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so yeah, it started with tony and his blasted ego but the rest of it - housing criminals and murderers - was all because of natasha

"she's my sister," natasha said in that tone which immediately raised tony's hackles up and shut his next question cause spy twins were spy triplets suddenly

yelena belova, came first, as an extended family of natasha then their apparent father who natasha really gives a lot of disgusted face to but guy could rival thor in his boiterous energy. maybe put those two together and it would be fantastic, or just calamitous to the entire new york city depending which way you wanna look at it

somehow, these two extended family addition made rogers think that he could bring his own stray in because tony was looking a murderous raccoon one morning as he exited the elevator and he stopped right where he was with a hushed, "jarvis?care to catch me up?"

in the next ten seconds, tony underwent an out of body experience between hearing "james buchanan barnes, sir" from jarvis and watching yelena belova tug the back of that murder raccoon's hair and push a steaming cup of something into his hand

coffee is that way, tony thought. coffee is that way, coffee is that way, i am here for coffee and coffee only do not look at me ohmygod pepper is gonna kill me

he got his coffee along with a rare steve rogers smile and a whispered "sorry i didn't tell you earlier," and then he was about to reply with something when another new face popped put of the elevator and tony pointed at him "who's that? who're you?"

sam wilson, rogers and said man answered and tony decided he's better off facing the crazies in the office than the bunch in the tower at that instant

someone had this saying about rescuing a stray once and you gonna keep doing that, or something along that line or another, tony's not really a literature enthusiast that was more of a pepper's forte which speaking off - pepper hasn't stepped back into the tower after that day they parted and they're still not broken up, she still cares, he still kisses her - it's all kinda status quo but she hasn't threatened him with murder yet, so that's good news

better news is thor coming back and they all went for a school trip to a hydra bunker where barnes went murder dog on half of their troop, shot strucker between the eyes, got the sceptor out along with three new shuffling baby mutants who stuck to his back like baby opossums

it was all kind of fascinating as well as mind blowing how it was a successful mision without a hulk out and a brand new three teenage occupants for the tower

"at this point, you might as well get pokeballs and run around yelling gotta catch em all" rhodey sniggered on one of his visits.

it was memorial day and he was plastered. so was rogers on an asgardian concoction with his head on tony's shoulder while bucky barnes sat on the longer couch further, fully sober with his loyal baby birds by his feet.

tony's personally grateful that he's not the one forced to be a foster dad to teenagers because he's too young for that kind of responsibilities but he's still impressed - very impressed as a matter of fact - with how barnes seem to be handling it all with a practised ease

later, steve would say it's cause bucky got used to caring for steve when he was skinny and sick and maybe there's a truth to that but those kids have their second favourite person as well; wanda with natasha, pietro with barton and bob surprisingly tags with yelena for an even longer period of time than he does with barnes

but nobody tells barnes that because than he would get jealous and a jealous barnes gets drunk and alexei always makes it his job to never let anyone be drunk on their own so they both would get drunk and everyone learned the hard way one time when they found the shooting rink thrashed to a point that tony refused to speak to any of them for three days - which for tony, is a personal record in all his 45years of living

speaking of too young for fatherhood though, one day bob comes home with a new teenager who appeared uncharacteriscally exuberant to see tony stark and tony kept seeing the boy quite often then onwards and he's called peter parker, living with his aunt may and he's going to school with bob and his best friend also includes ned and tony happened to learn all this in the next two weeks because bob is a menace with sad puppy eyes and peter is worse and maybe tony is becoming bucky barnes. either way, he got three of his own velcro babies attached to his side all of a sudden, shuffling along wherever he goes and sometimes he lead them to bruce's lab for distraction and makes his escape but he's happy -

he realises one day - walking into a bustling communal floor late one sunday with more people he can count on two of his hands and they are all his family; from 100 plus years old super humans and a norse god with his girlfriend and her friend and some occasional asgardian friendlies and reformed spies, teenage mutants and humans too, like sam and rhodey and these days, pepper comes by too whenever she feels like she can deal with all of this madness - that he is genuinely, for the first time ever in his life, happy