Chapter Text
Tony hadn’t been in his father’s study since the night his parents had died. He had stumbled drunkenly, grief-stricken, through the manor, hoping he might storm into the study and his father would be bent over his desk, eyes flashing at the interruption.
The only things Tony had found were memories and loneliness and he’d locked the door and walked away, promising himself that he wouldn’t come back unless he had reason to.
Tony glanced over at Steve’s perfect, blonde profile. He couldn’t have envisioned this being his reason.
“You sure about this?” Steve asked, “You don’t have to.”
He was polite but Tony could hear the want in his voice, the desperation to find something familiar. Tony remembered the emptiness, the nothing he had found in this room after Howard’s death and felt a stab of concern. This could end up being an exercise in cruelty and Tony and Steve had spent too long being unknowingly cruel to each other. Tony didn’t want to hurt him again.
He smiled uneasily at Steve, “It’s fine. I just don’t want you to be disappointed. I don’t know how much he kept.”
Steve smiled back, his hand coming to rest on Tony’s shoulder. Steve’s hand was big enough to make Tony feel small, fragile in his grasp and Tony shivered at the contact, nerve ending lighting up.
“I know. I’d still like to see.”
Tony nodded and unlocked the door. The air that met them was stale, heavy with dust. Particles danced in the thin, shafts of sunlight that stole into the room from between the heavy curtains. Tony found himself holding his breath. A part of him was still expecting Howard to turn around in his chair and shout at Tony for disturbing him.
“Where should I start?” Steve asked softly and Tony jumped, forgetting for a moment the man was next to him.
“Oh, the cabinet at the back, that’s where he kept all the stuff from the war.” Tony gestured to the thick imposing oak dresser at the far side of the room. Dust had settled in a fine layer and the dark wood looked ashen.
Steve smiled and made his way over, carefully but quickly starting his search. Tony wasn’t sure what exactly he was looking for, and wasn’t sure what Howard had kept. Howard would never have allowed a child’s sticky fingers near his prized keepsakes. The only reason Tony had any idea what was in the cabinet was because he had fumbled through it as a teenager looking for his father’s whiskey.
Steve was thumbing gently through a pile of photographs, smiling a strange fond, hurt smile. He hovered over one photo, thumb tracing the image and when he placed it down, Tony saw a familiar flash of Peggy’s serious, sharp-edged smile.
Not wanting to intrude, Tony made himself busy. He pulled open the curtains and cracked open the window, breathing deeply as the first gust of sweet summer air broke into the study. He wasn’t sure if it was the dust or just the room itself that made him feel like he couldn’t breathe.
When Tony had been very young, he had been barred from his father’s study and most other places his father frequented. His father saw no use for a baby or a toddler and had made sure Tony was neither seen nor heard. Tony’s world had been his mother and Jarvis. He had been squirreled away upstairs and transported through the back corridors of the house. He had learnt early it was best to keep away from his father, to be a shadow in his own home.
After he had made his first circuit board, things had changed. Howard’s interest had been piqued and he would summon Tony intermittently into his study as if he was a prized dog to be examined. Tony remembered standing outside the study in his tiny, itchy suits, listening to the scratch of Howard’s pen and waiting for his father to call him in. How he’d hated those visits. Howard would shoot a series of rapid questions at him, his fierce eyes pinning Tony to the carpet and Tony would mumble back, shrinking into himself as he realised his answers were unsatisfactory, that he was disappointing.
It had been Jarvis who had prepared him for those visits, who had taken him away afterwards to soothe him and provide reassurance. His mother had grown jealous and cold at the encroaching interference of Howard and would ignore the summons, taking Tony off to ice cream parlours and doctors’ appointments instead. She would ignore Tony afterward, looking at Tony as if he had betrayed her somehow. The first time his parents had ever argued it had been about those visits. All their subsequent arguments had been him too: about who got to have him.
Tony glanced down at the picture on his father’s desk, rubbing the film of dust from the glass frame. His mother’s beautiful face stared blankly at him. She was a slender, wisp of a woman; her eyebrows curled up slightly giving her a permeant expression of worry. Next to Howard’s imposing bulk, she looked fragile, a glass person balancing in high heels. Tony remembered the bottles of prescription drugs he had emptied from her room after she had died and the stab of guilt he’d felt as he had stared at the names of the drugs, trying to pinpoint what each pill was for. Trying to guess which ones she really needed.
Across the room, Steve made a little noise of surprise. The sound was a gunshot in the silent room and Tony jumped, turning to look at him quickly.
Steve offered up a small, fading picture. “You were sick like me.”
A small, sickly looking boy stared at the camera. His face was pinched with anxiety, eyes huge in his exhausted, too-thin face. The oversized hospital robe he was wearing was stiff with starch, hanging off his protruding collarbones and pooling at his elbows. Behind him, Maria was stood, dressed in her Sunday best. Next to Tony’s diminished pallidity, she was radiant. Her eyes were bright with barely suppressed excitement.
Tony could still feel the phantom touch of her hand on his shoulder squeezing hard, her fingernails biting into his skin in warning. He shivered and shook his head, stomach churning.
“No, I wasn’t sick like you.”
Steve blinked. Tony could see his curiosity and confusion forming a question, could see the words coming together on Steve’s face.
“We should get food, I’m starving,” Tony said suddenly, moving so his fathers’ desk was between them. “How do you feel about burgers? Nothing more American than burgers? Although I could go for Chinese. What do you fancy, big guy?”
Steve rolled his eyes, “Tony it’s 10 in the morning.” He dropped his hand, the photograph and his questions forgotten momentarily.
“What’s your point? Do you know how long I’ve been awake? I must be due a meal soon.”
Steve was shaking his head again but his expression was soft, fond. It was easy to convince him to take a break for a couple of hours.
Tony’s first memory was of lying, curled up in his mother’s arms as she sat in his nursery’s rocking chair.
Tony had been born a sickly child and stayed that way. Undersized and thin for his age. At three he could still fit as easily as a toy doll into his mother’s lap. She was humming a tune, each note rising and falling with the movement of the chair. Every now and again she would break out into song, a whisper of Italian that stroked across the top of Tony’s head. “Dormi, Dormi bel Bambin.”
Her hand skimmed across his forehead, pushing up his curls gently. “Oh dear, you’re burning up.” She exclaimed, her voice rising like a musical scale. “Do you feel too hot, tesoro?”
Tony made a sleepy noise in the back of his throat. It was warm in his nursery but he didn’t feel hot, just sleepy and loved. “No.” he said finally, not noticing at first as the rocking chair slowed to a halt.
Tony glanced up, his mother’s lips tightly pressed together. “Mama?” he asked hesitantly.
She smiled and the expression stretched taut across her beautiful face. “Close your eyes, Anthony,” she told and then she was reaching down and wrapping a blanket around him, tucking it tightly around his legs and arms and right up to his chin. Tony wiggled uncomfortable, quickly overheating. Her hands were firm, holding him still, biting hard into the narrow delicate bones of his arms.
“No Tony. You need to stay like that, you’re sick.”
Tony made an unhappy noise but her fingers dug in tighter and her eyes were hard, annoyed as she stared down at him. Tony licked his lips, they were cracking and he was thirsty. There had been no breakfast, no drinks today. He let his head fall back against her chest, and after a moment the slow movement of her rocking chair started up again and his mother’s voice lilted back into a soft, soothing lullaby.
Later that day Tony collapsed and Maria cried as she held his limp body, ordering Jarvis to call the doctor quick.
Tony remembered waking up in his bed, his mother leaning over him, her eyes still full of tears. The covers had been drawn around him tight, heavy winter duvets overlaid with blankets despite the hot summer day and he squirmed uncomfortably.
“You need to stay still, you’re sick, baby.” His mother was running her hands over his face. Pressing down against his glowing cheeks. “The doctor is going to come and take a look at you.”
Tony did feel sick, his stomach clenched hungrily and he was too hot, dizzy with heat. He licked his lips and asked for something to drink. Maria smiled sadly down at him, “After the doctor has visited. Ok, Tesoro?”
Maria was a beautiful crier. He eyes got bigger, more lustrous with tears and the enticing fragility that had drawn Howard and a number of other men to her seemed to get more pronounced. The doctor, when he arrived spent the first 10 minutes cupping her tiny hands in his and reassuring her that he would fix things, that she didn’t need to worry anymore.
Finally, the doctor broke away from Maria and came to Tony. He was a big, white-haired man with crinkling eyes and a moustache that wobbled when he talked. Tony liked him immediately and smiled up at the man as he made a show of groaning and bending down to sit next to him.
“OK, Anthony. Let’s have a look at you.” The doctor looked into his ears and throat, humming soothingly as Tony placidly endured the examination. Finally, he produced a thermometer from his stiff leather bag, waving it gently. Tony opened his mouth knowingly. His mother took his temperature often and he was used to holding the thin glass tube under his tongue and waiting.
“Hmm,” the doctor said, peering at the thermometer. “He has a slight temperature but no other symptoms. I don’t think there is anything to worry about.”
“But he fainted.” Tony’s mother interrupted, her hands clutched together nervously. “You can’t tell me that’s normal.”
The doctor focused his attention on Tony once more, twinkling eyes kind and jovial, “How are you feeling now, Champ? Still dizzy?”
Tony smiled, no one had ever called him champ before. His mother called his Tesoro and Baby and Jarvis called him Tony. He liked Champ, it sounded exciting, grown up. “Hungry.” He said finally.
“Not dizzy?”
Tony shook his head.
The doctor smiled, the movement making his moustache curl in a happy white comma. Maria was almost vibrating behind them, fingers interlocked so tightly her knuckles were bulging and white with blood loss. She made a noise of distress as the doctor packed away his thermometer, snapping his stiff leather bag shut.
“Children can faint quite easily. A day in bed, keep an eye on his temperature and make sure he drinks plenty of fluids. He should be fine.”
“But he’s not fine. He gets sick a lot.” Maria pressed, her worried eyebrows were twisting, her face anxious. She had stepped up close to the doctor, surging into his space and the man looked startled, uncertain in the face of distress and rocked backward, leaning away from her. “He gets fevers, dizzy spells. I can barely get him to eat.”
“Now, now Mrs. Stark.” The doctor said soothingly, patting her hand. Tony could see that unlike before, the reassurance didn’t please his mother. Her smile was pinched, frozen and uncomfortable on her face. “Tony seems like a perfectly healthy young boy. Children get colds all the time and plenty are picky eaters. He will probably grow out of it.”
“But doctor - ”
The white-haired man rested one of his big hands on Maria’s shoulder, his voice for the first time coming sharp, firm. “My medical opinion is that he is fine and you need to stop worrying.”
He nodded his head at her and waved at Tony before he was gone, stepping out of the room with sure, happy footsteps.
Maria swung her gaze to Tony. Her tears were gone and her eyes were bright, fevered. Tony folded himself into the bed, empty stomach clenching.
“Look what you’ve done.” She snapped, arm gesturing to the door. “He’s left now!”
Tony followed her arm and stared dumb and confused. This wasn’t a conversation he knew how to navigate and he felt anxiety clawing at him as he became aware that he had done something wrong but was ignorant as to what his mistake had been.
“You’re sick Tony!”
“Sorry, Mama.” He whispered, his voice raspy. His eyes were burning as if he wanted to cry but he found that the tears wouldn’t come. “I won’t do it again.”
Maria deflated. She dropped to the floor with a sob, prostrating herself next to his bed as she might start praying to him. Tony flinched at the movement, nervousness churning into worry. He knew that this was his fault, that his mother was upset because of him, for him. He struggled an arm out of the tight covers and reached for her hand. She snatched up his fingers, kissing his hot little fingers with a miserable desperation.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you Tesoro.” She told him, voice catching. “I was just upset. You made the doctor think you weren’t sick and I’m worried for you.”
Tony could feel his own eyes burning again with the threat of tears, his lower lip wobbling. Her panic was infectious, was he sick? “I’m sorry, mama. I didn’t know…”
Maria was smiling gently, her anger at him evaporated as quickly as steam. She was his beloved mother again with her big eyes and the worried upturn in her eyebrows. She stroked his forehead, pushing and pulling the loose curls across his face as he sobbed. “I know you didn’t do it on purpose.”
Tony nodded, gladdened that she understood he hadn’t meant to be naughty.
“Don’t worry. Next time, we’ll make them understand. Next time, they will see you are sick.”