Chapter Text
The sky over Seattle had that particular October color—not quite gray, not quite white, a kind of exhaustion that perfectly matched the Monday feeling the whole day had had, even though it was a Friday.
Tony Stark got off the school bus with his backpack slung over one shoulder and his headphones hanging around his neck.
"So, are you going or not?" Rhodey's voice came through the phone, slightly muffled by the light rain that was starting to fall. "Nat's party is going to be epic , man. She got a generator, there's even a DJ—"
- Rhodey.
- What it was?
— You're describing a quinceañera party to me.
It's a fifteen-year-old's rave . Completely different.
Tony smiled at the wet asphalt. Rhodey had a special gift for making utterly mediocre things sound like adventures. That was probably why they were still friends after all these years.
"Maybe," said Tony, which in his language meant probably not . "Let me see how the night goes."
He hung up before Rhodey could argue.
The street was familiar. He had grown up here—he had walked on this sidewalk with scraped knees, then in brand-name sneakers, and now with the same backpack he'd used since tenth grade because he hadn't been able to justify spending money on a new one when the old one still worked. Howard Stark would have disagreed. Howard Stark disagreed with most of his decisions.
Tony pushed that thought back to where he lived — somewhere between his sternum and throat, compact and familiar as a stone — and turned toward the entrance of the house.
That's when he heard the voices.
Stephen was in the front garden.
This in itself was not unusual. Stephen was always somewhere he shouldn't be, driven by an internal logic that Tony had spent almost a year trying to decipher and eventually decided it was more efficient to simply accept.
What was unusual was Brett Foster standing in front of him, his voice loud and his neck red in the way it got when he was angry or embarrassed—and with Brett Foster, the two things often coincided.
"...he shouldn't even be here, damn it," Brett was saying, pointing at Stephen with a slightly trembling finger. "His whole family is a piece of shit."
Tony stopped.
Stephen's shoulders were raised—not from fear, never from fear, that was always the problem with Stephen—but from a deliberate restraint that Tony recognized as his version of "I'm trying very hard not to do something I'll regret." His grey-blue eyes were cold and calculating, scanning Brett with the expression of someone analyzing a minor but irritating problem.
"What a fascinating observation," said Stephen, in that particular tone he used when he wanted the other person to know they were being treated like an idiot. "Did you take some time to think about it, or did it just come out naturally?"
Brett stepped forward.
Tony threw his backpack on the ground and crossed the garden.
"Hey." He placed himself between the two without thinking, an old and stupid reflex his brain executed before the responsible part could intervene. "Problem?"
"The problem is your shitty boyfriend," Brett said, turning his anger towards Tony without difficulty. "He kept staring at my sister through the window."
"I was looking out the window ," Stephen said, with the patience of someone explaining the obvious for the third time. "Your sister had the misfortune of being outside."
— Stephen — Tony said, in the tone he used exclusively for situations where Stephen was technically right but practically making everything worse.
I'm being precise.
You're being an idiot.
I can be both things at the same time.
Brett moved forward.
What happened in the next few seconds would be difficult for Tony to reconstruct later. Brett moving forward. Tony moving to the side. The two falling in a mess of elbows and asphalt. Brett hitting his head on the pavement in a way that sounded wrong, the dull thud of flesh meeting something too hard.
And then — the lights.
The blue and red lights of a police car turning the corner.
Tony stood still, kneeling on the ground, his shoulder throbbing, Brett motionless beside him, watching the police officer get out of the car with his hand already on his holster.
Do n't move.
The front door opened.
Howard Stark came out wearing his old work shirt, still with grease stains on his hands, because he had been in the garage when the shouting started. He had his hands raised even before he was completely outside.
"Officer," Howard's voice was calm. "My name is Howard Stark. These are my children. Please, let's talk—"
— Stay where you are, sir.
— I understand. I just want to get to—
The police officer was young. Tony realized this later, when he was trying to understand what had happened. His hands were trembling.
Howard took a step toward his children.
The police officer pulled the trigger.
The sound was absurd in its insignificance. A dry crack. Like a door slamming. Like a branch breaking.
Howard Stark fell.
Tony didn't process it. There was no processing—there was only the abrupt hole where reality had been a second ago, and then Stephen screaming, and then—
The world exploded.
There was no other word for what Stephen did, although even Stephen didn't know what he was doing. It was a scream that turned into force that turned into something that didn't yet have a name, a wave of energy that came out of him as if the entire universe had decided, at that moment, that it shouldn't.
The police car flipped over. The front grille ripped from the ground. The policeman flew backward and hit the car with a sound Tony would never get out of his head.
And then everything went quiet.
Tony was on his knees on the asphalt when he came to.
Howard was on the ground.
Stephen was kneeling beside him, his hands outstretched as if still trying to undo what he had done—something he hadn't done intentionally, something neither of them yet fully understood.
Tony crawled over to them.
He stayed with his father for—he didn't know how long. Time had stopped working as usual. At some point, he heard sirens in the distance, and the part of his brain that was still functioning said police, said witness, said Brett is still here and the policeman is dead and you won't be able to explain this.
He stood up.
— Stephen.
Stephen did not reply.
— Stephen. — Tony cupped his face in his hands, forcing eye contact. The grey-blue eyes were different — dilated, disoriented, as if Stephen wasn't fully present in his own body. — Look at me. Look at me now.
Something became focused.
"What I did," Stephen began.
"No. Not now." The sirens were getting closer. Tony calculated with the part of his brain that never completely shut down, even when collapsing, even with his chest split open. "Can you stand up?"
— Eu—
- It achieves?
— Yes.
Then get up.
Tony picked up his backpack from the ground. He looked one last time at Howard Stark lying on the wet sidewalk in front of the house where they had both grown up, on this street that had been their whole world for so long.
Later. That can wait.
He took Stephen's hand.
Mail.
They didn't look back.
Later, much later, Tony Stark would think that was the last moment the world was recognizable. Everything that came after—the roads, the cold, the weight of being responsible for something he couldn't control, Stephen's eyes—all of that was the other side of a line he had crossed on that sidewalk.
But at that moment, with the sirens blaring and Seattle fading behind them, there was only Stephen's hand in hers and the absolute, irrational certainty of the only clear thought she could form:
As long as he was alive, nobody was going to touch Stephen.