Work Text:
“You are terrible at this.”
Tony scowls at Pepper, crossing his arms. “Well, I grounded them, what else am I supposed to do?” he argues, leaning back against the counter.
“Tony, they’ve been ‘grounded’ since they first did something dumb.” Pepper raises an eyebrow, matching Tony’s stance. “Have you ever considered punishing them?”
Tony scowls again, taking an irritated sip of his coffee. “And do what, spank them?”
Pepper makes a face at Tony that he hates—it’s a combination of “are you so for real” and “are you so stupid”. “Have you tried chores ?”
The suggestion freezes Stark’s brain. Chores? Tony’s never really done that. Growing up rich was an easy way to assure he never cooked, did laundry…he knew how to do dishes, and reasonably straighten up a space, but he had someone to do that for the boys. Who wants to spend summer break doing the vacuuming?
“I’ll take that as a no,” Pepper states. “And as the only one not involved in the junkyard dog tetanus shot incident, I’m using my executive power to assign you all chores for the weekend.”
“That was Harley’s idea!” Stark exclaims, not sounding unlike his children, and she clicks her tongue at him and wags a finger.
“Oh no, mister, we have talked about the junkyard thing and said no more races . Last time you and Rhodey went, you got an actual dog bite and had a bacterial infection. Huh-uh. Go collect your little carbon copies and bring them in.”
Stark tries to stay unwavering, but Pepper’s icy cold stare finally makes him fold and slink off down the hallway to the boys’ bedrooms. Pepper slides her rings back onto her fingers after washing her hands and collects a piece of lined paper from a pad stuck to the fridge.
“Pen,” she states as Stark enters the room with two teenage grumps behind him, and she holds out her hand for Tony to dejectedly place his pen into her hand.
“Okay, inmates. I am going to the spa for some much needed unwinding,” she states as she scribbles. “When I come home, I want this done. All of it. Or I take every power cord in this entire house and send them through the incinerator.” She glances up to eye them all with warning, and the boys all tuck their heads down in shame. “Good. I’m glad we understand each other.” She peeps the chore list off of the sticky pad and slides it towards Tony with an eyebrow raised.
“Now. I would get started so you have time,” she warns, and with that, Pepper grabs her purse, presses a kiss to the cheeks of all three boys, and click-clacks her heels into the elevator and down to the first floor.
Stark turns towards the two teenagers. “Well. That didn’t go as planned.”
Peter shrugs. “It was bound to happen, really.”
“Yeah, if you two knew half the stuff—” Harley is cut off by a quick elbow to the ribs from Peter. “Ow,” Harley whines, rubbing his ribs. “Fine, let’s go,” he grumbles, and the three stand around the list to look at their chores.
Peter:
- clean oven
- clean insides of kitchen cabinets
- clean grout in kitchen
Harley:
- clean grout in bathrooms
- scrub and polish bathtubs and toilets
- reorganize hall closet
- polish good silverware
Tony:
- strip and rotate mattresses
- steam clean couches, chairs, and mattresses
- scrub baseboards
All boys scowl, but they trudge off to their assigned areas against their will, only fueled by the fear of Pepper’s wrath. She’s not kidding about the cord thing.
“I’m just saying, I got four and you two only got three,” Harley complains two hours later.
“Your fourth is polishing silverware. That’s hardly manual labor,” Peter complains back from inside of the oven. He sneezes again from the cleaner.
The boys had wildly underestimated the amount of time that it would take for them to finish the assigned chores. Tony was sure he’d die if he inhaled any more of the baseboard cleaner, and also couldn’t figure out why they had so much baseboard. Peter’s oven task was taking much longer than anticipated, likely due to Tony’s tendency to mess up the oven every time he tried to cook and the one time Harley made a frozen pizza and melted it through the rungs of the rack. Harley had finally finished the grout and bath tubs, and the only reason he finished first was because of the diligence of the cleaners that Tony paid handsomely to make sure they never had to do any of this as long as they lived here.
“This is totally both of your faults,” Tony calls from Peter’s room before immediately cursing out the mattress that undoubtedly fell backwards onto him.
“ You two are the ones who insisted we do the junkyard dog race, not me,” Harley argues defensively.
“I’m sorry, which of us determined the Yankees game was a good place to jailbreak to?”
“Oh, okay, Mr. Let’s sneak out and go to a party with a traceable Spiderman suit.”
“You bought a snake and lost it .”
“He has you there,” Tony calls again from underneath a king size mattress. Harley scowls in the direction of the hallways, to which he hears Stark holler, “don’t make that face at me, young man!”
“You’re also the one who brought the cigarettes,” Peter points out with another sneeze.
“I’m being ganged up on.”
“You’re definitely a Stark, is what you are,” Tony calls again. It sounds like he’s saved himself from the mattress. “And we’re all stuck in this together, so we might as well just deal with it.”
Peter pulls his head out of the oven, rinsing his rag out again in the greasy water. “I’d like to point out that I cause the least trouble around here.”
Harley huffs into the toilet he’s scrubbing, spraying down the outside with Windex to clear up any water spots. On the bright side, this is pretty clean, too, so he pours a cup or so of bleach into the bowl to help with any hard water stains and pulls off his gloves to go grab a drink of water.
“You’re always my partner in crime, Parker, I wouldn’t be so full of yourself,” Harley grumbles as he stalks down the hallway. He snatches a glass from the dishwasher and fills it halfway with water from the fridge to cure his dry throat. “If it was just me around here, it would be super boring.”
Peter opens his mouth to speak, but JARVIS cuts him off with a flash of red light.
“Toxic gas detected in master bathroom,” JARVIS reports at full volume. Both boys stare at each other before scrambling towards the hallway, knocking over Peter’s bucket of water in the process and spilling the greasy water across the kitchen floor in their attempt to get to the bathroom.
“Harley!” Tony is coming from down the hall now, but all three of them can see the white cloud of gas coming from the bedroom door. Tony pulls his shirt over his nose so the boys do the same, a little panicked as the lights keep flashing and JARVIS is whooping the same warning message over and over.
Stark snatches the boys with a fistful of their shirts and drags them towards the elevator. Peter slaps the close door button, and when it finally closes, they take their shirts back down to stare at one another. Well, more like Peter and Tony stare down Harley until he cracks.
“What!” he exclaims, throwing his hands out.
“What did you use in that bathroom?” Tony inquires, probably a little harsher than needed, and Harley is on the verge of a panic attack, so Peter hangs back instead of dog piling on his brother.
“I-I used the Scrub Daddy stuff on the bathtub and stuff! And, um, Windex for the ceramic, and then I put bleach in the toilet bowl before I got—”
Peter and Tony both throw their heads back in a groan, and Peter remembers the water he kicked over and presses a finger to his temple.
“You made chlorine gas.” Tony can’t not laugh—it was such a Harley mistake to make, it just reminds him why he thinks the kid is so funny.
“I spilled so much grease water in the kitchen,” Peter moans in despair. “We are so screwed.”
“You two are screwed. Not me,” Tony points out.
“Dude!” both boys protest in unison, and Tony throws his hands up as they step off of the elevator into the underground garage.
“Man, we’re going to just be stuck with more chores,” Harley grumbles as they pace around the concrete tomb.
“Or never have to do chores again,” Peter offers helpfully, but Harley isn’t amused.
All three boys jerk their heads towards the ramp when they can hear tires and groan again, leaning back against the wall by the elevator.
They watch helplessly as Pepper steps out of Happy’s car, peering at them from over her sunglasses. She narrows her eyes suspiciously.
“What happened?” she asks, and the three look at one another before they shake their heads.
“Nothing,” Tony says, shrugging. “Just, um…Just waiting to see you.”
“We missed you,” Peter adds, and Harley nods quickly in agreement.
Pepper eyes them as she takes off her glasses and tucks them safely into her purse.
“If that’s all, then why don’t we head upstairs to inspect your work?” she says innocently, and they all shake their heads again.
“Um…why don’t we get something to eat instead?” Tony offers, clapping his hands together. “We’re starving.” The teenagers nod fervently, eyes darting back and forth like scared animals.
Pepper purses her lips. “We can do that. After I check your work. If nothing happened.”
Tony inhales, looking around to search for another excuse. “Well, Pep, um…”
JARVIS, always a snitch like Karen, sounds through the garage at the worst possible time.
“Suite 14 has been cleared of toxic chlorine gas,” he reports, and Pepper’s eyes widen as she lays them on her three terrors.
“ Gas .” Not a question.
Peter and Tony step away from Harley instantly and she lasers in on him, and Harley blanches.
“It was an accident?” he offers weakly.
Pepper’s laser-stare swivels back and forth between the three of them, who all seem to shrink against the wall. Peter can feel a drip of sweat run down the back of his neck and tickle it unbearably, but he refuses to move, just standing and twitching instead in case the punishment comes down on him for the gas instead of Harley.
And then Pepper’s lips curl up into a smile that she can’t hold back anymore. She starts to laugh–a real, genuine laugh, not the laugh she has when Tony has driven her to the edge of a nervous breakdown. The boys look between themselves, but Pepper is losing it, giggling and laughing quietly.
“Well. Upstairs we go,” she manages between laughter, and the boys have no choice but to follow behind her as she takes the elevator to the top floor.
Peter cringes as Pepper examines the grease-water-covered floors, trying to explain sheepishly that he knocked the bucket over when the gas happened.
Harley is flushed red and horribly embarrassed at his mix up in the bathroom, hands clasped in front of him as he sits on his bed in shame.
Tony is fine–he bumbles around the house, taking off sheets and flipping mattresses like nothing has happened. The boys scowl at him when they see him. He shrugs and mouths, “things have been worse”.
Pepper taps her nails on the kitchen island. “Boys, come on in here,” she calls, and her two teenagers materialize in front of her, red and embarrassed. Tony appears at a much slower pace, but Tony figures Pepper is lucky he came at all.
Pepper eyes all three with a cocked eyebrow. A small smirk plays on her lips.
“Have we learned our lesson?” she asks, and the boys nod miserably. Pepper nods with them before a smile creeps across her face. “Good. I am going to order us all some lunch. You two finish your chores. Next time you two get into any trouble, I’ll make you watch Steve’s Captain America infomercials at eight AM.”
“No!”