"You two are hopeless. Who taught you to do this?"

"You did," Harley said.

"Don't remember that. I'm replacing you with Morgan. You're embarrassing me."

"No, you're not," Peter countered easily, "you're afraid of what she'll do with the knowledge of how to operate a soldering iron."

Tony narrowed his eyes at him. Peter cleaned off the excess solder from his iron and then – once again, incredibly – cut way too much solder from the spool, apparently deciding he'd cleaned it off too well. "I'm thinking you should stick with spandex, kid."

"Right, spandex," Harley repeated long-sufferingly. "It's a joke. Because that's funny, that he's Spider-Man, and not at all intimidating."

Tony sighed. Peter grimaced, probably because he knew what was coming. "Ten minutes, Peter," Tony reiterated like a mantra, something he'd been doing at regular intervals for the past couple of days. "It literally took you ten minutes to reveal your night job to him."

"It was an accident," Peter protested. "I was worried he might get hurt!"

"Ugh, that's so hero-y," Harley groaned, reaching over for the iron Peter had set down. Peter reached for his phone instead, distracted – once again – by whoever he'd been incessantly texting since he'd set foot on Tony's property. It was almost ritualistic at this point, the way he kept pulling it out, and it would be annoying if it wasn't starting to become worrying.

Tony kept a curious eye on him until Peter set the phone down again; the kid was worrying his bottom lip, but he made no note of it otherwise. After staring down at the table for a second like he'd forgotten what he'd been doing, Peter pulled up his schematics on the nearest screen. He became absorbed in the files, something Tony knew from experience he very rarely needed to do.

With this ongoing little mystery remaining unsolved, Tony set it aside for later and looked back at Harley, snorting from where he was sprawled in a rolling chair. "The word you're looking for is 'heroic'."

"Whatever, that's even worse. I'm not cut out for righteousness, it takes all the fun out of life."

"Some people might call me a sanctimonious goody-two-shoes, but I say you're just a sociopath," Peter informed him thoughtfully, opening up a Python script Tony knew was perfect because he'd written it himself. Still, he said nothing and let the kid fiddle with it. He rolled his chair over to oversee Peter's work from over his shoulder.

Harley nodded. "Agreed."

Tony narrowed his eyes, looking between the two of them. "Y'know, I honestly can't tell whether you two are getting along. It's been forty-eight hours and it's bothering me, I give up. Just tell me."

Harley shrugged. "It's fun." He suddenly flicked a pencil at Peter's head, which Peter caught easily. It put an expression of reluctant admiration on Harley's face.

"Yeah," Peter said good-naturedly. "Please stop throwing things at me, Harley. I think I've proved I can catch them."

Tony frowned at them. "Still can't tell." Something on Peter's screen caught Tony's more immediate attention again; he leaned over the kid to get a better look and tilted his head. "Are you unrolling my loops?"

"It's efficient."

"It's inelegant."

"Would you rather my shooters be elegant or efficient when aliens crash-land in New York and I need them up and running at a moment's notice?"

"Would it kill you to do both?"

"Against the aliens? Probably."

Peter inserted several lines of whitespace in the script to distinguish the now messy-looking code from the rest of the script. Then, above and below the fruits of his labor, he added several lines of comments full of '3 3 3', '!' and a single sentence warning the reader that it was 'peters dirty commoner code, high society boomers look away'.

Tony glared. Peter ran the script and expectantly stared at the connected display on the desk to the left, where several rows of nanobots lit up instantly, confirming they'd been activated. "Kid, I'm already letting you two code in Python like a couple of babies. Don't test me."

Harley, who had also dropped his own work to come watch Peter's test, groaned. "I hate to keep hitting on this, but you're so old. Not even being funny this time. You think maybe you should upgrade sometime soon? What would happen to all those geriatric jokes if Captain America found out you write code in a language invented in his lifetime?"

"First you'd need to explain to him what code is. Also what a computer is, and maybe even go all the way back to mankind's first use of forged metal. By the way, all languages were invented in his lifetime, because his lifetime predates the dinosaurs. And I'll have you know DUM-E, U, and Butterfingers are fully coded in Lisp."

"You mean the bots you decorate with dunce hats?"

Harley earned himself a half-hearted, poorly aimed kick for that, which accidentally hit the corner of the table instead, and left Tony with a mild shooting pain going from his foot to his spine, where most of his increasingly frequent body aches ended up these days. Harley snickered at this, but Peter didn't, which was unusual, so Tony followed his gaze to see him frowning at the nanobots. He noticed the problem instantly.

Harley did too. "You've got a dead row," he pointed out. "Did you break something while you were dumping solder all over the desk?"

"No, I was using the solder on the casing, not the bots."

Tony poked at him until Peter stood aside, and then pulled up the code Peter had been messing with. He deliberately pulled a face at the Python whitespace, making sure the boys saw it purely out of pettiness, and scanned Peter's handiwork while they probably made rude gestures behind his back. Tony blamed the accumulating number of children littering his house(s) for the fact that he was slowly but surely turning into an obnoxious seventh grade math teacher. "Your loop's skipping the last iteration," he said. "You're iterating up to n but you're indexing n plus one. Someone's head's not in the game today." Peter huffed and smacked Tony's hands away so he could fix it. "Change the upper bound or the indexing," Tony added unnecessarily anyway, just to needle the kid. "Personally, I recommend the indexing, because I think adding plus one is yet another dirty commoner thing, but to each their own."

Peter ignored him, ran the script again, and this time, all the bots linked up. Tony clapped his hands on Peter's shoulders in a congratulatory manner and said, "well, that was incredibly unnecessary." Peter threw him a dirty look and Tony relented. Conceding defeat was the easy way out of a battle over how much fondness Peter could get him to express. "Make sure that code's uploaded, I want to test how much time your loop shenanigans can cut in the suit's full assembly too."

Peter grinned triumphantly. "You had him at 'efficient'," Harley commented wisely, and then took the opportunity to run another experiment, snapping a rubber band in Peter's direction. Peter dodged it so fast, he was out of the way before it flew out of Harley's fingers. No one said a word on the matter, and Harley wandered back to his own workstation with a sigh. It was only when Tony's eyes followed him and beyond that they landed on Pepper, standing by the door with her arms crossed and her brows arched.

"I'm not working," Tony said immediately, bravely attempting to preempt the inevitable. He'd pretty much made a career out of that, so it was second nature by now. "This is technically not work. My position here is purely of oversight, which I am told is an activity responsible adults engage in when in the company of minors."

"I can see that," she drawled, making Peter and Harley whirl around and look up at her. "I'd hate to interrupt you boys' indoor vacation, but I was promised several days of sun and bikinis."

"Rhodey wears bikinis?" Harley asked, clearly unfamiliar with Pepper's no-nonsense moods. She gave him a look that was very near and dear to Tony's heart, and Harley wilted immediately.

"I know you three are having fun, but wrap it up soon," she ordered in the form of gentle suggestion. "Morgan wants to take Peter and Harley to the park before dinner."

"Oh, and I'm not invited?" Tony huffed. "That's it, I'm confiscating her driver's license, she can't go without me."

"Morgan says you're hogging their attention and it's her turn," Pepper told him. "So learn to share your toys and it won't be a problem."

And on that note, she walked right out of the garage.

"You guys are comfortable being called toys, right?" Tony asked as soon as Pepper's strawberry-blonde hair disappeared from view. "Because I can definitely ask Morgan to stop, as long as you don't expect her to actually stop."

The look Pepper had given him had clearly made an impression on Harley, because he'd begun tidying up. Not even Peter was that quick to follow orders, and Peter was definitely the kid Tony would leave in charge of shushing everyone during unsupervised reading time in an Avengers-populated classroom. "Beats being called her 'diversity hire'," Harley said, putting out any science-sanctioned fires that couldn't be left unattended while the lab was empty.

Tony choked back a laugh. "Pray tell, what in tarnation is diverse about you?"

Harley took note of the exaggerated drawl and didn't seem to be a fan. He scowled, crossed his arms, and moved closer to Peter for support, like Peter wasn't actively grinning along with Tony's teasing. "Being from the Midwest."

"Ah, so, diverse in the sense that it spans every shade of white between milk and eggshell. And what exactly is she hiring for?"

"Minion work."

That caught Tony's attention. "What kind of minion work does she need to get done?"

"You know, Morgan said you might ask too many questions," Peter interjected listlessly. Harley nodded somberly.

Tony shrugged and decided against pursuing that one. One way or another, he was bound to find out eventually. "Just don't let my daughter get involved in organized crime and at the end of this week we might all go home in one piece."

"This is more of a Despicable Me sort of situation," Peter corrected, unplugging the soldering iron at last.

"Ugh," Harley groaned, "why can't you just like Transformers like a normal person?"

Peter immediately narrowed his eyes at him. Tony removed the soldering iron from his hands before he forgot it was still pretty hot. "Mr. Stark, I don't trust him."

Harley took issue with that before Tony had the chance to inform him Peter was just being deliberately annoying. "And that's another thing, why the hell do you call him Mr. Stark?"

"What do you call him, 'dad'?"

Tony scowled, refused to express amusement or any other emotion, and forgot the soldering iron was still hot. He thought he played it cool when he hastily dropped it on the nearby sponge, but Peter probably noticed the angry burn it left on his wrist. "I'm just saying," the kid complained, politely not mentioning it, "he's sketchy. Calls you dad, likes Transformer movies, thinks I'm the new kid-"

"You are, I met him when I was thirteen."

"I met him when I was ten."

Tony interrupted Peter's challenging look with a pointed question. "I'm sorry, you what now?"

Peter froze. "Right, you didn't know about that."

"But do I want to know, is the question. I'm guessing."

"Probably not, don't you know enough things already?"

"It was a rhetorical question, I do want to know."

Peter sighed morosely. "Okay, fine, I'll tell you, but don't say I didn't warn you. There's just things that once you know them, they change how you see a person." Tony squinted at him. Peter sighed again, even more dramatically. "You see, I have a signed Iron Man toy helmet."

Harley snickered again. Tony wasn't buying it. "I know. Last time you went on a date with MJ-"

That did get under the kid's skin. "It wasn't a date, it was a- a study meeting-!"

Tony decided to correct himself to make this go quicker. "Last time you pretended to study so you could go on a date with MJ, May and I spent the whole afternoon eating some tiny quiches Happy cooked for her and exchanging embarrassing stories about you. She showed me the helmet and I wanted to sign it, but it turned out I already had."

"Why are you friends with my aunt?" Peter moaned. "She didn't even like you, before."

"That's the case for most of my friends. Some of them still don't like me."

"They're friends 'cause they're both middle-aged moms, from the sound of it," Harley decided to interject, ignoring Tony's attention-seeking self-deprecation and leaning over the table to stare at the two of them in fascination. "So Peter used to be a fangirl and got the helmet signed so long ago that you don't even remember?"

"Fangirl?" Peter sputtered at the same time that Tony scoffed, "Used to be?"

Peter huffed and started rambling. "I used to wear that thing all the time," he began, and then grinned at Tony in a way that meant that yet again in its danger-fraught life, Tony's heart's structural integrity was about to be tested. "I was wearing it at Stark Expo, when you flew down and saved me from one of those drone thingies." Peter's expression molded into the far-away look of someone reliving a memory. He was looking at Tony with the awed, hero-worshiping face he tended to pull around him, and it was probably not even facetious this time. "Coolest thing e-"

"Nope," Tony interrupted. "No, that never happened."

"Did," Peter countered, like he was taking it as a personal affront. "You said 'nice shot, kid' and everything, 'cause I was totally stealing your thunder-"

"Nuh-uh," Tony cut him off again, feeling his face grow paler by the second. "No, it never happened, because, if I had had a massive heart attack that day, I would've remembered it."

Peter's nose scrunched up. "You sure? Don't you have one of those, like, every other week?"

Harley was pursing his lips, probably finding the sudden emotional sincerity uncalled for. "I still think my story's cooler."

"Did you hear the part where I nearly died-?"

"I nearly died too-!"

Tony was, at this point, more than willing to concede defeat. "You both either shut up right now, or I'm killing you. Never mind getting along, you're keeping ten feet between you for the rest of the day, let's go."

He distinctly caught the two boys smirking at each other as they obeyed, and belatedly realized they'd been messing with him. Tony scowled, which didn't go unnoticed, so they started laughing. "You're both grounded. Harley, you're forbidden from kidnapping anyone for a month, and Peter, you're watching every Transformers movie back to back as soon as I convince your aunt it's an effective discipline strategy."

Peter made gagging noises, and Harley sniffed. "Whatever. You're both haters, those movies are awesome. At least I'm not into Fast and Furious." Both boys instantly gave Tony the most coordinated side-eye he'd ever received in his life. This was impressive because Tony had, on a number of occasions, been sloppy-drunk in situations where alcohol was socially and morally reprehensible, and a great many of those were within Rhodey and Pepper's side-eying distance, too. In response, Tony chose to protect his dignity by abusing the power dynamics.

"Two months, Harley."

"Parker, it's not like I have a rule against phones at the dinner table, because I'm not a masochist. But who are you texting with such urgency?"

Peter went scarlet and shoved the phone away, under the table. Tony hadn't really wanted to say anything, but Pepper had been giving him increasingly pointed looks for the better part of the meal, and he was pretty sure he was supposed to take the opportunity to set a good example for Morgan, or whatever.

"In his defense," Morgan said, right on cue, to remind them all she really wasn't the sort to act by example, "Harley keeps looking at his phone too, except he's a lot sneakier. Somehow. Are you sure you didn't get them mixed up, daddy? Maybe it's Harley that's Spider-Man."

"Snitches-" Harley began, and instantly earned himself another one of Pepper's looks – "...are rude."

Tony, who had not in fact noticed Harley checking his phone, cleared his throat. "I've got it on good authority that Harley would make a better supervillain than superhero. It's the hair and the self-confidence."

"So why aren't you a supervillain, Tony?" Peter asked, apparently eager to move on from the topic of his phone. He leaned forward to serve himself more potatoes. "Is your hair substandard?"

"Obviously not. It's because of the trauma."

"Hey, that's that word Uncle Bucky used," Morgan interjected. Tony thought about how toddlers had frightening memory recall mechanisms. Morgan never seemed to remember what 'broccoli' meant every time Tony asked her why she hadn't eaten her vegetables, but she absolutely never failed to remember words she wasn't supposed to know so she could repeat them in front of Pepper.

"Is it?" Pepper said calmly. "Well, it's good to know what kind of things daddy and daddy's friends are teaching you." Tony winced.

"Oh, I don't think he's daddy's friend. He's Peter's friend, though."

Across the table, Rhodey arched his brows at Tony. "Peter made friends with Barnes?"

Tony grimaced and waved him off. "Yeah, it's- a whole thing." He stuck a spoonful of peas in his mouth to prevent himself from saying anything further.

"I'm right here," Peter reminded them all.

"Who's Barnes?" Harley asked him. "Another one of the new Avengers?"

Peter stuck half a steak in his mouth, and Tony had half a mind to comment even without Pepper's prompting this time. "Yeah," the kid answered, somehow already having chewed and swallowed. Tony wondered if the ability to avoid choking was another one of his superpowers. "He's Captain Rogers' person of ambiguous relation." Tony looked down and found that he was out of peas to keep his mouth shut, so he just decided to pretend he'd gone temporarily deaf every time Barnes' name was brought up again.

Morgan, who had barely taken a bite, much to the distress of her designated feeder (Rhodey had volunteered before he understood the difficulty of the task ahead of him), harrumphed and dodged her spoon again. "Why do you call Uncle Steve 'Captain Rogers', Peter?"

"It's a title, he earned it when he went to war."

"What's war?"

Harley cracked up laughing, Peter looked stricken, Rhodey gave up and dropped Morgan's cutlery. Pepper and Tony exchanged harassed looks, though Pepper's was more of the this-is-your-fault variety. Tony turned to Peter with the most stoicism he could muster at the moment, which wasn't a lot when Harley was still lightly snickering. This wasn't funny. It wasn't. Pepper was saying so, with her eyes, and general body language, and with several choice words later, too, probably.

He cleared his throat. "If you were gonna make me explain war to my toddler today, kid, you could have at least given me a head's up. Finding age-appropriate visual aids is gonna be a nightmare."

Peter still looked stricken, which was never something Tony had the ability to stomach for very long. "I'm sorry. Sometimes I forget how young she is."

Which was a very reasonable response to Morgan; everyone who knew Tony's daughter had experienced it at least once. It wasn't even Peter's fault, Morgan just picked up on things with frightening attention. Tony still made Peter take over from Rhodey, though. The slow despair bred by the act of feeding a toddler who didn't want to be fed seemed like suitable punishment.

"What's war?" Morgan repeated anyway, and Tony replied, "I'll tell you when you're older and after you've learned about it in school."

Tony's whole idea had been to get his favorite people under one roof. That was it – it hadn't seemed complicated at the time. Pepper handled the logistics, Harley forced the logistics into compliance, Peter abided Morgan's attempts to manipulate the logistics in her favor, and Rhodey was there so Tony had someone with whom he could share the hilarity of it all, from the distant sidelines. All the ingredients were there, Tony had stirred the pot, and if he was really determined to keep with the cooking metaphor, something about the finished product smelt off to his chef's nose.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that it had started off with Tony half-convinced Rhodey didn't really want to be part of it, even if he was now reasonably sure that was just his own insecurities talking. Maybe it was about how Peter and Harley were apparently very preoccupied with something on their phones, which, in turn, was preoccupying Tony. Maybe it was because of his paranoia, control issues, chronic apprehension, all making a big deal out of nothing. Whatever it was, it was nagging at Tony's brain, and that never turned out well if left unresolved. It rarely turned out well with Tony's meddling, either, but he had a better chance for sure. Probably.

There wasn't much for Tony to obsess over these days, so this would have to do.

So, after dinner, he pulled Harley aside, into the living room. Peter would have made for a more difficult target because he had much more significant experience in dodging Tony's ambushes.

"Wanna go down to the garage again?" he offered, gesturing to the door leading to the stairwell. He could overhear, in the kitchen, Peter being ever polite and offering to help Rhodey and Pepper with the dishes. He could also overhear Morgan quietly slipping out the front door to go feed Gerald the half of her dinner that she'd sneakily stowed away at the table, and made a mental note that she was now going through an anti-pea phase.

Harley seemed bemused. "Isn't it kinda late?" Tony paused and squinted at him. "Late for normal people," the kid clarified, "which this house is full of."

"Just my girls," Tony assured, "and they're used to it."

Harley crossed his arms and shook his head. "Nuh-uh. I know what you're up to, and I'm better at it than you are, just ask Rhodey."

"Oh. Cool, I'll drop the pretext," Tony shrugged, dropping down on the couch. Harley followed his example, looking part curious, part hesitant. "Forgive my anxiety, but last time you shared something, you ended up telling me about a dream you had starring a raccoon on cocaine, and I collected a brand-new lifelong fear."

Harley waved him off, immediately at ease. "No raccoons, I swear."

Tony straightened, alarmed. "If you're on drugs, I'm telling you right off the bat, I'll stop being funny."

"No cocaine either," Harley added impatiently, rolling his eyes. "Though it's good to know the exact contours of your parenting style."

That word threw Tony a little, which wasn't a good sign.

The problem with this was that Tony was trying, and it was still difficult. He had no memories of his own father being concerned – or maybe just discerning – enough to do this, to prompt him on things Tony was maybe not sufficiently adept, emotionally speaking, to bring up himself. There was an argument to be made that maybe Tony didn't have the skillset for it anyway, let alone Howard, but at the very least he could make himself available. Tony's dad had never been available. Maybe that made the whole comparison a moot point anyway.

Tony focused and reminded himself, as he often had to, that this was not about Tony. The phone thing – after Morgan's comment during dinner, he'd started paying closer attention. Harley was checking on it more than Peter, and that was a hell of a feat, because Peter was having to charge his phone twice a day to maintain his habit. It was just that Harley was a lot quicker about it every time he glanced at the screen.

Teenagers and their phones, whatever, right? Except Tony was trying. Maybe too hard, but still, he'd like to be told 'whatever' – which, he understood, was something said by no one ever regarding seventeen-year-olds – instead of working off the assumption that there was nothing wrong when there was clearly something wrong.

Tony didn't even know if it was his place to do this, but he was sort of relying on instinct, and instinct told him this was an aberration in the boys' behavior. He was very confident he was normally the center of their attention whenever he was around, not their phones, which wasn't him bragging, it was just a fact, no matter what Pepper said or heavily implied.

Harley wasn't going to be forthcoming here, so Tony took initiative by imagining the worst-case scenario, an area of expertise of his. "Everything alright with your mom?" he asked in concern.

Harley started. "Oh – yeah, of course, it's not- it's." The kid shut up and took a deep breath, and Tony decided he'd successfully managed to out-stubborn him. "I'm kind of- I got into a fight, with my sister. Not- not something petty, this time, she's really upset with me."

Tony relaxed a bit. That didn't sound so bad – though, admittedly, Tony had developed a pretty thick skin in regards to people being upset with him. "Did you wear one of her t-shirts? I hear sisters don't like it when you do that."

"I wouldn't do that, even I'm not that stupid."

"If you wanna tell me about it, you can, you know. You can also not tell me about it, I'm an awful listener."

Harley grinned feebly. "I know. I- you know how I'm going off to college soon? You should know, or you must be getting some really weird receipts somewhere."

"Pepper is responsible for any and all pieces of paper containing tax deductibles," Tony told him. "I stopped doing my own taxes when she realized I was just throwing money in random directions every time someone bothered me about it."

"I can't decide if you're fighting the power or part of the problem."

"Kid, I'm a billionaire. I'm automatically part of the problem. I'm also lazy. But you were saying something about your sister?" Tony prodded, before this got too out of hand.

"Ugh," Harley looked down, suddenly finding something indescribably interesting about Tony's carpeted floor. "Fine. We blipped. My sister and me, I mean. And when we came back – a lot of our- friends, family, whatever, they'd moved on. My cousins are all- so much older, now. Most of my friends already graduated college, or started a career, or moved away, and most importantly, aren't seventeen anymore. Peter says most of his friends stuck around, well, he got- really lucky. Mom's sick. You're- you, but you're in New York, and you have your own family to think about. Part of why I didn't want you hearing about this, you're already making it your problem." Tony had automatically processed that as an insult, before backtracking and realizing it was probably a compliment. Harley wasn't waiting for a response and barreled on. "I mostly have my sister, and she has me. And now I'm- leaving. Like everyone else. And she's- she's upset. I know," Harley said hastily, as soon as Tony opened his mouth. "I know, okay? It's not fair, but it is what it is. She's my sister and I love her. I don't want to hurt her, but even coming here for the week turned into this huge fight, and I'm using it as an excuse to avoid her, and she can tell, and now she's not answering my texts. I won't even bother trying to call. That's why I keep checking my phone, so, big mystery solved."

While speaking, Harley had taken out his phone and fiddled with it anxiously. Tony recognized the symptoms, and still felt woefully inadequate to handle it. He cleared his throat, eyes drawn to the kid's fidgeting hands, because that's where Harley's gaze was set too. "Not that I'm speaking from personal experience, but y'know – siblings fight. They get over it."

Harley nodded, a guarded look on his face, and put the phone away. Tony got the distinct impression that wasn't the right piece of advice. "But anyway, that's it. No great drama, just a sibling squabble. You're right, it'll pass."

And Tony didn't really know what else to say to that, so he punched Harley's shoulder in a weird show of support, and let the kid wander away to the bedroom he was sharing with Peter. Somehow, Tony was left with his brain nagging at him anyway.

"He broke into my barn and demanded a sandwich. So I guilt-tripped him into paying for my stuff for the following five years and counting," Harley was telling Peter, the next morning. Tony, who had intended to knock on the open door for their attention, paused beyond the doorway to listen instead. "How about you? I assume you met because of Spider-Man."

"Yeah, I came home one day, and he was sitting on my aunt's couch, feeding her a bunch of lies. I played along for a bit, because I was kinda star-struck, and I had this feeling that I knew why he was there. But then, he started flirting with her, so I tried to extort him. Didn't go too well, I'm still kind of star-struck."

So, these two were getting along. A little knot of apprehension Tony hadn't realized was residing in his chest dislodged itself, and gave way to a surprisingly intense feeling of satisfaction. On a surface level, whether Harley and Peter got along didn't seem, logistically, all that important – they lived in different states, and were only meeting each other now, after being in Tony's orbit for a number of years that was complicated to calculate on account of the apocalypse.

But it did matter, quite a bit, apparently. Tony was most irrational when he was in touch with his feelings, which fully justified the fact that he preferred to deal with them by other methods, such as handing over billion-dollar companies and renaming towers not after his own personal ego, but rather after a collective ego where he was visibly represented. Whatever. Again, on account of the apocalypse and their subsequent five-year misfortune, Tony was allowed to be disgustingly sentimental for a while, say, for the rest of his life.

"You know, first impressions are everything," Harley was still commenting wisely. "Those interactions directly shaped the way Tony sees us today."

"Yeah, two manipulative little monsters," Tony said, announcing his presence and sauntering into the room. They whirled around, but Tony wasn't fooled. Peter had known very well he was there. Tony was hopelessly fond of these kids. "Evil, rotten to the core. Leading Morgan astray."

Peter scoffed. "Morgan's way better at manipulating you than we ever will be."

"And we weren't even here to teach her," Harley added.

"Morgan," Tony said firmly, making an effort to really convince himself, "is a sweet little angel who does not even know the meaning of the word 'manipulation'."

"Not sure not knowing the meaning of a word is an obstacle to her of any kind, but whatever keeps you swimming in the Nile."

"Excellent use of a cheesy metaphor, Harley. Keep it up and one of these days you might figure out what the birds really did to those bees."

Harley scowled at him. "Why do I continue to voluntarily partake in your company?"

Tony ruffled his hair, further aggravating him. He had to express a little bit of affection in some way. "As a young boy – whom I gifted military-grade weaponry that one time – said to me, many years ago, it's because we're connected."

"Oh, sure," Peter instantly interjected, and Tony knew that tone of voice, Tony had practically invented that tone of voice, "Harley gets a cannon or whatever, and I get a nanny cam."

"Also the full suit that came with the cam, but let's not split hairs," Harley counter-argued.

Tony pierced them both with a glare that was definitely not a smile. "Nuh-uh, I've got your number now. Pretend to fight all you like, I'm not falling for it."

While Peter and Harley offered him calculating looks in response, Tony pretended not to see it and crossed his arms. They were both in the process of getting ready for the day; Harley had one shoe in his foot and the other in his hand, and Peter was shirtless. He also had an apple in his hand, evidently swiped from the breakfast table on his way out.

And then, while Tony was contemplating the best way to make fun of the kids for sleeping in the twin beds Tony himself had provided for them, his eyes caught on the one thing that could currently make his warm fuzzies dull a bit. Harley had quickly slid his phone out of his pocket, scanned the screen for a second, then put it away again. The kid's expression was completely neutral, but Tony wasn't stupid enough to fall for it. Right – the problem.

Tony sucked on one cheek and looked around for a more immediately solvable issue, for distraction purposes if nothing else. Peter was still naked from the waist up. Tony threw the nearest t-shirt in his direction and called it a problem solved. "Why do you keep being half-naked where people can just barge in on you?"

Peter's voice came out muffled from under the article of clothing that had landed on his face. "'S a mystery. You don't think people might just- spontaneously stop barging into my bedroom, do you?"

And then, because Tony considered himself the height of wit, he replied, "Alright, just keep your shirt on."

Harley snorted, and it didn't sound very convincing, but Peter removed the t-shirt from his face and took a particularly aggressive bite of his apple. Tony couldn't please everyone all the time, apparently. Before the kids could start on him again, he pointed an authoritative finger at Harley and let Spider-Man struggle one-handed with his clothes.

"Did you pack swim trunks?" he asked. 'Don't you want to talk about it?', he wanted to ask. "Because I refuse to take you skinny dipping and I have been told my diplomatic immunity does not extend to public decency laws."

"Diplomatic?" Harley parroted derisively, holding up his swimwear with a thumbs up. His smile was real enough.

Tony waved him off, and made the decision to obsessively worry about Harley's relationship with his sister later. He thought about his position here; Tony had asked all these people to join him for a vacation because he loved them. They were family. Family worked on each other's problems. Something – like a problem – was bothering Peter and Harley, but Tony was a problem-solver. This was just the newest thing life had thrown at him; most people wouldn't scale teenage issues to a Thanos-level priority, but Tony gave himself full authority to do so, because Tony had martyr privilege. The guy who killed Thanos got to decide these things, that's just how it worked.

With this firmly settled in his mind and a goal-oriented attitude, Tony addressed Harley's question while his mind raced in a different direction, only half-paying attention. "Diplomatic, undiplomatic, I'm sure I have both, probably. Peter, did May pack you with a spare beach towel? She seems like the type to pack you with a spare beach towel. For no reason anyone can think of, Rhodey came here without one."

Peter had an apple in his mouth and was attempting to shrug into his t-shirt at the same time. "In my bag," he managed to mumble around the fruit, pointing somewhere toward the other corner of the room. Tony rolled his eyes and briefly wondered how his life had got to this point, but followed the kid's direction.

He unzipped the suitcase, took a single look inside, and froze. His silence and general stillness seemed to concern Peter and Harley, both of whom wandered over. They saw what had given Tony pause, and then Harley started to smile like he was taking his time thinking about how best to make a mockery of the situation, while Peter immediately went as red as the apple he was still eating.

Tony opened his mouth before they had a chance to open theirs. "I work so hard to make a joke out of everything. It's so nice when plain reality lets me take it easy."

"That's Morgan's," Peter said firmly, swallowing his mouthful of apple.

"Is it?" Harley laughed. "So if we ask, she'll corroborate this story to spare you from embarrassment?"

Peter pulled a horrified expression. "No, she's a rascal."

"Alright, I'm taking Peter's doll and giving it to my daughter, because frankly, it's much more age-appropriate for her," Tony said, picking up the Black Widow stuffed toy from where it was mixed in among jeans, hoodies, and cheesy t-shirts with science puns. "And if you're the one who keeps sending Nat those creepy stalker valentines, please, Peter, we would all be so much more comfortable if you stopped."

Harley laughed harder. Peter threw a t-shirt proclaiming neutrons to be free of charge at Tony's face (Tony thought these jokes were getting lazier and lazier, but what did he know, Peter liked them), and chased him out of the room. On his way to the kitchen, Tony smiled down at the doll and realized he was a problem-solver because it wasn't fair that people were saddled with problems when they didn't deserve it. In his decidedly biased opinion, the three kids currently under his roof deserved everything in the world except anything that could put that fake smile on Harley's face.

"You found my Widow!" Morgan said when Tony handed it back to her, downstairs at the kitchen table. She was playing with her eggs rather than eating them, and Pepper threw him a pleading look, which he responded to by picking up his daughter's spoon and initiating regular mealtime theatrics.

"That is a very disturbing statement without context," Tony noted, poking her nose with the spoon until she sighed in aggravation and opened her mouth. "Why was Peter's luggage the best place for her, by the way?"

"Because I'm a rascal," she said, chewing.

Tony gave her another spoonful. "Who said that to you?"

"Aunt May."

While Morgan chewed with her nose turned firmly up, he scraped the spoon against the bottom of her bowl again. "Oh. Well, I can't get mad at Aunt May, that's not how that relationship works."

"But when she said that, she sounded like you. Like when you say Peter's a little shit."

Tony took immediate advantage of Morgan's ensuing shit-eating grin to shove the spoon in her mouth again. But it was much too late and Pepper was already glaring at him, because Morgan knew exactly what she was doing. This parenting thing was a work in progress. Good thing these kids make it so easy, he thought, as his daughter, who he loved more than anything in this world, ducked the spoon again, knocked her elbow into his hand, and sprayed the egg she was steadfastly refusing to eat all over Tony's shirt.