Stephen stood between his napping family on the couch and the Avengers staring at the newest addition with a hand up to keep them quiet. When the elevator opened just a couple of minutes ago, he had never moved so fast in his life. He just barely kept Steve of all people from yelling in shock when he saw Tony sleeping on the couch with baby Diana snoozing right along with him on his chest.
This wasn't how they planned to introduce her.
Peter had gotten back from patrol not too long ago and was tucked between the couch and Tony's side with his head resting on the billionaire's shoulder, and Stephen was making an early dinner when the Avengers made a surprise appearance. After preventing the impending noisy chaos, most of the team stood with their mouths hanging open, and the rest looked to the sorcerer for an explanation.
Everyone except Natasha that is. She waltzed right over to the couch and crouched beside it to speak softly in Russian as she played with dark brown tufts of hair. If it had been anyone else, Tony would have woken with a start with a gauntlet already halfway formed on his hand.
Or Peter would have webbed them to the wall. The teen was surprisingly overprotective of his little sister.
"Strange...what the actual fuck?!" Clint hisses out.
"I will explain but please don't wake them up. They just fell asleep and can all use a nap." Stephen says softly. "In the kitchen."
The Avengers quietly shuffle into the kitchen and sit at the large dining table, and the sorcerer tells them about Diana and how she came to be. Of course, that earned a few chuckles from the group and Stephen merely rolled his eyes as he finished preparing dinner and put it in the oven. When that was done, he took the empty spot between Rhodey and Wanda and lays his head down on folded arms with a quiet sigh.
"New baby keeping you up?" Bucky asks.
"No. She's just as easy as Peter. Being Sorcerer Supreme is what's keeping me up." Stephen groans out.
For the past two weeks, it had been one thing after another and he barely got any sleep because of it. If he did manage to get home and lay down, it was only for about an hour before he was called about another dimensional mess. Stephen probably got about a full eight hours of sleep collectively over the two weeks. He was exhausted. Tony had been taking care of Diana without complaint because he of course knew that the doctor was running on fumes. Peter was pretty close to stepping up but the engineer would wave him off.
"How long will it be until our new princess wakes up? I wanna hold her." Scott asks.
When Stephen doesn't respond Steve leans across the table. "Strange?"
Wanda gently moves away the strands of hair hanging loosely over the doctor's forehead. "He's asleep."
Bruce sighs. "I was convinced he was going to pass out at the stove. Can you get him to bed?"
Wanda nods and uses her magic (with Levi's help when the cloak floats over) to get Stephen to bed and Bucky motions toward the oven. "I'll finish making dinner."
The rest of the Avengers either play a quiet card game or help clean up the family floor, which was a mess of dirty dishes and baby things. Even some laundry was left unfolded but Wanda helped with that when she came back from the master bedroom. It showed the showed the team how much a baby changed things, and also how much Stephen did around the penthouse. Sure, Tony and Peter did their part, but the engineer almost single-handedly took care of Diana for the past few days and Peter had patrols and was likely making sure his parents didn't pass out on their feet. Normally the teen would do the dishes, but he probably got hurt and decided a nap would help his healing factor.
Tony woke up not too long after the team finished and he blinked multiple times when he looked over Natasha's shoulder (who was still cooing at the baby) to find a clean house. With the Avengers.
"...please tell me Mama Bear didn't clean."
Natasha smiles. "No. He started dinner but he fell asleep at the table so Barnes is finishing up. Some of the others cleaned up." The assassin gently scoops up the waking infant. "I'm holding her."
Tony rubs his eyes tiredly. "Yeah...okay..." It took the man a few more minutes to process everything and when he did, he sat up in surprise, completely forgetting about the teen nestled into his side. "You guys know about Dia."
"How long did you think you could hide her from us?" Natasha asks as she points a can of pepper spray at the approaching Scott. The man wisely held his hands up and backed away.
"Honestly, I'm surprised we went this long. We weren't really hiding her, we had a plan to introduce her." Tony yawns.
Peter grumbles from being woken so abruptly. "We should know by now that we can't make plans when it comes to the Avengers."
The teen rolls off the couch with a quiet grunt after Tony sits up and places his feet on the ground, and the engineer stretches. He thanks the team with sincerity and uses his newfound freedom from Diana to sit in the kitchen with Bucky and lazily snack on some vegetables the man had cut up. He loved his daughter, he really did, but since Stephen had been dragged back and forth between dimensions with very little sleep, Diana had formed an attachment to Tony. While Peter had clung to Stephen the couple of times he was a baby (earning the Mama's boy title from Clint), Diana clung to the billionaire.
He would let Natasha fuss over her. In the small chance she would let someone else hold the baby, Tony knew the assassin would hover protectively. Peter might too.
"Nat said something about dinner?" The engineer asks the soldier standing at the other side of the counter.
"Almost done. You should probably wake up the wife so we can get something in him before he goes back to sleep."
"I will when it's ready. He needs all the sleep he can get."
"How much sleep has he gotten?" Bruce asks as he places a couple of cards down on the table.
Tony bites his lower lip. "I don't know. Barely any over the past couple of weeks. Even I was starting to worry."
Peter walks in and joins Tony at the counter and steals the sliced bell pepper out of the engineer's hand that he just picked up. The elder only rolls his eyes and picks up another piece to munch on just as a thud resounds throughout the floor. Tony stiffens momentarily, but when Diana doesn't cry, he relaxes again and eyes his son.
"I'm surprised you're not hovering."
"I trust Aunt Nat. That was her kicking Steve. He wants to hold Dia too."
"Earth's greatest protectors fighting over who gets to hold a baby." Tony snorts. "You guys better quiet down or you'll wake the beast! I don't think you want a sleep-deprived Mama Bear going on a rampage!" He says just loud enough for the others to hear in the living room.
It wasn't necessarily a threat either. It was fact. There was no telling what Stephen would do. He was protective of both Peter and Diana, but their daughter was a normal, tiny, human being, and much more fragile than Peter had been. While the teen had wanted to hold her, the moment Tony finally handed her over, Peter had remembered that little detail and had panicked. It took a couple of minutes of consoling from both his parents that he wouldn't hurt her, and they also admitted that if they didn't trust him to control his strength, they wouldn't have let him hold her in the first place. Peter was even aware of his strength while sleeping, and it was when both parents found out how protective he already was. He fell asleep cuddling Diana once and when Stephen went to pick up his daughter, Peter had opened his eyes and stared into nothing. When the sorcerer recovered from the threat of a heart attack, he realized the teen was still asleep.
It actually freaked both parents out.
Twenty minutes pass in relative quiet, with coos and mutters coming from the living room, cards being shuffled behind Tony and Peter, and Bucky pulling dinner out of the oven. The soldier looks at Tony when he puts together the last of the meal that he had added to to feed the entire team.
"Want to go wake Mom from hibernation?"
"Nope. I like living right now. Thanks." Tony looks at Peter. "You're up Underoos."
"Yeah...okay." The teen slides off his stool and leaves the kitchen as Bucky raises an eyebrow at the engineer.
"Afraid of Strange?"
"Only when he's exhausted. I risk sleeping on the couch and/or abstinence. Peter just risks being cuddled."
Rhodey chuckles from the table as he and Bruce clean up their card game. "Eventually it will be both Peter and Diana who can safely wake him up."
Peter returns moments later with Stephen trailing behind him half-asleep, and Tony cups the back of the sorcerer's neck when he collapses onto the stool next to the engineer. "We're just gonna get some food in you, then you can go back to bed. Sound good?"
"Hnn. Diana?" Stephen mumbles.
"We have a million babysitters. Two of them are actually parents, and one is an overprotective aunt. Peter and I will still be awake too."
"Alright."
That was all the man said for the rest of the night. Tony spent half of dinner making sure his husband didn't faceplant into his food, and when Stephen finished his meal, Clint was the one who made sure he made it to bed safely. It was a good thing he did because according to the archer, Stephen had faltered a couple of times in the short trip to the master bedroom.
"Poor guy was dead on his feet." Clint says as he sits back down after snatching Diana from Steve.
"Thanks for doing that." Tony says around a mouthful of lasagna.
"No problem." Clint tickles Diana's stomach and gets a happy noise for his effort. "Me and Auntie Nat are gonna teach you how to kick ass."
"Language." Steve says on reflex.
Wanda laughs. "I thought you got over that."
The captain sighs. "It was a reflex."
Tony turns and points his fork at Barton. "At least wait until she can hold her own bottle."
Natasha smiles. "Not a moment sooner." She promises.