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It’s 2 AM, all reasonable children should be in bed by now, (and it’s completely irrelevant that Tony, in fact, is not), but there are two gremlins in his fucking kitchen about to turn into monsters because somebody couldn’t keep their sticky little fingers out of the cookie jar.
“What are you doing?” Tony calls out, flicking the lights on. Said gremlins recoil back, hissing.
Morgan is standing on a chair, directly in front of the snack cabinet—the one specifically kept above her height of like, two foot five, filled with all kinds of sugary stuff that makes Tony’s life hell the next day. Coincidentally, this is also where they confiscate the energy drinks, and there are conveniently four missing from the pack (and Peter’s hands are suspiciously behind his back.)
“Nothing,” Morgan says. ‘Says’ is generous. She’s holding her elbow in front of her mouth and clearly chewing, panicked; words muffled through what is undoubtedly a full twinkie.
“Nothing?” Tony repeats. “It doesn’t look like you’re doing nothing.”
Peter’s eyes are wide open, which gives Tony clear sight of how red and puffy they are. Okay, so this is definitely not the first time they’ve broken through the fucking padlock on that cabinet before, then. Tony’s guess is that they figured it out a few days ago and have been going ham ever since.
Peter leans over to Morgan, whispering loudly enough that some in Russia could hear: “Don’t tell him.”
Morgan gives him a serious, conspiratorial nod.
“What are you eating?” Tony asks, pushing. Peter frantically shakes his head at her.
“Don’t show him,” Peter hisses. Morgan freezes, elbow still held over her mouth, chewing faster, now.
Tony stands there, waiting. Eventually, his glare is too much. “Hol’ on a seccon’,” Morgan muffles through her full mouth.
That is some absolute balls on that kid.
Eventually, she swallows, and then opens her mouth. “Ahh,” she says, like she’s at the dentist. Her speech is jumbled from holding her tongue out. “See? There’s nuffin’ in my mouf.”
Tony would argue that that’s probably frosting smearing her mouth, but he supposes that’s irrelevant.
“So you weren’t breaking into the snack cabinet,” Tony says flatly. Morgan and Peter both emphatically shakes their head. “And I don’t need to tell Mom and put you in time-out.”
Peter straightens up like a rod so damn fast he stumbles a bit, with eyes open even wider than before that Tony’s scared they’re going to pop out of his skull with a sad squirt of lime-green energy drink. There is no way to describe the emotion in his face—kid looks like he had a fucking stroke of genius. He looks like he’s about to get away with no sleep and three cans of monster. Tony is astounded by what on earth he finally could’ve come to because surely it must be the secret of life, and then the kid cries out, “Objection!”
Tony is absolutely fucking astounded.
The short-founded confidence the kid had in that moment is immediately put to rest when Tony levels his glare on him, and Peter immediately shrinks back and realizes what he’s done. What he’s said. Tony can see the moment he realizes there’s no backing out of it now. “You’re threatening my client with jail,” he mutters, extremely defensively.
Tony hasn’t had enough sleep to deal with this.
“Your client?” Tony scoffs. “And who are you?”
Peter is clearly rubbing his last two living brain cells, powered purely through the wonders of radioactive caffeine, together for any kind of cohesive response. And Tony should be really talking to May about how spending too much time with any lawyer is bad for a growing brain, much less Matt Murdock, because the only thing he could come up to say is: “Her… attorney?”
Morgan takes that and runs. “I have the right to a free trial, Daddy.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
“Okay,” Tony says, critical. “So, you’re pleading innocent to not breaking into the snack cabinet.”
Peter raises his hand like he’s in school, and then doesn’t wait for Tony to call him to share with the class. “Let the record state that there is no evidence to show for this.”
“Evidence? You’re telling me your sticky little hands weren’t in that cupboard five minutes ago?”
“Objection! Speculative in nature.”
Morgan nods furiously, clearly throwing her all into backing Peter.
Tony walks closer to them, and let’s it go for now that Peter’s clearly inching around to keep his back away from Tony. He picks up the plastic wrapper of what clearly once held a twinkie. “What’s this then?”
Two sets of shoulders shrug at him in unison.
He narrows his eyes at them. “Wasn’t here before. You must’ve opened it,” he muses aloud, still staring at them.
“Objection, leading the witness,” Peter replies. Tony wonders who he’s possibly objecting to in the court of law that is his kitchen. God?
“It looks like a twinkie to me,” Tony barrels on.
“Uh, we don’t know for sure though,” Peter says.
Tony squints at him again. “You were supposed to be in bed three hours ago.”
“Objection, irrelevant.”
“Do you know any other word than objection?”
Peter pauses for a moment. Then: “Objection... that was mean.”
Tony’s currently wondering if he can get Murdock fired from a company that has his name on it.
“Show me your hands,” Tony says instead of replying to whatever clusterfuck is happening in this conversation. He doesn’t miss the slightly alarmed look Peter has, but then—to his surprise, after a bit of shuffling nervously around, he takes his hands from his back and holds them palms out in front of Tony. “Hmph.”
Peter’s still staring wide-eyed at him, like he’s not quite sure what’s happening. Morgan is eyeing the box of twinkies again.
“So you didn’t just binge on an overload of sugar and caffeine,” Tony repeats.
Peter and Morgan’s gazes snap back to each other, and they both shake their heads slowly.
“You’re sure.”
“Asked and answered,” Peter states extremely hesitantly.
Morgan tugs on Peter’s sleeve, and Peter leans down so she can whisper in his ear. He nods seriously to her before straightening back up. “My client would like to be extradited for this trial.”
Extradited? Oh, Tony is incredulous at the audacity of these two. “Where could possibly be as forgiving as my kitchen law?”
Morgan whispers in his ear again. Peter flashes her a discrete thumbs up. “My client suggests McDonald’s.”
Tony coughs on a laugh. “Oh, you two have some balls,” he says. “How’s this for a plea deal, you little shit. You shouldn’t have tried to lie to me—”
“Objection, too late—” Peter interrupts.
“—And you promise not to do this tomorrow—”
“—Objection, we’ll see—”
“—And I let this go the one time. One. And next time you have to answer to Pepper.”
Morgan and Peter intensely side-eye each other. Then, furious whispers. Tony prays they don’t see through the real motivation for his mercy: the bag of expensive ass coffee beans that only Pepper knows where to buy hidden behind the energy drinks, that is absolutely purposefully kept locked away from Tony.
Finally, “We accept your offer,” Peter reluctantly agrees. Morgan looks remorsefully at the box of twinkies.
They shake on it. Both the kids’ grips are terrible, with Morgan’s fingers spaced widely apart (and definitely sticky with frosting), and Peter’s wrist entirely limp. He should teach Peter at least how to shake properly, sometime soon. Kid’ll need to know that if he wants to go anywhere in the business.
“Go to bed,” Tony orders, and they scamper off without a word. When Peter turns around, Tony notices that three cans of energy drink are sticking to his back like a fucking porcupine, absolutely held on there sheerly through the force of will and his weird spider powers. Tony is… too tired for this, quite honestly.
He sighs. He supposes he still has to be the bigger person. “I love you,” he calls out into the hallway, where they’re still scuffling down to their rooms.
From down the hall, he hears Peter urgently coaching Morgan. “Don’t fall for it.”
Jesus Christ, how does any parent fucking survive this world. Rolling his eyes, he calls out again, “I love you too, Peter.”
There’s a moment of silence, and then to Tony’s immense satisfaction, “Shit,” Peter mutters. “I’m falling for it.”
“And brush your teeth!”
The door shuts closed (and Tony doesn’t miss that they both went into Peter’s room instead of their own god-given bedrooms), and Tony goes to make himself a cup of coffee. He has the feeling he deserves it at this point.