"Sir," Jarvis spoke. "Zachary is awake."
Tony rolled from his back onto his stomach, sighing deeply. Beside him, her eye still closed, Pepper let out a breathy chuckle.
"Here we go," Tony muttered, and sure enough about ten seconds later, the bedroom door opened.
Tony and Pepper stayed silent, and soon felt the familiar dip onto the bed. Little hands and feet touched them on their faces and legs, and then Tony felt more weight on top of him as fingers trailed through his dark hair.
"Daddy?"
"Mm?"
"Are you cold?"
"Sure," Tony replied, eyes still not open. "Yeah. I'm cold."
Little hands struggled to take the heavy comforter and pull it up and over them. It was an almost everyday routine. The littlest member of the Stark family enjoyed spending those last few sleepy minutes of the early morning lying on top of his father, covers pulled up over both of them. He would then proceed to play with his father's hair. When Tony slept on his back, his son would lay on his torso, absent-mindedly running his fingers over the arc reactor.
"Daddy?" He rolled off of him to lay beside him. "When are you getting up?"
"Don't you have a mother?" Tony asked, opening his eyes. "Who's that on the other side of you?"
The little boy rolled over to face his mother, who was awake and smiling.
"Good morning," she said, sitting up and stretching.
Tony sat up and stretched two, scratching his bare chest.
"How long have you been up?" He asked his son.
The little boy didn't answer him and climbed into his mother's lap as she moved to sit cross-legged.
"Hey." Tony tried again, and his son still didn't acknowledge him. He flicked his ear lightly and then realized what was wrong.
The little boy turned around when he felt the tap on his ear.
"Where's your hearing aid?" Tony asked, pointing at his own ear.
His son scowled at him, but changed his mind about being upset and moved from his mother's lap to his father's. Tony helped him to sit in his lap all the way, picking him up under the armpits and lifting him up and into his lap.
"I'm hungry," The little boy said.
"Really?" Tony tickled him with a straight face. "I thought your name was Zach. Uh oh. Wrong kid."
Zachary squealed and doubled over, trying to fold into a tiny ball to escape the tickle attack. His mother's tickles were feather soft, but his father knew how to really send him into a laughing fit.
"Daddy!" He half growled, half laughed. "Stop!"
Tony grabbed him by the back of his pajama pants just as he'd started to finally escape, getting him good on his tummy and under his arms. As usual, he did it without cracking a single smile which drove Zachary insane.
"Stop what?" He asked casually.
"Mommy!" Zachary laughed. "Help me!"
Pepper ignore the two of them and got out of bed, stretching once more. Tony pulled Zachary against him, giving the two year old a chance to catch his breath. Once he did, he climbed out of bed too, still holding his son like a sack of flour, and then set him down on the floor.
"Go put your hearing aids on," he told him, giving him a little pat on the seat of his pajama pants.
"And go potty," Pepper added. "You were in underwear all night and you're dry."
Zachary frowned. "I hate the potty."
"Don't argue," Tony said. "Go."
Zachary let his eyes and head roll back dramatically as he walked out of the room. Tony pulled some pajama bottoms on over his boxers.
"Jarvis," he said. "Make sure he does those things."
"Yes, Sir," the house robot replied promptly.
Zachary stuck his head back in the room and said angrily, "Don't do that, Daddy!"
"What? Have Jarvis tattle on you?" Tony asked, trying not to smile now.
Zachary pouted and walked out again complaining about how much he hated the toilet. Once he was gone, Tony sighed and turned to his wife.
"I don't get it," he said. "Kid can practically read and write, but still pees on himself."
"He's scared of the toilet," Pepper said simply. "It's normal, and it's something he'll grow out of."
"See, a guy told me at a conference once that his kid was scared of the water going down the drain in the bathtub and my first thought was the guy's kid isn't that bright," Tony said. "But now my kid is scared his ass is gonna get sucked down the toilet."
Pepper grinned.
"He'll grow out of it," she repeated.
"When I take him places," Tony said. "He will not use a public bathroom if the toilets flush automatically."
They left the bedroom together, Tony rattling off a list of things for Jarvis to remind him to do or get started, and then headed downstairs to start breakfast. Before Zachary, Tony had never even set foot in his own kitchen, and now he was becoming a wiz in the kitchen. Sort of. He could scramble eggs, make toast, heat up pizza rolls, and throw things together in a pan and fry it. Sometimes Pepper and Zachary liked what he concocted, other times they were just good sports about it.
"I went potty!" Zachary announced, padding into the dining room, turning his hearing aid on. They glowed at the bottom similar to the arc reactor. It was the same technology, after all.
"Waffles or French Toast?" Pepper asked her boys, opening the fridge.
"French Toast," they answered together.
Tony started coffee, or rather, ordered Jarvis to start coffee. He poured some for himself and his wife after downing a cup, went back upstairs to shower and dress. When he returned, he snapped his fingers at Zachary.
"Wanna come to the garage with me?" He offered. "I've got some stuff I need to finish up."
"Breakfast will be ready in just a minute," Pepper reminded him.
"We'll come up and eat," Tony said as Zachary scrambled out of one of the dining room chairs to go after him. Tony picked him up in one arm.
"You have all day to work," Pepper replied. "Sit down and eat, or at least let Zachary eat."
Tony hesitated and then carried Zachary to the table and put him down in a chair, taking the seat next to him. Pepper set out plates of French Toast and sat at the table too. Zachary loved French Toast. Golden with egg and powered sugar and warmed syrup. Tony wordlessly wiped his son's chin with a napkin as syrup dripped off his toast.
"So what are your plans today?" Tony asked Pepper.
"I've got a lot of work to do myself," Pepper told him. "If you don't want to keep Zachary, I can take him with me. It's no problem-"
"NO!" Zachary pouted. He hated running errands with his mother. It was usually boring and involved meeting with other boring adults, shaking hands, getting them to sign things, and he was never allowed to touch anything in any office. It did pay off when Pepper always offered him a treat after, but he had already gone with her several times during the week.
"Or maybe Steve could keep him," Pepper suggested with a half shrug. "He's been talking about getting the boys together anyway-"
"NO!" Zachary said again.
"You don't like Jamie?" Pepper looked genuinely concerned. Jamie was Steve and Bucky's son, almost four.
"Not really," Zachary confessed. "He always makes me pretend to be the bad guy or the guy getting saved when we play super heroes and he thinks he's the boss at everything."
"I feel you, Kid," Tony muttered. To Pepper he said, "There's nothing wrong with him staying here with me. I'll just be in the garage most of the day."
"Yeah," Zachary said. "I'll stay with Daddy."
Pepper looked between them.
"I don't want him snacking on junk food all day," she said, standing up to collect dishes. Tony stood up to help her.
Zachary knew this meant she was already going to agree, which made him happy. He did not want to spend his entire day going to boring meetings or getting bossed around by Jamie Rogers.
"He won't," Tony assured her, but his wife didn't look convinced.
"And he doesn't go-" Pepper started, but Tony cut her off.
"Anywhere near the suit," he said. "I know. That last snafu was not as bad as you think it was."
Zachary knew he was referring to the new Iron Man suit prototype. It had exploded into several different parts and flew around the room knocking things over. Zachary had thought it was cool, but his mother though he could have been hurt.
"It will be fine." Tony put his hands on her shoulders. "My son has been around for two years and six months and in those nine-hundred and twelve days, I have yet to kill him."
Pepper rolled her eyes and said, "I know. I just worry that you think he's as sturdy as you."
"He is," Tony said, kissing her. "Now, go do what you need to do. The Stark men can hold down the fort."
"I just peed on myself," Zachary said, the floor around the kitchen chair he was sitting in becoming wet.
------------------
"And one million planet Earths could fit inside the sun," Zachary said, sitting on one of his father's work benches as Tony worked beside him-more like worked around him, reaching for various tools that were spread out around his toddler son.
Zachary waved his hand in front of the glowing, floating text to read more facts about space. Zachary loved space more than anything. Tony really didn't have a lot of interest in stars and planets, but he appreciated that his son did. He just wished he could get him more interested in robotics and physics and chemistry.
"And the sunset on Mars is blue," he continued, waving his hand again, reading faster and faster. "And it would take more than eight-hundred years to get to Pluto."
"Hand me that driver right there," Tony said and Zachary handed him the right tool, still looking at the space trivia his father set up for him to read.
Rock music played in the garage and there was a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies sitting on the bench that they munched on. Tony enjoyed it very much. He liked his son being with him while he worked. Hell, he liked his son being anywhere he was. He often took Zachary on business trips, on trips to test out a new suit or device-far away from people or property, and even to Avengers meetings (it never went over well with Fury, but Tony was firm on where he went, so did his kid). Tony had always been passed around from nanny to nanny, seeing glimpses of his father late at night just before bed or on holidays, and even then it was usually only a quick game of tickling or a hug. Tony never wanted Zachary to sit up in bed and wait just in case he could catch his father long enough for a few minutes of interaction. He couldn't understand how his own father hadn't gone insane not seeing him. He missed Zachary like crazy if he was gone for a few hours.
"The Milky Way has over two billion stars," Zachary said, and then frowned when he could not wave the old text away. He furiously wiped his hand in front of him.
"Daddy!" He said, frustrated. "It won't move!"
Tony moved in front of him and waved his hand, making it disappear. His waving, of course, was more smooth.
"What are you doing?" Zachary asked, shifting himself to get a better look. He took another cookie and munched on it. So did Tony.
"I'm modifying the new suit," Tony said. "To repair itself quickly when it gets damaged."
"Why is the suit called 'Iron Man'?" Zachary asked. "Why did you do that?"
"I didn't," Tony said. "The press did, and it just kind of stuck."
"Did you go to space in it?" Zachary asked.
"Sort of," Tony replied, giving him a half smile. He frowned slightly and wiped some mucus away from Zachary's nose with his bare hand.
"Snot face," he told him affectionately.
Zachary wiped his nose.
"I'm not a snot face," he said, grinning.
"So what's wrong with Jamie?" Tony asked, grabbing a new tool. "You know his dad's not always a barrel of laughs either."
Zachary shrugged one shoulder. He found it hard to explain his reasoning for not wanting to play with Jamie.
"When we play he always says 'I'll be the good guy and you be the bad guy and I throw you in jail'," he finally said. "And then if I tell him I don't want to be the bad guy, he says there can only be one good guy because then we wouldn't have a bad guy, but sometimes he lets his DOG be the other good guy and when I tell him that's not fair, he said his dog doesn't know how to be a bad guy and then one time I broke one of his model airplanes and he put me in pretend jail, but it was his closet and he put the dog in there with me so the dog can be a bad guy sometimes."
Tony stared at him for several seconds and then raised his eyebrows and looked away. He continued to work and Zachary watched him as he used some sort of tool to weld something tiny onto something else very tiny.
"Can I try?" He asked.
Tony nodded. "Yeah. Of course."
He took his safety goggles off and put them on his son, putting the tool into his hands. He knew some fathers liked to make their children think they were helping by letting them do things and then placing their hands over their child's and doing it for them. Tony knew Zachary would never learn a thing that way, so he left it all in his hands, leaning close to him over the workbench, but not interfering. He told him what to do and how quickly and slowly. Zachary was easily messing up the process, but Tony didn't mind. Redoing it wouldn't be a chore to him.
"I did it," Zachary said. "I did good?"
"You did fantastic," Tony said. "I'm gonna have to go back and fix these gaps you missed, but for a first time-I'm a little jealous."
Zachary beamed, looking back at his work beside him, and then back at his father.
"We've been in here a while," Tony said, standing up straight and stretching. "Wanna get out of here?"
"Can we go to the park?" Zachary asked, scrambling off the work bench.
"Sounds good." Tony held out his hand and Zachary took it, walking out of the garage with him back upstairs into the house.
-------------------------
"Eight o'clock, Sir," Jarvis reminded Tony.
Was it really already eight? Tony took off his goggles and wiped sweat from his forehead. He half jogged upstairs and passed Pepper coming down the stairs that led up to the second story.
"He's ready for you," she said, grabbing him by the collar of his T-shirt and said quietly, "And after you shower, then I'll be ready for you."
Tony grinned. "Maybe we can save water. Shower together?"
Pepper kissed him and nodded her head up the stairs.
"Yes, Boss," Tony said and went upstairs to his son's room, which was dark now, but lights shone across his walls and ceiling to resemble the Milky Way galaxy. Tony had designed and installed it several months ago.
"Squirt, you still awake?" He asked.
Zachary didn't answer him, but Tony didn't take this as him being asleep already. He sat on the bed and tapped his son on the temple. Zachary rolled over and Tony stroked some of his dark hair.
"I'll see you in the morning," he said and signed with one hand.
Zachary yawned and nodded.
"Daddy?" He asked, already starting to slur his words sleepily. "Did you really buy me a star on Christmas?"
Christmas was months ago, and Pepper and Tony hadn't been sure Zachary would understand the certificate with his name on it.
Tony nodded.
"I bought you a whole cluster of stars," he said. "Want to see them?"
"Yes," Zachary said.
"Jarvis, bring up Zach's stars," Tony said.
The lights in the room rearranged to focus on a particular group of stars, zooming in and making a handful of particular dots glow brighter than the others. Zachary blinked sleepily as Tony used his hand to bring the image closer to them, like he was reeling them in.
"There they are," Tony said. "We can also look at them through a telescope if you want."
He pushed the image away and rubbed Zachary's hair.
"Go to sleep, okay?" He said. "Gimme a kiss, I gotta go clean up and get in bed with Mommy."
Zachary raised himself up slightly to kiss his father.
"Love you. Good night. Sleep tight. All that good stuff." Tony stood up and walked to the door.
Zachary was already fast asleep when he turned back around.