Getting to Know You
Fandom: The Avengers (Marvel Movie Universe)
Rating: G
Characters: Clint Barton, Natasha Romanova, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Thor, Pepper Potts
Summary: When four of the Avengers are exposed to Asgardian technology and turned into children, Tony is left to care for them.
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox. I'm only playing in it for a little while.
Warnings: A few brief mentions of child abuse. Nothing is described. No detail is given. It's not even outright stated, just sort of skirted around.
Pairings: Pepper/Tony, Clint/Natasha at the end kind-of/sort-of
This is pure and utter unadulterated crack. Cracky crack crack. It's kid fic! Of course it's crack. Although, how much do I love that Shiny New Fandom has kid fic as a legitimate possibility in canon?
Can be found on AO3 for ease of reading in chapter format if you so desire.
The battle was fierce for being against only one person. Tony hadn’t expected the fight to go so long or stretch across so much of New York. At least they were mostly keeping to warehouses and sparsely populated areas.
Clint had long ago run out of arrows. Natasha had emptied her cartridges. Hulk hadn’t been able to get close. Even Steve and Tony were running out of ideas and willing to let Thor try negotiating. They’d had no luck. He wouldn’t relent, whoever he was.
Thor had him distracted, just enough, that Hulk smashed through his shield and Natasha was able to secure him. Tony couldn’t understand why he laughed so heartily as soon as Natasha tackled him to the ground. He’d been caught. Battle over; they won, just as expected. And yet the bad guy looked like the cat that caught the canary.
Tony hadn’t seen the canister. Hadn’t heard the beeping or the countdown and certainly didn’t expect the explosion. The bad guy was cackling maniacally, screaming something about ‘incapacitate’ and ‘Loki’s return’, when the canister exploded and filled the warehouse with a noxious red gas.
They ran for it, Natasha dragging their new psychotic prisoner behind her, and everybody made it out the door in one piece. Tony was just starting to ask what happened when Clint, Natasha, and Steve doubled over. Hulk bellowed. There was a loud pop and four puffs of smoke where his friends had stood moments before. Thor grabbed at the prisoner as quickly as he could, staring at the space Natasha had just occupied.
The smoke cleared and Tony gaped, not quite believing his eyes. Where his friends had stood there were now four small, coughing and sputtering children. They came complete with child sized clothes, armor and costumes vanished.
All four of them looked around, bewildered. The little girl where Natasha had stood started to cry. Nobody seemed able to move.
“Fuck me.” Tony whispered.
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They seemed to be copies of their actual young selves. There didn’t appear to be any superpowers or honed skill sets amongst them. Bruce, at seven and a half, had not shown signs of any inner Hulk coming out and Thor had made him plenty mad enough to bring out The Other Guy. Steve was a small and sickly six year old. Definitely not a tiny super soldier. Natasha couldn’t speak English, was afraid of everything, and probably couldn’t have killed anybody if she’d tried. And she was only four. Clint was his wild card of a six year old. He knew nothing about Clint or his childhood except that it looked like the kid had never picked up a bow before in his life with the way he was dragging the prized possession behind him.
It took mere minutes to hammer out a plan, probably longer than it would have if the tiny version of Natasha hadn’t been screaming for home in Russian. Thor would return to Asgard and find the cure all while keeping an eye on Loki. The last thing they needed was a breakout and a fight on Earth while they were down four Avengers. Tony would protect the children. He just had to convince Fury it would work better in the Tower than if they were all locked in rooms on the Helicarrier. There was no way he was going to let any of these kids be poked and prodded by scientists. Well, by anybody other than himself anyway.
That didn’t take long either. He won with Fury. He always did. He would settle for nothing less. Now they just had to get the kids back to the Tower and get Loki’s minion picked up before anybody saw them. Tony turned to look at the kids.
Natasha, tiny spitfire with hair as red as the sun, clung to his legs. She stared up at him with red rimmed green eyes. Her cheeks were streaked with tears and her hair hung in wisps falling out of her pigtails. He was the only one who spoke a language she could understand. She wouldn’t let him go.
Steve stood back, ramrod straight and head held high. His hair was a dusty blond, shaved short and glaringly old fashioned. He was thin as a stick and his clothes hung loosely off his body, but he was quiet and attentive. He’d do as Tony asked, small blessing though that was.
Bruce crouched over the steps of the warehouse, intently studying some bug or plant or crack or Tony didn’t know what. His hair was sticking up in all different directions, black and thick and coarse. He didn’t seem terribly concerned with being in a new place surrounded by people he didn’t know. Always the scientist, he was more interested in how it happened than anything else.
Clint was was chasing circles around the others, oblivious to the situation at hand. His hair was long and dirty, a tangled mess of bright blond he pulled back with an elastic band. It wasn’t quite long enough in the front and so half of it fell out, framing his dirt streaked face. His clothes were old, too small, and torn and faded. He looked as out of place as Steve.
He stared at them. They stared back at him. Sudden, crippling realization dawned on Tony. He had no clue what he was doing.
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“Pepper! Pepper, darling, sweetheart, love of my life.” He called her as soon as he was home. If the walk from the warehouse to Avengers Tower had been any indication, he was never going to survive this child-minding thing.
“What do you want, Tony?” she asked. Something crashed and broke behind him. He didn’t want to know.
“Who says I want anything?” She didn’t buy it. He should have known she wouldn’t. She never did when it came to him. Knew him too well. “Okay. I need a favor. A really, monumentally big favor.”
“Of course you do. What is it?” she sighed. He loved her sigh. It was so… her.
“I… need you take a few days off. And come stay with me.”
“Take time off? Now? Tony, you know we have the big buyout I’m trying to mediate. And won’t the others mind having me around for a few days? You aren’t exactly subtle.” She was making excuses. He knew her just as well as she knew him.
“They never mind. But the others… that’s the reason I need you here. Look, I can’t explain now. You just have to see it to believe it. Just come over. Stay a few days. Okay?” He was bordering on begging. He didn’t want to say please. She was going to make him say please.
“You’ll have to do better than that, Stark.” There was silence. She was waiting. He sighed as Natasha cried at his feet and Steve yelled from the other room, something about ‘Mr. Stark, Clint’s climbing the walls again!’ and he really, really didn’t want to know.
“Thor went back to Asgard so he won’t even be around. And the others… gotturnedintochildrenandIcan’ttakecareoffourkidsonmyownohmygodhelpmeplease?” It came out in a rush. She would never believe him. But he’d said please, if she’d caught that part. He could hear her breathing.
“I can be there in six hours.” She hung up. It paid to be a superhero. Things like this must be common. Surely. Maybe? He breathed a sigh of relief and turned around.
Bruce was curled in a corner behind a stack of books he’d pulled off the line of bookshelves. Clint had already found the kitchen and was climbing on the counters demanding a drink, knocking over every pot and pan on his way. Steve was at the breakfast bar with a pen and a stack of papers. Tony realized only too late it was the mail he was drawing on. Natasha tugged on his pants and told him she had to go to the bathroom.
It would be a miracle if he could make it six hours.
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Pepper showed up exactly six hours later and Tony was about to pull his hair out. Natasha had asked repeatedly where her mother and father were. She was scared because she couldn’t understand anybody around her except for him. She wouldn’t leave his side. He’d never had to pee with such an attentive audience before. It was a little unsettling.
He had found Steve some printer paper and a few crayons. That had kept him occupied for a short while, but even he got antsy. He’d asked once, just once, if Tony was his new father. He quickly nixed that. He was just Tony, taking care of them for a little while until they could all go home. It took him three hours to realize neither Clint nor Bruce asked for their own parents. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know why.
He’d fed them, twice, and marveled at the mess they had made. It was just pizza and yet there was food everywhere. On the table, on the floor, on the walls. Somehow Clint had managed to get cheese stuck in the hair on the back of his head. Tony opted for wet paper towels instead of baths. He wasn’t entirely sure how to go about that particular task yet.
“Thank god you’re here.” Tony limped up to Pepper, Natasha sitting on his foot. He’d gotten them settled into the movie theater with a cartoon. Steve had marveled at the colour, but sat quietly and watched.
“What makes you think I’ll be any better with children than you?” she asked, glancing over his shoulder into the theater. Clint was throwing popcorn at Bruce. Bruce was catching it in his mouth. Steve was fast asleep in the theater chair.
“I don’t care how bad we are at it. At least I won’t be alone with them. They’re terrifying, Pepper.”
“They’re just children.” She smirked at him.
“You haven’t seen them eat. They aren’t children. They’re monsters.”
“You exaggerate. Let’s just put them to bed, okay?” She patted his shoulder and waved down at Natasha. The little hellion had the audacity to giggle adorably and bury her face in Tony’s leg as if she were actually an angel.
Tony carried Steve upstairs with Natasha clinging to his back. Pepper corralled Bruce and Clint. There were a dozen empty rooms in the tower and Tony hesitated on where to put the kids. As adults, they all had their own floors. But that might be a bad idea, to separate them like that. Plus, he wasn’t sure how many weapons Clint and Natasha had stashed away, nor where they would have put them. The last thing he needed was one of them to off themselves or somebody else because they got curious. And Clint and Bruce were already into everything.
In the end he settled on dropping them all in the same oversized bed in the room right next to his. They were asleep almost instantly. He wasn’t too far behind.
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Pepper at least was level headed enough to send Happy out shopping early the next morning. Happy returned with stacks of clothes, boxes full of toys, and miniature versions of furniture. Tony cleared out the entire west side of the communal floor to create a room for the kids to play in. They had a table and four chairs. They had shelves stacked with books. They had toy boxes full to overflowing with anything a child could want.
And all they wanted to play with were the cardboard boxes everything had come in. Bruce and Clint had taken all the empty boxes and built a massive box castle. Steve was decorating it, and himself, with all the markers he could find. Natasha clung to Tony until midafternoon. They ignored all the new toys.
Natasha had found a stuffed bear and started carrying it with her everywhere, he assumed as a bridge between stuck-to-Tony and exploring-on-her-own. She only wandered away from him when she decided she liked Clint. Tony wasn’t sure why, as the boy basically ignored her, but she began following him around like a puppy dog. Steve was protective of her and it had caused more than one fight with Clint, but nothing had come to fists yet, so Tony counted that as a win.
Pepper was making lunch and Tony, finally free of his semi-permanent child appendage, left them alone for ten minutes. Just ten short little minutes. Long enough to use the bathroom without an audience. Long enough to sneak a kiss and a taste of the spaghetti. Long enough for all hell to break loose.
Natasha’s wails had them tearing through the halls and into the room. She was sitting in the middle of the floor screaming her head off and hitting Clint with her bear. Steve was sitting next to her and rubbing her back. Bruce had retreated to a corner in terror, apparently unsure of what to do when a girl cried. Clint was crouched in front of her, in a panic, trying to apologize.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Stop crying. Please stop crying. I’ll let you kiss me. I’ll let you hit me. You can play with me all day. Whatever you want, just please, stop crying!” His high pitched voice barely registered above her wails. He didn’t speak Russian. She didn’t speak English. His panic was only escalating hers.
“What the hell is going on in here?” Tony bellowed from the door. Every tiny little child hand pointed a finger at Clint. He turned, terror all over his face, and bolted across the room. Tony stalked towards him and Clint slid between his legs and careened down the hall, knocking Pepper against the wall as he went. Tony followed at a breakneck pace and he could hear all the little feet pounding after him. Natasha had stopped crying.
He finally cornered Clint in the library and tried to keep himself calm as he asked what had happened. The others skid to a stop in the doorway and he could hear Steve wheezing. Clint looked around like a caged animal, realized he was trapped, and scrambled for the bookcases. Tony grabbed him by the arm and pulled, not roughly, but Clint started screaming anyway.
“Let me go! Let me go! I didn’t mean to!” He flailed against Tony, hitting and kicking and twisting any way he could to get out. Next thing Tony knew, Bruce had grabbed him by his other arm and was pulling him as hard as he could, pulling him away from Clint.
“You leave him alone! Don’t you dare hurt him!” He let go of Clint in his shock and turned to deal with Bruce. He had no clue how this had gotten so out of control. Natasha laughed behind him. Steve wheezed.
“TONY!” Pepper screamed his name. He turned just in time to see the nearest bookcase tip dangerously forward, Clint clinging to the top shelf. Tony had just enough time to shove Bruce out of the way and reach out for the sides of the bookcase. The weight of it came crashing down on him, but he was able to stay upright and keep it from hitting the floor. The jarring stop was enough for Clint to lose his grip and he fell, hitting the floor with a hard thump and a sickening crunch. Books rained down around them.
Bruce was crying. Natasha had started to cry again. Steve went into a full blown asthma attack. Clint was clutching his chest and gasping, the wind knocked out of him. Tony righted the bookcase and turned as Clint scuttled away from him across the floor. He limped his way out of the room and Tony waved him off. With all the chaos, Clint was the least of his concerns.
Pepper helped Steve with an inhaler and he wasn’t about to ask where she got it from, he was just thankful she had it. Tony looked Bruce over and determined he was more scared than anything else. He settled Natasha by singing the first thing that came to mind, and if it just so happened to be Iron Maiden, well, she didn’t seem scared by it. Pepper led them all to the kitchen and instructed Tony on making hot chocolate while she salvaged the spaghetti sauce.
“So what happened?” she asked once everybody was calmly sipping at their mugs.
“Clint shoved Natasha.” Steve accused.
“Only cause she tried to kiss him and wouldn’t stop! He asked her to stop first.” Bruce defended.
“She doesn’t understand! She’s too little. And foreign. He shouldn’t have pushed her. You gotta be patient until she learns English.” Steve argued back. They glared at each other and Pepper stopped them before the argument could escalate.
“He shouldn’t have pushed her, but I don’t think he meant to hurt her. And she shouldn’t have tried to kiss him. Everybody is entitled to personal space, which Tony can explain to her later. Let’s all just calm down and figure out how a simple push turned into the destruction of the library, okay?” All eyes turned to Bruce and he looked sheepishly into his mug. He began to trace the picture of Darth Vader on the front.
“I thought you were going to hurt him. He probably did too.”
“I wouldn’t hurt him.” Tony was shocked.
“You’re a big and scary man. Big and scary men hurt kids like us when we’re bad.” Tony let that circle around his head for a minute.
“Give them lunch. I’m going to go find Clint.”
He took a mug of hot chocolate with him.
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Using what little he knew of the adult, he narrowed down the possible locations and found Clint on the second try. He was sitting on top of the lockers in the training room, curled into the corner as small as he could make himself.
“C’mon down, Clint. I’m not going to hurt you.” Clint looked at him over his knees, but didn’t move. “I brought you hot chocolate, see? I’ll just put it down here and then I’ll go stand over there. Okay?” He placed the mug next to the mat and stepped five paces back. Clint eyed him warily, but he crawled along the lockers until he reached a support pole. He slid down and crawled over to the mug. Tony sat down where he was and just watched the little boy drink. Hair was matted to his temple, slick and dark with blood. It stood out in stark contrast to the permanently disheveled blonde.
“You’re bleeding.” Clint just shrugged. “Can I take a look at it?” he asked. Clint shook his head hard and then dropped the mug, cradling his head in his hands in pain.
“Can you make it stop hurting?” he asked.
“Yeah, Kid. Yeah, I can do that.”
“Okay,” he whispered. Tony crawled over to him slowly. Clint trembled and Tony could tell he was tensing up to run at the slightest provocation, so he was extra gentle when he tried to pull the hair away. There was a gash on the side of his head and it was still oozing a little.
“Can we go to the bathroom? I can clean this and get it stitched up.” He stood slowly and held out his hand. Clint looked everywhere but at him.
“I broke your mug.”
“It’s okay. I have more.” Clint took his hand and Tony led him to the bathroom. He grabbed the first aid kit off the wall on his way. Tony gently placed him on the sink and started cleaning him up. It looked a lot worse than it was. He explained everything before he did it. When Clint didn’t even flinch at the first stitch, Tony wondered for the first time how often he sat in a doctor’s office and had his skin sewn back together like this. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.
When he was done, he tossed the bloody gauze in the trash and placed a hand on either side of the little boy. Clint still wouldn’t look at him, but at least he wasn’t shaking like a leaf any longer.
“Hey, listen to me, okay? I will never hurt you. Never. I can’t promise to not scare you. I’m a scary guy sometimes. But nothing could ever make me hurt you. Understand?” Clint looked him in the eyes for the first time all day and wrapped tiny arms around his neck. Tony carried him all the way to the kitchen.
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By the end of the following day, Tony discovered sweaty children who hadn’t bathed were smelly. And while none of them seemed to care that they stank, he did.
Steve insisted on bathing by himself. He argued about getting into the bath and, after 45 minutes, he argued that he didn’t want to get out. Tony threatened to break down the door and he heard the water immediately start to drain.
He convinced Natasha to let Pepper bathe her. She was surprisingly efficient. Five minutes after walking in, they walked out with Natasha clean and smelling like vanilla and lavender.
Clint and Bruce wouldn’t get in the bath at all. They ran, they hid, they fought him with foam swords. He was only able to get them in the water by suggesting they bathe together. They came out twenty minutes later, barely wet, and Tony nearly had a heart attack when he looked in the bathroom. There were towels crumpled up on the floor. Water was splattered on the walls and ceiling. There were huge puddles on the floor. They hadn’t even bothered to use soap. Tony sent them back in and stood in the doorway until they were sufficiently clean.
He tossed them both into the play room, still dripping wet with clothes sticking to their bodies, and ran a hand over his face. It was only seven, the sun wasn’t down yet, and he was ready for bed.
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Pepper left after two days. Clint kept to his word and let Natasha do whatever she wanted to him, but by that time she had abandoned him for Steve, her new lord and savior. Bruce became Tony’s new shadow.
“That shiny suit you were wearing, what’s it made of?”
Bruce followed Tony everywhere.
“How do you power it?”
He was the first up in the morning, hovering in Tony’s bedroom door.
“What’s that glowy thing in your chest?”
He was the last one asleep at night, pondering the existential questions of life. For a seven year old.
“Does it hurt?”
He followed him to the bathroom, standing outside the door and talking while he waited.
“How do you prevent infection? What if your body starts to reject it?”
He followed him to the kitchen.
“How do you not explode into your helmet? I saw the videos. You go really fast. That’s a lot of force.”
He followed him to the lab.
“How’d you figure out the inertial dampeners?”
He paced with him when Tony was on the phone, interrupting at every possible moment.
“How did you make your computer talk to us?”
“Bruce! Not now!” Bruce jumped back and cowered, visibly afraid. He hadn’t meant to yell. He was just so tired and frustrated. Bruce ran to the playroom and didn’t speak to anybody for an hour.
“You can read, right?” Tony asked. Bruce unfolded from his corner and nodded. Tony handed him a physics book.
“For me?” Bruce held it reverently.
“All yours, kid. Knock yourself out.”
Bruce didn’t put it down even at dinner and when he fell asleep that night, still reading, it hit him in the face. He didn’t care.
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By the third day he was finally comfortable leaving them alone in the play room for a few minutes at a time. They had mostly stopped trying to kill each other, when it wasn’t for fun anyway, and he was pretty sure anything that could be destroyed already had. They weren’t prone to wander, either.
“Apple,” a tiny voice called, tugging at his shirt. He placed his soldering iron down and looked at Natasha’s wide green eyes.
“What’d you say, baby?” he asked. She tugged harder.
“Apple!” Steve came running up behind her.
“I think she’s hungry. I tried to teach her that, but we can’t seem to get past apple.” Tony looked from Steve to Natasha and back again.
“You taught her apple?” he asked.
“Uh-huh. And book, car, horse, bear, cat, cup, and blue. Well, I think we got blue. She either thinks it means blue or piano. I’m not sure.” Steve was counting off the words on his fingers. Natasha smiled up at him and tugged on Tony again.
“Apple!” she insisted. He asked if she was hungry in Russian and she confirmed. He took them to the kitchen and made macaroni and cheese. He found Bruce reading and Clint climbing the walls, literally, and made them both come eat.
They all ate at the breakfast bar in an attempt to minimize the mess. It worked. Sort of. At least the maid was less likely to glare at him when the mess was just on the counter than when it was all over the walls in the breakfast nook. He’d have to give her a raise after this was all over. If she didn’t quit first.
“So what made you decide to teach her English?” he asked Steve, scraping the last noodles out of his bowl.
“You were busy and she was getting upset, so I thought I could help.” Tony had to hand it to the kid. It wasn’t a bad idea. It was kind of pointless, since they would all hopefully be their charming, sullen adult selves again soon, but it was keeping them occupied.
“That was some good work you did, teaching her that.” Steve looked up at him with wide, hopeful eyes.
“Really?” he asked. Tony nodded.
“You’re good with her.” Steve about burst from the praise.
“I’ll help out! I can take care of her,” he said, beaming up at Tony. He took Natasha’s bowl for her and then took her hand, leading her back to the playroom. He babbled the whole time, pointing at things on the wall and saying their English name. She didn’t repeat but he kept talking anyway and when they sat back down amongst the toys, she leaned over and kissed him. Steve blushed from his neck to the roots of his hair, but he was still smiling.
“Hey! I thought you only kissed me!” Clint called from in the cardboard castle. Natasha stuck her tongue out at him.
“She’s kissed me, too, Kid. And Pepper. Maybe even Happy.” Tony corrected him.
“Fine. I didn’t want some stupid girl to like me anyway,” he pouted.
“I still like you, Fart-face.” Bruce said, sticking his head in the cut out window. Clint launched out of the castle and tackled him to the ground in what Tony hoped was a gentler wrestling match than it looked. He didn’t have the energy to stop them. At least they were laughing.
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It had been a week. A long, agonizing week. Tony couldn’t take the kids outside. If press leaked, it would be disastrous. They were trapped inside and they were all going a little stir crazy. Tony was exhausted, stressed, and suddenly very appreciative of all the work his nannies put in when he was growing up.
“Tony? I’m here.” Pepper called from the elevator. Tony rushed down the hall to meet her. He hadn’t been so happy to see a familiar face since Rhodey picked him up in Afghanistan.
“You have the voice of a choir of angels singing on high,” he said and kissed her deeply. Clint and Bruce made retching noises behind him until Steve punched one of them. Clint, by the ‘ow’ and round of giggles that followed.
“You lie, but I’ll forgive you. I’ve got the kids for the afternoon. You go out and do something.” Pepper patted his arm and pushed him towards the elevators.
“Sleep. I’m going to sleep. For hours and hours.” And that’s exactly what he did.
He stumbled, three hours later, towards the playroom. He was starting to feel like a real person again. It was awfully quiet, so he glanced around the doorway before he actually stepped in and nearly fell over from the shock of what he saw. The playroom was clean, toys and art supplies put away, cardboard castles disassembled and stacked in corners, books neatly organized on shelves. Nobody was crying, nobody was screaming, nobody was hitting or punching or kicking or fighting. He had no clue how Pepper did it.
They were all getting along. Instead of fighting, they were dancing. Together. Well, Bruce was sitting in Pepper’s lap reading his physics book, but the other three were dancing. Steve didn’t know what he was doing and he was mostly just jumping up and down, but he was obviously enjoying himself if his smile was any indication. Clint wasn’t bad and it looked like he spent a lot of time copying television. But Natasha was the surprise. She flowed with a natural grace. It was like she was made to dance. And she did it all while hugging her bear.
Tony quietly pulled out his phone and accessed JARVIS. He set all the surveillance cameras in the room to record. He wanted this from every angle. Pepper reached down as soon as the song ended and skipped the next few tracks until she found something classical. Steve collapsed into a heap next to her, panting with a high pitched whine that made Tony nervous, but Steve was content.
Natasha twirled around the room while everybody else just watched her. She danced and swayed and a look of pure bliss slid over her face. She didn’t need to speak the same language as everybody else to mesh with this. All she needed to hear was the music.
Pepper let her have one song just for her before she skipped through the tracks again. She found some old Donna Summer and Clint about exploded from happiness.
“I know this song! I can do this one!” he exclaimed. Bruce actually closed his book and looked up to watch. Natasha even backed up a little as Clint started dancing moves Tony hadn’t see anyone do since he was a little boy himself. And he’d never liked disco in the first place.
It was all he could do to keep quiet and hidden when Clint started singing along. There was nothing like a six year old little boy in blue jeans and a bright purple shirt, long blond hair pulled back in a mess of a ponytail, belting out I Will Survive while bopping his way around the room. This was definitely going up on youtube when Clint was an adult again and would be sufficiently, horrifically embarrassed by it.
Natasha threw her bear at Steve, smacking him in the face and knocking him over, and reached for Clint. They clasped hands and started to spin, around and around in circles, as fast as they could go. By the end of the song, Clint had crashed to the floor with Natasha falling on top of him in a giggle fit. Clint didn’t let her hit the ground and he never let go.
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Thor returned that night in a flash of lighting, a boom of thunder, and dragging a rainstorm behind him. He had found a cure. He was ready to turn them back into adults.
Tony stepped lightly down the hallway. The kids had been in bed for hours. They were probably asleep, but he would check. He could wake them up for this. The light on the nightstand was still on, illuminating the bed just enough that Tony could see them all.
Bruce was on his back, balancing at the edge of the bed, with a book lying open on his chest. His left hand was resting on the cover, rising and falling with each steady breath, but his right hand was down beside him. He and Clint were holding hands, fingers loosely entwined in comfortable sleep. Clint’s eyelids fluttered with a dream and his breath was uneven, but his body was perfectly still. Natasha was using his stomach as a pillow. She was sideways in the bed, her head and shoulders resting on Clint while her legs were thrown across Steve. She snuggled her bear and laughed quietly in her sleep. Clint’s right hand tangled in her hair and she quieted, the smile still tugging at her lips. Steve was on his stomach, left arm dangling off the bed and the right under his pillow. He snored lightly, oblivious to the weight on his legs.
Tony’s heart swelled and he had to remind himself these were not his children. These people weren’t even supposed to be children. And soon, they wouldn’t be. They’d be adults again and what little innocence they still had would be lost.
He gently took the book out of Bruce’s hand and marked the page before setting it down. He switched off the light and tiptoed out of the bedroom, quietly closing the door behind him.
Thor’s cure could wait until morning. For now, he would let them sleep.
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Tony used breakfast, a normally quiet and sometimes not messy time of day, to explain what was going on. He and Pepper had figured the truth was the best option. It was explained that they were with him because he was their friend. They had been exposed to a chemical that made them small, that they were supposed to be much bigger, and that Thor was a doctor who had a medicine to get rid of the toxin and make them grown up again. He explained to Natasha in Russian and Pepper handled the boys. They seemed a little skeptical that Thor was a doctor, but they submitted readily enough.
It was only once Steve and Bruce were returned to their adult selves that Tony realized Clint had disappeared. Natasha was up next and she wouldn’t let go of Tony’s hand now that her little friend wasn’t so little anymore. Bruce was still shaking the fog of the past week from his memory, but he volunteered to go look for the little boy.
Bruce found him in the cardboard castle they had built. He was surprised Clint hadn’t climbed up high somewhere, but when he ran out of high places to check, JARVIS had told him where to find the child. Bruce crawled into the main box. It was a tighter fit than he remembered, but then, he was much bigger than the last time he’d crawled in it. He didn’t speak, just sat next to Clint and waited.
“So you’re Bruce.” Clint said, picking at his shoelaces.
“Yup.” Clint squinted up at him sideways and just studied him.
“Does it hurt?” he asked quietly.
“No. It feels… it’s kind of like peeling dried glue off your finger. Like you’re new.” Clint nodded and went back to his shoelace.
“Will I remember all this?” he asked. Bruce thought for a minute.
“Sort of. It’s… fuzzy. Like a dream. But it’s there. I remember it.”
“What if I can’t remember? People love me here. I don’t want to forget what that’s like.” And that was the crux of the issue. That was why he was so scared. Bruce had worried about that too, before Thor’s medicine. His childhood had not been happy. He knew Clint’s was worse. But he also knew what things were like for them now, as adults; what things were supposed to be. He knew it would be okay.
“You’re still loved here. Trust me. You’ll see.”
“Can we wait just a little while longer?” Bruce took Clint’s tiny hand in his and marveled at the sudden size difference. The past week they’d been on even standing. Now his was so much bigger; he could envelop the whole of Clint’s hand in just his palm.
“Until you’re ready.”
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They were halfway through movie night, three weeks later, when Tony noticed it. It struck him like a punch in the gut. And when he realized what it meant, he couldn’t stop smiling.
“So you kissed Steve. Should I be worried?” Clint teased Natasha. They were all spread out on the floor, pillows and blankets everywhere, couches and chairs pushed to the edges of the room. Steve dropped the popcorn bowl in shock.
“Well… I do have a thing for baby blues…” Natasha teased back. Steve dropped the popcorn he had just picked up. Bruce was laughing heartily and Thor scanned the room in confusion.
“I would never. C’mon, Barton. We were kids. I mean… she’s… and you’re… and the two of you are… I would never!” Steve whined. Natasha stretched out, placing her knees in Steve’s lap to get him to stop.
“To be fair, I think I kissed everybody,” she said, settling her head in Clint’s lap. He absently reached up and started twirling her hair between his fingers.
“You didn’t kiss me.” Bruce countered, settling in next to them with a fresh bowl of popcorn. He took a handful and passed it over to Steve.
“You were too busy making googly eyes at Clint. I would have, but I didn’t want to break up the bromance,” she sighed. Bruce sputtered until Clint took his hand and gave it a squeeze. He didn’t let go, just rested their clasped hands on top of the blanket.
“It’s okay. It was the hair. Everybody is a sucker for a scrappy kid with flowing blonde locks.”
“I believe I have missed something important, Man of Iron.” Thor leaned over and attempted to whisper. Tony could only chuckle and shake his head. There was no explaining this.
They remained like that for the rest of the movie.
Rating: G
Characters: Clint Barton, Natasha Romanova, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Thor, Pepper Potts
Summary: When four of the Avengers are exposed to Asgardian technology and turned into children, Tony is left to care for them.
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox. I'm only playing in it for a little while.
Warnings: A few brief mentions of child abuse. Nothing is described. No detail is given. It's not even outright stated, just sort of skirted around.
Pairings: Pepper/Tony, Clint/Natasha at the end kind-of/sort-of
This is pure and utter unadulterated crack. Cracky crack crack. It's kid fic! Of course it's crack. Although, how much do I love that Shiny New Fandom has kid fic as a legitimate possibility in canon?
Can be found on AO3 for ease of reading in chapter format if you so desire.
The battle was fierce for being against only one person. Tony hadn’t expected the fight to go so long or stretch across so much of New York. At least they were mostly keeping to warehouses and sparsely populated areas.
Clint had long ago run out of arrows. Natasha had emptied her cartridges. Hulk hadn’t been able to get close. Even Steve and Tony were running out of ideas and willing to let Thor try negotiating. They’d had no luck. He wouldn’t relent, whoever he was.
Thor had him distracted, just enough, that Hulk smashed through his shield and Natasha was able to secure him. Tony couldn’t understand why he laughed so heartily as soon as Natasha tackled him to the ground. He’d been caught. Battle over; they won, just as expected. And yet the bad guy looked like the cat that caught the canary.
Tony hadn’t seen the canister. Hadn’t heard the beeping or the countdown and certainly didn’t expect the explosion. The bad guy was cackling maniacally, screaming something about ‘incapacitate’ and ‘Loki’s return’, when the canister exploded and filled the warehouse with a noxious red gas.
They ran for it, Natasha dragging their new psychotic prisoner behind her, and everybody made it out the door in one piece. Tony was just starting to ask what happened when Clint, Natasha, and Steve doubled over. Hulk bellowed. There was a loud pop and four puffs of smoke where his friends had stood moments before. Thor grabbed at the prisoner as quickly as he could, staring at the space Natasha had just occupied.
The smoke cleared and Tony gaped, not quite believing his eyes. Where his friends had stood there were now four small, coughing and sputtering children. They came complete with child sized clothes, armor and costumes vanished.
All four of them looked around, bewildered. The little girl where Natasha had stood started to cry. Nobody seemed able to move.
“Fuck me.” Tony whispered.
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They seemed to be copies of their actual young selves. There didn’t appear to be any superpowers or honed skill sets amongst them. Bruce, at seven and a half, had not shown signs of any inner Hulk coming out and Thor had made him plenty mad enough to bring out The Other Guy. Steve was a small and sickly six year old. Definitely not a tiny super soldier. Natasha couldn’t speak English, was afraid of everything, and probably couldn’t have killed anybody if she’d tried. And she was only four. Clint was his wild card of a six year old. He knew nothing about Clint or his childhood except that it looked like the kid had never picked up a bow before in his life with the way he was dragging the prized possession behind him.
It took mere minutes to hammer out a plan, probably longer than it would have if the tiny version of Natasha hadn’t been screaming for home in Russian. Thor would return to Asgard and find the cure all while keeping an eye on Loki. The last thing they needed was a breakout and a fight on Earth while they were down four Avengers. Tony would protect the children. He just had to convince Fury it would work better in the Tower than if they were all locked in rooms on the Helicarrier. There was no way he was going to let any of these kids be poked and prodded by scientists. Well, by anybody other than himself anyway.
That didn’t take long either. He won with Fury. He always did. He would settle for nothing less. Now they just had to get the kids back to the Tower and get Loki’s minion picked up before anybody saw them. Tony turned to look at the kids.
Natasha, tiny spitfire with hair as red as the sun, clung to his legs. She stared up at him with red rimmed green eyes. Her cheeks were streaked with tears and her hair hung in wisps falling out of her pigtails. He was the only one who spoke a language she could understand. She wouldn’t let him go.
Steve stood back, ramrod straight and head held high. His hair was a dusty blond, shaved short and glaringly old fashioned. He was thin as a stick and his clothes hung loosely off his body, but he was quiet and attentive. He’d do as Tony asked, small blessing though that was.
Bruce crouched over the steps of the warehouse, intently studying some bug or plant or crack or Tony didn’t know what. His hair was sticking up in all different directions, black and thick and coarse. He didn’t seem terribly concerned with being in a new place surrounded by people he didn’t know. Always the scientist, he was more interested in how it happened than anything else.
Clint was was chasing circles around the others, oblivious to the situation at hand. His hair was long and dirty, a tangled mess of bright blond he pulled back with an elastic band. It wasn’t quite long enough in the front and so half of it fell out, framing his dirt streaked face. His clothes were old, too small, and torn and faded. He looked as out of place as Steve.
He stared at them. They stared back at him. Sudden, crippling realization dawned on Tony. He had no clue what he was doing.
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“Pepper! Pepper, darling, sweetheart, love of my life.” He called her as soon as he was home. If the walk from the warehouse to Avengers Tower had been any indication, he was never going to survive this child-minding thing.
“What do you want, Tony?” she asked. Something crashed and broke behind him. He didn’t want to know.
“Who says I want anything?” She didn’t buy it. He should have known she wouldn’t. She never did when it came to him. Knew him too well. “Okay. I need a favor. A really, monumentally big favor.”
“Of course you do. What is it?” she sighed. He loved her sigh. It was so… her.
“I… need you take a few days off. And come stay with me.”
“Take time off? Now? Tony, you know we have the big buyout I’m trying to mediate. And won’t the others mind having me around for a few days? You aren’t exactly subtle.” She was making excuses. He knew her just as well as she knew him.
“They never mind. But the others… that’s the reason I need you here. Look, I can’t explain now. You just have to see it to believe it. Just come over. Stay a few days. Okay?” He was bordering on begging. He didn’t want to say please. She was going to make him say please.
“You’ll have to do better than that, Stark.” There was silence. She was waiting. He sighed as Natasha cried at his feet and Steve yelled from the other room, something about ‘Mr. Stark, Clint’s climbing the walls again!’ and he really, really didn’t want to know.
“Thor went back to Asgard so he won’t even be around. And the others… gotturnedintochildrenandIcan’ttakecareoffourkidsonmyownohmygodhelpmeplease?” It came out in a rush. She would never believe him. But he’d said please, if she’d caught that part. He could hear her breathing.
“I can be there in six hours.” She hung up. It paid to be a superhero. Things like this must be common. Surely. Maybe? He breathed a sigh of relief and turned around.
Bruce was curled in a corner behind a stack of books he’d pulled off the line of bookshelves. Clint had already found the kitchen and was climbing on the counters demanding a drink, knocking over every pot and pan on his way. Steve was at the breakfast bar with a pen and a stack of papers. Tony realized only too late it was the mail he was drawing on. Natasha tugged on his pants and told him she had to go to the bathroom.
It would be a miracle if he could make it six hours.
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Pepper showed up exactly six hours later and Tony was about to pull his hair out. Natasha had asked repeatedly where her mother and father were. She was scared because she couldn’t understand anybody around her except for him. She wouldn’t leave his side. He’d never had to pee with such an attentive audience before. It was a little unsettling.
He had found Steve some printer paper and a few crayons. That had kept him occupied for a short while, but even he got antsy. He’d asked once, just once, if Tony was his new father. He quickly nixed that. He was just Tony, taking care of them for a little while until they could all go home. It took him three hours to realize neither Clint nor Bruce asked for their own parents. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know why.
He’d fed them, twice, and marveled at the mess they had made. It was just pizza and yet there was food everywhere. On the table, on the floor, on the walls. Somehow Clint had managed to get cheese stuck in the hair on the back of his head. Tony opted for wet paper towels instead of baths. He wasn’t entirely sure how to go about that particular task yet.
“Thank god you’re here.” Tony limped up to Pepper, Natasha sitting on his foot. He’d gotten them settled into the movie theater with a cartoon. Steve had marveled at the colour, but sat quietly and watched.
“What makes you think I’ll be any better with children than you?” she asked, glancing over his shoulder into the theater. Clint was throwing popcorn at Bruce. Bruce was catching it in his mouth. Steve was fast asleep in the theater chair.
“I don’t care how bad we are at it. At least I won’t be alone with them. They’re terrifying, Pepper.”
“They’re just children.” She smirked at him.
“You haven’t seen them eat. They aren’t children. They’re monsters.”
“You exaggerate. Let’s just put them to bed, okay?” She patted his shoulder and waved down at Natasha. The little hellion had the audacity to giggle adorably and bury her face in Tony’s leg as if she were actually an angel.
Tony carried Steve upstairs with Natasha clinging to his back. Pepper corralled Bruce and Clint. There were a dozen empty rooms in the tower and Tony hesitated on where to put the kids. As adults, they all had their own floors. But that might be a bad idea, to separate them like that. Plus, he wasn’t sure how many weapons Clint and Natasha had stashed away, nor where they would have put them. The last thing he needed was one of them to off themselves or somebody else because they got curious. And Clint and Bruce were already into everything.
In the end he settled on dropping them all in the same oversized bed in the room right next to his. They were asleep almost instantly. He wasn’t too far behind.
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Pepper at least was level headed enough to send Happy out shopping early the next morning. Happy returned with stacks of clothes, boxes full of toys, and miniature versions of furniture. Tony cleared out the entire west side of the communal floor to create a room for the kids to play in. They had a table and four chairs. They had shelves stacked with books. They had toy boxes full to overflowing with anything a child could want.
And all they wanted to play with were the cardboard boxes everything had come in. Bruce and Clint had taken all the empty boxes and built a massive box castle. Steve was decorating it, and himself, with all the markers he could find. Natasha clung to Tony until midafternoon. They ignored all the new toys.
Natasha had found a stuffed bear and started carrying it with her everywhere, he assumed as a bridge between stuck-to-Tony and exploring-on-her-own. She only wandered away from him when she decided she liked Clint. Tony wasn’t sure why, as the boy basically ignored her, but she began following him around like a puppy dog. Steve was protective of her and it had caused more than one fight with Clint, but nothing had come to fists yet, so Tony counted that as a win.
Pepper was making lunch and Tony, finally free of his semi-permanent child appendage, left them alone for ten minutes. Just ten short little minutes. Long enough to use the bathroom without an audience. Long enough to sneak a kiss and a taste of the spaghetti. Long enough for all hell to break loose.
Natasha’s wails had them tearing through the halls and into the room. She was sitting in the middle of the floor screaming her head off and hitting Clint with her bear. Steve was sitting next to her and rubbing her back. Bruce had retreated to a corner in terror, apparently unsure of what to do when a girl cried. Clint was crouched in front of her, in a panic, trying to apologize.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Stop crying. Please stop crying. I’ll let you kiss me. I’ll let you hit me. You can play with me all day. Whatever you want, just please, stop crying!” His high pitched voice barely registered above her wails. He didn’t speak Russian. She didn’t speak English. His panic was only escalating hers.
“What the hell is going on in here?” Tony bellowed from the door. Every tiny little child hand pointed a finger at Clint. He turned, terror all over his face, and bolted across the room. Tony stalked towards him and Clint slid between his legs and careened down the hall, knocking Pepper against the wall as he went. Tony followed at a breakneck pace and he could hear all the little feet pounding after him. Natasha had stopped crying.
He finally cornered Clint in the library and tried to keep himself calm as he asked what had happened. The others skid to a stop in the doorway and he could hear Steve wheezing. Clint looked around like a caged animal, realized he was trapped, and scrambled for the bookcases. Tony grabbed him by the arm and pulled, not roughly, but Clint started screaming anyway.
“Let me go! Let me go! I didn’t mean to!” He flailed against Tony, hitting and kicking and twisting any way he could to get out. Next thing Tony knew, Bruce had grabbed him by his other arm and was pulling him as hard as he could, pulling him away from Clint.
“You leave him alone! Don’t you dare hurt him!” He let go of Clint in his shock and turned to deal with Bruce. He had no clue how this had gotten so out of control. Natasha laughed behind him. Steve wheezed.
“TONY!” Pepper screamed his name. He turned just in time to see the nearest bookcase tip dangerously forward, Clint clinging to the top shelf. Tony had just enough time to shove Bruce out of the way and reach out for the sides of the bookcase. The weight of it came crashing down on him, but he was able to stay upright and keep it from hitting the floor. The jarring stop was enough for Clint to lose his grip and he fell, hitting the floor with a hard thump and a sickening crunch. Books rained down around them.
Bruce was crying. Natasha had started to cry again. Steve went into a full blown asthma attack. Clint was clutching his chest and gasping, the wind knocked out of him. Tony righted the bookcase and turned as Clint scuttled away from him across the floor. He limped his way out of the room and Tony waved him off. With all the chaos, Clint was the least of his concerns.
Pepper helped Steve with an inhaler and he wasn’t about to ask where she got it from, he was just thankful she had it. Tony looked Bruce over and determined he was more scared than anything else. He settled Natasha by singing the first thing that came to mind, and if it just so happened to be Iron Maiden, well, she didn’t seem scared by it. Pepper led them all to the kitchen and instructed Tony on making hot chocolate while she salvaged the spaghetti sauce.
“So what happened?” she asked once everybody was calmly sipping at their mugs.
“Clint shoved Natasha.” Steve accused.
“Only cause she tried to kiss him and wouldn’t stop! He asked her to stop first.” Bruce defended.
“She doesn’t understand! She’s too little. And foreign. He shouldn’t have pushed her. You gotta be patient until she learns English.” Steve argued back. They glared at each other and Pepper stopped them before the argument could escalate.
“He shouldn’t have pushed her, but I don’t think he meant to hurt her. And she shouldn’t have tried to kiss him. Everybody is entitled to personal space, which Tony can explain to her later. Let’s all just calm down and figure out how a simple push turned into the destruction of the library, okay?” All eyes turned to Bruce and he looked sheepishly into his mug. He began to trace the picture of Darth Vader on the front.
“I thought you were going to hurt him. He probably did too.”
“I wouldn’t hurt him.” Tony was shocked.
“You’re a big and scary man. Big and scary men hurt kids like us when we’re bad.” Tony let that circle around his head for a minute.
“Give them lunch. I’m going to go find Clint.”
He took a mug of hot chocolate with him.
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Using what little he knew of the adult, he narrowed down the possible locations and found Clint on the second try. He was sitting on top of the lockers in the training room, curled into the corner as small as he could make himself.
“C’mon down, Clint. I’m not going to hurt you.” Clint looked at him over his knees, but didn’t move. “I brought you hot chocolate, see? I’ll just put it down here and then I’ll go stand over there. Okay?” He placed the mug next to the mat and stepped five paces back. Clint eyed him warily, but he crawled along the lockers until he reached a support pole. He slid down and crawled over to the mug. Tony sat down where he was and just watched the little boy drink. Hair was matted to his temple, slick and dark with blood. It stood out in stark contrast to the permanently disheveled blonde.
“You’re bleeding.” Clint just shrugged. “Can I take a look at it?” he asked. Clint shook his head hard and then dropped the mug, cradling his head in his hands in pain.
“Can you make it stop hurting?” he asked.
“Yeah, Kid. Yeah, I can do that.”
“Okay,” he whispered. Tony crawled over to him slowly. Clint trembled and Tony could tell he was tensing up to run at the slightest provocation, so he was extra gentle when he tried to pull the hair away. There was a gash on the side of his head and it was still oozing a little.
“Can we go to the bathroom? I can clean this and get it stitched up.” He stood slowly and held out his hand. Clint looked everywhere but at him.
“I broke your mug.”
“It’s okay. I have more.” Clint took his hand and Tony led him to the bathroom. He grabbed the first aid kit off the wall on his way. Tony gently placed him on the sink and started cleaning him up. It looked a lot worse than it was. He explained everything before he did it. When Clint didn’t even flinch at the first stitch, Tony wondered for the first time how often he sat in a doctor’s office and had his skin sewn back together like this. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.
When he was done, he tossed the bloody gauze in the trash and placed a hand on either side of the little boy. Clint still wouldn’t look at him, but at least he wasn’t shaking like a leaf any longer.
“Hey, listen to me, okay? I will never hurt you. Never. I can’t promise to not scare you. I’m a scary guy sometimes. But nothing could ever make me hurt you. Understand?” Clint looked him in the eyes for the first time all day and wrapped tiny arms around his neck. Tony carried him all the way to the kitchen.
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By the end of the following day, Tony discovered sweaty children who hadn’t bathed were smelly. And while none of them seemed to care that they stank, he did.
Steve insisted on bathing by himself. He argued about getting into the bath and, after 45 minutes, he argued that he didn’t want to get out. Tony threatened to break down the door and he heard the water immediately start to drain.
He convinced Natasha to let Pepper bathe her. She was surprisingly efficient. Five minutes after walking in, they walked out with Natasha clean and smelling like vanilla and lavender.
Clint and Bruce wouldn’t get in the bath at all. They ran, they hid, they fought him with foam swords. He was only able to get them in the water by suggesting they bathe together. They came out twenty minutes later, barely wet, and Tony nearly had a heart attack when he looked in the bathroom. There were towels crumpled up on the floor. Water was splattered on the walls and ceiling. There were huge puddles on the floor. They hadn’t even bothered to use soap. Tony sent them back in and stood in the doorway until they were sufficiently clean.
He tossed them both into the play room, still dripping wet with clothes sticking to their bodies, and ran a hand over his face. It was only seven, the sun wasn’t down yet, and he was ready for bed.
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Pepper left after two days. Clint kept to his word and let Natasha do whatever she wanted to him, but by that time she had abandoned him for Steve, her new lord and savior. Bruce became Tony’s new shadow.
“That shiny suit you were wearing, what’s it made of?”
Bruce followed Tony everywhere.
“How do you power it?”
He was the first up in the morning, hovering in Tony’s bedroom door.
“What’s that glowy thing in your chest?”
He was the last one asleep at night, pondering the existential questions of life. For a seven year old.
“Does it hurt?”
He followed him to the bathroom, standing outside the door and talking while he waited.
“How do you prevent infection? What if your body starts to reject it?”
He followed him to the kitchen.
“How do you not explode into your helmet? I saw the videos. You go really fast. That’s a lot of force.”
He followed him to the lab.
“How’d you figure out the inertial dampeners?”
He paced with him when Tony was on the phone, interrupting at every possible moment.
“How did you make your computer talk to us?”
“Bruce! Not now!” Bruce jumped back and cowered, visibly afraid. He hadn’t meant to yell. He was just so tired and frustrated. Bruce ran to the playroom and didn’t speak to anybody for an hour.
“You can read, right?” Tony asked. Bruce unfolded from his corner and nodded. Tony handed him a physics book.
“For me?” Bruce held it reverently.
“All yours, kid. Knock yourself out.”
Bruce didn’t put it down even at dinner and when he fell asleep that night, still reading, it hit him in the face. He didn’t care.
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By the third day he was finally comfortable leaving them alone in the play room for a few minutes at a time. They had mostly stopped trying to kill each other, when it wasn’t for fun anyway, and he was pretty sure anything that could be destroyed already had. They weren’t prone to wander, either.
“Apple,” a tiny voice called, tugging at his shirt. He placed his soldering iron down and looked at Natasha’s wide green eyes.
“What’d you say, baby?” he asked. She tugged harder.
“Apple!” Steve came running up behind her.
“I think she’s hungry. I tried to teach her that, but we can’t seem to get past apple.” Tony looked from Steve to Natasha and back again.
“You taught her apple?” he asked.
“Uh-huh. And book, car, horse, bear, cat, cup, and blue. Well, I think we got blue. She either thinks it means blue or piano. I’m not sure.” Steve was counting off the words on his fingers. Natasha smiled up at him and tugged on Tony again.
“Apple!” she insisted. He asked if she was hungry in Russian and she confirmed. He took them to the kitchen and made macaroni and cheese. He found Bruce reading and Clint climbing the walls, literally, and made them both come eat.
They all ate at the breakfast bar in an attempt to minimize the mess. It worked. Sort of. At least the maid was less likely to glare at him when the mess was just on the counter than when it was all over the walls in the breakfast nook. He’d have to give her a raise after this was all over. If she didn’t quit first.
“So what made you decide to teach her English?” he asked Steve, scraping the last noodles out of his bowl.
“You were busy and she was getting upset, so I thought I could help.” Tony had to hand it to the kid. It wasn’t a bad idea. It was kind of pointless, since they would all hopefully be their charming, sullen adult selves again soon, but it was keeping them occupied.
“That was some good work you did, teaching her that.” Steve looked up at him with wide, hopeful eyes.
“Really?” he asked. Tony nodded.
“You’re good with her.” Steve about burst from the praise.
“I’ll help out! I can take care of her,” he said, beaming up at Tony. He took Natasha’s bowl for her and then took her hand, leading her back to the playroom. He babbled the whole time, pointing at things on the wall and saying their English name. She didn’t repeat but he kept talking anyway and when they sat back down amongst the toys, she leaned over and kissed him. Steve blushed from his neck to the roots of his hair, but he was still smiling.
“Hey! I thought you only kissed me!” Clint called from in the cardboard castle. Natasha stuck her tongue out at him.
“She’s kissed me, too, Kid. And Pepper. Maybe even Happy.” Tony corrected him.
“Fine. I didn’t want some stupid girl to like me anyway,” he pouted.
“I still like you, Fart-face.” Bruce said, sticking his head in the cut out window. Clint launched out of the castle and tackled him to the ground in what Tony hoped was a gentler wrestling match than it looked. He didn’t have the energy to stop them. At least they were laughing.
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It had been a week. A long, agonizing week. Tony couldn’t take the kids outside. If press leaked, it would be disastrous. They were trapped inside and they were all going a little stir crazy. Tony was exhausted, stressed, and suddenly very appreciative of all the work his nannies put in when he was growing up.
“Tony? I’m here.” Pepper called from the elevator. Tony rushed down the hall to meet her. He hadn’t been so happy to see a familiar face since Rhodey picked him up in Afghanistan.
“You have the voice of a choir of angels singing on high,” he said and kissed her deeply. Clint and Bruce made retching noises behind him until Steve punched one of them. Clint, by the ‘ow’ and round of giggles that followed.
“You lie, but I’ll forgive you. I’ve got the kids for the afternoon. You go out and do something.” Pepper patted his arm and pushed him towards the elevators.
“Sleep. I’m going to sleep. For hours and hours.” And that’s exactly what he did.
He stumbled, three hours later, towards the playroom. He was starting to feel like a real person again. It was awfully quiet, so he glanced around the doorway before he actually stepped in and nearly fell over from the shock of what he saw. The playroom was clean, toys and art supplies put away, cardboard castles disassembled and stacked in corners, books neatly organized on shelves. Nobody was crying, nobody was screaming, nobody was hitting or punching or kicking or fighting. He had no clue how Pepper did it.
They were all getting along. Instead of fighting, they were dancing. Together. Well, Bruce was sitting in Pepper’s lap reading his physics book, but the other three were dancing. Steve didn’t know what he was doing and he was mostly just jumping up and down, but he was obviously enjoying himself if his smile was any indication. Clint wasn’t bad and it looked like he spent a lot of time copying television. But Natasha was the surprise. She flowed with a natural grace. It was like she was made to dance. And she did it all while hugging her bear.
Tony quietly pulled out his phone and accessed JARVIS. He set all the surveillance cameras in the room to record. He wanted this from every angle. Pepper reached down as soon as the song ended and skipped the next few tracks until she found something classical. Steve collapsed into a heap next to her, panting with a high pitched whine that made Tony nervous, but Steve was content.
Natasha twirled around the room while everybody else just watched her. She danced and swayed and a look of pure bliss slid over her face. She didn’t need to speak the same language as everybody else to mesh with this. All she needed to hear was the music.
Pepper let her have one song just for her before she skipped through the tracks again. She found some old Donna Summer and Clint about exploded from happiness.
“I know this song! I can do this one!” he exclaimed. Bruce actually closed his book and looked up to watch. Natasha even backed up a little as Clint started dancing moves Tony hadn’t see anyone do since he was a little boy himself. And he’d never liked disco in the first place.
It was all he could do to keep quiet and hidden when Clint started singing along. There was nothing like a six year old little boy in blue jeans and a bright purple shirt, long blond hair pulled back in a mess of a ponytail, belting out I Will Survive while bopping his way around the room. This was definitely going up on youtube when Clint was an adult again and would be sufficiently, horrifically embarrassed by it.
Natasha threw her bear at Steve, smacking him in the face and knocking him over, and reached for Clint. They clasped hands and started to spin, around and around in circles, as fast as they could go. By the end of the song, Clint had crashed to the floor with Natasha falling on top of him in a giggle fit. Clint didn’t let her hit the ground and he never let go.
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Thor returned that night in a flash of lighting, a boom of thunder, and dragging a rainstorm behind him. He had found a cure. He was ready to turn them back into adults.
Tony stepped lightly down the hallway. The kids had been in bed for hours. They were probably asleep, but he would check. He could wake them up for this. The light on the nightstand was still on, illuminating the bed just enough that Tony could see them all.
Bruce was on his back, balancing at the edge of the bed, with a book lying open on his chest. His left hand was resting on the cover, rising and falling with each steady breath, but his right hand was down beside him. He and Clint were holding hands, fingers loosely entwined in comfortable sleep. Clint’s eyelids fluttered with a dream and his breath was uneven, but his body was perfectly still. Natasha was using his stomach as a pillow. She was sideways in the bed, her head and shoulders resting on Clint while her legs were thrown across Steve. She snuggled her bear and laughed quietly in her sleep. Clint’s right hand tangled in her hair and she quieted, the smile still tugging at her lips. Steve was on his stomach, left arm dangling off the bed and the right under his pillow. He snored lightly, oblivious to the weight on his legs.
Tony’s heart swelled and he had to remind himself these were not his children. These people weren’t even supposed to be children. And soon, they wouldn’t be. They’d be adults again and what little innocence they still had would be lost.
He gently took the book out of Bruce’s hand and marked the page before setting it down. He switched off the light and tiptoed out of the bedroom, quietly closing the door behind him.
Thor’s cure could wait until morning. For now, he would let them sleep.
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Tony used breakfast, a normally quiet and sometimes not messy time of day, to explain what was going on. He and Pepper had figured the truth was the best option. It was explained that they were with him because he was their friend. They had been exposed to a chemical that made them small, that they were supposed to be much bigger, and that Thor was a doctor who had a medicine to get rid of the toxin and make them grown up again. He explained to Natasha in Russian and Pepper handled the boys. They seemed a little skeptical that Thor was a doctor, but they submitted readily enough.
It was only once Steve and Bruce were returned to their adult selves that Tony realized Clint had disappeared. Natasha was up next and she wouldn’t let go of Tony’s hand now that her little friend wasn’t so little anymore. Bruce was still shaking the fog of the past week from his memory, but he volunteered to go look for the little boy.
Bruce found him in the cardboard castle they had built. He was surprised Clint hadn’t climbed up high somewhere, but when he ran out of high places to check, JARVIS had told him where to find the child. Bruce crawled into the main box. It was a tighter fit than he remembered, but then, he was much bigger than the last time he’d crawled in it. He didn’t speak, just sat next to Clint and waited.
“So you’re Bruce.” Clint said, picking at his shoelaces.
“Yup.” Clint squinted up at him sideways and just studied him.
“Does it hurt?” he asked quietly.
“No. It feels… it’s kind of like peeling dried glue off your finger. Like you’re new.” Clint nodded and went back to his shoelace.
“Will I remember all this?” he asked. Bruce thought for a minute.
“Sort of. It’s… fuzzy. Like a dream. But it’s there. I remember it.”
“What if I can’t remember? People love me here. I don’t want to forget what that’s like.” And that was the crux of the issue. That was why he was so scared. Bruce had worried about that too, before Thor’s medicine. His childhood had not been happy. He knew Clint’s was worse. But he also knew what things were like for them now, as adults; what things were supposed to be. He knew it would be okay.
“You’re still loved here. Trust me. You’ll see.”
“Can we wait just a little while longer?” Bruce took Clint’s tiny hand in his and marveled at the sudden size difference. The past week they’d been on even standing. Now his was so much bigger; he could envelop the whole of Clint’s hand in just his palm.
“Until you’re ready.”
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They were halfway through movie night, three weeks later, when Tony noticed it. It struck him like a punch in the gut. And when he realized what it meant, he couldn’t stop smiling.
“So you kissed Steve. Should I be worried?” Clint teased Natasha. They were all spread out on the floor, pillows and blankets everywhere, couches and chairs pushed to the edges of the room. Steve dropped the popcorn bowl in shock.
“Well… I do have a thing for baby blues…” Natasha teased back. Steve dropped the popcorn he had just picked up. Bruce was laughing heartily and Thor scanned the room in confusion.
“I would never. C’mon, Barton. We were kids. I mean… she’s… and you’re… and the two of you are… I would never!” Steve whined. Natasha stretched out, placing her knees in Steve’s lap to get him to stop.
“To be fair, I think I kissed everybody,” she said, settling her head in Clint’s lap. He absently reached up and started twirling her hair between his fingers.
“You didn’t kiss me.” Bruce countered, settling in next to them with a fresh bowl of popcorn. He took a handful and passed it over to Steve.
“You were too busy making googly eyes at Clint. I would have, but I didn’t want to break up the bromance,” she sighed. Bruce sputtered until Clint took his hand and gave it a squeeze. He didn’t let go, just rested their clasped hands on top of the blanket.
“It’s okay. It was the hair. Everybody is a sucker for a scrappy kid with flowing blonde locks.”
“I believe I have missed something important, Man of Iron.” Thor leaned over and attempted to whisper. Tony could only chuckle and shake his head. There was no explaining this.
They remained like that for the rest of the movie.