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"Hap, what's that?" Tony's voice filters throughout the apartment, startling Happy from tidying up the living-room.
Tony walks in not a minute later, gripping Happy's laptop in a rather precarious hold, trying to show him his screen. Happy lets his eyes flicker to the computer, then to Tony's face before he turns back to the building blocks Peter's left littering the carpet by the couch.
"What's what?" He grunts, his jaw setting despite himself.
"Nuh uh," Tony unsurprisingly stops him. "Harold Happy Hogan Stark, don't you try."
Tony puts the laptop down on the couch, one of his hands coming to circle Happy's elbow. It's a gentle touch, it is, but Happy disengages from it anyway, not even giving the webpages he knows are opened on his computer a glance.
"Articles." He says in the end when Tony doesn't say another word, but instead keeps staring at him, whiskey brown eyes prodding at Happy's closed mask.
Happy puts the mass of blocks he's gathered in their container, grateful for the rattling noise they make as he can practically feel Tony taking a deep breath in, sure that he's crossing his arms behind him.
"Articles which you have read how many times exactly?"
"Articles," Happy starts, turning on his knees until he can get up, foolishly hoping his stance will make Tony stop - as if, "which happen to be about me, and, it's none of your business."
A guy could hope that'd work too, unless they know their husband as well as he does, and said husband is both too curious and too concerned to ever let that go.
"None of my…" Tony scoffs then, his arms doing that thing were they hang from his shoulders, at a loss for words and motions alike. Happy watches him pinch the bridge of his nose, discomfort balling in his stomach. "Are you fucking serious right now? You went running with Cap yesterday, with Cap , Happy!"
"So?" Happy tilts his head, praying this will be it, knowing it won't, nevermind the fact that that jogging with Rogers had been a complete disaster that he doesn't intend to see reconducted ever again.
Tony's face turns into that expression of stubbornness Happy both loves and hates to see, especially now that he's starting to see that one transferred to Peter - his eyebrows raise and his eyes widen and the movements of his head are a little too jerky to convey his seriousness. He looks a bit ridiculous, and Happy loves him so much for it.
"So, why?"
"You've seen them right? Let it go now please." Happy sighs, avoiding Tony's scrutiny by sitting on the couch, resting his head on the back cushion. It makes his glasses ride up his nose a bit but he can't be bothered to fix them.
Tony makes a noise, halfway between a hum and something more wounded. He's tense, but Happy is too. He didn't want to have this conversation, didn't want to talk about those damn pictures and the dumb headlines that came with them. He doesn't know why he took that to heart so hard. Scrap that, he does. Doesn't mean he wants to talk about it - or ‘air it out’ like his therapist's encouraged him to do so many times.
Happy cracks an eye open when he hears Tony moving, then feels the couch sinking in next to him as Tony sits. Their knees and thighs are touching, and Tony's chest is twisted so Tony can face him, and the force of his gaze makes Happy blink.
"I've seen them," Tony nods, his voice low and steely now, "Yeah, I've seen pretty pretty pictures of my pretty pretty husband." He breathes, tries to smile. "Didn't read the words."
Happy huffs, confused with his own emotions, exhausted by the feelings that war inside him, "Don't fuck with me, Tony."
"Oh, but I love that so much,"
Of course he'd try to joke.
"Not in the m--"
"No, I know, I know, sorry," Tony interrupts him. He shifts on the couch until he can put a hand on Happy's cheek, and even though it's tempting, Happy doesn't resist him when Tony pulls him in and presses their foreheads together. He does sort of stop breathing though. "Seriously, Hap, come on, you can't… you can't be letting this load of crap get into your head, are you?"
"So you did read the words." Happy murmurs, hating the defeated tone of his voice.
"Yes of course, I fucking read the words! And those assholes with no lives need better eyes is what they need!" Tony draws back, but his hand only slides down to Happy's neck, while his other hand rights the position of Happy's glasses on his nose - fuck if that alone doesn't make Happy's eyes water, getting sappy with old age . "Wanna know what I think of them?"
"Got a feeling you'll tell me anyway."
"That's right." Tony smiles, a hint of the grin Happy fell in love with something like...too many years ago to count without falling into an existential crisis. "Those morons have no idea what they're talking about." Tony bites his lip, squeezes the back of Happy's neck. "I… prefer… 2020 Happy, baby, I… you've grown so much… and I'm not talking surgery, I'm not, you've grown into the man you wanted to be and I'm so thankful for that and I'm going to ramble like this for a while if you don't say anything."
Happy's keeping his eyes purposefully wide, and his hands to himself, not fidgeting on his lap, as he listens to Tony's words, forces himself not to avoid his husband's gaze once he sees the emotional light that fills it. He tries to come up with words, tries to explain what those pictures are doing to him, tries…
"I can't Tones, I just…"
"You know why they went with those pictures, right?"
Happy huffs again. "Tony,"
"Do you?"
"To make their fucking point that I grew fat."
Sometimes Happy wants to punch the man he loves in his perfect white million-dollar teeth - the way Tony actually chuckles, even if it sounds darker than it normally does and the look in his eyes is anything but mirthful - that's one of those moments. It must show on his face, or in the way Happy straightens up as he glares at him because Tony waves to halt him.
"Hear me out before you manhandle me into shutting up?"
It takes an amount of strength that Happy is not sure he has, but then is thankful to have found all the same. Because of course.
"They went with those because they thought they were making a point, sure, but also because they're the only ones they had? Know what I see? I see a man who wore a tee-shirt to the beach twelve years ago, and wore dark colors every day because he couldn't live with himself."
Happy inhaled sharply but nodded when Tony put a finger to his lips, not yet .
"I see a man with a binder, both literally and metaphorically and I know you hate those, metaphors, but you know I'm right. And then, the other one, I'm suing them by the way, nope, nothing you can say, I'm already doing it - they took it during our first holidays as a family and what I see there, Hap? Is the happiest version of you you've ever been, tell me I'm wrong."
Silence stretches between them, the laptop still open behind Tony and Happy does his best not to let his eyes stray to the garish catchphrases underneath the pictures of doom. He does his best to keep his eyes on Tony's as well even if the intensity there is hard to keep up with - it often is, and Peter has inherited that same focus, damn him. But just thinking that, Happy feels his lips twitch in a wet hint of a smile. He knows Tony's doing everything he can to stay put and let him come to him, he can see the way he flexes his hands and the way his thighs twitch.
He's right, of course he is, the last decade has seen everything Happy had ever hoped for in life come true, one after the other. From finally daring to confess his feelings to Tony, to getting to a point where he could have and got top surgery, to looking Tony in the eye and asking him to marry him, until two years ago, when they finally settled on getting a surrogate and Peter was born. Nothing in Happy's life is ever difficult anymore, not really. There are only minor bumps in the road, sick kid days taken from work, and minor fights over Tony not doing the dishes or himself not forwarding SI-related calls when he deems them too late for Tony to work still.
"You're not wrong." Happy says finally.
Tony's the one who blinks this time, and they're both emotional and it's ridiculous, but because Pete's still napping and will be for another hour or so, Happy decides they get to have this. It's not the first time he's been grateful for Tony pushing him outside of his comfort zone - sturdy silence and loud voices - and he can't take even the short distance between them any longer. He pulls Tony onto his lap, winds his arms around his waist and back and buries his face in his neck.
"You're right. This is the happiest I've ever been, it is."
Tony's hands comb in his curls, span over his shoulders and down his front when Happy lets him go just enough, and he bites his lip again, "I love you. And I'm getting the copyrights of that last pic, just so you're warned."
Happy rolls his eyes, but when he tries to ponder on his feelings now, after the discussion he was made to have, after seeing the whole thing through Tony's eyes and considering the fact that Tony immediately caught on to how he'd taken trash magazines writing about him, he doesn't feel the sadness, or the emptiness he felt the day before. It's gone, replaced by the warmth of Tony straddling him and the perfect mental image of their son sleeping soundly in his cot.
"Thank you."
"Don't you dare."
"No, I mean it. Thank you, Tony."
"Ten plus years on I catch myself hoping you know thanking me for being supportive of you is a no-go, pal and yet here, you, go. Nope, nope, no thanking me." Tony shakes his head, hard and fast like puppies do before he stops and waggles his eyebrows then starts again with a high-pitched voice, "Now if my big, happy husband would hug and kiss me already!"
Happy can't stop the laughter that bubbles inside him to escape, he laughs, and he laughs, and he blindly pushes the laptop out of the way as he does before he pushes Tony back, flat on the couch under him and their twin laughs die on each other's lips.
"Dork."
"Coming from you, that's rich, sir,"
"Shut up, Tony,"
"Or what?"