If They Knew All About You

11 years, 5 months, 27 days

[author's note: because it's sunday I decided to post this today rather than tomorrow ;) Enjoy, guys!]

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The light in the lab was dimmed down. Tony was resting his head in his hands. Eyes closed, he tried to drown out the multitude of thoughts that threatened to crash his system and would send him back into a panic, paralyzing him. The sound of metal clicking on the lab's tiled floor pulled his mind out of spiraling further downwards. He didn't look up when she sat down next to him on the couch. Her presence was uncomfortable after the months of estrangement that had just made it so much more obvious to him, how much he had been relying and leaning on her. For years.

"It's true."

He didn't look up, didn't move a single muscle.

"Tony..."

"Potts...", he responded with a sigh, trying to keep his voice steady.

"Talk to me."

Any moment now she'd reach for him. Place her hands on him ever so lightly and it would make him jump out of his skin. He desperately needed to release his frustration somehow, lash out against someone. And it couldn't be Pepper. Not again. This mess, his mess, was not hers to deal with anymore.

Her voice had been soft and calm before, but the next question came only in a whisper: "It's true, right? It's really Addy?"

He let his hands drop, lifted himself off the couch and strode over to one of his desks. He needed to put space between the two of them. The tools and the prototype of the Nano Housing Unit were still scattered all over the desk as he had left them when he had gone to find out the truth after all. When he had no longer been able to distract himself, had just needed to put an end to everyone's conspiracy theories. He grabbed a couple of screwdrivers, put them back into the top drawer, where they belonged. The movements so internalized after years of repetition, his arms relied entirely on muscle memory. It was soothing in contrast to the constant tension every muscle in his body had been limited to for the past days. Then he just stood there, his back still turned to her.

"Tony," her voice had lost some of the comforting vibe and taken on a tenser tone. "Talk to me!"

A short chuckle bubbled out of him. Dry and humorless. He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, Potts. Am I not reacting on the appropriate emotional curve of the 'father being reunited with long-lost son' scale?"

"No, you are however perfectly aligned on the 'Tony Stark trying to battle some inner demons' scale that usually starts with you barricading yourself in your lab, refusing to speak to anyone and culminates with you blackout drunk somewhere between Vegas and Monte Carlo. So, cut it out! We had a deal: You tell me. You don't self-destruct."

He turned around, facing her. "That deal expired when you walked yourself out of this relationship and back to LA."

She kept her eyes on him, her expression remaining guarded and calculating. "Tell me."

"Tell you what? How are you even here?"

"Natasha called me. And don't even get me started on how pissed I am that this message didn't come from you. Tell me why you're here, locked up in the dark on your own, stewing in your lab while your kid, who we have been searching for and upended the whole country for - hell, the whole fucking planet - to find for more than a decade... he's up there on his own, scared and confused. He needs you, Tony. That's where you should be right now, by your son's bedside, holding his hand and telling him how everything's going to be alright."