Pairing(s): Steve/Peggy - past; Steve/Bucky/Darcy (if you squint); Tony/Pepper; Tony & Darcy & Harley & Vision - background; Steve & Phil - implied
Tags/Trigger Warnings: unethical genetic experimentation; family dynamics; Howard Fucking Stark
There's a reason Philip J. Coulson is so obsessed with Captain America, and the memorabilia of Cap and his Howlies.
Biology, as they say, will out.
Tony was the first to notice – of course, of course he was [Pepper kind of wishes Tony would just give in and accept that honorary genetics doctorate from Harvard already]. It takes a Legacy to know a Legacy, after all, and for all that Tony's tried to distance himself from the clusterfuck of expectations and disappointments wrapped up with his father and the Captain America Thing, he is still a member of the Howlies' extended family. And while yes, typically Tony preferred to distance himself from anything that would link him to Howard – unless of course he was showing his old man up – even he couldn't deny that a whole lot of his personality was nature, not nurture. It stood to reason that this axiom would be true for others.
And it wasn't just the eyes [old, old eyes in a young face], and it wasn't in the way they each set their shoulders [genetic predisposition to scoliosis]. What tipped Tony off was the affable charm, the sincere engagement with other people that made you feel like you were the most important person in the whole world. That kind of pure goodness couldn't be taught; it was an inherent quality that precious few people had.
Granted, the whole concept of Steve Rogers fathering a child was utterly ridiculous. It was Steve; stalwart, honorable, upstanding Steven Grant Rogers would never leave a lady in the family way and abandon her. Hell, Tony was more than halfway convinced that Capsicle couldn't even get it up unless he had a ring on the lady's finger [at least, that's what he was telling himself for his peace of mind so he didn't have to think about what Steve got up to with Bucky and Darcy. Because, Captain America or not, no one but no one was good enough for Tony's Baby Bot.].
And anyways, Steve had gone into the ice a full two decades before Agent was born.
Tony did so love a good puzzle.
Besides, the progeny hadn't had a good and proper challenge in a while. Darcy loved bio-engineering almost as much as Tony loved his suits, so this was right up her alley. Vision, still so fascinated by all things organic, would thoroughly enjoy the chance to expand his practical knowledge. And Harley… well, Harley just plain liked to tinker, and he got bored when he didn't have school to distract him [Harley bored tended to end in a lot of explosions. Tony was very proud.]. This would be good family bonding time. And hey, genetics research meant a lower probability of explosions, so maybe they could avoid Pepper making The Face. That'd be good; Tony preferred to be unsinged if at all possible.
Under Vision's direction, FRIDAY worked her way through the cache of SHIELDRA files JARVIS had pulled from Natasha's info dump a few years back, while Tony and Harley hacked some "secure" servers. Darcy, using her position as Assistant Liaison between the Avengers and SHIELD, made her way to the SSR's hard copy archives, where the answer lay.
God-fucking-damnit, Howard.
After the success of Project Rebirth, Steve had undergone extensive medical testing to determine just how deep the rabbit hole of genetic enhancement went. Was it possible, for instance, that the serum could be passed down to biological descendants? Steve had, to quote Darcy, "proved once and for all that he is and has always been a textbook Slytherin seriously how can you people even question this" and gotten himself into active duty before the full battery of tests could be completed, so the question had never been definitively solved. By the time anyone thought to revive the tests… Well. Steve had become a Capsicle in the Arctic, and there wasn't much use in questioning anymore.
Until, apparently, Howard [Fucking] Stark happened.
Tony had grown up with the burden of knowing that he was not his father's greatest creation; Captain America was. The man had invested millions of dollars in the development of Project Rebirth, had personally funded a large percent of the cost of operations for SSR SpecOps Team Alpha [as the Howlies were officially known], and then spent a small fortune trying to bring his obsession home before spending a somewhat larger fortune trying to drink away his failures. And somewhere in that period before Howard had entirely given up hope, but after he'd lost himself to despair and regret, he had gotten his hands on a few of Steve's… ahem… samples.
The fact that Phil Coulson was a test tube baby had been buried as far and as deep as Howard could possibly ensure. Had she known what he was up to, Peggy would have shot him, and Howard had a healthy respect for a furious Pegs. Still, what she didn't know couldn't hurt him… After all, Peggy had provided the SSR with samples, too. There had been many genetic experiments on both sides of the Iron Curtain before, during and after the war. Peggy had been considered for some of them, until she became too valuable an asset to the SSR. But her paperwork and samples had all been preserved, and Howard didn't believe in waste.
Howard had picked the surrogate parents carefully. Steve and Peggy were his dearest and closest friends, after all; he'd do right by their child [aside from, y'know, the deeply unethical procedures that led to the kid's existence in the first place]. He'd found Robert and Julie Coulson – good, decent people who desperately wanted a child but couldn't conceive. Howard had provided for the kid and his new family through a series of shell corporations. The little boy would want for nothing, in exchange for the parents allowing discrete, periodic testing of their son's genetic tissue and abilities.
He was named Philip, in honor of the good Colonel. Middle name James, of course, to keep Steve's ghost quiet.
As it turned out, the serum had become badly decayed by the time Phil was born. Degraded by time, by inadequate storage procedures, and perhaps by the ghost of Steve coming back to righteously disapprove of what Howard had done. Deteriorated as it was, the serum hadn't granted Phil super strength or enhanced metabolism or delayed aging, or any of his father's super soldier abilities. But the genetic conditions he should have developed – color blindness, partial deafness, asthma, scoliosis, effectively nonexistent immune system – Phil was mercifully spared all of that. Perhaps because of adequate care and better nutrition and not being raised in abject poverty. Perhaps not.
Phil was not a genius student, but he excelled in all manner of tactical thinking. He was king of all playground games – you did not go against Phil Coulson in capture the flag. And good goddamn but did the boy ever inherit his father's sense of moral justice. Of everything that could have passed from father to son, Howard was pretty sure he was most happy about that. That there would be at least one man with an unshakeable sense of moral rightness, of decency and compassion… If that was the only legacy of Steve Rogers to survive the wreck of the Valkyrie, Howard was content.
Tony was being weird.
Now granted, Tony was always weird – the price of genius, or whatever the fuck Darce called it. But still. Tony was acting oddly even for Tony, and it was setting Bucky on edge. And as everyone knows, it is a bad, bad idea for Bucky to be on edge.
He kept to himself more than usual, holing himself away in his workshop with his sons [and his daughter, when she wasn't busy shadowing her ma around SI]. And when he was around, he would just… stare at Steve. Now, according to Steve this was nothin' new; apparently he was still House Stark's favorite science project. [Note to self: Have a chat with Tony about that whole "everything special about you came out of a bottle" conversation.] But this was different. Tony had the look of a man who had something to say, but couldn't find the words. Given that this was Tony Stark, the fact that he had no words was fuckin' concerning.
But hand to God, Bucky hadn't intended to worry about it. Darcy had assured both him and Steve that nothing was wrong, that Tony was just stuck on a Science! problem and was being a pissbaby about it. But then Tony's weirdness started rubbing off on Darcy. Bucky hated it when their best girl was tense and upset. [Not that he objected to her using them to work out a little tension, o'course. Just… He hated seeing their girl so damn twitchy, and having no idea how to fix it.]
So, yeah. Once Darcy was involved, Bucky couldn't stay quiet anymore.
"Jesus, Stark. If you wanna confess your undying love to Steve, just get it fuckin' over with already."
Okay, maybe blurting that out in the middle of a family dinner wasn't his smoothest move. Still. No time like the present. And Tony's gaping fish impersonation? Fuckin' priceless. Almost as funny as the Confused Eyebrow Furrow of Patriotism coming from Captain Stars n' Stripes.
"What?!" Tony spluttered, choking on his 18-year-old scotch as Pepper patted his back. "Not that I don't swing that way, because I could be persuaded, but that would be some weird Daddy issue shit that I would much rather ignore."
After a belated beat in which Darcy indulged in a royal facepalm and Harley made exaggerated gagging noises while Vision looked politely confused, Tony turned to Pepper.
"Plus I am a happily monogamous man and please don't hurt me for that not being my first response but c'mon, you can't blame me," he babbled, wide-eyed. "You've ogled his manboobs too."
"Appreciated, Tony," Pepper replied smoothly with a twinkle in her eye as she reached for her glass of Sauvignon Blanc. "I have appreciated Steve's manboobs. You have ogled."
Tony shrugged, unable to defend himself, before turning to Steve. He drew a deep breath, squaring his shoulders as his eyes got uncharacteristically solemn. Beside him, Darcy cursed under her breath, and he could practically hear her muscles clenching in tension and aw hell, this wasn't gonna be good, was it? Amusement aside, Bucky was really startin' to regret bringing this up.
"What do you know about the tests the SSR conducted on you?"
Forty-five minutes later found Steve on the balcony of Tony and Pepper's penthouse, furiously smoking. Not a habit he regularly indulged in – turns out, cigarettes really don't help with asthma, and the nicotine had no effect on him. But this seemed like a situation that called for a cigarette. And a stiff drink.
Holy fuck, a child. A son. His son… Peggy's son.
What the flying fuck had Howard been thinking? This was… This was about six different shades of fucked up, is what this was.
Tony and Darcy had promised that Agent- that Phil didn't know. That he'd never had contact with Howard, and that SHIELD had never said a word. Then again, the fact that SHIELD had brought Phil into the fold in the first place told Steve everything he needed to know.
Christ, his son. He was twenty-eight years old, and he had a fifty-two year old son. Whose biological mother had just died eighteen months ago.
What the fuck did he do now? What was he supposed to do? Should he do anything? Phil had had a good family, a loving home; and he was a grown-ass man. He didn't need a father, let alone a father who was technically young enough to be his son. Sure, they were colleagues, and sort of friends… But could they be a family? Was that even something either of them would want?
What the fuck happened now?
Author's Note: I have no idea, y'all. I had a shitty mental health week, and this is the ridiculousness I needed. I have no plans to actually write anything further for this story prompt. But in my head, there is much awkwardness all around for a while, until Darcy knocks heads together. Phil and Steve bond over stories of Peggy. Tony makes uncomfortable father and son jokes until Pepper hauls him off by the ear. Harley continues blowing things up [mostly by accident. Probably.].