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The first night Tony sleeps at the compound, he gets maybe an hour and change before nightmares have him bolting awake, breath frozen in his lungs. For an eternal, panicky moment, he scrabbles at the sheets before his body remembers how to inhale, and then he sits there for long minutes on the edge of the couch, sheet tangled around his waist, head in his hands, gasping and shaking.
God, he should be used to this shit by now.
“It’s one o’clock in the morning, boss,” FRIDAY says, gentle and low volume, and the lights gradually brighten as she turns them up. “You’re at the Avengers facility in New York. You’re safe.”
“That’s relative,” he rasps, and drags his hands down his face. “Headcount?”
“All present and accounted for,” FRIDAY replies promptly, “with the exception of Thor, who departed for Asgard shortly after midnight. Nothing to worry about, boss,” she adds, as he tenses. “I gathered it was a personal trip, another attempt to convince Sif come to Earth and join the Avengers.”
“If she does, that’ll make the girls happy. Did he at least think of the lawn?” Tony’s breathing is slowly coming back into his control, his heartbeat approaching something close to normal. “Or is there yet another patch of Asgardian runes burned into my grass?”
“Sorry, boss. Mr. Odinson left in the general vicinity of his previous departure points, if that helps any.”
“Oh, no. Perfect,” he says, grumbling as he gets out of bed. No point in staying there anymore. Even if he manages to get back to sleep, it’s going to be another round of nightmares, and he’s had quite enough of those, thanks. “Instead of many dots of scorched earth that can possibly be hidden with shrubbery, I’ll have one bit patch all in the same place.”
He goes over to the window, scrubbing his face and looking out at the night-dark grounds. His suite was never meant as living quarters, but even the passing thought of being surrounded on all sides by the Avengers made him too edgy to be comfortable in the rooms assigned to him. So here he is, clear across the compound, and even though it kind of felt a little like a homecoming when he landed in the courtyard, now it just feels like entrapment.
I can leave any time I like, he reminds himself, cracking open the window to let the breeze cool the night-terror sweat. I am Iron Man. They didn’t take that from me. Even if, for a time, he thought they had.
He pushes the window wider and leans on the sill with his forearms, turning his face to the breeze. His eyes close and he sighs quietly, slumping over the sill until his forehead rests on his crossed wrists. It would be disingenuous to think he’s having second thoughts. He’s well-past the point of second thoughts. He’s into thirtieth, fiftieth, thousandth thoughts.
Christ, what is he doing here? He can’t look at Wanda without feeling betrayal. Can’t look at Natasha without feeling the rage surge like bile in the back of his throat. Can’t be in the same room as Steve without seeing the glint of a vibranium edge high over his head, feeling it bite deep into the breastplate of his armor. He doesn’t know what to do with Sam. Can’t talk to Bruce. Doesn’t have any idea what to say to Thor.
Why is he here again?
Faintly, he hears the sound of someone singing, and lifts his head to see a dull light gleam at the ground-floor suite at end of the compound, soft illumination spilling from an open doorway where he thinks the Bartons took up residence with their brood. He squints, sees an oddly-shaped shadow pass through the light and settle on the porch swing. A moment later, an unhappy squawk that even allergic-to-kids Tony can recognize as the cry of a fussy, sick, grumpy baby. And right after it comes an unintelligible but clearly exhausted murmur of off-key song again.
Laura then. Clint’s got perfect pitch, even when he’s falling-on-his-face punch-drunk.
Tony grimaces. “This is why I programmed my kids instead of having them the natural way,” he mutters, then scrubs at his hair and raises his eyes. Ah well. He’s up anyway and like hell is he getting back to sleep again. Might as well see if she needs anything.
---
Tony makes his way across the common area, skirting wide to avoid passing close to any of the Avengers’ suites. Most of their lights are out, since it’s past the crack of too fucking late, but a few still have the glow of televisions or bedside lamps going. The last thing he wants is to have to have another conversation as awkward and stilted and filled with repressed anger as the ones he had around the conference table earlier, getting up to speed on this Thanos situation.
Laura’s still in the porch swing by the time he gets there, her eyes half-closed with exhaustion, the kid wrapped in a soft blanket in her arms. The swing’s rocking back and forth, pushed by one of her feet, but isn’t making the slightest sound. A credit to whoever oiled the chain last. Nathan, big and heavy-eyed and miserable-looking, sprawls over her chest, huffing breaths and rubbing frustratedly at his eyes.
He clears his throat softly, scuffs his feet on the flagstones of the path, to announce his presence, and her head tries to jerk up, but just wavers vaguely in his direction. “Hi Laura,” he says, awkward and suddenly wishing he’d just stayed the fuck in his own room, because he really no longer has any idea why he had the notion to come out here like this.
She gives him a real, if completely drained, smile. “Hi, Tony. You’re up late.”
He shrugs, finds a smile to give her back in return, a real one. “Couldn’t sleep. First night in a new house sort of thing, I guess. Saw your light on from the window. How’re you doing?”
Laura just laughs softly, and it’s amazing that she manages to find the humor somewhere to let it infuse her tone. “Ask me on a day when Nathan isn’t teething, Tony. But you might want to schedule it. This can go on for awhile.”
Tony grimaces in sympathy; he has no idea what it’s like to parent a teething kid, but he can imagine it’s full of not-fun days and sleepless nights. “Is there anything I can do to help you, then?” he tries next.
Laura eyes him, long and assessing, long enough that Tony’s starting to squirm under it. “I don’t suppose you have a machine that can instantly grow teeth for children, do you?”
“Uh.” He scratches the back of his head, smiles ruefully. “I’ve had a machine for just about everything at some point or another. And if I didn’t, I know I could figure out how to build one.”
Laura sighs. “It’d be nice,” she says wistfully. “Between the drool and the crying and the fever, Nathan’s been extra needy the last few days. I’ve barely had five minutes to myself to pee, let alone doing anything else.” Absently, she kisses the top of Nathan’s head. He’s so out of it he doesn’t do more than stir lethargically and huff a sigh. Tony’s heart goes out to the poor guy.
Tony finds himself nodding as a plan comes together in his head. “What do you want me to take care of for you then?” At her mildly withering look, he holds up his hands, palms forward. “Let me help, Laura. I know you may have heard otherwise, but I’m very capable of being helpful.”
“I know you are, Tony.” She smiles, a corner of her mouth tugging upward, and resettles the kid on her lap. “And I don’t listen to what anyone has to say like that anyway. Most of it’s jealousy or anger or grief or another emotion blocking up the brain.” She presses a hand to her forehead. “God, I’m so tired I’m not even thinking straight.”
“I can do coffee for you? Ice cream? A child-free weekend at a spa?”
She eyes him again, and Tony sighs. “Come on, Laura. Don’t look at me like that. It’s not an imposition if you want something. I’m perfectly happy to get it for you. Babysitter? Au pair? All-expenses paid trip to Iceland or Hawaii or something?”
“I don’t need or want your money, Tony.” She pats the swing beside her. “You here’s enough right now. Come sit and keep me company if you want. I could use the company.”
Tony hesitates, but he’s been around Pepper, Natasha and Rhodey’s on-again-off-again Carol, and he’s got enough experience to recognize when a request isn’t a request. “Princess Merida around anywhere? I mean, is it safe to step into your home without getting an arrow in the ass?”
Laura laughs, which jolts Nathan, and she stops instantly, whispering a shhh to her son as she bounces him lightly on her lap. “We had a long talk, Tony,” she says, amused. “Clint’s got a better picture of everything now, I think, including what will happen if anything like this ever happens again and he has such a shit-poor excuse to explain his behaviour.”
Tony’s eyebrows go up, try to crawl into his hairline, as he settles down beside her. “Laura,” he says, with as much respect he can scrape from the bottom of the barrel. “This is why I keep reminding myself to never, ever make you really angry. There’s this gleam you get in your eyes and it terrifies me that some day, you’ll try to take over the world because your ways are more efficient.”
Laura’s smile is beatific, resilient, utterly innocent, and she closes her eyes with a humming sound. “Mmph. I have no idea what you’re talking about, Tony.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” he says with a snort, and leans his head back against the back of the swing. Nathan eyes him with a dull glitter, mouth wet with drool and sluggishly rubs his eyes with a fist. “Hey little guy,” he says softly, looks at Laura to get her encouraging nod, before he brushes a finger over the kid’s cheek. “Mouth hurt? Yeah, I know all about that. Well, maybe not so much about the teething part, but I’ve been to the dentist a few times in my life for toothaches and general stupidity that resulted in me getting punched in the mouth. Never fun, kid. Try to avoid it if you can.”
A firm, heavy weight rolls onto his shoulder, and Tony jumps a little at the unexpectedness of it. Laura’s slumped against him, bruises of shadows under her eyes stark in the light from the still-open door, snoring very faintly. Tony freezes immediately, at least until Nathan turns his head ever so slightly and starts gnawing on Tony’s finger.
“Um… Laura? Laura? Shit.” Carefully, he settles back, wincing and gently reclaiming his hand as Nathan stops gnawing and starts chewing with the teeth he’s already grown. Nathan’s face screws up and he whines, soft and piteously. Tony rummages through the pockets of his jacket for something chewable and comes up empty handed.
“Sorry kid,” he says, and with a sigh, goes back to letting Nathan gnaw on him, while Laura snores away on his shoulder. He sighs again, lets his head rock back. “Not exactly what I had in mind,” he mutters and closes his eyes.
Astonishingly, he sleeps, waking when the sky is starting to turn rosy gold and something nudges his foot. Tony blearily peers up, gradually registering the presence of Clint, holding Nathan on his hip with an absolutely unreadable expression. Confusion sweeps through before Tony realizes the softness under his cheek is the top of Laura’s head.
“Morning,” Clint says softly.
Tony goes cold and still, carefully starts to extricate himself from beside-under Clint’s wife. “This isn’t what it looks like,” he says, trying his best to not wake Laura up and not knowing how. He blinks at his hand, wrinkled and pruned and bearing the impression of many, many tiny teeth. Jesus, how long was the kid gnawing on him?
Clint shakes his head, and a very tiny smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t,” he says, quietly. “She hasn’t slept more than a few hours in days, even when I was on baby duty. Just how she is, you know? Can’t rest while one of hers is sick. So keep your ass parked, Tony, unless you have better things to do than be a pillow for an exhausted mother.”
Tony hasn’t the slightest fucking clue how to respond to that, but there doesn’t seem to be any hostility or anger or sarcasm in Clint’s voice or expression. After a long, hesitant moment, he settles back. “I really don’t,” he mumbles.
“Good.” Clint hitches Nathan higher on his hip. Nathan chews on his hand and stares at Tony with big, wide blue eyes. “Lila and Coop will be up soon. I’m making breakfast. Don’t run off when Laura wakes up. I have zero interest in dealing with her worrying about whether or not you're eating, so you're staying. No arguments. How do you want your eggs?”
“... what? Uh…” What the hell is going on here? “Scrambled?”
Clint nods, faintly pleased. “Will do.” He adjusts his son around, face taking on comically chipper proportions, all wide eyes and overexcited smile. “Okay little man, let's go get some cereal! Huh? You want some cereal?”
Tony’s been through a lot of really weird shit in his life, from backstabbing avuncular mentors to killer robots to aliens pouring out of the sky, but waking up on the porch with another man’s wife sleeping against him and being ordered by said other man to stay for breakfast is definitely near the top of the surreal what-the-fuck charts.
But he’s really great at rolling with it, so he just closes his eyes and lets himself drift, until he wakes up again with the sun clear of the horizon, Lila snoozing on his lap, Laura starting to stir on his shoulder, and Clint smirking at him and holding out a cup of steaming coffee.
oOoOoOo
One Week Later
Laura stands at the folding table in the loft overlooking the den, folding bedsheets and keeping a watchful eye on the kids playing below. Cooper is engrossed in a book on the couch, while Nathan babbles away to his stuffed animals in the gated-off play area in the corner. She doesn’t see Lila at the moment, but she’s not concerned. Tony walked by a few minutes ago, hair askew and heavy-eyed, shuffling towards the kitchen with his coffee mug dangling from his fingers. All she has to do is wait.
She gets through two more sheets, stacking them neatly on the pile on the side of the table, before Tony shuffles back, setting the now-full and steaming cup down on the end table before throwing himself with a groan into the overstuffed recliner beside it. His hand lazily flicks left, and blue holographic light springs in its wake, white lines delineating whatever he’s working on today.
She wonders if Tony’s figured out yet that he’s starting to consider their home his home.
Like clockwork, Lila appears with her lap desk, sketchbook and plastic box of colored pencils not thirty seconds after Tony gets comfortable, and sets them down in his lap. Laura bites her lip to keep from laughing at the flabbergasted look on his face, hand frozen in mid-gesture. He gapes as Lila as she goes to the couch, determinedly pulls the afghan from the back and drags it back to Tony. “I’d like to get up, please, Tony,” she says very politely.
Laura sinks her teeth deeper into her lip, smiling hard enough to hurt her cheeks as Tony hesitates and eyes Lila like a particularly strange breed of wild animal. Slowly, like he’s not sure if she’s going to gnaw an arm off, he reaches out to with both hands. Lila’s never been one for patience though, stepping on Tony’s foot and grabbing one of his hands for leverage to boost herself up. Lila settles herself in his lap, arranges the afghan over their legs, and digs out her drawing supplies, curling into his chest as she flips to a blank page and starts drawing.
And Tony just stares uncertainly at her, hands helplessly raised as if she’s holding him up instead of cuddling against him. Hesitantly, one arm comes down, settling around Lila, and eventually the other goes back to flipping through holograms. Every thirty seconds, Tony shoots Lila an incredulous glance, the look of a man uncertain about this tiny, fey thing who might devour his soul.
Laura is in agony. She’s dying. She’s not going to make it in silence. She has to turn away from the astonished Tony with the dinner-plate eyes and the helpless air, hang her head and stuff her fist in her mouth to keep from bursting into peals of laughter. She’s a terrible person because she should go down and rescue Tony, but she has a feeling it would only be delaying the inevitable.
She’s been watching Lila stalk Tony for days now, keeping an eye on his comings and goings, trailing behind him and seeing what he does. She hasn’t started emulating him yet, but it’s only a matter of time. It’s the Barton family curse to collect strays. Clint never could help bringing home lost souls with sad eyes and hidden wounds, and Lila is her father’s daughter to the core.
Below and behind, a door opens and footsteps approach. “Hi, Dad,” she hears Lila say distractedly, over the scritch-scratch of the pencil that never stops. Laura can't resist creeping back, peering over the table at the scene below. Clint's down there now, back to her, so she can only see the top of his head and shoulders.
But Tony. Oh god, Tony's face. Pale, big-eyed, pleading silently with Clint to help him. Laura bites hard on her fist, manages to keep her laugh to a soft snort.
“Hi, pumpkin,” Clint says. His head turns just slightly, and Laura knows he heard her up here. “Having fun?”
“Mmhmm,” Lila says, without looking up from her drawing, as Tony is desperately mouthing something that looks an awful lot like goddammit Barton, help me out here . “Tony’s holograms are good light.”
“Tony, huh?” Clint shifts, hands loose in his pockets. Tony’s eyes narrow as he glares at Clint. “What happened to Mr. Stark?”
Laura nearly dies all over again, because the exasperated eye roll Lila shoots her father is a mirror-perfect image of his own. “Friends can call each other by their first names,” Lila says. “Right, Tony?”
“Uh.” His eyes dart from Lila to Clint and back to Lila. “That is… true. But sometimes friends call each other by their nicknames or their last names, or sometimes no name at all. There’s a lot of ways friends can address each other.”
Lila pauses, and Laura leans carefully over the laundry to spy, resting on her elbows on the table. “Well,” Lila says slowly. “I want you to call me Lila, and I want to call you Tony. That’s okay, right?”
“Clearly, you’ve never negotiated anything before, little Barton,” Tony says. “Never lead with what you want. Y’gotta… You gotta start big. Like… okay. Say… I wanted half your colored pencils. So what do I do?”
“You could always ask me for half my pencils. I like you. I’d give them to you.”
Clint snickers and Laura wishes she had a camera, because the look on Tony’s face, chagrin and concedement and self-deprecation, is absolutely priceless. “Yes, I could definitely do that. Okay. Better example. You want me to call you Lila, but I want to call you Little Barton. So we have to find a way to agree, maybe something the other person wants that you can trade. So I say, alright. I’ll call you Lila, but you have to call me The Amazing Awesome Spectacular Iron Man Tony. But you don’t want to do that, you just want to call me Tony.”
“This is getting awfully complicated,” Lila says doubtfully. “Can't I just call you Tony?”
“Can I call you little Barton?”
Lila's nose scrunches up the way it does when she's deep in thought. “Nathan's littler than me,” she informs Tony. “But I guess it'd be alright some of the time.”
“Well then! Glad that’s settled!” Tony looks at her expectantly. “Don’t you have other stuff to do? Homework or making cookies or building death rays or something?”
“Nope,” Lila says, and returns her attention to her drawing. She pauses for a moment, then blinks up at Tony with wide, innocent eyes. “Can I sit with you while I finish drawing, Tony?”
“Clint…” There's something dark and desperate in Tony's voice, something terrified and vulnerable in his eyes, bright and clear enough that Laura can see it from the balcony.
Clint twists around, his eyes finding Laura's. The haunted shadows are back in them, the guilt and self-recrimination. The uncertainty and doubt. All the things she thought were banished when Tony came back more than a week ago. It clenches a fist around Laura's heart to see it, just as deep and fresh as it was the first time she saw it, months and months ago. It's eerie how similar the look in Tony's eyes is.
She clears her throat, steps to the rail and leans on it with her elbows. “Seems to me you two should get on with that being okay thing,” she says lightly. “I seem to recall some mention of cars to the head and supermax incarceration?”
Clint stares at her for a moment in non-comprehension, then brightens with a devilish grin “That's right,” he drawls, turning back around to Tony. “You owe me.”
Tony's eyes grow impossibly wider. “Barton,” he says, edge of warning, edge of panic. “You better not be thinking what I think you're thinking.”
“A few weeks in supermax,” Clint goes blithely on, as if Tony hadn't spoken. Clint reaches out and ruffles Lila's hair, dodging her irritated sweep at his hand. “Meet your new warden. You’ll keep an eye on him, right, Lila?”
“Uh huh.” Lila pokes her tongue between her teeth and bends low over her drawing, heedless of the dirty look Tony is glaring Clint’s way over her head. Laura holds her breath, hoping she hasn't misread this.
“Supermax,” Tony says with narrowed eyes.
“Supermax,” Clint replies with a nod.
“Fine,” Tony says through gritted teeth. “But you might want to unpack the instinct to call spending time with your kid equivalent to time in the Raft.”
“That’s cos you haven’t spent time with her yet,” Clint says, and ruffles Lila’s hair. “She’s a demanding little tyrant.” Laura holds her breath again as Clint reaches out and ruffles Tony’s hair too, lets it out when Tony just growls something under his breath that her ears don’t catch, but Clint laughs at.
Lila looks up from her papers, staring at Tony with disappointed eyes. “You’re not allowed to say that word, Tony,” Lila informs him. “It’s a bad word. You’re going to have to put a quarter in Mommy’s swear jar.”
oOoOoOo
One Week Later
Laura sits on the porch swing with a cup of tea, moving it back and forth with an idle foot, listening to the sound of water rushing through the pipes as it drains out of the bath. She can hear Nathan’s distant squeals of displeasure as he’s taken out of the bath. Overhead, from the partially-open window into Lila’s room, Tony’s voice rises and falls in a cadence, punctuated by Lila’s giggles and Cooper's questions. It's nice, she thinks, closing her eyes and pulling the afghan more securely around her shoulders, to sit here and listen to the sounds of normalcy around her. Especially when she thought she'd never have it again.
She dozes, swaying back and forth, jerking back to alertness again at the scuff of a boot on the boards in front of her. She smiles without opening her eyes as Clint's weight settles onto the swing beside her, jarring the gentle back and forth. His arm drops around her shoulders and she settles back against his side. “Nathan went down okay?” she asks.
“Once I convinced him bathtime was done, yeah. That kid is a holy terror.”
“Your kid,” she says, and Clint snorts. “Everything okay with you and Tony now?”
“Getting there. Fucker hit me with one of Cooper’s Hot Wheels earlier. In the head.”
“Could have been worse, honey. It could have been an actual car.”
“True.” Clint settles back and closes his eyes, pulls Laura against his chest. “But hey, free babysitter. I think he’s reading them Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. With holographic visual effects. They’re never going to be satisfied with any story ever again.”
“We’ll just have to keep him.” Laura sips her tea as Clint stills beside her, then shifts around to eye her. She eyes him right back and keeps on sipping. “You heard me. We’re keeping him. He needs family and he fits right in here. This is where he comes at the end of the day. This is where he comes to get patched up after you guys get back from Avenging. This is where he actually manages to sleep.”
Clint scrubs the back of his head. “Are you sure about this? I’m not saying no, but hell… I know what Tony’s like and I know what our kids are like, honey. Are you really sure you want to combine the two?”
“He seems to be doing okay right now,” Laura says with a shrug. “He’s good with them.”
Clint huffs and sits back again, slings his arm back around Laura’s shoulders. “Well, shit. I guess that’s that then. When do you want to inform Tony he's been adopted against his will, and when do you want to tell the kids Lila’s scored them a pet billionaire?”