Forget Me Not

8: Give Me Hope

Shout out to @LineBerndsen for the title. Thanks so much for the ideas.

Percy liked Agent Coulson... Sort of. He was the sort of person that grew on you, he supposed. Either that or... Yeah, his fed up attitude probably had way more to do with Tony than with Percy or his own personality now that he thought about it. He could see the chill under it, but it was like putting that chill person in a room with an ADHD, autistic, shithead, six-year-old. He left with Director Super-Pissed after handing out a rather colorful and impressive threat involving a taser, Super Nanny, and Tony drooling into the carpet. All in all, Percy approved. Tony sighed when they were alone, picked up the case of his father's stuff left on the floor and plopped it on the couch while Percy settled down next to it to watch as Tony unpacked it.

"I like him. Coulson, I mean." Percy smiled up at Tony with a shit-eating grin and the man couldn't help but snort in response.

"The man's a walking rule book with no real sense of humor... and you like him?" The look on Tony's face made it clear he was questioning Percy's sanity as he pulled out an Arc Reactor schematic, rolled it out to look at it, and then set it on the floor beside him with a grimace.

"Hey, I thought he was very humorous. He just didn't put up with your bullshit, that's why you have a problem with him."

"No, I have a problem with him because he acts like his word is law and-" Tony was cut off by Percy snickering. He was hiding it very poorly behind his hands while he hunched over to try and control the shaking caused by the heavy laughter he was holding back. "What?" Tony Stark was getting annoyed. Percy Jackson may be the man his heart completely belonged to (not that Tony seemed to have a choice in that), the light of his life, an extension of his own person, and someone he damn-near tore himself apart trying to find whether he could remember everything or not, but sue him, he was getting irked by the little shit. He felt emotional enough, as is, he didn't need to be laughed at.

Percy adopted a deep sluggish tone to mock the voice of a moody teenager who may or may not be completely stoned out of their mind. "The parental figures are totally getting on my case. What makes them think they make the rules? I'm just trying to live my life and-" Tony chucked an old Captain America comic book that had been buried in his dad's box at Percy who dodged expertly by twisting off the couch where he crouched on the floor while devolving into a fit of giggles.

"You little..." Percy snatched up the paperback as though he were going to retaliate only for Tony to flinch like a total wuss before he could, prompting a round of maniacal laughter that was outrageous and contagious enough to get Tony laughing too. His irritation fleeing faster than he thought possible, bringing the realization that he wasn't truly irritated with Percy in the first place. That this was what a normal relationship might be like. "I swear..." Tony shook his head, his mood brightened considerably even with his dead father's belonging waiting there for him to sift through.

It occurred to him, belatedly and a little like an epiphany, that maybe that was Percy's point. He didn't want to give the other man too much credence (actually he did and that desire to leap to conclusions that put him on a pedestal was why he had to forcibly inject a grain of salt into any assumption he made when it came to Percy), but the way he lightened the mood felt very in character for him. Tony may be no better than an alcoholic with brain damage when it came to remembering and understanding Percy, but that just seemed to mean his instincts would have to guide him. And they said that the little shit act, while entirely true to form and a definite part of the other man's personality, was also put in play to help Tony. To lighten the mood and detract from the emotionally complicated experience that was looming over him in the form of his shitty dad's old things.

He opened an old newspaper titled Soviet Scientist Vanko Defects and the smile faded from his face.

Don't get him wrong, Tony loved his father, but he didn't always like him. In fact, most the time he hated the man, but he still loved him. It was a twisted and complicated kind of love. He'd have jumped in front of a bus to save the man just a readily as he'd have socked him in the face. They were family, but Howard Stark was a tough man to share a surname with. He was vain and quick to anger and unwilling to listen to anyone he deemed less intelligent than himself. Being his son came with some of the same problems, but also a fair bit of trauma. Tony remembered desperately trying to explain his ideas to his distant father in hopes that the one positive area where the Venn Diagram of their lives overlapped would somehow bring him closer. That hope was dashed when the man treated his genius as stupid and irrelevant and a distraction from what Howard was working on... That summed up his father's attitude toward him nicely. He was a distraction from more important things. Any ideas he had were assumed to be childish and he was quickly dismissed... Except...