Cockaigne: An imaginary land of luxury and idleness.
Tony loves Emily, really, truly he does. But my God, he has nearly forgotten what lying in past five-thirty feels like. Emily has an internal circadian rhythm like a Japanese bullet train, and every morning, precisely at 5:28 and 39 seconds, she wakes up with a shrill scream that has Pepper burying her head under her pillow and kicking Tony in the ribs to go and attend to their daughter's needs.
"Christ, kid," he murmurs as he picks her up and presses a kiss to her head, where dark curls have just started to make their wispy appearance. "What do you say about letting Daddy and Mommy have a little lie in every once in a while, hm?" She stares up at him with indignant dark eyes, as if this were completely out of the question, and who did he think he was to even dare to ask?
He feeds Emily her morning bottle, watches the sun rising over the skyscrapers of Manhattan as he burps her, and settles her back into her crib just as she is starting to yawn again, her little mouth open in a perfect pink oval. He watches her sleeping for a few moments before he tumbles back into bed next to Pepper, who is already fast asleep again.
He drifts into dreams of waking up at nine-thirty, of rolling around in a giant mattress made of fluff and marshmallow, and is jolted rudely awake as Pepper punches him in the shoulder at precisely 6:07 and tells him that he is gnawing at the pillow again.