Work Text:
It had been two weeks since Tony had agreed to let Bucky live in the Stark Tower. He still wasn’t exactly thrilled about Bucky being there but he at least had stopped, in the last few days, giving Bucky angry looks every time he passed him. This uncharacteristic character growth, probably had to do with the fact that Clint was being extraordinarily nice to Bucky, since his daughter, Lily, had taken a liking in “Uncle Bucky” and Tony surely didn’t want his boyfriend to think that he, Tony Stark, was incapable of being a decent person and good example for Lily.
Other than stopping a prison break from the Raft, it had been a pretty uneventful week for the Avengers in the Stark Tower. Bucky hadn’t been allowed to come to the mission (“You may live here, Barnes, but that doesn’t automatically make you an Avenger”, followed by Clint elbowing Tony in the ribcage) but he didn’t mind, on the contrary he was glad that he could now at least attempt to live a quiet and “normal” life, without worrying about missions.
But quiet weeks, like the past one, were rare when you lived in a tower filled with superheroes and a ten-year-old girl. On this particular Friday, the Stark Tower fell victim to the screams of said ten-year-old girl.
“BUT YOU PROMISED!!! THAT’S NOT FAIR DAD!”, Lily cried so loud that every resident of the Tower could hear her, “YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME!”
Alarmed by Lily’s screams, Steve and Bucky, who had been watching a movie in their quarters, hurried to the common living room area to see why Lily was throwing a tantrum. Sometimes they would make bets on why Lily was screaming. If it was a happy scream or a bad scream, if Tony or Clint were responsible or if the storyline of her favourite TV show wasn’t going where she would like it to go.
The sight the of them found in the living room was as funny as it was bizarre. Lily was laying on the floor crying and screaming, Clint was sitting next to her, trying to calm his daughter down and Tony was frantically typing on his phone and pacing the room with a panicked look on his face.
“What on earth is happening?”, Steve asked puzzled by the sight they had found. As soon as Lily realized that Steve and Bucky were in the room, she got of the floor, ran towards Bucky, jumped into his arms and held onto him tightly, all while still crying big crocodile tears.
“A lot as you can see”, Clint sighed, “Last week, we promised Lily to take her to the Zoo today but Tony forgot that he actually has to be at some Gala in about an hour and he’s insisting to drag me along.”
“And Lily didn’t take the news well?”, Bucky grinned, petting Lily over the head which to his and everybody’s surprise actually resulted in her stopping the screaming.
“As you can see, she did not”, Clint rolled his eyes, “And we now also have to organize a babysitter because someone”, he glanced at Tony, “forgot that Nat and Maria are out of town, some S.H.I.E.L.D business. Bruce is refusing to be left alone with Lily, Thor is banned from Babysitting and I don’t trust Vision with a human child.”
“Peter has school, damn it!”, Tony groaned, “Why do kids these days have school every time you need them to do you a favour?”
“I told you ten times already, I can stay home with Lily! The press will only ask questions when they see that I’m there with you and I told you that I’m not ready for the world to know about us, yet.”, Clint was now trying to calm Tony down, since Bucky was taking care of Lily.
“You are coming. I need you there, by my side. And if someone asks stupid questions, I’ll deal with them.”, Tony’s expression grew softer as he spoke and grabbed Clint’s hand.
“Uhm”, Steve cleared his throat, “We’re free the entire day. We could take Lily to the Zoo. I hereby volunteer us as babysitters.”
“REALLY???”, Lily squeaked into Bucky’s ear. Suddenly, her face brightened and all the tears had been forgotten.
“Sure, Lily”, Bucky smiled, “If it’s okay with you, Clint?”
“You would really do that? Thank you so much!”, Clint sighed but this time out of relief.
Tony’s reaction was surprising to everyone, even Tony himself wasn’t exactly sure why he did it, but he grabbed Steve and Bucky and technically Lily, since she was still clinging onto Bucky, into a group hug and then left the room without another word. Steve and Bucky exchanged a confused look but Clint just shrugged, mouthed another “Thank you” at Steve and Bucky and went after his boyfriend.
***
A few minutes after Tony and Clint had left the tower, Steve, Bucky and Lily were on the way to Central Park Zoo. Steve had insisted that the three of them should walk to the zoo, since it was only a roughly 25min walk from the tower.
Something neither Steve nor Bucky had thought of prior their decision to walk was the fact that almost everybody in New York knew who they were and that seeing Captain America and the Winter Soldier walking hand in hand and taking a 10-year-old girl to the zoo, would actually spark many rumours. Steve hadn’t bothered yet to officially announce his relationship to the public. He was still adjusting to social media and was mainly using his twitter account to share his opinion on various reality shows, like American Idol or RuPaul’s Drag Race. He also was of the opinion that technically it didn’t concern anyone of his “fans” or “followers” who he was screwing. He also couldn’t care less about what people thought about him, so by the time he realized that some of the people passing them were “secretly” taking pictures of him and Bucky, he decided that he truly didn’t give a shit if people knew that he was dating Bucky and that he wouldn’t even try to hide his love and affection for his boyfriend.
***
At the zoo, the first thing Lily wanted to do was to get a picture of the three of them taken. Naturally, Steve and Bucky obeyed and followed Lily to the photo point. On the way there, Steve decided it was probably time to tell Bucky about his plan of not hiding their relationship. Steve knew it sounded ridiculous and he was fully aware that he should have brought up the issue before they were walking hand in hand through Manhattan, but better late than never, right?
“Uhm, Babe?”, he started carefully.
“Yes?”
“I don’t know how to say this, but it occurred to me that people saw us walking hand in hand and that they’ve taken pictures of us and they probably already posted them on social media. Uhm, I just thought you should know that”, well that did sound even more stupid than it did in his head.
“Uhm, Stevie, I’m fully aware that people took pictures. I’m not a single-brain-celled-being like you, my love”, Bucky teased, “If I weren’t fine with being seen with you in public, I wouldn’t have held your hand for the last 30 minutes.”
Before Steve got a chance to reply, Lily had found a photographer and pulled the poor man towards Steve and Bucky. The man either didn’t recognize Steve and Bucky or he very obviously didn’t give a shit. He just asked them how many pictures they would like and if they would be paying with cash or with card. They quickly decided that they would take two pictures, one fun one with Lily to send to Clint and one just the two men.
For the fun picture, Lily decided that they all should do a silly face to “show Dad and Tony, that we have loads of fun together and they’re stuck at their boring Gala!”
For their solo picture, Steve pulled Bucky close to him and kissed him on the lips. In that moment he truly didn’t care if 10000 copies of that picture would end up on twitter in the next 5 minutes. He just hoped that he would get to post his copy first.
***
After the pictures where sorted out, Clint had been sent to fun picture and Steve had posted his on twitter like he planned (and consequently muted his twitter app with Lily’s help), the three of them could finally do for what they came to the zoo in the first place: look at the animals. Their first stop was the Tropic Zone, but they didn’t spend much time in there as Bucky’s hair started to develop weird-looking curls thanks to the humidity and he insisted that he couldn’t stay in there for much longer.
Consequently, they moved on to the Temperate Territory where Lily immediately ran towards the snow monkeys and Steve and Bucky found themselves the nearest bench. As soon as they sat down, Steve’s phone began to ring. It was a facetime call from Clint.
“Hi! Sorry to interrupt”, Clint sounded genuinely apologetic, “We got the picture but that’s not the reason I’m calling. There are actually three reasons why I’m calling. Tony?”, he paused and looked around, “Where did you go? Two of those three reasons are yours! Ah! There you are. Sorry”, Clint apologized again, pulling Tony into the frame.
“Hi!”, mumbled the billionaire, “Sorry to interrupt your fun time. Felt like I had to share the fact that I’m a bit tipsy with you two.”
“Tony, a) if that’s one of the reasons why you called, I’m going to punch you in your perfect teeth and b) it’s not even 3 pm yet! Why are you drunk?”, Steve laughed and made an expression that said “pretends to be shocked”.
“I’m not drunk, Capsicle, just tipsy, there’s a difference. And you’re not allowed to use my own insult compliments against me, okay? You are the one with the punchable, perfect teeth.”
“Tony, your crush is showing”, Clint giggled in the background.
“What crush? What-“
“Anyway”, Clint interrupted Tony, “Anyway, reason one we’re calling: Steve, your twitter is blowing up but I guess you know that. So yeah, I guess I just wanted to say that this must have taken some balls to post. So good for you, buddy.”
“Actually, I’ve been meaning to do that for a while now”, Steve smiled at Bucky, who blew him a kiss.
“Can you stop being so disgustingly cute?”, Tony groaned while pretending to throw up, “So reason numero dos: this one”, he gestured over to Clint, “says I’m being too couple-y. I disagree! I just want to be disgustingly cute with my own boyfriend, but said boyfriend doesn’t want me to in public. Disgustingly cute couple: please help me!”
“I’m beginning to think he is pretending to be tipsy. First of all, apparently, he quit drinking months ago and secondly everybody knows that tipsy Tony is very clingy. So, my guess is he’s just pretending to be tipsy so he has some kind of excuse to be clingy and that Clint gives him more attention”, Steve whispered to Bucky, who couldn’t stop himself from laughing out loud.
“Tony”, Bucky said, still laughing, “are you pretending to be drunk so you can be a clingy jerk in public?”
“Okaaaay, move over Tony”, Clint intervened before Tony could think of a fitting insult, “the last reason why I need to talk to you, concerns Lily. I just wanted to warn you that security might not let her go to the penguins, remember because of the incident with Thor last time she was at the Zoo? They took her name down and took a picture of here as well, so technically she is banned from that part of the Zoo as well as Thor. Just be warned ok? Oh, and if she is able to get to the penguins, please keep an eye on her!”
“Ok Clint, we’ll try and keep her away from the penguins. Have fun at the Gala and punch Tony in his perfect teeth from us!”, Steve nodded, “Byeeee!”, he and Bucky said in unison.
“I have so many questions! Starting with why Thor and Lily are banned from the penguins?!”, Bucky laughed.
“Long story! So basically, what happened….”
***
Half an hour later, Lily was finally done watching every animal in the Temperate Territory and was now insisting to see the penguins. Steve tried to carefully prepare the young girl, that she may not be given access to that area but the child insisted that they probably wouldn’t remember her.
As they arrived in the penguin area, Bucky suddenly tapped Steve on the shoulder and pointed to a sign next to a security guard.
No Asgardians beyond this point
(Exceptions apply)
“So, they do remember”, Steve chuckled, “I wonder who those exceptions are though. It’s not like many Asgardians have actually been to Central Park Zoo.”
“I’m guessing everyone except Thor and maybe Loki since no one in New York would want Loki anywhere near them after what he did in 2012”, Bucky smirked.
The two of them where abruptly taken out of their conversation when a security guard yelled: “HEY! Kid! Get down there immediately! You can’t go in there and don’t think I don’t remember you from last time!”
Steve sprinted towards the penguins to see what Lily had done now, only to find the girl trying to climb into the penguin enclosure.
“Lily Barton! Get back here this instant!”, Steve shouted, “I told you to stay close and not to go to the penguins without us. Your father will hear about this!”
“Nice reference”, Bucky chuckled only to receive a rather confused look from Steve, who had no clue what Bucky meant by that.
A few seconds later, Lily was returned to Steve and Bucky by the security guard. Steve apologized on behalf of Lily a million times and then manoeuvred the child towards the exit.
“Why on earth did you think that you climbing into the enclosure was a good idea?”, Bucky asked with the best strict-dad-voice he could do, which didn’t sound like he had intended it to at all.
“Well, the sign only said Asgardians weren’t allowed near the penguins and last time I checked I wasn’t Asgardian.”, the girl replied innocently.
“Well, as much a this is true Lily, it doesn’t change the fact that no one is allowed to climb into the enclosure. It’s dangerous you know? And it gets you kicked out of the zoo.”, Steve felt a bit strange having to lecture the child but he volunteered to babysit and of course he should have expected that Lily would manage to get herself into trouble.
“But penguins are so cute! How can something this cute be dangerous?”, Lily didn’t understand how such a small animal could be threat to her.
“Sweetie, just because they are cute and small doesn’t mean that they can’t hurt you. If they feel threatened, they might attack you. Look at Bucky for example. He’s also cute and small, but if he would want to, he could really hurt someone if they are threatening him.”, Steve smiled at Lily, “Look, I’m not saying this to upset you, I’m saying this because I don’t know what I would have done if you got hurt. Besides your dad would kill me if something happened to you on my watch. Do you understand, Lily?”
Lily nodded, “Can-Can I have some ice cream before we leave?”, she shyly asked.
“Sure, sweetie”, Bucky pulled out his wallet, “what kind do you want?”
***
Back home at the Stark Tower, the three of them had played some board games until Clint and Tony returned in evening. Steve and Bucky had agreed that there was no need for Clint and Tony to know about Lily’s attempt to befriend a penguin, since she had already learned her lesson earlier today and telling Clint would just get her into unnecessary trouble again.
Later that night, when Lily was back in her room with her father, Steve and Bucky sat in front of their TV and relaxed to the noise of the television. Steve rested his head in Bucky’s lap when he suddenly jumped up and exclaimed “Shit!”
“What’s wrong?”, Bucky jumped, startled by the sudden movement.
“Ah, nothing too important but I want to unmute my twitter and Lily is already in bed.”
“You are aware that I can do that too, right? I am literally part machine so I guess I’m pretty good with technology”, Bucky winked, “I don’t understand how someone as clever as you can be so stupid at times.”
“Not fair”, Steve groaned, “you’re like that too! You bought Lily ice cream just after I lectured her on her behaviour!”
“She was upset! Now she knows that I’m the fun uncle and you’re the strict uncle. It’s important for her to know that”, Bucky snickered.
Steve overdramatically rolled his eyes at Bucky and threw his phone into his partner’s lap.
“Here, get my twitter back to normal!”
“What’s the magic word?”
“Fuck you”
“I love you, too”