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“You know what one of the best perks of being a big brother is?” Tony asked Peter with a grin as he walked into the kitchen of the penthouse in the Tower, reaching for the coffee machine as if it was his saviour.
Peter, who’d had his head stuck in an engineering book for probably far too long trying to study for his finals, looked up. He hadn’t studied all day because he’d been at work for SI—slacking, honestly—but was making up for it in the evening. Trying to ensure he did at least an hour a day of studying in the build up to his last ever exams.
He’d decided that four years of college was enough for anyone. Peter had gotten one degree by his second year in MIT and had decided to shoot for another, just like Tony had done. He figured there was always time to work on a PHD on the side if he felt like it, but his heart was calling for him to go back to his family and his job.
“What?” He asked, chewing on his pencil.
Tony smiled, having downed one cup of coffee and busying himself with refilling it.
“Babysitting.”
Peter turned to look at him, wide-eyed, pencil falling out of his mouth in shock. “Dad, I–”
Tony raised his eyebrows mid-sip, interrupting him. “You’re not shirking your sibling responsibilities now, are you?”
“I have finals ,” Peter stressed, holding up his textbook.
“Not for over a month,” Tony shrugged. “It’s Friday night, put down the books. You’re a college student, you should be partying on a night like this!”
“That’s the sort of thing first years do, y’know,” Peter flicked the pencil in his hand. “Some of us like to focus on our degrees from time-to-time.”
Tony sighed. “What happened to playing beer pong until three in the morning? Focusing on your degree? God. College sure has changed since I was there, kid.”
“Yeah, well,” Peter shrugged back at him, challenging. “You’re old, so that makes sense.”
Tony gasped mockingly, a hand over his heart. “Ouch, Pete, ouch. I’m hurt, really.”
Peter smiled and glanced back at his textbook.
Tony hummed. “Okay, if you babysit Morgan tonight, I’ll make you that game console you wanted to test out, although I can’t for the life of me understand why you can’t just do it yourself.”
He wasn’t able to do it because the labs in MIT were brilliant, but they weren’t exactly Tony Stark’s personal workshop. He could ’ve done it himself, but Peter wanted Tony to build him a super-powerful high-tech games console with a ton of modifications. There were limits to Peter’s skills, and it gave Tony something to do.
Peter considered the proposition. It was a pretty good deal, although…
“Why do you want me to babysit?” Peter inquired. Tony was practically begging him. He had been saying no to the games console for months.
“I want to take Pepper out tonight,” Tony continued. “Date night. Her favourite Italian place has a free table, and she hasn’t got anything on.”
Peter felt a pang of understanding in his chest. His parental figures had rarely gotten to go out on dates before they’d had Morgan, because of the company, and Iron Man and Peter and everything. Since having another kid–who was in the toddler ages and needed a lot of attention–they rarely got any time to themselves.
He put down his book.
“Fine,” He acquiesced. “Sure, I’ll do it.”
“It’s almost like you don’t want to spend time with Morgan,” Tony said dramatically, tutting.
Peter shook his head rapidly to correct Tony. “Of course I do, I love her, she’s my sister. It's just...finals.”
“If you want to hit the town and go out to a nightclub tonight, please take the opportunity instead of babysitting, but I can’t stand the thought of you looking at those books any longer,” Tony sighed. “You work too hard.”
“I don’t work hard enough ,” Peter protested, wide-eyed. “You should see Gwen, I mean, it’s incomparable, she’s like a machine.”
“Tell her to apply for a job at Stark when she's done with her PHD. Or maybe even before.” Tony waved at hand.
“I did,” Peter reminded him. “I'm the CEO, remember? She’s had a job offer since year one of MIT.”
“Right, right,” Tony nodded. “Take the night off today, in any case. Make sure your sister is asleep every so often and we’ll be back before long. Order a pizza for you, it’s on me, whatever you want.”
There was still a little buzzy feeling in his heart every time Tony called Peter his sister, even though it had been years, even though he knew Morgan thought of him as a brother.
“Sure thing,” Peter nodded. “When are you planning on heading off?”
“Probably in about an hour or so,” Tony shrugged.
Peter gave him a thumbs up. “Okay, cool, I’m just going to go and chat with Ned for a bit in my room beforehand, let me know when y’all are leaving. It's big date night for him, so I just want to check in.”
Ned had had a date planned with his partner for a number of weeks and was quite stressed about it. He was ready to drop the big three words– I love you –and Peter had been central in the planning process.
Tony told him to say hi, and Peter slunk off to his room to jump on call.
An hour or so (and a lot of talking Ned through his worries) later, and he got a knock on his door. Peter webbed the door open to save him having to get up. It was Pepper, wearing a stunning dark blue dress and clearly ready to go out.
“Wow!” Peter scrambled out of the bed.
“Peter,” Pepper stepped toward him, pulling him into a hug. Her face was relaxed, a small smile dancing across it. She’d had a stressful week, and needed a break. “Thanks for doing this.”
“No problem,” He nodded back. “Have a good time tonight.”
They wandered back into the main part of the penthouse.
Pepper gave him the run-down. “Okay, so, bedtime at eight-ish, read her a story but say no if she wants more than one.”
Tony emerged then, with Morgan. She was already in her pyjamas, being held on Tony’s hip as he strode toward them. He was speaking to her in low tones, quiet enough that Peter couldn’t hear him. Tony himself was wearing Armani–Peter recognised it–with the cufflinks that he’d gotten for his last Christmas. Iron Man themed ones. Naturally.
“Petey!” Morgan said when she caught sight of him, scrambling out of Tony’s arms to come and give him a hug. Peter grinned and let her hug his legs, making sure he stayed steady enough not to topple over as there was impact. It was the first time she was seeing him all day. Peter reached down to ruffle her hair, nodding back at Pepper to show that he’d understood.
“Now,” Tony crouched down, putting on his ‘I’m being stern’ voice. “Be good for your brother, okay?”
Morgan nodded quietly, still gripping Peter’s legs, and then Tony and Pepper were off on their way. Babysitting had officially commenced.
He’d looked after Morgan before, when people weren’t around. If the others had to pop to the shops or go off on some errand. Tony and Pepper were busy people. But because he’d been off at college, there was a limit to how much he’d been around, and he’d never babysat her one-on-one for as long as he was going to.
“Peteyyy,” Morgan said, almost seconds after Tony and Pepper had left. “I’m hungryyy.”
His first responsibility was up.
“Dinner,” Peter mumbled. “Right, dinner.” He cast a look toward the kitchen of the penthouse. “Um. Huh. What shall we have for food?”
“Cookies!” Morgan exclaimed, excited to be given unlimited choice.
Peter let out a chuckle. Kids were great. “We can’t have cookies for dinner, Morgan. That’s not a dinner food, that’s a snack food.”
“Mac and cheese?” She asked as a second option, pouting. Her eyes were wide.
Well, mac and cheese was easy, and it was definitely in his repertoire of cooking, so he could do that. And he loved it too, which meant it was dinner done for both him and Morgan. Two birds with one stone.
Peter made the mac and cheese whilst she sat on one of the kitchen island stools and babbled about her day. When it was done, he gave her the equivalent of about half his own portion and watched as she ate the whole thing in the space of about five minutes.
When she was done, she turned to him and asked, “Can we play a game, Petey?”
“Uhh,” Peter looked at the clock. It was already nearly her bedtime, and he probably should say no to that kind of suggestion given that games made kids hyper and full of energy.
But he looked back at Morgan and she was pulling the puppy dog eyes. Peter could never resist the puppy dog eyes, so he said, “Okay, sure.”
“Yay!” Morgan said. “Let’s play hide and seek! I’ll hide first, you count!”
She was running off into the distance before he’d even agreed.
“Only in the penthouse, Morgan!” Peter called out after her. “Promise?”
“Alright!” She yelled back whilst already having disappeared from sight. Peter closed his eyes and covered them, counting to thirty seconds out loud, in an exaggeratedly slow manner.
“--twenty nine, thirty,” Peter opened his eyes and started looking in the kitchen, even though he knew Morgan wasn’t going to actually have hidden in there. He’d played the game with her enough before to know her favourite hiding spots, but he had to drag it out otherwise the game became no fun for either of them.
Fifteen minutes later, it had stopped being fun. He hadn’t found her. He’d stopped pretending to look and had started actually looking , but she wasn’t in any of her favourite places. Not behind the curtains in Tony and Pepper’s room, not behind the door in the bathroom, not crouching behind the sofa in the main room. She was nowhere to be found.
He’d looked everywhere. He’d looked everywhere in the fucking penthouse, and he couldn't find her.
“Shit! Shit!” Peter ran a hand through his hair, stressed. He’d lost Morgan . It had been less than an hour since Tony and Pepper had gone, and yet! He’d lost their daughter!
He needed help, he needed someone to help him, he was in a crisis. There was just nowhere she could be. Who could help? May was on a shift, she wasn’t going to pick up. And Ned was on the big date he’d been planning for months, so Peter wasn’t going to be an asshole and interrupt that. Which left–
“Happy–” Peter thanked the lord that the man actually picked up the phone when he called. “Happy, Happy, I need you to help me.”
“Pete?” Happy said, clearly swallowing some food. His voice was slightly muffled over the phone.
“I’ve lost Morgan,” Peter told him hurriedly. “We were playing hide and seek, and now she’s gone, and my mind has just jumped to thinking…what if someone’s taken her and I’ve lost her whilst I was supposed to be looking after her–”
“Woah, woah,” Happy interrupted. “You said you were playing hide and seek?”
Peter affirmed that.
“Have you checked behind the sofa?” Happy asked, pensively.
Did Happy think he was a newbie at hide and seek?
“Of course I checked behind the sofa,” Peter hissed back, stressed. “Happy I can’t have lost her, Tony will kill me. Pepper will kill me. They’ll both kill me!”
“Peter. Calm down,” Happy encouraged. “I’m sure she’s just fine. What did FRIDAY say when you asked her?”
Oh, shit.
Peter had an all-knowing, all-powerful AI who monitored the building at all times at his fingertips, and he hadn’t even thought to ask her.
There was a long silence in which Peter tried to figure out how to explain to Happy that he was, in fact, an idiot who had not thought to ask FRIDAY.
Happy seemed to pick up on it without him saying anything. “You did…you did ask FRIDAY, right?”
“Um,” Peter bit his lip.
“Peter,” Happy said reproachfully.
Peter swallowed and held the phone away from his ear. “Hey FRIDAY, do you know where Morgan is right now?”
“Yes, Peter,” FRIDAY informed him, very calmly. “I can tell you exactly where she is, but I rather think that would undermine the point of the game.”
He switched back to talking to Happy. “Sooo, good news. FRIDAY’s got this, apparently she’s just gotten better at hiding since we played last. Sorry for calling you.”
“Have a good night, kid,” Happy sighed and hung up.
“FRIDAY,” Peter instructed, sliding his phone back into his pocket. “Hot and cold me, Marco Polo style.”
As Peter walked around the penthouse, FRIDAY told him if he was getting closer to or further away from Morgan’s location. After another five minutes of searching the penthouse, he located her—she was hiding in her own room, in her wardrobe. She’d managed to squeeze herself into a small ball and screamed in delight when he pulled open the door.
“Morgan,” Peter said, slightly breathless. Obviously he knew she was safe and well because of FRIDAY’s reassurance, but having her in his sight just made him feel better. “Thank god.”
She was grinning, clapping her hands together. She scrambled up from her hiding position.
“Let’s play again!” Morgan demanded.
Peter looked at his watch and winced. It was already gone eight. She looked like she was seconds away from running back out the door, so Peter picked her up and tickled her until she was squealing with laughter.
“Alright, rascal,” he said when she’d stopped giggling. “Time for bed now.”
“—’m not a rascal,” Morgan corrected, looking at him matter-of-factly. “I’m a princess .”
“Yeah you are,” Peter said, placing them on Morgan’s bed so that she was on his lap, ready to read a story. She was already in her pyjamas, so that was one problem sorted, just needed to get her rested enough to actually nod off. “What book are you thinking, princess?”
She requested Cinderella from her book of short fairytales, so Peter contendly read aloud the tale of the girl-turned-princess and her Prince Charming.
“One more story?” Morgan asked, and pulled the puppy dog eyes on him when he was finished, and Peter couldn’t resist giving into that. Pepper had said not to give in to her charm, but Peter was helpless. It was too difficult! How were parents so good at being strict, at putting their foot down? She was too sweet!
So he read another story.
And then another.
And then another.
It was gone nine before he’d managed to get Morgan asleep-with lots of hugs and kisses on the forehead involved. It was much later than she should have fallen asleep. Peter didn’t seem very suited for a job as a babysitter, because he was nowhere near strict enough, but then again, it was his baby sister that he was looking after. He cared for her too much not to read her multiple stories before bed.
An hour then passed, Morgan remaining asleep, and by the end of it, the penthouse was spotless. It had been clean before, but in need of a proper deep clean, and Peter had sort of sworn not to pick up the textbooks that night. He wasn’t great at handling evenings by himself without being productive–either he wanted to get on with his degree, or work for SI, or socialising with friends. Back in NYC he’d want to spend time with his family or go on patrol, but neither of those were an option whilst babysitting. Hence, cleaning. Most of the surfaces were literally sparkling by the time he was done, including the floors.
Peter had gotten FRIDAY to monitor the couple’s whereabouts so he knew how long he had left before they were due to get back, so he strategically timed it so that everything was just perfect for when Tony and Pepper got back.
They were holding hands when they entered, looking ever so in love, and the corner of his mouth turned up at the sight of them looking so happy. Date night had gone well, then, if both of them were smiling so contentedly.
“So,” Peter said, breathless, as he smiled back at them. “How was date night?”
“It was lovely,” Pepper hummed. She had flowers in her hand that she found a vase for as they walked toward the kitchen. She paused, looked around, and frowned as she took in the cleanliness. Just as she was about to say something, Tony interjected.
“I’m parched ,” Tony said as he pulled open the fridge to grab a bottle of water. He paused, and glanced inside for a long moment. Then he turned back around. “Peter, why is there mac and cheese in the fridge? I thought you were ordering a pizza in?”
“Well, I made mac and cheese as food, some for me, some for her, there was extra because I still can’t do portion sizing, then we played hide and seek, and then I know you said one story max then to put my foot down if she wanted more but she did the puppy dog eyes and you know I can’t resist those–”
Pepper interrupted his speech before Peter could even get into all the shenanigans that had happened after that. “You know we gave her dinner before leaving, right?”
“What?” Peter asked, slightly breathless.
“We gave her dinner before going out,” Pepper repeated. “You think we would have made you make her food without saying anything? ”
“Well, I don’t know!” Peter stressed. “That’s what you guys normally do when you put her to bed, I just followed along with that routine!”
“So she made you make her food knowing full well she’d already had dinner?” Tony’s mouth was wide in shock. “That’s so sneaky !”
“It’s smart, that’s what it is,” Peter corrected. “No surprise there, given her parents.”
Tony turned to look at Pepper, slightly stunned. “Do you think she’s been pulling this with us too? Have we ever fed her twice?”
“Probably,” Pepper said back, looking equally surprised at the development. She sniffed, turned back to the kitchen counter. “Also…did you…disinfect the entire kitchen? Including…hand-cleaning the floor?”
“I just,” Peter shrugged. “Tidied up a bit, y’know.”
“Peter,” Tony was shaking his head. “Really?”
“You said I couldn’t do any more work!” He threw his hands up in the air. “I had to do something !”
“You could have watched a movie!” Tony told him.
“It’s not fun without someone to watch it with,” Peter shrugged.
“Honestly,” Pepper interjected, holding a hand out to prevent Tony from speaking. “Count yourself lucky. Just be glad he didn’t think about the possibilities of liaising with the Stark office in Tokyo.”
Ah, shoot! He hadn’t thought about that. That could have been such a good use of his time!
“One day,” Tony said, still shaking his head. “One day I’ll teach you how to relax.”
“Coming from you .” Peter snorted. Tony hardly ever took breaks. If he wasn’t inventing something, then he was in a meeting. If not that, then he was doing a press conference, or fighting aliens, or liaising with the Avengers. If not that then he was spending time with his wife, or Peter, or his daughter. He was non-stop.
“You’re telling me,” Pepper chuckled, and looked at Peter despairingly. “Y’know he was tinkering whilst at the restaurant?”
“I didn’t bring anything with me,” Tony defended himself. “There was a flaw with the hard-drive of the restaurant’s computer and I offered to have a brief look at it. It’s not like I hauled something from the workshop with me to work on during date night. That’s progress, Pep.”
“It is,” Pepper sighed.
“I think we can all accept that none of us are very good at relaxing and settle on that,” Peter grinned. Two CEOS as well as an ex-CEO turned superhero inventor.
“True,” Tony raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry your sister is a tyrant. I’m glad you managed to get her to sleep at all, given what a night you seemed to have had.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just lucky she didn’t actually go missing and that was only a brief concern for part of the night,” Peter sighed, then froze. Oops. He hadn’t meant to mention that he’d almost lost Morgan.
Tony turned to him and just stared, saying nothing but also saying absolutely everything with just his facial expressions.
“Hide and seek,” Peter explained, and the man relaxed.
“Understandable,” Tony nodded. “She’s gotten so much better at it recently, it’s exhausting.”
“It is!” Peter covered his face with his hand. “I don’t know how she’s improved so much?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Pepper asked, frowning at them both. “She asks FRIDAY where you’re least likely to find her and hides there.”
Peter and Tony sent back matching gasps of horror at the revelation.
“No!” Tony exclaimed.
Peter shook his head. “Surely not.”
“Surely not.”
“Mmhmm,” Pepper nodded. “It’s true. I heard her ask.”
“Wow,” Tony put a hand over his heart. “I’ve never felt so betrayed by a three year old in my life, and this is after the burrito incident from last month.”
They erupted into laughter, then, the three of them, at how ridiculous it all was. To be outsmarted by a three year old at hide and seek. Tony ruffled Peter's hair, and comments were made about how it was clearly time for sleep, and they dispersed. Peter checked in on Morgan one final time to make sure she was doing okay, and then went back to his own room.
So, yeah. Babysitting, maybe not his ideal career path. He wasn't going to be getting the world's best babysitter award any time soon, that was for sure. Besides, Peter was pretty sure he was more suited to being the Co-CEO of a multinational, multi-billion dollar tech company.
It was much easier, really.