony’s roaming around in other countries.”
Harry blinked at him and then shook his head. “That’s terrifying,” he said. “Am I supposed to get a DNA test any time I date someone?”
Tony threw his head back and laughed at the very Tony-like question coming from his (hopefully) only child.
“Petey’s probably safe,” Tony said. “But if you happen to find a dashing young lady with our good looks then a quick DNA test wouldn’t hurt before procreating. I’d rather my grandkids not have crossed eyes and eleven toes.”
Harry snorted quietly while he started eating and there was a tiny glimmer of amusement in his eyes which Tony counted as an absolute win.
“I’ve never thought about having kids,” Harry said thoughtfully after they both made a dent in their food. “I reckon I’d adopt though, keep the poor bastards from getting my genetics.”
“You have excellent genetics,” Tony told him. “My brains, my good looks…”
And Lily’s eyes?
It was a shame that Tony didn’t know all that much about the woman who gave birth to his son. He knew she had curves to die for and had some truly naughty tricks she could do with her tongue.
“My broken brain, my cursed luck, and my depression.” Harry looked up at Tony with his spoon hovering in front of his mouth. “All genetic, right?”
“Not the luck, no,” Tony acquiesced. It was kind of tragic that Harry didn’t want biological kids based on all the things that Tony himself passed on to his son.
Harry raised a shoulder in a ‘there you have it’ move and Tony figured it was time to change the subject.
“When should I be expecting an influx of gingers?” Tony asked, hoping to find something more cheerful to discuss. “I’m not sure when wizard schools decide to go on break. And with their lack of electricity, I’m not sure how they keep track of the date even.”
It was the perfect question to ask, if Tony wanted Harry to look suddenly uneasy.
“You know I can tell them all not to come, right?” Harry said, narrowing his eyes at Tony. “They’re loud, and they’ll probably trash the place. Luna might even bring creatures.”
While that actually sounded like a nightmare, and six additional teenagers were sure to be a migraine, Tony wasn’t going to be the house where his kid couldn’t have friends over.
That was Howard’s house- only distinguished guests, and none of Tony’s friends had ever been distinguished. Hell, Rhodey didn’t get to see the inside of his parents house until they’d died- murdered -and Tony needed help packing it up.
“You never got to meet them, but you would have liked Rhodey’s parents,” Tony told Harry abruptly as he thought of it. “His mom was young, his dad was a general that was always on deployment until Rhodey went to college. They always let him bring home friends for school breaks and had a basement with a pool table and a mini fridge.”
Harry stared at Tony as he tried to find the relevance to their current conversation.
“I’m saying let’s get a pool table,” Tony said with a shrug. He snapped his fingers as he had a genius idea. “The floor under ours is empty now, I think Pietro took Thor’s room in Sirius’ place. Nat and Clint have their own places. We can make Steve’s old place somewhere you can have friends over. I’m assuming they might want to come again this summer?”
And God knew that if Steve wanted to come back he’d have to fight it out with Sirius as much as he would Tony. It certainly hadn’t been Tony who’d socked Captain America in the jaw with a sharp right hook when he asked where Barnes was.
“You… you’d let me friends come over in the summer too?” Harry asked, sounding unfairly surprised.
“Why not?” Tony asked. It was a much less unappealing idea now that he’d thought of creating a whole teen friendly floor of the tower. With JARVIS installed, it would be perfectly safe and the noise would be an entire floor away from Tony.
“You know Ron my first friend,” Harry said as he dug out the remainder of his cereal. Tony raised his brows, interested to hear more. Harry was reticent on a good day, damn near mute on a bad.
“We met on the way to Hogwarts,” Harry told him, the ghost of a grin on his lips. “We met Hermione too, but she was annoying.”
Tony laughed at the thought of the brainiac girl with the wild hair. “Can’t imagine why,” he joked.
“First thing she did was tell Ron off for using magic,” Harry said with his own smile. “Then Ron and I accidentally locked a troll in the loo with her and we’ve all been friends ever since. Well,” Harry paused and scrunched his face up, “we were pissed at Hermione in third year and I was pissed at Ron in fourth, but mostly we’ve been friends. Ron’s family usually let me stay with them in the summer. We saw the Quidditch World Cup last summer.”
“And now Ron can come here,” Tony grinned. “Let’s hear more about that World Cup though.”
Tony, personally, didn’t give a damn about sports of any kind, he never had. But if a sport had involved flying through the skies, he might have given it a shot.
Harry straightened up and poured himself some more cereal while he began enthusiastically describing a quidditch match in nearly painful detail.
Ask the kid to do long division and it’s a blank stare, bring up quaffles and bludgers and it’s all waving hands and rushed sentences.
It was adorable, actually.
Harry used up the rest of their morning by talking quidditch, and Tony made a mental note to himself to find out where next summer’s event would be held at.
“What’s physical therapy like?” Harry asked with the tiniest tremor of unease in his voice. The two of them were on the elevator, headed down to the garage to make it to Harry’s first appointment.
“It’s much less painful than regular therapy,” Tony assured him. “It’s basically just working out, stretches and stuff.”
“Ah.”
“I did physical therapy when I got back from Afghanistan,” Tony said. He waited for Harry to push himself from the elevator and thought about the brief couple of months that he’d suffered through the therapy needed to get his body back in shape.
“It’s not terrible,” he said. Tony snagged the key for the SUV, something subtle and big enough to slide Harry’s chair in the trunk. “And I looked your therapist up, she’s one of the best in the country.”
Harry nodded and then seemed to use all of his concentration on sliding sideways from his chair to the passenger seat. Tony hovered anxiously, terrified he was going to fall, but Harry managed it and looked a little smug once he was in. Tony quickly had the chair folded up and packed.
“Ready?” he asked Harry once he was in.
Harry had a brief little wistful look in his eyes when he glanced at the drivers side. “I guess so,” he sighed.
“You know you’re only supposed to use your right foot when you drive,” Tony reminded Harry as he backed out of his spot and headed toward the hospital. “There’s literally no reason you can‘t get your permit in January and be licensed on your next birthday.”
Harry hummed noncommittally so Tony set the radio to connect to Harry’s phone and waited for him to start playing his crap music.
“Peter’s playlist again, huh?” Tony grinned when he saw the name of the playlist Harry pulled up. “You two made up then?”
Harry’s only response was to scowl at Tony with a face as red as his hoodie and then to turn the radio up full blast.
Teenagers were fun.
Tony pulled up to the valet in the front of the hospital and tossed the guy his keys after he got Harry’s chair out.
“So much for unnoticed,” Harry said sharply while he gave the gawking valet the stink eye.
“Pains of fame,” Tony said carelessly. The valet didn’t whip his phone out and nobody else had taken notice of their arrival, so Tony doubted if Harry’s privacy was being violated too badly. “Mind if I navigate?”
Harry folded his hands on his lap so Tony figured it was as good as permission.
In the endless amounts of research on handicapped teenagers and lower limb amputees that Pepper sent Tony, he was chagrined to realize he sort of grabbed the chair without asking Harry a little too often. Also, apparently, for some ungodly reason, almost a third of lower limb amputees chose to not use a prosthetic.
Even though Tony could personally ensure that Harry had the most badass fake leg in the world.
Doctor Torres’ office was simple enough to find, they just followed the giant signs for physical therapy that were painted with her wide smile.
“Like I said, best in the country,” Tony reminded Harry when Harry scoffed at one of the signs. “And don’t laugh, kid, I’m pretty sure there’s a school in Tennessee that uses my photo on their billboard.”
“Why?”
Tony grinned fondly, thinking of the only other kid he’d ever not-hated.
“I crashed my suit in Tennessee, camped out in a garage. I met this kid, Harley, who helped me. He’s a sophomore now, right about your age. Anyway, he writes to me sometimes and I think I sponsored his school, or something.”
“So he’s like my older brother then,” Harry said, his tone pensive enough to put Tony on edge.
“Mm… maybe more like your cousin,” Tony said carefully. He navigated the chair through the hallway and could see the office at the end of the hall. “I send him a card on his birthday, I’ll sign your name on the next one.”
“Don’t bother,” Harry muttered quietly. Tony backed in the office, pulling Harry in with him, and was taken aback by the packed waiting room.
The packed waiting room of what seemed to be half a dozen veterans with various injuries and amputations.
“Oh, fuck me,” Harry whispered so quietly that only Tony could hear him. Harry twisted his head around and Tony could see the sudden panic in his green eyes. “Dad, I can’t…”
Yeah, Tony wasn’t feeling so great either. But he was the grown up, so he had to show some grit.
“This is fine,” Tony told Harry quietly. He held his head up high and kept a charming smile on his face while he pushed Harry to the window where a pretty, young, secretary sat.
“Hello,” Tony told her, “we have an appointment at ten with Doctor Torres?”
The young woman flashed her own smile at Tony before looking at the computer. “Harry Stark?”
“That’s me,” Harry said, sounding as if he’d rather be anyone else in the moment.
“Great.” The woman smiled at Harry before handing Tony a clipboard with a couple of sheets of paper on it. “Your wife sent ahead most of the paperwork, we just need a little more medical history. You can have a seat out there and just bring it back when we call your name, okay?”
“Perfect,” Tony said, not bothering to correct her on the wife assumption. He backed Harry up to the closest available seat, right next to what seemed to be a soldier missing his entire right leg.
“Hey, look,” the soldier leaned across Tony and nodded at Harry with a little smirk, “we’re a perfect match.”
Harry scowled at him and then tried to hastily hide the scowl while Tony started on the paperwork.
“Hilarious,” Harry said dryly before turning his face to look at the wall opposite them.
“Hey, have you ever had any surgery?” Tony asked Harry as he filled in ‘allergies’ and was at a loss for the rest of the questions.
“Er… no.”
“Any idea what your mom’s medical history was like?”
Harry stared at Tony with a deep look of nearly comical disdain.
“Yeah, Dad, my aunt was real open about her medical history,” Harry snapped. “And Mum told me everything she knew, unfortunately I was one so I forgot it all.”
“Right,” Tony said, bobbing his head. He drew a few question marks on the majority of the questions and then slapped the clipboard down on his lap and checked the time, five til.
With nothing else to keep Tony’s wandering attention, he looked over at the young man sitting beside him.
“What are you in for?” Tony asked.
The guy grinned roguishly, too damn young to have been in any real conflict that could have resulted in an amputation.
“Friendly fire, shot me in the thigh at Fort Jackson,” he said. He offered Tony his hand, “Specialist Ramsey.”
“Tony Stark,” Tony said as he shook his hand. Tony tilted his head out and tried to get a better look at the BDU covered legs. “No prosthetic?”
“Dad!” Harry hissed.
“You’re his dad?” Ramsey asked Tony, indicating Harry. After Tony nodded, Ramsey’s dark eyes became even darker, troubled. “You’re in for a tough ride. Prosthetics are expensive, they’re uncomfortable, and crutches are usually just easier to deal with.”
Tony hummed just before a door opened and Harry’s name was called.
“Hey, send me a text sometime,” Tony said, he grabbed a card from his jacket pocket and passed it to Ramsey. “Let’s talk about those prosthetics sometime, alright?”
“Sure,” Ramsey said, sounding puzzled. He held the card up and then tucked it in his own jacket pocket. “Thanks, man. And good luck, kid, Callie’s great.”
Harry and Tony both nodded in tangent as they moved to the inner office.
“You want to buy him a prosthetic?” Harry murmured up to Tony while they followed the nurse with the swinging hips through a hall.
“Nope. I want to build him one,” Tony said, his mind already creating blueprints and prototypes. “Expenses and discomfort can be reduced, but they’d have to all be individually made, they can’t be mass produced, I think that’s where the expenses come in…”
“You’re right and you’re wrong.”
Tony shook away his thoughts, tucking them in a vault for safekeeping when he could get back at them, and saw that Doctor Torres had came outside her office and waited on them with a smile.
“Doctor Torres, call me Callie,” she said, offering Harry her hand before Tony. “Harry, you ready to lose these training wheels and get back on your feet?”
“Foot,” Harry said flatly. “My foot.”
“Foot, feet, who cares,” Callie said airily. She tossed her dark hair over her shoulder and didn’t let her smile waver once. “You ready?”
“Am I not- not going back as well?” Tony asked, caught by surprise. “I thought I’d be going back.”
“Harry’s practically an adult, I think we can handle it,” Callie said. She raised a black eyebrow at Tony when he didn’t remove his hands from Harry’s chair. “Tony, seriously, it’s usually easier the first couple of times if we just rip the bandaid right off, you know? He’s perfectly fine with me.”
Tony slowly pried his fingers off the handles, hating it the entire time.
“I’ll just wait in the…?”
“We have a family waiting area down the hall and to the left,” Callie said, pointing the way. “We’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
“Couple of hours, great,” Tony said to himself as he watched Harry disappear with the doctor. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll just… I’ll just wait in the family area. Cool… cool…”
Tony found the lounge waiting area easily enough, and it wasn’t a bad place to waste a couple of hours. There were counters and outlets, TV’s covering the walls, even a few laptops set up at the tables against the windows.
There was only one other person in there, a man around his late twenties with dark skin and his eyes closed as he had his head tilted back.
Tony made himself comfortable at one of the stools and immediately pulled his phone out and began transferring all the notes in his head to tangible ones on his phone.
It wasn’t difficult to construct the limbs, and comfort could be tweaked and played with until it felt as natural as breathing, but the individual expense of each limb would be astronomical and Tony couldn’t find a way to lessen the cost while maintaining the quality…
“Can you change the iron to something cheaper and more lightweight, like aluminum?”
Tony didn’t jump, but he certainly twitched at the sudden voice that broke through his design. A quick glance over his shoulder told him that the other occupant was awake and nosing in Tony’s design work.
“Aluminum would crush under too much pressure,” Tony told him. He didn’t mind if someone wanted to standby and bounce ideas off of, it often brought out Tony’s own locked-in brilliance.
The man pulled the chair out beside Tony and plopped down. “Not if you reinforce it on the inside with rods of iron.”
“That’s not exactly conducive to bend at the knee.”
“Nah, look.” The man snatched Tony’s phone and began drawing his finger over the screen, scrapping and recreating the design. Tony watched in rapt attention as the man began drafting out thin rods that lined the calf and the thigh and ended at the knee.
“You’d have to add something here, to connect them, and it would have to bend…” the man said as he paused to scratch at the neatly trimmed black beard around his mouth. “And the knee’s the hardest part, because it’s the most wore down…”
“What about…” Tony took the phone back and wished he’d brought his tablet with him, a bigger screen he could manipulate. “This?” Tony drew out a more flexible device, one that was reinforced with its own miniature rods of iron.
“But then it’s still just as expensive,” the man pointed out, gesturing the the running supply total that Tony kept up on the program.
“Damn it,” Tony swore. He clicked the screen off and slid it away irritably. “A comfortable leg for a wounded soldier shouldn’t cost—”
The man chuckled, “An arm and leg?” He relaxed in his chair and offered Tony his hand. “Sam Wilson.”
Tony shook his hand while the name niggled at something. “Do I know you?” Tony asked, not bothering to share his name.
“We have - had - a mutual friend,” Wilson said. “Are you here for someone in your team?”
“Mm, no, my son,” Tony admitted. “How about you?”
“A brother in arms,” Wilson said. “Pararescue in the United States Air Force.”
Tony figured Wilson was military, he had that look about him.
“Does Torres mostly specialize with vets or does she just accept your insurance?” Tony asked.
“Both,” Wilson laughed, unflappable. “Callie’s great, the guys all love her. How old’s your boy? About sixteen?”
“Who’d you say our mutual friend was?” Tony asked, seeing that Wilson seemed to know a bit about Harry despite not seeming like a big fan.
Wilson grimaced then and leaned his chair back for a moment before resting it on the ground. “Rogers, actually. I haven’t been able to get ahold of him lately, you’re doing, I’d guess?”
“You’d guess I, what? Killed him?” Tony asked curiously. “Locked him in my basement? Sailed his body down the river?”
“Buried in a hole with Barnes,” Wilson shrugged after crossing his arms over his chest. “I saw the news, I tried to help join some of the search teams, and if your kid’s here then I’m guessing it didn’t have such a happy ending.”
“It didn’t,” Tony said, cooling his voice a few degrees. He had no interest in buddying up with Steve’s friend, not now that he recalled seeing footage of Sam Wilson flying through the air, fighting side-by-side with Steve.
“Mind telling me what happened before I see it anyway?” Wilson asked.
“Oh, sure.” Tony turned and stared him down as hard as he could, putting real force in his glare. “Your good buddy, Barnes, kidnapped my kid. Harry tries to escape, what happens? Breaks his leg. Does Barnes detour to an ER? Nope! Kept driving to God damned Mexico, where he buried my son under probably seventy pounds of dirty produce and ditched Harry in a filthy motel where he forgot about him!
“That,” Tony slapped the countertop hard, “is what happened.”
Wilson laced his hands behind his head and whistled under his breath while he and Tony held each others gazes.
“First, Barnes is not my friend, Barnes is a criminal and I don’t understand what fucking hold he has on Steve,” Wilson said evenly. “Second, I was very much Team Bad Call, when Steve let him go back in May. And I don’t have a third, but I can tell you that I haven’t talked to Steve in a while and don’t plan on it for a while.”
Tony eyed Wilson closely; he was usually a good judge of character. Wilson seemed to be telling the truth, he didn’t blink or fidget even once while Tony stared him down.
“Harry’s leg had to be amputated above the knee, that’s why we’re here,” Tony said, sighing as he admitted it.
Wilson reached over and grasped Tony’s forearm for a moment, looking solemn as he did it. “I’m sorry, man, that’s a rough ride for you both.”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s been hell,” Tony admitted with a joyless laugh. He ran his hand through his hair and then gestures toward his phone. “I can rebuild my whole place to be wheelchair friendly, I can build him the best fucking leg known to man, but he doesn’t give a damn about any of it.” Tony huffed and tried to roll the tight tension from his shoulders. “I’m at a loss here, it’s…”
“Hell,” Wilson supplied again. “It’s always hell, for the patient and the family. They don’t know how to readjust to the new body they’re suddenly in, the one with all these restrictions. And they don’t know how to relate with anyone, because who the fuck can understand it? And you poor bastards are stuck with trying to play housemaid and nurse and therapist. It’s tough, man, props to you for doing what you can.”
“I just…” Tony struggled to admit what really bothered him. “I’ve got nothing but money and time and an entire lab and none of it is making a difference.”
If there was one tangible thing on a list that would fix Harry’s life, Tony would find it or get it. Tony was an inventor, a builder, a mechanic- he was a fixer. And there was nothing that he could fix.
“Are you kidding me?” Wilson chuckled warmly and shook his head. “Tony, I’m here because my guy doesn’t have any family to help him; he’s doing this alone. Harry, your son? He’s got you, and you’re here, in this shitty lounge, drawing blueprints for prosthetics. You’re here, that counts.”
Tony stared at Wilson and willed himself to accept the words at face value.
“It doesn’t count enough,” Tony said flatly. “My kid’s in there, probably crying because what I didn’t tell him is that PT is a bitch, and I’m out here just ‘counting’.”
“Hey, tell you what…” Wilson grabbed Tony’s phone and pulled up the contacts, putting his own number in and sending it a text. “I’ll send you the details, but we have a great group therapy on Saturday mornings down at the VA. It’s mostly vets, but Saturday mornings are our amputee group, family’s welcome too.”
“Is there shitty coffee?” Tony asked, gesturing to the pot sitting on one of the counters in the lounge. Tony hadn’t bothered with it, despite the ache in his head that begged for it, since it looked to be about two days old.
“The VA only pays for the shittiest of coffees,” Wilson laughed. There was a cough from the doorway and Tony and Wilson both looked over to see a man around Wilson’s age leaning on a crutch under his left arm to make up for the missing limb.
“Hey,” the guy nodded at Tony. He had the same buzzcut as the soldier from the waiting room and looked to be in decent shape despite the amputation. “Is that your kid back there?”
“Black hair? Devastatingly handsome? Yeah, he’s mine,” Tony said proudly.
The guy smiled widely while Wilson clapped Tony’s shoulder and joined him in the doorway.
“He’s a trooper, and god damn does he have the mouth of a soldier,” he laughed.
“That’s my son,” Tony said. He raised his hand and watched the two men leave, one hobbling along on crutches and one guiding him with a hand on his back.
Tony imagined his kid back with the doctor, working his ass off and probably begging for death if his therapy was as rigorous as Tony’s had been. Tony imagined Harry running his mouth and glaring at Callie, just hating himself and hating his life.
“That’s my son,” Tony repeated softly to himself. He pulled his phone back to reopen the program he’d been designing with.