Chapter Text
Four in the morning. It is fucking four in the morning and FRIDAY’s alarms are blasting through the penthouse like a hungry child.
“Wa?” Tony yells. He takes one of his five pillows and throws it at nothing because he is a genius and his alarms doesn’t have a nice and easy to pick up physical form that he can throw at the walls in situations like.
“Good morning, Boss,” Tony’s maniac AI greets in a too cheerful tone.
‘God, I need to change that,’ Tony thinks. ‘She needs to learn tact and not to bother me.’
“Not morning,” he mumbles. Not morning because it is four and it still dusk and dawn and whatever outside, and Tony went to bed only two hours ago and he is not ready to wake up already. He needs more sixteen hours of eyes-shut before trying to be human again.
“It is, in fact, past morning, Boss.”
To prove her point, FRIDAY opens his blinds and Tony is assaulted by light.
Why? Why did he needed to be a genius and a smartass and had to create an AI with personality? He missed JARVIS, at least his old AI pretended to respect him.
“You hate me, don’t you?”
“Why I would hate you, Boss?” FRIDAY says. “Hating you would be like if you hated God.”
“Fuck, no, I am not going to have a philosophic Deus ex Machina chitchat at whatever in the mourning with my creation.”
“It is three in the afternoon, Boss.”
“What do you want?” Tony grunts
“Thirty mine ago, my systems got a flag for the Billie Jean Protocol,” FRIDAY informs.
“The what?” Tony has too many protocols named at wits to remember them all.
“The Billie Jean Protocol,” the AI repeats, “as in ‘the kid is not my son’.”
Tony rolls out of his bed and falls flat on the floor, nose first.
“What?”
That couldn't be happening. Hell, no. The Billie Jean Protocol was supposed to be a joke, it was not supposed to work. Tony made it in the 90s when he went through paternity scandals on daily based, be it from the media or from the people that showed up at the front desk of the company trying to claiming him as theirs kid sperm dorm. The situation was so bad back then that he remembers vividly three instances where cisgender men tried to claim Tony was their baby daddy.
As a result of it, a very drunk and high Tony who happens to the listening the real King at the moment created the Billie Jean Protocol. It was a drunkard joke that was not supposed to be real, he didn’t even knew was active, why the hell it was active?
“How it happened? Why this protocol still exist?”
“When you upload JARVIS’ old system to mine, the some of his earlier protocol become active once more,” the AI explains.
"Oh, that is right." Tony did used some of JARVIS' earlier codes as a base for FRIDAY.
‘Alright, sure, I can be normal about it,’ Iron Man lies to himself while trying really hard not to panic.
“Details,” he asks, “I need details.”
Doing as she is told, FRIDAY put up a holographic screen in the middle of Tony’s bedroom. The hologram showcase the hospital file of a ten year old child. It was a boy, small for his age, with untamed jet-black hair and piercing green eyes. The boy's bones structured is all Tony’s, but the eyes, those are Maria’s eyes.
That shade of green was something he had only ever seem on his mother’s eyes.
“What is the situation?” Tony paces the room, as if it would help him get to some coherent conclusion.
Ha! As if!
“At 14:15, a boy as admitted to the hospital with his arm broken in three places —”
“— How the hell that happened? —”
“— the file says the boy and the next door kid are playing when he fell —”
“— Fell from where? Five stores? —”
“— from a tree house on the backyard,” the AI finishes. “The neighbour’s uncle brought him to the ER, where it was determinate he needed surgery —”
“ — ack! —”
“— it was also when his blood entered the system and flagged the Billie Jean Protocol.”
“The kid parents?”
“As of now, only the neighbour’s uncle, a man named Benjamin Parker, and a woman that as noted down as the boy aunt, are present and taking cared of the situation.”
“Who is the kid’s mom?” Tony inquires.
FRIDAY shows him the picture of a redhead.
‘Of course it was a redhead,’ Tony sighs.
“What do I do?” Tony doesn’t know if he is asking himself, his AI or the universe.
“I would recommend calling Miss Potts, Boss,” FRIDAY answers his rhetoric question, “as she is the one with the better brain to deal with this type of situation.”
Tony would be pissed with FRIDAY's comment if it wasn’t truth.
Pepper is so much better for this then him.
“Call Pepper.”
The phone rings four times, then six, then twelve before the call being disconnected.
“Again!”
The process repeat four more times until she finally picks up.
“I am busy,” Pepper says. “Can you call me later?”
“No can’t do!” Tony doesn’t yells, but it is almost.
“Some is dying?” There's real worry in her words. Living surrounded by super-heroes is very stressful.
“Not yet, but I'll in a few.”
“What did you do?” The worry is replaced by annoyance.
“Someone, apparently.”
“Did you drink until passing out again and woke up with someone you don’t recognize?”
“I don’t it anymore!” Tony can hear the silent judgement. “The drinking part, and the passing out part, and the last person I slept with as you!”
“So what is this about?”
“I did someone —”
“Tony!”
“— as in I created a whole new person!” he explains.
“What?”
“Do you remember the Billie Jean Protocol?”
“The one that breaks so many privacy laws?”
“That one. Well, FRIDAY just informed me that a ten-year-old just flagged it.”
“Are you telling me that you have a ten-year-old child?”
“No, I am telling you that there’s a ten-year-old right now in the General Hospital that might share some DNA with me, but that totally is not my kid because denial is a rive in Egypt and I am Tutankhamon.”
Tony is so losing it.
“What do you need me to do?”
“Get in touch? Call the family? Ask the mother if she remembers sleeping with a gorgeous billionaire ten years ago? See if there’s a dad on the picture? Help me find out if I as supposed to be said dad?”
Did he said he is losing it? Oh, no, he had already lost it. He lost it so bad there was nothing else to lose.
“Tony, breathe.”
“I can’t, I have lungs problems!”
“You have a heart problem, Tony.”
“Well, they graduate to lungs problems!”
“I’m calling Happy and he will drive you to the hospital.”
“What am I going to do in a hospital?”
“Get committed, maybe.”
“Not funny!”
“Tony, I need you to stay call. Happy will drive you and I will meet you there,” Pepper says in the same voice she reserves for boarding meeting. “Then, will talk with the mother and asks some questions and do a DNA test, okay?”
“No mother.”
“What?”
“The mother isn’t on the hospital, only the kid’s aunt.”
“Well, we talk with the aunt until we found out who the mother is and where she is.”
“And if the kid is mine?”
“Then you will be a father.”
“I don’t want to be a father.”
“You can always chose not to be one,” Pepper says, “it would be really easy, all you have to do is forget everything and go back to sleep. But, tell me Tony, would you be able to live with yourself if you did that?”
“No.” That is a no brain question. Tony might suck, but even him wasn’t that bad.
“Though so.”
“I am a dad.”
“You might be a dad.”
“I am not ready to be a dad.”
“No one ever is.”
“What if he is not mine and it is just a false positive?”
“Then I buy you a pie saying ‘congratulations, it’s not a boy!’“
“I want a cake.”
“Sure Tony.”
“With a stripper inside it.”
“Of course.”
“Pepper, even if I am not the dad, this kid has some sort of connection with me,” Tony says, “His DNA has Stark all over it. My son or not my son, he is still family. I might have a family, Pepper.”
“Well, congratulations, Tony, you aren’t the last Stark any more.”
“Fuck!”