"I'm bored," Mikey sighed, dropping his action figures to the couch.
Liam looked over at his partner-in-crime, "Maybe Daddy can bring us to the park?"
"Too hot," Mikey sighed.
And he was right. It was mid-August and it seemed like the world was melting outside.
Natasha and Kit had taken to complaining about the heat at every chance they could get, until, of course, Steve or Clint appeared with a pint of Ben & Jerry's.
(They won't talk about the time Natasha's pint of Chocolate Peppermint Crunch had a bite taken out of it and Clint had a smudge of chocolate on his face. That was a dark day.)
"Maybe Uncle Tony will bring us for ice cream?" Mikey wondered, thinking about the absurdly expensive and delicious sundaes Tony had treated the boys to at Serendipity's.
Kit and Betty had gone apoplectic when they heard Tony had spent two thousand dollars on sundaes the boy's hadn't finished.
(Tony had waved a hand and grinned, "They're only boys once. And besides, what am I gonna spend my money on? Hellicarriers?")
"Mommy'll get mad if we do that again," Liam sighed, they had been really good sundaes, "'Sides, Uncle Tony and Uncle Bruce are 'sperimenting in the lab."
A devilish gleam appeared in Mikey's eyes; the same kind of gleam that often-appeared in Tony or Bruce's eyes when they had an experiment to work on.
Liam crinkled his nose, "What?"
"Daddy always says I can esperiment in the lab!" Mikey grinned, "Let's go!"
Liam scrambled off the couch, following his friend.
"Bye Aunt Pepper!" They chimed running past the red headed woman.
Pepper looked up from the grilled cheese sandwiches she was making, "Hey! Where are you two going?"
"To see Daddy," Mikey supplied.
"And Uncle Tony," Liam added.
Pepper narrowed her eyes, "Okay, but tell one of them to call me when you get there."
The boys nodded and ran out the door, squabbling over who got to hit the button for the elevator.
Pepper laughed, shaking her head, before saying, "JARVIS?"
"Yes, Mrs. Stark?" The AI's accented voice filled the apartment.
"Can you let Tony and Bruce they've got two hurricanes headed their way?"
"Certainly," JARVIS said, and Pepper could've sworn she heard him laugh.
"Sir, Mrs. Stark would like ..." JARVIS started, but Tony shushed him.
"In a minute JARVIS. Brucey and I are on the verge of genius."
Bruce rolled his eyes, "I don't know if I'd say genius, Tony."
Tony shushed him too, "I am a genius, and so everything I do is genius."
Bruce sighed, "Let's get on with this Tony. I want to see if I can take Mikey swimming or something."
Tony grinned, "Sure, on it Big Guy."
Bruce and Tony worked together silently, mixing and adding chemicals.
"Would you like to do the honors?" Tony held out a vial of purplish liquid to Bruce.
Bruce took it and poured it into the larger mix if chemicals.
"Aha!" Tony shouted, his face falling when nothing happened.
"Something went wrong," Bruce said, sticking his head closer to the mixture.
Tony shoved his head next to Bruce's, "We did EVERYTHING right."
Small orange bubbles began forming on the edge of the mixture.
Tony's eyes narrowed, "Is that?"
Bruce nodded, "GET DOWN!"
Both men hit the floor as the mixture exploded, leaving a thin layer of black powder over everything.
"Cool!"
"Do that again!"
Bruce and Tony sat up, blinking black dust from their eyes.
"Mikey?"
"Liam?"
"I tried to warn you, sir," JARVIS's voice sounded vaguely condescending.
"Thank you, JARVIS," Tony grumbled.
Bruce stood up and brushed as much of the dust from his clothes as possible, "I though you two were hanging out with Aunt Pepper this morning?"
He greeted both boys with hugs and kisses on the head.
Mikey shrugged, "We got bored."
"Yeah," Liam piped up, "We wanted to do 'speriments!"
Tony and Bruce shared a grin.
"Experiments we can do," Tony laughed, "Come on, boys!"
Mikey and Liam roamed the lab for a little bit, touching everything that was guaranteed not to explode.
"Can we make suits?" Mikey asked, gazing at an outdated Iron Man suit with awe.
Tony smiled happily, "Maybe one day, Michelangelo."
Liam hung onto Bruce's hand, "What can we do?"
Bruce thought for a minute, before directing his suggestion to Tony, "Mentos and coke?"
Tony laughed wickedly, "Oh yeah! Mentos and coke!"
The two boys stared back and forth as Bruce and Tony made plans to run out and grab Diet Coke and a dozen rolls of Mentos.
"You have to go out!" Tony said, "I get recognized everywhere."
Bruce shook his head, "That's your fault, Tony!"
"But, if I go out, it'll take three times as long," Tony protested, "You don't get recognized!"
"This isn't fair," Bruce grumbled, but he pulled his wallet out of something sticky and jammed it into his pocket, "Boys, want to come?"
"Yeah!"
"Let's go!"
Bruce took one boy by each hand and led them out of the lab.
"I'll just clean up here," Tony called after them.
"It's not nice to lie, sir," JARVIS said.
Bruce and the boys came back twenty minutes later.
"I have soda!" Mikey shouted as he entered the lab.
"I got the Mentos!" Liam giggled, stepping on the backs of Mikey's sneakers as he walked behind him.
"Nice!" Tony held up his hand, "High five!"
Mikey and Liam took turns slapping Tony's hand before transferring the coke and Mentos to his arms.
"Let's go!" Mikey shouted, climbing up onto a stool near a lab table.
Bruce leaned against the steel table, "Alright guys, first thing. Let's not tell the moms about this."
"How come?" Liam asked, poking at a pile of the black ash.
"Because...we're not supposed to be making a mess," Bruce explained.
"Isn't this your lab?" Mikey asked, "How can Mom be mad if you make a mess here?"
Bruce was silent as Tony cackled, "He has you there!"
Dropping the shopping bags on the table, Tony grinned, "Alright, men, we're undertaking a great experiment today. This could alter all of creation."
"What's creation?" Liam poked Tony's side.
"Uh..." Tony scratched at his goatee; how to explain the concept of creation to a 4-year-old?
He finally settled on "Ask your dad."
Liam shrugged, accepting Tony's response, and turned back to look at the table.
"How do we do this?" Mikey leaned forward and poked at the rolls of Mentos.
Bruce frowned in thought, "Should we just put them straight into the bottle, or should we pour the coke into a bucket?"
Tony looked around the lab, "Each kids gets a bottle and a roll of Mentos. We go from there."
Bruce smiled; this was definitely going to be interesting.
"Okay, unwrap just the ends of the Mentos," Bruce instructed, handing Mikey and Liam a roll of the mint candy.
It was cute to watch the boys carefully peel the wrappers away, tongues poking out in concentration.
"Done!" Mikey held out his unwrapped roll of candy.
"Wait for me!" Liam pouted.
"We're waiting, pal," Tony said.
Liam held to candy up proudly a second later, "Done!"
"Onto the best part," Bruce smiled, twisting the tops off of the bottles of Diet Coke.
"Do we get to drink it?" Liam leaned forward and looked at the dark liquid with wide eyes.
"Yeah…" Mikey breathed, "'Mommy doesn't let me drink coke."
"I know," Bruce ruffled Mikey's hair, "Which is why we're not drinking the coke. You're going to drop the Mentos in it."
Liam lifted his hand to drop the candy into the soda, but Tony caught them before they could hit, "Not yet! Gotta drop them all at once."
"Can we do it now?" Mikey whined.
Bruce and Tony nodded.
Bruce held one bottle of coke, while Tony held the other.
"On your mark, get set, go!" Tony shouted.
The Mentos hit the Diet Coke with an explosion, the likes of which Mikey and Liam had never seen before.
The boys screamed with glee as the sugary drink exploded out of the bottles, covering everything in a two-foot radius.
"AGAIN!" Liam screamed once the soda had fizzled down.
Tony shook his head, spraying drops of coke everywhere, "No way, man. We're covered, and this lab is gonna need a serious cleaning."
Mikey dropped his hands into a puddle of coke, "Can't we do another one? Please?"
He turned to Bruce and widened his eyes and poked out his lower lip in a puppy-dog pout that Natasha had taught both boys.
Bruce shook his head, "Sorry, guys. You heard Uncle Tony. Besides, we have to clean you guys up before the moms come home. They wont be happy about the coke mess."
Liam kicked the table leg, 'What if we show mommy the 'speriment?"
Tony looked slightly scared for a minute. Kit wasn't fond of Liam being around when he and Bruce were tinkering in the lab. The last thing he wanted was her pregnancy hormones to decide he was a bad guy.
He scooped Liam up under the armpits, "Let's bring you to Aunt Pep and she can get a bath started."
Bruce took Mikey by the hand and followed Tony to the elevator.
Tony and Liam were whispering to each other; it sounded like an argument over bath time.
Mikey tugged on Bruce's hand.
"What's up?" the scientist asked, kneeling down next to his son.
Mikey's brown hair was plastered to his forehead with coke, and his green eyes were bright.
"I just wanted to tell you that you're the best daddy. And I wanna do more experiments," Mikey lunged forward, wrapping his arms around Bruce's neck in a hug.
Bruce froze for a minute, shocked by the hug, but then, disregarding the soda that covered both of them, he wrapped his arms around Mikey's back and squeezed.
"You're the best son," he said.
"Uncle Bruce! Mikey! Come on," Liam shouted from the elevator, "We gotta take baths."
A/N: The second installment of life in the Avengers Tower is here!
I would like to thank Pekenota14 for the prompt - hope you like it ^_^
I have a poll up on my page to see what you guys would like Baby Girl Rogers' name to be, so check it out =)
And, as always, I'm accepting prompts for this story here and on Tumblr. And I accept general prompts on Tumblr anyways.