The clock was hitting five in the afternoon, meaning Jarvis opened the front door of the Stark mansion and waited for six year old Tony to be dropped off by his driver. The boy was in 4th grade, and the school year had just started.
When his boss' son stepped out of the Mercedes Limousine though, Jarvis realized something was wrong. Usually, Tony ran straight into the house to play or screw open old computers or do calculus for fun or whatever, but today he walked slowly, not even smiling at the butler.
Then he saw it. The billionaire's son had a very obvious wet stain across the crotch of the grey pants of his school uniform. He walked up to the front door and Jarvis asked him straight away what had happened, but Tony just shrugged his shoulders and walked inside.
Jarvis helped the boy take off his jacket and shoes, then said: "Come on, let's get you cleaned up." They left Tony's backpack in the entry area and the boy took Jarvis' hand to lead him upstairs.
On their way to Tony's room and adjacent bathroom, they had to pass Howard's office, which they did quietly to not disturb the man. But that day, Howard called for Tony before they were safe in his room. "Anthony?"
"Yes, daddy?"
"Can you come in here for a second?"
Tony looked at Jarvis unsure, but the man just shrugged because he didn't know what else to do either. So Tony peeked his head through his father's office's door. "Hi dad," Tony said. His father was sitting at the huge desk, head over some plans for a new attraction at the next Stark expo.
"How was your day?" Howard didn't even look up from the plans.
Tony didn't know what to say. Terrible, horrendous, the worst he'd ever had.
"How was your day?" Howard repeated and looked up.
His son shrugged in response. "I don't know."
"You don't know? Get in here." Tony stood still. His father hadn't been in the best mood lately, and a pair of wet pants would surely not make that any better. "Come on, get in here."
So Tony dedicated himself to his fate and entered the office. Luckily, his father didn't look up until he stood at the opposite of the table.
"Look, this is the future." Tony looked at the plans, understanding only bits of it but he was still fascinated. When he would be big, he wanted to be an inventor, just like his dad. "What smells so bad in here?"
Tony looked at his trembling hands and Howard got up, walking around the table before his son could do anything about it. He grabbed the boy's tiny wrists. "What happened?" His father asked him as insensitive as one could.
Anthony was a small kid. He was extremely skinny, and only about 3 feet tall. The children in his 4th grade class took advantage of that pretty much every day, but that day had been the worst they'd done so far. "Derek and the other boys blocked all the stalls." Tony's eyes were tearing up for several reasons: The sheer embarrassment he had suffered at school, his dad's strong grip on his already bruised wrists and having to tell someone he looked up to what had happened.
"Why don't you ever stand up for yourself?" Tony and Jarvis had given up on explaining to Howard that being six years old and bullied by at least nine 10-year-olds left not much room to stand up for oneself.
"I don't know, I'm sorry, sir."
Howard sighed. "It's alright. Now go and get cleaned up." Howard pressed a forced kiss to the forehead of his 6-year-old. He knew he'd been rough on the boy recently, even for his own conditions, and things like that just happened in elementary school.
Tony entered his room with tears streaming down his face. Jarvis had already run him a bath and helped Tony wash himself off. He didn't attempt to comfort the boy before getting him in the tub, so Tony was crying silently throughout the course of his bath.
"Do you want to tell me what happened?" Jarvis said when he walked over to the laundry chute. He grabbed a bottle of shampoo and came back.
While he was rubbing the shampoo on the boy's head, Tony spoke up and told him about his terrible day. About how he'd asked for a hall pass during the last period and hadn't got it. About how he'd seen his bullies start to whisper, and how they'd outrun him on the way to the bathroom. By the end, the boy was sobbing.
Jarvis got him out of the tub then, dried him and his hair off with a towel and then put a poncho towel on him, Mickey Mouse themed and it even had ears on the hood. Then the man finally picked Tony up, cradling him in his arms and holding him very close.
"It's okay. It happens." Tony held on tight to Jarvis.
Jarvis knew for a fact that Tony couldn't physically calm down unless he was held and comforted by an adult, and he thought that was quite alright. He had only just turned six a few days ago, and although genius, he was just a child.
The doorbell rang just then, and Jarvis took Tony downstairs with him. He opened the big oak door to find a young boy with blond hair waiting in front of it. He was wearing jeans and a brown leather jacket, and carried a backpack.
"You must be Steve," Jarvis said.
"Yes that's right."
Steve was 12 years old, and Jarvis had asked him, upon a teacher's recommendation, to tutor Tony in languages. Despite having only just started at an actual school, the boy was learning two new languages, and limping behind the children of his class. In addition to that, if Tony would start to take a liking in Steve, the 12-year-old would soon be some sort of a babysitter to him. Jarvis' wife was about to give birth, and he would have to be able to take some evenings off as well. Tony had agreed to that after throwing a mini tantrum.
"Alright come on in then," Jarvis said and closed the door behind Steve. "I'm Edwin and this is Tony." He put Tony down, who turned around to shake Steve's hand with his right hand. The index finger of his left hand was scrunched between his teeth, like he tended to do when he was upset.
"Hi Tony, nice to meet you."
" Naiff to meet you too." Steve laughed in response to Tony's mumbling.
Then Jarvis spoke up. "You know what Tony? Why don't you show Steve where you usually do your homework and I'll go and get some clean clothes for you." Tony nodded. He knew being upset was okay for as long as he needed to. And the shorter the better, especially if there were guests.
The 6-year-old took Steve's hand and led him to the living room, where he usually kneeled at the table to do homework. They both placed themselves at the couch table. "So why did you take a bath in the middle of the day?"
Tony shrugged. "I got all dirty at school."
"Is that why you were crying?"
"I wasn't." Tony was a very felicitous child, and usually won arguments with anyone but his father.
"Your face is all wet," Steve stated, and the boy quickly wiped the reminder of tears off his face.
"So are you good at languages n stuff?"
"Yeah, sort of." In fact, Steve was fluent in 3 languages: Spanish, French and, obviously, English.
"Cool, I suck at those." That was not especially true. Tony averaged at about 90% in all languages, yet that involved a ton of work every day and Howard actually expected a lot more from Tony. So Jarvis had asked Howard whether it would be okay to hire a tutor, and surprisingly, the man had sad yes. "I'm good at science.
"I suck at that," Steve said and laughed. "So why don't you show me your homework for today?"
Tony retrieved his backpack from the entry area and took out two textbooks. He took out a pencil as well and sat back down next to Steve.
Jarvis came back down just when Steve started to read through the exercises. The butler handed Tony a pair of Winnie the Pooh underpants, socks, a pair of jeans and an AC/DC shirt.
The 6-year-old got dressed right there, while Steve was still reading.
The two of them made it through Tony's homework in about an hour, but Tony learned much more than he would have had he worked alone.
They had both started taking a liking in each other, sharing the same type of humor. Jarvis was quite sure he hadn't heard little Tony laugh like that in forever, and it nearly broke his heart to know that the 6-year-old wasn't at his happiest at all times.
When Steve was about to leave, Howard came downstairs as well, and he led the tutor to the door, subtly handing him a 50-dollar bill. The man actually thanked the 12-year-old for his help. Maria was at an International meeting in Dubai , and would only be back the next day. What Howard had actually planned to do during his days alone with Tony was make up for bad attitude all of the boy's life. Yet, he'd been extremely stressed out, and having quit drinking made him live on the edge of rage at all times, and he ignored Tony rather than hurt him a lot more.
So father and son had dinner together, and Tony cherished it a lot because he knew those times with his father was rare.
From that day on, Steve came over to the Stark mansion twice a week and within three sessions, Tony's language grades had already increased drastically.
On a Friday about one month after Tony and Steve had first met, both Tony's parents were at the Pentagon and Jarvis had just become a father, so he'd asked Steve to come over to babysit Tony until the next morning.
The doorbell rang just after Tony had finished dinner, and he ran to the front door to hug Steve's waist tight. The 6-year-old had grown very fond of his tutor over the past couple of sessions.
"Okay I put his pajamas on his bed, he knows where to get breakfast and snacks and he'll show you the guest room. Bed time should be around 10pm and I'm in a bit of a hurry so I'm sure he'll know anything else you need to know."
"That sounds quite alright."
"Alright, thank you so much. Tony's parents will be back tomorrow morning by about 11." Jarvis shook Steve's hand, then kneeled down in front of Tony. "Okay champ, you know the drill. Be nice and don't break anything." Then he hugged the boy close and kissed his cheek before leaving.
"So," Steve said once they were alone. "What do you want to do?"
"I'm working on a rocket right now," the boy said. "We could go to my workshop."
The two boys spent most of the evening in Tony's workshop, that was equipped with more material than the labs at Steve's middle school. Steve was majorly impressed by how exactly Tony was planning everything. The boy couldn't even write or read fast, but he drew plans of a literal rocket and it actually worked. The rocket would be about 3 feet tall, so just like Tony, and it was planned to fly over 100 feet high and land at an exactly calculated spot in Central Park.
Steve read Les Misérables the entire three hours they spent in the workshop, and they listened to the music that the babysitter had chosen.
Towards 9pm, Steve could tell that Tony was getting sleepy. "How about we call it a night?" He suggested upon the 6-year-old yawning for the third time in a row.
In response to that, Tony wrote down the final calculations for his rocket and then nodded towards his tutor. When Steve closed his book and had got up, Tony held out his arms. "Carry me."
As Tony was really extremely short and skinny as well, Steve agreed. He played basketball at school, and had got quite fit since the school year had started. Besides that, Tony wasn't even 35 pounds probably, and it was really not a burden for Steve. So the 12-year-old cradled Tony in his arms and brought him upstairs into his room. He locked the front door on his way there and shut off the lights downstairs, as his room was just adjacent to Tony's.
On Tony's bed lay some batman pajamas, and next to them, a Monster's University themed pull-up.
"Do you wear pull-ups to bed?" Steve asked Tony upon seeing that.
Tony nodded in response. "Jarvis said it's normal. One in six five year olds need them." Tony got undressed and put on his pull-ups like normal and Steve thought that this was quite funny. He had just seen this 6-year-old create an entire plan for a literal rocket and now here he was, wearing nappies. This reminded him again that, after all, Tony was still a very young child.
Once Tony was dressed in his pajamas, he brushed his teeth and then lay down in his bed. "All ready?"
"Can you read me a story?"
Steve frowned. "I'm not really good at that."
Then it was Tony's turn to frown. "But you have to. I can't sleep otherwise." The 6-year-old's eyes got all glassy; he was way too tired to be convincing Steve right now.
"But I-" Tony's first sniffle had Steve stop, and look at the kid's face for once. There was a single tear streak from the boy's eye down to his jawline, that was angrily wiped away right then. Steve sighed. "Where are the books?"
The 12-year-old ended up reading Winnie the Pooh to Tony, who fell asleep pretty soon afterwards. He kissed the boy's forehead and then went to his own room, watching some TV before falling asleep himself.
Steve was woken again the next morning by a weight put onto his torso; Tony. "Good morning." The boy smiled at him once he'd opened his eyes.
"Hey," he said in response. "What time is it?"
"9:13. My parents will be here in less than an hour," Tony said excitedly, and then climbed off Steve. He was still wearing his pajamas; On Saturdays that was practically his go-to until he actually had to do something.
Steve got changed into the same outfit as yesterday, then made the bed and took Tony downstairs in order to make some breakfast.
They had toast with Nutella, pretty usual, and while Steve was still cleaning up, they heard the front door open, and Tony ran there to greet his parents. Surprisingly to Steve, he ran to Howard first. He had seen their relationship become better, and heard about it as well. He cherished that just as much as Tony did, because he knew the boy had had rough times with his dad, and that was nothing a 6-year-old deserved.
Howard picked his son up and hugged him close, then handed him over to Maria to take off his jacket and shoes. Maria kissed her son all over and then placed him down as well.
"I finished my plans for the rocket."
"That's nice, did Steve help you?" Howard asked and smiled at the babysitter.
"I'm not really in a place to do that, sir," Steve laughed.
Steve left the Stark mansion with a couple hundred bucks more in his pocket, but he couldn't have cared less about the money.