Chapter 6
“Grounded,” Phil said slowly, playing with the word in his tongue.
“Shut up,” Tony ordered, glaring at him.
“You are grounded,” Phil repeated, emphasizing each word more than necessary, trying to get the meaning through his head.
“Shut up,” Tony demanded again, crossing his arms over his chest a bit too briskly.
“Steve grounded you,” Phil half stated, half asked, “Steve grounded you.” Perhaps, if Phil repeat that sentence aloud enough times, his brain would finally comprehend what was happening.
“Shut the fuck up!” Tony shouted angrily, stomping his foot.
“And I’m babysitting.” That was another thing he hadn’t been able to understand, and saying it out loud just made the whole situation more surreal.
This was definitely not the first time Phil had babysat Tony, but this was the first time that Steve had asked him to do so. Not to look after Tony because he still wasn’t completely recovered, not to keep an eye on him because he might require assistance with diapers he needed to use due to a temporal incontinence problem, not to make sure he didn’t do anything reckless that could interfere with his recovery. No, Phil had been literally asked to babysit Tony because he was grounded, the kind of punishment in which all your gadgets are taken away and you are not allowed to leave your room until further notice – or in Tony’s case, go inside his workshop until further notice.
“I’m babysitting you because Steve grounded you.” OK, Phil may have started to sound a little stupid for having been repeating the same thing for over ten minutes now, but he hadn’t been able to come to terms with it yet.
“Would you shut up already?” Tony commanded, clearly annoyed. Well, more annoyed than he had been when he saw Phil coming inside the room and Steve had notified him Phil was going to be his babysitter.
“Why are you even grounded?” Phil asked, though Natasha had already told him in broad terms about the incident she had witnessed in Tony’s workshop less than a week ago. Steve had been very pissed about the irresponsible way Tony had decided to act, refusing to go to the doctor right away. So, Steve had grounded Tony, because, apparently, Phil had been sent to an alternative universe where grounding was the proper way to teach Tony how to be responsible.
“I’m not grounded!” Tony reaffirmed, sounding offended.
“Steve hadn’t let you go down your workshop nor come close to any of your cell phones or tablets, that does sound like being grounded to me,” Phil pointed out. Tony’s glare deepened, “And he asked me to come and babysit you to make sure you didn’t do any of the things you weren’t supposed to do until he lifted your punishment,” he finished saying, making Tony thrust out his lips. A pout. Tony had been pouting very often lately.
“Steve’s an ass,” Tony declared, mumbling. Phil could tell Tony didn’t really mean that by the tone of his voice. “They’re gonna get kill just because he didn’t let me go on the mission with them,” he implied, Phil doubted that. It was truth the Avengers had been sent on a mission, but it had been a spy mission. Those kind of missions turned out better when Iron man was left out. Having the habit of showing up with an AC/DC song turn up full blast wasn’t a good idea when the most essential thing to achieve victory was going unnoticed.
“I’m pretty sure they’ll be just fine,” Phil assured, “if, by chance, I’m notified something went wrong and they need help, I’m sending you over there, grounded or not,” he promised, though he knew that was very unlikely to happen. Tony pouted even more, realizing his chances of going on a mission were almost non-existent. “So, what are you allow to do?” Phil asked conversationally, if he was going to be stuck there until the other ones came back, he might as well do something to entertain himself.
“I’m not grounded!” Tony growled, sounding less and less convincing to Phil’s ears every time he said that.
“OK, OK… what’s something we could do that won’t make Steve get angrier at you?” Phil reformulated the question. Tony’s expression indicated him that he hadn’t seen any difference between the previous question and the last one.
“You could leave me the fuck alone and go,” Tony suggested.
“Even if that suggestion sounds great, I promised Steve I’d stay here,” Phil informed. If Captain America asked Phil to do something, he would certainly do it, no matter how odd it seemed to him.
Tony mumbled something Phil couldn’t hear, but he figured it must have been a curse or something of the kind. Then, Tony looked away and said nothing more.
Phil sighed heavily, still finding it hard to believe he was literally babysitting Tony Stark.
- - - -
“I wanna go out,” Tony spoke out after thirty minutes of pure silence. Phil barely heard him, as he had been dozing off for the last ten minutes.
“What?”
“I wanna go out,” Tony repeated.
“Go out? Where?” Phil asked, trying to suppress a yawn.
“I don’t know. Anywhere,” Tony said, standing up from the corner he had been pouting from ever since Steve and the others left.
Phil squinted at him suspiciously, “I get the feeling leaving the Tower is something Steve won’t be happy about.”
“You told me what I wanted to do. That’s what I wanna do. I wanna go out,” Tony said stubbornly. “I’m sick of being locked in here,” he expressed a bit too dramatically, “What? I need fresh air!” he emphasized when Phil threw him a skeptical glance.
“You don’t even believe that yourself. You only want to go outside to make Steve upset,” Phil assured. Because that was what Tony liked to do. The most reasonable thing to do when someone was mad at you was backing off, but not Tony. According to his way of thinking, pushing all the buttons was the correct way of handling situations like these. “Well, more upset than he already is,” Phil pointed out.
“That’s not true!” Tony assured, sounding offended. “I can’t stand being shut in anymore! It’s driving me crazy!” continued, his arms flailing around to emphasize his frustration.
“And I’m supposed to believe that after seeing you locked away for days in you workshop? Please Tony, give me more credit,” Phil said, unsmiling.
“You said it, in my workshop. The workshop is fine, but I’m not there right now, am I?,” Tony asked, starting to pace in front of the couch where Phil was sitting on. “When I’m there for a long time is because my mind is entertained with something, here I have nothing to entertain myself with, I’m bored out of my mind! I really need to get out of here!”
Still not buying it, Phil declared with a deadpan expression on his face, “So you never want to go out, and now that you can’t, you’re telling me that is exactly what you want to do? Again, give me credit.”
“What?! I always want to go outside!” Tony stated, raising an eyebrow as if he didn’t truly understand why Phil wasn’t getting him.
“So the times you hid from Pepper because you didn’t want to go out, you were just pretending, right?” Phil questioned a bit ironically.
“She wanted me to go to boring meetings, no one wants to go to boring meetings,” Tony excused himself, still pacing.
“And the times Thor asked you to go sightseeing with him?”
“I hate doing touristic stuff.”
“And when Clint asked you to… OK, no, forget that time, you going out with Clint is definitely not a good idea,” Phil came to that conclusion by himself, scratching his chin. “But what about the times Steve asks you to go with him somewhere, you always find an excuse not to do it.”
“Again with the boring stuff.”
“You’re just making excuses,” Phil assured, trying to ignore Tony’s fake suffering expression.
“I’m not! Pleeease?” Tony implored, stopping right in front of Phil.
Phil crossed his arms over his chest, determined not to give in, “no.”
“Pleeease,” Tony begged, though his tone of voice showed it wasn’t for real.
“No.”
“Pretty please?” Puppy eyes went with the begging. Phil rolled his eyes.
“No!”
“C’mon! I’m dying here!” Tony said melodramatically, flopping down onto the floor.
“No!”
“Pleeease!” Tony kept pleading, pulling Phil’s pants.
“No!” Phil repeated, trying to shake Tony’s grip on his pants off.
“Pleeeeeeaaase.”
“Stop it! You might get what you want from the others with these ridiculous melodramas, but they’re not working on me,” Phil affirmed.
“What if I throw a tantrum?” Tony suggested, a bit cynically.
“For someone who gets mad every time he’s called a kid, I don’t see that happening,” Phil reasoned, but because of how things had been lately, now he wasn’t sure Tony didn’t consider throwing a fit right there, kicking included. Just the idea of it made Phil shudder.
Tony looked up at him, thoughtful. Phil shuddered even more. “If that’s what’s necessary to convince you to let me go out, I might think about it.”
“Please, don’t.” Now Phil was the one who implored.
“Then let’s go out,” Tony suggested once more, restarting the pulling of Phil’s pants job.
“I already told you no!” Phil reminded him, standing up with the intention of getting away from Tony, but the latter didn’t loosen his grip and Phil ended up dragging Tony for some inches while he continued saying ‘please’ in such a whiney way it was beginning to get really annoying. “Stop it!” he ordered.
“C’mon!” Tony kept whining, “Why did you ask me what I wanted to do if you weren’t going to let me do it?”
“Because I forgot you always want to do what you were told not to do!” Phil alleged, shaking off Tony’s grip for a second time and walking away to prevent him from grabbing his ankle again. “I don’t want to be scolded by Steve because I let you do something you’re not allowed.” Captain America being mad at him? No, thanks. That was something Phil would certainly avoid at all costs.
“Well, technically, Steve never said anything about not being allow to go outside, the only place he doesn’t want me to go is the workshop,” Tony informed, getting up from the floor and going after Phil. The latter walked faster, not wanting to listen to any more of Tony’s reasoning.
“Then how come he didn’t even let you go out for the mission?” Phil demanded, stopping dead in his tracks, causing Tony to bump into him.
“That was because, according to him, you can’t do any fighting for a week at least after a concussion,” Tony said, sounding boring on purpose, “and I stress, according to him, not to the doctor.”
“I don’t care. Think about something else you want to do, because there’s no way I’m changing my mind. We’re not going anywhere outside the Tower. Period.” Phil assured, turning around and looking at Tony, a frown on his face.
- - - -
And, of course, they didn’t stay in.
If being over dramatic didn’t work on Phil, being extremely annoying certainly did. After hearing Tony say ‘please’ for more than a thousand times – and he was not going too far with the number – Phil just had to go out to make him shut up – peeing while someone is knocking on the door and shouting ‘can we go out?’ can really get on someone’s nerves.
“I swear, if you get away from me one more time, I’m getting one of those safety harnesses mothers use to keep their children close, and, God help me! I’m making sure you use it!” Phil warned, yelling at Tony in a mumbling way, as he grabbed his wrist to stop him from walking away. This was the third time Phil had to jog to catch up with him. Telling Steve that they left the Tower was mortifying enough without having to add an ‘I lost him’ part to the sentence.
“You walk too slowly,” Tony complained, but he did slow down.
“No, you’re walking too fast. Why are you even walking fast? You don’t even know where you want to go, we’ve been just wandering around for twenty minutes now,” Phil stated, pissed. “I swear to God if you wanted to go out just to get rid of me, I’m putting you in charge of rookies for the rest of your life! You’re never going to set foot on a battlefield ever again!” he threatened, knowing perfectly well that that’d be something Tony would totally loathe.
“Relax! I’m not doing that,” Tony promised, shoving his hand into his pockets, “I meant what I said, I just wanted some fresh air. I never said there was somewhere in particular I wanted to go,” Tony observed, though that didn’t do anything to ease Phil’s nerves.
For all the time they kept walking, Phil didn’t take his eyes off Tony, not even for a second. Every time Tony got just a few inches away from him, Phil pulled him by the arm, sure that Tony’s sudden interest on whatever that was behind a store window was just an excuse to run off at the first opportunity. By the time Phil started to relax a little and really pay attention to their surroundings, he realized they had reached Central Park and were walking through it. Great, a place where Tony could easily get away and hide from him.
“You know, it’s not very safe to come here when it’s already gone dark,” Phil implied, looking at how deserted the paths looked. Central Park was usually crowded, and it sometimes had night time activities, but on a weekday night there didn’t seem to be much of movement.
“I assure you that whoever tries to mug us won’t have enough time to draw a gun,” Tony replied, raising his hand to show him a bracelet.
“And how do you plan on getting JARVIS to deploy a suit? Steve has your cell phone,” Phil questioned skeptically. It wasn’t that he was afraid or anything like that. He himself was capable of taking down any mugger who was stupid enough to try to rob them. He was actually curious about the answer, since it may give him a clue why they had ended up there.
Tony turned his head until Phil was able to see his right ear, specifically the earphone he had in it, “I can always get hold of JARVIS.”
- - - -
“OK, that’s it, let’s go,” Phil said all of a sudden, standing up and grabbing Tony’s hand.
“What? But I haven’t done anything wrong!” Tony complained when Phil pulled him until he stood up from the bench they’d been sitting on, “I don’t wanna go back yet!”
“We’re not going back yet,” Phil informed as he started to walk, still holding Tony’s hand to make him go along that way.
They had gone deep into the park, until they had reached a nice desolated playground and sat down on the nearest bench. It had taken Phil several minutes to be able to relax, the fact that Tony was looking at everywhere around them tensed him once more, as his mind told him Tony was looking for an escape route. Thankfully, Tony never made any attempt to leave. So, Phil just sat down next to him, contemplating what the dim streetlight bulbs and the moon let him see.
It had been pretty nice. Phil didn’t remember when the last time he had had the chance to do this had been, his life had become very chaotic since he had joined SHIELD. So, enjoying the outdoors was something he almost never do anymore. The sky was clear, the air pleasantly cool and the company, well, not the person and the circumstances Phil would have chosen if he had been given the chance, but at least Tony had been quiet, something Phil certainly appreciate. Tony could be too talkative sometimes.
That had been the reason why Phil had glanced at Tony, because the latter was never quiet when he was with someone else. Unless Tony was mad, which Phil doubted, after all, he had agreed to go out. And that had been when Phil saw the way Tony was looking at the swings, a stare which radiated such a longing that made Phil feel uneasy somehow. Was Tony remembering something from his childhood? Had he ever come to this park and play in those swings and that was making him nostalgic? Phil doubted that, according to what he had read on his file, that scenario couldn’t be something Tony experienced.
Phil forced himself not to give it a lot of though, and tried to focus on his landscape that laid in from of him again, but unconsciously, he kept looking at Tony out of the corner of his eye. After several minutes, Tony’s desire to go over the swings was so palpable, it was making Phil anxious, especially since it seemed Tony wasn’t willing to do anything about it.
“Then why are you pulling me? Where are you taking me?” Tony asked annoyed, though he didn’t do anything to stop Phil from dragging him. His eyebrows came together in a look of total confusion when Phil stop in front of the swings. Then, he raised an eyebrow in a silent question, clearly not understanding Phil’s intention.
“Go on them,” Phil ordered, pointing at the swings.
Tony raised his eyebrow even more, “What? Why?”
“Because you clearly want to swing on them,” Phil stated, a mix of frustration and boredom in his voice.
“What? Of course I don’t!” Tony assured. Phil couldn’t help rolling his eyes, he knew Tony was lying.
“You and I both know you do, so let’s get it over with so we can go back to the Tower,” Phil insisted, getting the feeling he would have to deal with a pouty Tony if he didn’t persuade him to play on the swings.
Without giving Tony the time to argued, Phil pushed him down gently. Hesitation took over Tony for a moment, but after some seconds, in which his face clearly showed a mental battle deciding whether he should or not, he let himself being pushed until he was sitting down on a swing.
“But it’s for kids,” Tony mumbled shyly, and even under the dim light the street lamp provided, Phil could see the sight of a pink blush on his cheeks.
“Well, you fit, didn’t you?” Phil asked, smiling at Tony encouragingly. And Tony certainly had. Maybe he would have to be more careful and bend his legs a bit more than a child would when he pumped on the swing to not hit the ground, but that was pretty much it. “C’mon, I’ll help you,” Phil offered when Tony failed to do anything else but hold on to the chains, walking to stand right behind him. Tony turned his head and looked at him nervously, still thinking if it was a good idea. “Hold on tight, besides having to tell Steve that I let you out and I didn’t send you to bed at the time he told me to, I don’t want to have to tell him that you hurt yourself because you fell of a swing,” he asked, getting a shy nod for an answer.
Slowly and carefully, Phil began to push him, not gathering a lot of momentum. Tony sat down a bit too rigidly, his head turning everywhere as if he was making sure nobody was around, clearly uncomfortable with the idea of being seen like that. Although it didn’t take long for him to start asking Phil to push him harder so he could go higher, and in less than five minutes, he was swinging by himself.
Phil stepped aside and sat down on the swing next to Tony’s, his eyes glued on the latter, on the alert. He didn’t know why, but he got the feeling Tony would be the kind of kid – person – who would try to jump off the swing when it was still moving, and he was ready to refrain Tony from doing that as soon as he show any sign of even thinking about it. Thankfully, the only sign Tony showed was an expression of pure enjoyment. Phil could even swear he heard Tony giggling a couple of times when he managed to go really high. That feeling caused in the stomach when you managed to go very high could be very fascinating.
The whole babysitting thing turned out to be not so bad. Yes, everything was still too surreal for Phil. Because really, Steve grounding Tony? No matter how much he thought of it, it still sounded weird. But when Phil told Tony it was time to go back home and the latter didn’t refute at all, not even when he was told to wash up and go to bed as soon as they arrived, the grounding thing was pushed into the background.
Now the thing Phil found hard to understand wasn’t why Steve grounded Tony, but why Tony allowed to be grounded.