Dang, somehow I churned a whole chapter out after work (though today was at home so no commute). I haven't been able to churn out chapters in a day since student teaching two years ago... so I'm sure the trend won't continue.
Harry seems to have forgiven James for implementing time-out, but still, part of James feels guilty. He'd witnessed the Dursleys give Harry time-out in the cupboard.
The bedrooms in the tower are, if possible, even more grandiose than the bedrooms at Xavier's Institute or Stark's mansion in Malibu. James does not remember any of the Brooklyn apartments that Bucky had lived in, but Steve had commented that bedrooms now are bigger than entire apartments they'd lived in before.
Rich people bedrooms, anyway. Bucky notes. The smaller buildings visible from the window clearly have smaller apartments, many of which are likely the dimensions Steve described. We're in the lap of luxury.
Keeping Harry safe had already been a full-time mission, but Harry's making it harder, and James doubts that time-out will magically fix the issue.
He glances at Steve, who had spent a lot of time out sick and would be back to scrapping in alleys as soon as he was well enough to go out again. Harry has the same stubborn streak as Steve.
James half expects he'll be dragging Harry out of fights his whole life, just as Bucky had with Steve.
For now, though, Harry asks to play Wii.
THE WII HAS BOXING,
The Wii might not be the best choice if he's trying to convince Harry to stay out of fights. James wonders if he should confiscate the Wii remote. Harry had tried to use it as a weaponized wand twice, on both Barton and Loki.
Would Barton suggest confiscating it like Harry's motorbroom?
Before James can ask, Jarvis shares that too much screen time is not healthy for development, and Harry has already played the limit recommended by doctors.
Harry asks if he's in trouble, and clearly doesn't get why doctors would say it's bad. "Can I ring Doctor Beast?"
Beast confirms that Harry should play with something that doesn't involve screens. Harry huffs about doctors being no fun, making him stay in bed and not play.
"There are plenty of things to do, Master Harry." Jarvis suggests finding a book to have read to him, drawing Harry's attention to the children's books on the shelves.
Instead, Harry pulls thick books off the shelves, staggering under the weight of a large stack. He's determined to carry it, proudly proclaiming himself strong, but accidentally dumps the pile on the floor.
Rather than picking it up, Harry waves the Wii wand at the stack. "I'm going to lift them like Miss Jean!"
The books levitate, neatly stacking themselves and floating to Harry's arms. Harry gasps, dropping the Wii Wand on the floor. "Did you see me? Did you see?!"
He's so excited that he almost drops the stack again. James notices Loki smirking faintly, having made a quick gesture with his hand as the books stacked themselves.
"Do you Midgardians encourage boys to pursue scholarly activities?" Loki shoots a scathing, pointed look at Thor.
"We do here," Stark replies easily. "I made being a nerd cool."
Thor beams at his brother. "He is indeed much like you."
Something almost like approval flashes over Loki's face as he watches Harry. James isn't sure he likes the thought of Harry being like a younger Loki.
Harry frowns as he deposits the stack of books on the floor, careful to keep them balanced. Rather than opening any of them, he runs back to the shelf for more. He keeps stacking them rather than reading them.
Loki levitates a few more, but Harry soon realizes who is really doing the magic. He takes those books off the tower and insists on doing it himself.
By now, the tower is as tall as Harry. He throws books up in the air, clearly hoping they'll settle on the top. He almost knocks the whole tower down, but it's held up by an invisible force that seems to actually be Harry's doing rather than Loki's.
Professor X tells Harry that he must treat books better, and Loki clearly agrees. The books float gently to the ground.
"Okay, Grandpa'fessor," Harry dutifully hands books to James, who places them atop the tower.
When they're done, Harry takes all the credit.
"I made our tower!" Harry points proudly to the precarious stack that really should have fallen over. Harry pokes his finger against individual books. "Here's the car floor, and here's the gym. This is the time-out for bad guys floor."
Harry pauses to stare at Loki, then stretches in an attempt to reach the top. "And when everyone's good, they go all the way up here!"
Moments after admiring his creation, Harry abruptly demolishes it. The toppled books spill across the floor.
"Gentle," Professor X admonishes.
"The monsters killed it!" Harry shouts at the top of his lungs.
Stark eyes the mess of books. "I hope that's not what happens to this tower,"
Harry swings his Wii wand wildly, battling invisible foes.
James sighs heavily. Had the whole talk of being something other than a hero gone in one ear and out the other? James thought he was the one with a bad memory.
Then again, as Barton had said, Harry's surrounded by heroes and is obviously trying to impress them.
Loki snaps his fingers, and the scattered books immediately fly back to their places on the shelves, lining themselves up neatly.
Stark makes a nonsensical remark about a spoonful of sugar helping the ingestion of medication.
Harry doesn't pause his pretend battle as he protests "I'm not sick!"
Stark laughs and mentions Mary Poppins, though the name appears to be as meaningless to Loki and Thor as it is to Steve, Harry and James.
Harry climbs onto the couch, ready to leap off. Barton swoops in at about the same time as James. Even so, Barton doesn't turn his back to Loki for an instant.
James glances at Barton. Barton isn't a handler, but still seems to know how to implement discipline.
James is frozen, unsure what to do. The amount of power he has over Harry makes him dizzy. Harry unknowingly had even more power over the Soldier and never abused it. James doesn't want to abuse his power here, but it's all he knows. He doesn't know how to have this much authority, after a lifetime of having none.
Even if Harry can argue and whine in ways the Soldier couldn't, it feels like too much.
The thought of punishing Harry still makes James uneasy, remembering his own punishments in the hands of HYDRA, but he'd seen firsthand that being too lenient creates pint-sized delinquents like the Dursley boy.
Steve's ma wasn't lenient, and he was still a pint-sized punk.
James ignores Bucky.
Should he send Harry to time-out again? Can there be too much time-out?
"I think you need an even better fortress than a tower," Barton says, and Stark tells Barton, indignantly but without any heat, to get out of the tower if he can't properly appreciate it.
Barton huffs with a small smile. "You ever make a blanket fort, kid?"
"Like a bed?" Harry asks, skeptically.
"Not quite," Barton then tells Harry he has a super special mission for him, and sends Harry to gather all the blankets and pillows from the bedroom.
When Harry's off on his mission, Fury and Coulson question Loki about the Chitauri, clearly believing they'll bring ruin to New York as Harry had to the book tower. It is a more intense interrogation than the questioning James had undergone as Batman when Romanoff and Coulson invaded Stark's workshop in Malibu.
Minutes into the interrogation, a high shout comes from the bedroom. "Dad, help! Logan!"
James almost slams the door off the hinges in his haste to get to Harry. He envisions agents dropping from the vents or smashing through the window as several thuds come from the bedroom.
Bursting in, he finds Harry on the floor with the king size sheet wrapped around him like a mummy's bandages. Harry's trying to roll out of it, but entangling himself more, kicking the nightstand as he squirms.
Logan arrives at James's heels, and Harry shouts from his coccoon. His voice is muffled, and even with enhanced hearing, James can't tell if he says get me out or cut me out.
There is no snikt of Logan's claws. James kneels down to unwrap the sheet from around his son.
"It won't make a good fort in ribbons," he says.
Once Harry's been extracted from the still-intact sheets, he insists on dragging them himself, even though they're four times his total size.
Harry manages to haul the sheets out on his own, but they keep falling to the floor when he tries to prop one end over the sofa.
James helps Harry secure the blanket over the couch, then stretch it in an incline to the floor.
During the process, Harry interrupts the interrogation to ask his own questions. After spending time around Moody, Harry is completely unfazed by Fury's glare.
Harry asks if Thor ate all the food, gesturing between Loki's slender body and Thor's bulkier frame. Thor's barely admitted that he enjoys feasts tremendously before Harry's rattling off more questions, mostly about magic.
"Can you make things fly? Can you make me fly?"
"No flying," James reminds him.
"I'm not on my broom!" Harry says. Loki smirks and James shakes his head, giving Loki more of a warning look than Harry.
"No flying," James repeats, sternly. Harry humphs, but soon returns to working on his fort.
By the time the fort is finished, Steve is leading the planning session on how to hold off the army. It sounds as if prevention is no longer a possibility. There will be a fight.
Loki offers his own strategies, which Fury is clearly torn between accepting as inside intel or viewing as an attempt at sabotage.
BE MISSION READY, the voice commands. The Soldier usually hadn't been privy to the planning sessions, merely thawed to receive orders and be sent out, but it still feels as if James supposed to be preparing for an op.
James reminds himself that the mission is to protect Harry, who has climbed into the blanket fort. James does not like the idea of going under the blanket, of not having visuals of his surroundings when there are agents and former enemies present.
"Dad! Come see my cozy cupboard!" Harry calls from under the blanket, far calmer than he'd been before.
James frowns at his son's choice of words. It would be as if James built himself another cryogenic chamber, or languished on the armchairs that he still cannot bring himself to sit on, no matter how superficial their resemblance to The Chair is.
Taking a breath and trusting Jarvis, Stark or Logan to alert him to any threats, James ducks under the blanket fort. It's smaller than the cupboard, but Harry seems far from bothered. He's sprawled over the pillows, stroking the fabric walls.
"I'm going to live in here forever," Harry smiles, but James's frown doesn't lift. The blanket walls are not opaque, he can see see his surroundings outside the fort, but the feeling of leaving himself vulnerable doesn't leave.
How does this not feel like a punishment to Harry? Why had he protested staying in a large bedroom with a city view, and is now reverting to shutting himself in tight places?
"You won't be able to see all your family in here," James points out. The fort's barely big enough for him and Harry, let alone their large family they've built for themselves.
Harry sits up, considering, then wriggles out of his fort. James ducks out, too, relieved to leave.
Harry runs into the kitchen, and returns with an armful of food. Stark makes no comment.
As Harry slips back into his fort, he shouts, "Come in! It's big enough! I love magic!"
James ducks under, figuring the fort seems bigger without him in there. The fort is much, much more spacious than it should be. It appears to be a whole suite now, with sprawling rooms and lots of lighting. The pillows have been replaced with actual furniture.
James isn't sure Harry needs his own penthouse in the middle of Stark's.
Stark pokes his head in next, his eyes widening as he starts talking about all the laws of physics that are being broken. James is sure Stark will be interrogating Loki next.
Harry jumps on the sofa, delightedly proclaiming that they can do that in his cozy cupboard.
"This isn't a cupboard," James tells him.
Other members trickle in, but some seem wary to leave Loki out of their sight, despite the slight transparency of the blanket walls remaining.
Harry takes his duties as host seriously. He leads his guests the kitchen, which has far more food than the things he'd smuggled in. Nobody seems particularly willing to eat it, unwilling to trust magic food. Romanoff eyes the expanded walls as if they'll suddenly begin shrinking until they're all squeezed into one blanket.
"You allow smoking here?" Logan asks.
Jarvis interrupts to insist that smoking only take place on the balconies, citing the dangers of secondhand smoke inhalation for non-enhanced individuals, especially children.
Outside the fort, Steve has suited up in his Captain America suit, and tells Logan it's time to don his suit. James sees Loki's clothes suddenly change, magically, no doubt.
Steve pokes his head in to eye James. They're both silent, leaving much unsaid. Steve is likely thinking of past battles he fought with Bucky. He opens his mouth, but Stark brushes past and holds something metal out to James.
"You already have a kick ass prosthesis, but I know you rival Legolas over there. And I stopped making weapons, so no rifles."
James takes it, and the thing wraps around his prosthetic hand, an extra layer of metal over metal.
It's a gauntlet, modeled after the ones on the Iron Man suits. It shines the same silver as his arm, but there's a thin, red lightning bolt on one of the fingertip.
James is silent. He's a sniper, of course, was in both his lifetimes. He doesn't want to fight, but having the ability to shoot down enemies from a distance before they get to Harry means more than he can say.
"I'd say try it out, but you'll wreck Harry's place. It'll work, guaranteed." Stark claps James on his metal shoulder and saunters back out to put on his Iron Man suit.
Harry slips out of the fort to watch, in awe, as the X-Men, the Avengers, Thor and Loki stride across the penthouse in their costumes and armor. Harry bites his lip, clearly wanting to ask about his Robin suit but remembering what he was told.
"The fort is fireproof," Loki tells him.
"So's the tower." Stark shoots back, then he takes off. Thor flies with his hammer, and Storm follows suit.
Loki simply vanishes, much to Fury's fury.
Barton perches on the penthouse balcony, readying an arrow. Romanoff, Logan and Steve head into the elevator, leaving Fury, Coulson, Professor X, Harry and James in Stark's penthouse.
James keeps his eyes peeled on the skyline. Lightning fills the sky, and he's not sure if it's Storm or Thor calling it. Harry joins him at the window, but grows restless soon. He heads back to his fort, saying "I'm going to build a fort in my fort."
Another slice-of-life chapter but it was so fun to write. I thought of blanket forts after yesterday's chapter, and then thought of those magic tents in Goblet of Fire.
I'm really indecisive on if James should fight in the New York battle. I mean, it'd help with his red in his ledger, and he did in Infinity War. Plus it'd be totally badass. But he didn't really want to fight in the movies either. Plus the Avengers have even more allies here and Loki's probably not a problem, so it's not like they really need him.
I hope you enjoyed the fluff I churned out.