Work Text:
Anxiety twisted in Tony’s stomach; the wind battered the house above them. The concrete walls of the basement offered no comfort. “Tornadoes are created by super-cell thunderstorms. The warm air rises and the cool air falls, creating spinning currents—” Stephen, his new neighbor, looked exasperated, but he let Tony talk. Stephen’s little sister, Donna, had taken Tony’s carefully created graphs and diagrams and was cheerfully coloring on them.
New York didn’t really get tornadoes. Tony already didn’t know how to deal with leaving New York suddenly and in utter secrecy, he didn’t know how to deal with Nebraska, and he definitely didn’t know how to deal with tornadoes.
So fine, he’d borrowed every book from the library about tornadoes and had made graphs and diagrams. Tornadoes were science and science could be broken down and understood. Tony needed that right now.
So he kept talking about tornadoes, weather patterns, and statistics and Stephen listened to him.
Tony’s mom was near the wall and Stephen’s mom—she’d told Tony to call her Beverly—was teaching her to crochet. Beverly had come over and invited Tony and his mom to join her family after the tornado watch had come out. Tony hadn’t wanted to come—he didn’t like being around people these days—but he had to admit he was grateful now.
“Do you want to play checkers?” Stephen asked, when Tony finally ran through tornado facts.
Checkers. Jarvis had played checkers with him. His throat hurt; he wanted to cry. “Okay.”
“Why can’t I skip?” Stephen argued. They were all in the basement, summer tornado raging above them. the argument echoed against the concrete. “Tony’s skipping!”
This argument had been going for several weeks, ever since Tony had excitedly told him he was skipping a grade. Tony hoped he could skip a grade next year, too.
His mom wanted Tony to have a normal childhood. More, she didn’t want Tony to draw attention if Howard was still looking—Tony didn’t understand why he would, Howard hadn’t cared about them before. But Tony was suffocating in school. In the end, his mom had agreed a skipped grade here and there was doable.
Stephen figured if Tony was skipping grades, he could too.
Tony hoped Stephen won the argument. Stephen was his best friend; Tony didn’t want to leave him behind.
“You’re good at this, Tony,” Eugene said, drawing Tony’s attention away from the argument and to the engine they were working on together. “The engines run much better since you’ve started helping.”
“I like engines,” Tony said. “They make sense.” He made a face. “Stephen thinks metal and bolts don’t make any sense.”
Eugene laughed. “My son thinks the human body makes sense. We know better than to listen to him.”
Tony grinned. Everyone knew the human body made no sense. “Are you and Beverly going to let Stephen skip with me?” he asked.
Eugene laughed. “I suspect you and Stephen are going to stay attached at the hip a while longer.”
“Do not encourage her,” Stephen hissed, glaring at Tony.
Tony ignored him, belting out the next lyrics. “Someday I’ll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behiiiind me!”
Donna was grinning, eyes bright as she took the next stanza. “Where troubles melt like lemon drops away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll fiiiind me.”
He and Donna both turned to Stephen, waiting.
“Not happening.”
Tony wasn’t sure whether it was his pout or Donna’s pout that made Stephen give in, but he gave a long exasperated sigh. “Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly,” he joined, tone just a little lackluster. Tony accepted it, though. He and Donna joined in. “Birds fly over the rainbow. Why then, oh, why can't I?”
“We should never have let them watch Wizard of Oz,” Tony heard Eugene mutter to Beverly and his mom. “Especially not during tornado season when we’d end up stuck in a basement with them.”
Tony grinned at Donna. Wizard of Oz was her favorite movie; she’d been watching it every week for months. She’d been getting away with murder the last few months since she’d fallen into the lake. It had taken both Stephen and Tony to get her out—Tony knew Stephen had nightmares about that day, dreaming of a life where they didn’t save her—and she’d gotten so sick that Beverly and Eugene had thought they might still lose her.
But it did make afternoons in the tornado shelter very… boisterous.
“Do you think we’ll ever do this again?” Tony asked, leaning against Stephen, both of their backs pressed against the cold concrete of the basement wall. The sound of the tornado against the house now strangely familiar.
They were going to Cornell this fall, which had both incredible medical and engineering programs. Perfect for his and Stephen’s desired careers. None of the parents were super pleased, but they were still supportive.
“I don’t know,” Stephen admitted. “We’d miss summer semester.”
“You’ll be in college at sixteen, Stephen,” Beverly spoke up. “You’ll hardly fall behind. You can lose a summer to visit home.”
“We’ll see,” Stephen muttered under his breath.
Tony kind of wanted to, though. “It just feels weird,” Tony said. “That this might be our last tornado.”
Stephen let out an exasperated sigh. “Fine, we’ll come back next summer for summer break. I’d hate to deny you a few hours in the basement and days cleaning up in the aftermath.”
“I won’t make you come back with me.”
That earned him a disgruntled expression. “My mom would never let me hear the end of it. I have no choice other than to come back with you.”
Tony caught Beverly and his mom sharing amused, knowing expressions. “I’m sure it’s my reaction that means you’ll follow Tony home,” Beverly said. Amusement in her voice said she didn’t mean it; Tony didn’t know what she did mean, though.
Why wouldn’t he and Stephen stick together?
It just made sense, after all.