Work Text:
Tony wasn’t even sure what he’d come into this closet to find anymore. All thoughts seemed to have left him as he came across The Robe.
It was hideous really, horribly ostentatious and by now ridiculously outdated. But his hands seemed to have a mind of their own as they pulled the protective plastic off of the hanger. As Tony slid the robe over his shoulders, he was surprisingly hit with the scent of his father’s cologne.
He’d never actually seen Howard wearing this robe, but he’d seen a picture or two of him lounging in it; usually with a drink in one hand and a nameless girl in the other.
Tying the robe closed, he stepped out of the closet and in front of the mirror that stood next to the door. People always told him how much he looked like his father and for the first time Tony agreed. In that moment, nothing else mattered; not the faint glow of the arc reactor in the middle of his chest, not the Ten Rings responsible for putting it there, not Obadiah’s betrayal.
The gold pattern on the robe caught the sunlight streaming in the window just right and he was no longer Tony Stark, genius, billionaire, playboy and philanthropist. Instead he saw Howard, as Aunt Peggy remembered him.
“Tony?” Pepper’s voice from the other room brought Tony out of his reverie.
“Coming Pep!” He called, pushing the vision of his father and his loneliness aside. If there was an ache in his chest, he blamed it on the reactor. If Pepper recognized the robe when he joined her a few moments later, she thankfully didn’t mention it.
Because of all the things Tony’d been called in his life, nostalgic wasn’t one of them.