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“Are you sure you can handle it by yourself?”
Bucky looked up from where he was unbuckling his youngest child, Peter, from his car seat to find his husband standing beside him, one hand on his hip, the other holding his phone at his side. Tony’s eyes were on him, a slight smile on his face even if his eyebrows were raised in doubt. Tony, to everyone’s surprise (except Bucky’s), had turned out to be the helicopter parent, always worried and always fussing. Bucky thought it was cute, but he’d found out the hard way not to point it out to Tony himself.
Bucky lifted Peter out of his seat and sat him on his hip, one arm around Peter’s back to hold him in place as he turned. “I got it, don’t worry,” Bucky assured his husband with a smile. “We’ll do the groceries while you run over to SI and handle whatever it is that R ‘n D messed up this time.”
“Ardee,” Peter echoed, hands slapping at Buck’s shoulder happily as Tony smiled proudly at him. Each day he learned new words and each time Tony was as proud as the first.
Luckily, there was a small, if slightly more expensive, grocery store near Stark Industries R&D labs. So while their normal Tuesday evening errands had shifted to include a sudden minor explosion that Tony had to deal with personally, they’d still be able to get home in time for family dinner with Pepper and Rhodey, Clint and Steve and Tasha. It just meant that while Tony went off to save the world – or at least, Stark Industries – Bucky was in charge of grocery shopping and two small children.
“Okay,” Tony said, scrunching up his nose at Peter. He kissed Bucky’s cheek, ruffled Peter’s hair affectionately and then bent down to crouch in front of their oldest son. “Do not make trouble, young man.”
Harley, their oldest at three years old, just grinned at Tony, reaching up to take hold of Bucky’s free hand. It was the prosthetic, and therefore didn’t have as much range in motion, but for holding his troublemaker son’s hand, it worked just fine. Tony scoffed, as if he knew very well just how much trouble Harley was likely to get into even with a chaperone, and stood.
“I’ll keep it as quick as I can, babe,” Tony said, then turned and headed toward the stoplight where he would cross over to SI’s block.
Bucky watched him cross the street before he turned to his oldest son. “A’ight, hooligans, let’s go.”
Bucky nabbed a cart once they got inside and carefully placed Peter into the front part, buckling him in before he reached down to lift up Harley. “You know the rules, baby boy,” Bucky told him as he set him inside the larger section of the cart. “You gotta sit so we don’t tip over, okay?”
Harley, miracle of miracles, did as he was told, and Bucky reached into his pocket for the list Pepper had made him. Bucky was well aware that it was considered unsafe to put a child in the large section of the cart - it said so right on the sign they attached to every single one of them, but with Tony off taking care of SI business and Bucky down one fully functioning hand, there was no way he would be able to coral Harley, push the cart, and collect their items with any sort of ease or efficiency. So into the cart his son went. Harley knew the rules, Bucky would just have to hope he didn’t get bored.
And they almost managed it.
Bucky was almost through his list when they got to the end of the snack aisle and Harley officially lost interest in reorganizing the contents of the cart based on some criteria that was outside Bucky's understanding. They passed by the fruit snacks and Bucky held his breath in the hopes that it would go unnoticed, but as soon as his son spotted the bright yellow packaging of the Pokemon fruit snacks, all hell broke loose. Harley popped up like a damn prairie dog, hand reaching out toward the shelves as Bucky desperately tried to weave the cart in a way that would allow his son to keep his balance, all the while trying to reach for his son with his good hand. This left the cart-steering to his prosthetic, and that was not working well at all, and Harley was tipping precariously as he yelled for Pikachu and something called a ‘Sobble.’
“Harley!” Bucky called, voice tense but not loud enough to attract attention, hopefully. The last thing he needed was to make a scene. “Siddown, buddy, yer gonna-!”
As if in direct contradiction to his last thought, just as Harley was about to tip, an older lady came zipping around the corner like she was running the Indy 500 with a cart and just about crashed into Bucky’s cart and, because he was hanging off the side like a damn monkey, Bucky’s son.
She managed to swerve and miss, and actually darted out a hand to catch and stabilize Harley at the same time, and Bucky immediately went from what a fucking idiot to damn those are some nice reflexes. Once Harley was righted, fruit snacks in hand, he sat back down like he knew he was supposed to (like it mattered now, but oh well), flipping the box over and over in his hands as he admired his hard-won prize. Bucky heaved a heavy sigh of relief and turned to thank the woman.
What he expected was a smile and perhaps a chuckle at how their timing had worked out just right, but what Bucky got was a judgmental frown and attitude.
“I don’t know what your father was thinking, putting you in the cart like that,” the woman said, talking to Harley but looking directly at Bucky, superiority written clear across her face. “You could’ve been seriously injured, honey.”
Bucky frowned. Not for nothing, but he usually was not the subject of harsh criticism when it came to parenting woes. People were generally unwilling to approach an amputee to begin with, let alone judge them for the deficiencies said apmputation caused, and Bucky’s prosthetic was clearly visible beneath his t-shirt. In addition, and he knew this was sexist as hell and unfair to boot but it didn’t make it any less true, the fact that he was a father out with his two young children ‘all on his own’ without the help of their mother usually meant he was more likely to be praised for his efforts than judged for his shortcomings.
So instead of thanking the woman, Bucky just stood there, rather at a loss for words.
Fortunately, Peter picked up the slack.
They were near the front of the store, which had floor to ceiling windows that let in an abundance of natural light and also allowed everyone inside to watch the traffic passing by on the road outside. As if summoned by god himself, a firetruck passed by the window, heralded by its siren, and Peter, hearing the easily identifiable sound, turned to watch.
The thing about Tony and Bucky’s youngest son was that he loved fire trucks. Loved them. Hands down his favorite type of vehicle. He had fire truck toys, fire truck shirts, fire truck pajamas, and Tony had even managed to find little kid plates with fire trucks on them with matching fire truck silverware they used at almost every meal. Bucky was in the middle of designing a fire truck big boy bed for Peter in the hopes he’d be ready to make the transition after – and not before – he presented it for this year’s Christmas. It was getting a bit excessive, but Tony thought it was adorable and Bucky thought Tony was adorable so they were all one big happy fire truck-loving family. Peter even knew how to say the words, which made Tony even more of a proud papa.
The only problem was: Peter was one and, as Tony liked to put it, not all of the wires were connected up top yet. So when Peter said, “Ah! Fire Truck!” as was his wont whenever he actually heard or saw the real deal, what actually came out was-
“Ah! Fuck! Fuuuck!” Peter yelled at the top of his cute baby lungs, interrupting the lady’s next scathing criticism quite handily. “Ah, fuck! Fuck! Ah, fuck!”
Peter was pointing at where he’d seen the fire truck pass by and, as if Bucky wasn’t already halfway to losing it completely, it happened to also be exactly where the lady was standing. “AH FUCK!” Peter shouted, bouncing in his seat excitedly, finger extended toward their critic.
The lady looked utterly shocked, hand to her chest as she gasped and leaned back, and- Bucky lost it. Totally and completely. He started laughing so hard that he actually interrupted his little boy’s excitement over the fire truck entirely with his laughter.
“Well, I never,” the lady said, and just the fact that she said those exact words hit Bucky even harder and he bent over the cart and his son as he tried to catch his breath.
The lady moved to pass him by, her tone curt as she said, “Well, heaven forbid you reap what you sow.”
Bucky straightened and, convinced that his body was blocking Harley’s view and Peter wouldn’t understand what it meant, happily gave the lady the bird as he grinned at her. Her eyes widened comically and Bucky could tell that she was gearing up for another lecture when another voice called out.
“Petey! Did you see that fire truck?” came Tony’s voice, and Bucky absolutely did not turn around, needing to see the look on this woman’s face as he listened to the sounds of Tony lifting Harley out of the cart.
“Fuck!” Peter yelled happily, reminded of his fire truck once more. “Fuck! FUCK!”
The lady looked at Peter, then back towards where Tony was surely standing with Harley now safe and sound on the ground, and then back to Bucky, cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Bucky grinned, ruffled Peter’s hair with his prosthetic.
“Yeah, baby boy,” Bucky said loudly. “Fire truck.”
After a long, drawn out moment of awkward silence, the woman turned quickly around and sped away. Bucky watched until she turned into the next aisle, out of sight, before he turned to his husband. Tony was grinning, trying not to laugh and failing.
“Oh, my god,” Bucky said lowly, face still sporting a grin. “How much of that did you see?”
“I just saw the last bit,” Tony said. “But I heard all of it. How do you think I found you?”
“Fuck!” Peter said again.
“Exactly,” Tony agreed, laughing.
“Thank god,” Bucky said, laughing as well. “Rogers would never believe me if I didn’t have a second witness to back me up. That lady- oh my god .”
“Papa,” Harley called, holding up his fruit snacks so Tony could see them. “Pikachu. Daddy said I could have them!”
Bucky ignored the fact that he had said no such thing because he was still recovering from his laughter, and watched Tony pick the box up to look at it with scrutiny. Bucky plucked them out of Tony’s hands and dropped them in the cart.
“Pikachu is what started that whole entire thing, I think they’ve earned a spot in the Barnes-Stark household,” Bucky told him.
Tony smiled, moved so that he was within kissing distance so that he could plant a fierce one on Bucky’s lips, then took Harley’s hand and headed toward the checkout. “If you say so,” he called, leading the way. "Pikachu is alright in my book."
“Fuck,” Peter said to Bucky, patting Bucky’s prosthetic where it rested on the cart’s handle.
Bucky laughed again, pressed a quick kiss to Peter’s forehead and went after his husband.