Written to: Photobooth - Death Cab for Cutie, crosspost from AO3

"I am really very concerned about Tony," Miss Shreve, Tony's World History teacher at UNIS, said to Maria and Howard one brisk November afternoon. She noted that Tony's father didn't really seem to be paying attention, and appeared to be looking dazedly over her shoulder out the window, where grey clouds were gathering on the horizon; they would get snow that night, Miss Shreve felt, and was supremely annoyed by this. She hated the snow, the grey slush that it turned into after only a few hours on the New York roads, how it would frost over on her car's windshield and make her pull out her winter parka and gloves from the closet so she wouldn't freeze to death on her drive to work. It annoyed Miss Shreve even more that Howard didn't seem to be at all involved in his son's progress. If she were being kind, she would say Howard Stark had come to the mandatory meeting a little bit tipsy, his breath sweet with the tang of liquor; if she were being honest, Howard Stark was drunk out of his mind, and Maria had had to support him walking through the door.

"What about Tony?" Maria asked anxiously, worrying her hands in her lap. "Is there something wrong with his academic performance?"

"It's not his performance, exactly," Miss Shreve said, turning back to Maria after shooting a disapproving glance at Howard; Howard seemed not to notice, and Miss Shreve wondered, not for the first time, how exactly this man of all people was the owner of one of the largest corporations in the world. "It's his attitude in class. He is often very inattentive, and usually doodles in his notebook when he is supposed to be taking notes. Additionally, he doesn't seem to get along well with others. His project partner, a young lady by the name of Pepper Potts, has often complained about him getting quickly irritated and snappy with her."

"In fact, besides young Mr. Rhodes and somebody named Steve, it does not appear that Tony has made any friends during his time here, which, as I'm sure you can understand, is rather concerning."

Miss Shreve folded her hands and looked across at Maria and Howard. Howard was still staring distractedly out the window, his eyes bloodshot, and Maria was picking at a knot in her skirt. At the mention the name "Steve," Howard started, turned to her for the first time.

"Steve?" Howard asked, his words slurred. Miss Shreve wrinkled her nose at the wave of alcohol fumes spilling across the table.

"Yes, Steve," she said, forcing politeness. "I've absolutely no idea who the boy is, I don't have a Steven in any of my classes, but with the way Tony goes on about him, you would think this child was everywhere. I've asked his other teachers, and they also have no idea who this Steven is. His math teacher has even gone so far as to suggest that he's pretend! I, of course, said that was completely absurd. How could a thirteen-year-old boy still have an imaginary friend?"

Miss Shreve fixed Maria with beady eyes; Howard was starting to look a little green and Miss Shreve wondered if he would at least have the decency to make it outside before he vomited all over the new marble floors.

Howard wasn't thinking about any of that. With a sudden, startling moment of clarity through his drunken haze, he remembered Steve Rogers, from decades and decades, another lifetime ago, wondered if, just maybe, this was who his son kept talking about. But the nanobots hadn't been broadcasting anything, he remembered that well enough. So how...?

"And so," Miss Shreve was saying, "we would recommend some sort of psychiatric evaluation for Tony. You know, just to make sure that everything's shipshape up top."

"Right, yes, of course," Howard murmured absentmindedly, the first words he'd spoken since entering Miss Shreve's classroom. "I'll make sure of that." He stood up, clasped Maria's hand in his own, forced her up as well. "We'll just be going now so we can attend to this matter as quickly as possible," he said, clumsily fastening Maria's coat around her and stumbling towards the door.

Miss Shreve watched the Starks exit her classroom with narrowed eyes, watched the staggering lean form of Howard Stark as he leaned on Maria and stumbled towards the parking lot. That most definitely wasn't the profile of a Time Magazine's Man of the Year.

"Anthony," Howard said, his words coming in a blur. "Anthony, I need to talk with you."

His son entered the living room, running a hand through a wild tangle of dark brown curls. Howard looked up at him from his position on the sofa - when had his son gotten so tall? when had his voice gotten so deep? - and gestured for him to take a seat. Instead of sitting down beside him, Tony planted himself in the armchair across from his father and looked at him. Howard swore it was like looking into a mirror, just aged a few decades back. But Tony's look, the expression in his eyes, that was all Maria's. That determination, that steady confidence that Howard felt leaking from him day by day.

"Yes, Father?" Tony asked, his voice quiet. Deep. A man already, grown up while Howard looked the other way. "What did you need to see me for?"

Howard cleared his throat, made himself steady, firmly put down the longing for a nice glass of whiskey.

"I had a talk with one of your teachers this afternoon," Howard said, trying to ignore the pounding headache building behind his eyes. "She mentioned that you were friends with somebody named Steve?"

"Yes?" Tony asked, suddenly cautious. Howard could see it in the tensing of his knuckles on the edges of the armrests. "What about it?"

Howard felt nauseous.

"Is this Steve...real?"

"Of course he's real," Tony said. Indignant now. Howard could see that in himself, just like him when he was still young and reckless. "He's a real person."

"Anthony. This Steve...he can't possibly be the one in your room, right? In the monitor of green specks that's been in there ever since you were a child. That's the Steve you're talking about, isn't it?"

Unguarded for a moment, Howard could see the uncertainty in Tony's eyes, the steeling of his resolve as he lied. "No. It's a Steve at school."

Howard sighed, waved his hand and motioned for Tony to go away. He thought it might ruin his credibility more than it already was if he vomited in front of his son, and as Tony's footsteps tapped away down the hall, Howard sighed again, lay down, and waited for his dizziness to subside.

A few days later, while Tony was at school, Howard quietly slipped into his son's room. He looked around, at the soft white curtains hanging still, framing the windows gently. He looked at the bookshelves full of comics and engineering texts, the tops dusty with disuse. Howard looked at the various electrical equipment used as decoration, the buckets of huge nuts and bolts and big plastic wrenches with colourful handles, just the right size for a growing baby boy to use. They'd never taken it out of the room, and Tony had never complained about it or taken any initiative to do anything about them.

He let his eyes drift over to the giant monitor on the far wall of the bedroom, hanging above Tony's desk like some black and green abstract artwork. The green dots were still, like they had been the day he brought Tony home from the hospital, and surely that was a sign, wasn't it? That Steve wasn't, couldn't possibly be alive.

He sat down at Tony's desk, rested his chin on a hand, and stared at the green specks, muttering to himself, to Steve if he was still there - the specks on the monitor remained stubbornly still - until he heard Tony and Maria come home.

Miss Shreve and the other teachers were rather gentle, but rather firm about Tony's psychiatric evaluation. And Howard, too sick with worry about the company and the odd swelling in his abdomen that didn't seem to go down no matter what he did, ignored these incessant requests from Tony's teachers and tried to put the green speckled monitor out of his thoughts for good.

Tony's teachers frowned and chatted about him in the staff lounge during lunch and the breaks the students had in between classes. A favourite topic of gossip was how his psychological adjustment couldn't really be blamed on him; it was all the father's fault, Miss Shreve said over a salad and coffee. Coming in drunk to a mandatory meeting, can you imagine? Didn't even try to hide it.

Poor Maria, she said, her mouth full of lettuce. The poor woman.

Maybe she drove him to drink, another teacher said slyly. I mean, with a face like that, I can't imagine anyone being less than perfect.

Miss Shreve chewed on her salad thoughtfully, and decided privately that that most certainly couldn't be the case. Maria Stark looked too innocent, too timid, to drive anyone to anything. As for the boy, he was sharp, that was a sure thing. But he didn't talk to anyone, not really. He didn't take notes, he wasn't a good student. And it infuriated Miss Shreve - along with all the other teachers - that he still managed to get perfect or near perfect scores.

But without parental consent, no psychiatric evaluation was to be had, and Tony ignored the disapproving glances his teachers gave him while he bent over his notebook and doodled what he imagined Steve would look like. And maybe it was because his name was Steve, maybe it was because Tony really liked him, that the drawings all turned out like the images of Captain America in comic books stuffed along his bookshelves, dusty with disuse.

Something very odd happened a few days ago. I didn't tell Tony about it, the poor boy seems to have a lot on his plate at the present moment, but someone besides him started talking to me. It was a man's voice, deeper, weary, his voice slurred like he'd had just a bit too much to drink.

He introduced himself as Howard Stark. He asked me if I was Steve Rogers, if I would like to talk to him.

Well, I am Steve Rogers, that is very true, but did I want to talk to him? Not at all.

I don't know why I feel like this, but I just have the feeling that he's not a very good person, and from the way he treats Tony - with casual disregard and an affectation of disgust, at least from the way Tony describes him - he can't be a very good father either.

So I kept very silent, not thinking anything at all, and I could hear his breathing, noisy and ragged. He waited for what felt like centuries, but must have been more like hours, before he finally stood up and went away.

Tony came in a few minutes later, talking to me as soon as he got into his room, his words bubbling out rapid and steady, as if he'd been bottling them up all day so he could talk to me. Like he genuinely wanted to talk with me.

I know it will sound a bit creepy to you, but it feels very nice to have this sort of attention again. To be the one someone tells everything to, from trivial day to day things to deep thoughts about the universe. Maybe this was what Bucky felt like? I've no idea. Bucky was always surrounded by girls, almost as if he was flaunting them for the world to see, confident in his own sexuality. Heterosexual. Capital H. No room for interpretation, no wiggle room at all. It made me feel strangled, just being around him.

But with Tony, I feel...free. I've got ample room to breathe. That doesn't make sense, does it? But it's just what I feel.

I never imagined I'd ever be able to feel this way.