When Adrien Lehane was sixteen years old, his house was broken into and his mother was murdered.
He had been in the school music room so he wasn't at home when it happened. He walked home, and noticed with growing concern as police cars and ambulances drove down his street and pulled to a stop in front of his house. He ran the last few dozen feet to his front door, ignoring the cop who yelled at him, ignoring her partner who called him 'son'. He shoved his key in the lock and threw the door open.
His house was trashed. The lamp his mother had made in her glass-blowing class was smashed to pieces on the ground. There was mud and blood tracked down the hall. The pictures on the wall, pictures of his mother pregnant and of him as a baby and of him ages two days through fifteen years and some of his grandparents; they had been tossed on the ground and stepped on.
He walked through the hall, broken glass crunching under his boots. He could see a bit of graffiti on the wall in the living room,
Mutie Scum
it read. He had a horrible, sinking feeling, deep in his stomach.
He could hear pathetic whining and hoped like hell it was his mother, that she was still alive, but it wasn't. He stepped into the living room. Two assholes with baggy jeans and beanies were lying across the floor. His mother had one of her strong six hands around the throat of one of them, even though her blue eyes were glassy and blank. A paramedic rushed in and pried him from her grip. The other asshole was unconscious, probably (hopefully) dead. A pair of paramedics carried him out on a stretcher.
Adrien felt numb. His knees gave out and he collapsed next to her prone body, still warm. He felt hands pulling and touching his back and it was all he could do not to grab the nearest hard object and start swinging. He reached over and closed his mother's eyes. He kissed her forehead. He stroked her hair.
A gloved hand dropped on top of his. He looked up, startled.
"We need to see to your mom, okay, honey?" One of the meds was talking to him. Why?
"What is there to see to," he remarked dully, "She's dead." The med nodded and let go of his hand.
"I know, sweetie, but we need to find the cause and time of death, so that we can prove that she attacked these fuckheads in self-defense." Adrien looked at the medic with a little more focus. Her pupils were horizontal slits. Oh. He looked back down at his hand and nodded. He stood up. A cop grabbed his arm and pulled him outside. Someone wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. The cop crouched in front of him, and he saw that she was the one who had yelled at him. Well. Fuck her, then.
When she opened her mouth to say something, he cut her off. "I don't want to talk to you," he told her. Her lips pursed and she stood, walked away like a wet cat. He rolled his eyes and made a rude gesture in her general direction. He sat down on the grass in front of his house, pulled his knees up, rested his chin on them, and wrapped his arms around his legs. He inspected the grass. It was awfully dry.
Someone walked up to him and say down. Rude cop's partner.
"Hi," he said. "Do you mind if I ask you some questions?" Adrien didn't answer for a while. Then he nodded.
"Thanks. I'll keep them to yes-or-no answers, so you can just nod or shake your head, okay?" Adrien nodded again. The cop pulled out a notebook.
"Do you know the men who attacked your mother?" Shake.
"Did your mother know them?" Shake.
"Do you have any family you can stay with?" Adrien hesitated. His grandparents had been dead for the last six years, and his aunt and uncle were anti-mutant extremists. He knew he had a father somewhere, but he didn't know the man's name, so. He shook his head.
"Okay." He heard the man get up. A hand landed on his shoulder.
"I'm sorry for your loss." Adrien closed his eyes. He had a feeling he'd be hearing a lot of that.
He was driven back to the cop shop, after he had been permitted to gather some of his possessions. He was told he would be able to collect the rest of them later. He grabbed his keyboard and composition book.
He was sitting on the floor, playing an upbeat ditty for a toddler with a black eye, when he heard some sort of commotion from the front of the station. He heard a lot of 'Mr Stark's. He ignored it, privately wondering if they were talking about Tony Stark and what the hell he would be doing in some run-down police station in one of the shittier parts of New York. He finished the song, and tipped an imaginary hat to the applause the toddler gave him.
He was about to start a second song when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
"Mr Lehane? Could you come with me please?" Asked a police officer who looked vaguely worried about something. Adrien ruffled the toddler's hair and grabbed his keyboard.
He was led into an office. There was an officer, probably the chief, behind the desk and two people in front of it, a man and a woman. The woman had very bright red hair. The man's hair was dark and threaded with grey. When he opened the door, three heads spun to look at him.
Oh.
Why was he in an office with Tony Stark and Pepper Potts? Oh, god, there was that sinking feeling. Stark glared at Potts for a moment, and then stood up. He walked over to where Adrien was trying to blend into the wall.
"Hi," he said, holding out a hand. Adrien sort of hid behind his keyboard and responded with a muffled 'hello'. When Adrien didn't take his hand, it dropped awkwardly to Stark's side.
"So, uh, funny thing," Stark continued. "I'm your dad." Adrien hated that sinking feeling, it was always right. He just stared at Stark. The man started to look irritated. The police chief jumped in before things could escalate.
"We found some papers in your mother's study, a paternity test. She had a contract from Ms Potts, as well, stating that in return for her discretion she would receive monthly cheques as child support." Adrien nodded weakly, figuring that made sense. His mom had really only ever worked as a bartender and there was no way that paid well enough to feed and clothe a child.
"Right, so," Stark interjected, "this is awkward. Sorry I never called on your birthday, or Christmas, or anything, but I actually had no idea you existed." He twisted around to glare at Potts. She rolled her eyes at him.
"Forgive me if I didn't think you'd be terribly interested, Tony," she snapped, but Stark just held up a finger.
"Don't talk to me, I'm mad at you." He warned. She just shook her head and continued talking quietly to the police officer behind the desk. He looked back at Adrien.
"Sorry. If I'd known I would have visited, at least. Bought you stupidly expensive toys." He scrubbed a hand over his face. "Look, your records show that your mother had two siblings, so if you want to live with them - "
"No!" Stark, Potts, and the officer all just stared at him. Adrien flushed.
"No," he said, more calmly. "They're bigots." They're stupidly Right-wing Christians and once my uncle held me under bathwater and shouted passages from the Bible at me. He told my mother he was trying to 'cleanse me of my taint'. Stark looked at him with some weird combination of seriousness and concern. Potts was just looking at him with something resembling pity and Adrien wanted to shake her.
"Okay," he said slowly. "Well then. We can't grab the rest of your stuff right now because your house is a crime scene, so I guess we can do that later. Uh, Pepper can draw up the necessary papers. Are you hungry? We'll get something to eat on the way back to -" Stark paused. Potts looked smug.
"Yes, Tony, where were you planning on housing your son?" Adrien thought she was being rather unnecessarily snarky. He shuffled his feet and thought that maybe he should find a way to replace his boots soon.
"You shut up," He snarked right back. Heh. Snark, Stark. Oh, was this late-onset hysterics? Because Adrien just wanted to laugh and cry at everything. He chewed his lip. Stark looked at him.
"Okay, so I figure you can stay at Stark Towers. It's where I live, most of the time. I - yeah. Didn't have time to hash that out." He turned to Potts.
"It's not a big deal," Adrien said quietly. Stark looked back at him.
"What?" He seemed genuinely confused. Adrien gripped his keyboard tighter.
"If you don't want me to live with you. It's not a big deal." Stark walked a little closer to him and put heavy, scarred hands on his shoulders.
"Look at me," Adrien did, after a moment of hesitation. "Now that I know you exist, that I'm a parent, I can't not do everything in my power to keep you safe and happy. It's weird, I'm not used to feeling that way about anyone other than myself, but I can't ignore it."
"Like a scab you can't help but pick?"
"More like something broken that interrupts all of your other thoughts until you fix it." Stark chucked his chin. Adrien did not like that and his miffed look probably conveyed his feelings on the matter. Stark grinned.
"So, pizza?"
AN: OH MY GOD. I'm so sorry I haven't been active lately, AT ALL. I'm starting school again on Tuesday so it might me a while before another plot bunny bites me.
So. This. This has been floating around in my head for a while (and I know I keep writing kid fics but I just found out my sister-in-law is pregnant and it's a boy and I guess I have babies on the brain) and to tell the truth I wrote it a while ago, I just cleaned some stuff up. I really just wanted to write about Tony being fantastically bad at parenting. And with all the drunk sex he has you'd think he'd have an illegitimate child or ten out there somewhere, right? Right. If you guys want to read more, please please please send a review or PM saying so.
Working on chapter eight of Mycroft right now but it's a stubborn bitch.
I really do think that if Tony knew he had babies out in the world he'd do all he could for them, particularly after being raised by Howard Stark.
I have no idea where Tony lives. I mean yeah there's the Miami house but I figure he'd have a residence or five in New York if that's where the Avengers HQ is, and yeah. I haven't seen The Avengers yet so I'm relying on Tumblr and fanfiction for all my information.
Um. If this gets positive reviews I'll write more and get more in detail in this, but Adrien. So Tony's genius passed itself on down but it's sort of different? I imagined Adrien as a sort of Mozart deal, writing symphonies at age six and mastering every instrument he could get his jammy little hands on.
More later?