Steve curls up on the couch with Tony, who really should be in bed by now but Howard was inconsistent with bed times and he and Maria have given up on trying to correct this. Because Howard decided Tony didn’t have an actual bedtime he tended to stay up late though Steve noticed he was awake early too. At some point he’d talk to Maria about that to see if this was something she noticed too or if he was reading into things too much. Howard told him he had a habit of over worrying but he couldn’t help it. He spent a lot of his time sick when he was Tony’s age; he thought it was perfectly natural to be hyperaware of Tony’s strange habits. And he had a lot of strange habits. Most of them could be linked back to his intelligence though so Steve tried not to read too far into things that were easily explained.
“How come you didn’t go to the show?” Tony asks and he sounds tired but he looks wide-awake. Steve thought that was a pretty clear indication that something was wrong but that was just him, literally because even Bucky thought that was nuts. But he knew what the inability to sleep looked like; he had a lot of insomnia as a child too, always in too much pain to sleep. Maybe he’d ask Tony some questions later and hope he wasn’t leading him into giving the answers Steve wanted to hear.
“I didn’t really feel like it, you know that they exhaust me,” Steve says in response to Tony’s question. It was true enough; the social life did exhaust him, which was a real shame for Howard because he loved the attention. Steve had no idea how he wasn’t driven nuts by all the cameras and questions and people but Howard thrived off it all. Tony did too, thankfully, because his ability to act was getting him a lot of attention that Steve thought he was way too young for. Plus he’s a genius, the tech guys didn’t tend to care for Tony toying with their equipment but mostly because he was better with it than they were. The media seemed to love it all and Steve was wary that Tony would go down the child star route and end up a drug addict with a ruined life that people made fun of without taking a real look at their circumstances.
“Yeah but you usually go anyways, to make dad happy,” Tony points out. Perceptive kid, more than people gave him credit for. So Tony forgot simple things like remembering to do his chores, or forgetting his socks, but the kid picked up on subtle emotional changes in a heartbeat.
“Not this time,” Steve says simply, unsure of how to even explain the situation to Tony. It wasn’t like he could logically understand, he was too young.
“Is it because of that death scene? Because dad didn’t really die, it was just acting so you shouldn’t be scared,” Tony says and shit that kid was smart. “Why are you looking at me like that? You’ve been all weird since you filmed that scene so clearly that was the problem,” Tony tells him matter-of-factly.
“Sometimes I forget how smart you are,” Steve says, “but you’re right anyways. And I know he was acting, but it felt real and it was… unsettling, the feeling of loosing someone you love, even if it wasn’t real.” It was the best he could do in his attempts to translate his feelings into words. Howard thought the whole thing was ridiculous too but after the panic attacks that followed he wisely kept that to himself. Steve would happily tell him where to shove that opinion and then he’d pretend to die in a very sad and visceral way to see how much Howard liked it. On the plus side Steve’s inability to function like a normal human translated really well on film so the movie came out great, even if it promoted the Sad Dead Gays trope.
“Everyone forgets how smart I am because I’m a kid and no one thinks my opinion means anything,” Tony says bluntly and ouch. “But I guess I know not to do any death scenes because I don’t want to scare you.”
Steve can’t help but smile and pull Tony close for that, “that’s very considerate of you,” he murmurs into Tony’s unruly hair, “and for the record I think your opinion means something.”
“Yeah? Okay. Do you hate me?” Tony asks suddenly and abruptly.
“What? Of course not, what the hell gave you that impression?” Steve asks, fully prepared to stop whatever behavior encouraged Tony to have ever developed such an opinion.
“Well… you and dad are sending me off to boarding school. Don’t you want me here?” Tony asks in a small voice and Steve was going to kick Howard for this later. He told him that Tony would do this but no, Howard knew best.
“Of course we want you here… I… to be honest it would be best if you talked to Howard about this. He has his reasons,” Steve says. Not very good ones in Steve’s opinion but Howard was a stubborn ass that refused to listen to Steve until he was proven right and Steve gave him ‘I told you so’ looks. At least Howard usually had enough shame to apologize for being an ass even if he didn’t have enough brain capacity to listen next time. But then Steve was a stubborn ass too and he also refused to learn when it came to certain issues so he supposed he couldn’t fault Howard too much.
Tony looks unimpressed with this answer but he agrees to talk to Howard. Steve was determined to make this go right so Howard can finally bond with his damn son and stop acting like a fool.
*
By the time Howard gets home Steve has been in bed for hours sleeping. Howard is loud getting in though that wasn’t any fault of his own; he was naturally a loud person and he had a hard time toning it down. “Shhh,” Steve mumbles from under his blankets, curling into a tighter ball as if that would help at all.
Howard responds by pulling the blankets back and grinning down at Steve, “Guess who won that award,” he says.
“You put those blankets back or I will take up Tony’s advice to leave you for Maria,” Steve tells him, glaring at his ass of a husband. Insensitive jerk, pulling Steve’s blankets off like that when he’d whine and cry if Steve ever did that to him. Howard throws the blankest back over Steve’s head and Steve rearranges them grumpily.
“Me, by the way, is the answer to my question,” Howard tells him and Steve can hear the cocky grin on Howard’s face.
“That’s nice, talk to your son, we thinks he hate him because you decided to send him to boarding school,” Steve says bluntly. Howard stills and Steve finds that telling because Howard didn’t really stand still for anything. It drove Steve nuts sometimes but he somehow managed to put up with Howard’s inability to stay in one place doing one thing for too long. He got antsy and if Steve was honest he actually kind of liked Howard’s habits of changing things around constantly, even it was exhausting to keep up sometimes. It was Steve’s most and least favored trait about Howard, that and his stubbornness about damn near everything.
“I… he told you this?” Howard asks quietly. More telling information because Howard wasn’t quiet, it wasn’t in his nature and Tony very much inherited that from him.
“Yeah, point blank. Kid’s smart as hell,” Steve mumbles. He managed to surprise Steve more and more every day.
Howard sighs, “I’ll talk to him tomorrow. But I won Best Actor,” he says excitedly and the energy in the room seems to lift back up with Howard’s mood. It wasn’t a surprise that the man was a good actor when he could change the mood of a room at will, a talent Tony had inherited too.
“Congrats,” Steve mumbles, “now come cuddle.” Howard complies, sliding under the blankets and circling his arm around Steve’s waist, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.
“Couldn’t have done it without you, you know. Which I made very clear in my acceptance speech,” he says. Steve grins and threads his fingers through Howard’s, content with his life.
*
Communication wasn’t his thing and Howard knew it, which was half the reason his relationship with Maria had failed. That, and he was an asshole to her so she had been right to leave. Steve, thankfully, had no interest in putting up with Howard’s crappy behavior and unlike Maria he told him when he did something wrong right away instead of hitting a breaking point months later. If he knew it was a problem to begin with he wasn’t confused when it was suddenly a problem later. The problem with that is that he expected Howard to actually do things like talk to his child and he expected Howard to be good at it.
He’s a shit father and he knows it, but more importantly Tony knows that too. How did you talk to a kid that flat out knew that you were a crappy parent? Howard wouldn’t listen to himself if he were in Tony’s position and he didn’t much expect Tony to listen either, why would he? It wasn’t as if Howard had ever listened to his own shitty father so why would Tony listen to him? He loved his son, of course he did, but he never should have agreed to children with Maria. She was a great mother but he was terrible at this and Tony was the one suffering for it. Steve didn’t seem to think that was a reason to not be involved with Tony though so here he was awkwardly standing in his kid’s doorway with no clue what to say.
“I uh… I love you Tony, you do know that right?” he asks for lack of anything better to say. Tony looks up from the blender that was now destroyed, god knows what he was even doing with it, and he has a script open off to the side of his supplies. He was sure if he examined the pieces long enough he could figure out what Tony was doing, Howard was pretty intelligent himself, but Tony was far smarter.
“No, you want nothing to do with me,” he says bluntly and oh, that hurt. But he was right, Howard did want nothing to do with Tony, it was just better than way. He’s a bad parent and he figured Tony was better off but everyone else thought the opposite was true. So now he was in some weird position where he was supposed to bond with Tony and he had no idea how. And Tony, he had no reason to even want to bond with him and Howard didn’t blame him for that even if it was painful to think about.
He sighs and wanders into Tony’s room a little further, sitting down on the edge of Tony’s bed. Tony watches wearily, like he expects this to end badly and honestly that made two of them. “I’m an awful father,” he says bluntly because Tony deserved the truth, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I do, I love you more than anything else in the world but I have no clue how to show that.” He didn’t even know how to deal with children as a whole let alone one as special and important as Tony.
“I can tell,” Tony says and Howard really wished the kid would learn social rules already. Tony had a habit of being too blunt, too brash, and too unwilling to change any of that. Just like his father really, with Maria’s sense of humor and her capacity to care. Now Howard knew why he seemed to throw people off so much, why people thought him intimidating. God knew he had no clue how to handle someone just like him and Tony wasn’t much of a stranger to telling him that. Steve too, though he knew when to play the game and when to tip the board, Howard didn’t have that balance and neither did his son.
“Yeah, I know you can. Which is why I chose to send you to boarding school, I thought maybe you’d like the freedom, the independence. I did when I was your age dealing with my own shitty father, it was a blessing to be gone and I thought maybe you might feel the same way,” he explains. Steve thought that he was running from his problems and maybe he was right but leaving worked for him, he figured maybe it would work for Tony too.
Tony considers his words, giving him a shrewd look like he was trying to determine whether or not he was acting or not. Maria used to do that frequently, try to determine what was and wasn’t real. Another reason their relationship failed and honestly Howard didn’t blame her. Towards the end he didn’t even know what was real or not so he doubted she could tell. Steve never did that though, he always seemed to automatically know when Howard was faking it or not and that was impressive. Howard was a damn good actor and he knew it so he had no clue how Steve just knew when he was lying.
“You have a crappy father?” Tony asks eventually and of course he would choose to focus on that.
“There’s a reason you haven’t met him, Tony.” A reason he never would if Howard had anything to say about it. He’s done enough damage to his child; he didn’t need the old man adding to it. Howard had been surprised Steve hadn’t pushed that too when the letters started coming. Turns out his father hadn’t died like Howard assumed he had, but he was dying and he wanted to make it up to Howard before he went. Whatever sickness he had must be getting worse because the letters were getting more frequent and desperate and Howard remained wholly uninterested. His father only thought he was wrong because he was dying and that wasn’t real guilt, not to Howard. If he didn’t think he should have spoken to Howard before he ran off he didn’t need to be talking to Howard now, or his son.
“Oh,” Tony says quietly, “and you liked boarding school?” he asks.
He loved it. When he was at school he could be whoever he wanted to be, do whatever he wanted to do. At home it was like he was in a fucking prison where he had to follow all his father’s rules, except the rules were subject to change at any moment and Howard had never been able to keep up. “Yeah Tony, school was one of the only places I had to be myself and that was important to me,” he says honestly. It was unpleasant to come home and forget his role as his father’s son only to be beaten for speaking out of turn, not doing something, doing something too much, and on one particularly memorable occasion not being heterosexual enough.
“And you think it’ll be important to me, too?” he asks.
“Obviously, or I wouldn’t have bothered enrolling you. Plus you’re a genius and not many schools know how to handle a student like you and this school does, you’ll actually learn there instead of being bored all the time,” Howard tells him. He chose the school carefully; keeping his son’s needs in mind, regardless of what Steve might think this was actually the best move for Tony. Maria had agreed after all, and Steve thought she was the sensible one out of the two of them.
“Oh. That would be nice, I don’t like being failed because I’m smarter than everyone else,” Tony says. Yeah, neither did Howard. He also didn’t much appreciate the implication that Tony was stupid because he couldn’t do simple math, it wasn’t that he was stupid, it was that the math was so easy Tony over thought his answers. As soon as Howard complicated the problems Tony got all the answers right so clearly the teachers were the stupid ones. Then came the cheating accusation because no seven year old can get those answers right. Well, clearly Tony did and he wasn’t cheating to do it. Steve had handled that and there haven’t been any complaints since. He and Maria have been trying to figure out what he said to the school officials to cow them like he had but Steve refused to talk. Now it was a weird bonding thing he and Maria had and she was under the impression he wasn’t pulling his weight in figuring out this mystery.
“Yeah, well your teachers are assholes that don’t know how to handle a kid smarter than them,” Howard says, unable to keep the irritation from his voice. As if Tony was cheating to get his answers, the kid was just freakishly good at math.
Tony giggles, “you should tell them that,” he says.
“I have, they weren’t impressed,” Howard says.
“Really?” Tony asks, looking surprised.
“Of course, it isn’t your fault they’re stupid and your smart, I saw no reason for you to suffer because they were the ones who couldn’t keep up.” They hadn’t been impressed with that either but Howard hadn’t cared, he was not about to let someone insult his child.
For a moment Tony looks stunned and then he gets up, dropping some blender parts Howard had forgotten he was holding, and hugs Howard. He wraps his arms around his kid’s body and holds on tight, surprised when Tony’s reaction was to tighten his grip too. Maybe Steve wasn’t lying when he said that Tony was vying for Howard’s attention, that he wanted his father’s approval.
*
Steve picks up the very cute, very dander covered cat that had invaded the house and carries it off to Howard’s office, eyes streaming as he goes. “What is this?” he asks, holding the surprisingly tolerant cat out in front of him. Tony and Howard pause in the middle of what they’re doing to look over at him. The two share near identical looks of confusion as they take Steve in with his red-rimmed streaming eyes, dripping nose, and general unimpressed stance.
“A cat?” Tony says eventually, “but I think you might be allergic.”
“I am, which you know Howard, so why is this cat here?” His throat felt tight but he ignores it in favor of scolding the children.
“I kind of wanted a cat and forgot you were allergic to them. Which I should remember because you’re allergic to everything, even fish,” Tony says, looking upset with himself for forgetting.
“Oh honey, this isn’t your fault. Howard, explain the animal,” he says, setting the cat on the ground in an effort to get the thing away from him. Of course he then makes the mistake of rubbing his hand on his itchy eye only to have it react by streaming more tears and swelling.
“I think you need to go to a hospital,” Howard says, concerned. He takes a step forward; presumably to try and help but Steve takes a step back because he was not going to the hospital.
“I’ll take allergy meds, get that cat out of the house. I found it on the counter, it walks in its poop, Howard, and it was on the counter. Where we make food. Get Tony a hypoallergenic animal,” he says, irritated.
“Not a hairless cat, I won’t love it,” Tony says, concerned. “They look like demons,” he whispers. If Steve could see two feet in front of him he might have found that funny but currently he was having a considerably strong allergic reaction to pet dander.
“Steve, seriously, you look like hell. I think you need to go to a hospital,” Howard says.
“I’m not going to a damn hospital, you know how much I hate hospitals. I’ll take allergy meds, just make sure to clean every inch of this house of pet dander,” he says and turns to leave the room. Unfortunately he walks straight into the door jam instead.
*
“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” Howard says, irritated that Steve had taken so long to take allergy medication.
“You started it, if you didn’t buy your child a cat on a whim to make him love you I wouldn’t have had an allergic reaction,” Steve points out. His eyes were still itchy and his nose was still runny but his body was under control now, thankfully, because walking into doorways hurt like hell.
“That doesn’t mean you neglect to take allergy medications first and then chew me out. You scared the hell out of me,” Howard says, voice getting quieter towards the end of that statement.
“I was fine, I know my limits and I was no where near them. My throat was barely closing, obviously I was perfectly alright,” he says stubbornly.
“Jesus Christ, Steve, you can’t just neglect shit like that!” Howard yells, “take your damn allergy medication!”
“I already did and I’m fine, now stop yelling and start cleaning. I’d do it myself but I rather like being able to breathe, so.” Steve makes a shooing motion at Howard but he doesn’t move. Typical.
“Did you somehow miss the part where your throat was closing? You were not fine, you probably still need to go to a hospital so you get up we’re going right now,” Howard says in his best attempt at sounding authoritative.
Steve snorts, “I’m not going anywhere, thank you. I am fine so long as you remove every bit of pet dander in this house, and trust me, I didn’t miss the part where my throat was closing.” Howard glares at him for a moment, fully expecting Steve to move but when he doesn’t move an inch he throws his hands up.
“You freak out over my fake death and I can’t even freak out over your very real potential death. If this was me you’d be all but dragging me by my ear to the hospital,” Howard points out.
“I would not, I know how to deal with allergic reactions, I’ve been having them my whole life. I’d be able to nurse your dumb ass back to health myself, so I feel no need to go to the hospital, thank you. And besides, your fake death was far more real and scary than and allergic reaction. I obviously wasn’t hurt,” he says. That was sort of a lie, he would actually make Howard go to the hospital but that was because Steve only knew how he reacted to his allergies, for all he knew Howard would drop dead even if he looked fine. But he was fine so Howard could stop worrying.
Howard looks ready to rip his own hair out, “how is my fake death more frightening than your real allergic reaction?” he asks.
“You’re a good actor,” he says, grinning. If all else fails, stroke Howard’s ego, then he usually calmed down a little.
“I love you but that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Now I’m going to go and clean the house so you can leave your quarantine without dying on me,” he says, throwing his hands up in frustration. If Bucky were here he’d laugh and tell them that they were made for each other, which they clearly were so.
“Don’t forget to shower and throw your clothes in the laundry room so the pet dander on you doesn’t kill me either,” Steve yells after him, laughing when Howard makes a frustrated noise. Now Howard knew what it was like to deal with his own brand of irritating stubbornness, and that it wasn’t easy. The man was a handful and a half but then so was Steve.