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It was Saturday afternoon and Peter was happily walking down the sidewalk with Morgan’s smaller hand in his. Both Tony and Pepper’s presence were required for a merger deal they had been working on and Morgan’s usual babysitter was unavailable. And since it was summer break, Tony had decided that he would be the next best solution. He’d hesitated at first because he’d only known Morgan for a few months and while he loved her like a little sister he’d never been in charge of looking after a child before. Tony and Pepper had then convinced him that if he could look after an entire city, he would be fine looking after one four-year-old and offered to let him take her to the ice cream shop around the corner to help pass the time. Eventually, he’d agreed and a few days later, he’d walked into the tower, buzzing with apprehension.
However, once he’d settled down and got into the swing of things it hadn’t been so bad. Pepper had packed a backpack full of paper, crayons, and some little plastic dinosaurs. The morning had started with making comics. Morgan drew the wonky stick figures and Peter made little speech bubbles so that he could write down what she wanted them to say then they both signed their names at the bottom. The dinosaurs had come out next and that was followed by lunch in the cafeteria. Then it was time to walk to the ice cream shop as promised and by the time they got back, Tony and Pepper would be almost done with their meeting. From there they would all head back to the cabin together, getting home just in time to squeeze in a little bit of swimming before Tony pulled the grill out. To have been so worried everything seemed to be going just fine.
“What flavor are you going to get Mo?” Peter asked as they walked, hand in hand, down the sidewalk, weaving between people.
Morgan tilted her head thoughtfully and then looked up with a serious expression. “My mommy says I can’t have strawberry,” she said and Peter nodded his head. Tony and Pepper had reminded him of that before they went into their meeting.
“Well, it’s a good thing that they have at least thirty-seven other flavors then. I’m going to get Chocolate Peanut Butter Ripple. Or maybe Salted-Caramel Brownie Swirl. I don’t know yet,” Peter said, laughing at his own indecision. Then he looked down and smiled. “Are you still deciding too?”
“I’m going to get-” Morgan began, bringing her eyebrows together much like Tony did when he was trying to make a difficult decision. “-Vanilla,”
“Really? Vanilla?” Peter asked in surprise because the place they were going to made all kinds of elaborate concoctions. Enough That they could give Ben & Jerry’s a run for their money. “Not, I don’t know- Triple Chocolate chunk?”
“I like vanilla,” Morgan chirped, adding a little skip to her step. “My daddy says that vanilla is a classic and that nothing beats a classic.”
Peter hummed in agreement because he could hear Tony saying something like that and chuckled quietly. “Do you at least want some sprinkles on it?” he asked, grinning widely when the girl nodded her head. “Extra sprinkles?”
“Yeah!” Morgan squealed, ripping her hand out of Peter’s so that she could take off running.
The moment Morgan’s hand left his Peter began to panic. “Wait! Morgan, you have to wait for me!” he shouted, chasing after his little sister, catching her just a few long strides later. “You can’t run off like that, Mo,” he fussed, once he had her back at his side but the girl seemed unphased by his mild chastising. She was entirely too occupied by the ice cream shop that had come into view.
With a shake of his head, Peter led them into the store and ordered them each a cone, using the money that Pepper had handed him when he’d arrived. For a while, they sat at a table and ate their cones. Morgan’s was covered in so many sprinkles that they stuck to her lips like candy lipstick making both of them laugh. He made sure to take a picture to show Tony, Pepper, and May later.
“Is it good?” he asked as he reaches for a napkin in order to wipe the dripping sticky mess off of the little girl's chin and fingers. Of course, Morgan vigorously nodded her head. “Maybe we should get this in a cup instead,” he mused before having the cone and what was left of the ice cream transferred into a small bowl before heading back to the tower.
The walk back was slower than the walk there. Morgan ate her ice cream and chattered beside him as they walked past the theater that must have just let out. There were people everywhere and at first, it was fine. Then the crowd began to thicken in one large congregated bunch around them. He reached down to grab Morgan's hand until they made their way through the bulk of it but he came up empty. Looking down, he didn't see her. He spun around to look behind him but she was nowhere in sight and he immediately began to panic. “Mo?” he shakily called out. “Mo!” he repeated with more vigor but there’s no reply, causing his chest to tighten just a little bit more. “Dang it- Morgan!” he screamed over the crowd, dropping the last of his ice cream cone onto the sidewalk as he did so.
“Have you seen my little sister?” he questioned as he walked around in the mass of people. “She has brown hair and brown eyes and she's wearing a pink and grey outfit--” he pleaded but no one was really listening. He continued to weave his way out of the pack where he spotted Morgan sitting on the ground happily petting a dog. A wave of relief crashed into him seeing that she was safe but the feeling was soon replaced by fury and impatience like he’d never felt before.
“What are you doing, Morgan?” he growled as he stormed towards the little girl, gaining her attention as well as the dog's owner and several passer-by's. Any other time he would have been mortified by the attention but at the moment, he didn’t care who was watching him. “You can’t disappear like that! You were supposed to be beside me!” he shouted before scooping the girl up onto his hip, where he worked to keep her from squirming out of his arms.
“Stop it, Pete! Let me go!” Morgan screeched loudly enough to make Peter’s ears ring. "Put me down! I was petting Daisy!”
Peter made sure that his grasp was just tight enough to hold her in place but not too tight to hurt her before turning to walk away from the audience that had accumulated. “Well, now we’re leaving!” he all but shouted directly into her face causing her to burst into tears.
“Why are you being so mean to me!” Morgan wailed at the top of her lungs and suddenly Peter could feel his stomach swirling with guilt.
“I’m not-” he began with the intention of telling her that he wasn’t trying to be mean but she was still sobbing and he was starting to feel overwhelmed. “Oh, God I can’t do this,” he said mostly to himself and then carried Morgan, who was still crying over the dog and probably his yelling to the steps that led up to an abandoned shop. Once he had her settled he stepped to the side where he could still see her red, wet cheeks and called Tony.
Unsurprisingly, Tony answered on the first ring and Peter was quick to explain that everything was fine. Because now that he knew that Morgan hadn’t been kidnapped or swept completely away from him he knew that it was but at the same time, he knew that he couldn’t possibly watch Morgan anymore. So he told the man that he couldn’t handle it, though he didn’t chance to tell him why, and then he apologized over and over again while begging for someone, anyone to come and get her from him.
Tony could hear his daughter crying in the background and was concerned but at the same time, he trusted his son when he said that everyone was safe and unharmed. He looked at his watch and was relieved to see that enough time had passed that Happy’s security meeting had more than likely already ended because if he couldn’t go get his kids himself then Happy was, without a doubt, the next best choice. Especially since Peter and Morgan had both seemed to be rather upset at the moment.
By the time Happy arrived, he could see that Morgan was no longer crying and had gone back to eating her half-melted ice cream. Peter, on the other hand, was still clearly upset. Though he was doing a decent job of trying to hide it. If he didn’t know the kid as well as he did, he probably would have written it off as a bad mood. “Hey, Kiddos. Let’s hurry up and get the car, okay?” he said before ushering Morgan to the car and buckling her into her booster seat. Once he was done he reached for a wet wipe to clean the girl's sticky face and noticed that Peter had yet to join them. “Come on, Peter. Let’s go,” he called out, not looking behind him until there was no reply and at that point, the teenager was gone and Tony was going to kill him.
“What do you mean he was just gone? You were supposed to pick up both of them!” Tony strained once he realized that only half of his kids had been returned to him. He’d stepped out of his meeting specifically to make sure they were okay and was upset when Peter wasn’t there. “How did that even happen?”
“I don’t know, Boss. I asked him to get in the car but he must have taken off while I was getting Moran into her car seat. And at that point, it wasn’t like I could go chasing after him. I was illegally parked and Morgan was already strapped in. I would have never caught up with him,” Happy explained with a sigh. “Look, I can watch this kid, why don’t you call Peter. I’ll try to find out what happened between them,” he suggested and then held out his hands to take Morgan onto his own hip.
Tony reluctantly handed his daughter over to his friend and brushed her hair out of her face before stepping out of the room to try and call Peter. He tapped his foot as the line rang and rang without answer and groaned in frustration when the voicemail message began to play. He hung up to try again and wanted to scream when he was met with the same results “No answer,” he tightly stated as he walked back into the room.
“No answer?” Happy repeated in question.
Tony reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose in order to prevent himself from snapping and took a deep breath. “That’s what I said,” he replied with more calm than he actually felt. Then he looked to the other side of the room where his daughter was happily flipping through a storybook and sighed. “Did Morgan say anything?”
“Just that she wanted to pet a dog and that Peter got mad and yelled at her,” Happy unsurely replied. “but I’m sure there’s more to it than that. The kid would never yell at her. Would he?”
“I don’t know,” Tony said while scrubbing his hands over his face. “-but if he did, there was a good reason for it.”
Tony ended up calling Peter’s phone six more times during the time it took for Pepper to finish up her meeting. He tried to call May as well before remembering that she tended to take on double shifts anytime Peter was with them. He was just checking the status of the spider-suit when Pepper walked in with her forehead furrowed with worry. She was just as upset by their kid’s sudden disappearance as he was.
After greeting his wife, Tony double-checked that the suit wasn’t active and then checked the GPS sharing on his phone. When it looked like the teenager was more than likely in his bedroom in Queen’s he looked back and forth between Pepper and Morgan with remorse. “I know I promised I would grill some cheeseburgers tonight but I need to go find Pete and make sure he’s okay. I’ll meet you at home later,” he said and smiled a little when his wife gave his natural arm a firm squeeze.
“It’s not a big deal, Tony,” Pepper assured before tipping her head towards the door. “Just go find our kid,”
Once Peter is home he finally let himself become properly upset. Tony had trusted him with Morgan and he’d lost her. Not only that, he’d screamed in her face and made her cry. He could clearly picture the look of shock and betrayal on the little girl's face when he’d raised his voice and it caused his stomach to twist and his eyes to water. She looked so much like Tony, especially in the eyes, that it wasn’t difficult to imagine the man displaying the same expression when he found out what he’d done. He couldn’t even imagine how much trouble he was going to be in. He was supposed to be responsible.
When Tony got to the apartment he half expected Peter to meet him at the door, having heard the key in the lock but that wasn’t the case. If anything it left him wondering if no one was home. But he didn’t want to assume. “Hey, Kid?” he called lightly down the hall, not wanting to startle the teenager with his sudden appearance. Then he pushed the boy’s door open to find him lying on his bed furiously wiping his sleeve across his eyes. “Are you okay?” he asked, not bothering to wait for permission before walking into the room.
“Yeah,” Peter replied with a deep breath and a quick sniff that he couldn’t quite hold back. “I just- didn’t hear you come in,” he explained while scrambling into a sitting position at the edge of his bed and apologizing. Though he wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for. Everything probably.
Tony looked the kid over and then tapped him on the knee so that he’d move over and allow him to take a seat beside him. “What happened today, Buddy?” he asked, still trying to piece together what could have happened to make his kids argue.
“Morgan didn’t tell you?” Peter asked, his brown stitched together with confusion and concern. He would have thought that the girl would have jumped at the chance to tell everyone how horrible he’d been.
“She’s four Pete,” Tony chuckled and then placed his left hand on the downward curve at the back of the teenager’s neck so that he could really feel the warmth against his skin. A reminder that the kid was still there, still safe, and still with him. “She doesn’t exactly give me accurate and detailed accounts of anything.”
There was a split second where Peter considered lying. If Morgan hadn’t said much then perhaps he didn’t have to say anything at all but the idea alone left him feeling painfully guilty. He owed Tony his life, he couldn’t very well lie to him. Especially when it had to do with Morgan. “I yelled at her,” he quietly admitted, not quite able to bring himself to reveal everything at once.
“Well, she’s your sister. You’re going to fight sometimes,” Tony said, with a curious tilt of his head. “But do you think you could give me a little bit more than that to go on?”
Peter turned his head and looked the man in the eye for about half a second before he had to turn away and once again, wipe his eyes. “You’re going to be so mad at me,” he said, his voice cracking just a touch at the end.
With a deep sigh, Tony moved his hand from Peter's neck to his shoulder, his prosthetic hand joining on the other side, and turned the kid so that they were facing each other. “Everyone is safe, no one got hurt and you called for backup when you felt like you needed it. I’m not sure that there’s anything for me to be too mad about. Talk to me, Kiddo, and we’ll figure it out,” he said with what was meant to be a reassuring smile.
After squirming out of Tony's arms, Peter flopped backward onto his bed to stare at the ceiling. It took him several more seconds after that to force himself to explain everything. He was having a hard time believing that the man wouldn’t be angry with him and that combined with his remorse seemed to be making his vocal cords seize up. “She, uh- well, I lost her for a minute,” he choked out past the lump in his throat. “I actually lost her. I didn’t notice when she walked off to go pet some dog and when I didn’t see her anywhere, I got so scared. It didn’t really take that long for me to find her again but when I did, I screamed at her. I screamed a lot and she started crying and told me that I was being mean. Then I just- I panicked because it was really my own fault. I should have been paying better attention to her and I really shouldn’t have yelled and I-” he continued to ramble all in one breath until he felt Tony’s hand fall heavily onto his rapidly rising and falling chest.
“Shh. Hey, hey, hey- Listen, Kiddo. You’re okay,” Tony said and when he was sure his kid wasn’t going to fall into a panic, he lay down beside him. “She saw a dog and wandered off- she does that kind of stuff to Pepper and I all the time,” he said with a wave of his hand and then looked beside him to find the teenager looking at him with wide eyes. “The point is that you found her. And yeah, you yelled a little bit but that’s okay, you were scared. We should have warned you that she does that sometimes but at the moment, reminding you about her allergies and where to find her epi-pen, just in case, seemed like the more pertinent information. We didn’t even think about it. That’s on us,” he expanded, hoping to take on some of the guilt the kid was feeling. It really had been unfair of him not to mention Morgan’s tendency to run ahead and stray away.
Peter took all of that in and nodded his head but he still couldn’t seem to get the sound of his sister’s crying out of his head. He felt like a horrible brother and an even more horrible babysitter. “I made her cry, Tony,” he pressed.
“Yeah?” Tony replied with a deep chuckle. “I made her cry this morning when I told her she couldn’t wear her bathing suit under her clothes today,” he said, smiling a little as he thought about the early morning dramatics.
“She said I was being mean,” Peter returned, choosing not to mention how deeply those particular words had cut into him.
“Yep. I’ve heard that one too,” Tony said with a nod of his head. “She’s young, Buddy. That’s just what she says when she’s upset.”
“So I’m not in trouble?” Peter asked, turning his head so that he could try and read the man’s thoughts.
“Absolutely not,” Tony assured. “You found her and when you were upset you asked for help. You did the right thing.”
“What if I hadn’t found her?” Peter queried because that had felt like a real possibility at the time. So many horrible scenarios had gone through his head in the handful of minutes it had taken him to spot her that it was astounding. He shivered at the thought.
“She never goes far-” Tony said with a flourish of his prosthetic hand but he didn’t get very far before Peter was cutting him off.
“-But what if I hadn’t, Tony? Then what?” Peter challenged with a little more passion than was probably necessary.
Tony sat up and rubbed his left hand over his face while trying to come up with what he could say that would force Peter to understand how much faith he had in him. “Then you would have called me- probably from the spider suit that I know you had in the backpack that you brought with you- and we would have worked together to make sure that both of you were okay. Okay?”
The room went quiet while Peter contemplated what he’d been told and eventually decided that the man was right. He did have the spider suit with him and he wouldn’t have hesitated to change into it if he’d thought that Morgan was in any kind of danger. But Tony having faith that he would make the right decision was different than Tony trusting him fully and completely, and that worried him. “Do you and Pepper still trust me with her?” he asked, sitting up and looking pleadingly towards the man beside him.
With a soft smile, Tony pulled his kid into his chest and rested his cheek on the top of his head. “You’re her brother, Kiddo. We both love you and trust you more than anyone. We know that you would never, ever let anything happen to her,” he swore before turning his head to kiss the boy’s hair.
“I’m still sorry that I yelled at her,” Peter said with a shuddering breath, trying his hardest to keep himself from crying all over again, but this time from relief. Tony wasn’t mad and they still trusted him. All he had left to hope was that he's not ruined his relationship with Morgan. He liked having a little sister.
“Well,” Tony said as he rose to his feet with a grunt. “You can tell her that when we get back to the lake house. If we leave now there might still be time to pull the grill out for dinner,” he said because even though he knew that Morgan has long since forgiven, and probably mostly forgotten, the entire incident. Hee also knew that Peter wouldn’t feel better until he’d made some kind of amends. He was sure Pepper and even Happy were going to be getting some apologies as well, no matter how unnecessary. He smiled and shook his head at the notion.
“What are you smiling about?” Peter asked as he attempted to straighten his rumpled shirt and flatten his bed mused hair.
“Nothing, Kiddo. I was just thinking that maybe you could help me with the grill tonight. That’s all,” Tony said as he wrapped his natural arm around his kid’s shoulders, grinning, even more, when the boy reciprocated by falling into his side.
“That would be awesome, Tony,” Peter said with a small smile of his own. “But not until after I tell Morgan that I’m sorry,”
Tony chuckled, pulled the teenager into a tight side-hug, and looked at him with affinity. “Of course, Buddy. I didn’t think it would be any other way,” he said and then guided both towards the waiting car.