Hey all!

Just as a quick heads-up, next week's post may be late. We will be visiting family and I may have to wait until everyone goes to bed before I can actually get to work. If it's not my usual Monday night (central time, USA), it'll be Tuesday. I won't leave you hanging if I can help it!

If you head over to AO3 and check out the comments, my beta decided to do something fun and has posted excerpts from our comments back and forth in my working docs for this fic. Nothing spoilery, just the weirdness that happens as we chat while I'm writing. If we do this in subsequent parts, there are some real doozies to come.

I feel like there was something else I was supposed to put in today's note and it is completely gone. I wrote 9,000+ words yesterday and I'm aiming for 6,000 yet today, which may explain my slightly numb brain. So I guess I'll just put this up now and get onto writing!

The song for this week is "Life Uncommon" by Jewel.

Enjoy!

Chapter 4: Lend Your Voices

At the end of the second week after the attack in Queens, May and Pepper finally convinced Tony that it would be okay for May and Peter to go back home.

By 'convinced,' he really meant they 'negotiated until he was tired of it.'

But May and Pepper pointed out that he had finished the monitor watches, the evac suits, and already had completed the process of integrating JARVIS more thoroughly into the building so that never again would JARVIS be unable to lock some people out of the seventh floor. Plus, now it was mid-April and May didn't want Peter to miss any more school after the break ended, and Ned's parents were even asking questions about where he was and if they were okay, and May's job was beginning to be a little less tolerant of her absence.

Which, none of that mattered to Tony, really. The kid could skip three grades any time he wanted, or Tony could have gotten him the best tutors on Earth. Ned's parents could be explained away. And May literally did not need to work ever again because she was part of Tony's family. But he also couldn't take their lives away from them. Not if they wanted to keep their little world in Queens as undisturbed as possible.

Honestly, Tony wanted to keep it that way, too. He'd managed to avoid any public appearances or statements after the battle at the Triskelion, so as far as the world knew, nothing really had changed on the 'Where is Tony Stark?' watch. He could, in fact, go back to being Mario Carbonell, fix-it man of Queens, without much fuss. And he fully intended to do so.

Even if Iron Man had to return to the spotlight when the Avengers started running around chasing Hydra out of their holes, Tony could always sneak back to Queens where he didn't have to be a Stark and could keep being a nobody.

So he understood why the Parkers wanted to go home, no matter how badly he wanted to hold them close. In his own way, he wanted to go back, too, and reclaim that other life. He just wasn't sure he'd ever really be ready to let them do it, not after what almost happened, not when the Tower would always be safer for them. Which is why May and Pepper joined forces and pretty much threatened him into it.

But if he was sending the kid home, he was going to go out on a bang. And that is why Tony decided that the Avengers and Avengers-adjacent people should come to the Tower for one last debrief, planning session, and, ultimately, party. Besides, everybody deserved to meet the kid after hearing about him for most of a year. And, Tony knew, Peter would lose it in the best possible way if he actually got to meet them all in person.

So that Friday, Tony locked down one floor of the Tower for the Avengers crew. Besides the originals — himself, Cap, Romanoff, Barton (who finally turned up after being somewhere vague), Bruce, and Thor (who also turned up after being conveniently off-world) — Rhodey was coming, Sam Wilson who had helped Cap, Maria Hill, and Fury after got away from the Senate for the first time in a week. May, Pepper, and Peter were tasked with making the common area ready for the party while the rest of them wrapped up the official business.

Tony thought Peter was going to vibrate out of his skin when he realized how many people he would be meeting. It was absolutely worth the trouble of having them all invade his Tower again.

Even if, as they all began to arrive, Tony felt a little strange about it. Sure, they had saved the world together, but most of them weren't even really friends in spite of spending various holidays together. And yet they were a team. Trust had been forged out of necessity. But the deeper things hadn't grown fully yet. Tony wondered how long it would take until they did.

"Tony." Steve caught him and waved him to the side as everybody else was settling around the big table in the room he'd set aside for today to keep them all off the common room floor. "I just...I wanted to say thanks."

Tony nodded. "You're welcome."

"No." Steve shook his head. "You...you didn't have to try to help out. It put you in danger, you and the Parkers. But if you hadn't...I mean, without you there, I might have…" He sighed. "You kept me from making a bad decision because I couldn't see straight. And I didn't entirely understand everything Hill said, but she made it clear that whatever you did with the satellites kept the helicarriers from firing too early. You saved a lot of lives."

"I thought that's what we do," Tony said. "You're the one who talks big about the team. Be pretty hypocritical of you not to actually call us when you needed something."

"I know. I'm glad I did." Steve glanced down for a moment, then met Tony's eyes. "Look. We're about to go in there and make the Avengers a real thing again. And the truth is, I can't do it without you. I can lead a team, but I can't do it alone."

Tony remembered again about James Barnes, remembered that he had been Steve's closest friend for life, that he had gone into battle with Steve, had watched his back, had been there to support him when he made the tough calls. And remembered, once again, just how young Steve really was.

"So," Tony said slowly, "you're asking me to, what? Co-parent the Avengers with you? Kinda getting practice on that one." But he smiled to make it clear he was teasing. "You're the one with the tactical brain for battle. I can build our stuff, and I can call you out when you're wrong, but I'm not the person you want making the plans for a fight."

"I remember," Steve said, smiling a little. "Your plans tend to start and end with 'attack.'"

"Exactly. And I think we're going to need something a little more elaborate most of the time." Tony held out a hand. "Make you a deal. Everybody in that room in there would follow you into battle, but they might not follow me. So you call it on the field. But I can, you know, keep an eye on the bigger picture. Tell you when I think you're headed down the wrong path."

"That sounds good." And Tony could see Steve relaxing slightly.

Tony withdrew his hand as Steve reached for it. "But I have a condition, Rogers. Non-negotiable." As he said it, he realized how much he sounded like May, and this was his life now. Oh well. "If I say stand down, if you're about to make a choice like putting the whole of SHIELD on the internet, I need you to trust me long enough to hear me out. We can always argue about it. I'll go where you say in a firefight, and I'll leave the tactics to you. But, if you don't back down when I exercise veto power, this is going to come apart before we get started."

Steve paused, considered. Then nodded. "Fair enough. I promise to let you make your point before I make a decision I can't come back from."

Tony gave his hand back and they shook.

"Between the two of us," Tony said, "I feel pretty okay about us not screwing up completely. Maybe a little. But then we can just get one of the others to tell us we're idiots. Just…not all the time, okay? I can be a co-captain, but I'm not signing on for a threesome here."

Tony was rewarded by Steve's ears turning slightly pink.

Steve coughed. "Okay. Well, let's go talk to our team. And afterwards, I'm really looking forward to meeting that kid."

"Hey, it was his idea how to jam up the satellites," Tony said, joining him to walk to the conference room. "I had the tech, but he came up with the plan. So, really, he should be here, too."

Steve chuckled. "I think he might be a little young to be an Avenger, don't you?"

"Yeah, you're probably right. And then May would kill me, and you'd be out your partner in chaos management." Tony smiled, though. "Pete can be our mascot."

The meeting lasted about two hours longer than it needed to, in Tony's opinion. But there was a lot to cover. They had to catch everybody up on what had happened at the Triskelion and what the fallout continued to look like. They went over some of the Hydra documents they had already released and what would come out in the next few waves. Fury and Hill described the current negotiations they were having to try to keep SHIELD alive, though it would probably have a lot less budget in the future in the traditional governmental method of exerting control.

When the subject of James Barnes came up, Tony caught Steve exchanging a glance with Sam Wilson.

Oh, looks like Cap already got somebody to try to hunt down his buddy. Well, I'll see if I can save him the trouble.

Guy was clearly messed up by Hydra, but he did the right thing in the end. Maybe he's not a total psycho. Or, if he is, I'd rather find out sooner than later.

But I'd bet the Tower that Steve wants to find him and save him. Better keep an eye on that before we have to have our first chain-of-command argument.

Then they went over everything JARVIS and Romanoff had dug out of the Hydra files regarding Hydra locations and resources. There was a distressingly long list of hideouts, bolt-holes, bank accounts, weapons caches, and open projects. Hydra had apparently made off with everything from half the initial wreck of the Chitauri army to Loki's scepter, and a million other things from the past sixty years.

"Some of these places," Barton said, looking at the various schematics and maps displayed on every available surface in the room including the walls, "are like fortresses. Yeah, I can sneak into the little ones and take them apart on my own, but some of them are going to take a lot more effort."

"That's why we have a team," Steve said. He stood and straightened his shoulders and looked like Captain America out of every patriotic poster of him ever made. "We're not going to finish this fight in a week or a month. We need to be in this for the long haul. We need to strike often enough that Hydra can't grow back, but we also can't get so caught up we miss moves being made in the shadows."

He looked at Tony and Tony could feel the silent question hanging in the air. He gave Steve a deliberate nod.

Steve nodded back and returned his attention to the room at large. "It's going to take all of us. Some of you have other obligations," he gestured to Rhodey, "or might not always be up for the fight." Bruce gave a little wave. "But with enough of us working together, we can drive Hydra out of the darkness and finish what we started."

"So," Tony said, picking up the thread, "here's the deal. The Avengers ride again, but with slightly less SHIELD hand-holding. I'll handle equipping the team. SHIELD will deal with official channels. Anybody who needs a place to crash is welcome in the Tower. And whenever Cap puts a mission together, we'll go save the world one slimy rat-nest of jerks at a time."

"Not," Fury said, "until I can get some things together on my end. SHIELD's gonna go partway underground for a while. You have a few months before you get cracking. Use them to get ready. Hydra isn't going to sit around waiting on you, so keep an eye out in the meantime."

"But," Steve said, "if any of you want to back out, now's the time. This isn't a conscription. We've got a long road ahead of us, and I'm not asking any of you to walk it unless you're really committed."

Natasha smirked. "Hydra broke apart the place that gave me purpose. I'm more than happy to repay them."

"I've never liked bullies, megalomaniacs, or people who shoot civilians," Barton said. "Hydra's three for three. Count me in."

"I have many duties across the nine realms," Thor spoke up. "But when I am here on Earth, I will be glad to lend my hammer to this noble battle against such evildoers."

"I, um." Bruce looked at his lap, then sighed. "I do want to help. I'm not sure how helpful I can really be, though. The Other Guy…"

"Don't sweat it," Tony assured him. "We'll work on it."

"I'll want some assurances, anyway." Bruce shook his head. "Some way of shutting me down if I run out of control."

Steve nodded. "We won't call you into the field unless you're truly ready and you feel safe enough with the Hulk joining in."

"Thanks."

"Technically I'm still part of the Air Force," Rhodey said, "so I can't officially commit to any cross-command ops. But, if you need me, I'll be there." He eyed Tony. "Can't let you be the only hero in a suit around here."

Tony grinned at him.

"Not to sound ungrateful," Sam Wilson said, "but I don't know most of y'all from Adam. Are you sure you want a total stranger on the team?"

"You stood with us when we needed you," Steve said. "That's the only thing that matters to me."

Tony leaned back in his chair. "It's fine if you don't want in. But you're capable and you did good under bad odds. More hands, light work, all that stuff. You think you can stand us, I don't see any reason for you not to join our fun little social experiment."

"Okay, gotta be honest. I did not see the endorsement coming from Tony Stark," Sam said.

Tony smiled. "I'm not always an asshole, you know."

"No," Rhody put in, "and when you're not is when folks need to watch out."

Tony threw the nearest pen at him.

"Anyway." Steve took a deep breath. "Director Fury and Agent Hill are still SHIELD, so you're not really one of the team, but feel free to join in when our agendas overlap."

"I'm a little past the shoot-at-idiots-who-want-to-take-over-the-world phase of my life," Fury said, "but thanks for the invite."

Hill just smiled. "Good to know that when I need a break from SHIELD I've got somewhere to work out some frustration."

"All right." Steve nodded. "Then — "

"Hey, hang on." That was Barton. "Stark didn't say anything."

"Yeah, gonna be hard for you to keep that low profile in Queens you got going if Iron Man starts showing up in the field again." Natasha raised an eyebrow. "Or are you going to abandon your little protégé that easily?"

"Okay, first off." Tony waggled a finger at her. "You get a pass because you actually helped me out when he was in trouble. But the kid is upstairs dying to meet all of you, and anybody who makes him feel uncomfortable is going to answer to me and not in a nice way. And then you can answer to Pepper and May."

The entire room flinched. Bruce flinched twice, being the only other one who really knew how scary both women were together.

"Second, obviously I'm in. Hydra sent armed guys after my-the kid and his aunt, almost killed hundreds of thousands of people, and tried to use my tech to do it. That's too many layers of annoying to let slide."

He ignored Rhodey snorting at his near slip.

"And third." Tony smirked across the table. "If you think I'm giving up spending half my life in Queens where the only people who call me are Pepper or in this room, you're crazier than Hydra. Iron Man can go kick ass and look great doing it. But at the end of the day, once you meet that kid, you'll get why building bots with him in a souped up garage is the most relaxing thing I could possibly do with my downtime."

After that, Steve pulled everyone back to the more important topics and ended the meeting shortly thereafter.

"All right." Tony practically bounced to his feet. "Who's hungry? Pep and May and Peter have been getting food together for hours. JARVIS, are they ready for us?"

"They are indeed, sir. In fact, Mister Parker has asked about your estimated time to arrival no fewer than four times in the last hour. Shall I advise him you are on your way?"

"Yup." He turned back to the room. "Remember who's going to build your gear and can make it chafe on command if you get any cute ideas about messing with him."

And with that, he led the Avengers upstairs.

Tony hadn't thought that would include Fury or Hill, but both joined the group.

"What?" Fury shrugged. "I like kids. And I'm curious about this one that turned your narcissistic butt into somebody a lot more useful."

"Same," Hill said.

Tony glared at both of them, but had no real defense for that one.

The elevators arrived on the floor at the same time, spilling the host of Avengers into the big common room. Tony could see at once that Pepper and May had absolutely not skimped on the food, which, given that Thor was with them, meant they might have enough for some leftovers. There was one really sad-looking cake off to the side near the kitchen area that Tony knew from its uneven shape must be an original May Parker creation and he resolved to ensure that nobody attempted to eat it.

Tony had half-expected Peter to go wild and decorate the whole room like it was for a kid's birthday party, but instead there was just a small pile off in a dark corner of what looked like some board games and even the controllers and system for video games. The pool table was already set up for air hockey as well. Pepper and May were standing beside it looking as if they had just played a round or two from the slightly flushed light in Pepper's cheeks and May's disheveled hair, but Peter was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's the kid?" Rhodey asked.

"I dunno. May?" he called.

May smiled a little shyly from being faced with so many strangers, famous strangers. "He got nervous at the last second and stepped aside, I think."

Bruce nodded. "Honestly, if I didn't know most everybody, I might have done the same thing."

And Tony remembered all the times his father had dragged him to some corporate or social outing where he was the only kid, where he had to look up into the faces of dozens of strangers, behave perfectly, and never complain. Of course, Peter wasn't going to be held to those kinds of standards, but Peter didn't know that. And, also, Peter was the sort of kid who would impose those standards on himself.

May stepped forward. "I'm May Parker. It's...overwhelming to meet all of you, honestly. But, for what you've done for all of us, thank you. My nephew and I are both safe because of all of your efforts last week or against the Chitauri or a hundred times we never knew about. So thanks."

Tony nodded at her, but he really wanted to go find Peter. Thankfully, Pepper moved to his side. "Go talk to him. I'll take care of this," she whispered in his ear.

Tony gave her a kiss on the cheek and ducked sideways, leaving Pepper space to fill in the gap and begin the introductions. He glanced down at his own watch and hit the sequence that brought up the tracking app connected to Peter's. The kid hadn't gone back to the penthouse apparently; he was down the hall at the other side of the floor where there were more guest rooms and an empty conference room.

Tony set off.

By the time he reached the conference room where Peter was, he had pretty much talked himself into kicking all the Avengers out of the Tower just so Peter didn't have to meet them all in one giant herd. That was a bit much for anybody, after all.

He tapped at the door. "Underoos? You there?"

"I'm here, Mister Stark." Peter's voice was muffled by the door, but steady.

Tony pushed the door open. "Hey. You okay?"

"Yeah." Peter was sitting perched on one of the benches up against the window looking out over the darkening sky above the city. "I didn't mean for you to have to come get me. It's just, JARVIS said everybody was coming and I…"

"Hey, I get it," Tony said. He sat on the bench beside Peter, but giving him a margin of space between them. "Heck, I felt like running the first time I met Cap, too. I'd heard about him my whole life, you know, because my dad knew him. And suddenly meeting him in the flesh just…" He sighed. "It was a lot. How could I measure up to the legend?"

Peter looked at him with wide eyes. "But you...you're Iron Man! You're awesome."

Tony chuckled. "Glad you think so, squirt. But against that, I wasn't sure I would be." He reached out and ruffled Peter's hair. "Look, if you're not ready, it's okay. We can go upstairs and just hang out, or go down to the lab. You can meet them another day. They're going to be around a lot, and so are you."

Peter swallowed — Tony could see his throat move. "That isn't right, though."

"Oh?"

"It feels like being a coward. And I don't want...I mean, they're your friends and…"

"Peter." Tony moved his hand to Peter's shoulder. "They're not going to think less of you if you're not comfortable. And they're not going to think less of me, either. You don't need to worry that what you do will reflect on me. Anything between me and them is on me alone. You're just…"

Tony swallowed.

"Kid, you remember figlio, right? What it means?"

Peter nodded.

"Then you should know that I'm as proud of you as anybody could be. And, yeah, I want to show you off and let everybody who doesn't already know you see what makes you such a good person. But not if it hurts you. You've already got Pepper and Rhodey and Bruce in your corner, but if the rest is too much, then we'll forget it for now. You come first, Peter. Always."

Peter hauled in a breath. "There was a quote Uncle Ben liked to recite when I was nervous sometimes — you know, before. It's something Muhammad Ali said."

Tony made a mental note to file this one away — anything Ben Parker had done to help Peter was something Tony wanted to honor, and maybe borrow if the kid needed it some other rainy day.

"'If there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do you no harm.'" Peter looked up, his face setting into something stubborn. "I don't want to be scared of the strongest people in the world just because they're heroes. The scared is of me, not them."

"Well," came a new voice into the darkened room, "given everything I've heard about you, I'd say you have nothing to worry about."

Tony and Peter both looked up to see Steve Rogers saunter in.

"Sorry if I'm interrupting," he said with a smile, "but I just wanted to make sure everything was okay."

"Ohmygosh," Peter breathed. "Mister Stark, that's Mister Captain America!"

Tony chuckled. "I think he goes by Steve."

Peter gave him the most horrified and affronted look ever. "Mister Stark, I can't call Captain America Steve."

"Actually, you can," Steve said. He stepped up close and held out a hand. "It's nice to meet you."

"Oh." Peter shook the giant hand. "I'm Peter. Peter Parker." Then he drew in a breath. "I'm really glad you're not hurt anymore, Mister Captain, sir."

"Yeah, no." Tony poked the kid. "You already tried that with Rhodey. Putting 'mister' in front of the military rank just doesn't work."

Peter gulped.

But Steve just laughed. "If you can't call me Steve, I can live with being Captain Rogers for a while. Not Mister Rogers, though. I've seen that show and I don't look that good in sweaters."

Tony grinned. "Catching up on pop culture at last, then?"

"It's a work in progress." Steve pulled up one of the chairs so he could sit across from Peter. "I wanted to thank you, Peter."

"Me?"

"Tony tells me you really helped him out when we were fighting at the Triskelion. He says you helped him build the suit he sent into space after the satellites, and that it was your idea to do something to them to stop them."

Tony saw the kid squirm uncomfortably. "I didn't really do anything."

"You're the one who thought of a DOS attack," Tony corrected. "The Where's Waldo protocol infiltrated the satellite network and asked every individual node in it 'where are you' a thousand times a second, which jammed them up. It was brilliant and you came up with it."

"And because of it," Steve said before the kid could argue, "it slowed those weapons down enough for me to disable them. People are safe today because of that. So thank you, Peter Parker."

Peter looked unconvinced, so Tony nudged him with an elbow. "There. Even Steve Rogers knows you have nothing to worry about. It's still fine if you don't want to meet the others, but if you decide to go say hi, everybody is going to look at you and see that. What I see, and what Steve sees."

"Or we can hang out here," Steve offered. "It's a nice view of the city. Though if we were facing the other way, we could see where I grew up."

"Where's that?" Peter asked.

Steve grinned at him. "Brooklyn."

Peter found himself grinning back. "I'm from Queens."

"See?" Steve waggled his eyebrows at Tony. "All the best things come out of the boroughs."

"Not going to argue that, although I could," Tony said.

"It's weird to think about Captain America growing up in a regular neighborhood," Peter said. "Like, you went to school and everything?"

"Just like you, although we learned different things back then," Steve said. "I wasn't as smart as you."

Peter opened his mouth to refute that and Tony spoke over him. "He's dead right about that, mini me. Cap can lead a bunch of heroes and fight the bad guys, but he can't do chemical equations in his head. And he's never written a line of code in his life."

"All true," Steve said good-naturedly. "I leave the science to the experts. But if you wanted to try to teach me something, I bet there's a lot of chemistry I missed while I was in the ice."

Tony didn't laugh, but it was a near thing; he thought Peter's jaw would hit the floor. "You want me to teach you science?"

"If you have the time," Steve said.

Tony decided right then that Steve Rogers was okay in his book. If he could get the kid to forget his nerves and look that excited, he was welcome in their little world.

"I actually, um." Peter turned to look up at Tony. "So, Aunt May tried to make a cake."

"Yes, I saw."

"Don't eat it." Peter shook his head. "I think she left out the sugar this time. It tastes like really awful bread. But she felt so bad about it, I told her I could fix it."

"Dare I ask how?" Tony started to smile.

"Um, I put a bunch of the less fancy shot glasses into it and put some colored baking soda in them. Miss Pepper and JARVIS helped me find a...slightly stronger reactive agent than vinegar and we set it aside. Miss Pepper said as long as I did it over the tile instead of the good floor, I could make the cake look like it was exploding in Iron Man colors."

"Oh my god." Tony lurched to his feet. "We are so doing this. We are doing it right now. Come on, Underoos, let's go show those guys what an Iron Man cake fountain looks like."

"This sounds both very messy and very amusing," Steve said, standing as well. "Can I help?"

"Oh." And Peter made a look up at Tony that Tony could read in the dark and knew Steve wouldn't. That was impish, troublesome Peter all over, using his full powers of innocence to look like he was not about to ruin somebody's day. "I mean, if it's on the counter it might be easier if you pour the first one. I had to get on a chair to reach."

Tony pulled on his own poker face quickly. "Good idea. Cap can start us off right." He put a hand on the back of Peter's neck. "I'm so proud of you, kid."

And he meant it, but he also meant he was proud of Peter being brave enough to prank Captain America right here and now. And he knew from the twinkle in Peter's eyes that Peter understood that Tony meant both equally.

So, that was how Tony and Peter and Steve returned to the party and asked everybody to gather around for a little science demonstration. Peter handed the beaker of fluid to Steve and then, with Tony, took a giant step back.

Steve, innocently enough, poured the entire contents of the beaker into the shot-glass hole Peter pointed out — not little by little, but all at once.

And got promptly hit in the face with a geyser of red, frothy, bad-smelling solution.

Tony was fairly sure he'd never heard the spies laugh that hard. He was so glad JARVIS had footage of every moment of the spectacle.

After Steve sputtered and rinsed his face off, he ruffled Peter's hair until the kid squeaked, but otherwise was a good sport about it. Suddenly the booby-trapped cake turned into the best party game ever as Barton, then Rhodey, then Fury of all people, stepped up to try their luck at dodging the fountain of foam. Nobody really succeeded, and by the time all the shot glasses were empty, the cake was a soggy, smelly mess and Peter had won the hearts of everybody in the room who didn't love him already.

"Thank you, Tony," May said, catching him to the side at one point.

Peter was nestled between Natasha and Clint retelling the story of the robotics competition, with Natasha adding bits and Clint grinning broadly at the kid's victory. Even Thor was hanging around interested, though he didn't seem to get the robots part entirely. But he cheered as they reached the end of the story and called it a "battle worthy of a young warrior." Rhodey was complaining about missing it, though, and Peter promised he could come to the next one.

"Of course," Tony said as they smiled at the kid fitting in amidst the Avengers as if he had been born there. "He was nervous they wouldn't like him."

"Never happen," May said confidently. Then, more quietly, "Not just for that. Not even just for saving him. For...for being...for all of this."

Tony tipped his head. "All of what?"

"Letting us into your family. Letting us be part of what you hold dear."

Tony reached out and put an arm around her shoulders, drawing her close. "May, you've got it backwards. I didn't...I didn't invite you into this family, sorella mia. I invited them into ours."

"Oh," she breathed. Then she put an arm around his waist and squeezed him hard. "How do I call you...whatever you called me in Italian?"

Tony swallowed. "Fratello. Fratello mio if you want to be…"

"It means brother mine, doesn't it?"

"Yes, it does." He didn't meet her eyes, but he didn't need to.

"Good." She gave him another squeeze before letting him go. "I've always been bad at languages, but that's one I'm going to remember for sure." She started to move into the crowd to challenge Bruce to a game of ping-pong. But she said over her shoulder, "I never forget the things that are really important."

Tony smiled. Then he strode after her. "Hey, Pep! How about you and Bruce versus me and May? See if Queens can beat out the Tower?"

Pepper looked up from where she had been sitting with Hill and grinned. "You're going down, Tony."

"We'll see about that!" May yelled back. "Peter! Come be the referee for us!"

And that was how the entire Avengers team, and a few extras, ended up starting a ping-pong doubles tournament that went long into the night. Unsurprisingly, the team nobody could beat was Natasha and Clint, although Sam and Steve came in at a close second. Tony was just happy that he and May beat Rhodey and Hill as well as Pepper and Bruce — and that mostly because Bruce was always trying to tamp down his enthusiasm just in case. Fury refused to play citing 'old man bones' but, between rounds, he did show Peter some moves between rounds.

"Next time maybe you'll be on a team with me?" Peter asked.

And Tony was watching, so he spotted the moment the uber-spy softened and fell under Peter's spell. He could see it in the man's eye.

"Next time," Fury promised. "And we'll put them all to shame."

By the end of the night, Peter had a bunch of new contacts in his phone, though several were without names or normal photos attached. Nick Fury gave the kid his number only after eliciting a promise never to use it except in an emergency, and Peter added it with just the picture of the black sleeve of a leather jacket. Similarly, Clint Barton's was a picture of an arrow in a tree and Natasha's was a single ballet slipper. When Peter finally conked out, tired enough that he needed to be steered to bed — but not carried, he wasn't a baby, after all — Tony sat down with a drink in his hand on his couch and smiled to himself.

"I get it," Barton said, sitting beside him. "I do." He glanced around, but the others were making another run at the food before the party broke up.

Tony blinked when Clint held out his phone showing a picture of a woman and two children.

Tony felt his eyebrows hit his hair. "Seriously?" he asked, keeping it down.

Clint nodded. "Only Nat and Fury know. Safer that way — for them." He met Tony's eyes. "If you ever need help, if that kid ever needs someplace to hide, let me know. Or, you know, if you need more dad jokes." He made a small smile.

"That's why you gave me that mug. You already knew," Tony accused without any real heat.

"Obviously. The 'something means more to me than life itself and must be protected or my heart will shatter' look? I invented that look. It's not the same for anybody else. So, yeah. I knew."

Tony understood the amount of trust Clint Barton was giving him, and he accepted the weight of it. "Hey. If you ever need anything, or if they do, call me. I'll...you know. Anything."

Clint's smile went soft and true. "Thanks. Maybe between the two of us I'll be able to sleep at night once in a while not worrying about them. Get ready for some sleepless nights of your own."

Tony nodded. "If you want something for that…" And he explained about the watches for Peter and May, the panic buttons and the evac suits. By the time he was done, Clint's eyes were wide.

"You would do that for them?"

"Say the word and it's done." Tony was dead serious. "All I need is the measurements on all three so the suits are the right size. Or stick a JARVIS node in the house and he'll do the rest. Up to you."

"I'll talk to Laura," Clint finally said. "But...thank you, Stark. Seriously."

"Any time, Legolas."

That made Clint give him a glare. "You ever going to let up on that?"

"I don't know." Tony smirked. "You ever gonna call me by my name? And let me improve on that quiver design you got from SHIELD?"

One side of Clint's mouth twisted up. "If you can fix some of the bugs in my gear, you will have earned a friend for life for a completely different reason," he said.

Tony could live with that.