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When Tony woke up, it was because there was a strange weight on his chest. Groaning aloud, he reached up and caught the little hand pressing down against his pec, sending the small body sat on top of him toppling forwards with a squeak of surprise.
“Who dares spoil my Sunday morning lie in?” he rumbled, refusing to open his eyes, and smiled when he heard a little giggle come from the body on top of him. “Who dares?”
Another, harder giggle, and then James mumbled, “Papa sez y'gotta come get breakfas’.”
Cracking an eye open, Tony peered down at his four year old son now happily wedged between Tony’s side and his arm, sucking milk out of a sippy cup. “He said that, huh? So, of course, he sent you to do his dirty work?”
James paused for a minute, thinking that over, and then, with another giggle, nodded his head.
“Of course he did,” Tony hummed, pulling both himself and James into a sitting position with another groan. He certainly wasn’t a young man anymore. “You know why he sent you? Because you weigh a tonne, kid, and I’m fairly certain he wants to suffocate me -”
“Nooo,” James giggled hysterically, barely managing to balance both himself and his sippy cup as Tony got off the bed. The clock on the bedside table read 8:45am – not bad.
“Yeeesss,” Tony replied, making an exaggerated groaning noise as he ducked in to scoop James up into his arms. “Jeez, no more milk for you, okay? You’re getting much too big and strong, and I need you to stay my baby forever -”
“Noo, Dada!” James cackled, wrapping his little arms and legs around Tony like a cuddly octopus. “M'gonna get s'big as Papa!”
“I don’t doubt it,” Tony hummed, because James was already starting to overtake Peter in height, and there was half a year between them. “And then, when you’re big and strong, you’ll be able to carry me around like I’m carrying you, huh?”
“No,” James guffawed as they stepped into the elevator, and Tony gasped melodramatically.
“No?” he huffed. “You’re not gonna take care of your old man when he’s as gross and old as Papa is now?”
“Papa’s not old.”
“Yeah, he’d like you to believe that, kid,” Tony chuckled, patting James’ back as he stepped out of the elevator again and across the living room to the kitchen. “Steve, your son just called you old and gross.”
“Noo!” James squealed as Tony padded into the room and stopped at the stove for a kiss from Steve.
“He did so,” Tony disagreed with a grin as Steve rolled his eyes fondly at him. “He also said he’s not gonna take care of me when I’m as old as you are.”
“Is there any wonder, the way you wind him up?” Steve replied, though he leaned in for another kiss. “Good morning.”
“Morning,” Tony hummed with a happy sigh. Smooching James sloppily on the cheek, he let the boy down so he could wrap his arms around Steve’s waist. “You’re looking particularly ravishing this morning.”
“Tony,” Steve huffed, cheeks heating under the attention even though they had been together years. “There are impressionable babies in the room.”
“I’m not a baby!” Lily cried from behind them, and with a final kiss against the nape of Steve’s neck, Tony pulled away from him to go greet his other children.
“You’ll always be my baby,” he insisted, leaning down to plant a kiss on the crown of Lily’s head as he passed to get to his own seat at the table. “All three of you.”
As he sat in his seat, Peter lifted his arms next to him and started wiggling forwards into his lap for a cuddle. Never one to deny his kids what they wanted, even though they were really big enough to sit on their own seats at meals, Tony grabbed him under his armpits and shifted him quickly onto his lap.
“Good morning,” he hummed, kissing Peter’s cheek. “Are you done with your cereal, or can I finish it?”
“No!” Peter replied, tugging it messily towards him. “My cereal.”
“All right, all right,” Tony chuckled, reaching over to grab Peter’s sippy cup of OJ before that ended up all over the table, too. “Can I just have a bite? One bite for your starving old man?”
“No,” Peter repeated with a giggle, though he dunked his plastic Thomas the Tank Engine spoon into the bowl and then lifted it up to feed to Tony all the same. Not a whole lot of it ended up in Tony’s mouth, but he appreciated the sentiment.
“Thanks, kiddo,” he mumbled around his mouthful of sugar and milk. “At least youfeed me.”
Across the kitchen, Steve snorted. “I’ll let you take the early shift next Sunday, then, huh?”
“Aw, baby,” Tony grinned, pecking the back of Peter’s head in the process. “You know I’m only joking.”
Steve hummed under his breath as he crossed the room to give Tony a heaping pile of bacon, eggs and toast, though he still leaned down for a kiss when Tony puckered his lips. “Your highness.”
“You know I love and appreciate you,” Tony smiled, batting Peter’s wandering hands away from his breakfast.
“I should think so,” Steve replied with a smile of his own, wandering back over to the stove to get his own breakfast. “James, honey, sit down, please. I don’t wanna trip over you.”
Because James was following him around like a lost duckling, sippy cup still stuck firmly in his mouth. He pouted when Steve shooed him away, and Tony took pity on him, pulling Peter’s abandoned chair out beside him and patting it.
“C'mon, kiddo,” he coaxed, watching carefully as James clambered into the chair. “Atta boy.”
“Lily, baby, do you want some eggs? You haven’t eaten a whole lot of your cereal,” Steve called from the stove, dishing himself his breakfast up.
“Yes, please,” the seven year old replied, fiddling with a Black Widow action figure on Tony’s other side.
“How is my princess?” he asked, leaning in to kiss her rosy cheek. “Hmm. A little warm.”
“I think she might be coming down with something,” Steve agreed, sitting himself opposite Tony at the table with his own meal. He passed Lily a small plate with some scrambled eggs on it. “She’s not eating properly.”
“My baby,” Tony frowned, shifting one of his arms from around Peter so he could wrap it around Lily. “You never usually get sick.”
“We’ll see how she goes,” Steve hummed around a bite of toast. “Might just be a twenty four hour thing.”
Tony just frowned deeper, and had to lean in to kiss her again. She grumbled and wiped her face as though completely put out by his affection, but Tony knew she secretly liked the attention.
“Let’s just hope she doesn’t infect the boys, too, huh?” he hummed, patting Peter’s tummy gently. “The last thing we need is three infected children.”
“Exactly,” Steve nodded, playing along. “We’d have to quarantine them all.”
“Wha’s kw – kwor -” James tried, and then huffed out a frustrated sigh.
“Quarantine?” Tony asked, and he nodded. “It means you’ve got to be put in a sealed room all by yourself until you’re completely cured again. No going outside, no TV, no tablets, no games consoles, no books -”
“Nooooo!” the kids all squealed at once, looking collectively horrified.
“I’m not sick!” Lily insisted, picking up her fork and cramming eggs into her mouth. “See? M'fine.”
“All right, baby, okay,” Tony chuckled, petting the back of her head. “Slow down. You’ll make yourself sick if you cram it in like that. Don’t force it.”
“I eated my breakfast,” Peter proclaimed. “Do… can I have m'books?”
“Yes, sweetie, you can all have your things,” Steve replied. “Are you completely done?”
“Yis,” Peter nodded, and James joined in beside him.
“Okay, you can both get down from the table,” Steve compromised. “Lily, baby, you don’t have to eat your eggs if you don’t want them.”
Lily looked down at what remained on her plate, obviously thinking hard, and then put her fork down and pushed the plate away from her. Finishing what was in her mouth first, she then clambered down from her chair and followed her brothers out into the living room.
“I don’t like it when one of them gets sick,” Tony sighed as she disappeared, watching Steve scrape what Lily hadn’t eaten onto his own plate.
“I don’t really think she’s sick,” Steve hummed. “I think she’s nervous about starting the second grade next week, and it’s starting to show.”
“What, really?” Tony pouted, heart clenching in his chest. “She seemed excited when I took her back to school shopping last week.”
“I think she’s excited, too,” Steve reassured. “It’s just jitters, I guess. She’ll come around.”
“I hope so,” Tony frowned, finishing up the last of his breakfast. “I guess I’ll just have to snuggle the jitters out of her.”
Steve smiled intimately at him as he got up to start clearing up, grabbing Tony’s plate in the process.
“What?” Tony asked, smiling back.
“Nothing,” Steve replied with a small shake of his head. “Just love how affectionate you are with them, that’s all.”
“Of course I am,” Tony replied with a huff, getting to his feet to grab the remaining dirty dishes and carry them over to Steve at the sink. Dumb goof insisted on washing dishes by hand instead of in the state of the art machine Tony had installed. “They’re my children, my babies. I adore them.”
Steve hummed, leaning in to kiss Tony soundly on the lips. “You’re so sexy when you’re good with the kids.”
“Mmmm, then imagine how turned on you’ll be when I tell you I have to go change the kids out of their gross cereal pyjamas and make them presentable,” Tony replied, going back for another kiss. “You need me to help you with the dishes first?”
“I wash, you dry?” Steve suggested, and Tony nodded his head.
Grabbing a dish towel from the counter, Tony took a handful of cutlery from Steve and started to dry them. They worked in a companionable silence for a few minutes, exchanging the occasional kiss as Steve handed something to Tony to dry. He could hear the kids playing happily together in the other room, could hear cartoons blaring away on the TV, and he felt completely content with his life.
“We should go out for lunch,” Tony decided as they were putting away the last of the now clean dishes. “Maybe take them to the park, grab a hotdog or something, or there’s that new bistro just opened down the street that looks nice -”
Steve cut him off with another kiss, and he rolled his eyes.
“All these years, and that’s still the most effective way you’ve got to shut me up,” Tony grumbled, leaning in for one more kiss, because he was an addict by this point. “You could just ask me to be quiet.”
“I actually just really like kissing you,” Steve replied, raising his eyebrows, “and kissing you is definitely not the only way I know how to shut you up.”
Tony growled, low in his throat, and tipped himself forwards for yet another kiss. “If there weren’t three gremlins in the next room bound to come running at the mere hint of noise, I’d bend you right over that table and -”
Steve laughed. “Please, I’d bend you over the table.”
“Excuse me?” Tony scoffed playfully. “Fine, see if I blow your world now, you meanie -”
“Meanie,” Steve cackled, wrapping Tony up in his arms. “What happened to your dirty mouth?”
“I had kids, you ass,” Tony huffed, blowing a raspberry against Steve’s neck before stepping back again. “Kids that I’m taking out to lunch. Keep talking like you’re talking, and you’re not allowed to come -”
Steve just snatched him up and kissed him quiet again. Tony couldn’t say he minded all that much.