Chapter Text
“Dad! Daaaaaaad!” The little voice coming from the bouncy castle refuses to be ignored. “DAD, LOOK!”
“Which dad?” Bucky asks without turning around.
“Both dads! Look at me! Look! Hurry!”
Steve and Bucky obediently turn and look and immediately sort of wish they hadn't. Grant is jumping in the air and shooting arrows between his legs from the toy bow Clint bought him. Every time he lands, he comes closer to poking himself or one of the other kids in the eye.
“Look at their twin cringes,” Bruce teases.
Natasha snaps a photo. “Worried dinosaurs watching their young.”
Everyone laughs while Steve and Bucky roll their eyes. “Grant, be careful,” Steve calls. “Don't poke anyone's eye out.”
“And don't shoot a hole in the bouncy castle,” Bucky adds.
“And don't shoot any people.”
“Too many don'ts!” Grant yells cheerfully, still bouncing.
“Just enough don'ts,” Bucky counters.
“Whatever!”
“Which one of you taught him that?” Steve demands. Everyone looks equally guilty, except Natasha, who doesn't count because her poker face is too good.
“Okay, time for cake and presents,” Bucky says, mostly to get Grant to stop almost accidentally killing his friends. All the kids scream excitedly and race to exit the castle. Once everyone's situated, they light the candles and sing and then everyone urges Grant to make a wish. He wrinkles his forehead in confusion.
“A wish?” He asks.
“Something you want,” Bucky explains.
“I want a puppy!”
“Uh...” Steve looks worried and Bucky shoots Clint a disapproving look. He's been letting Grant spend too much time with his dog.
“Well, you said it out loud so now it can't come true,” Sam saves them. “Pick a different one and keep it a secret.”
Grant only misses one candle, which Thor, who's closest to it, surreptitiously blows out before Grant can notice he missed it. Everyone cheers and Grant bounces up and down in his seat.
“Am I four now?” He asks.
“You're four now!”
He claps excitedly. He ends up looking like he got more of the cake in his hair and on his shirt than in his mouth, but he doesn't seem to be too bothered by it. The group around the table is a mix of kids from Grant's SHIELD sponsored gymnastics class (taught by that kid Peter Parker, who calls himself Spiderman and is a little too hyperactive and twitchy for Bucky to love handing his kid over, but he does have that web thing that comes in handy when the kids are falling off things and he reassured them Grant's reduced balance from his bad ear wouldn't be too big of a problem) and Avengers, plus Dr. Jones and Ms. Lydia, Grant's speech therapist.
When they handed out invitations, Tony had scoffed, “What's the point in celebrating a little kid's birthday?” and then had reserved the park and blocked off the street so paparazzi couldn't crash the party and a crew showed up with a bouncy castle and he bought a giant cake they would be eating for the next week.
“Should we open presents?” Steve asks.
“I don't know,” Bucky pretends to think. “Does Grant even want presents?”
“I do!” He squeals, accidentally switching to Russian in his excitement. “Presents!”
He gets the usual mix of kid stuff—coloring books and crayons and toy cars and puzzles. Bruce gives him a science set that makes him bounce up and down (the box promises to make “smelly slime” and Steve grimaces). He gets some more arrows from Clint (“Wow, thanks,” Bucky says, not excited because the arrows have suction tips and Grant's favorite target happens to be Bucky's metal arm—it turns out Grant's a really good shot and Bucky's too proud to be mad about it) and a toy train from Sam and some books from Natasha.
“Books?” Steve asks, kind of surprised.
“I thought about getting him a 'My First Knife' set, but I figured he's earned some time to just be a kid,” she says. Steve grins about it until he realizes the books are all about Captain America and Grant is looking curiously between the drawing of Steve on the front and the Steve sitting beside him.
Thor and Jane get him a stuffed dinosaur ("Jane tells me this animal no longer roams Midgard," Thor says solemnly, "so I think it is noble you memorialize it so."), which he plops onto the bench beside Bucky Bear. Poor Bucky Bear looks a little worse for wear thanks to a year of continuous use. Darcy, thinking she's funny, bought him a tiny Captain America toy shield.
“My dad has one of these!” Grant exclaims. “I need a metal arm.”
“Let's hold off on that,” Bucky mutters.
But Tony, of course, overshadows everyone when he says, “Mine's in the car.” Pepper looks at the sky and sighs in a long-suffering kind of way.
“It's a big one,” she confirms, rolling her eyes.
He comes back with a box that is only actually medium sized, but Steve knows Tony enough to feel incredibly wary.
“Here you go, kid.” Tony sets it in front of Grant. Grant looks at Steve and Bucky for confirmation before opening it, the way he has with every single present. But he's also thanked whoever gave him each present without prompting, so they call it a draw.
Grant tears off the wrapping paper. “A box!” He cries excitedly, clapping his hands.
“Are you kidding me?” Tony says. “I could have just gotten him a box and he'd be happy?”
“You want to open the box?” Bucky asks.
“Something's inside?” Grant's eyes go wide and even Tony has to cover a laugh with a cough. They lift off the lid and Tony springs forward, pressing a button before Grant can peer in, and then out of the box pops...
“Robot!” Grant shrieks. “Just like DUM-E!”
“It's Min-E,” Tony explains. “For the mini-me. Well, mini-you guys.” One arm has a red star painted onto it and the other ends in a shield.
Steve lifts the robot out of the box and puts it on the ground, where it immediately starts zooming around. Grant's screaming with delight and all his friends jump from the table to start swarming the thing.
“Wow, Tony. You built him a robot? You must really love him,” Bucky says with a grin.
“I didn't—no. It wasn't even a big project,” Tony protests. “I literally slapped some scrap metal together. It's not a big thing. Although it did take almost twelve hours. I just had to give the best present, you understand. I detest children.”
“Thank you, Uncle Tony!” Grant pauses his game with Min-E to run and give Tony a hug and for a second Tony is actually speechless.
“He just detests children,” Pepper says sarcastically, smiling softly.
“That wasn't my choice.” Tony sounds faint. “He just hugged me of his own accord.”
“Yeah, that Grant.” Clint shakes his head. “What a menace. Always running around touching people.” Grant does love having his back rubbed or his hair played with, but he has very specific parameters—namely, only Steve and Bucky get to rub his back. He'll sit in Sam, Clint, or Bruce's lap or on Thor's shoulders, and he'll occasionally let Natasha play with his hair, but he doesn't get affectionate with anyone else.
“We do have one more present,” Pepper says. “It's from all of us.”
“It's mostly from Pepper,” Jane counters. “She just doesn't want to take all the credit.”
“She'll take twelve percent of the credit.” Tony gets an elbow jab for his troubles.
“Well, Sam did contribute an awful lot,” Pepper says, and Sam grins in triumph.
"Remember that." Sam points a finger at them. "Don't ever say I never do anything for you." A ridiculous statement; Steve is almost embarrassingly grateful for everything Sam does for them.
It takes a few minutes to get all the kids gathered back around the table, because they're all running and chasing each other and Min-E. There's an awful lot of screaming going on.
“Remember when Grant didn't make noise?” Bucky jokes ruefully.
Ripping off the wrapping paper is Grant's favorite part. “That's us!” He cries once he sees the picture on the front. Steve feels his throat tighten automatically. It's a photo album, and the picture on the front cover is of the three of them sprawled across the couch, all fast asleep.
“We're sleeping,” Grant laughs. He flips the book open and gasps because each page is full of pictures—some of Steve, some of Bucky, some of Grant, but mostly of all three of them together. There's a picture of Grant on Bucky's shoulders ("Wouldn't mind that spot," Darcy stage-whispers, wiggling her eyebrows, and Bucky barks out a laugh and throws her a wink), a picture of Steve and Grant drawing together (they're drawing the Hulk, as Bruce points out, half self-deprecating and half flattered), a picture of all three of them sledding on Steve's shield (“Super expensive, super rare metal,” Tony shakes his head, “and this is how you use it”), a picture of Steve and Bucky cuddled together on the couch (“Where's James's other hand?” Natasha asks wryly, and Steve blushes furiously).
There are also pictures of Grant with the rest of the team, including one of him flying with Sam on an instance Steve and Bucky hadn't previously known about. ("What you didn't know didn't hurt you," Sam points out.) Grant at gymnastics, Grant playing T-ball, Grant and Clint signing together ("What's he saying?" Jane asks, and Clint laughs, "You do not want to know."). It's a year summed up in pictures, and they left half the book blank, to be filled in with new pictures.
“This is...” Steve trails off, shaking his head.
“Amazing,” Bucky finishes. “More than that, but...yeah. Thank you, Pepper. Thanks to all of you.”
“We don't have a lot of pictures of our families or us as kids,” Steve murmurs, looking at a picture of Steve, Bucky, and Grant with the whole team.
“We love it,” Bucky confirms.
Later, they go home and Grant is cranky from too much sugar and so tired he's signing instead of talking and there are still breakfast dishes in the sink. But before he falls asleep, Grant asks for the photo album and the three of them look through it together and Steve tucks the picture of Ekaterina that had mysteriously shown up in their apartment one day onto one of the blank pages. He knows Natasha got it for them somehow, but she won't admit to it and Steve won't push. He's just grateful they have the picture; he doesn't want them to forget the woman who sacrificed herself so Grant would have a chance to get away form HYDRA.
Bucky catches Steve's eye and winks and that right there tells Steve they have plans for after Grant falls asleep. They walk down the hall back to their room with Bucky already letting his hands wander until he trips over Min-E, and Steve realizes he could never have planned for any of this—waking up in the future or finding Bucky or meeting Grant—but he wouldn't change a second.