Chapter 5
About the same time that Pepper coincidentally ran into Peter, Tony had made his way to his lab where he knew Harley would be working on his suit to give him a shovel talk of sorts.
As the elevator doors open Tony strolled into the room where Harley was engrossed in his tinkering and Tony opted to plop himself onto a swivel chair backwards.
Harley still hadn’t acknowledged Tony’s presence yet, whether he actually knew the man was there or not Tony had no idea, so he efficiently rolled his way forward and into his peripheral vision.
“Whatcha doing old man?”
Absolutely scandalised Tony made a dramatic gasp putting his hand over his heart.
“Sit yo ass down Keener” Tony said pointing to the swivel chair next to him.
“Why tho, you look like you’re up to somethin and ima have to pass on that” Harley retorted not even looking up from his work through the whole back and forth.
Like the responsible adult parent man he is Tony kicked the chair in Harley's general direction which earned him an “oof fiiinee” and the younger boy copied his mentor/father figure by sitting on the chair backwards.
“Alright, I’ll cut to the chase,” this made Harley roll forwards in anticipation, “we’re gonna talk man to man” this made Harley roll back without hesitation.
“Can we not?” Harley tried.
“Bold of you to assume you have a choice here, Tennessee”
Finally relenting Harley huffed out an “Okay, what d’ya wanna talk about”
Tony simply smirked which put Harley on edge even more.
Clearing his throat Tony started with “There comes a time in every man’s life-”
“wOaHWOAHWOAH I’m gonna stop you right there chief,” Harley said waving his hands, “if this is the birds and the bees or it’s creepy cousin the hawks and the wasps you can stop right there, been there done that there is no need!”
Tony started wheezing at his panic.
“Okay okay, I’ll come clean,” he said wiping his tears, “I know you like Peter, Harls”
The young engineer’s face instantly burned red with a look of shock.
“i- i don’t know w-what you mean of course I like him, everyone, everyone likes Peter?” Harley stuttered.
“Seriously? You’re gonna play dumb? With me of all people. You’re not exactly subtle, either of you actually”
Harley just sort of gaped for a few seconds before snapping out of it.
“What do you mean ‘either of us’?”
“You’re smart, you’ll figure it out,” Tony went back to smirking and stood to leave.
The man started to walk towards the elevator but turned around to face Harley one last time adding a “Just don’t hurt my son, bitch”, to which Harley replied “Bitch, I would never” with a smirk of his own regaining his usual air of confidence.
Satisfied and proud of himself, Tony got back into the elevator and high fived himself. He then went to meet Morgan at the rendezvous point where they then waited for Pepper. The two parents explained everything that happened on their sides of the mission and all agreed the masterplan had been a success so far.