"There's no right side to this."
"Heard things aren't going too well between you and the kid," Tony stated in purposefully measured tones when he finally caught Happy passing by the workshop. "Wanna step inside?"
To his credit, Happy looked sufficiently off-guard and mildly confused by the greeting.
"What do you mean, not going well?" he asked once he shut the door behind himself, giving them the privacy Tony was hoping for.
"That's what I'm hoping you can tell me. Level with me here. All I got out of the kid was that you didn't want to be his point guy after our little trip to Germany, but he wouldn't say a damn word after that."
"That's not…" Happy's face scrunched up. "Shit. Okay, so we didn't have the best start. You told me to keep an eye on him, and I told him to check in with anything important."
"Yep, sounds about right," Tony encouraged when he stopped the story short of any useful details.
"Well, you saw the texts and voicemails after that. It was ridiculous, and you know I talked to him about it, right? Several times, even. I'd tell him, 'Kid, you only need to tell me the important stuff,' he'd agree, and then he'd go right back to it two days later."
"You didn't tell me you asked him to stop."
"You were making fun of the quadruple texting and daily check-ins with me damn near every week, and you didn't think I asked him to slow it down?"
"Hold up, we weren't making fun of him. It was cute kid stuff. We were bonding over our baby superhero."
"Tones, you were definitely making fun of him with me. There is no world where what we did is considered fawning over a kid."
There was that damn tone again, the pitying one Happy only brought out when he didn't want to come out and say, "You'd know this if your old man didn't fuck you up."
God, Tony hated that tone.
He waved his hands through the air as if to physically clear that point away.
"Just," he paused for a second. "Let's move on. You said he didn't listen when you asked him to text less."
"Not the first few times, no, but after moving day and the whole Toomes thing… I don't know. He stopped when you took the suit, and he didn't go back to the double texting thing after you gave it back. He's texted me a few times since when something actually happened, but that's it. Once when the aunt found out and three times when he was injured and couldn't deal."
"And you didn't think to check in with him?"
"Well, yeah. I checked in. I called him myself the third day he didn't text or call after he turned down the spot on the team to make sure he wasn't kidnapped or something, but he said things were fine. Even apologized for texting so much before. That's when he stopped giving me the day-to-day recaps."
Tony desperately wanted to find fault with it all, to fix the injustice for his kid, but it wasn't fair. The whole situation was… There was no right side to this.
He took a breath to pull himself out of the blame game he wanted to play anyway.
"Okay, well, he was up in his room feeling sorry for himself earlier because he thinks you hate him or something. I know it's not really your problem, but there's only so much I can say to try to convince him. It would mean more coming from you. Unless you really hate him. You don't, right?"
"Hate him? Of course not. You know I don't. It was just the stress of the move and the breakup and everything right when we met… Shit, I should've treated the kid better."
"I know. Now go tell him that. Seriously, it's killing me a little that I had to see him like that over some stupid misunderstanding."
"Was he really that upset about it?"
"Upset enough to ask me not to tell you, so if he asks, you came to your senses on your own."
"He's gonna know."
"He's not gonna know. How would he know?"
Happy rolled his eyes with a smile but dropped it nonetheless.
"I'll go talk to him then."
"Take him out to dinner on me. Wherever you two want. Just do me a favor and actually get to know him. He's a good kid, and you're stuck with him now, like it or not."
