Harold "Happy" Hogan had been Tony Stark's personal chauffeur and bodyguard for many, many years. "Weird" was practically in the job description. He'd been asked to do many things that no normal human being would be caught dead doing. His boss was eccentric, to say the least, and Happy had it ingrained in his mind that nothing he heard coming out of Stark's mouth would surprise him.
"Do you have a minivan?"
Well.
That was certainly one for the books.
Happy had heard Ferrari and Porsche and Mustang, and even on one occasion Sea-Doo JetSki, but never once, in the history of being Tony Stark's do-boy, had he ever, ever, ever, heard the words minivan.
"What?" he asked incredulously.
"A minivan," Tony replied impatiently. "Or an SUV. Don't make me say it again. It's already left a sour taste in my mouth. Preferably one that can fit…" he paused, taking a headcount of his crew… "eleven people."
"Um… yeah," Happy said, "I can get something… something like that. Where are you?"
Tony relayed the information on the whereabouts of the Babies 'R' Us he was at.
"I'll, uh, be there in twenty," Happy said. "Sit tight."
After he hung up, Happy stood in shock for a good thirty seconds before snapping into action. Tony Stark doing away with his flashy sports cars had to mean something was up. Tony Stark requesting to be picked up in the least flashy kind of transportation available -the kind that, in fact, he cracked jokes about while driving- meant that it was detrimentally serious.
Thirty-five minutes later, Happy carefully drove his 11-seater Kia Carnival into the Babies 'R' Us parking lot and honked his horn.
"Took you long enough," Tony grumbled, coming out from the back alley near the store.
Happy didn't respond to his snarky comment, instead focusing mainly on the baby that was unmistakably Captain America in his boss' arms.
"Uh… Tony-"
"Don't," Tony interrupted snappily.
"Happy nodded in confusion as Pepper, Loki, and Peter walked over to the large car.
"Tony!" Happy was aghast.
Pepper offered the chauffeur a kind smile and bent down by the driver side window to quickly explain their predicament.
"My God," Happy muttered once she'd given him the rundown. "How does a team of literal super soldier and gods and geniuses always manage to have the worst sh*t happen to them?"
"Good question," Tony huffed. "Here, hold them for a moment." Through the car window, he passed the baby Captain America and Bucky Barnes to his friend. "Thanks. I'll quickly put in these carseats and we should be able to go."
"Do you need any help?" Peter asked.
"Kid, I can build a fully operational Iron Man suit in less than 48 hours. I think I can handle a few baby seats. Just keep the kids occupied and off the radar from passersby."
Fifteen minutes, hundreds of curses, and a couple dozen gallons of blood, sweat, and tears later, Tony Stark, the world's most renowned genius, graduate of MIT, literal rocket scientist, found himself lying across the middle seats of the super-sized Kia with an instruction manual upside down on his face.
"How the h*ll do they expect me to do this?!" he exclaimed angrily. "The instructions," he growled, waving the offending pamphlet in the air madly, "are in Russian!" Looking over at Natasha, he rolled his eyes and averted his gaze to Bucky. "Lotta help our two translators are right now."
"Aw, Tony, it can't be that hard. You're probably just overthinking it."
"Famous last words," Tony muttered sourly, as Pepper leaned over and squinted at the manual on his face.
In the end, they ended up having Peter stick the baby seats in place with his webs. It wasn't the safest option, but Tony was practically in tears from fighting with the contraptions.
"I hate to be the bearer of bad news," Loki drawled casually once all the kids were settled into their respective seats and the numerous boxes of Babies'R'Us stuff were shoved into the trunk, "but there's not enough seats for the rest of us."
"Oh, don't worry about me," Happy said, surprising himself with how lackadaisical he talked to the antihero. "I figured this would probably happen so I scheduled a ride to pick me up."
"Good man," Tony appraised, slapping him on the shoulder. "Thank you again for the help, buddy. Couldn't do it without ya."
"My pleasure," Happy said sarcastically. "Call me if you need anything else."
Tony nodded, then waved as Happy strolled over to an inconspicuously waiting car with another driver in it.
"Alrighty," Tony said, clapping his hands together. "Pep and I are up front. Lokes, you sit between Bruce and Thor. Pete, you're with Romanoff and Barton. Both of you keep an eye on the three troublemakers in the middle, got it?"
"Aye, aye, Captain," Peter said, giving him a salute. "Or… not Captain. The captain is another person. Uh… yeah. Got it, Mr. Stark!" He vaulted agilely over the other seats and settled into the very back row with Clint and Natasha.
Loki rolled his eyes and slid into the front row of seats between Thor and Bruce.
"Everyone settled in?" Tony asked, looking in the rearview mirror to check up on his passengers. Peter flashed a thumbs-up from the back, and Loki rolled his eyes again. "Lovely. Off we go."
The car ride started off as uneventful, but Tony knew it wouldn't last long. Sure enough, only three minutes down the road, Sam had found a way to undo the clasps on his carseat and was crawling into Steve's.
"Um! Mr. Stark!" Peter reached over the seats to try and grab the elusive child, but Sam wriggled out of even the sticky Spider Man's grip.
"Grab him, Pete!" Tony shouted, glancing back in the rearview again.
Peter did so, finally nabbing the child and wrestling him still. "Gotcha," he panted. "Now get back in your seat, mister-" Peter's tender lecture to Sam was cut off by him crying out in pain. Looking down at where the sudden attack had come from, he saw that Natasha had somehow unbuckled both hers and Clint's seats and stealthily rifled through Peter's slightly unzipped backpack. Unsurprisingly, Nat had gone for the small Nerf gun he'd had stashed in the front pocket from his last sleepover with Ned, and was currently chewing on the handle. The pain Peter had felt was the sharp sting of Natasha accidentally (let's be honest, it probably wasn't accidental) shooting him in the leg with a plastic Nerf pellet.
"Miss Romanoff!" Peter exclaimed, keeping the formal titles even though he was scolding her. "That's not for you! Oh d*mmit, Mr. Barton, where'd you get that?!"
"What's going on back there, kid?" Tony asked, concerned.
"Mr. Barton somehow got a bow!" Peter practically shrieked, shrinking up against the seat with Sam still in his arms.
"What!?" Tony yelled, swerving the car as he whipped around to see for himself.
"Tony! Eyes on the road!" Pepper reprimanded, leaning over and grabbing the steering wheel Tony had released.
"Sorry, sorry." He returned his hands to the wheel, but kept one eye firmly on the rear-facing mirror to monitor the kids. "Loki, please help him."
Loki twisted around to face Peter and nearly laughed aloud at the scene he saw. Barton and Romanoff had the teenager cornered in the backseat, cowering against the armrest with Sam clutched to his chest. Barton was holding the tiniest bow Loki had ever seen, and Natasha was fiddling methodically with the trigger of a Nerf gun. Poor Peter was terrified to be at the gunpoint (or, uh, arrowpoint) of two assassins, and rightly so. Loki was fairly certain that their weapons being playthings or them being babies would not stop either Barton or Romanoff from killing someone.
Loki reached over and motioned for Peter to hand him Sam. Once he did, the Asgardian stretched even further over his seat to wrangle the enthusiastic baby Falcon into the harness once more.
"Mister Loki…" Peter said cautiously. "I'm gonna web up Ms. Romanoff. Can you get Mr. Barton before he takes my eye out?"
"Yes," Loki replied, shaking his head so that his long hair was out of his eyes as he leaned over the seats. "You web her and take the gun. Barton will probably be distracted by that for a moment so I'll take the bow in his moment of hesitation and stuff him back into the seat."
"On the count of three?" Peter said. Upon seeing Loki's head nod, he began counting down. "One… two… three! Now!" Peter flicked his wrist out towards Natasha and covered the small assassin in web fluid. Loki lunged for Clint, wrenching the miniature bow out of his hands and forcefully plopping him back into the car seat he had escaped. Peter had to practically pry the Nerf gun from Nat's hand, the redheaded baby screaming as he did so.
It took the combined efforts of Loki and Peter both to stuff her back into the carseat. Loki had his arm across her chest and his knee across her legs to keep her in place, while Peter fumbled around with the harness straps. The panicked teenager had managed to snap the top clip together and was working on the three-piece triangular clasp at the bottom when Tony swerved severely to avoid hitting a driver that had cut him off, sending Peter and Loki tumbling into the side of the car. A flurry of curses spouted from Tony's, Pepper's, Peter's, and Loki's mouths. Peter and Loki both rubbed their foreheads from where they'd collided into each other during the crazy turn. Tony had rolled down his window to shout expletives out the window at the driver that'd cut him off. Pepper was twisted around backward in her seat, reaching for -and just missing- another troublemaking baby. Actually… three more troublemaking babies.
During the swerve, Steve's stomach must have gotten upset, because he'd spit up all over himself and his carseat. Bucky, having seen his best friend's distress, had ripped his seat's harness off with his vibranium arm and climbed into Steve's infant seat.
Sam, on the other hand, was laughing hysterically as Bucky cuddled up next to Steve, both of them covered in baby spitup.
Pepper, fed up with straining her back from turning around in the seat, finally unbuckled and clambered over the center console and first row of seats. Carefully, she removed Bucky from Steve's carseat and stuck him right back into his own. "Peter," she asked, addressing the teenager who was now back to struggling with Nat and her stubbornness, "can you hand me a pack of baby wipes from one of the bags?"
"Yup," Peter said, his voice slightly constricted as he shot another web at Natasha to keep her in place. "Just give me a min-" He didn't finish his sentence, however, because at that moment, Tony slammed on the brakes and they screeched to a halt, narrowly avoiding being hit by an oncoming semi truck. The sudden jolting stop sent them all flying again. This time, Pepper tumbled backwards over the middle row of seats, landing in a highly uncomfortable position on the ground near Thor. Peter, startled by the stop, had jumped so high that he stuck to the roof of the car. Loki had hit his head again, against the window.
Following the painful stop, everyone (not just the babies) was shouting and/or crying.
"TONY!" Pepper yelled from her twisted position on the carpeted floor. "What the h*ll?!"
"IT'S NEW YORK TRAFFIC!" Tony shouted back defensively.
Steve wailed.
Bucky wailed.
Thor shouted (with glee or with sadness, it is uncertain) and whacked Mijölnir against the car door.
Tony's phone rang.
Sam giggled.
Natasha screeched.
Clint wailed.
Bruce wailed.
Tony's phone kept ringing.
Pepper massaged her cricked neck.
Loki muttered sourly under his breath.
Peter stayed stuck to the ceiling.
Tony's phone rang again.
Pepper slowly sat up and caught a glance at Bruce.
This led to yet another barrage of activity and chaos.
"CODE GREEN!" she shouted, lunging towards Banner and momentarily forgetting about her pain.
"WHAT?!" Tony spun around and saw that indeed, Bruce was rapidly getting greener and greener around the gills. "PETE!"
"WHAT?" Peter asked panickedly from the roof.
"CAN YOU DRIVE?"
"WHAT?!"
"DRIVE!" Tony repeated. "CAN YOU DO IT?"
"NOT WELL!"
"TIME TO LEARN!" In one swift motion, the genius had unbuckled his seatbelt, turned on cruise control, and frantically tripped over the seats to where Pepper and Banner were.
Peter scurried across the roof and dropped down into the driver's seat. Luckily, they'd been stopped at a red light when it had happened, or they probably would've never walked away.
Trembling, Peter tried to remember what his Driver's Ed teacher had taught him and positioned his hands at what he assumed to be 10 & 2. "F.R.I.D.A.Y," he said, addressing the AI he knew was listening, "if I don't make it out of this car alive, please tell Aunt May to donate everything except my Lego sets to charity. Give the Legos to Ned."
"Of course, Mister Parker," the AI responded, perfectly calm despite the hellish chaos ensuing all around her.
"Come on, Banner," Tony muttered from behind the driver's seat, facing Bruce and trying to stay standing up as the car rumbled down the highway. "Calm down, buddy. Calm down. It's okay. Come on…"
Banner hiccuped and quieted a bit down, but when Tony's phone started ringing loudly yet again, the baby just sobbed louder, clenching his fists as they shifted from his usual tan to a bright green.
"D*mn it," Tony growled in frustration, ripping the cell from his back pocket and checking the caller ID. "Sh*t, it's Fury. I forgot he was supposed to come by today."
"Don't answer it," Peter suggested from the driver's chair, his eyes glued to the road. "Won't it go to voicemail?"
"Yes, and it will also royally p*ss off Nick Fury. No thank you, I've already got enough stress for one day." Tony turned back to Bruce and tried a different tactic: speaking in a higher-pitched baby voice. "Hey, hey, Brucie, it's alright."
At the sound of his demeaning tone, Bruce kicked his feet out and nailed Tony right between the legs.
After shouting at least sixteen cusses (five of which even Peter's high school-trained mind and Loki's allspeak had never heard before), Tony fell to the floor of the car and curled up into the fetal position.
Loki, in the back, winced with understanding. Peter cringed as he glanced back in the rearview, and even Pepper inhaled sharply watching her fiancé in pain.
Loki, taking pity on Tony's state, reached over the seats and grabbed his fallen phone. He also put his hand on the top of Bruce's small head. From his fingertips, a bit of green light shone, and calmed Bruce down. Loki swiped up on the screen, accepting Fury's call.
"Stark!" The director sounded highly annoyed.
"Yes, Fury?" Loki asked in a shockingly accurate imitation of Tony's voice.
"Wanna tell me why the h*ll I've been calling Captain Rogers, Agent Romanoff, Barton, and Doctor Banner for an hour at the compound and no one has answered?"
"Uh," Loki hesitated, "they're out on a small mission at the moment."
"As the director of the organization that virtually controls and monitors your actions," Fury began angrily, "how many times have I told you, you need to run these things by me?"
"I'm sure many times," Loki drawled, a bit of his own accent seeping through into his otherwise spot-on Tony impression. "But I've never actually had the energy to listen to your full lectures."
"Stark, what's going on? Your voice is all garbled. I'd say our connection is sh*tty but you have the best internet access in America."
With a huff from the Asgardian, another green shimmer of light sparkled around Loki's head, magically magnifying his voice to Stark's loud, boisterous articulation. "Well, what can I say, Nick, I'm recovering from a cold. Though I make it quite hard to believe with my constant demeanor, I'm actually not perfect. Imagine that."
"I swear, if you can't manage to keep the sarcasm down for one d*mn minute…"
Loki looked exhausted from using his powers so much in one day, but his voice illusion seemed to do the trick. So too was the calming spell he'd cast on Bruce to keep his green friend subdued.
That is, until Clint sneezed and startled Bruce so bad he leapt out of his carseat in a flurry of green skin and high-pitched growling.
Peter shrieked from the driver's seat, seriously considering slamming his foot on the pedal and breaking every traffic law known to man in order to get them home.
"Stark!" Fury's voice shouted from the phone's speaker. "What in the name of God was that?!"
"Nothing to worry about!" Pepper shouted, taking the phone from Loki, who was grasping madly for Bruce. "Sorry, Fury, we're going to have to call you back!" She jabbed her finger at the end call button and dropped the phone to the ground.
Bruce, in all of his terrible twos hulkishness, leapt from seat to seat, growling at each of them in turn.
"FRIDAY, HOW MUCH FURTHER TIL WE'RE AT MR. STARK'S HOUSE?!" Peter asked, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
"Approximately 10 minutes," F.R.I.D.A.Y. replied calmly, to which Peter screamed something indiscernible and slammed his head against the dashboard.
The four-foot-tall Hulk launched himself at Loki, who barely managed to secure his grip on the monstrous toddler before he shot himself towards Pepper.
The constant chaos led to a flurry of agitated shouting, with no one really aware of who was yelling what.
"CATCH HIM!"
"I'M TRYING!"
"OBVIOUSLY NOT HARD ENOUGH!"
"STARK, WHAT IS GOING ON?!"
"SH*T, I DIDN'T HANG UP ON FURY!"
"WHY THE H*LL NOT?"
"NOW'S NOT THE TIME FOR THIS!"
"LIKE H*LL IT ISN'T, I JUST GOT KICKED IN THE CROTCH AND I'M IN A BAD MOOD!"
"MISTER STARK WHERE'S THE FREAKIN' TURN SIGNAL?"
"NEXT TO THE WINDSHIELD WIPERS, PROBABLY!"
"I GOT HIM! LOKI, USE THAT CALMING SPELL AGAIN!"
"I DON'T KNOW IF I HAVE ENOUGH ENERGY FOR THAT, STARK!"
"TRY!"
"STARK! I DON'T KNOW IF YOU'RE TRYING TO BE FUNNY, BUT I'M SURE AS H*LL NOT AMUSED!"
"I JUST REMEMBERED THAT IF I GET ARRESTED FOR GOING SIXTY IN A FORTY-FIVE, I DON'T HAVE MY PERMIT WITH ME!"
"HAND ME THE D*MN PHONE SO I CAN HANG UP!"
"IT FELL UNDER THE SEAT!"
"IS NOW A BAD TIME TO MENTION I GET CAR SICK?"
"I GOT THE PHONE, NOW GET BRUCE TO CALM THE H*LL DOWN!"
"STARK, I SWEAR IF YOU HANG UP THIS CALL, YOU'RE ON S.H.I.E.L.D. PROBATION, YOU MOTHERF-"
"HE'S CALMED DOWN!"
"PETE, FLOOR IT!"
Panting and sweating, the three adults in the back slumped down onto the ground, squished between the seats. Loki had a now-pacified Bruce Banner in his arms, a shimmery green aura around the snoozing baby. Pepper was clutching Tony's cell phone in her hand, her finger still resting on the screen where she'd hung up on Fury. Tony himself was still in pain, wincing everytime he moved his legs. Poor Peter, up in the driver's seat, was crying from the stress of it all, his watering eyes fixed madly on the road in front of him.
Surprisingly, the kids were all extremely well-behaved for the rest of the ride to the Stark residence. When Peter finally pulled up to the gate and steered the large car onto the gravel driveway, the adults began unbuckling all of the babies from their car seats.
"That…" Peter said, his face a sunken mess of leftover anxiety and fear, "was… I don't even know how to describe it."
The four of them, each carrying an armful of babies and/or Babies 'R' Us bags, climbed up the stairs and dropped all of their new merchandise in the living room.
"I sure know how to explain it," Tom grumbled, setting Steve down on the couch.
"Me too," Loki agreed.
The two of them looked at each other and simultaneously deadpanned an identical response: "A huge f*cking mess."