#shameless self-promotion time

[essektheylyss]

I AM writing a post-c3 one-shot about Essek trying to blow up his whole life and getting gently bullied into being loved, idiot... but also if you want to read a saga of Essek trying to blow up his whole life and getting gently bullied into being loved, idiot, you can come on down read heir to the devil's fortune right now. And you should, because frankly, it is a delight.

[epiphanyx7]

Thank you! I can't believe I never realized that it was continued on AO3 as well (and that I also never stopped to think about who would *mother* all these adorable children, wow.) After-school science club sounds absolutely amazing :)

You’re very welcome, anon. What was posted on the Archive isn’t much more than that original snippet I posted to tumblr, but I am glad to be able to point it out to you. And this is one of my favourite universes, so, I was happy to re-visit it with you. The after-school science club I thought would be really cool, because Tony would be like a combination of Bill Nye and the Mythbusters team, teaching kids about science because of the cool things you can do with it and just being really enthusiastic about all of it? That’s one of the reasons I thought it would work, even for characters that fandom would probably not have thought would be science nerds. Bruce and Peter are science geeks obviously, but I wanted to show a very young Jan being excited about something she can do with her older siblings AND starting to think about all the different ways she wants to learn about the universe (and change things to suit her.) and Clint wanting to know physics so he can be better at archery, Thor wanting to learn things to impress a girl at first but quickly becoming fascinated by outer space, Natasha who starts out just wanting to see if she can make stuff explode and then getting sidetracked by learning about electronics and how to make new things out of standard parts.

Thanks for letting me be enthusiastic about this story, though. If you have any more questions about the story or universe you should feel free to keep asking. I promise that any and all inquiries are welcome.

Anyways, you asked before about Dum-E. Well, not in a way that actually said anything specific. So I looked through my writing folder and I found the next bit of that story (the only unposted parts I’d already written), which I’ll post here just for you since you were kind enough to ask. It’s not edited or polished, but it’s 100% material I’d completely forgotten about and was delighted to rediscover.

The Sound of Science: Chapter Six

--

“Holy shit, you’re Tony Stark,” the FedEx guy said, gaping at Tony.

Tony gestured for the electronic signature sheet. “Yeah,” he said, prying it gently from the delivery man’s fingers and signing it with a flourish. “That’s me.”

“That’s-- wow,” the man said. “That’s really cool.” He was staring at Tony instead of actually delivering stuff, though, which might eventually become a problem.

“You a fan?” Tony asks.

“Uh,” The man said. His nametag said “Doug” and he was suddenly looking a little shifty.

“Are you one of the picketers?” Tony asked, squinting at him. “Because you should know that this is a private residence where there are children residing, if any camera crews show up I’ll sue the fuck out of you and FedEx. But if you’re anti-war or one of the environmental activists, I’m totally with you.”

“You are?” Doug asked suspiciously. “Because Stark Industries made over ten billion dollars last year due to military contracts, and--”

“Actually, it was eleven,” Tony interrupted. “But I’m a hundred percent behind the need to cut back on weapons manufacturing and the promotion of clean energy and technological resources. The fact that my dad’s company depends so heavily on military contracts is a huge debate on the board of directors right now, and I’ve been trying for years to convince him we need more diversity in our contracts. Not just because of economic reasons, but because we should actually want the wars overseas to end. Being dependent on military contracts means being dependent on warfare, and that’s--”

Doug was looking less suspicious, but then Tony saw the truck in his driveway. “Hey, is that my robot?” Tony asked. “Because I am down to continue this conversation, but you gotta help me unload the robot first.”

“It’s a robot?” Doug asked, eyes lighting up. He shoved the signature tablet into a pocket that wasn’t at all large enough to hold it, but headed for the truck. “Me’n the guys were taking bets, nobody guessed it’d be a robot though.”

“You took bets?” Tony repeated. “Why would you--”

The box beeped at him.

Doug looked at the box pointedly. It was almost as big as Tony, a little over five feet tall, and three feet wide and deep. It beeped again, then wiggled. “Well,” Doug said, “Because of... that.”

“Dum-E...” Tony sighed.

The box whirred excitedly.

Tony resisted the urge to literally facepalm. “Oh-kay,” he said. “Right, how do we--”

“Oh, there’s a trolley,” Doug said, going to the side of the truck. “Let me lower the ramp first, then it’s easy.”

The box beeped again, the top of the cardboard bulging outwards a bit.

In short order the lamp was lowered, the trolley utilized, and the box deposited carefully onto the driveway. Doug the delivery man handed Tony a boxcutter, which was apparently something he carried around with him in the truck cabin.

“Thanks,” Tony said. “Appreciate it.”

The box beeped happily.

“You’re supposed to be on standby mode, you fucking disaster,” Tony told the box.

“Is it okay if I watch?” Doug asked him. “I mean, I can head out if you’d rather. I just. I never seen a robot before.”

“Yeah, hang around,” Tony said, carefully cutting through the tape on top of the box. He pulled back the flaps and looked down.

Dum-E, whose motion had been severely limited in the confines of the box, raised his arm and whirred.

“Oh my god,” Tony said. “How long have you been awake, miscreant? Pepper had you on standby for a reason.”

Dum-E ducked his arm down into the box, then returned with a teddy bear.

Tony stared at the stuffed bear. Doug stared at the stuffed bear.

Dum-E squeezed the teddy, and Tony watched in horror as the thing’s stomach began to glow and the thin, tinny sound of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star began to play. Dum-E beeped again.

“What the fuck,” Tony said.

Doug appeared to be speechless.

Dum-E squeezed the bear again, starting the song over again.

“You--” Tony said. “But-- the-- Ugh.”

Dum-E carefully presented Tony with the glowing and musical bear, and then ducked down into the box again. This time he returned with a LED flashlight.

“Did Pepper know about this?” Tony asked him. “Did she know you are incapable of listening to directions? This is unbelievable. Four days in a goddamned box, Dum-E, really?”

Dum-E gently presented Doug with the flashlight. He then ducked back down into the box and popped back up, this time holding a nightlight. It was one of the press-on ones that were popular with little kids, easy to stick onto any surface and modelled to look like the stark industries arc reactor.

“What the actual fuck, you dumbass,” Tony said.

Doug still appeared to be speechless.

Dum-E beeped, ducked down into the box again, and this time returned with a flash drive. This didn’t also appear to be a child’s toy, so Tony accepted it with as much dignity as he was able (which was not a lot). He shoved the drive into his pocket and glared at his robot.

“Awesome,” he said. Dum-E beeped at him again, extending his arm to carefully pat Tony’s hair with his claw. “Don’t even-- don’t touch me, you weirdo,” Tony muttered, ducking down to cut the sides of the box so Dum-E could escape his cardboard prison. “Seriously, you are a failure of programming and I regret ever giving you sentience.”

Dum-E responded to this with the appropriate gravity, ignoring Tony completely to race forward and then start spinning around. He did a full 360 with his arm, and then followed it up with a couple of donuts on the driveway.

“Stop that,” Tony said. “Don’t get dirt in your gears, I don’t have the facilities to clean any gunk if you get gummed up. Garage, now.”

He pointed at the open garage door, trying to maintain a stern expression. Dum-E didn’t seem to notice his expression, but happily sped towards his new home.

“God,” Tony said. “Robots. I don’t-- I fucking can’t. I have no idea. I can’t believe he was awake the whole time.”

Doug blinked at him. “Holy shit,” he said.

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. “Do I owe you anything? I don’t have a lot of cash on me, but--”

“No,” Doug said, shaking his head. “That was. Holy fuck, Mr. Stark. No. You don’t have to pay me anything. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“You never will again,” Tony assured him.

--

Rogers had a pretty big two-car garage, large enough that there was room for the massive SUV as well as Tony’s car. Even with both vehicles parked inside, there was plenty of room for Dum-E to move around in the garage without scratching anyone’s paint job, so, great.

Tony closed the garage door and stared at his robot, who seemed confused by the lack of computers and scientific equipment. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “It’s not the most technologically advanced of places, but it’s going to have to do.”

Dum-E approached a rack of power tools, raising his arm curiously to touch a drill.

“No,” Tony said, firmly. “No-- no power tools, you haven’t even gotten your blender privileges back yet.”

Dum-E made a noise that was pretty much the robotic equivalent to blowing a raspberry.

“Ugh,” Tony said. “I don’t even know why I wanted to save your miserable metal hide, you ungrateful little shit. Come on, let’s go inside.”

The Rogers house wasn’t the biggest house, but it did have plenty of space. More importantly, it had a pretty big first level and didn’t have a step up between the garage and the actual floor, which meant that Dum-E had no problem navigating his way into the house.

“Well,” Tony said. “This is home for the time being.” He showed Dum-E the kitchen, first, ignoring the way the bot made a beeline for the blender. “No, stop it, we’re doing a tour.” Tony insisted. “Here’s the... uh, I don’t know what this room is called.”

The floor was littered with various doll-type toys, some of which were clearly wearing clothes not marketed towards their particular form. There was a soldier-type action figure doll wearing a prom dress that was both ill-fitting and ill-suited to its particular skin tone. Which reminded Tony of Natasha wanting makeup-- black, gothic makeup, if he based his assumptions on her clothing choices for the first two days of school.

Today, for example, Natasha had opted to wear her black jeans, a black tank top and sweater, and sequin-enhanced black scarf. At this point, Tony was tempted to buy her something adorned with a flaming skull or covered in satanic symbols just to inject a little colour into her wardrobe. The lack of gothic makeup was actually more startling than the all-black outfit was.

“Maybe she should get hair dye,” Tony mused, but Rogers would probably be pissed if he came home and his precious baby had dyed her hair. Parents got weird about stuff like that, or at least Tony assumed they did. Howard hadn’t ever really noticed except for the one time Tony showed up with blue hair and copious eyeliner to some media event and had then been accosted by various makeup experts.

Obie had been appalled, though, and that probably was a better gauge of parental responses than Howard’s ever had been.

Dum-E beeped agreeably.

“Right,” Tony said. “This is our new house, and we are going to have a new project! You’ll like this one. We’re babysitting.”

Dum-E obligingly crooked his claw and made an inquiring noise.

“Yes, I know, we’re way more used to explosions than children, but I have been assured that most children do not enjoy being exploded.” Tony replied. “So we’re keeping them alive until their dad gets back.”

He started picking up toys, more because he needed to do something with his hands than because he cared about the state of the room that has no function aside from being convenient to congregate in. “We need a box for these things,” Tony decided. Dumping the pile of toys beside the couch, he headed off in search of a toy box. Dum-E followed behind him, engine whirring.

--

By the time the kids are expected to be home, Tony has made zero headway into the toy-organization project, but has managed to sweat through his t-shirt, get covered in grime, and discover a treasure trove of tupperware that he can’t actually use. The tupperware is all full, full of stuff, and while some of it appears to be actual garbage-- old newspapers, magazines, and a few items of no discernable value-- there are also things that Tony knows for a fact are previous sentimental treasures that cannot be disturbed. The first tupperware had housed a huge collection of now-obsolete baby toys, as did the second, but the third contained a wedding dress. Tony had stared at it for a while, then carefully packed it up and labelled the tupperware box “Do not Disturb, Contents: Wedding Dress” and continued on his search, but despite finding a whole lot of random stuff, the best he had managed that might be used for toy storage were five tupperware containers with labels that read ????? .

Most of them had Do not Disturb labels, though. Do not disturb: wedding dress. Do not disturb: clothing. Do not disturb: photo albums. Do not disturb: ???

He was now painfully aware of the missing Mrs. Rogers, and the fact that most of her stuff seemed to be carefully packed away in tupperware in the storage rooms was... well. Tony had no idea what to do with that. He was careful not to dig into any of the boxes, and was trying to be respectful, but--

He had no idea what had happened to her. But he did know that he couldn’t do anything with this stuff unless he’d talked it over with Rogers and then with the kids, so--

“I’m going to have to get new Tupperware,” he said. “Dum-E, make a note! Tupperware. Storage bins. Maybe a closet organizer. Oh, and the kids should all have their own rooms. And Natasha needs mascara. She needs makeup in general, not just mascara. Actually, Clint and Thor could probably use a little concealer to deal with whatever hormonal acne problems they’re about to be besieged with.”

Dum-E beeped.

--

The school bus dropped Bruce, Peter, and Jan off right on time, and Tony hustled them inside so he could feed them before Clint and Thor returned to decimate their food stores. “How was school?” he asked.

“Henry put gum in Jan’s ponytail,” Bruce informed him.

Tony looked at Jan, whose Ponytail looked the same as it had that morning. “Uh,” he said.

“I punched him in the nose,” Bruce added. “I have a letter from my teacher!”

Tony stared at him. “You-- it’s the second day of school,” he said. “The second day.”

“Mr. Parker says I’m pre-co-cious,” Peter piped up. “And that spiders aren’t insects because they have eight legs and not six and insects have six legs and spiders are ar-ack-nids and they spin webs from their butt.”

“Hold on,” Tony said. “Bruce, I need that letter from your teacher, please. Jan, did you have a good day?”

Jan smiled at him. “Miss Munroe says there are eight planets in the solar system, but I tolded her there are nine, because Mommy said there are nine, but Miss Monroe says Pluto isn’t a real planet, and I tolded her that she was wrong ‘cause Mommy’s favourite planet is Pluto and it’s teeny weeny like me, and Miss Monroe said that Pluto can still be my favourite if I want but it’s a B planet not an A planet and I tolded her that if it’s a B planet it’s a planet because it’s right in the name, see?”

Tony gaped, shocked at the sheer number of words that had just come out of the little girl’s mouth. “I-- yeah,” he said. He shoved a plateful of cookies in her direction, feeling relieved when she accepted it and sat down on the floor to eat.

Bruce was digging through his backpack, eventually pulling out a crumpled envelope. He presented it to Tony with a flourish before joining Jan on the floor.

Tony eyed Peter. “Did you get into any fights?” he asked.

“Nope,” Peter smiled at him, showcasing his missing tooth.

“Did your teacher send any letters home?” Tony asked him.

“No.”

“Good. Eat some cookies.” Tony shooed him in the direction of the kitchen, where there was also milk waiting for them.

Bruce and Jan needed some convincing to get up off of the floor and relocate to a less germ-filled area, but they acquiesced quickly when Tony just grabbed the plate and walked away from them.

In the kitchen, Peter was gaping at Dum-E, who was wearing an apron to protect his chassis from spills and in the midst of making tony a mid afternoon smoothie.

“Okay, introduction time,” Tony said as he put the plate of cookies on the table. “Dum-E, these are the bratlings: Jan, Peter, and Bruce.” He pointed at each of the kids. “Brats, this is Dum-E. He’s a robot.”

Peter screeched.

[penguinseatsnow]

time for some self-promotion!

So... I created a new blog! A travel blog, to be precise.

It's still very much in the works, but I've got one post up already and many more to come! 

I'm very excited because I love travelling and I've been thinking of a good way to document my travels besides using my physical travel journal (which I will still continue with nevertheless). It's just that I tend to forget some details and the physical entries take time to make, so I thought that having a quicker means to record down my trips would be useful for myself and hopefully others!

Do take a look! :)

http://wanderswonder.tumblr.com http://wanderswonder.tumblr.com http://wanderswonder.tumblr.com

[nepenthe-architect]

#Triptych

It’s difficult to be caught between two religions. It’s even more difficult to feel caught between two genders. At that point, being caught between two worlds, accessible through a door you found in the woods behind your house, doesn’t seem like that big a deal.

Do you like paintings of beautiful creatures, mysterious sounds in the night, doorways to other worlds, discussions of gender and religion, characters with improbable names, and pomegranates?

Part #1 of Triptych comes out��on November 1st. Catch it here.

[amoralheroine]

#Triptych

It's difficult to be caught between two religions. It's even more difficult to feel caught between two genders. At that point, being caught between two worlds, accessible through a door you found in the woods behind your house, doesn't seem like that big a deal.

Do you like paintings of beautiful creatures, mysterious sounds in the night, doorways to other worlds, discussions of gender and religion, characters with improbable names, and pomegranates?

Part #1 of Triptych comes out on November 1st.

[ghxsttype]

I think more people should follow my writing blog and kawaii blog tbh

I have literally 30 times the amount of followers here than on my writing blog and the only thing I post here is pretty pictures and whining. and on the kawaii blog you get the bonus of pretty pictures minus the whining

[epiphanyx7]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Incredible Hulk - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Hulk (Marvel), Hawkeye (Marvel), Original Female Character, Steve Rogers, Tony Stark Additional Tags: POV Hulk, Hulk Smash, Children, Canon-Typical Violence, Robots, Friendship, Protective Hulk Series: Part 2 of How to Win Friends and SMASH! Summary:

There is a noise. Not robot noise, this is human-noise, a crying-noise. Hulk squints but there is no human.

Close eyes -- human noise, crying. Robot noise-- going to shoot!

[epiphanyx7]

The Sound of Science 1/? (WIP)

Once upon a time, I imagined Tony taking a job as a nanny when his father cuts him off. And then I imagined Steve Rogers as the Avengers' father, trying to take care of them after his wife Peggy passed away, and, uh. Then it turned into a Sound of Music/Avengers fusion, where Tony is Maria, and instead of music, it's science (and robots!).

So, uh.

Alternatively entitled “How do You Solve a Problem Like Tony Stark” “The Von Rogers Family Singers” “Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti BOOM” “Nanny McTony” and “Raindrops on Roses and Robots with Pincers”

--

“I hate him,” Tony vowed into his phone. He was huddled down in the front seat of his car, wrapped in three sweaters and his old winter coat, shivering.

“Tony, he’s your father.” Pepper said soothingly into his ear. Her voice was just the right amount of sympathetic, but not gratingly sycophantic.

“He’s an idiot,” Tony replied bitterly.

“So are you.” Pepper, at least, wasn’t mean about it.

Sighing, Tony rubbed his free hand through his hair. “Pep, what am I going to do?” He whined. “I can’t... I can’t go back. Not now. Not when he’s being so...” He trailed off. His father and he had never really gotten along, but this past year had been really bad. Really, really bad -- and now, with Howard insisting Stark Industries maintain their production lines for weapons, when Tony knew firsthand that the weapon-making industry was causing more problems than it solved---

Okay, he didn’t really care that he was fighting with his father, but this whole ‘being disowned’ thing was kind of a bummer. “Pepper...” Tony sighed. “Help me, Pepper!”

She made a pleased noise. “Look, Tony, I’ll do what I can-- but you and I both know that the only way to change Howard’s mind is to make him think it’s his own idea.”

“Yeah. Psychological manipulation, you’re good at that,” he admitted. “Just, promise you’ll try?”

“Of course I will,” Pepper said. “I’m not going to let Howard take everything from you.”

Tony huddled down into his pile of sweaters and shivered a little harder. “Okay, in the meantime,” he said. “I need a thing. A job.”

There was a meaningfully long pause, before Pepper replied. “Are you sure that’s what you want to do, Tony? I mean, you could probably find a friend to let you in... or...”

“I am living in my car, Pepper,” Tony said grimly. His teeth were going to start chattering. Why was it so cold? August was still summer, wasn’t it? “In my car,” he repeated. “You know, the convertible?”

“Where exactly are you going to get a job?” Pepper asked him. “If you go to work for any of Stark Industries’ competitors, Howard is never going to forgive you. Forget disowning you to teach you a lesson, he’ll have you written out of his will and get his lawyers onto your inheritance from your mom, too. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if even Obie wrote you off as a lost cause after something like that.”

“Please, Obie loves me,” Tony scoffed. “And besides, I was thinking I’d lay low for a while. Howard can’t get pissed at me if I work in a coffee shop or something, right?”

There was an even longer pause. “Tony, you know working is, um, work, right?”

“I need a job.” Tony reminded her. “And if I can’t do something in the field without pissing off the old man, I’m gonna have to think outside of the box. Someone will hire me.”

“Someone would hire Tony Stark, genius engineer, without hesitation,” Pepper agreed. “But you can’t get a job with any of those people without risking your future with Stark Industries. So you leave the field, that means you’re going to be looking for an entry-level position with no experience, no references, and nowhere to live in the meantime, Tony.”

“How hard could it be?” Tony asked bravely.

He had an idea of just how hard his life was going to suck until Howard decided he was too much of an embarassment to be on his own... but in the meantime, he was determined. He was NOT going to go crawling back to his dad.

“Look, I’ll just... use mom’s name.” Tony suggested. “I can be a Carbonell for a while. Legally, it’s iffy, but if I put Stark on the background check and admit Carbonell is an alias, I’m good. Scrap the experience, write me up as if I haven’t done anything since MIT. Someone is going to want to hire a smart guy like me.”

“If you say so,” Pepper said doubtfully.

--

Two days later, Tony was still living in his car, his credit cards were all being declined, and he really, really needed a shower.

“Pepper,” he said, desperately, as he answered his phone on the first ring. “Please tell me you can help. Help me. Help me, Pepper!”

“I found you a job,” Pepper said. “It’s the only offer we’ve gotten on your account, and they’re not even waiting for an interview. If you can get there by this afternoon, you’re hired.”

“I love you,” Tony sobbed.

“I am pretty sure you’re going to kill me,” Pepper replied.

--

The thing with children was, Tony hated them.

Like, hated them.

Despised them, in fact.

They were all whiny, snot-nosed, sticky little monsters with no sense of personal space and no understanding of computer programming, so as far as Tony was concerned, they might as well be designed purely to infuriate him. The only good thing about kids was that, unlike dogs or cats, they didn’t make his eyes itch.

Tony eyed the group of them suspiciously.

“Do you have names, or something?” he asked.

They glared at him. All of them. There were like, a hundred tiny, sticky children in the room, and they all hated him already.

On the bright side, at least they lived in a big house. If he stayed on, Tony would get his own little apartment, which means he could have a hot shower for the first time in three days. That had got to be worth something, even if he did have to deal with the spawn of Satan.

“Who’re you?” one of them, a girl, demanded. She had bright, bright red hair, either because of an unfortunate accident of birth, or because somebody let her rob a salon. She was fortunately not as freckly as other kids, but Tony didn’t think that the hair colour is natural. Natural red is a little more... carroty. Like Pepper, who keeps slapping him when he calls her carrot-top, but hey, it’s not his fault she looks like a Weasley.

“I’m Tony.” He answered.

He carefully counted the number of children, surprised when he realized that there were only six of them. Six was still way too many, but it felt like he was surrounded on all sides and about to be violently trampled, so he’d expected at least fifty of the little demons.

The children shifted, looking around at each other.

“Are you the new nanny?” One of them asked.

Tony glared. “I’m not a nanny,” he protested. “I’m a temporary caretaker, tutor, and supervisor.” That sounded better in his head than outloud, and the children didn't look impressed. Fuck. He was a nanny.

“So... you’re a nanny,” one of the others said.

Tony sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and then looked at them.“Okay, I can’t do this,” he said. “Line up, order of height. Shortest on this end, tallest on that end, backs to the wall.”

Strangely enough, all of the children immediately followed his instructions, lining up quickly. They looked at him, expectantly, quietly. Looking at their posture, the military posture the boys had adopted, the hands-behind-the-back pose, he had to wonder what the hell kind of life these kids were living.

At their age, tony would immediately have declared war on anyone idiotic enough to tell him what to do.

Seriously, something had to be wrong with these children. Aside from the fact that the woman at the agency had described them as “hellions,” “beyond help” and, most impressively “the worst children I’ve ever met, bar none.” Of course, Ms. Hill had never met Tony as a child, so her opinion was probably biased.

“Names,” he said. “Introduce yourself. First name, nickname, I don’t care, just tell me what you want me to call you and how old you are. And one thing about yourselves, if you can manage to hold three whole thoughts in your heads at once.”

The second-tallest boy glared at him. Tony beamed at him, glad at least one of them had some rebellious spirit.

The tallest boy was blond, blue-eyed, and in the middle of that awkward, gangly stage of adolescence where his hands and feet were too large for his body and he looked like a large pile of elbows. “My name is Thor,” he said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “I’m fourteen, and I like cheese.”

The second boy, as blond as the first, but slightly shorter, more freckled, and still glaring at Tony, stepped forward. “Clint. Twelve.” he said, eyes narrowed at Tony. “And I don’t need a nanny.”

Tony beamed at him. This one was his favourite, because he was a cheeky little motherfucker.

“Natasha,” the redheaded girl said. She actually did have a few freckles, across the bridge of her nose. “Twelve. I,” and here she paused, clearly thinking hard about what to say. Finally, she raised her eyes, met Tony’s gaze squarely, and said, “I also like cheese.”

Tony could just feel a headache coming on.

“I’m Peter,” This one was a good foot shorter than Natasha, and had dark brown hair. “I’m eight years old and I like cheese too.” He smiled, and Tony could see he was missing a tooth. He also had freckles on the bridge of his nose, but not as many as Clint, or even Natasha, did.

“I’m Bruce,” the youngest boy said. He didn’t have freckles, not that Tony could see, but he did have huge, comically oversized glasses perched precariously on the bridge of his nose, and ears that were too large for his head. “I’m six and a half and I’m in the second grade and I like cheese but I like ice cream better and I like robots but Clint says robots aren’t real and yes they are but unicorns aren’t but maybe they are just because I haven’t met one doesn’t mean they aren't real and I haven’t met a robot but that’s okay because I still believe in them and this is Jan and she’s six and a half too and we’re twins but not identical twins because Jan is a girl and I’m a boy, also Jan is in the first grade not in the second grade like me, but Papa says that doesn’t matter we can still be twins and play together at recess but Jan doesn’t want to play on the slide she only likes the swing set and sometimes we make sand castles or play tag, but when we play tag Jan always wins because she’s faster than me.”

What.

Tony blinks at him, but the little girl next to him, shortest of all, doesn’t say anything. She shrinks back when Tony looks at her, hiding behind her twin brother.

From what he can see, these kids are weird, but no more or less so than any other children he’s ever met. Why had the agency been so desperate to find someone? Tony had been expecting these children to be possessed by the devil, not weirdly obedient and only a little bratty.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m Tony, I’m older than all of you, I can’t cook so don’t ask me to. If you need help in school, feel free to ask me for help, but not if it’s art class, because I am not an artsy type of man. I, for what it is worth, am not a big fan of cheese, so you don’t have to worry about me eating all of it. And from what I remember, I’m supposed to be meeting your dad, so where is he?”

“He’s behind you,” a deep voice interrupted.

Tony turned around, manfully repressing a yelp, and glared at the newcomer.

“Steve Rogers,” the man said, holding out a hand. He was tall, and blond, and blue-eyed, with a sharp jaw and strong nose and beautifully defined cheekbones, and he probably would have been good looking if he smiled. He wasn’t smiling.

Tony didn’t shake the offered hand, instead taking a step back. “Do you often leave your children unattended in the same room as a complete stranger?” He asked.

“Do you often show up on your first day of work without bothering to shave?” Rogers countered.

Tony glared at him. The not-shaving thing had been a side effect of the not-showering, not-being-able-to-afford-breakfast, and not-having-time-to-do-anything-without-being-late. He might look like a hobo, but at least he had a good reason. Good reason to look like a hobo because technically, he was a hobo.

“I said I’d come by and meet your family, Mr. Rogers,” he said, cooly. “I didn’t agree to work for you.”

Rogers looked more than a little pissed off, his jaw tightening as he considered Tony. “Captain,” he said, finally.

“Excuse me?”

“Captain Rogers.” He inclined his head. “I’m a Captain in the United States Army.”

“Great, and here I was trying to get the hell away from the Military,” Tony snapped.

“Watch your language in front of my children, Mr. Carbonell,” Rogers snarled.

“Sure thing, Cap.” Tony shrugged, turned back to the kids. “Why don’t you go entertain yourselves while your father and I talk business, kids?” he suggested.

He was going to take the job, even if it was just to crawl into a shower stall and wash four days worth of filth off of himself, but Rogers didn’t need to know that.

Rogers didn’t look happy, which was fine. Tony wasn’t here to make the bastard happy, he was here to deal with his own shit until he could convince Howard to see why his business plans suck. Tony was not going to be a goddamned nanny to six bratty children for the rest of his life, and he didn’t care if Captain Rogers liked him.

“Let’s go to my office,” Rogers said.

“Fine.”

--

Rogers has a small office, with a large, antique-looking desk and lots of bookshelves. “Have a seat,” he said.

Tony looked at the chairs -- the one behind the desk is high-backed, leather, and looks comfortable. The others remind him of what it must be like to sit in a principal’s office to get yelled at, at once both too small to really fit him and uncomfortable, hard, and uncushioned.

“I’d rather stand.”

Rogers made a little huff of displeasure. “Look, Mr. Carbonell, it’s obvious that you’re not suited to--”

“Shut up,” Tony snapped. “Look, Rogers, it’s nice that you’re pretending you don’t need me here, but you really, really do. So why don’t you tell me why the agency you’ve hired to take care of your children is so desperate to pawn you off on a newcomer like me? No references, no experience, but they assured me you’d hire me on the spot. That leads me to believe you have no other options. Why is that?”

“I don’t care what the agency seems to think,” Rogers snapped back. “I’m trying to look after my children, but the people they’ve sent so far have been entirely unsuitable, and--”

“By which you mean, the people they sent so far have been experienced, qualified professionals with references.” Tony clarified.

Rogers glared at him.

“Look, if you don’t want me here, tell me.” Tony said. He’d probably cry, if that were the case, but worst case scenario he’d get back in his car and drive to DC to visit Rhodey. At least he’d be guaranteed a meal and a shower afterwards, even if he did run out of money.

Rogers stayed silent.

“Wow, okay,” Tony hadn’t really been expecting that, so he floundered a while. “What’s wrong with your kids? They don’t seem to be possessed by Satan or like, Barbie fanatics.”

“There is nothing wrong with my children,” Rogers snarled.

O... kay...

“Right,” Tony sighed. “Fine. What happened to the last nanny?”

“She ran screaming from the house, yelling something about rats.” Rogers said through gritted teeth. He avoided looking Tony in the eye.

... Interesting. Tony filed that one under ‘probably psychological torture or pranks by schoolchildren’, although he had to be curious about their methods. He’d never made any of his own nannies actually have a psychological breakdown, and he’d been... one heck of a shitty little brat. Of course, he also hadn’t had backup in the form of siblings, so. Maybe they weren’t really all that inventive.

“The nanny before that?”

“Was convinced that aliens were using my children to communicate with her.”

Wow. Another point in the ‘psychological torture’ column, and once more, Tony was at a loss to explain the methodology. Maybe he could make a case study out of the hell-brats and sell an award-winning book, or just ask them how they did it and sell the secret on the black market. Howard would be out of a job in no time if the world leaders started using these kids’ tactics instead of missiles.

“And before that?”

“Arachnophobic.”

Tony thought about this. “Is there some sort of reason that would factor into daily life here?” he asked, when Rogers didn’t seem to be offering any further explanation.

“Peter,” Rogers said, sighing. “He... collects spiders.”

“I... see.” Tony did not see. Tony absolutely did not see.

“Live spiders.” Rogers clarified.

Tony stared at him.

“And he then decided to store them in the Nanny’s suite.” Rogers continued. “Without telling her.”

“Wow,” Tony said, genuinely impressed. “Wow, okay. That’s... that’s something. Peter’s the one who...” he stops himself before he can finish that sentence with ‘likes cheese’ because Tony does not need to sound like even more of an idiot. “Peter’s the one missing a tooth?” he hazarded.

Rogers nodded. “He got into a fight at school.”

Tony raised both his eyebrows. “A fight? Seriously? He’s eight. Eight years old. What was the fight about? Did they get too cranky before naptime?”

Rogers didn’t answer, instead opting to make a wide, confused gesture with his hands. “Look, Mr. Carbonell--”

“Tony.”

“Tony, it’s true that my children can be somewhat of a handful, but they’re children. They’re supposed to be a handful.” Rogers seemed to genuinely believe that.

Was he living in an alternate reality? He seemed to be completely unaware that it was unusual for nannies to run screaming away from their charges, especially with the rats and the aliens commentary. Tony decided not to disillusion him, because honestly, he felt a lot more comfortable with the children if he knew for a fact that they were gonna try their best to break him. Psychological warfare and underhanded tactics were the sort of thing Tony was very capable of dealing with. After all, he’d handled a life of academia. And living with Howard. He could handle whatever torture six brats could come up with.

“Let’s talk details,” Tony said, deciding to give the poor man a break. “You pay me weekly. I get the suite and the keys to the SUV if I need to take the kids out-- I’ve got my own car if I’m not shipping all the children around. I’ll need a copy of their schedules, extracurriculars, that sort of thing. Are they registered for school? If not, we’ll need their birth certificates and immunization records before we get them registered, schools require all sorts of documentation now...”

The list of demands is actually pretty long, and Rogers listened to the entire thing with a serious expression. “You’re serious about this,” he said, looking at Tony strangely.

“I might not be experienced dealing with children, but I’m used to being in charge.” Tony said cooly. Besides, the R&D department at SI had pretty much been a bunch of whiny babies, just in grown-up bodies. Actual children couldn’t be any more difficult to deal with. Probably. Hopefully.

“I spend a lot of time away,” Rogers said.

“I can tell.” Tony shrugged. “Not a big deal. Make sure I have an emergency contact number, that you’ve given permission for me to pick the kids up at school, sign for absences, and whatnot. If you’re out of the country make sure there’s someone with power of attorney who can make legal or medical decisions for your children on your behalf if you’re not available, and--”

The list of things that parents need to do to care for their children while absent isn’t that complicated, actually. Tony had known the whole thing by the time he was eight, and most of his life had been entirely or partially under Jarvis’ control before he even started school. Howard’s life as an absentee father was at least benefitting Tony now, when he could pretend it meant he knew more about caring for children than he did about being abandoned.

Rogers looked at him, calculatingly, for a very long time.

“Am I hired?” Tony asked, but he already knew the answer.

--

So all he had to do was take care of six children. That couldn’t be that hard, right?

Tony crawled into bed, exhausted, wondering why ‘family dinner’ was a real thing, in a house where apparently they did not have a computer or even a television and the children all retreated to their rooms and glared out the window at the sunlight until it was time to have another painfully awkward conversation with their own father.

He called Pepper.

“Pepper,” he said, and then stopped, because had had no idea what he wanted.

“It’s okay, Tony,” Pepper said, because Pepper was wonderful.

“Can you do me a favour?” He asked, feeling miserable and maudlin and homesick.

“What is it?”

“Can you check on Dum-E for me?” he asked, wondering if he sounded as pathetic as he felt.

Pepper sighed softly. “Of course I will, Tony.”

--

Day one dawned bright and early, and by bright and early Tony meant it actually happened at dawn. As in, sunrise. As in, the sun had not finished rising, and there was a loud, pounding knock on his door.

Tony, who had fallen asleep at 3 AM while on the phone with Pepper, screamed and fell out of bed, rolled around trying to detangle his sheets, and then flung the door open, furious, to glare at Steve Rogers’ stupidly handsome face.

“What do you want?” he said, although it came out more like a low growl of fury. Like a panther. Or a disconcerted kitten.

Rogers stared at him, wide-eyed, and then he said, in a strange voice, “Breakfast.”

“I don’t cook,” Tony reminded him, although that possibly sounded more like a squeak of protest. His morning communication skills still weren’t that great. He tried again. “No,” he managed to choke out, still glaring for all he was worth.

Rogers licked his lips, made a hand-wavy gesture at Tony’s bare torso, and then said, “Get dressed, Tony.”

“I do not start work until eight o’clock,” Tony said, very slowly, so that his words came out like words instead of pathetic mewling noises. “Get out of my sight and let me sleep, you tyrant.”

Rogers blinked at him, and then said in a rather adorably confused voice, “You don’t want breakfast?”

“I want to sleep,” Tony shouted at him.

“Oh.” Rogers managed to look somewhat abashed.

“Okay,” Tony said, slamming the door and wading back to his bed amidst the tangled mess of blankets still wrapped around his legs.

God.

What a dick.

--

Tony woke up several hours later, when the sun was already shining and his cellphone loudly proclaimed that it was eight o’clock and he was late for work.

He dragged himself out of bed, grabbed a t-shirt, glad he’d showered last night so he didn’t have to deal with complicated ‘on’ and ‘off’ things in the morning, and walked down the stairs to the main part of the house, where six children were all dressed and staring at him like creepy little freaks.

“What,” he grunted.

“You weren’t at breakfast,” Natasha said, sounding disapproving. “We thought you left.”

Tony squinted at her. “Not gonna get rid of me that easily.” He muttered, turning around and trying to remember where the kitchen was. He was pretty sure he remembered seeing a coffee maker in there during his tour, and god damn did he need some coffee.

“Where’s your old man?” he asked, shuffling towards what he thought was the kitchen.

It was not the kitchen, it was a den or something, with board games. Actual board games. Tony turned around, left the room of depressing family entertainment, and managed to find the kitchen. The children were trailing behind him, like ducklings. Creepy, stare-y ducklings.

“How come you only have half a beard?” Bruce asked him.

Tony blinked at him, then decided making a pot of coffee was more of a priority than explaining the difference between ‘why’ and ‘how come’. “Fashion is complicated,” he said instead. “Your glasses are too big for your face.”

Bruce considered this carefully.

“We don’t have coffee,” Clint said.

Tony pointed at him, furious. “That is a lie,” he said firmly. “Never lie to me again, young man.”

Clint looked shocked, and then a little guilty, which meant holy shit, he’d actually been lying. Tony had only been joking. Well, mostly joking. Wishful thinking.

He turned and began searching the cupboards for anything resembling coffee, more than a little surprised when he unearthed a bag of decent dark-roasted coffee beans.

He would have smashed the beans with a hammer if he needed to, because, coffee, precious fucking coffee. That wasn’t necessary, but only because Peter lit up with joy when he saw the beans, and scurried up onto the counter, climbing halfway into a cupboard and emerging with an actual, honest-to-goodness coffee grinder.

“You’re my new favourite,” Tony told him, and made a pot of coffee.

--

Tony finished drinking his coffee, ignoring the horde of tiny monsters surrounding him, and then left the kitchen. They followed him into the dining room, which was so painfully formal Tony almost felt at home there, and then into the garage, which was horrifyingly clean and organized.

“Where are your rooms?” he asked, and the kids pointed at the stairs.

Right.

The house was a big one, not quite a mansion but definitely on a larger scale than most. It had six bathrooms, including the one in Tony’s suite, and a large back yard with a pool. It had a sturdy-looking wooden fence, painted white with fading paint that surrounded the property.

Tony stuck his head outside. The sun was still shining, ominously, like it was just daring him to go outside and get sunburnt. “It’s warm out,” he commented.

The six children stayed silent.

“Don’t you want to go out and...” Tony trailed off. what the hell did children actually do? At their age, he’d been writing essays to get into MIT or building engines. Did normal children do that?

They looked at him.

“Find spiders?” Tony guessed, looking at Peter. Peter was the spider aficionado, right? Gap tooth, likes cheese and spiders.

Peter lit up like it was Christmas.

Fuck’s sakes.

“Go.” Tony pointed at the door. “Find a spider. Stay away from the pool.”

“I don’t like spiders,” Bruce protested.

“Find a frog.” Tony suggested. “I do not care. Go outside and stay there for half an hour. Afterwards we’ll...”

What the hell was he going to do with six children?

Eh, he’d think of something.

--

Peter found three spiders in thirty minutes, which would have been impressive, except he was the only one who actually did something productive.

Tony groaned and tried not to hide his head in his hands. “What do you mean, they’ve been arrested?” He whined into the phone. “They’re children!”

“They’re menaces to society. They damaged public property, endangered themselves and others, and they started a brawl.” The police officer on the other end of the line  didn’t seem very concerned with Tony’s emotional health. “Come pick up your juvenile delinquents. We’ll discuss the charges when you arrive.”

“Charges,” Tony said flatly. “As in, plural. More than one. Multiple charges.”

“Charges,” the officer confirmed.

Tony groaned and grabbed Bruce, Jan, and Peter, glad they had at least managed to come back under their own power, and tried to load them into his car, before realizing that he would need to fit the older children in as well and instead bringing them to the family SUV.

It sat eight, comfortably, which was saying something, and also had car seats, which was something Tony hadn’t actually realized the kids would need.

Jan and Peter sat next to each other, Bruce sat behind Tony in the driver’s seat, and by the time he’d strapped all the kids into their seats it was eleven o’clock and he had a headache.

Tony resisted the urge to bang his head on the steering wheel.

--

“I’m really very sorry,” the woman said, wringing her hands and looking wretchedly devastated. Tony had no idea what she was apologising for, but he wanted to forgive her just so she would stop looking at him like that.

“Loki’s always been getting into trouble,” her companion said. He was scowling at his kid, a dark-haired, skinny little twerp with a black eye. Tony glared at him, certain that this kid was the one who was ruining his day.

Thor, standing beside Tony, was shamefacedly staring at the ground. He had a split lip and a rapidly swelling bruise on his knuckles, probably because he hit the other kid in the face, when he should have aimed for center mass, or something less likely to mess up his hands. Tony was going to talk to him about that later, but for now, he smiled politely and shook hands and apologised for whatever the hell the fucking preteen Rogers children had done to get into a brawl with the neighbour kids.

The other parents, at least, weren’t being bitchy about it, and assured Tony that they wouldn’t press charges.

Clint and Natasha didn’t even have the acting ability to look ashamed, which was really disappointing. What kind of children were these, anyways, Tony wondered as he shoved them all into the SUV and started the engine. Seriously. Seriously.

He tried to ignore the depressing silence that immediately descended on them when he pulled out of the police station parking lot. He wasn’t about to play music or whatever, so he just clenched his jaw and breathed through his incandescent rage, until he realized he was hungry and so the kids probably were too.

“Okay,” he said. “So that’s something we’re going to have to work on.”

“We’re not juvenile delinquents,” Clint said, the first words he’d managed in his defence.

“Yeah, I meant more along the lines of Thor learning social skills,” Tony said. He wasn’t sure how the fight had started, but he had a pretty good idea it was because punching people was easier than trying to deal with complicated social situations, and Thor knew it. “And you and Tasha really need to work on your acting skills, nobody’s going to believe you’re sorry if you can’t fake it.”

“Aren’t you going to yell at us?” Natasha demanded, sounding more than a little annoyed. “We got into a fight.”

“Didn’t you get yelled at enough by the police?” Tony asked. “Look, I’m not going to say I’m happy with the situation, but nobody got hurt. You didn’t cause irreversible damage to anybody’s face, and quite honestly, that sculpture you knocked over was really ugly so I doubt anyone is really feeling it’s loss. It’s fine. Just. Y’know. Try not to get into any more fights.”

They sat in silence for a few more minutes.

“What was the fight about?” Bruce asked.

None of the older children answered him.

--

He made an assembly line of sandwiches, fed them lunch, and then made them play board games with each other for forty minutes while he googled “Captain Steven Rogers” on his phone and glared at the results.

None of the brats were that invested in winning monopoly, but after the third time Peter put his mouth on the board and refused to spit the hotel out without monetary compensation, Bruce flipped out and had a screaming, crying, violently throwing furniture around the room tantrum, and Tony was forced to intervene.

For a six year old, he was really freaking strong.

“Okay,” Tony decided. “That is enough. Enough, I say!”

Tony made them do laps around the back yard until they were exhausted, then he had them change into their swimsuits and they spent the rest of the time in the pool, splashing around half heartedly and giving Tony sad, soulful looks. He wasn’t torturing them, or anything, but they seemed to think he was.

Whatever. Who cared what they thought, anyway.

--

Captain Rogers returned in time for dinner, which was fortunate, because Tony would have been forced to try cooking something otherwise, and that probably would have gotten him fired. Well, not the cooking, but the last time he’d tried to cook something he blew up the kitchen, and he had the feeling that any kind of explosion would get him fired. Or kill a child. Something bad like that.

The kids had all gotten suspiciously quiet around four thirty, almost as if they were plotting against him. No, exactly as if they were plotting against him. Tony had no idea why the children hated him -- although he took at least a small amount of satisfaction in the fact that it was mutual hatred at least -- but he was determined to not let them beat him. He’d faced off against Howard. He had Pepper as his backup. Probably. Well, she was his emotional backup.

He wasn’t going to get bullied by a bunch of twerps with underdeveloped brains.

“How was your day?” Rogers asked, looking at Thor.

Thor smiled at him, sunnily. “It was good, father.” He said. “We played outside. Tony said we had a lot of energy.” He stopped, eyes flicking down to his plate where he was pushing his vegetables around.

If Tony hadn’t been there to see the brawling teenagers being separated by police officers, he’d never have guessed Thor had been in any trouble. Maybe Thor should give his siblings some tips, because Clint and Natasha both had the most obvious guilty-face he’d ever seen.

“Is that right,” Rogers said evenly, looking over at Tony.

The children all hunched in on themselves, like they were expecting Tony to tell their dad all about their exciting activities that day.

“Peter found three spiders this morning,” Tony said, taking a large bite of his salad and staring directly at Thor until the teenager ate a bite of his own veggies. “And Jan learned to float on her back in the pool. I hope you don’t mind that I took the cover off, the kids were pretty tired after all that... energetic running about, so I thought it would be nice for them to cool off.”

He continued eating, smiling pleasantly around the table. It wasn’t a real smile, more like his Official Tony Stark Paparazzi and Media Frenzy smile, but it seemed to pass muster.

Captain Rogers seemed a little confused. “Did... did anything happen today that I need to know about?”

Technically he needed to know that his children were violent psychopaths and that Tony was likely to throttle them, but then again, ‘need’ was a very strong word.

“Thor needs new pants,” Tony said, instead of answering the question. “School will be starting in four days, and he’s showing quite a lot of ankle. Do you have plans to take the kids back-to-school-shopping?”

Rogers frowned. “I have to leave tonight,” he said. “I’ll be gone a week. I’ll leave my credit card, you can get the kids whatever they need.”

Tony raised an eyebrow.

“Natasha could use some new dresses for school, and new shoes.” Clint said.

Natasha, who didn’t look too happy at the prospect, elbowed her brother in the side.

“I need new shoes,” Bruce said.

“Me too! And Jan does too, her toes pinch!” Peter announced.

Rogers sighed. “Tony, can you take them--”

“Wait, what do you mean you’re leaving?” Tony demanded. “Where are you going? Are you seriously leaving me alone with your children after only a day? What kind of father are you?”

Captain Rogers stood up, glaring, his face flushed red with anger. “Look, Mr. Carbonell, I don’t know--”

Tony would never know what Rogers was going to say, because at that point a large spider crawled out of Peter’s hair and onto the table, and the rest of his sentence was drowned out by Bruce and Jan screaming at the top of their teeny, adorable lungs.

--

Tony filled the bathtub with... well, it was probably about fifty percent bubbles, fifty percent toys, zero percent water, and then he dumped Peter and Bruce into the mess and stirred them until they came out smelling vaguely clean. Peter, he’d noticed, was perpetually sticky, and Bruce managed to have himself covered in filth and looking almost green by the time they’d been ready for bed. Jan, who had yet to say a single word to him, was clutching her towel and a toy boat with desperation as she waited for her turn in the tub, and Tony had sent the older children off to get themselves ready for bed without his supervision. If they got arrested again, he promised, they would have to rot in jail overnight because he was absolutely not going to pick them up before nine o’clock the next morning.

Thor, who had heard his whispered promise, looked moderately guilty. Clint and Natasha had stared at him with cold, dead eyes, like the children of the corn, and made absolutely no promises to behave themselves.

Okay, so the brats were starting to grow on him. That sort of unrepentant disregard for rules and authority spoke to him, on an emotional level, it was impossible not to like them.

Tony threw a bath towel over Peter’s head, tried to dry him off, only to be thwarted by a rather impressive barrel roll that had Peter running, buck-ass-naked, down the hallway and screeching in delight.

“Get back here, you little monster!” Tony yelled, chasing him with the towel while Bruce skipped happily behind them, equally naked but at least holding the towel over his shoulders like a cape.

Peter screeched again, turned the corner, and then there was a loud thump.

Tony’s heart made this terrible, clenching thing, like it had suddenly forgotten how to beat, and he ran around the corner to where the stairs were, certain he was going to find a bratty eight year old body crumpled on the landing, surrounded by blood.

Instead, he found Captain Steve Rogers, in full dress uniform, holding his dripping wet and naked child up by one ankle.

Tony stopped, looked at the other man, and then handed him the towel.

Peter, who was dangling upside down, had stopped giggling and was instead wide-eyed, craning his head to see Tony.

“Sorry, Cap.” Tony said, using Peter’s momentary lapse in escape artistry to swaddle him in the towel, hoisting the kid over his shoulder. “You getting ready to leave? You look... well, you look very formal.”

“They’re sending a car for me,” Rogers said, apropos of nothing. “You... seem to be...” he trailed off, looking confused. He stared at Peter, who was letting Tony hold him in his towel-cocoon, and Bruce, who’d tagged along and was waving shyly at him.

“No worries, Cap.” Tony said, hoisting Peter over a shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Let’s see the little twerp escape from this, he thought to himself gleefully. “You enjoy your trip. You’re gonna be back in eight days, right?”

“Yes.” The Captain was still watching him, warily, his expression unreadable. “I’m sure you’ll manage fine.”

“I will,” Tony agreed. All he had to do was keep the brats alive for eight days. He could totally manage that.

“I’ll just... be going, then.” Rogers said, finally.

Tony didn’t mention how callous it was, for Rogers to make his way to the doorway and walk away without saying goodbye to his kids. He didn’t mention that Peter and Bruce had stopped laughing the moment they’d seen their father in his uniform, or that both kids were pretty unnaturally quiet now. Tony didn’t say anything, because he was used to it, because he’d been the kid watching his father walk out the door one too many times, and quite honestly, he didn’t care what Rogers’ reasons were.

“Come on, guys,” Tony said, resting a hand on Bruce’s damp hair. “Let’s get you into bed.”

--

He dressed the boys in their PJs and somehow managed to run a bath for Jan as well, grateful that the little girl was at least able to follow basic instructions such as “don’t drown”.

She, oddly enough, seemed to be more comfortable with Tony as time went on, instead of turning into a bratty, sticky, messy monster like her brothers, she simply stopped hiding behind everything. She tagged along in near-silence, dressing herself and feeding herself and minding herself, and Tony hated it. He hated it so much, because the rest of the kids were-- well, they were brats, they were terrible psychopaths who were destined for a life of crime, but at least they acted the way children should act. Jan didn’t cause any trouble, and every moment of every minute he spent in her presence made Tony desperately want to change that.

What kind of kid didn’t cause any trouble?

She wrapped herself in a large, fluffy towel three times the size of her, taking small steps as she walked to her bedroom so she didn’t trip. Tony followed with her, trying to remind himself that it was normal to help a little kid with getting dressed, and that there was nothing creepy about his presence. Well, nothing too creepy. Did women-nannies have to deal with this kind of pressure? How could he tell if he was being creepy?

Ugh, this was way too complicated. Tony shoved the nightgown over Jan’s shoulders, relieved that she was at least covered now, and then stared around her room. “Where’s all your... stuff?” he asked.

Jan didn’t reply, instead she tucked the towel into a hamper in the corner, and then skipped out of the door, presumably to find her brothers and watch while they wrecked something.

But her room was...  plain. Plain and boring. There were no pictures on the walls, no posters, no decorations. Her bedspread was clean, functional, striped yellow and orange, but other than that the room had no colour, no little personal touches. All of the toys were... somewhere else, maybe in her closet, but it looked like the sort of room that didn’t get lived in.

There was a deep sense of wrongness there, Tony didn’t know how to put it into rooms.

Suspicious, he immediately checked Bruce and Peter’s room -- the boys shared a small room with a bunk bed, but he could clearly see a poster of Wall-E on one wall, and a bunch of smaller pictures of cars, dinosaurs, and spiders. The floor was covered in Lego and dirty clothes, and the beds were both unmade, covers falling off and pillows scattered about.

Natasha’s door was firmly shut, and Tony had just enough presence of mind to not try and invade her personal space because... well, pre-teen girl was pretty much the most terrifying version of any child, ever. He didn’t want to make her angry.

Clint and Thor’s room was across the hall from hers, though, and while they had a larger space than the younger boys, the room was just as sparse and impersonal as Jan’s.

Creepy, he thought, before he went downstairs to find the kids sprawled out on the carpet in the den, wearing their PJs.

“What are you doing?” Tony asked, because whatever they were all planning to do together, in their pajamas, as a group, could clearly not bode well for his peace of mind.

“Reading,” Clint said, rather viciously in Tony’s opinion. “What, you’ve never seen a book before?”

Tony took a deep breath, because what kind of children sat down and read a book together instead of watching TV or playing XBox or--

Then he realized that he hadn’t actually seen a TV or Xbox in the house, which meant maybe there wasn’t one, and he cut that line of thought off before he hyperventilated himself into a coma. “Right,” he said. “Whatever you’re reading, stop it. We’re going to... uh.” He stopped, because he didn’t actually know what to do with kids, and he was still flying by the seat of his pants.

“Can we play monopoly again?” Thor asked.

“No,” Tony said. “No, reading is good. Let’s go with that.”

Clint, who’d been clutching his novel to his chest like it was his security blanket, heaved a sigh of relief. “Okay,” he said. “We’re on chapter four.”

Tony stared at him.

The children all looked at him, expectantly.

“Wait, you want me to read?” Tony whined when Clint handed him the book. “Goddamnit, this isn't what I signed on for.”

--

One thirty AM and Tony finally flopped down onto his bed, face-first, exhausted and a little concerned about his emotional well-being.

“Pepper,” he mumbled, voice muffled by the blankets. “Pepper, I think I’m dying.”

“Tony, this is important,” pepper said, her tone serious. “Dum-E has been getting into trouble at school.”

Tony flopped around like a fish until he managed to dig his cellphone out of the covers and hold it up in the vicinity of his face. “Dum-E is a robot, he doesn’t go to school.”

“Well, he’s been getting into trouble in the R&D department, and when they kicked him out and sent him to the focus groups, he got into even more trouble.” Pepper told him. “After that, he was sent to assist in the daycare facility, only he ended up doing less assisting and more being-a-nuisance, and Obie is threatening to have him taken offline and--”

“No!” Tony shouts into the phone. “No, Pepper, they can’t do that! He’s sentient, okay? How many times to I have to explain this, he’s not just a machine, he is a sentient creature. He has self-awareness, and taking him offline is torture! They cannot do that, you can’t let them, I’ll--”

“I know, Tony, I wasn’t going to let anything happen to him!” Pepper shouts back. “I got him out of Stark Industries but he can’t stay with me forever, I have to go back to work and we need a more permanent solution to--”

“Bruce likes robots,” Tony says, realizing the answer to all of his problems. “Of course! Pepper, send him here!”

“... to your car?”

“To my job!” Tony grins at his phone. “It’s a-- here, I’ll text you the address, you can have him shipped commercially if you don’t have time to bring him yourself, I love you Pepper, this is wonderful--”

“Tony, are you sure this is okay with your employer? Maybe you should--”

“I should sleep,” Tony says, hitting the end call button.

He’s snoring before he has a chance to turn off the lights.

--

It’s still dark when Tony wakes up, and he wakes up because there’s a heavy, warm weight on his chest. He shifts, trying to dislodge it-- he doesn’t remember a cat, but then again, the damn things love following him around and sneaking up on him to give him allergies when he’s trying to sleep.

Except then the warm, heavy thing elbows him in the throat and he chokes on air, flopping around until he manages to dislodge himself.

It’s Jan.

Jan is sleeping in his bed.

Jan is sleeping on Tony’s bed, and Bruce is curled up behind her, and Peter is at the foot of the bed looking rumpled and with one leg hanging off the edge.

Tony looks around, wild-eyed, but he can’t see any more children. Thank god.

“Come on,” he says, tugging Peter into one arm and throwing Bruce over his shoulder. He makes his way unsteadily back to the rest of the house and tucks them into bed, returning to his room to grab Jan and do the same with her.

Tony climbs back into bed, stretches so he’s occupying all the space on the queen-sized mattress, and falls back asleep.

--

He wakes up to the sound of thunder, rain lashing against his window and Clint mashed up against his back. Taking quick stock of the situation, Tony finds Natasha draped over one shoulder, and the littler kids all back where they’d been in the first place.

Squinting at the clock, Tony reads 5:22 AM, and then he decides he cannot deal with this shit and closes his eyes and falls back asleep.

--

He wakes at 8:44AM with all six kids crammed onto the not-inconsiderable space on his bed. Tony’s pretty much the only one who doesn’t have room to breathe, and that is more on account of Peter’s knee being lodged up against his windpipe and Bruce snoring heavily with his weight all over Tony’s lungs. Gasping, Tony attempts to escape his prison, but then he ends up precariously balanced on the edge of the mattress, teetering with only the weight of Jan’s legs over his waist keeping him in place.

“Shit,” Tony swears, and then the clock beside the bed changes to 8:45AM, the alarm shrieking it’s terrible displeasure at his lazy ass. The children all wake up, sending Tony tumbling down to the ground.

“PIZZA’S HERE,” Peter announces, bleary-eyed, rolling off the bed and landing on top of Tony hard enough to knock the breath out of him.

Tony groans.

“Oh my god, Clint.” Natasha says from somewhere above them. “You smell like ass, get away from me.”

“I’m hungry,” Bruce pipes up.

Various grumbling noises agree with Bruce’s initial assessment of the situation, which Tony responds to by groaning a little louder. “Get off me, punk,” he says to Peter, who seems to have fallen asleep again. “I can’t breathe, what is this, I need coffee. Clint, where’s my coffee?”

There’s a short moment of silence, after which Clint’s voice says, “I’m not here.”

Thor, Natasha, and Bruce all murmur agreeably.

“I know you’re here, you brats.” Tony whines. “Make me coffee. Thor! Make me coffee. If you make me coffee I promise I won’t complain about you all being afraid of thunderstorms, or whatever it was that made you decide you couldn’t sleep in your own beds last night.”

“Fine,” Thor grumbles, crawling out of the bed with his hair sticking up in eleven different directions, and eleven different dimensions.

Tony manages to pry Peter off of him by the time the pot is finished brewing.

--

Tony has a list of things to do today. He wrote it last night, at some point, scrawling it haphazardly over a loose piece of notebook paper he found in one of his pockets. Squinting at it, it reads:

COFFEE,

UGH DON'T KILL THE BRATS

Food?

SHOPPING FOR SCHOOL STUFF

sleep or whatever.

He’s not certain that this is a good idea, but he doesn’t have a choice. The brats need... things... for school, and what those things are doesn’t really concern him. Children are always needing things for school, after all, and Tony has literally no idea what things are necessary for a year in the public education system.

He’s not sure he wants to know.

So far, he’s achieved both numbers one and two without any effort, so he gives himself a mental pat on the back and then drags the children into the family SUV and takes them through the McDonald’s drive-thru for breakfast. After all, that’s... food. No matter what lies or exaggerations Pepper and Tony collaboratively put on his half-assed fake resume, he still doesn’t cook, and he’s also pretty certain that the Rogers Family Refrigerator hasn’t been cleaned out since the stone age, “No way in hell am I risking my gastrointestinal system eating some of the questionable leftovers I saw in there,” he vows.

“What’s gastrointestinal?” Bruce asks him, seriously.

“Shut up and eat your happy meal,” Tony slides his sunglasses back into place, slurping happily at his keg-sized coffee and ignoring the chaos as the children devour their weight in deep-fried junk. Not his problem. Rogers can deal with their collective struggle with childhood obesity after Tony’s gone, but right now, he thinks the Captain would rather have his kids eating fried food than starving at home like the unrepentant little shits deserve.

--

He very quickly realizes that he has made a grievous error in judgement.

Shopping with children is, quite frankly, impossible. Shopping with several children is probably the sort of thing that counts as ‘cruel and unusual’ according to the Geneva convention. Tony is so far out of his depth here. So very, very far.

“Mine!” Peter yells, holding onto the front of the shopping cart, making every attempt to pry Jan out of the seat.

Tony sighs, thumbs open his phone, and calls Pepper.

--

He’s a terrible person, which is why he ends up standing in a toy store, neck-deep in screaming-with-excitement children. Even the older ones -- Thor and Clint and Natasha -- are perusing the nerf gun section with a scary level of dedication. The little ones are crowded around all the science toys, robot-making and experimental physics and Tony isn’t quite sure why these children are gravitating towards the toys that will let them create the maximum amount of chaos, but Tony’s totally okay with their instincts. Robots are cool.

He buys everybody their own robot-making kit, and nerf gun, and extra nerf ammunition. And then he takes them back to the house and lets them have free rein in the yard while they do their best to kill their siblings.

Tony lugs his laptop outside, sprawls on a chair near the pool, and opens up amazon.com so he can get this school supply shit all sorted. Pepper would be proud of his multitasking skills, he decides, as he purchases Peter a backpack shaped like a giant tarantula. “I am the boss,” he whispers to his laptop. “I am the king of cool.”

“Are you talking to yourself?” Natasha asks, appearing by his shoulder. “And don’t get me anything pink or purple or frou-frou.”

“What’s your favourite colour?” Tony asks.

“Black.”

He eyes the teenager suspiciously, but natasha looks deadly serious. Her jaw is clenched in the stubbornest expression of impotent puerile anger he’s ever witnessed. “Wow,” Tony says, squinting at her. “Wow, okay-- so I take it the frilly skirts and lace-detailed everything wasn’t your idea?”

Natasha looks like she swallowed a rotten lemon. “My dad’s kind of old-fashioned,” she says, bitterly.

“Sit down,” Tony shifts over to give her some space on the lawn chair next to him, patting the ratty furniture as invitingly as he’s able (which is not very). “You can help me pick stuff out.”

“Because I’m such a fan of shopping,” Natasha says flatly.

“Because you’ll at least tell me if something is hideous and you hate it?”

Natasha sighs, raises her nerf gun, and fires two shots that practically ruffle the hair on Tony’s head as they whiz by.

“OW!” Thor says, behind him.

“I’m busy, Thor.” Natasha glares.

“Ugh,” her brother says.

--

Natasha picks out a wardrobe that is all black or dark grey, with pretty much zero ruffles or girly designs on it. Tony figures there’s no reason to antagonize the teenage girl, so he agrees to her choices and then asks her if she’ll need a formal outfit for dances and stuff.

Natasha eyes him suspiciously, then shrugs.

“Right, well, if you do,” Tony says. “Let me know and we’ll go pick out either a tux or a dress.”

He’s given up on pretending that he knows what the kids like. Aside from Peter’s joyful love of spiders, the only thing he knows about these kids is their penchant for getting into trouble and their all-consuming love for cheese. That, and they’re probably somewhat psychologically disturbed, but that’s really not his department.

Tony goes the easiest route and just colour coordinates the kids. A short interrogation reveals their favourite colours, and thus Thor’s school supplies are all in red. Clint’s are purple, which is somewhat surprising but not at all out of character (Tony still can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not, the little shit. He’s definitely Tony’s favourite). Natasha’s things are black, Peter’s are Spider-themed (in varying shades of red, blue, and black), Bruce’s things are all green, and Jan’s are mostly yellow.

Clothes are more difficult, but he buys them in bulk online and vows to return anything that doesn’t fit.

Whatever. Captain Rogers should have bought his own kids their goddamned clothes, if he didn’t want Tony using his Amex. It’s not like school didn’t start this week, and Thor was still walking around in jeans that showed off his ankles and half his shin.

“Tony, Dum-E’s been shipped out express freight,” Pepper whispers into the phone, sounding a little frightened. “The R&D department are up in arms, they think Howard’s been holding out on him-- nobody has been able to replicate the learning AI even in the most basic sense, and half the schematics for the new missiles is completely over their head. Howard’s trying to make sense of it, but they’re really feeling your loss.”

“Good,” Tony says grimly. “I hope they all suffer, I hope they all suffer so much.”

“It’s not pretty. R&D keeps suggesting they call in outside consultants and experts to look at things like the power sources or even checking out that proposed satellite project, and Howard’s been shooting them all down in increasingly rude ways. Half the board is talking about locking him out, Tony. I shouldn’t even know that, but people keep asking me when you’re coming back, and whether or not you’ll be able to put a leash on the old man--”

“Hah!” Tony says, triumphant.

“This isn’t funny, Tony. This is the future of your company. If Howard destroys everything now, there won’t be anything left for you to pick up the pieces!” Pepper says.

“Yeah,” Tony says. “But if Howard doesn’t back down, I’d have to start from scratch anyways. Let him figure it out and come calling when he’s not so determined to put me in my place.”

“Ugh, fine.” Pepper groans. “Look, just be there to sign for Dum-E. I made sure he’d be in standby mode, and explained to him that he was going to be with you for a while. I don’t know how much of it he understood, though, and I’m worried he’ll come back online in transit. He’s in a box, Tony. It’s dark in there, you know how he hates the dark--”

“I’ll be home, I promise.” Tony says. “And I wouldn’t let anything happen to Dum-E. Thanks, Pepper, you’re the greatest.”

Pepper sighs. “I miss you Tony. Come back soon, okay?”

“I miss you too, Pepper,” Tony says. He doesn’t promise to come back soon, because he’s not a liar.

--

The first day of school dawns bright and early.

Tony wakes up to the shrill beeping of his alarm clock. Jan’s foot is in his mouth, Peter is snoring softly against his neck, and also kind of drooling a lot. Bruce has stolen his pillow and Clint, Thor, and Natasha are piled on the floor next to the bed, huddled miserably under a single blanket.

“Ugh,” Tony mumbles.

He pries Jan’s foot out of his face as gently as he’s able, then stumbles downstairs to turn on the coffee pot and set the table.

The kids don’t automatically follow, so he stomps back up the stairs and glares at the unmoving lump that has migrated from the floor to the warmth of his recently-vacated bed, and prods the blanket with one finger. “Get up,” he says.

“Murrrghl,” the large blanket-lump whimpers.

“Get up, school starts today.” Tony insists, poking the blanket again.

“SCHOOL!” Bruce flails his way out of the blanket, excitedly, eyes wide as he thumps onto the floor. “TODAY IS SCHOOL.”

“Noooo....” A voice that sounds a lot like Clint’s says. It could be Thor, though.

Jan peeks out of the blanket, before wiggling her way to the edge of the bed and holding her arms up imperiously. Tony lifts her because apparently the child has trained him well. “Get up, lazybones.” he prods the blanket lump again.

“I don’t waaaaaaaaaaaaannna.” Clint’s voice says again.

“Well, you have to.” Tony says. “If you don’t go to school, I’ll get in trouble and your father will fire me. Plus, you’ll all stay stupid and annoying, and have no social skills. Sort of how you are right now.”

“Blarnngh.” Natasha’s voice says, sullenly.

--

They all eventually get dressed, and shuffle dejectedly down to the kitchen to eat their cereal and glare at Tony.

Jan seems mostly unmoved by the trial of starting school, Bruce is excited, and Peter seems to be mostly enthralled with his tarantula backpack. The older kids look like he’s sending them off to their deaths, which, okay, whatever.

He herds them all into the SUV, drops them off at their respective schools, although he does stay long enough to make sure that the younger kids actually get into the right classroom, and then Tony drives back to the house and goes inside and.

Yeah.

It’s just really... really quiet.

He fidgets for a while, a little uncomfortable, and then he realizes that he actually misses the brats, and then he realizes that he’s managed to get used to having people in the house, which is stupid. Tony has spent the majority of his life alone, why would it matter now whether or not he’s--

But yeah. Okay. So he maybe gets lonely.

He dicks around one the internet for a while, wasting time, and then he gives in and orders an x-box. And a television. And some other stuff, but that’s entirely because he’s pretty certain that Captain Rogers meant to order those kinds of things for his kids, and just never got around to it. Small oversight, but it’s a good thing he has Tony to fix that kind of mistake.

Then he wanders around the house and finds all the empty rooms, which is a little ridiculous, why would anybody who had six kids living in a single house have extra rooms? Wouldn’t Thor or Clint or someone want to have their own room, or something?

Well, Natasha does have her own room, but Tony also remembers what it's like being a fourteen or twelve year old boy, and he’s a hundred percent certain that Thor and Clint need their own room. Otherwise, Captain Rogers is just going to be spending way too much money paying for them to take hour-long showers, and that’s just a waste.

Tony glares at the empty, unused rooms.

--

It’s entirely possible that Tony is just bored and lonely.

--

[epiphanyx7]

I came here to tell you how much I love your writing, and then proceeded to get incredibly distracted by everything on your blog. But yes. Silvertongue and A Symphony in Starlight are literally two of the best things I have ever read because of the depths of characterization in them and how lyrical they both are. Every single sentence has maximum impact without unnecessary clutter.

Awwwwww. That’s so nice of you, thank you! I’m glad you enjoy my blog, I sometimes worry it’s too much politics and not enough fandom… and then I worry it’s too much fandom and not enough REAL WORLD THINGS.

But yes, I am happy you like my writing… I’ve been struggling to put pen to paper (metaphorically) for a while now, and having people like you pop out of the woodwork to give me compliments and feedback will give me fuel to write another sentence.

If you stay tuned I’ll be posting ficlets/unfinished works to my tumblr, probably this evening, so—- uh, look forward to that. :)

[epiphanyx7]

I found your "Good night Moon/Good night night vale" thing and it's sooo awesome

Why thank you! I’m glad you liked it!

[epiphanyx7]

Lameass fucking christmas fic (1/2)

Helpfully Titled in my GoogleDocs Folder as "Horrible Cheesy Christmas Fic WHAT THE FUCK SELF", have some Avengers Christmas Feelings/Crack

--

“He’s still sulking,” Clint reported, walking into the kitchen.

Natasha sighed. “Did you tell him that Thor made Eggnog?”

Clint shrugged.

It was two days before Christmas, and for some (painfully obvious, Tony-related) reason, Steve was determined to be as miserable as possible.

“This can’t continue,” Natasha said, darkly. “If he doesn’t cheer up, I’ll stab him.”

It wasn’t an idle threat, Clint had caught her drawing her knives out and running her fingers over them while Steve ranted about Tony at least twice in the past week. If anyone could stab Captain America, is was likely to be Natasha.

“It’ll be fine,” Clint assured her. “We’ll... fuck, I don’t know. There’s gotta be something we can do. Living with Ebeneezer Scrooge and the Grinch would be better than Steve right now.”

Thor slunk into the kitchen, holding two cups of eggnog and looking like a kicked puppy.

“Aww,” Natasha said, looking sad for him. “Thor -- was Steve mean to you?”

Thor put the eggnog down on the counter. “I am going to watch the Christmas Special,” he announced quietly. “Alone.”

“Fuck,” Clint said, staring as the God of Thunder left the room, exuding a distinct aura of “I am so very alone and even my best bro doesn’t want me near him." “This has got to stop, Tash.”

“Agreed,” Natasha said grimly.

--

“You did not just fucking call a meeting for this shit,” Fury snarled at them.

Natasha crossed her arms in front of her chest. “This is a serious issue,” she argued. “Steve is very clearly depressed, and during this time of year, we need to be concerned. Also, it’s pissing me off. It’s pissing Clint of. It’s making Banner unstable.”

Bruce, who was sitting nearby, raised his hand. “I am personally feeling upset by Steve’s attitude,” he offered. “Although I probably won’t destroy Harlem again, if that’s a concern. Probably.”

He’d been spending most of his time down in Tony’s workshop, hanging out with the robots and finishing his shopping online. (Bruce was not a fan of shopping centres or malls, even when it wasn’t crazed-holiday-shopper-season.)

“What the ever-loving-hell am I supposed to do about it?” Fury yelled.

Natasha raised an eyebrow.

Fury stared at her, eye unblinking.

Clint said, “Uh, can’t you call him back or something?”

They both turned to look at him.

“He would come back, right?” Clint suggested. “If we said like, giant robots were attacking the city? He’d show up in his suit ten minutes later no matter how far away he was. His latest Iron Man suit can hit mach 9.4 without effort, that means it’d only take him like six hours to go all the way around the world. He can come back to New York for christmas.”

“Clint,” Natasha said. “You want to lie to him about a crisis, so Cap will stop sulking?”

“Yes.”

“That wouldn’t work,” Fury said. “He’d have time to check the news reports, satellite feeds, and Twitter. The lack of general panic or concern would give it away.”

Clint looked at him. “Wait, you mean you already considered it?”

Fury tried his best to look like he wasn’t overly concerned with Captain America’s happiness. “It’s been brought up,” he said, which meant the rest of SHIELD was already on their side and scheming.

“Just give us a jet.” Natasha said. “We’ll go get him.”

It was a simple, easy plan. “Yeah,” Clint agreed. “We can go pick him up.”

Fury sighed.

Natasha and Clint both looked at him expectantly.

“Fine,” Fury agreed. “Just have it back before the twenty-sixth, Hill has orders to take the assets to a Boxing Day Sale.”

Natasha and Clint both nodded. “Yes, sir.”

--

When they got back to the tower, they found Steve in the main room, arguing with Tony.

“Tony!” Clint shouted in joy. “When did you get back?”

Tony turned to look at him, grinning. “Just a few minutes ago, actually. I thought I’d swing by, give you guys your presents before I headed back out.”

Steve, behind him, was glowering. Or at least it looked a lot like glowering, if you mixed in a slightly hangdog expression. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Me’n Pep are heading out to the Dominican tonight,” Tony said. “I figured we’d hang long enough to catch dinner, say hi to the folks, you know. But the jet’s getting refueled so we should be ready to go by nine.”

“I just--” Steve stopped himself, clearly upset. “I don’t--”

“Look, if you don’t like your present--”

“I do like it!” Steve shouted.

Natasha and Clint looked at Tony, then at Steve, then back at Tony.

“What did you get him?” Clint asked.

“I can get you something else,” Tony said through gritted teeth. “I just though, considering how you’re all about, you know, the time of the season and the meaning of Christmas and baseball and apple pie--”

“Don’t bring baseball into this, Tony--” Steve snarled.

“-- you’d appreciate something that was a little less capitalist and consumerist, since you’re always bitching about me having so much money and god knows, it’s not like I’m going to be able to spend it all even if I fucking try, Steve, but you seem to hate me if I try, and hate me if I give it away, and hate me if I leave it in the goddamned bank--”

“I don’t like the bank,” Steve argued. “They’re not trustworthy, Tony, they--”

“Stock Market crash aside, there literally is not enough cash in the country to keep on hand, and not enough space to store it even if I did, and really, Steve--”

“--gamble with your money and it’s not safe, what if something happened, people are robbing banks all the time--”

“Holy shit,” Clint said, gaping at them. “What are you guys even arguing about? Tony? What did you get me for Christmas?” He was bouncing on the balls of his feet, not even trying to contain his excitement. “Does it explode? God, tell me you got me something that explodes.”

“I don’t make weapons anymore, Barton,” Tony said, amicably enough for all he’d been practically snarling at Steve. “But hey, if you don’t want the Ferrari --”

Clint made a happy, pornographic noise as Tony held out a key fob for him. “Oh god, oh god, you didn’t. You didn’t. Fuck. Fuck you, Tony, that is amazing. That’s fucking awesome. I could kiss you.”

“Lay it on me, baby,” Tony replied, grinning as he tossed the keys through the air, sailing in a clean arc right into Clint’s hand. “Come on, give your sugar daddy some sugar.”

“I know you are just being gross right now,” Clint said, dead serious. “But I will actually have sex with you in exchange for a Ferrari. Be very careful what you wish for, Stark, because if you tell me to get on my knees---”

“Gross,” Bruce said, entering the room and giving Tony an enthusiastic hug. “No way, Barton, get your own billionaire. This one’s mine.”

Tony grinned at Bruce and whipped out a red, snowflake-emblazoned envelope to shove into his hands. “There you go, buddy. Merry Christmas, or Hanukkah, or whatever. Happy fucking Winter, okay? I’m not doing the politically correct thing this year, but I’m willing to be inclusive for you non-Christians. Do buddhists even have holidays?”

“We don’t celebrate the birth of Christ,” Bruce replied, tugging a small box from his pocket and presenting it to Tony with a solemn air. “But we are perfectly willing to celebrate the spirit of the season and be happy to spend time with family and friends. And I, personally, have no objections to other celebrations.”

Now Steve was glaring at Bruce. “You got him the same present as me,” he says, flatly.

Tony shrugged. “Technically, yes. Well, no. Well, yes.�� He looked vaguely uncomfortable. “I got him a similar present, but it’s not the same at all,” he finally said, looking back and forth between them. “I put thought into it, it’s not like---” he waved a hand. “A whole-- thing.”

Opening the envelope, Bruce looked at the certificate inside. His face contorted like he was trying not to cry, but after a moment he began to smile, looking touched. “Tony,” he said, “You didn’t have to do this--”

“Well, obviously,” Tony said, shrugging. “Duh. But you appreciate that sort of thing, and I thought, hey, what kid doesn’t want a goat? Or a chicken? So I thought hey I could get a whole bunch of goats, but I don’t think that you’d want them yourself, so I outsourced.”

“You bought him a goat?” Steve asked, sounding confused.

Tony huffed a breath. “No, I bought him a thousand goats.”

Everyone stared at him.

Thor beamed. “Truly a generous gift, my friends! Tony Stark, I commend you on your thoughtfulness.”

“Thank you, Thor,” Tony graced the Asgardian with a smile. “But you should know, I didn’t buy them for Bruce to keep.”

Thor nodded approvingly. “Doctor Banner is a man of intellect, a scholar, and not a farmer. Goats are a noble animal, but he would be best having the peasants of his range care for the beasts in his stead, that they might profit from their noble work.”

Pointing at Thor, Tony made a sharp gesture. “You-- you are my favourite. Absolutely. For the next year at least.”

Thor smiled.

“And yes,” Tony said, turning back to Steve. “I bought Bruce a bunch of goats. Why do you care?”

“You didn’t buy me a bunch of goats,” Steve said petulantly. Clint and Natasha exchanged looks of disgust at Steve’s vaguely jealous tone.

“I bought you a well!” Tony shouted. “Goddamnit. Does it not matter to you that an entire village of people is going to have clean, potable water for the next hundred years? Is that not a good enough Christmas gift? Because I fucking thought you’d like it, okay, Steve? That’s the whole reason I did it. I could have just thrown that money at the Salvation Fucking Army instead, like I usually do, but I thought hey, maybe you’d like something like this, maybe you’d enjoy knowing there’s a well out there with your name on it giving thirsty people free, clean water whenever they needed it, but if that’s not good enough for you, just take the custom bike I fucking built for you and shut the hell up about it!”

Steve’s mouth snapped shut, his face flaming bright red. Clint could see his jaw working, as if he wanted to snap out something angry, but instead, he ducked his head down and said in a very quiet tone, “Thank you, Tony.”

Tony blinked at him.

“It does mean a lot,” Steve continued morosely, staring at his own feet. “I appreciate the gift. It was very generous of you.”

A short pause.

“I don’t need the bike,” Steve finished, before turning and leaving.

Bruce sighed, looking at Steve’s retreating back. “I’ll talk to him,” he said, rolling his eyes at Natasha and Clint. Thor gives him a consoling pat on the head as he passes by. He’s barely out of sight before he came dashing back in, throwing himself at Tony and hugging him tightly. “Thanks for the goats, Tones.” he said. “A thousand families are going to be very, very happy because of you.”

Tony grinned at him, jerking his thumb at the door. “Go talk a supersoldier out of Tonycide,” he quipped.

--

Tony's an asshole, so he’s gone and made donations to charity in everyone’s name. A whackload of goats to families in Africa for Bruce, a brand new well for a village in East Asia for Steve, a ten-year-lease on a crisis center for battered women for Natasha, a new roof and new beds for an orphanage for Clint; and a whole whack load of fantastic prosthetics to the war amps for Thor.

He also got them otherr, more materialistic presents. But Clint is clutching a thank-you-letter written in broken english from a Chinese girl for the new roof over her head and he was too busy holding back tears to care about some stupid car. Natasha was trying to pretend she wasn't really, hilariously grateful that Tony had paid for the center she’s still pretending she doesn't volunteer for, but she couldn’t seem to work up any enthusiasm for the fancy dress made with bullet-proof silk Tony made for her.

Tony was still explaining the War Amps to Thor, who was demanding to visit each and every one of the amputees so that he might use Mjolnir to heal them, or possibly invite them to do battle with him to celebrate their status as warriors. Nobody is quite sure what Thor's intentions are.

--

Steve was out on the balcony, hugging his knees and staring at the skyline.

“Are you okay?” Bruce asked.

“Fine,” Steve said, his shoulders hunched in defensively.

Bruce sighs. “He’s not doing it on purpose. He just-- he’s Tony.”

“I know.”

“Maybe you should just tell him that you want him to spend Christmas with us.” Bruce suggests, sitting down crosslegged next to him. “He’s not going to get this passive-aggressive tantrum you’re pulling.”

“I’m not-- I don’t want him to spend Christmas with us because I told him to,” Steve says. “I want him to spend Christmas with us because he wants to. But he’s got-- plans. Better things to do. Places to go and people to meet.”

“Right,” Bruce says.

“I’ve only got you guys,” Steve admits. “And it’s... it’s killing me, because Tony’s not alone. Not like we are.”

Bruce slings an arm over his shoulder.

--

[epiphanyx7]

I wrote a thing. A "Hulk Smash" kind of thing.

Betty knows that Hulk is good, that Hulk will keep Betty safe. This human does not know. This human is not Betty, but she comes close and touches Hulk, and only Betty touches Hulk.