A/N Here's the more humourous story I promised! I hope you enjoy, and maybe find it a little amusing!
A little fact about me: to this day, the only fight me and my best friend of thirteen years have had was when we were nine. She wanted to play this Alien board game. I wanted to play Monopoly. There were no winners that night, and we avoided each other on the playground for a few days to "teach each other a lesson." I feel like that really says a lot about me as a person, even now, haha.
Have I ever mentioned I love stories that include specifically Tony interacting with children? If there's a scene like that, you've won me over. (Btw, this story is VERY ROUGHLY a remake of my old story "Evil Little Girls," similar to how my last one-shot was reminiscent of "Beautiful.")
I just remember I have a presentation I have to do tomorrow. Yippee. Send help.
IM:AA doesn't own to me. If it did, oh boy. Oh boy.
Tony sprang up off the couch at the sound of the doorbell. Pepper.
"Coming!" he shouted, carefully laying a few schematics on the coffee table before sprinting for the front door. He peered through the peephole almost as an afterthought, baffled by what he saw. His brows furrowed, he yanked open the door.
"Hey, Tony!" Pepper chirped, brushing past him into the foyer. In either of her hands she clasped the shoulders of a little boy and girl, both no older than five or six, if Tony had to guess. The little girl wore a pink jacket, her curly auburn hair tied up in pigtails, and the little boy wore a long-sleeved Superman shirt, his own red hair shorter-cropped and less wild. Both clutched clear plastic bags that contained clearly unsettled goldfish.
"Um, Pepper..?" Tony glanced down at the children, then pulled Pepper away by her forearm. The children lost interest in them almost immediately and sprinted off into the living room, making the inventor nervous. Children left to their own devices rarely had regard for other people's property. "I'm pretty sure they're not mine, so what's going on?"
Pepper smirked, wrapping her arms around Tony's waist and teasingly bumping their noses together. "Remember the other day? You said you'd do me a favour?"
"Uh... No?" Tony answered honestly.
"Break-dancing with Celebrities ring any bells?"
Uh oh. Tony bit back a groan, a memory from three days prior bubbling to the surface. Late-night television on Pepper's bed, her incessant chattering about some favour, saying yes to make her stop... Oh, boy. He really should have been paying more attention, and Pepper knows it, too. That's why she looks so smug.
Tony gaped at her as he pulled out of her embrace, everything suddenly making sense. A favour, the kids, that darned look Pepper was still shooting him with... "Please don't tell me I'm babysitting. Twins, no less."
"You agreed to it!" Pepper interjected.
"I was emotionally compromised from Mark and Bri being eliminated, and you knew it!" He paused, noticing Pepper's smug expression. "Not that I enjoyed that nighttime reality television crap at all. None." If the show had been more compelling than he'd anticipated, that was through no fault of his own.
"Right. Anyway, I'm supposed to be going to a family-reunion sort of thing- I mean, I don't know if five people constitutes a reunion- but I need someone to watch Jack and Janine while I'm out. I definitely don't want to be hauling these little terrors around the city all day."
"Terrors?" Tony cast his gaze towards the living room warily.
"Cute lil terrors?" Pepper wrung her hands together pleadingly, sticking out her lower lip. "Please, Tony? You said you would. Please? Please?"
"Okay, okay." Tony sighed. It was best to give in to the inevitable now before she amped up her plea tactics. "Just don't expect them to be in one piece when you get back."
"That's a joke, right? I'm gonna assume that's a joke. Thank you, Tony!" Pepper lurched forward and gave him a tight squeeze. She pecked him on the lips and then pulled away, readjusting her purse strap on her shoulder where it snagged on her coat. "I've really gotta go. Have fun with the kids!"
"Yeah, yeah, okay." Before Pepper could leave, Tony called after her, "Pep, wait. What's with the fish?"
"Oh, those?" Pepper's gaze shifted towards the living room where the faint peal of high-pitched laughter could just barely be heard. "We won them at a ring-toss on the boardwalk. They should be fine for the day, just- don't let the kids eat them, or anything like that. That's a story I don't want to have to explain to their mom." With no more histrionics she was gone, leaving behind her very anxious boyfriend.
"Okay, how about we not smear peanut-butter on my family portrait... Yeah?" Tony asked as he scooped Jack up into his arms and dropped him back onto the couch. He sighed as the little boy popped his fingers into his mouth to suck off the gooey mess, rivulets of drool running down his hand. "Gross. Look kid, I'll give you fifty bucks if you just sit there for the rest of the day. Sixty if you don't talk."
"Bribing little kids now, are we?"
Tony looked up as Rhodey entered the room, throwing his winter coat over the back of an armchair and eyeing him smugly. "Rhodey, thank God you're here, man. I manage to wrangle one of them into submission and the other one just- uh..." Shoot, the other one. Tony trailed off, his eyes widening as he jerkily snapped his head around to search the room. Rhodey looked around as well, not sure what Tony was looking for. "Speaking of... Janine? Hey, where are you?"
"Fishy! No!"
Tony shot Rhodey a sour look and then followed the shrill cry to the kitchen. Rhodey trailed behind, all grins.
The little girl was stationed at the kitchen sink. She'd managed to pull a chair across the room and was currently atop it on her tip-toes, leaning so far over that her upper body almost disappeared beyond the counter. An empty bag laid in a puddle of water on the granite- forewarning a tragedy. Janine turned to Tony as he approached, her wide brown eyes glistening. "Fishy went down the sink!"
"Are you kidding me right now?" Tony rocketed over to the sink, peering down the drain into darkness. "What were you even trying to do?"
"I wanted to give him a new home!" Janine whimpered, holding up a large Tupperware container filled to the brim with water. Judging off the steam rising from it, they would've had one dead goldfish if the girl had succeeded in getting it inside. Rhodey snickered; Tony glowered at him.
"You think this is so funny? You get him out of there." He pointed to the sink.
Rhodey froze mid-laughter. "Wait, what?" He watched as Tony moved the chair- the little girl swaying along with it as she clutched the back- and opened the twin cabinet doors, exposing the pipes running beneath the sink. "You're better with tools than I am," Rhodey protested, taking a step backwards.
"Be a man and save the goldfish!" Tony threw him a wrench that he'd found under the sink. Rhodey fumbled to catch it before it clattered onto the tiled floor and failed. "The thing's gotta still be stuck in that little bend if it's still aliv- uh..." He caught himself, glancing at the little girl who looked like she might burst into tears at the drop of a hat. "It's gotta be in there," he amended. He gave Rhodey a sly look and then dropped onto the balls his feet to look the sniveling girl in the eye. "Janine, why don't you ask Mr. Rhodey to save your fishy? If you ask nicely, I'm sure he'll do it."
"Please?" Janine begged with shining eyes. Rhodey sighed in defeat, purposefully avoiding looking at Tony' triumphant smirk. His one weakness: crying little kids.
A minute later found Rhodey laying on his back, his head and shoulders snugly nestled beneath the tangle of pipes. The space beneath the sink was musty and small, and very little light reached him while he worked. The pipe's connecting joint was sealed on tightly and he was having trouble disconnecting it with brute force. It didn't help matters that he couldn't even distinguish one length of the pipe from the other in the dark.
"I can't see anything," he griped, wiping his damp hands on his jeans before gripping the wrench handle once again. As Tony turned to go find a flashlight, Janine reached for a switch over the sink. Tony narrowly- very narrowly- caught her hand before she flipped it.
"That's for the trash compactor, not a light switch," Tony breathed. "Unless you're in the mood for sushi, don't touch." Just then, Tony heard a cry of surprise as Rhodey successfully freed the bend of the pipe. The goldfish- along with the water that had been trapped behind it- cascaded onto Rhodey's face through the new opening.
"Psh- ugh..." Rhodey groaned, spluttering and wiping water from his eyes. Tony wasted no time ensnaring the wriggling fish, currently flopping around on Rhodey's chest, in his hands. He practically hurled the poor thing into the bowl he'd prepared with room-temperature water.
"Fishy" didn't move for one terrifying moment- in which Janine clung to Tony's pants leg and began to cry- but then it began to swim in frantic circles as though preparing for the marine Olympics. Probably scared to death, Tony thought, eyeing it idly. I would be too if these kids were the deciding factors in whether I lived or died. I'd have better chances arm-wrestling the Hulk, or playing darts with Hawk-Eye.
Tony pulled Rhodey to his feet, laughing instead of apologising when he hit his head on the counter-top like the best friend he was. Janine had her face pressed to the bowl now, grinning widely as though she hadn't very nearly killed the thing.
"Kids, man," Tony groaned, rubbing at his temple.
"Don't start. You know you were this bad."
"Dude, no. I was worse. Doesn't make it any easier for me now, though." Tony dropped a hand to his pocket as his phone began to vibrate. He checked the name. "Pepper. Watch her-" he gestured to Janine "-for a second? I've gotta take this."
Tony walked into the living room, hand covering the phone receiver until he was out of earshot from the kitchen. "Hey, Pep," he finally greeted. "How goes the not-really-a-family-reunion family reunion?"
"Terrible," Pepper huffed. Tony could almost hear her rolling her eyes. "Mom has been talking about disestablishment for about twenty minutes and Aunt Joan isn't having any of it. I don't know why they talk at all, they know they're only going to fight. And then there's the dog... Greg has a rottweiler. A rottweiler. I think it smells my fear. Every time I try to go into the kitchen it starts growling at me. I just want some Coke!"
"Why don't you just throw it a steak to distract it? Oh. Wait." Tony grinned.
"You think you're funny. I'm mentally punching you right now."
"I'm mentally in pain."
"So how are the kids? Are they giving you any trouble? You haven't sold them on eBay yet, have you?"
"Just Jack." Tony paused for comedic effect. "No, they're fine. We- I mean, I've got this! I'm an adult! I can do adult things."
"You invited Rhodey over to help, didn't you?" Busted.
Before he could respond, Tony heard the sound of a toilet flushing and a giggly voice cry, "Bye-bye, Nemo!"
Oh, nuts.
"Um, uh, Pepper, I've gotta go. There's a... I promised the kids ice cream if they were good- and they've been really good, no worries, I've got this- so... I'll talk to you later."
"Oh!" Pepper sounded surprised. "Okay, talk to you then. Lo-"
"Love you, bye." Tony hung up the phone and ran to the bathroom. "Rhodey!"
"T? What's happening?" Rhodey asked, stepping into the hallway with Janine's hand in his own. Tony's voice filtered from the bathroom above Jack's shrill laughter.
"Dude, he flushed the fish."
"He wha-?"
"He flushed it. Get Janine's jacket on. We're going by the pet store."
As they got the kids ready, Jack continued to babble about how now "Nemo will be able to find his daddy!"
"Won't any old goldfish fool Pepper?" Rhodey asked, pulling Jack back by his shoulder as the little boy smacked his small hands against a fish tank full of Beta fish. Janine was busy engaging in a staring contest with a caged parakeet. Tony absentmindedly shook his head, his wary gaze locked on a snake exhibit not too far from where they stood.
"They called this one Nemo because it was missing a fin. I don't want her to know we killed the fish in less than two hours." Tony caught an attendant's attention, waving her over. Her messy dark hair was pinned into a sloppy bun, and her baby blue button-up was darkened with water. Her name-tag read Tina. "Hey! Hi. Do you happen to have a goldfish that's missing a fin?"
"Excuse me?" she asked. She eyed the four of them skeptically, obviously not recognising Tony and Rhodey. It was easily explained by the bags under her eyes and the overall exhausted way in which she carried herself. She looked like she hadn't slept soundly in days. Even so, Rhodey found her very pretty. In other circumstances he might try for flirting, but right now he just wanted to get the twins home before they tried to eat dog food or freed the hamsters or something.
"Sorry, that's a dumb question. Follow up: do fish have nerve endings in their fins?" Even Rhodey, who'd known Tony most of their lives, had trouble discerning whether the inventor was being facetious or not.
Rhodey socked Tony roughly on the shoulder. "We are not cutting off a goldfish's fin." He smiled apologetically at Tina, who looked alarmed. "We're just looking to buy a goldfish. The last one got flushed."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," Tina said as she began slipping on some rubber gloves from a pouch hung around her waist. She picked up a net and stepped over to the goldfish tank. "It's always sad when your pet fish dies."
"Yes... It was flushed because it was dead," Tony mumbled, shooting Rhodey a look. "No other reason. Not bad baby-sitting. Just the normal reason."
Rhodey punched him again.
Tony cast an annoyed look at Jack out of the corner of his eye. "Child, what exactly are you doing?"
Jack donned an innocent expression and stared off into the distance as though examining the wallpaper, hands behind his back. Janine giggled from where she sat behind her brother. Both were ignoring the children's television programming that Tony had turned on a few minutes ago. Oh, yeah. Something was up.
Sighing, Tony shuffled the schematics he was examining for flaws and pulled the Sharpie out from behind his ear to make a correction. This time he knew for sure Jack was moving closer, slowly, painstakingly, but nearing all the same. Tony dropped the papers onto his lap, exasperated.
"I offered to play with you and you called my choice in games lame. I gave you food- my precious pizza bites- and you dropped them on the floor and stomped on them. What is it you want now?"
With a childish giggle, Jack clapped a flour-coated hand across Tony's cheek. White powder puffed outwards, dusting Tony's hair, face, and clothes in a thin white film of dust. Janine was practically in stitches on her back as Tony sighed, setting his specs aside and picking Jack up with both hands to hold away from himself. A little foot caught him in the throat, making him gasp and cough as the diabolical little boy grinned proudly.
"Heh. You got me this round," Tony choked with a weak smile. It was then that he noticed Janine was holding his Sharpie. With the lid off. And she was making eye contact with him. Turning to shout down the hallway to his bedroom, Tony called, "Rhodey! I need reinforcements in here."
The negotiations to lower the marker would end with tears, lots and lots of promised grilled cheese sandwiches, and crisscrossing black lines all over Tony's face.
"What do you mean, you lost Jack?" Janine was currently asleep on Tony's chest, her small little fists gripping handfuls of Tony's shirt. It was probably stretched beyond salvation, and he knew that she was drooling on his shoulder; he couldn't find it in himself to care.
"I mean," Rhodey said as he opened a closet door and peered inside as thought Jack had hidden away inside, "that one second he was asking for a soda from the drink machine and the next he was gone. Vamoose. Houdini-grade vanishing act."
"Do you know how big Stark Towers is?" Tony hissed, cringing as Janine shifted her head on his shoulder. He tightened his hold on her with his right arm and placed his left hand over her ears, easing his voice to a whisper. "He could be anywhere!"
"I know that," Rhodey griped back. "And this probably isn't the best time to tell you, but he broke your copy of The Fellowship of the Ring. Sorry. Guess he wasn't a fan."
Tony let his head roll back to hit the wall with a thump, closing his eyes. He still had enough flour left in his hair that the action created a little cloud of powder in the air. "Fantastic. Anything else?"
"Pepper sent a text and said she'd be here in fifteen minutes."
Tony's eyes snapped open in a panic. "What? Okay, so we need to find Jack, and we need to find him now."
"What about Janine?
Tony glanced down at the snoozing girl in his arms. "I can't just leave her. Guess she's tagging along."
"Jack?" Rhodey dropped to his knees to check under a desk.
"Jack!" Tony checked a broom closet as he scourged the video feeds with Extremis. Janine continued to snore, her arms thrown around his neck. Like aunt, like cousin.
"Pepper's gonna be here any minute," Rhodey said as he Tony regrouped in the reception area. "There are over sixty floors that he could be hiding on-"
"Shh. Do you hear that?" Tony asked, craning his neck and listening attentively. He stepped closer to his father's office, pressing his ear against the door before opening it, ignoring Rhodey's questions.
Howard was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Jack, who was enthusiastically waving a model jet around in the air. The little boy peeked up at Tony guiltily, slowly lowering the plane. Howard looked up as well, amused and expectant.
"Lose someone?" he asked with a grin. "Say, Tony, you... You have something on your..." Howard gestured to his face, indicating the Sharpie smudges that still marked his skin. Tony's response was a bleak look that told his dad everything he needed to know.
"Uncle Howard was showing me how to fly an airplane!" Jack beamed.
"Uncle Howard?" Tony questioned, eyebrow quirked. Howard shrugged.
"I've missed having little ones around. These are Pepper's cousins?" Tony nodded, shifting his arms around Janine as she started to slip from his grasp. "I hope that means my grandsons are going to be this cute, then."
Tony spluttered, his face searing with heat. "D-dad-!"
"It's the place of a father to embarrass his son. I have two years to make up for."
Tony narrowed his eyes, only half jesting. "C'mon, Jack. We're leaving now." Jack whined but jumped to his feet, running past Tony where he was intercepted by Rhodey like a hyperactive goalie.
"When you're coming up with baby names, Howard is a good one!" his father teasingly called after him.
Oh, he was so going to get it later.
"Wow, you're better with kids than I thought," Pepper remarked as she curled up next to Tony on the couch. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and squeezed. Tony responded by yawning and stretching his arms over their heads.
It was the day after Tony and Rhodey's babysitting escapade. Janine and Jack had been safely returned to their parents, along with the lucky "Fishy" and one surreptitiously replaced goldfish. So far their ruse hadn't been discovered, and the twenty bucks Tony had given the twins for their silence seemed to have been just the bribe their silence required. "Jack and Janine were raving about you and Rhodey after I took them home. You're positively a Doctor Doolittle, but with kids instead of monkeys. Janine especially misses you."
"What can I say? Girls love me," Tony grinned cockily. Pepper slapped his shoulder and rolled her eyes, though a smile curved her lips.
"Great news, though," she continued as Tony rested his head atop her own. "You're just going to love this."
"What's that?" Tony asked lazily, pulling Pepper's legs on top of his own and inhaling the sweet scent of her strawberry shampoo. Her next words, though, paralysed him with horror, the effect similar to a stasis field.
"Their parents are asking you to baby-sit them again next week!"
A/N So, what did you think? Yay or nay on the comedy front? Let me know what you think! It's always wildly appreciated- you have no idea, haha. Hope your week is going well!