#I rewatched this recently and had completely forgotten how hysterical it is

[dammit-stark]

good ol’ cousin sam

I‘m rewatching Spiderman: Homecoming and I just realized that the P.E teacher’s name is Mr Wilson so now allow me to present to you my theory that this Mr Wilson is the legendary Sam Wilson’s underperforming cousin... this was originally a head canon but I gotta admit this became not-a-headcanon many, many words ago

no pairing - - 2.3k words

While the family favorite Sam joins the Armed Forces to fight for his country, the other Wilson cousin- let’s call him Raymond, Ray to his friends and family- goes to a local community college and receives a degree in physical education.

Sam’s a few years older, has been climbing the ranks in the military for a few years before Ray even gets into college, and he continues to fight while Ray passes math tests and writes essays that get torn up with red pen. Ray graduates middle of his class. 

The whole family comes to the graduation, except for Sam who’s stuck overseas. Sam sends a real nice congratulatory card anyway and Ray tacks it up on his dresser right next to the card from their Nana who passed and above the picture of the whole family ten years prior.  

Too soon, cousin Sam gets discharged from the military with full honor for some unfortunate freak accident that leaves him injured and itching to fly. Almost all the details surrounding the accident are classified, leaving all their nieces and nephews guessing after supernatural means or clandestine alien attacks. Their imaginative guesses leave Sam trying not to break out into hysterical laughter and Ray rolling his eyes over and over again. Sam missed being home. Ray just likes that the whole family is back together again, complete and whole and good for the soul. 

Ray starts coming back home on the weekends for a few weeks to make sure his cousin is doing alright.

At Auntie Glinda’s, they watch football and eat Uncle Greg's homemade chili as if they were teenagers again. It’s like any other weekend for Ray. It feels weird for Sam, who hates having his feet on the ground and his hands in his lap, but there’s nothing anybody can do about it. He puts on a smiling face, does his best to slip back into the family, but it’s all a little too forlorn to fit right, like the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle had a rip in it and the picture is just barely incomplete.

Sam refuses to watch Top Gun when little Billy so sweetly asks. He helps Auntie Glinda with dinner, but makes himself scarce otherwise. Ray notices, but doesnt know what to make of it.

After a few weeks, Ray stops coming by in all his free time, spends some time at his apartment, gets a cat named Hammy, joins a gym. Sam doesn’t need him. In fact, Sam up and leaves for DC, as independent and ready to move as ever. Before he leaves, he tells Ray that if he was gonna be grounded, he couldn’t imagine not at least trying to help others, whatever that means. Ray just smiles and nods and tries to imagine himself outside of New York. He just can’t see it.

Again, they part ways; things are good.

Then, around the same time that Ray gets his first job at a public school in the center of Queens, Sam meets Steve Rogers.

It’s not the best job in the world, a lot of the kids mouth off and tend to complain when they play anything that isn’t dodgeball, but it’s a job and it pays the bills. On Fridays, Ray orders himself a pizza from the Domino’s down the street and he gets take-out from the Thai place by the school every Wednesday. He’s not saving children in a third world country somewhere like his cousin always did, but he’s happy enough and that’s all that matters.

Out of the blue one day, Ray gets a job offer for a teaching position at a private school for gifted teenagers. He doesn’t remember ever applying for the position, but it comes with a pretty hefty pay raise and an office that doesn’t smell suspiciously like a festering rat problem, so he accepts the offer.

Completely coincidentally, his promotion coincides with the rise of Queens’ Amazing Spiderman on the public’s (and the Avengers’) media radar. Ray had watched in awe as the news revealed the first footage of their local vigilante. Another superhero? A lot of people complain, but Ray doesn’t mind. He never really had a problem with spiders anyway. Birds had always irked him, something about the freakish wingspan and their frail yet powerful little bodies, but spiders were always fine. He spends the night after learning the moniker of Queens’ new hero holed up in his bedroom under the covers watching Spider-Man compilations on his laptop. Late at night, when his brain slows down and he sees that red suit when he closes his eyes, Ray finds himself imagining Sam’s face beneath that mask. 

Cousin Sam just so happens to move back to New York around the same time, too. Another complete coincidence. He starts coming around and visiting about once a week or so. Thai night turns into burger night with frequent guest appearances by Sam, food courtesy of the family diner down the street. The nice family have his and Sam’s order down pat within a month.

Once everything settles and Ray gets used to the promotion, he decides the job’s actually pretty nice. The kids are generally less athletic and less enthusiastic than at his old school, most too busy with their nose stuck in a book or worrying over the state of their manicure to go after the dodgeball, but they’re attentive and for the most part are too afraid of failing his class to dare sassing him too much. Once a week he has to supervise a detention, but considering that it’s a school full of suck-up geniuses, detention is usually pretty barren. At the very least his college debt is nearly paid off. That’s cool.

The same day that one of his students, Pete, stumbles into class with a black eye and a wicked limp for probably the third time, Tony Stark shows up at school.

The rumors about his presence flutter incessantly in the Teacher’s Lounge like the words themself has sprouted wings and were determined to bother each and every person in the room. The science teachers sound like they‘re about to pass out from excitement. Raymond himself doesn’t really get what the big deal is- Tony Stark is just another person. Sure, he had a big shiny suit and he fought crime or whatever, but his cousin Sam fought for the people of the country, too, but you don’t see people wigging out over Sam’s sheer presence.

Ray really just wants to eat his lunch, that’s it. He had picked up a chicken salad sandwich from the bodega under his apartment before heading to work that morning and Nancy made the best chicken salad. A quiet lunch unfettered by gossip. That day, Ray learns that history teachers are surprisingly interested in gossip considering their coursework was based on 200 year old facts.

The last thing Ray expects when he gets back to his not-rat-infested office after lunch is for Tony Stark to be waiting for him. It’s quite a turn of events.

“You’re Tony Stark,” Ray says dumbly from the doorway of his own office. He’d just spent half his lunch being forced into a one-sided conversation about the recent advancements of StarkTech upstate, something about unprecedented, unimagined technology that the market itself isn’t ready for. One man did that alone, tinkered in his office at two am and all but broke the stock market with the sheer power of his brain. This man is standing in Ray’s office. It’s weird. 

Inside, Tony Stark is leaning back in Ray’s creaky office chair, his feet propped up on the desk next to a precariously tall stack of physicals that Ray hadn’t taken the time to peruse through.

Tony Stark peers over his orange tinted sunglasses to reveal a devilish black eye that he seems entirely unperturbed by. He lets his feet fall to the ground with a thud and his face is entirely serious, “Coach Wilson, right?” He says, “Come on in. Take a seat. I won’t bite.”

Ray inches forward, eyes narrowed. There’s a billionaire in his office, beckoning him in, and he doesn’t know why. This wasn’t something that happened to him every day.

As Ray sits, Tony rises from the office chair to peruse the degrees hanging on the wall. Ray remembers one of the science teachers gushing about how Tony Stark went to MIT or some super fancy college with an acronym or something. Tony flicks the bobblehead on the shelf beneath the frames and Wilson can’t look away.

Neither of them says anything. Tony watches the oversized head bobble on the bookshelf as Ray watches the mysterious billionaire. The quiet aches. 

“That chair has awful lumbar support by the way,” The billionaire says suddenly, picking up an old baseball cap and sniffing it carefully. His hands are always moving. Ray sits back in the chair himself, but doesn’t say anything about it. The furniture creaks.

“Mr Stark,” Ray says eventually, “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Actually,” Stark says, turning around, his face serious for the first time since he’d stepped into the office, “I believe there’s something I can do for you.”

Ray realizes then that Stark’s suit is wrinkled, a possible stain forgotten at the hem of the graphic tee shirt. Every description ever given about Tony Stark has provided an image of pristine carelessness, of confidence and ease. Tony Stark’s hands can’t seem to stop twitching. It’s kind of unsettling.

“Have you watched the news lately?” Stark asks.

“I’m more of an ESPN guy myself.”

Tony hums thoughtfully, glances over at the wall of community college degrees for a second time.

“From what I’ve gathered, your cousin is Airman First Class Sam Wilson. He visits you every other Wednesday, checks in on you,” Ray skin prickles. Suddenly, Tony looks like steel, “Is this correct?”

Ray just nods.

“An incident occured in Germany. Your cousin was involved.”

Ray had long been told tales of his cousin’s heroics. Sam usually told them with an air of modesty, a dash of pride. Tony doesn’t spare him the expense.

“Was he injured? Is he okay?”

An out-of-place expression of hilarity traverses Tony’s face And he all but laughs, “No, no. Our, um, friend Sam is fine, scrapefree for the most part actually,” His eyes go weird and unfocused for a moment before returning to Ray like a laser gone haywire, “Unfortunately, he was caught on the wrong side of things. For an indefinite period of time, he will be in prison. Mr Wilson, your cousin is a criminal.”

No. Ray’s cousin was no criminal. No way. Sam joined the army, went off and fought somebody else’s battle instead of getting a degree, instead of living a safe life. He has a big heart with this wretched piece of PTSD shoved between its plates of steel. Sure, things got a little twisted after the whole thing with his friend up there in the sky, but he would always be a good man. Sam Wilson was a hero. Not a criminal. Tony Stark was supposed to be smart, not slanderous, and definitely not wrong. 

“I think you’re talking about the wrong Sam Wilson.”

Tony’s hands twitch, “No, no, I think I’ve got the right one.”

A silence befalls them.

“I don’t believe you,” Ray accuses. Just because Tony Stark was a billionaire with an ego didn’t mean he could just waltz into somebody else’s office and defame their cousin right to their face, “You’re lying.”

“Tell me,” Stark says, “How is it you think you got this job? All on your own?”

Ray stares.

“Yeah, no,” Tony wipes a finger along a dust covered bookshelf, circles the office again. It’s a pretty small office. He paces over his own footsteps as he continues, “Sorry to break it to you, but you were all part of the plan. Wilson’s plan. But he- he messed up.”

Tony looks hurt. There’s a crack in the facade, a break in the airwaves. Ray’s so used to coaching emotional teenagers through the inevitable products of sleep deprivation and hormones every day, he spots it from a mile away. Tony continues like it’s nothing, a tendril of something else, not pain or betrayal or some drama that’s far beneath his celebrity status. God, Ray’s so tired.

“Where’s Sam? He demands, leaning forward against his desk, “Did you do something to him?”

“Sam Wilson is currently located in the most secure prison in the world. In the middle of the Atlantic. Otherwise undisclosed. Confidential, you have to understand.”

Ray’s eyes are narrowed dangerously on Tony Stark.

“What could he possibly have done?”

Ray isn’t thinking about himself anymore, he doesn’t care if he got his job through improper means or through hard work or through whispers up a chain of command. He just wants to know what happened to his cousin. He wants to know what happened to the good, caring, hard-working man that he had deigned to call family.

“Look,” Tony supplants, hands waving animatedly as his feet finally remain still, “It’s all very complicated. He broke some laws, defied the UN. It’s where he belongs, he put himself there,” Tony only looks distantly sorry, a regret misplaced from another dimension of time maybe, “In the end, he lost his title.”

“What title? I know for a fact that my cousin hasn’t been in service in years.”

Tony just stares, eyes narrowed, “Do you not know?”

Ray remains quiet, and then Tony’s eyes grow. He takes a seat opposite Ray, hands gripping the ledge of the metal desk as he peers into the confusion flashing across Ray’s express, “Oh my god, you don’t know.”

Ray crosses his arms, and Tony has to hand it to him, he’s certainly an indignant man, “I know everything I need to know about my cousin, Mr Stark. You don’t need to come in here and tell me things that don’t need to be said. I’d like it if you left.”

Tony’s grip tightens. He looks… confused, maybe a little out of place, suddenly uncomfortable or maybe doubtful or maybe they’re one in the same, but he makes no move to rise, “How do you not know?” The silence is enough, “Raymond,” He says seriously, “Sam Wilson is- was- an Avenger. He went by the codename Falcon. He had gone on nearly fifty missions with us. He lived in the Tower most weekends. You didn’t know?”

Ray doesn’t believe it.

While he was here, in the middle of dingy ol’ Queens with a bachelor’s degree from an unassuming college and a neatly laid out weekly menu, Sam was off in Manhattan lounging around with billionaires and saving the world over and over again. Then again, maybe it isn’t so out of the question, it’s just… a lot at once.

“Why are you telling me this?” Ray demands. His head is starting to hurt. Who would have thought that megalomaniac superheroes could be worse to deal with than moody, brainiac teenagers being forced to exert themselves physically for a grade?

Tony shrugs, “Why do you think?” He’s nonchalant, at ease, a line of platitudes expressed over his face before he finally says, “We’re really shorthanded with all the dissenters. I wanna offer you a job.”

“Wait- what?”

Tony looks more than a little smug, “Let me tell you about a kid named Spider-Man.”