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“Sorry, say that again?” said an unimpressed-looking Darcy.
Steve and Tony looked at each other.
“I didn’t really think it made a lot of sense, either,” Steve admitted.
“Damn. Straight.” Agreed Tony, which sent Clint into another fit of laughter. Tony turned and glared at the archer, whose hands remained steady despite everything as they filmed the encounter. Damn snipers. Beside him, Wanda watched with her head half-cocked to the side, staring like she was at a zoo for the very first time.
“Dada,” said the toddler (a tow-headed creature of reaching up toward Steve’s hand. He bent down to meet the child, who solemnly placed a half-eaten animal cracker into his hand and looked expectantly up at him.
He looked down at the soggy cracker, then at Tony, who grimaced and held up his hands. “She gave it to you,” said the older man.
Steve popped it into his mouth. “Yum. Thank you, sweetie,” he said awkwardly.
Darcy looked at Clint, who was typing into the phone without moving it from filming position.
“So you think that this is your kid. Both of your kid.”
“I mean, in the pictures the characters who end up together do usually start out hating each other,” Steve added.
“Pepper has always been too good for me,” Tony said mournfully. He’d been bouncing back and forth from needing to invent a dozen new ways to protect his girlfriend, from being convinced that she was involved in this future three-way relationship, to pre-mourning her inevitable dumping.
“All because the kid call you both dada?”
“Well, yeah,” Tony said. “It’s not like it’s rocket science. And even if it was-”
“Hey, kiddo,” Darcy said, kneeling down to the child’s level. She held up her phone, bright colours on the screen.
“Coco!” the child squealed happily, crossing the few steps to the woman and reaching happily for the phone. Darcy held it out of reach. “Mama!” she shrieked in frustration. “Coco!”
“You’re buying me a new one,” Darcy told Tony as she handed the phone over, a video playing.
“But-” Tony stopped as the phone crashed to the ground. It continued piping out what could generously be called music.
“Darc,” Steve breathed out in wonder. “I – I never would’ve-”
“Oh my God,” she snapped in irritation.
“I did try to tell them, before I started filming for Sam and Bucky,” Clint interjected. The new partners had been on a mission on the other side of the country and hadn’t made it in time for the latest attack on New York.
“It’s super normal for kids this age to call everyone ‘mama’ and ‘dada’,” Darcy snapped. “You kidnapped a random toddler from the scene of a Doombot attack, you morons!”
“The cops found the dad twenty minutes ago,” Wanda added, holding up her own phone. “He doesn’t understand why the Avengers still have his daughter, but he was very relieved that she was safe.”
Steve and Tony avoided looking at each other or the child, who had interrupted a huge post-Doombot fight-fight between the still-feuding leaders of the Avengers.
“Nat!” Tony whined.
“Why would I know anything about children? Choose your next words very carefully.” She leaned on the counter. She had carefully kept a large piece of furniture between her and the toddler since Tony had brought them all back to Avengers tower to sort this out, eyeing her warily as though she could explode or poison via touch.
“Bruce would’ve told me,” he muttered resentfully. Bruce was still sleeping off the Hulk transformation.
“How did you know?” Natasha asked Darcy.
“I used to babysit, like many normal teenagers.”
Natasha flipped a hand, as if to say “oh, that”.
“Bucky and Sam know about this?” Steve asked weakly. He was never going to live this down. Initially he’d been grateful when his two best friends finally started bonding. But then they’d started comparing notes about him and now-
“Oh yeah. Say hi, Cap,” Clint said.
“Fuck,” Steve ground out.
“Language!” Tony said automatically. He glanced down at the kid. “For real, language!”
Steve face-palmed.