Chapter Text
"Honey, I'm home!" Tony called out as soon as he closed the door to the penthouse, toeing his shoes off at the same time.
He allowed himself to bask in the warmth that lit up his entire body when he heard Bucky call out right back with a "Welcome home, baby!"
From the sound of it, his husband was in the bathroom, and still in the shower. If it were just the year before, Tony would have run to the bathroom and jumped under the spray to have some steamy shower sex with Bucky in a matter of seconds. But right there, right now, there was one thing he wanted to do more than anything in the world, taking precedence even over joining Bucky and kissing him silly after a full day apart, and his feet led him where he wanted to without delay, guiding him further into the penthouse.
The door to the nursery was ajar, as they always left it, and Tony entered the room on his tippy toes. His heart sized in his chest when his eyes fell on the cutest baby the world had ever known – he was not biased, this was fact. His son was wide awake, lying in his crib, snug in his sleeping shark onesie, and staring right back at him with huge and adorable brown eyes, babbling happily at the sight of his father. Tony wondered, not for the first time, if it was possible to die of happiness. He cooed at his son and reached down to take him in his arms.
"Hey there Petey-pie, light of my life, tesoro mio. I missed you so much today," Tony whispered, burying his head in Peter's soft brown curls, breathing in the soft scent of the tear-free apple shampoo they washed his hair with.
He spun round on his feet just to hear Peter squeal with delight, before leaning back to take in the huge smile that graced his son's face. It had been a tough decision, and a tough process, when Tony and Bucky decided to adopt. Knowing they had not the best past, nor the best baggage. Knowing their everyday life was not the easiest, nor the safest, and that they would have to change their ways to be able to offer the child the most normal life they could. But that smile. That smile made it all worth it.
Right at this instant, Peter tried to lift his left hand to tap at his father's cheek – Tony was always thankful in these moments that he didn't have Bucky's long hair, which more often than not ended up tangled up in Peter’s fingers, and then his husband had to endure their son pulling at the strands with gusto, and with quite an enthusiastic amount of strength –, but something went wrong.
Tony's blazer was coming up along with Peter's hand, even though it didn't look like the boy had grasped it in his fist. On the contrary, Peter was looking at his hand and at the offensive fabric with a ridiculously small and adorable frown, and began to give small pats to Tony's torso, trying to shake off the blazer, expressing his indignation with a series of sharp "Bah!"
Tony cocked his head, perplexed. He reached down and gently grabbed his son's tiny wrist to try and see what was happening.
"What's going on, Pete, tesorino? What's that on your hand?"
Peter's hand seemed curiously glued to Tony's blazer. Tony frowned. He looked to the side and realized that, even though Peter had not noticed yet, the baby's right hand also seemed to be glued to Tony's clothes. Peter didn't look frightened in the least – he rather looked like he enjoyed trying to shake the feeling off by tapping his father's torso – but surely it wouldn't be long before he changed his mind about it, so Tony tried to keep the interior freak-out well, interior, and the urgency out of his voice when he called for his husband.
"Bucky, darling? Would you mind coming right here immediately? Like right now, pronto? Quickly quick?"
Fortunately, Bucky was perceptive enough not to dawdle, and barged in the room barely a second later.
"What?? Doll, what's going on?"
Tony mourned the fact that he did not have the time to linger on his husband's state of undress – straight out of the shower, droplets of water still clinging to his bare skin, only a towel hanging low around his hips, yum – but they had more urgent matters at hand. AH. At hand. Tony was hilarious even in trying times.
"Buckaroo, care to explain why our son's hands are sticky? Wait, let me rephrase that – why are our son's hands apparently COVERED IN SUPERGLUE????"
Okay. So much for not freaking out. Peter had frozen in place, looking up at Tony with his huge doe eyes, and he asked, quietly: "Da?"
Immediately, Tony soothed him with affectionate nonsense and words of reassurance.
"It's alright Petey-pie, we're going to find a solution, glue is fun, don't you worry, you’ll be fine, you’re just going to be our super sticky son for a bit, it’s alright."
"Tony..." Bucky began, and his tone was soft and even, but his eyes were worried. "He was clean and fine when I put him down for his nap a few hours ago… I don't know how he ended up like that."
Tony bit his lip, and gently bounced Peter in his arms. "Okay, let's keep our cool, and try to find answers."
For the following fifteen minutes, they went over the whole nursery with a fine-tooth comb, Tony fussing over Peter and instructing Bucky where to look while the super soldier was doing all the heavy lifting.
But they could never find the guilty tube of glue. Or anything bearing any kind of close resemblance to glue, for that matter.
They were starting to get desperate when, all of a sudden, Peter reached up and tapped Tony's cheeks with a happy giggle. Tony exclaimed in surprise, and Bucky rushed over to the two loves of his life. They could not find any sticky residue of any sort on Peter's hands, which straight up didn't make any sense. It was as if all of the incident had been but a dream.
They allowed themselves to relax when nothing else out of the ordinary happened for the rest of the evening, and eventually settled for a more or less rational explanation, namely, that Peter had probably drooled all over his hands in his sleep and that it had been a bit sticky when he had woken up, but that Tony and Bucky had blown the thing out of proportion by panicking.
And thus, the case was closed.
Until the day Bucky entered the nursery in the morning, and found Peter on the ceiling.
But that particular event was the beginning of a much larger story.