At first, all Peter was to Happy was a nuisance.
It’s not that he couldn’t understand why Tony had recruited him; he knew that it came from a place of absolute necessity. The Civil War was increasing in tension. Secretary Ross was becoming more and more dangerous. The meeting in Germany was coming up and it was obvious to Tony that they didn’t have enough numbers on their side.
From the YouTube videos they watched together, it was clear that the kid was talented, especially for an amateur. And then, they both worked together to find out who he was, and Peter Parker first made his introduction. Star student, top in his class, but coping with the recent murder of his Uncle. And most notably, fourteen years old.
There was a moment that Happy tried to argue with Tony that a fourteen year old boy had absolutely no business in the absolute shitshow that was the Avengers at the moment, but then he took one look into Tony’s eyes and knew that he wouldn’t be able to handle opposition from his own corner. And generally, no one goes against the wishes of Tony Stark. So he did his best to support his boss. And then he met the kid.
And Peter’s exactly what he expected from a fourteen year old kid about to meet the Avengers. His first observation is that he’s painfully small. Petite and short and Happy knows that no one on Team Cap is aiming to kill, but still can’t shake the feeling that Peter’s about to be snapped in half. When Peter says something about Star Wars for the first time, he remembers the footage he saw of Spider-Man single-handedly fighting rapists, murderers, thieves, and worse. There’s no reason that this child should have the ability to stop a bus with his bare hands. Whenever he sees him, he feels responsible for his life, sees the worst outcome of a potential fight. So, Happy decides to stop looking altogether and focus his energy on driving to Tony’s private hangar.
And then he talks. And he talks, and he talks. And he doesn’t stop. Asks questions about the Avengers, about what happened, thanks him a million times even when he ignores him. It’s painfully naive in a vaguely endearing way and Happy puts up the divider in the car as soon as he can. The less time he can bond with the kid the better.
At heart, Happy knows he’s soft. Tony’s a different kind of soft than he is, he cares in a nonchalant, quiet, hard kind of way that makes little boys with Iron Man helmets feel like they could win the world some day. Most of the time he can deflect his feelings, or at least fight back when he can’t. He’s a protector.
Happy’s a listener. It’s why him and Tony get along so well. Tony talks and talks and talks but sometimes he doesn’t know what he’s saying until Happy slows it down for him. He listens and he studies people and falls in love with them. Working Happy is why he’s stressed out all the time, perpetually frowning, flashing badges and getting badges flashed in return. He’s on defense mode, guarding what he loves most in the world with a fierceness even he isn’t aware of. Human Happy is significantly less common, but he watches Downton Abbey because of the drama and he’s still stressed, he’s always stressed, but has the time to appreciate where he is and feel.
One of his first thoughts about the kid is that he’s nothing like Tony. Perhaps it’s not a fair observation to make seeing as he’s so young, he’s aware. But he has no idea how they manage to get along.
God, Happy misses Tony. Tony, who’s different right now from the stress, who’s losing one of his best friends and half the team, Tony who misses his girlfriend. Happy misses Tony. And while he knows it’s not right, he allows himself to detest the kid for this reason, build up a final wall in-between them so that he doesn’t have to worry about this kid like he has to worry about losing Tony.
When he drops the kid off at his house, a little bruised, a little older, he thinks that’ll be it. He doesn’t wave goodbye when he speeds back to the Compound. Tony asks if he was well behaved, and Happy replies, “He’s a good kid,” followed, deflected by, “Would be better if he ever learned how to shut up.” Tony laughs and that’s all they say about him for now. He chooses not to tell him about the porn.
---
He’s his best friend, but he might kill Tony for giving the kid his number. What he wanted to do was forget about him, for christ's sake. He texts him every single day, sometimes in the morning asking when he next mission will be. Sometimes during patrol. Always wrapped with a bow with a call at the end of every day. Things like hey Happy, today I saved a cat from a tree and then I also saved a woman being jumped in an alleyway and then I helped 4 children find their parents and I memorized their names and made friends with them. But I still feel like I could do more Mr Happy and he doesn’t know how to tell Peter that he’s doing more than enough. More than he should be doing. Peter’s charitable actions are increasing by the day and Happy’s still trying to convince himself and everyone around him that he hates him.
He knows that Peter reminds Tony of Steve sometimes, and he knows how much that hurts him. Happy can see the parallels too. He’s got the same drive to do the Right Thing for no reason other than he can, even if it costs him. Noticing the bags under his friend’s eyes growing darker and darker with the passing day, he tells him that he’s got Peter under control and that he’ll actually listen to the calls and report if anything sounds suspicious (he knows that Tony’s been stalking Peter, as he’s been receiving calls about little cameras he’s finding everywhere where he usually patrols). The least he can do, he decides, is take that responsibility off of his shoulders. He decides that he won’t mention anything to Tony unless it’s a worst-case scenario; he can see Tony wither a little bit whenever he brings Peter up. The PTSD from Siberia is getting the best of him, and Happy can tell that Tony worries he gave Peter the means to get into more dangerous fights with his suit. He’d feel responsible if Peter got into something bigger than what he can handle.
(Happy is a listener, so he knows Tony like the back of his hand: his fears, motivations, traumas, thought-processes, insecurities. He’s really more observant than anyone would expect from an ex-boxer, ex-chauffeur, ex-bodyguard man. He can’t truly describe the way he knows Tony, doesn’t think it normal to learn someone, to memorize a person like he memorizes him.)
When he takes the suit from Peter, he comes home and sobs . The glassy eyes and sleepless nights since Siberia culminate into a breakdown on one of his nicer carpets. Happy finds him curled up with his cheek against the scratch of the floor. He’s so busy with his new job and moving day coming up, but for a second, he puts it on hold and listens. Tony says that he hates himself, that he hates Steve, that he hates Bucky. Tony tells him that holding Peter’s suit in his hands and sending him home in embarrassing pajamas made him feel far too much like Howard, but knowing that Peter can’t wind up dead in an alleyway somewhere is the best feeling in the world, and Hell, does Happy understand. A second passes where something more protective than avoidant resonates through Happy. But then Tony whimpers that Howard never would have cared enough to stop me from being Iron Man , and he dissolves completely, and Happy doesn’t have enough time to think about Peter anymore because this is the lowest that Tony gets.
And then everything is going up. He doesn’t get anymore calls from the kid, and Tony can finally come up now that he’s fallen. Moving day comes and the jet leaves on time, and he is damn proud of himself for pulling that off- that is, until the jet is on the beach and surrounded in fire and he reads the note that the kid leaves attached to the Vulture.
Happy’s the only one that spots Peter that night, and he wouldn’t dare tell anyone else that he sees him. He uses his phone to zoom in on him, and is forced to confront all that he fears: Peter, in only a sweatshirt with just his web-shooters, bloodied and broken. He doesn’t know how he got all the way up on the Cyclone in that shape, but he knows if he took down Toomes without a suit, a climb wouldn’t stop him from finally getting the rest he needed. No one gets in the way of Spider-man.
Happy feels truly, inconceivably stupid. In the months that follow, he knows that Tony blames himself, but cannot help but feel that the entire thing was truly his own fault. That’s when he decides he can’t run from Peter anymore, that it was selfish and childish of him to think that he could for so long. He cares about Peter. And he owns up. He not only goes to his school to pick him up like Tony asks, but goes inside, meets Peter in one of their gross bathrooms, and at least attempts to apologize. It doesn’t quite go according to plan, but Happy is content to label ‘things not going according to plan’ as part of the job description and leave it at that.
---
After that, driving becomes important for the two of them.
After moving day, Tony’s inviting Peter upstate left and right. He’ll come down sometimes on Friday nights and spend the weekend, leaving early Sunday so he can get all of his homework done. Tony says that it’s out of guilt, that he just likes his input when he develops new tech, but Happy can tell that he enjoys Peter’s company more than he lets on.
Happy pretty much always drives Peter, even though Tony might occasionally switch out to surprise him every once in a while. The tower is sold, and yes, Tony has a place in New York that he occasionally entertains, but he spends most of his time at the Compound. The drive from Forest Hills, Queens to the Compound is about three hours total. Which adds up faster than Happy thought it would.
Peter always talks on the way- it’s his coping mechanism for nerves. But Happy starts to listen, switches from Working Happy to Human Happy. He asks questions and he swears to God, the look Peter gives him when he realizes that he’s actually interested gets him out of bed for the next few days.
The more Happy listens to Peter, the more he likes him. The more his wide-eyed wonder starts being sweet instead of overly optimistic. And soon his rambling turns into something fully digestible and tangible, and he’s really having three hour long conversations with a kid that he at first, couldn’t bear to look at.
What shocks him is when he realizes that he’s learning Peter in the same way that he learned Tony. He’s absolutely soaking him up. He learns the way he thinks and what he’s afraid of and the gap between them grows smaller and smaller. His mannerisms and expressions become second nature, just as important in understanding him as his words. Peter tells him everything. He knows his friends, he knows his pet peeves and favorite foods. He’s unpredictable by nature, that’s who he is and that might be why he’s still alive, but Happy’s got him down to a T.
Happy doesn’t say it, but he thinks he knows Peter a little better than Tony. When they’re in the lab, it’s all science jargon and innovation. Not that the two aren’t close, they’re close in a different way. Tony still tries to hold Peter a small distance away from him sometimes, even though he’s quickly realizing how attached he really is. They have this unique, unspoken bond between the two of them- likely due to their time as heroes. Peter doesn’t have Real Talk with Happy often, but Happy can read him now, he knows when he’s skimming the surface of something larger. He loves learning Peter. It was refreshing to know that Peter’s a real person sometimes, as absurdly good as he is.
These were the good days.
---
He’s less surprised than he’d like to be when he realizes that Peter got onto that fucking spaceship.
He wishes he could yell. He wishes he still had a chance to tell Peter how much potential he has, to shake him by the shoulders and say that something as important as his life is something that can not be put at risk.
(He’d had the same conversation with Tony before, once he’d started being Iron Man. Tony just shook his head at Happy. But he knows Tony, and knows him well enough that he couldn’t back down from a fight, even if he wanted to. Moving day taught him that about Peter too, but he never thought that it would go this far.)
Happy doesn’t get snapped.
When Tony comes back from space, Happy cries.
When he says “I lost the kid,” Happy nearly throws up.
---
Happy struggles. More than he thought he would. Half of the world is gone, and everything seems incurably bleak. In proper Tony fashion, he neglects his needs as soon has he returns and winds up in the hospital much later than he should have been admitted. When he studies the bones protruding from Tony’s chest, the sharp angles of his cheekbones, he is almost happy that Peter didn’t have to suffer like he did, happy that the light wouldn’t have been slowly drained from his eyes like it had with Tony’s. And then he promptly hates himself for the thought, maybe a little selfishly. He misses Peter. He misses him as much as he’d expected to miss him if this happened, which is a lot, but the thought of it is nothing like the experience of it.
Tony’s no better than he is. He knew how hard he’d been trying with Peter, how difficult it was for him, how afraid he was to turn into Howard. He was distancing himself because he was afraid of what would happen if Peter got hurt, closing the gap for the same reason. And now Peter was gone and the only thing left is regret.
They mourn Peter together, because May was dusted and they’re the only people they know who appreciate him like they do. There’s no real funeral; there’s not with anyone of the Avengers who were dusted. They feel too much blame, any funerals that they attempted ended with people in worse shape than they began. And with no bodies to bury, closure seemed impossible.
Tony aimed not to forget, but to put it behind him. Pepper was now visibly pregnant, and he chose to put all of his energy into building a home for their new family. And he did a beautiful job with it too.
(Happy helped him decorate the house. In one of the boxes was a picture of Peter and Tony, playfully teasing each other with bunny ears behind their heads. Happy didn’t own a single picture of himself with Peter, as routine car rides were not typically viewed as something to commemorate with a photograph.
He put it in his kitchen, and stared at it for a long time before Tony came up behind him to look too. It was quiet for a long time before, in a hushed, wet tone, Tony said “He’s so smart Hap, I’m so proud of him,” and put his head in his hands to hide his tears. It took him just under two months to begin to use past verb tenses with Peter Parker.)
He doesn’t move near Tony when he goes to the lakehouse. Instead he stays in the city. He does everything completely different this time around and starts a new life. He hates it.
---
Tony doesn’t not do something when he can. So he goes around and invents time travel for the kid. That’s why Tony’s Tony. He knows he’d never stop, even if he tried, because Peter is on the line. Happy wouldn’t stop either, hell, Happy would kill him if he stopped.
The last conversation he has with Tony was over phone call. Always wanting to take up attention, never wanting to make himself anything important. That’s how Happy will remember him.
He calls Happy late at night, and he answers without his usual cursing reserved for when he has to use technology. The first image he sees of Tony in almost three years is him sitting on the couch with his head in his hands. Instantaneously, Happy knows something is up.
“Tony?” His voice is tentative and quiet, testing the waters. “Tony, what do you need?
His rises at the sound of his voice. He sounds tired. “I’m gonna get him back, Happy.” And Happy believes him. Tony tells him about the technology he began to look into, how it actually fucking worked somehow, and how their mission to fix everything is scheduled for tomorrow. And he’s coming back with Peter. “Whatever it costs,” he promises.
Happy could cry, but for all that he’s been through for the past 5 years, he doesn’t. What he says instead is, “I knew you could Tony. If anyone could it’s you.”
He tells him good luck and that he loves him. Tony says it back. And when he decides to drive to the compound to see how it went, it’s already destroyed into rubble.
--
The whiplash of mourning almost kills Happy, but somehow he makes it out alive. He hugs Peter tight when he sees him and he’s the only one who cries, with Peter numb and tired from hours of sobbing already. Happy tells him everything that he should have told him before he died (he made a list one night when he was alone, before the Blip) and Peter somehow finds more tears to cry. Happy decides right then that he hates seeing Peter cry more than anything in the world.
After Peter finally cries himself to sleep, Steve tells him what Tony did for him. He’d said “whatever it takes,” and Tony had meant it. Happy feels some relief knowing he died in honor, doing the one thing that mattered as much as the life he’s missing back home: protecting the kid. Happy knew Tony and he knew it’s what he would have wanted, and no one goes against the wishes of Tony Stark.
He’s proud of Tony. He hopes he knows that. Tony took a chance on Happy, when he was just a boxer that never won. He couldn’t have asked for a better best friend.
For the second time, he mourns.
---
Happy pretty much already knows May from all of Peter’s stories about her, but of course, doesn’t let her know that. It starts very casual, with just a little flirting, with some visits to her job to surprise her. But Happy likes her a lot. She’s beautiful of course, but she’s also one of the kindest people that Happy’s ever come across. She cares with everything she has and Happy loves that.
---
Working Happy , back from the dead, picks up his phone to hear Peter, apparently trapped in the Netherlands. Another man tells them which town he’s in and suddenly Happy’s flying a jet into Europe.
Peter looks terrified when he first sees Happy. He asks for something that only Happy would know about him, and Happy tells him that he rented an adult movie in Germany, and that Peter asked him how he found out, and that he said he could tell by the price, and the next thing he knows, Peter’s holding him a little bit too tight. Happy’s fine with it.
Happy hates seeing Peter cry. So when they’re on the jet, he tells him about Tony, the one thing that linked them together in the first place. He tells him that he knows Tony did it for him, that he wouldn’t have done it if he wasn’t completely confident in Peter’s capabilities to fill his shoes. That he’d accepted him as the future of the world, of the Avengers, and he was proud of him. And then Peter says that he’s gonna kick Mysterio’s ass and it’s like Tony never died.
Happy’s first impression of Peter is that he’s nothing like Tony. Looking at him now, he feels disgusting that he didn’t see it sooner. Peter shares Tony’s gestures and mannerisms while working with the tech. He works just like Tony, eyes focused, but blank with the multitude of ideas flying across their minds. And then puts on the holographic web-shooter, just like he’d seen Tony do a thousand times with his gauntlets, and the illusion completely hits. Peter looks so old in that black t-shirt, hair a little mussed, walking around like he owns the place. He realizes that Tony is still alive within the influence of this 16 year old kid, the same way he is with Morgan. He exists within the cities that still stand because of his protection. Within the millions of children who looked up to Iron Man and said that they would be superheroes when they grew up. Within Pepper. Within him.
Peter is to protected at all costs, Happy thinks, his light, his enthusiasm must be preserved. Because Tony Stark died for him, and he was completely right in doing it.