It is my duty to tell you that I will have drastically less time for updates from now on. As a result, I've finished a bunch of WIP:s in preparation and have made a schedule. I might yet get sudden update ideas and especially in some stories add bonus chapters randomly, but otherwise the stories get their own dates every month to make sure they're not neglected. This story will be updated on the seventh, as a rule. (Variations may occur.)

I know the passing of time is a tad confusing in this story, but trust me, it is marching on. We will notice that it has once Pepper has her baby, though quite a few things will happen before then!

I am not Marvel and I do not mean to infringe on their stuff.

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The press was tittering in excitement for themselves over in their corner. It was not unusual to see Tony Stark at a classic car auction (even though he owned some of the most impressive specimens already) but he always made for the very best stories to write about, quite regardless of what he was doing.

To be Tony Stark, though, he wasn't being very loud today; not in personality, dress nor in sheer volume. He was in the company of a seemingly greatly intrigued James Barnes, a thoroughly bored James Rhodes, and a secretary with a braid and one plastered hand, seated between them. At first, the press had wondered if she was the great man's date; but she had to be there simply to keep track of ownership papers or something, because there was no way, no way, that he'd go for such a sweet, discrete-looking woman.

It seemed everyone had forgotten about how he had dated his CEO for about two years, practically right away. Maybe they thought it was just an extended bout of temporary insanity. On both their parts. They weren't necessarily wrong.

Two auctions later at the week-long car event, and the press was as bored as James Rhodes, who at that point had seemingly made up an excuse to go back to work and had left, leaving the car-enthusiasts to it and fleeing. Normally by now, Tony Stark would have seduced at least three models and caused a handful of scandals, but instead he sat in his designer jeans and red leather jacket with gold details (in a boring mood or not, he was still Tony Stark after all) and chatted with his two remaining companions.

The lack of fashion interest aside (Barnes was also wearing jeans and a leather jacket - black in his case - and the now widely smiling girl was wearing darker jeans than the two men and a supremely pale, fitted leather jacket which subtly looked as designed as Stark's) there was also a decided lack of other interesting happenings. There were no models, no shouting, and no one was in the least bit drunk. Every single member of the press felt the urge to shout, "Who are you and what have you done to Tony Stark?!" but this far, they had all restrained themselves.

Stark had been seen chatting to a representative of Maclaren, and he'd bought the wonderful record state Austin Healy everybody was talking about, but beyond ooo-ing about the cost of that - it wasn't even a record sale! - he wasn't doing one, single, interesting thing. A few seasoned, patient journalists were simply biding their time, still watching as eagerly: they knew that lions don't change their spots, and being Tony Stark, he'd do something exceptionally gossip-worthy sooner or later. Being Tony Stark, that was of course also exactly what he did.

This auction - featuring very old but not especially exciting cars - was going onwards peacefully, Tony Stark assumedly there because of a genuine passion for engineering, even though no one expected him to bid on anything. Unless maybe if he needed vintage parts or something.

What no one at all expected, was for him to bid on an old three-wheeled Isetta Bubble car. That was odd enough - it wasn't exactly exciting, fast or glamorous - but when he wrote a check for it and then refused the keys, instead referencing the girl - not unusual in itself - and she took them with a beaming smile and kissed him on the cheek; then jaws started to drop, as it was suddenly clear that the car was a gift.

Who was she and why did Stark suddenly - now that they finally noted her - look at her with such adoration? Then, with extraordinary timing in the silence of shock, several dozen people were close enough to hear her happy, "Thank you, dad," and the presses almost literally hit the ceiling.

Tony Stark being referred to as "daddy," had happened before - though only once by each girl, to the point where journalists speculated that the title, however jokingly applied, freaked Stark out at least a little when coming from a partner (some might say he couldn't be blamed) - but dad? This was an entirely new scandal, in the exciting ongoing epos of Tony Stark.

Everybody, absolutely everybody, were gutted that before they could publish this scoop, Stark's official twitter had posted a picture of Tony and the car, announcing, "Bought a car for my goddaughter. What have I done wrong for her to want this instead of a nice Koenigsegg?!"

Smart as that tweet was of Claire after publicly slipping and calling Tony dad - the caring father she'd never gotten to have (until now, anyway) - the speculation didn't die down for days. Tony loved it.

No matter how much Tony claimed it was because he loved to mess with the press, Bucky's super hearing had picked up on the answering, "You're welcome, daughter," as much as Claire's ears had. Neither one of them told the rest of the team, but then again - they did not strictly need to.

Actually, leopards do change their spots - they grow different and further apart as they grow up - but lions have spots where their whiskers are, and those don't change!

And I don't care what you say, calling a sexual partner "daddy" is freaking creepy as hell!

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