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Tony regrets ever meeting Nick Fury when he’s falling asleep on the table in the conference room that has become solely for avenger’s business. It’s 10 AM on a Saturday morning, he’s just got back from his business trip to Tokyo, literally an hour ago, and he wants nothing more than to mess around in his lab until he passes out, collapsing on whatever he’s building. Everyone apart from Steve and Harley are at least half asleep, even if some of them are hiding it better than others. Fury isn’t even here yet and Tony’s made a deal with himself that if he doesn’t show in the next three minutes, he’s allowed to leave. That’s fair. Pepper probably won’t even be that annoyed with him. Steve might be, but honestly, Tony doesn’t care that much about Steve’s opinion at 10AM on a Saturday morning.
He doesn’t get to leave. Fury arrives less than two minutes later, scowling. He throws his phone down on the table, aiming it so it lands right in front of where Tony’s head is laying. Tony doesn’t jump from the sound, just raises his eyes to glare at Fury.
“It was your idea to bring him onto the team, you can get Parker to come here.” Fury is practically growling at him.
“You called this meeting at this God-awful time; you get him here.” Tony replies, pushing the phone away from him. He raises an eyebrow when Fury glares at him.
“You think I haven’t tried?” He complains as he takes a seat. “Damn kid is dodging my calls,”
“He’s probably asleep in his bed,” Bucky groans, twisting in his seat and resting his head against Sam’s shoulder. The other man doesn’t even try to push him off. “It’s where we all should be,” Tony sneaks a glance down at the phone Harley is hiding under the desk, where he’s clearly texting Pete and the kid is responding to him, sending pictures of dogs. He rolls his own eyes before asking FRIDAY to call Peter. He answers, barely letting the phone ring.
“If you’re trying to get me to come to whatever sucky meeting Fury is calling me about, you can tell him to go away. I’m busy.” Peter sounds annoyed through the phone. Harley tries to muffle the snort of amusement with a cough. He fails spectacularly.
“Get your ass here now, Parker,” Fury demands before Tony has a chance to say anything. Everyone is the room can hear Peter rolling his eyes down the line.
“God, Mr Fury, I would, but I’m busy,”
“I don’t care, Parker. You’re one of the team, this is a team meeting. Get here,”
“I can’t,” Peter snaps. “I’m busy,”
“Villains don’t care about your schedule.”
“I can’t come. I’m busy.”
“What are you up to, kid?” Tony manages to get in. Peter’s voice is a lot happier when he replies.
“Oh, hey, Mr Stark, you’re back!” He answers. “We’re at the park. Leia’s feeding the ducks. We’re busy.”
“And ducks are so important that you can’t feed them later this afternoon?” Fury snaps.
“Well, Mr Wilson bought Leia a duck onesie, and she’s been extremely excited about showing it to them. It’ll be dirty by this afternoon. That wouldn’t make a particularly good first impression with the ducks, you know,”
“Just bring the kid,” Fury tells him, before telling FRIDAY to terminate the call. No-one says anything for three minutes, until FRIDAY chimes in again. Tony jumps from where he is on the very verge of sleep.
“Boss, you have a new text for ‘Underoos’. You left your phone in the lab. Would you like to hear it?”
“Yeah, go on,”
“Text from Underoos: ‘Mr Stark, you would be doing me a solid if you told Fury you’re retiring or something, you know, so he’s less annoyed at me’,” There’s scattered laughter around the table, but Fury looks even angrier than he did before. “Text from Underoos: ‘don’t acc retire tho bc that would suck’. Text from Underoos: ‘you know, just get him off my back?? Bc he’s gonna be hella annoyed when I’m up there’.”
“Where is he, FRI?” Tony asks, ignoring Fury’s glowering.
“Mr Parker has just stepped into the lift. He has asked me to take him to the penthouse first.”
Peter sighs when Fury ends the call. He shoots a quick text to MJ to let him know where he’s going, and one to Harley complaining about Fury. He gets a short acknowledgement from MJ, and a description of how angry Fury is getting from Harley before he puts his phone away and moves back over to where Leia is laying breadcrumbs out for the ducks that are waddling around her.
“Right,” He sighs, crouching down next to her. She frowns when the ducks move backwards away from Peter. “We’re going to have to take a break from the ducks, kiddo. Mr Angry wants to see me at the tower,” Leia frowns deeper as she stands up from her own crouch, steadying herself on Peter’s arm.
“Uncle Tony will be there?” She asks, hopeful look on her face. She grins when Peter nods.
“Sure will be. He got back early this morning. And you can show Sam how much you like your new outfit, yeah?” Leia nods happily and laughs. “Alright. Where’s the other menace got to?” He asks, looking around in big, exaggerated movements, pretending he can’t hear the two lots of giggles. “Oof,” He groans quietly when something collides with his leg.
“Hi,” He looks down at the kid attached to his leg. He laughs as he peels the little hands off his jeans.
“There you are!” Peter exclaims dramatically, causing both Leia and the little boy to giggle harder. “I thought I was going to have to tell your mom that you’d been eaten or something!”
“Haven’t been eaten, Petey,” The boy smiles up at him. Peter grins down at him as he ruffles his hair.
“No, I guess not.” He crouches down again in front of the two toddlers, trying to look serious. He struggles to fight the smile when he looks at his two favourite kids. “Right, Lucas,” He starts. “I’ve got to go and speak to someone at work, okay?” Lucas nods happily, sends Peter a big, toothy grin. “So, you’ve gotta be on your best behaviour, yeah? And if you’re super-duper good, I’ll even tell MJ to take you to get ice cream on your way home!” He stands up when Lucas cheers. He picks up the backpack off the floor and swings it over his shoulder, before taking one of Leia and Lucas’s small hand in each of his own.
“Hello, Peter and Leia,” FRIDAY’s voice welcomes them when they step into the lift at the tower. Peter laughs at the way Lucas’s head spins around, looking for the source. “You appear to have an unauthorized youth with you.”
“This is Lucas, FRI,” Peter explains, squeezing Lucas’s hand. “He’s MJ’s brother.”
“Good morning, Lucas,” FRIDAY responds, a little warmth in her voice. “I will add you to my systems.”
“It’s FRIDAY,” Leia whispers to Lucas, where he’s still looking around suspiciously for the owner of the voice. “She’s invis’ble,” Peter laughs again at the look of awe on Lucas’s face.
“FRI, can you take us up to the penthouse first please? So I can grab some toys or something,”
“Of course, Peter.”
“Thank you,” When they get up to the penthouse, he grabs the box of colouring supplies from Leia’s bedroom, along with a few colouring books and some blank paper. Leia and Lucas are still in the open lift, playing some sort of hand game as they sit in the corner. They perk up as Peter steps back in.
By the time the doors open on the floor of the conference room, Leia is bouncing on her feet.
“Hey, be careful!” Peter calls after her as she runs down the hallway towards the room. Peter and Lucas, hand in hand again, walk slower towards the room. Peter laughs when Leia goes a room too far. He pushes the door open, still laughing. “This way, trouble,” He holds the door open for her to jet through, smiling when she runs straight up to Tony. Everyone in the room, except for Fury, smiles and offers her a hello. Natasha is the only one to notice.
“Peter,” She stage whispers towards him, small smile on her face. “I don’t want to alarm you, but you appear to be collecting children,” This gains everyone’s attention, including Fury’s, and Lucas hides his face into Peter’s jeans when all the attention is suddenly on him.
“This is Lucas,” Peter tells them, ruffling the boy’s hair. “He’s a bit shy,” Steve offers the small boy a wave and smiles brightly when Lucas sends a little wave back before hiding himself again. Peter leads Lucas over to the smaller table by the window that was added to the room when Leia started to come to meetings with Peter. He sets the books and box of stuff on the tabletop, before getting two drinks out of his backpack. “Leia, come and play with Luke, sweetheart,” Leia frowns at him where she’s hugging Tony tightly. “Come on, you can see Uncle Tony when the meeting’s finished,” Leia hesitates again, frowning until Tony bounces her slightly on his knee.
“Go and play with your friend, kid,” Tony tells her, lifting her up and putting her on the floor. He laughs when she pouts at him. “Go on, or I’ll tell Aunt Pepper to give the present we got you to DUM-E,”
“Present?” She asks, looking at him suspiciously.
“What, you think I wouldn’t bring my best friend something back from Tokyo?” He teases her, tapping her nose lightly. “But, you only get it if you go and play with Lucas. Go on,” She frowns once more before trotting over to Peter and Lucas, sitting down happily next to the other child.
“You need anything, just come and ask, yeah?” Peter tells them, waiting for their nods before joining the others at the bigger table. He takes the seat between Harley and Bruce.
“Why’d you have Luke?” Harley asks, not trying to stay quiet, barely looking up from his phone.
“MJ and her mom have gone to a doctor’s appointment,” Peter tells him, taking his own phone out of his pocket and hiding it out of Fury’s view. He looks up at the man who is glaring at him. “If you’ve got a problem, can we please leave it until there are no children around to hear it?”
“You better not make a habit of bringing random children to confidential meetings. What if he takes what we discuss home and tells somebody?”
“I thought villains didn’t care about my schedule, Mr Fury? If they did, they’d have known that this has been planned for weeks, and maybe they could rearrange their…villain-ing until I’m not looking after two children with nowhere else to go,” He shifts in his seat, trying to hide his laughter at the meme that Harley has just sent him of Fury.
“Anyway,” Harley looks up briefly, offering a bright, false smile. “He’s four, the only person who would believe what he’s saying is MJ and Peter tells-”
“Shut up, Harls,” Peter interrupts, kicking Harley’s shin. He laughs when Harley gasps and glares at him. “I thought this was an important meeting. I left the ducks for this. Shouldn’t you be doing some…meeting stuff?” He asks Fury before leaning back in his chair. He doesn’t say anything when Fury glares at him. As soon as Fury is talking again, he looks back down at his phone.
Peter’s only been half paying attention to what Fury is telling them about, knowing that Steve is paying attention and will give everyone a more concise version later. He makes sure he’s paying enough attention that, if he does ask, Peter will be able to at least bullshit an answer to any question Fury sends him.
The other half of his attention is split between the phone on his lap, where he and Harley have been texting for the entire meeting, and the two children sitting just in the corner of his eye line. Fury’s been talking for about an hour already, so he’s not really surprised when he feels a little hand pulling gently on his t-shirt. He places the phone on the table and turns his attention to the little boy by his side.
“Sup, buster?”
“Need to go, Petey,” The boy whispers back to him, cheeks flushing slightly. Peter just nods, taking his hand and standing up and picking his phone back up. Tony looks up at the movement, nodding when Peter gestures his head towards Lucas. Peter goes back over to the smaller table, bending down and asking Leia if she needs to go as well. She follows them happily out of the room, jetting off down the hallway in front of them.
They’re on their way back to the conference room when his phone rings.
“Hey,” He answers when he picks the phone up. “How’d it go?”
“All good!” MJ tells him, voice happy. “She’s growing me a very healthy little brother,”
“Congrats, dude!” Peter laughs. “Is she happy knowing you’ll both be outnumbered by men now?”
“Very happy. She doesn’t care as long as they’re all happy and healthy, really,”
“Yeah. Lucas will be pleased though,”
“Yeah, he will. I’ve just got mom home, so I’m on my way to you now. You still in the meeting?”
“We took a toilet break. Fury’s glaring at me through the window. He’s definitely going to yell at me later.” Peter sees and hears Bucky snort through the glass.
“Ha!” She laughs. “Get back in there, loser.”
Fury stops talking as soon as Peter leaves even though Tony knows that Fury knows the kid wasn’t paying attention, but he’s grateful for the break from the constant talking. He glances at Harley, who’s still on his phone, has been all morning, but has angled the screen away from Tony. The man nudges his foot, getting his attention.
“Who’re you texting, kid? Smiling like that?” He asks. Harley locks his phone immediately, snapping his head up to look at Tony.
“What?” He asks, tilting his head slightly. “Oh. Uh, no-one. Ned?” He stutters, before nodding his head, and talking with more conviction. “Yeah. Ned. We were talking about…Star Wars. Yeah.”
“You were talking to Ned about…Star Wars?” Sam joins in the conversation, voice disbelieving. Harley frowns.
“Yes?”
“Harley,” Natasha meets his eyes, raising an eyebrow. “You hate Star Wars,”
“Oh. Yeah but…Ned doesn’t.” He says after he hesitates for a split second. “I don’t like dinosaurs, but I still talk to Cap and Bucky, don’t I?” Whatever reply Steve is about to fire back is interrupted by Leia running back into the room with Lucas. Lucas hesitates for a moment before going back over to the table by the window, but Leia crawls straight into Tony’s lap.
“Where’s daddy got to, sweetheart?” He asks, moving her hair out of her face. She giggles at the sensation.
“Talking to Emmy,” She tells him happily as she rests her head on his shoulder. Tony hums softly.
“You having a nap?”
“Just wanna cuddle,” She tells him, shaking her head. Tony looks up when Bucky snorts. The older man just gestures behind Tony. Peter comes through the door then, phone to his ear.
“Yeah, floor 48. Alright. Yeah. See you later,” He says into the device before he sits down. “Lucas, your sister will be here in a few minutes, you wanna finish your drawing quickly?” He smiles when Lucas nods happily at him, and then turns back to Fury. “Sorry,”
“Moving on.” The director says, turning back towards the rest of the room. He barely gets 5 minutes into the presentation when FRIDAY interrupts again. Fury groans.
“Mr Parker, Miss Jones would like you to know she is on her way up,”
“Thank you.” Peter turns to Lucas, who is looking up at him, eyes wide. “Grab your stuff, munchkin,” Fury continues talking, and Tony can see how much he wants to be finished with meeting as soon as possible. He gets through another two points before there’s a knock on the door. Peter glances up.
“Quick as you like, Parker,” Tony chuckles when Fury sits down and pulls his own phone out, not even bothering to glare anymore. Peter looks at him suspiciously before gesturing for MJ to come in. She’s barely opened the door before Lucas crashes into her legs.
“Hey, buddy,”
“Petey said you’d get me ice cream if I was good,” He tells her. MJ lifts her eyes away from him to glare lightly at Peter.
“Did he now?” She raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. Peter just shrugs his shoulders. “And were you good?” She laughs when he nods his head quickly. “Well, I guess we can get ice cream then, if you’ve been very, very good,”
“Yay!” He giggles as he hugs her legs. Peter comes over to her, handing her Lucas’s jacket.
“You want me to take Leia?” She asks Peter, lowering her voice a bit for Fury doesn’t hear. “In case things kick off?”
“Would you? I’ll join you after?” He smiles gratefully when she nods. “Leia, princess, you wanna go and get some ice cream?” The toddler perks up in Tony’s lap. She nods her head, her curls bouncing. “Okay, come and get your shoes on,” He moves over to where she’s kicked her shoes across the room.
“How’s your ma, Em?” Harley asks her, putting his phone down on the table.
“Peter said she was at the doctors?” Tony asks, concerned look on his face. It shifts when MJ smiles at him.
“Yeah, she had a 20-week scan. She’s all good, though,” She ruffles Lucas’s hair, laughing when he sends her a little scowl. “Growing me another healthy little brat of a brother,”
“Nice,” is all Harley offers before picking his phone back up. MJ rolls her eyes, but still has a smile on her face. She glances over to Peter, checking he’s busy with Leia, before turning back to Harley.
“You joining us after, Keener?”
“Huh? What?” He asks, glancing up.
“Ice cream,” She says, giving him a look, eyes flitting across to the other teen putting his daughter’s shoes on. Harley follows her gaze. “You’re coming, yeah?”
“Sure. But I’m not-”
“Okay, Keener, see you later!” She calls, taking Leia’s hand when she comes over to her.
“Be good!” Peter calls after them, smiling when Leia waves at him. “Sorry,” Peter offers to Fury again. The man rolls his eyes, putting his phone down, and carries on with his presentation. Peter, while still not fully paying attention, at least tries to look more engaged than before, asks questions before Steve can, and only looks down at his phone periodically.
Fury gets through the rest of his presentation without interruption. It takes a little over an hour and a half more, and by the time Fury bites out “Dismissed.”, Tony is already halfway out of his seat.
“Parker.” Fury says, gaining the attention of everyone in the room. The kid looks up from his phone. “Stay behind. We’re going to have a talk about your professionalism.”
“My…professionalism?” Tony sits back down in his seat. Even Harley puts his phone away. Away. Not just beneath the table, he actually puts it in his pocket, and turns to watch Peter and Fury. Fury rolls his eyes when no-one leaves the room.
“I appreciate that you have a child in your care but bringing her and her little friends to confidential meetings in unacceptable.” Tony looks at Peter. He figures it would be inappropriate to laugh at the mixture of confusion and annoyance on his face.
“Are you…serious?” He asks. He puts the phone that’s in his hand face down on the table. “If you want me to stop bringing my daughter to meetings, try telling me about the meetings before I’m already late. Or!” He snaps his fingers sarcastically. “Here’s a better idea! Listen to me when I say I’m busy!”
“You were feeding ducks, Parker!”
“Yeah, and you took me away from that to spend nearly 3 hours telling us something Cap could tell us in 30 minutes!” Peter snaps back. Everyone is watching him carefully, not having expected him to bite back. “And it doesn’t matter. What does matter, is that I told you I was busy, at least four times, and you ignored that. It doesn’t matter what I was doing! And even if you don’t count what I was doing as being ‘busy’, what do you want me to do with a three and a four-year-old at 10AM on a Saturday?”
“Call a babysitter, put them in a class, I don’t care, Parker! You were needed here; you should have made arrangements. Bringing two children isn’t the solution!”
“Who do you want me to call?” Peter’s voice rises, his eyes going dark. “May’s in work, and Tony is right fucking there!” He gestures angrily towards Tony, who raises an eyebrow at the outburst. “Who do you want me to call?” Harley places a hand on Peter’s elbow gently. The younger teen deflates almost instantly, closing his eyes and taking a breath before he continues. “I get this is like, your full-time job or whatever, Fury, but it’s not mine. I choose to do this, I don’t get paid for this, and believe it or not, this isn’t my biggest priority.”
“It should be, Parker! There are people-” Peter stands up suddenly, moving towards the door.
“Unbe-fucking-lievable.” He mutters, before leaving the room. The door slams shut behind him. Clint and Sam both let out a low whistle as they all watch the door.
“Was that really necessary?” Natasha asks Fury. “What was he meant to do with two toddlers with no warning?”
“I don’t care-” Fury starts to reply but is interrupted by the door opening again.
“I’m terribly sorry for being so unprofessional and interrupting your very important meeting,” Peter doesn’t even look at Fury when he talks. “Harls, you coming to get ice cream?”
“Absolutely.” Harley says without hesitation. He scrambles out of the room, quickly catching up to Peter. Everyone watches through the glass except for Fury, who gathers his stuff together and leaves the room. It’s quiet.
“So,” Clint starts. Everyone turns to look at him. “Harley has a massive crush on Peter.”