FIC: my love is bigger than a cadillac (MCU, Tony gen, PG-13)
my love is bigger than a cadillac
MCU, Tony & Howard & Maria, blink and you'll miss it spoilers for Civil War
Tony expects, with the air of a child raised by nannies and shipped from boarding school to boarding school, that he will learn to drive from the chauffeur. His father would never, he thinks, take the time to teach him.
But somehow he is sixteen years old and sitting in the driver’s seat as his father explains gears to him. Tony knows about gears; he understands how the inner workings fit together, understands the mechanics. Hell, he built his first motor in grade school. He could be a mechanic by now.
Tony, who has been able to sprint out of every gate, assumes he can do this, no problem.
Howard tries not to look amused when Tony chokes the engine before leaving the driveway. Tony looks at his father choking back a laugh, and expects to be annoyed, but instead something like hope blooms in his chest. How marvelous--how unexpected--to find that his father still has things to teach him.
***
Car accident, they tell him, and he asks for the name of the hospital, and then the officer on the phone says dead, and the rest of the conversation goes unheard, echoing like noises underwater. That's the change, right there, like a switch flipping. The word throbs in his head, and from then on he's different, a man who won't let his chauffeur drive him, a man whose house is empty except for a beautiful view.
***
He identifies the bodies. The morgue is cold, and this registers as a fact, a variable, without him feeling it. They don't look like they are sleeping. They are white, and cold. There are tiny bruises like freckles around his mother's eyes, and except for this and the gash at his father's temple, they could just be wax dolls. Tony looks for the variables. He knows they're dead, but they're not crushed and broken, flesh torn by cracking glass and twisted metal.
He studies his mother's face. When she was younger, she had dark hair. When he was little, sometimes he would watch her get ready for parties, zipping dresses up the buttons of her spine, brushing rouge into her cheeks, pinning up her chocolate colored curls.
The sheet covering her is so unlike anything he's ever seen her in. She always dressed so well, and seeing her without pearls or some fashionable new dress seems so surreal. He thinks about what he'll dress her in for the funeral.
Howard’s eyes are closed, and this is bizarre. Tony is so used to his father's eyes on him, usually narrowed in annoyance. He's unfamiliar without his gaze.
The morgue attendant comes back in the room, and Tony turns away from the bodies. He clenches his hands into fists, and nods when they ask him for the ID.
***
The Mercedes has a crumpled bumper, a broken windshield. The engine is intact.
They tow it to the house; the groundskeeper asks Tony if he's going to rebuild it.
Tony takes the car into the garage. He lays out his tools.
He smashes windows and dents metal, first with a crowbar and then with his fists, until he is too weak to stand on his own. For a moment he let's the car support him, vicious tears in the metal slicing his arms. Tony falls to the floor, aware of there's blood on the hood. He wonders if all of it is his.
***
He speaks at the funeral. There's a reception afterward, flesh pressing and condolences from dusty distant relatives and business associates he's never met. Tony locks himself in the bathroom, leans over the sink in case he's sick. He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, then can't look away.
He has his mother's eyes.
***
Obadiah offers to hire cleaning crews to pack up his parents’ belongings. Tony shrugs off the suggestion. He stands for an eternity in the doorway of his parents’ bedroom. The lights are off, and the curtains are drawn. Tony thinks of being seven years old, sneaking past the sleeping nanny and into this darkened room, his mother lifting the blankets and holding his small body against hers, asking what his nightmare was about.
Tony turns on the lights.
***
Their closets smell like them. He boxes up their clothes, seals in their smells as he tapes over the tops. He keeps his mother's jewelry box, his father's library.
Tony goes down to the garage, carrying in the boxes two at a time. He stacks them against the wall, knowing this part is only temporary. In the corner of the garage, next to the boxes, is the Jaguar Tony stalled in the driveway his first driving lesson. Tony puts down the boxes he's carrying. He places his hands on the car’s metal skin. He swings open the door and lowers himself into the leather sling of the driver’s seat. It is, he realizes, still set for his height.
Tony sets his hand on the stick. The sun had been shining that day, his first time in the driver’s seat. It had cut through the glass, shining across Tony's eyes. The car was warm with the heat of the sun, and his father was holding back a smile.
That was a long time ago.