"Tony!" hissed Steve after trying to sleep for a total of seven minutes – seven minutes which felt like seven hours to the four year old. "Tony, wake up!"
Tony blinked drowsily at Steve through the bars of his crib before turning over to his other side and trying to go to sleep. He was tired, his hand hurt, and he just wanted Jarvis; Steve was not Jarvis, not even close. Jarvis would have read him a story and made sure he had a blanket before leaving even though Jarvis was a butler, not his nanny. His nanny wasn't very good at being a nanny. She was far more interested in going to read his dad a story in the big bedroom than read Tony one.
"Tony!" said Steve, louder this time. "I want to play!"
"Go way," grumbled Tony, slipping his thumb into his mouth.
"Come on, Tasha and Clint are sleepin and I want to play! We can play Cowboys and Aliens!"
Tony grumbled but turned back over and tried to crawl over the top of the crib. It was much more difficult than he expected and in the end when Steve shoved him away from the rail to try and pull the side down, it sent Tony tumbling back onto his bottom and then crashing down to the floor when Steve succeeded in pulling the entire crib on it's side. The crash woke Clint and Natasha, who both started crying at the rude awakening, and Bruce who promptly turned into a four foot tall green hulk and began pulling apart the bed. Thor continued sleeping while Sam and Bucky rushing into the room.
"What the hell is going on in here?" yelled Bucky, marching into the room.
Tony had already grabbed a soft blue blanket and crawled into a small cardboard box in the large pile of boxes so he was nowhere in sight when the adults arrived.
"I just wanted to play!" sobbed Steve. "I- I – I was try-trying to get T-t-t-to-tony to play with me and and the crib fe-fell!"
"Where is Tony?" asked Bucky, looking around and realizing the tiny genius was nowhere to be found.
Steve pointed at the boxes while Sam tried to calm the screaming assassins. The hulk continued to smash everything in sight.
"Steve, go to the living room," sighed Bucky. "I'll deal with you later. Sam, can you get those two out? Leave Thor, if he's willing to sleep through this noise then he deserves the sleep. I'll get Tony and Bruce."
Sam picked up the assassins and ushered Steve out of the room. When he heard the door shut, Tony stuck his head out of his hiding spot.
"Bwucey," whispered Tony, crawling out of the box and approaching the small hulk. "Bwucey, stop. No pawing time. Seepy time."
The little hulk paused and glared at Tony. Tony looked back just as stubbornly, not the least bit frightening though Bucky couldn't say he was surprised, Tony had never been scared of the hulk, before whispering frantically.
"Bwucey, no mess. Get in twouble fow makin a mess!"
Slowly but surely, the miniature hulk lost his green tint and shrunk back down to just Bruce, who curled up where he was and went to sleep. Luckily children's sweat pants stretched out Bucky sighed, looked around the mess of a room, and decided he was not going to deal with it that moment. Instead he picked up Tony and walked over to the guest room across the hall. There, he sat down and placed Tony facing him on his lap, firmly hold the toddlers waist to keep him from escaping.
"Tony," said Bucky as calmly as he could. "I want to get a few things straight. Okay?"
Tony nodded, his thumb slipping into his mouth where he gnawed on it.
"Firstly, you live here and for now I'm the boss, so I make the rules," said Bucky. "One of my rules is that we don't get in trouble for making messes on accident. I've done that plenty of times and you never – I mean, the person who owns this place has never once complained or made me feel bad about it. He always shrugs and states he was going to upgrade the room anyway and that I just saved him on demolition costs. So if you make a mess and it was an accident, don't worry.
"Secondly, if Steve ever tries to get you to play during nap time again, ignore him or yelled for Sam or me. Steve is a big boy, he knows better. And thirdly, I don't mind carrying you, it's faster than expecting you to walk everywhere because quite frankly kid, you're tiny. That would take ages. So get over the no carrying thing. Understand?"
Tony nodded.
"Alright, well then," said Bucky, a little lost at what to do; normal sized Tony never gave in to anything easily, almost as if on principal. Perhaps he was trying to make up for a childhood of easily caving. "Um, let's go have snack."
By the time Bucky had reached the kitchen where Sam had once again sat everyone down and placed some crackers and juice in front of them, Tony had fallen asleep on his shoulder. When Bucky tried to put him down, the toddler whined and stirred, threatening to wake up, to the ex-assassin settled down on the couch next to Steve with Tony still sleeping on him.
"This is my life now," sighed Bucky, resigned.
"I'm sorry, Bucky," whispered Steve. "I didn't mean to wake everyone up. I just wanted to play."
"I know you did, kiddo, but I told you it was naptime. Instead of taking a nap you woke everyone up. Was that a very nice thing to do?"
"No."
"I think you owe everyone an apology and then you get to help Sam clean up the bedroom. Got it?"
"Yessir."
Bucky ruffled Steve's hair fondly and sent the boy to the kitchen for a snack. The others would not be going back to sleep anytime soon; Bucky just hoped there were no major meltdowns from cranky toddlers.
There were.