Chapter Text
~* July, 1972 *~
Edwin Jarvis, ramrod straight and stripped to his undershirt and trousers, did not turn from the sink to growl his answer. "Howard."
"I heard him come in," she nodded. "He was turning his guts out in the toilet from the sound of it." She didn't mention having locked the door so the drunken fool wouldn't take it into his head to visit his wife and make her migraine the worse for it. "Apparently not the first time today, then?"
To that, Jarvis didn't answer, just wrenched the tap closed as if he'd have liked to pull the whole thing from the wall and throw it. The stink was sharper closer to, but between the baby Maria had given birth to, and the one she'd married, April had smelled worse in her time at Stark Manor. She let neither the lingering smell, nor the butler's glower give her pause. "But since Maria came home in a cab three hours ago, I'd thought he would get his ownself home and not trouble you on your holiday." She glanced into the sink, where Jarvis best Bond Street jacket and waistcoat puddled darkly, then turned to her baking cupboard for soda to lift the smell out of the wool.
"He mightn't have troubled me," Jarvis clipped, red to the chest with suppressed temper. "Only the Senator's wife rang when she took away his keys, and with the police commissioner there at the party, he didn't want to hotwire the car himself. Thank Heavens I was here to take the call."
"I'd have answered," April replied, and let the smug curl of her voice say that she would have driven out to the Senator's barbecue, collected Tony, and then left Howard behind to walk home or sleep himself out in a ditch, whichever he managed the better.
Jarvis' sniff betrayed that he'd heard the unspoken clearly. "You were seeing to Maria," he answered stiffly, then his voice softened a trifle to ask, "I'd not have wanted to distract you. It seemed like a bad episode when she came in earlier."
April nodded, not trusting her tongue. All of Maria's migraines were bad these days, and coming closer together as well. All any of them could do for her was to give her quiet and darkness, coax her to new doctors when she'd go, and hope that things would get better somehow. "How is she now?" Jarvis asked.
"Sleeping," she sighed. "Or she was, before Howard came bashing about and rattling things. I'd just come down to fetch some crackers and weak lemonade, in case she might manage to eat a bit, and oh, just be quiet," she bit out when Jarvis made as if to shoo her along. "You know as well as I that she'll most likely ignore them anyway. Whereas you're standing there with sick all down your best trousers as if it'll wipe out on its own, which it won't. Let's have them in with the rest then."
"Mrs. Sloane-" Jarvis huffed.
"Mr. Jarvis," she mimicked his tone without mercy and clapped the box of baking soda on the counter. "You know I don't care a fig for your shorts or what you've got in 'em. I'm trying to save your best suit here." He glared, and she gave it straight back to him with a grin for spice. "I might not enjoy wrestling you down and stripping your smelly trousers off you right here in the kitchen, old man, but you should know I'm not morally opposed to it or anything..."
Jarvis rolled his eyes heavenward, but unbuttoned and let the black cloth slither to the floor without another word.
April collected them as he stepped clear and pitched them into the sink. "And just why," she asked, using a wooden spoon to poke the fabric under the water, "couldn't Miss Tandry have driven Howard and Tony home from the barbecue?"
Taking the damp sponge she offered, Jarvis wiped at the remaining stain along his shirt tails with a grimace. "Because Miss Tandry tendered her resignation this morning after breakfast," he replied in a voice so even and inflectionless it might as well have been a snarl.
April whistled lightly through her teeth. Another governess gone, and this one after only four months. "Was it Tony this time, or Howard?" she asked, worrying the sodden clothes with her spoon and watching the water cloud.
She felt, rather than saw Jarvis' weary shrug. "Does it matter? She was not equal to the task required of her, and..." The sponge slapped down into the shallow water with a curiously final sound. "And realizing that, realizing that her best efforts could make no headway against the obstacles ranged against her, and that she would be neither recognized, nor thanked for her struggles against those obstacles, she rather shrewdly chose to leave."
Her back stiffened at that, at the tone of exhausted, disgusted resignation that stained her best friend's voice like sick in the water, and April turned to stare. Jarvis did not meet her eye, just wrung his wet shirt against the kitchen towel as though he wished it had breath he could choke away. "Edwin," she murmured, feeling a chill of angry dread across her shoulders.
He did not meet her eye, merely wrung and wrung and choked every drop of water from his ruined shirt. "I left my home for this life, April, did you know? I'd so little left after the blitz, but I still had family, and friends I loved then, and I'd have found a situation in London, helped to rebuild it after, only... Howard Stark, genius hero of the SSR wanted to take me on, and I was... flattered." He said the word the way he might have said 'an idiot'; thick and brittle with disgust. "I left England, left everything I knew, thinking that surely the aide and ally of such a brilliant man, such a driven man must carry with him a sense of purpose, of destiny perhaps... or at least of self respect." He laughed then, an arid, aching sound, and shook out the strangled towel with a snap. "Lately I have come to feel not much like any sort of man at all – more like a tick, dangling from a rabid dog."
And then he turned and took himself off out of the kitchen; as stubbornly erect in pants, socks and knee-garters as ever he'd been in wool and linen. Habit, April realized, was keeping his spine locked straight where pride could not do the job, and that, she would not have. Not at all. She slung the spoon onto the counter, took hold of her temper in both hands, and marched after him.
"It won't work you know," she said, hard on Jarvis' heels as he climbed the stairs to the servants rooms. "Howard's not going to let you leave – he never has before." Still angry, or perhaps foolishly ashamed of his outpouring, the man didn't answer, and so she pressed on. "He knows damned well this place would never hold up without you, Edwin. It'll be full on revolt within a week; barricades in the ballroom, gardeners handing out the pitchforks, and there's bound to be explosions as well."
That won a huff, and she chose to take it for grudging amusement, though he didn't slow, or even acknowledge her at all. "That's why Stark's always gone begging after you every time you've left before," she went on. "Because he's an arse of a genius who hasn't the wit to maintain a damned thing once he's built it, and he bloody well knows it. Nothing's changed there."
"Well perhaps it's time it did so," Jarvis growled at last, throwing open his door and marching into his room. He didn't try to close April out of it, which showed the man still retained some vestige of sense. "Perhaps without others picking up what he drops, the man might learn how to-"
"Bollocks," April cut him off without mercy. "That one, learn any damned thing that doesn't suit him? The man is rich, and always has been! He'll only hire someone else, who'll then only bungle the job trying to learn it, and the rest of us will be stuck straightening up the results."
He fixed her with a glare, but didn't contradict. Then he turned back to his wardrobe, reaching for a charcoal grey dinner suit April knew damned good and well he'd only just bought, and dearly too. It was still in its plastic sheath, unworn, and entirely above the kind of day this was turning out to be. She marched over and slapped his hand away from it. "Oh, for heaven's sake, it's still your day off man!" April said and plucked a pair of brown tweed trousers out of the wardrobe. She thrust them at his chest, then turned and scooped up a red golfing jersey and tan cardigan and added them to the stack.
"Now put those on and tell me, really, what this is all about. And none of your ancient history, either," she warned, putting up a finger. "You're not to pretend we don't know each other after all these years, or that I can't see right past your stiff upper lip."
His glare remained intact for a long second, but when April settled her hands to her hips and thrust up her chin, he relented with a sigh that as good as said he was only indulging her because she was being damned inconvenient. "There were to be fireworks at the barbecue," he murmured as he buttoned down his ruined shirt.
April glanced out the small window at the long, low light of a New York summer afternoon, and nodded grimly. "Ah yes. I do recall our young tyrant mentioning something about that." By which she meant to say that Tony Stark had been over the moon about fireworks from the moment he'd learnt about the barbecue, and for going on three weeks now, had been chattering about them, history, chemistry, and construction, to any of the staff he'd been able to coax into listening. April had even heard the boy begging Howard to buy him chemicals so he could build his own contribution to the barbecue's display.
She sat on the narrow bed and gave a sigh. "And now, because of his Ma's head and his Da's liver, he'll have no fireworks at all but what he can see from the roof, poor mite."
"He didn't so much as cry," Jarvis said after a long silence, trousers held loosely before him as if the effort of stepping into them was too much. "When I came to drive them home, he was polite to the hostess, quiet and obedient in the car... stoic as a child could possibly be with his own father acting out a tantrum in the front seat, but..." He faltered, eyes bright with angry tears
"Aye, but he's a child still," April nodded, ignoring the twist of rage in her own belly and making her voice something like a soft comfort, "and there's only so much he can hide from you, who knows him better than anybody."
Jarvis drew in a deep, shaking breath, and visibly gathered himself. "The boy was crushed," he said, dressing with brisk efficiency now. "But he was also unsurprised at the disappointment. On some level, I think he expected it, however much he hoped for better." He buttoned up his cardigan and turned to face her with a cutting twist of smile. "I know I did, which was why I did not leave the Manor when given the day off."
April met his eye coolly, her belly simmering with rage that would keep for later, even as her heart wrung for this old, wounded friend she'd never expected to like, let alone love as a brother. "Edwin," she said, and held out her hands for his.
He raised his eyebrows, as though to scold her presumption, but she ignored that and waited until his stiff British resolve crumbled. Then she drew him to sit beside her, and slung her arm over his shoulders. "Don't think I'm not conscious of the irony when I say you've got to get your temper in hand here, man," she said. He sniffed, and she grinned at the showy disapproval. "You've every right and reason to storm off and have done with the lot, but you can't, Edwin, you simply can't."
He slanted a glance her way, weary, braced, waiting. He knew what was coming, and so she didn't bother to pull the blow. "You can't leave Tony like that. Who'll he have to count on if he doesn't have you? Me?" she laughed. "I'm bitter, mean, sarcastic -- hardly fit company or care for a child. And Maria, for all I love her, doesn't have the first idea how a mother's meant to behave." April shook her head, brutally honest with herself as well as him. "Between her spoiling Tony rotten when she sees him and then forgetting he exists when she doesn't I'm afraid she's less than useless as a parent. And then there's Howard."
Under her arm, April felt the man sigh. "And then there's Howard," he agreed.
Presently, when the silence had begun to say what they both wished unsaid, she ventured a pat on the man's knee, and a friendly jostle to his shoulders. "Come on then, it's no good sulking like this without a glass in hand, and I daresay himself won't miss a few fingers from the decanter at his condition."
Jarvis chuckled there, clearly tempted, but he shook his head as he settled his long, thin fingers over hers with a pat. "No, I must really check on Tony first. He was right there when Howard..." a single, sweeping gesture and a grimace of revulsion supplied the hint. "He was more than a little splattered himself."
"Ouf. The pig," April snarled, not meaning Tony. It was a token of his lingering temper that, Jarvis didn't scowl at her for the disloyal sentiment.
"I'd asked him to have a shower when we got home, but when last I saw him, he'd changed clothes, but was in his playroom glowering at that toy dog he'd got for Christmas." Jarvis sighed, and smoothed his hair with both palms. "He might require some convincing on the topic."
"And by 'convincing,'" Sloane grinned, "you mean to say 'bribery'. Don't think I don't know your wiles, Mr. Jarvis." Still, she got to her feet and brushed down her skirt as she followed him from the room. "Well, you're lucky; I've got that shortbread he likes on hand. I'll just go and bring some up whilst you open negotiations, shall I?"
***
The reek of ozone and hanging curtain of blue smoke in the air might have had something to do with that. The mechanical guts of the electronic dog strewn across the room as though he'd been flinging the parts at the walls also bore out that supposition, though with Starks, it was often to differentiate total, spiteful destruction of a machine from 'just upgrading it'. Tony's mulish, sooty, surly face, though, lent itself toward the spiteful destruction end of the scale.
"It's mine anyhow," the boy was snarling, brown eyes bright with angry tears as he wrenched at a stuck nut in the metal housing of the leg. "And it's stupid, and it doesn't do anything cool."
"An oversight which, as I recall, you had been amending," Jarvis coaxed idly from his respectable distance, though Sloane could tell just how much he wanted to take the tool away. "Surely smashing your work at this stage is not going to make the device function any better, young sir."
"Doesn't matter," Tony answered, his voice wavering. "It wasn't ever gonna work anyhow. It was no good to start with. Just a dumb toy for dumb babies, and I-"
"And you're filthy and smell like the gutter outside a brewery, young man," Sloane cut through his self pity, setting the cookies squarely on top of a scattered constellation of metal bits and wires. "Were you not told to go and have a shower?"
The glare he shot her was a fiercely loathing thing, tinged equally with humiliation and gratitude. "I changed already," he said, taking a cookie. "It was just on my clothes."
April sniffed pointedly. "I find I disagree. Still, if the idea of showering properly was so far beyond you, you might as well have left your dirty clothes on – I could have tumbled you and them, and Mr. Jarvis' dirty suit into the washer and had done all in one go. It's not as if it'd be a tight fit, small as you are."
"Thank you, Mrs. Sloane," Jarvis cut in as Tony colored scarlet and began to puff up. "But I cannot allow the young sir to be washed via machine."
The boy's color darkened to maroon, but the tears had fled his eyes in favor of snapping anger, so April helped herself to a square of shortbread, and goaded just a little more. "Well it's not as if he'd be the most delicate thing I've ever laundered, you know. I'd see to it he didn't shrink. Still," she sighed, "it's plain enough he doesn't want to go, Jarvis. Shame, that is, after you'd worked so hard on the surprise."
She didn't miss Jarvis' startled flinch as she turned for the door, but whatever else one wanted to call Edwin Jarvis, slow would never suit. He schooled his face into its familiar, disapproving scowl at once as he pushed off the desk to follow. "The surprise which is no longer a surprise, thank you Mrs. Sloane."
"Well, what does it matter now?" she asked, letting him open the door for her so she could pull it closed behind them. She didn't raise her voice then, but made no move to put any further distance between them and the door. "He's as good as told us to go away and leave him alone, and it's not as if your friend David will be able to hold back the Battery Park display a whole day just because young Master Stark's got himself into a snit and would rather smash up his work than go watch them light the fireworks off."
"Mrs. Sloane, you are the worst keeper of secrets ever born," Jarvis groused, his eyes shining with grateful epiphany. "You were meant to merely pack the picnic dinner and keep mum about the rest. Now you've gone and ruined everything."
April grinned at him and took the liberty of winking, because if the old fool had actually forgotten his having dated that dashing young fireman last year, then he bloody well deserved her taking the piss of him for it now. "Well, what kind of a dinner do you call hot dogs and ice cream anyhow?" she complained in her own turn. "The boy'll grow wider than he will tall with that kind of nutrition-"
Tony flung the door open then, face hot, eyes wet and furious as he glared up at them. "You're making it up," he said, the hope in his eyes a terrible thing. "There is no surprise."
Boosting an eyebrow at him, Sloane bit her shortbread in half. "Are we now?"
"We were supposed to watch fireworks at the barbecue."
"Oh, perhaps," Jarvis allowed airily. "And if you like, we may certainly go back to the Senator's house and watch." April restrained a frown, sensing the line Jarvis was pushing between a lure they could actually play out, and an outright lie. "It's only that the Battery Park display is usually the biggest in the city, and you'd seemed more interested in the rockets themselves than the lights and explosions."
April scoffed. "The boy's a Stark. Of course he likes the explosions. But you're neither of you dressed for the Senator's barbecue now, are you? So you'd better go along to Battery Park and have done with it. Assuming you've done with your sulk, Tony."
Tony shrugged, a carelessly insouciant gesture that was about a decade too old for him. But his eyes were canny as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his short pants. "Can we have potato chips with our hot dogs?" he asked it like a dare.
She sighed and made a show of rolling her eyes in disgust. "Only if you put that damned contraption back together again before we go," she told him, pointing to the scattered bits of robot dog still in the play room. "I'll not have Elena trying to vacuum around the gears and springs when she comes in here to clean tomorrow morning."
Tony rolled his eyes right back at her. "I'll just make a better one later," he said, but retreated into the room and began gathering up the wreckage all the same. April shared a look with Jarvis and retreated to the kitchen to leave him to it.
"I don't actually know as how I've got hot dogs in the larder just now," she admitted when they got there. "Shall I ring up the butcher for delivery, or do you want to just buy dinner off a cart?"
Jarvis checked her with a look, reproachful and soft as a hug. "April Sloane, I confess I couldn't care less about the damned hot dogs just now," he said. "You are bitter, mean, sarcastic, and I owe you a great debt for being somewhat brilliant as well. I'd forgotten all about David's hobby. Of course he'll be involved with the city's display."
Grinning with triumph and not ashamed of it at all, April continued to search the refrigerator. "You're still on good terms with him though? Despite not-"
"Good enough terms for this," Jarvis smiled, a genuine, easy expression that did not often see light in the Stark Manor. "And David's always loved children; his reason for getting married last year, ironically."
April laughed. "Oh, don't raise your nose at it, Edwin. I married Charles for a green card, a beard, and the ability to stay where Maria needs me. Not nearly so noble as a love of children, when all's said and sifted. And no, there's no hot dogs to be had in here, and peanut butter won't go the distance, I fear. Street cart it will have to be."
Jarvis smiled, knowing, as April did herself, that Tony would love the horrid cheap food, and positively adore the novelty of buying it on the sidewalk instead of bringing better fare from home. "On days like these, April, I feel nobility of purpose must fall a far second to anything that allows one to be where one is so clearly needed." He settled a hand on her arm for a moment, the fingers long, elegant, and damp with relief. "I might marry you myself one day," he confessed, blue eyes only halfway joking, "if you will keep on being so damned helpful."
April clapped his fingers under her own, gave them a squeeze, and then pried his hand lose. "You might ask, you stuffed up toff," she grizzled over the fond tightness in her throat. "We both know that young Tony's a jealous mistress though. He'll be years in learning how to share his things with anyone. Best you keep to handsome firemen in your off hours, and leave me in the kitchen where I can do less harm, hm?"
His bark of laughter surprised them both. "Well, perhaps I shall," he said with a grin. "I'm off to make a call then. I expect we'll be ready to go in about an hour. And, Mrs. Sloane?"
"Yes, Mr. Jarvis?"
He nodded toward the sink, still full of crumpled, sodden wool. "Have Darla send that suit to the cleaners on Mr. Stark's account, will you please?"
"Of course, Mr. Jarvis," she grinned, fully intending to order another good suit from the man's favorite tailor as well, and tack the total right onto the cleaning account. And if Howard bloody Stark should ask about the accounting, well then April bloody Sloane might just have a thing or two to say to him about the cost of leaving messes like this for others to tidy up.
In the meantime, she set about making up a few sandwiches for show. Tuna, she reckoned. It was the boy's least favorite without being loathed, and having a meal to ignore and feed to the ducks would make Tony's contraband hot dogs all the sweeter.