A/N: Hello people! This little story came to me a couple days ago and wouldn't leave me alone until I got it out of my system, so there you go! Sixteen year old Morgan gets in trouble, and big brother Peter comes to the rescue! Humour, family fluff, and non-graphic mention of past spankings. You've been warned!
This story plays out in Of Suits And Heroes universe (quite a few years in the future though) but you can definitely follow it without any issue even if you've never read the OSAH story.
To my OSAH followers, I'm writing chapter 22. It's going slowly but it's going. Hang in there.
To all of you: Reviews go a long way, people! Let me know if you liked this or not by taking a minute to write me a review!
A big thank you and shoutout to Geetha Krishnan for betaing this!
Have a great weekend!
Marion
The rushed, repetitive banging on his door made Peter get up from his desk chair and hasten to the door. Taking a deep breath, he unlocked his apartment's door and held it open for the man waiting outside to enter.
"You didn't ask who I was," Tony remarked as he stepped inside.
"I'm thirty-two years old!" Peter quipped with a roll of his eyes.
"Thirty-two-year-olds get assaulted too, you know!"
Peter scoffed and his eyes Widened with incredulity, "I'm Spiderman!"
"I could have been a powerful villain," Tony countered, spreading his arms.
"You tried to open with your own keys! I heard! I knew it was you!" Peter exclaimed. The man was clearly not in a good mood.
"You shouldn't leave your keys behind your door. You know that! What if it was an emergency and I couldn't get in?" Tony said in a scolding tone.
"You'd blow up the god-damn do… Ugh. You're impossible! That's why I keep the keys behind the door! 'Cause you're overbearing and overprotective and you'd barge in here without even bothering to knock first!"
"Where is she?"
Peter's eyes narrowed in confusion and his brow creased. A small involuntary flush spreading on his face as he answered, "She left…"
"She left? You let her leave?" Tony boomed.
"Well, yeah, Tony. Keeping people somewhere against their will is kind of frowned upon, you know."
"Where did she go?"
"Home?" Peter offered in an even more perplexed tone.
"Home my ass! Pepper would've let me know if she'd gone home!"
"How on earth would Pepper know that she went home? She lives four blocks down from here…"
"Who on earth are you yapping about?"
"Who on earth are you yapping about? Dammit, dad, now I have a headache."
"Morgan, Peter! Morgan! I know she's here."
"Morgan isn't here! Don't you think you'd notice her?" Peter asked, spreading his hands to indicate the small studio they were standing in.
The single-space room was empty aside from the two of them and Peter's furniture. No hiding spots were available, not even a closet. Peter had a dresser. Even the tiny bathroom's door was open, as Peter had just finished mopping after his shower and had left it like this for the tiles to dry faster.
"Who was here then?" Tony asked suspiciously.
"G…" Halting himself and bringing a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, Peter sighed in tired frustration. "You're exhausting!" He commented, as he moved to the small kitchen counter, reaching for two mugs and the half-filled coffee pot.
"You're avoiding to answer," Tony merely commented as he followed right behind Peter to the corner of the studio that served as a small kitchen.
"A friend… Alright? A friend who...stayed over last night," Peter said with a huff as he filled the two mugs and returned the coffee pot to the coffee-maker. Grabbing the mugs he offered one to Tony and taking a sip from his own, he walked towards the L-shaped sofa, plopping down on his usual spot.
When Tony joined him, Peter asked. "What's going on? Why are you particularly grumpy today?"
"Are you seriously gonna keep acting like you don't know anything?" Tony asked, annoyed.
"I don't! Now, do you wanna tell me what on earth happened between you two and why you're here looking for her, or do you wanna keep nagging at me about my door and my lady-friends?"
"You should let me buy you a decent place with a decent door and decent security. Plus this hole is tiny! How can you live like this?" Tony commented glancing around him with a judgy look on his face.
"You have the attention span of a dinoflagellate!" Peter exclaimed. "Morgan! Pace with me! What's going on? Should I worry?"
"Yes, you should worry, 'cause when I get my hands on her…"
"Dad! C'mon! What happened?"
Tony sighed in frustration. He looked at Peter through his glasses as he ground out his next words. "She went for a joyride."
Peter remained looking at him silently for a few seconds. "That's it? That's like… Nothing!"
"With a friend of hers!" Tony continued.
"Oookaaay," Peter said, his facial expression still conveying confusion and surprise.
"In two of my suits," Tony tacked on as he took a sip from his mug.
"Oh…"
"In two of my space-suits!"
"Ouch!"
"And they went for a ride to the effing stratosphere!"
"Daaamn," Peter commented with a grimace.
"You got that right!"
"How on earth did they manage to take the suits? Didn't you baby-proof them or whatever? I remember attempting to take one and Friday giving you my ass on a silver plate."
"She hacked her way into them," Tony said in a half-annoyed, half-proud tone.
Peter's eyes widened at that. "She managed to override your safety protocols and hack Friday? Damn, Morgan! Way to go, kid!"
"If you dare to sound impressed whenever she talks to you about this I'm gonna bust your ass too, do you hear me?" Tony wagging a pointer finger dangerously close to Peter's nose.
"I won't, but you gotta admit… The kid's gonna go far," Peter said with a proud smile.
"Not if she breaks her neck doing stupid things like this!"
"Oh, come on! You can't sit there and tell me you don't see where she's coming from," Peter countered as he took another sip from his mug.
"Are you seriously trying to defend her right now?" Tony asked disbelievingly. "She has you wrapped around her little finger like ivy on a fence"
Peter rolled his eyes at that. "Like you're any better. You bought her a damn pony the minute she asked for it, and had an entire lab and a bunch of vets and biologists experiment on the poor thing to find a way to make it a unicorn-pony when she wouldn't stop crying for one!"
"Hey! The experimentation was one hundred percent humane! That pony is still alive, healthy and happy!"
"And looks like a bloody rhinoceros!"
"It's not like it knows that."
Peter couldn't help but snort at the absurd dialogue they were exchanging and the even more absurd memory of Sparkle's adventure.
Bringing the discussion back to focus, he continued, "My point is… She's growing up with all this amazing technology around her. These shiny, incredible gadgets that do all sorts of awesome things. You can't expect her not to be tempted to play with them!"
"I expect her to be tempted, Peter. I also expect her to play by the rules. With mine or Pepper's permission and under supervision!"
"Dad, c'mon!" Peter sighed with a tired expression. "She's a teen. She's bound to break rules. It's normal."
"It's normal to break curfew every now and then, Peter, not to steal bloody space-ships!"
"Space-suits! Don't exaggerate things."
Tony shook his head and now it was his turn to pinch the bridge of his nose.
Peter watched him carefully. "All I'm saying is, I get how tempting having everything just out of reach is. And we both know how important it is to look cool at that age. Can you imagine being sixteen and able to sneak a ride in your superhero dad's state-of-the-art flying-to-the-god-damn-space suit?"
Tony stared back at Peter silently.
Taking advantage of the lack of retort, Peter continued, "I can tell you, if you had developed those things back when I was her age, I'd have definitely tried to take a ride with Ned. And don't even try to pretend you wouldn't have tried the same shit if you had access to something like that when you were sixteen."
Tony now sighed. Peter read the man's movements and could practically see the gears shifting in his head.
"I'm not saying she wasn't out of line… But she wasn't… You know… Completely overboard." Peter added carefully. He didn't want to be too blunt about any of this. This needed careful maneuvering.
"You think I shouldn't spank her? Is that what you're telling me? 'Cause you know better than I do, had it been you pulling a stunt like this at her age, you'd have caught the spanking of your life."
"Oh, I know!" Peter easily accepted. "But I was constantly in trouble and pulling stunts. Not to mention far less cute than Morgan is." At the scoff that involuntarily left his father's lips, he continued. "Seriously now… She's a good kid. She rarely screws up. I don't say turn blind eyes… Just, fix your system. Make sure she won't override it again. And ground her. Take away her car. She loves that thing more than sparkles. Cell-phone privileges… C'mon. That's the shit teenagers live for these days."
Tony sighed and shook his head as he deposited the by now empty mug on the coffee table. "I can't believe I'm taking parenting advice from my own son," he mumbled.
"Why the hell not?" Peter countered. "You parented me for quite a few years and I didn't turn out that bad," Peter let some tenderness slip into his voice.
A small smirk forming, Tony shook his head. "You turned out incredible. And don't kid yourself, I'm still parenting you."
"Yeah… You can tell yourself that old man."
Rising to his feet, Tony let out another sigh. "I'd better get going."
"Yeah. Get back home. I'm sure Morgan will come back sooner than you think."
"I guess! We're not done discussing this living arrangement of yours, by the way," Tony said as he walked towards the door. "And stop leaving your keys in the lock!"
Peter followed him and opened the door for him, leaning on it as he waited for the man to leave.
"Stop using your key without permission or emergency and I might consider it," Peter quipped.
"Brat."
"Insufferable old man."
"We'll see you on Sunday for lunch."
"Yes, you will. Now get. I got work to get to."
Tony hugged his adoptive son close and patted his back twice. "Thanks, kid."
"You welcome, dad," Peter said with a smile as they broke the embrace.
Closing the door behind the departing figure, Peter waited for the elevator door to sound. When it did, he let out a sigh of relief and walked to the large window on the wall next to his bed. He opened the heavy grey curtains and held them to the side as his sister got up from her spot on the fire-escape stairs and climbed back inside.
Turning to look at Peter, she wore her best Tony-Stark glare. Complete with furrowed eyebrows and a straight-line crease between them.
"Ground her? Take away her car? Take away my phone? What the hell were you thinking? I thought you were supposed to get me out of trouble," Morgan said in an accusatory tone, her lips forming a perfect disgruntled pout.
Crossing his arms across his chest, Peter fixed her with the strictest warning look he could muster when dealing with that particular pouting face.
"I wasn't supposed to do anything! You came here and begged for my help to get you out of a spanking -a well earned one at that, may I add- and I did. So this is where you put on your sweetest smile, hug me and offer me your deepest gratitude, little sis."
His words registering, Morgan let her hands fall to her sides. She looked up at Peter through her dark eye-lashes and offered a lopsided apologetic smirk.
"Sorry, Pete. You're right. Thank you so much. I totally owe you one. No, to hell with one… I owe you 3000," she answered in her sweetest voice and she took the two steps between them hugging him tightly.
A warm smile spreading on his face with the way she used the signature phrase of her toddler years, Peter shook his head amusedly and mumbled, "You're something else, kid." Running a hand through the soft brown hair, he finally stepped out of the hug and nodded to the sofa. "Go sit down. I'll call you a cab. You'd better get home before Pepper talks Tony back to busting your butt."
Morgan plopped herself on the couch and waited patiently for her brother to make the call. When he heard him ending the call, her eyes drifted to the ceiling.
"Hey, Pete?"
"Yeah?"
"Would you consider smuggling me a smart-phone on Sunday?"
The throw pillow that unceremoniously landed on her face was the only answer she got.