Chapter Text
“Well, I believe this is accomplished, don’t you think?” Tony leveled a fiery look at the piece of crap in front of him and offered the trademark smile he was so well known for.
“I do think that it is,” Tony said.
“We will be on our way. We hope that you don’t consider this to be a bust,” the man offered a smug smile that made Tony’s blood boil. Who did this guy think he was messing with? Sliding the cool metal ring into his palm he shook the man’s hand.
“Oh, I don’t think that at all,” Tony said. The man in front of him offered a curt head nod before standing and staring the man in the eye. “I think this is done.” He flashed a bright smile. “My pleasure.” Watching the man get into the car, Tony offered another wave.
“We’ll have to do this again, old friend,” the man replied with a smug smile before turning to enter the plane.
“Well that was unpleasant,” Rhodes said next to him. Tony smirked and made his way toward their own car. Instead of pulling off, Rhodes sat behind the wheel looking at the scene in front of them. A flurry of workers were rushing toward the scene. “What do we call this?”
With satisfaction lining his chest, Tony leaned back in his chair. “A job well executed,” Tony said, smirking before putting on his glasses. “Get me home to my son, Rhodes.”
“You got it.”
~/~
Peter or Prince as he was known found himself jumping up and down on his bed. He had worked pretty hard with Ms. Huston today and he was ready to play. He loved his daddy, but he was so tired of being alone all the time. Ms. Huston was nice and played games with him, but Peter hated spending so much time inside all the time. He had all the toys in the whole world, but there was only so much he could do by himself.
More than anything, he really wanted a friend or a brother.
Or maybe both!
He did a flip on his bed and hoped that his daddy would be home soon so he could ask him. Light shined in his room before he saw the light on his desk flash green. He squeaked with excitement, it meant his daddy was done with work! Peter did another flip off of his bed and landed with a bit of a thump. Rushing toward the door he pulled it open and rushed out of his room.
“Daddy!” By now he’d learned that if his dad turned his light green before he opened the door it meant that he’d had a ‘clean’ day. So when he saw his dad coming out of his bedroom Peter knew that he’d had a 'dirty' day at work.
“Hey, Prince! There's my little man.” His dad tossed him into the air while Peter squealed with excitement. More than anything in the world he loved his daddy.
“How was your day?”
“It was hot and stinky.” Peter nodded.
“Did you see da big man wiff da plane?”
“With the plane,” His dad said, announcing the words so Peter could try to mimic it.
“Right, thuh plane.”
“Yes, I saw him. ” Peter nodded. His dad told him lots of things about his work. He said that he wanted Peter to know what his job was so he could be a big boss when he grew up. “But let’s not talk about that. Why don’t you tell Daddy what you did today?”
At that, Peter wiggled himself out of his daddy’s arms and ran into the schoolroom. He grabbed his workbook and his model plane. “Look! Daddy! Look!” He saw a bright smile on his father’s face as he rushed toward him.
“What do you have there?”
“I gots a lot done today! Look at my book!” He opened it to show his dad just how many pages he had completed. “I’m all done wiff da dird grade book.” His dad gripped him up so he was settled on his hip.
“Alright Prince, let’s slow down there. How about you try again, huh?” Peter blew out a hard breath. He hated having to start saying stuff over and over. Nobody else had to do it.
“I am all done wiff,” Peter started before his daddy shook his head.
“No, it’s with,” his dad said emphasizing the ‘th’. “Try again, buddy.”
“I’m all done wiii-thh uh th-he thurd grade book.”
“Good job!! That was perfect!” Peter smiled big at the words of his father. “You’re done with the third-grade book already. That means six-year-old Prince Stark, is a genius. Did you know that?” Peter nodded. “How’d you know?”
“‘Cause you say so.” Peter smiled again. His dad laughed and pulled Peter close to kiss his cheek.
“‘Cause I’m always right, Prince. Remember that.”
“Can we play tonight?” His dad nodded at him before he winced after the airplane poked him in the side. “Oh, sorry.” Wriggling he silently asked to be let down so he could run to his room. “We gonna play all night!”
~/~
For a day that had started so well, it had turned to complete crap. The night had begun with him sharing a fun dinner and movie night with his son. They had played games and he got to forget about all of the troubles and just enjoy his bright and smart six-year-old.
Unfortunately, just as they were settling in for a night of math puzzles that the boy enjoyed he got a call from Rhodey saying that he needed to head down to the bunker immediately. His son had not liked that and threw a fit. The hysterics weren’t anything new, but the face punches were something that the boy had started recently and Tony hated it. Anytime the boy was frantic he would ball his little fists up and go to town swinging for all it was worth. Tony knew it was a part of the self-defense regimen he had set the boy up with, but most of it he was sure was due to the boy’s loneliness. Thanks to the FBI and other government agencies cracking down Tony had to spend more time away from home than he’d like. He’d hired and did away with more nannies in the last six months than he could even count. He had toyed with the idea of doing some sort of playgroup, but he didn’t trust the kid to leave the house to go to school let alone be with other kids in an unsecured facility.
His life was dangerous and sadly his son paid the price for it.
Needless to say, after prying the small fingers of his son off his arm as he entered the elevator door Tony was in a foul mood. Standing at his desk his eyes bored holes into the men in the room. He was fuming as he listened to the debrief of the situation. It was like one thing after another had gone wrong and he was pissed. It was getting to the point where he couldn’t even trust some of his best men to do a simple job.
Raid the warehouse of the Acolytes.
That was all he’d asked them to do.
He pressed his hand to his face before rubbing his eyes as he listened to them explain how something as simple as a raid had turned into a cluster with three men’s lives lost.
“I thought you said this was handled,” he glared at his lieutenant and the group of people responsible to help carry out the raid. “It will be easy, Boss. Isn’t that what you told me just last night?” The blonde-haired man glared right back at Tony.
“It was up until the very last minute. Someone must have tipped them off. Our research was perfect and we knew their schedule down to the minute. This was an inside job.”
Not really caring about anything else any of them and had to say Tony brushed his hand in front of him ordering them out of the office. He was starting to wonder if he was getting too old for this. Three men were gone. For what? Because they couldn’t get their crap together? When he looked up and saw Rogers still standing there. Tony rolled his eyes, of course, the man still had problems following his instructions after serving under Tony’s father for so long. Howard Stark ran things much differently than Tony did. He knew that some of the changes irked Rogers, but he didn’t care.
This was Tony’s empire...not his.
“I thought I told you to leave,” he said harshly.
“There’s something you need to know.” Tony was so not in the mood for this.
“Well spit it out.
“We found something.” Tony urged him to go on. “Well, there was a kid. He’s covered in bruises and is skittish as they come. We found him hidden behind some boxes in the back of the warehouse. He won’t talk to us but we’re pretty sure he was one of the errand boys.” Tony rolled his eyes. He wasn't really a fan of kids well aside from his own, but that was different.
“OK, why are you telling me they leave or something? Do we need to send a team out?”
The blonde man shook his head. Tony noted that even with Tony abolishing the military-style dress code of his father, Steve Rogers still fully adhered to the policy of the elder Stark. He let the man drawl on while he sat down and looked down at his phone. Peter was still awake and from the looks of it, he was taking pleasure in building a tower before knocking it down with a plastic bat. Tony hoped that the boy wasn’t imagining the tower was him. “We brought him back here.” With that Tony’s head snapped up.
“What? Why would you do that? Do we look like a babysitting company? In case you haven’t noticed we have dangerous weapons just lying around. This is no place for a child.” Tony spat.
The cold and contemptuous look that Rogers sent Tony’s way wasn’t lost on him either. “What about Peter?”
“He’s my son,” Tony said, daring Rogers to say anything.
“Look, I know Peter’s had a rough couple of years with his asthma flare-ups and the speech thing.” Tony narrowed his eyes. Rogers didn’t get to speak about Peter. “This kid’s smart, he's got a good head on his shoulders and he’s a kid, Tony.”
“You said he didn’t talk, how would you know any of this? He could be a serial killer for all we know.”
“Tony, he’s a kid. One who managed to build some type of gun out of scraps. He wouldn’t have used it if I didn’t sneak up on him. I mean kid’s got good instincts and he’s tough Tony. We can use that.” Tony rolled his eyes. “I thought Peter could use a friend.” Tony rolled his eyes but pondered on the statement. Peter was a little bit socially awkward and having another child his own age to play with on a daily basis may make a world of difference. Especially with his speech. Tony could only model correct speech patterns so much. As Peter’s speech therapist noted, a child his own age to regularly play and speak with would really alter things. He leaned back in his chair and contemplated. He could do this for Peter and it wouldn’t hurt to stick it to Rogers either.
“All right, I'll tell you what if you’re sure this kid is worth it then I take you at your word.” Before he could even finish them Steve was already out of the office. Apparently it was to get the kid because only moments later Steve returned practically dragging a boy behind him. Tony almost couldn’t believe his eyes. The kid was tiny with crazy curly blonde hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in months. The boy definitely smelled to high heaven and stood there in clothes that were three sizes too big. But all of these things were fixable. Leaning over his desk he peered down at the boy's blue eyes which were glaring at him.
“What’s your name kid?” The boy scoffed at him before spitting right on his desk. Part of Tony wanted to reach across the desk and throttle the kid with the other part was a little bit impressed.
The kid had guts.
Tony chuckled as he watched Steve’s shocked face flicker between the desk and the boy. Steve reached for the boy’s arm apparently to reprimand him, but Tony’s words came out first.
“He can stay.” Steve looked up mid-sentence at Tony in a bit of shock that he removed from his face moments later.
“Great I’ll get Peter’s nanny to give him a bath and get him some new clothes. I’ll bring them up to you in about an hour.” Tony narrowed his eyes at the man. “What?” Rolling his eyes Tony stood up and looked Rogers dead in the face.
“Nope, I’ve got my kid. If he stays here he’s not my responsibility,” Tony says.
“What am I supposed to do with him, Tony? I don’t know the first thing about kids. I've only known Bucky since he was almost ten.”
“I don’t care what you do, if he stays he’s staying down here with you and the rest of the team. I am sure you guys can figure out where he goes from there. He can come up and play with Peter but at night he comes back down here with you. Got it?”
“Tony,” he raised his brows at the name, “Boss, your house is much better for kids. Who knows what the kid will be exposed to down here. What if we get him another nanny or something?” Tony crossed his arms before steeling his gaze.
“I run a multi-billion dollar empire. I have an asthmatic son and a government that’s crawling up my back. Hear me when I say that I don’t have time for this or for him. Understood?” Steve glared at him.
“Understood,” Steve said firmly. Grabbing the boy’s shoulder Steve led him out of the room.
“Your house probably sucks anyway,” the kid said as Steve pulled him out the door. As the little miscreant left all Tony could think was that one day that kid will be the perfect second in command for Peter.
For now, though, he had a kid of his own to apologize to. Grabbing his phone he headed into the hall. With a smile, he watched the boy race down the hall darting back and forth with precision and determination.
Yeah, this kid would be the perfect lieutenant.