Chapter Text
When the plane landed on the top of the shiny metal building, Harley let out a breath he wasn’t aware he had been holding. His shoulders lost tension and a smile crept onto his face. He was home.
He quickly got to work getting his items from the upper bin, thankful for his height that allowed him easy access. Glancing over toward the back of the plane, he felt a pang of wistfulness at seeing the empty space. Tony had stopped forcing Happy to chauffeur Harley during his trips up to New York and back to Rose Hill. While it was nice having his own space, he missed Happy’s fond exasperation and carefully concealed care. He wasn’t aware how much he enjoyed the routine of skipping over to get Happy’s bag down for him, fighting off the protests the head of security always had. He would stumble back, his country twang insisting that’s how he was raised, that Happy was an elder, that he was being respectful. It would end with Happy near cursing him out for calling him old but eventually surrendering the fight and allowing Harley to show off his years of dragging and lifting stuff for the neighborhood and family friends back in Tennessee. A majority of Rose Hill were older couples, the younger crowd having slowly moved along to greener pastures, leaving Harley as the town’s overqualified fix-it man. Not only due to his child-genius brain but also his bones that don’t pop and ache. It became clearer with every solitary plane ride – despite the space, Harley missed the other’s reluctant conversation and the easy access to bother him when the ride proved boring. As much as he swore otherwise, Harley did not like being alone.
The air was chilly as he made the final step onto the open-air helipad. His legs felt like jelly as his brain jolted to remind him he was thousands of stories high with no barriers on the sides to catch him if he tripped. He breathed deeply to center himself, squinting as he let his eyes adjust through the sunlight reflecting on the glass. He had done this plenty of times before. He just had to lock eyes with Tony, see his sunglasses and his oiled-stained tee and the fear would vanish. Tony would provide the safety he needed, the hand stretched out to pull him back on the ship. If he were to fall, Tony would see and he would be saved in a flash of red shiny alloy metal. That certainty kept him afloat and sure-footed in the roughest water. It always had.
The wind whipped his hair out of his face as his smile slowly dropped in confusion. In front of him stood no eccentric billionaire, only closed doors and empty space. He walked towards the doors, his legs feeling more and more stiff, put off by the lack of being bombarded with a flurry of ideas that the two would start working on immediately until Pepper pulled them upstairs for lunch. Harley blinked, readjusting his hold on his duffel bag to steel himself and heading inside himself.
The living room was quiet, the sun still rising in the sky, sending stray streaks that highlighted the dust floating around the air. Harley breathed deeply, letting the peace of the scene flow over him. Despite wishing Tony had greeted him, he was grateful for the serenity of a moment alone in the tower, a brief second to reminisce around his time here and how far everything had come from the crash-land meeting six years earlier. He let the security of this place take hold of his bones and settle in his chest. He shed his anxiety and fear and left it in a neat pile by the door. He didn’t need that here.
He headed straight for his room, dragging his calloused fingertips over the sticker on the door with his name- a claim, a token that he always has a place here. He pushes inside his room, intent on setting down his bags and hopping down to the lab to find Tony. Maybe act a little aloof at the lack of a formal greeting, make Tony offer him something particularly interesting to tinker on in the lab to win his forgiveness. However, what he was really antsy to get his hands on was the personal plasma shield nano-tech that they had been talking about working on since the winter when Harley briefly mentioned the idea the last day of his visit. Tony had been appalled he hadn’t said anything sooner, and they had been discussing ideas off-hand for the last half-year. Tony had promised to prepare and gather all the needed parts for when he returned. It was going to be the crux of his summer visit, the main mission for their time, the highlight that would carry him through the half-year back home until he could escape north again.
The lab was a short elevator ride two floors down. Harley was practically buzzing with energy, his hands shaking to take something apart or put something together. He might have to dig around the parts box today before lunch, just to get out the energy and focus his mind before he starts on anything important. When he arrives at the lab, he sees Tony sitting on the bench with someone else. Another kid, his fluffy brown hair an unruly mess. They were turned away from him, focused intently on whatever project they were working on.
“Maybe it needs an extra accelerator? It doesn’t seem to be moving fast enough for the magnetic force to catch it and it thinks it isn’t there – making it turn back off.” The kid says, leaning further in, his back forming an almost perfect c over the counter.
“If we add an extra accelerator then we would need more stabilization, otherwise it would burst out. Which would be great if we were looking to make a defensive weapon. FRIDAY, put that idea on the ‘circle back when I’m bored’ files.”
“Right away, boss” FRIDAY’s familiar voice rang out from overhead.
“Needle in a haystack, huh?” Harley calls out, and the two brunettes spin around quickly. The kid looks shocked, his wide eyes blinking at Harley before shifting in between Tony and him. Harley only glances at him briefly, taking in his lean frame, his brown doe eyes, the unsure look on his face, before moving to his mentor. Tony looks shocked for a moment before his features even out to something more confused.
“Kid? What are you doing here?”
Harley’s eyebrows scrunch, he looks to the side before looking back at Tony. “It’s May 17th? I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be today that I show up. Otherwise it’s your private jet’s fault, not mine.” Harley crosses his arm.
Tony leans his head back. “It’s May 17th already? Shoot, did we stay up all night, kid? I didn’t notice.” Tony looked at Peter, who shrugged his shoulders, amusement slowly growing over his face. “Pep’s gonna kill me. Hell, that aunt of yours is gonna kill me. You need sleep. Up to your room. Come on. A nap before lunch.” Tony hopped up, urging Peter out of his seat. Since when did Tony become such a parent? Peter sighed and trudged out of the room, right past Harley without any extra acknowledgment. Okay, rude. Tony was suddenly in front of him, a hand on his shoulder pulling him into a hug.
“Hey, kid. FRIDAY didn’t tell me you were arriving, otherwise I would have been upstairs to greet you.”
“You put me on do-not-disturb mode, sir. My coding instructs to not interrupt unless someone is in danger or Mr. Peter comes from one of his outings.” FRIDAY interrupts.
“Add my other kid arriving to that list as well. I want to know when he’s here.”
“Added, sir.” FRIDAY responds.
“It’s all right. It gave me time to set down my stuff without you hovering.” Harley attempted to squash the flash of annoyance and jealousy that the other kid had an arrival notice set up. Who was that kid? Why did he matter so much? Why did he have such a monopoly on Tony’s time when this was supposed to be their time?
“When have I ever hovered?” Tony asked, eyes squinted in mock offense.
“What are y’all working on?” Harley forwarded the conversation, moving to the table. “It sounds like you need to switch out the stabilizers to a stronger magnet-”
Harley was at the table now, looking over the particular work that they had been focusing on. Despite the exposed wiring and scattered nanotech, its purpose was clear from the moment Harley looked at it. Something in Harley's stomach hollowed out. It was close to how he imagined it would look for the past half year. Tony walked up beside him.
“Oh, yeah. Pete and I got a start on it. I mentioned it to him and that kid has as many ideas up in his head as you do. I figure we can all work on it together this summer.” Tony’s voice sounded vaguely distant, like it was underwater. Harley couldn’t look away from the workbench.
“Oh” Harley pursed his lips. He wanted to scream. It was his idea, his plan. His thoughts and hard work and Tony had just given it to whoever that other kid was. Started the work that he was looking forward to since the end of winter break without him. Like he was inconsequential to the creation of it at all. He wanted to smash the stupid thing on the concrete below them and go and hide in his room for days. He wanted to shove Peter off a cliff.
Harley sat down where Peter had been sitting. Distantly, he still wanted to just weld some pieces of metal haphazardly together, get the anticipation out of his hands and his mind into the process, clear and stable. But now he desperately just wanted to start on this before the entire thing was taken away from him. To figure out how far they got and finish the rest before Peter touched it again. “Did you want to try the magnets? I could look for them real quick and we could pick up where y’all left off.” Harley could feel his voice shake and he willed the lump in his throat to go away. Everything was going haywire in his brain, like his cylinders were all misfiring, and he couldn’t make sense of anything around him.
“I think I’m gonna take a page from the kid’s book and go take a nap.” Tony breathed out. “Plus the kid would get all pouty if he missed out right after I sent him to bed. But we can all come back down here after lunch and pick it back up. Feel free to mess around with anything you want though, run wild, start fires, blow something up. I’ll call you when lunch is ready.”
“Since when do you sleep?” Harley’s eyebrow shot up, trying to sound amused but feeling more desperate by the minute.
“Underroos has been a good influence on me.” Tony shrugged, heading to the elevator. “I’m hoping he will be on you, but you just might corrupt him yet.” The billionaire sent him a smirk before letting the doors closed, leaving Harley alone.
Harley let out a shuddering breath, the room around him somehow becoming dark and gray-scale in Tony’s absence. Before his brain could catch up with his feelings, he moved to the welding bench and picked up the most warped pieces of metal he could find.
*<*<*<*<*<*<*<*<*<*<*
Lunch came quickly, unluckily just as Harley’s jetlag was kicking in. He felt like a tow truck had run over him. To make it worse, Peter was across from him, well-rested and talkative. He wouldn’t shut up. It was irritating, grating on Harley’s nerves more than anything else.
On the bright side, he had managed to scratch his itch and his frustration earlier in the lab, spending time welding and swinging a hammer at scrap metal. He only occasionally stared at his stolen project on the table, mind switching between smashing it and finishing it alone. Either would have worked wonders for the small fire that had been burning in his chest.
He picked at his food, his body feeling nauseous. Tony was listening to Peter ramble on about some lego build with his friend. Pepper was on the other end of the table, smiling gently, focused as intently as she usually was when someone was speaking. His attention turned back to moving the noodles around his plate to appear as if he was eating anything.
His mind spaced out, circling a precarious drain that he tried his best to keep the stopper tight in. His eyes outlined the line of his sleeve, dedicated to making sure it did not slip past his wrist. If it did, he wasn’t sure what reaction he feared more - a mess of worry and care, intent on making the final gust of wind that would fold the delicate house of cards that was Harley’s home life, or utter neutrality, a cold slap to the face that indicated that he was not a part of this family and they did not care what shade his arms and stomach were.
“Harley?” He heard directed at him. He looked up to see Pepper’s expectant smile cover a twinge of concern in her eyes. “Are you okay, hun?”
“Uh yeah,” He blinked, looking at the others. Tony also seemed expectant and Peter was watching him carefully. It made Harley’s skin crawl, an uncomfortable feeling of nakedness expanding over him. “Just spaced out for a second. What did you say?”
“I was just wondering how your sister and your mom are doing?”
“Good.” Harley’s response on autopilot, perfectly casual and not even a lie, really. “Abbie’s grown up faster than a marigold and ‘real independent now. Ma’s good, same as usual. ‘Been datin’.”
“Really? Good for her. Macy is a good looking woman.” Tony said. Harley scrunched his nose.
“Tony.” He heard Pepper admonish.
“Of course no one is prettier than you, Pep. You know what I meant.” Tony responded, sheepish.
“He says stuff like that about my aunt May all the time, totally weird and strange of him, right?” Peter stage whispers to Harley. Harley sees this for what it is, a feeble attempt at connecting with him. A play at making fun of Tony. He sees Tony reach over and ruffle his hair, Peter batting him away. Harley feels distant, like the table is stretching and he’s being stretched with it, further and further away from the others.
“Hey, behind Pepper, of course, your Aunt is a very attractive woman. Objectively.” Tony teases Peter back, switching between looking at him and Pepper. Pepper is looking at him with a raised eyebrow and a barely withheld smile. They look like the perfect family, and Harley suddenly feels like he’s on the other side of the glass completely. Peter glances back at him and immediately loses his smile. Tony follows Peter’s eyes, and his face morphs back into a mix of concern and exasperation.
“Kid, are you sure you’re alright?” He asked.
“‘M’Fine.” Harley responded.
“Are you sure? You’ve barely touched your-”
“I said I’m fine!” He shouted. Huffing as he sat back in his chair, spearing his noodles with his fork absentmindedly. “You know, maybe we should just not talk at the table. A lot of people like to eat in silence.”
“Geez, alright kid. Silent lunches, got it.” Tony responded.
The rest of the meal went by like molasses, and Harley felt choked on the silence of it. Guilt ate away at him as he continued to push around his food. The others ate to the sound of tableware clinking and Harley kept his eyes trained down as he felt the others glance his way. At some point he looked up to see Pepper and Tony communicating silently through their shifting eyes and shoulder shrugs. He wanted to apologize, but he felt stuck, unable to break the silence he had laid himself, heavy and thick.
*<*<*<*<*<*<*<*<*<*<*
The silence was broken by Peter, of course, on the elevator down.
“Can we talk now?” He leaned forward to look around Tony who stood between them.
Harley knew it would be the perfect time to apologize. Blame it on jet lag or stress. But he just couldn’t when the other boy made irritation swell up in his chest so quickly it almost choked him.
“Are we sitting at the dinner table?” He deadpanned back.
Peter’s jaw tightened. “Didn’t know if your silence rule extended to elevator rides too.”
“Maybe it does.” Harley shot back, looking forward again. Schooling his features into indifference.
“But you’re talking.” What kinda comeback is that? Harley sent him a glare.
“Only ‘cause you won’t shut up.” He shot back
“Okay stop.” Tony held his hand before rubbing his temple. “I don’t want fighting in the lab. I am going to have you two work on a project together and you are going to work out this issue.”
Peter pouted. “What kinda project?” He asked, looking at Harley through the corner of his eye.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Can’t we just work on the plasma shield? During my nap I was working on it in my dream and dream-me had some great ideas that real me would like to try.” Peter said.
Harley was in the process of opening his mouth to explain that neither version of him had any right to the plasma shield when Tony responded.
“All the more reason to take a break if I can’t even get you to take a break while you sleep. I might just medically induce a coma on you to make you rest a little, kid.”
Peter scrunched up his nose. “Pepper would just do the same to you.”
Tony tsked. “Damn. You’re right. Scratch that, I’ll think of something else.”
The elevator doors opened to the lab, forcing a pause to Tony and Peter’s family squabble as Tony walked forward and started opening a chest on the other end of the room.
“Alright you two. You are going to work on this robot. It was a random project I was working on a year or two ago when I was bored. I wanted it to clean dishes- soap, water, dry, the whole sha-bang.” Tony put it on the counter and left it there.
“Perfect, that will take me like an hour and then we can work on the actual project.” Peter interrupted, heading toward the device. Harley reached out and grabbed his arm to stop him. Although it weirdly didn’t feel like Harley actually managed to force him to turn around, the brunette stopped anyway.
“Actually, I can handle it in half that time. You can sit and watch.”
“No way!” Peter glared.
“You both are going to work on it. And to force you two to work together, one of you is going to be blindfolded, and the other can’t use his hands. I saw it on a TikTok cooking video, funny stuff.”
Both boys groaned. Harley looked at Peter “You are being blindfolded then. I’ll explain things slowly, don’t worry.” Harley patted Peter’s back and was rewarded with Peter glaring at him harder.
“Can I have earplugs too?” Peter turned to Tony, who gave him an amused smirk before nodding his head toward the desk to get them to start. Peter threw his head back with a sigh before dragging his feet over to the half-formed robot.
Harley looked over at Tony, who was already leaning against the counter behind them, tinkering with a small piece of metal in his hand. “Harley, help Peter tie the bandana. There’s one in the closet in the corner.”
“I know where the extra clothes are,” Harley grumbled, going to fetch one. He grabbed the first bandana he could find out of the closet, briefly glancing over familiar clothes that he had changed into anytime he accidentally ruined the ones he had been wearing. There were brand-new shirts sitting nicely folded at the bottom, but he always would grab one of Tony’s weathered band tees from the top. It made him feel safe.
Walking over to Peter, Harley tied the bandana onto his head. Thankfully, Peter did not oppose his actions and sat still while he tied the two ends, careful to not tie his hair into the knot. Once he was done, he sat down on a chair beside Peter, who was already feeling the object in front of him.
“Okay, you two. There is nothing particularly challenging about the project, especially for two people at your skill level. Where I was at when I ended was having a certain issue with its performance. You need to figure out what the issue was, fix it, and have it clean a dish before the trial is over.”
“What’s the time limit?” Peter asks, still focused on feeling the object.
“No limit. If this takes you both until dinner, so be it. But it should only take a few hours, max. Yell for me if you need anything.” With that Tony stood up and headed over to another workstation a little bit away.
“Alright, flip it over and open the hatch. I need to see the wiring.” Harley instructed, leaning his head on his hand, already itching to reach over and grab the machine. It would be so much easier if he could just do it himself, but he knew that was part of this ‘challenge’ Tony put them up to.
Peter, to his credit, followed Harley’s instructions, opening the bottom hatch and tilting it to let him see inside. The wiring looked fine, at least from where Harley could see. He voiced as much to Peter, who nodded. Before Peter turned it back around, he noticed a small sensor box on the side. The presence of a sensor indicated that Tony may have engineered it to start up when it sensed a dish around it, which may have caused the issue. Sensors have a radius, and being able to make the radius fit a certain area takes a bit of troubleshooting and complicated coding.
“So we need to fix the coding and lower the radius to the size of a standard sink.” Peter responded when Harley voiced his thoughts. “I can type decently well, so it shouldn’t take long to flush out a code. You would just need to proofread it.”
“No, hold on.” Harley stopped him. “If we are making this purely sensor-based, then it would have to have the addition of a complicated AI structure that senses the intention for the dish.”
Peter hummed in disagreement. “The dish is in the sink, that indicates it’s dirty-it needs to be washed.”
“What? No. What if someone is filling something up? Washing fruit? Putting something down real quick. What if it is something they would prefer to wash themselves? There are a lot of reasons a dish would be in the sink, and it wouldn’t just be for washing.”
“Alright, so no sensor. Are we going with a manual actuator then?”
“Yeah. What about a switch? Then we won’t have to mess too much with coding.”
“Switch would probably be best to protect the inner machinery from water damage.”
“Alright, I’ll get the materials, you go ahead and pull out the sensor and get it hooked up with a screen. I’ll proofread the code, but make it so it handles any dish in the sink when it’s prompted by the switch. Then we can work on cutting out a part in the machine for the switch and re-wiring…”
Harley looked over to see Peter already typing out lines of code.
*<*<*<*<*<*<*<*<*<*<*
It was two hours later and they had a functional machine working. The hours passed with minimal talking, Harley offering directions and Peter following with agile perfection. His code only had a few misspellings, which took about half an hour of arguing to get it fixed, which almost made Harley break and snatch the keyboard from Peter’s hands. They were now at the lab sink, testing out the machine. They had a few plates that Tony ran to get, god knows from where, hopefully not from a place Pepper would kill all of them over.
As they were testing it, Harley was standing in front of the sink as Peter flipped the switch. Harley could do nothing but watch as the machine bent down too fast, grabbing onto a plate before moving up and swinging too soon. Suddenly, Harley felt himself being pulled back and the sound of a socket being popped out of place mixed with a sharp shatter of something glass-like.
He looked up to see the hand of the machine pulled out, the torn wires hanging limply and sparking and a shattered plate in the sink.
“What the hell?” Harley breathed out, his heart thumping in his chest.
“It went too fast- the plate” Peter spoke, ripping his blind-fold off his face.
“You broke the machine, dumbass!” Harley’s irritation flared up, his back aching in pain from where it had hit the counter behind him as he was flung back.
“I- You could've been hurt!” Peter shot back with just as much irritation.
“So you yank me back into the desk? Real heroic.”
“I couldn't see!” Peter jerks the bandana in his hand, his voice turning incredulous.
“We’ve spent two hours on this. You ruined it” Harley walked forward to grab the arm that had somehow been torn apart in the commotion of Peter shoving it during its speed cleaning. Harley didn’t even want to think about the physics of that. He was too angry. He was never going to be able to work on his project now that they had to completely start over again. It grated on his nerves and he held back frustrated tears. Peter suddenly grabbed his arm with a firm grip, stopping him from moving forward.
“The dishes are dangerous” Peter eyed the shattered ceramic in the sink. Harley tried yanking his hand out, but failed.
“I can handle a broken dish, back the fuck off.” Harley spit in his face, putting his hand over Peter’s wrist and tugging.
“I don’t want you to get cut,” Peter said as he got the hint and hesitantly let go. His chest was heaving and his jaw was clenched.
“Maybe don’t destroy my work” Harley grumbled as he started moving the robot parts to the bench behind them.
“Your work? You just sat there!” Peter spat out.
“My direction! You were a glorified Butterfingers. ARE a glorified Butterfingers! I mean how do you even manage this!” Harley shook the part of the machine he was holding in front of Peter. “It’s completely destroyed. I wanted to actually do something productive today, instead, I’m stuck dealing with your hulk anger issue bullshit!” Spat, setting the machine down hard.
“Harley, that’s enough.” Harley jumped at the sound of Tony’s voice behind him. He had never heard the older man use such a harsh, commanding tone. “You okay, Underoos?” He added, gentler. Harley clenched his teeth, his shoulders tense.
“Don’t call me-” Peter huffed, giving up his usual complaint. “Yeah I’m fine. I don't think I want to be blindfolded while testing this out.”
Tony pushed his lips together, eyeing the sink. “Yeah, I think I can finish it off from here. Good idea on the switch.” He sighed, patting Peter’s shoulder.
“Thanks,” Peter smiled lightly, glancing up at him. Harley didn’t miss how Peter’s eyes sparkled as he looked up at Tony. He hated that he understood that look. He also hated how unfair it all felt. Another idea snatched from right under him, given to this perfect intern. It just wasn’t fair. Harley dug his nails into his palms.
“It was my idea,” Harley mumbled.
Tony looked over at him with a disappointed look on his face. Harley felt his shoulders tense more. “It was my idea. I thought of it.” He clarified. He needed to get that look off of Tony’s face. He was just being honest. It was the truth. He deserved the recognition, the shoulder pat, the pride.
“I helped.” Peter spoke up, frustration coming off of him in waves, only serving to make Harley’s worse.
“No you didn’t. You made my job harder, you made everything worse.” Harley spat out.
“Harley!” Tony admonished. Harley felt guilt start to settle in and desperately willed it away. “I don’t know what is up with you today but you need to chill out. Go to your room and cool off. Take a nap, shake off the attitude. You can come back to the lab tomorrow.”
Harley wanted to argue. He wanted to scream and yell and make Tony understand that all of this was unfair. That he just wanted to work on their project without having it stolen out from under him. But he couldn’t. He was tired and upset and he wasn’t sure he could find the words to explain the situation. He wasn’t sure he could explain it all without crying even if he found them. He sucked his cheeks in nodding to the floor, looking everywhere but at the other two in the room. Then he silently set down what was in his hands and walked out the door.
*<*<*<*<*<*<*<*<*<*<*
Harley slammed the door to his room harder than he wanted to, slightly wincing at the loud bang that resulted. A wash of fear poured over him like a cold water plunge, stopping him in his tracks. He pauses, quiet, listening for the scream of a man who is all too quick to prove where his mom’s loyalty truly lies. To throw him around, get him in line – showing everyone that he is mighty, powerful, and strong and Harley is just an ant to squash under his shoe. His stubborn refusal to fall into that power play had led to countless maroon bruises and ruby split lips- a common shade of Harley’s childhood.
But those off-colored marks don’t burn as much as the fact his mom doesn’t care. There was an ironic type of pain when he remembered how he tried to hide it at first. Some embarrassment-lined guilt for continuing to ruin his mom’s endless attempts at finding someone to spend her life with after his father left. Led by the inescapable fear that any punishment inflicted on him was some world-sent karma, something of his own fault for being a difficult brat who couldn’t keep his mouth shut. It was the third boyfriend when Harley accidentally revealed the marks - his sleeve rolled up while he was stirring pancake mix to reveal splotches of bruised skin. She stared for only a moment before telling him to keep his sleeve pulled down during school. That she didn’t need the stress of a concerned teacher calling her at work, how embarrassing that would be for her. She ended with a kiss to his forehead and asked him why he couldn’t be better and just stay out of the way. He wished he knew.
Harley knew he was difficult. He knew he was abrasive and blunt, judgemental and loud, but Tony had never once laid a hand on him. Tony never did anything to deserve any actual judgement and always took his light-hearted sass with a playful glare or a chuckle and hair ruffle. He loved being in New York. It was a safe haven. A dream that he never wanted to wake up from. He was useful here in a way that he had not felt since Abbie became old enough to support herself; old enough to learn spending all her time at her friends’ house was a better option than being at home. He barely got to see her anymore and her effort to distance herself from the family seemed to include distancing herself from Harley as well. He understood it, though. Understood how the constant fights about Harley’s inability to keep his head low and his mouth shut slowly turned to apathy; how she couldn’t stop him and so she had to do what was best for her. He understood it. But that didn’t stop the bitter pain at seeing another back walking away from him. There was always someone better than him, always an option above him. His dad would choose another family, his mom would choose another family, his sister would choose another family. He was just not family material.
Harley’s thoughts drifted back to the fluffy brown-headed boy and he knew in his gut that Tony was ready to choose another family too. He was being cast out, Tony did not need him to stand-in anymore, the real thing had come. He just wished it hadn’t been so soon. This place was the best thing he had ever had, he didn’t have anything else. He had no idea where to go from here. He had run out of options - cornered by the hard, unfeeling truth he had always run from. He closed his eyes as he slid down his door, lying curled up by it, his head growing dizzy as if the floor had collapsed under him and he was hurtling down the 90 flights below him. As the darkness consumed him, he let himself fantasize it was true.