Archive of Our Own ^beta

"And last, but probably not least for the half of you who don't believe in vacations," Fury says, leaning back in his chair, "we need to talk about the state-wide prosecutors' conference coming up next month."

The cold finality in his tone curdles something deep in Bruce's stomach—something he expertly ignores while he reaches for his coffee. Tony, predictably, catches his half-second hesitation (never mind the way he flinches like he just heard somebody scratch nails down a chalk board). He quirks an eyebrow, and when Bruce shakes his head, steals Pepper's napkin from under her coffee cup.

Pepper frowns, but Tony ignores her. Business as usual, really.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the table, Clint raises a hand. "Why are we talking about the conference?" he asks, and his usual inability to read the room causes Phil and Maria to sigh in perfect unison. "What? We go every year. It's an office— Maybe not tradition, but a thing we all do. What's there to talk about?"

Fury flicks his gaze in Bruce's direction, his lips pursed in an unusually severe frown. They briefly study one another, Fury clearly checking for cracks in Bruce's armor, but . . . Well, truthfully, Bruce's spiritual wounds from the 2009 conference feel totally healed over, most days—old, silvery scars that no longer ache every time a coworker talks about an extended vacation or, worse, adding another conference to the yearly schedule. And with all the upheaval of the last few months (Darcy passing the bar and joining legal aid, Maria's maternity leave, Phil and Clint's toddler-related roller coaster), the yearly conference feels like a return to the status quo.

Which is why Bruce plasters on a brave little smile and nods to Fury—and probably why Fury stares him down for another few seconds before nodding back. "Just needed a head count to start booking hotel rooms," the district attorney half-lies, turning back to Clint. "Didn't know how many of our new parents might opt out of a couple days away from their tiny roommates."

"Or whether we're counting down the days," Phil mutters darkly, and Clint works very hard to hide his thousand-watt grin behind his coffee mug.

On Phil's other side, Maria nods seriously. "No offense to all the crunchy granola super-moms out there, but I might actually kill a man to score a night alone in a hotel room." She pauses just long enough to toss a glimpse over to Jasper. "And before you ask, no, I'm not sorry."

Jasper shrugs as he snags another doughnut hole from the plate in the middle of the table. "Pretty sure I'd like you less if you were."

A couple people chuckle at that (or, more likely, at the soft smile his comment coaxes out of Maria), and Tony seizes the momentary distraction to slide his purloined napkin over to Bruce. But in roughly the same instant, Steve glances up from a stack of charging documents to peer suspiciously at Bruce. "Are you sure you don't mind watching Dot?" he asks. "Last year, you only had Miles. And with the office running on a skeleton crew, I don't want—"

"We'll be fine," Bruce promises, raising a hand. "It's only a couple days, and the boys are basically self-sufficient at this point." Tony taps his pen against the napkin, and Bruce resists the urge to sigh. "And who knows?" he adds. "I might even be able to sleep for once."

His husband huffs and immediately rolls his eyes. "You know, big guy, I don't remind you complaining about our all-night—"

Natasha grits her teeth. "Please don't finish that sentence."

"—The Americans binge-watching party at the time." Natasha frowns, mostly in confusion, and Tony flashes her an incredibly smug grin. "And," he continues, "I definitely don't remember you complaining about sex marathon after."

Most of their coworkers groan, but seeing as he also remembers that night (and the low ache in his thighs the morning after), Bruce smirks slightly even as he shakes his head. Fury dismisses all of them "before somebody else decides to turn my stomach," and they scatter like cockroaches back to their offices and, more importantly, swamped dockets. Bruce considers stopping Tony—mostly to reassure him that a two-day conference won't somehow cause the fall of Rome—but by the time he's gathered up his legal pad, Pepper's already literally dragged his husband away.

Napkin! Tony mouths like a confidential informant tipping off his government contact.

"Do your job!" Bruce calls after him, and he smiles when Tony wrinkles his nose.

Back in his office, however, Bruce slips on his glasses and unfolds Tony's note.

might be due for another crisis conference, the familiar scrawl reads, the ink bleeding into the napkin in messy blotches. been five years and these things always come in cycles. like when horoscopes talk about venus being in retrograde only with crazy work disasters.

(At least, Bruce assumes the squiggles between the R and E add up to "retrograde." He blames a combination of engineering and genius for Tony's atrocious penmanship.)

He balls up the napkin and lobs it into the trash before opening an e-mail to his husband. For the record, he types, we're not living in a George R.R. Martin novel. Winter is not coming, and there's no guarantee of disaster.

He's halfway through a social work report when Tony finally replies. believe what you want but ten bucks says this will be a crisis conference. just like the prophecy foretold.

Bruce studies the e-mail for a full minute before sliding his chair back to his keyboard. I'll buy you something nice with the money I win, he promises, and returns to work.

==

Except Tony ends up being right about the crisis conference.

Bruce wakes up on the first day of the conference with a heavy bolus of dread in his stomach and a massive hairball in the bed next to him. "Great," he mutters, and he at least rubs the sleep out of his eyes before rolling out of bed to clean up the mess.

But all four children (the three usual suspects and Dot) dress for school without complaint, and the girls both demand goodbye kisses when he drops them off. "You should tell my daddy how good I'm being," Dot suggests as she climbs out of the car, backpack in tow. "Send him a text. He likes knowing when I'm good."

Bruce narrows his eyes. "Is your dad worried you won't be good?" he wonders.

She immediately pales. "No!" she half-shouts, and he bites down on the edges of his smile. "He just likes knowing things! I need to go now, bye!"

He laughs as he pulls out of the drop-off lane, and when NPR switches from the news to one of his favorite This American Life reruns, Bruce feels surprisingly positive about the day.

His positivity lasts until he walks into the district attorney's office.

"Drop the travel mug and nobody dies today," Peggy instructs as he passes her cubicle, and he honestly checks over his shoulder to see who exactly she's talking to. But the hallway behind him remains totally empty, and the half-second distraction allows her to snatch the mug right out of his hand. "This hurts me more than it will hurt you," she says, "but trust me when I say I'm serving the greater good."

"Except I'm managing four children for the next day and a half," Bruce defends, and she actually scoffs as she walks away. He sighs. "I don't pretend to know half the unwritten rules around here, but if I broke some fundamental coffee law—"

"Not a coffee law, a water main." Bruce frowns as Jane—heavily pregnant and clearly very tired—wanders over, armed with four coffee mugs. Four familiar coffee mugs, he realizes belatedly: Pepper's, the receptionist's, the file clerk's, and his own. "Half the building's without water. We avoided the worst of it, but the library and a couple other offices on the third floor are trashed. And until our bathrooms are working again, Fury's placed a moratorium on coffee."

"And soda," Peggy adds, jabbing a finger at Bruce. "I've already hidden Pepper's boundless supply of diet cola. The Dr. Pepper is next unless you're able to behave yourself."

"Behave," Bruce repeats numbly, and she nods. He watches in some undefined horror as Jane shoves all the mugs into a file cabinet, adding in his travel cup at the last minute. "Are you sure Fury approved this? Because given that there are working bathrooms, I'd think—"

"That I'd want my staff running around this damn building like chickens with their heads off while I— No, I'm still here, thanks for asking." Fury scowls at his cell phone—or, more likely, at the tinny hold music drifting out of the speaker—before he turns his attention to Bruce and the trial assistants. "Word on the street's that most the public restrooms are out of commission," he explains, "and the judges are guarding their toilets like they're the gateway to Narnia." Peggy snorts, and he shoots her a razor-sharp glare. "Until I know exactly what the hell's going on in this place, we're gonna minimize our bladder disasters. End of story."

Peggy leans against the side of her cubicle, arms crossed. "I still say you'd be better off asking Skye for intel on the break."

"The day I ask the computer girl to deal with facilities for me is a cold day in—" he starts, but the words dry up the instant the hold music stops. "Yeah, the judicial complex, that's right," he says into the phone, and his suit coat whirls like a cape as he stalks off.

Bruce massages his temple and tries desperately to ignore the sweet smell of coffee that still trails out of the file cabinet. "Is tea out of the question?" he finally asks.

From all the way down the hall (and theoretically out of earshot), Fury bellows, "No bladder disasters!"

Jane shrugs. "Sorry, Bruce," she says, and he sighs as she locks the file drawer.

==

"What about disabled people? What if they need to pee? Or worse, go number two?"

Bruce glances up from his pile of charging documents—literally seven of them, all involving various forms of battery—but Wade Wilson keeps his eyes on his cell phone and his feet up on the bar that separates the well of the courtroom from the gallery. He barely twitches, obviously engrossed in whatever cat video's appeared in his inbox.

Bruce waits a few seconds before asking, "How hard have you thought about this, exactly?"

Wade wrinkles his nose. "Okay, first and foremost," he says, "that disapproving tone of yours sounds a lot like my husband's, and I'm not sure I need conflicting sexy feelings about three members of your office. Two's definitely enough." Bruce frowns, but Wade waves him off as he pockets his phone. "And second, I've only thought about it long enough to worry about the disabled people who can't run over to Starbucks for a tinkle. Well, them and the old people. Or young people with poor bladder control." He pauses, his lips rolling together. "And, actually, the poor, unsuspecting Starbucks employees. They shouldn't have to deal with judicial complex bathroom grime just because facilities management can't keep the water running."

Bruce sighs. "I'm sure there's a contingency plan," he replies, but the answer feels mostly like a lie. By his last count, Fury's placed at least sixteen phone calls to various arms of the great county maintenance leviathan, and to no avail. Aside from a few time-sensitive matters, like the stack of first appearances, all court hearings have been officially cancelled and most of the courthouse staff's beaten a hasty retreat home. Trial assistants and file clerks included, actually, transforming the district attorney's office into a two-man skeleton crew.

Well, plus Peggy, who refuses to leave "in case of coffee mug malfeasance, Banner."

After he double-checks the statutory citations for the final time (he's a child welfare attorney, after all), he glances back over at Wade. "Are you here for a client, or just expecting to be appointed?"

Wade cringes. "Yeah, about that—"

But before he finishes his sentence—or, more importantly, explains why he suddenly looks like he's bracing against physical pain—the security door opens and a guard walks in with a line of seven cheerleaders. Actual cheerleaders, in slightly crooked uniforms and once-proud knee socks, their high ponytails and carefully tied ribbons in disarray. Bruce blinks once before the urge to openly gape beats his discretion into submission.

After a few seconds, he blurts, "They're the 'girl gang' charged with six batteries apiece?"

One of the young women tosses her messy ponytail. "Only because those whores from Monroe County Community College—"

"Alleged whores," Wade corrects, feet still up on the bar.

"—kept talking shit about our routine." Her friends—or rather, codefendants—nod in impressive unison, and Bruce seriously considers resting his forehead on counsel table. "Somebody needed to stand up against their lies."

"Alleged lies, Madison." She huffs and rolls her eyes as Wade turns to Bruce. "Please tell me you knew more about this than you're showing on your face right now," he says, the worry in his tone evident. "Because otherwise, Judge Dunbar's going to walk in here and go all elitist on our collective asses, and—"

"All rise," the guard says, and Wade groans aloud as he hops to his feet.

"Oh, don't bother," Judge Dunbar says as he steps into the courtroom, waving a hand. "The sooner we finish this hearing, the sooner we can all return to civilization and forget that this water main disaster ever . . . "

He stops mid-sentence, his mouth falling open as he spots the row of disheveled cheerleaders and their equally disheveled attorney. Wade tugs uncomfortably at his (possibly corduroy) blazer before saying, "Your honor, before you ask all the obvious questions, you should know that Suffolk County Community College has communicated with my office—"

The judge raises a hand, and Wade promptly snaps his mouth shut. "Before you continue, Mister Wilson, I need to ask you a very important question."

The defense attorney gulps audibly. "Yes, sir?"

"Am I hallucinating, or are there seven brawling cheerleaders in my courtroom this afternoon?"

Madison huffs and tosses her hair again. "Alleged brawling cheerleaders, thanks," she says haughtily.

Wade shuts his eyes as Dunbar flashes the whole courtroom a shark-toothed smile. "My day is suddenly looking up," he remarks, and settles into his chair.

==

"Your hair is really pretty," Dot says, resting her chin on the counter. "I want hair like yours. But long, for braids."

Detective Ororo Munroe frowns and brushes the floppier part of what she usually wears in a mohawk off her forehead while her partner smirks into his coffee mug. The usual school day debris surround them and, really, the whole kitchen, transforming the house into a warzone; a shoebox diorama languishes on the floor, along with three beginning readers from the school library, a single teen-sized tennis shoe, and a discarded pair of sweatpants. Bruce tries to puzzle out which son stripped half-naked at the bottom of the stairs before deciding he prefers ignorance.

Amy peeks over the back of the couch, catches her father's eyes, and ducks out of sight again.

Bruce sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. "I need to talk to the detectives about work," he says, nudging Dot with his hip. "Why don't you and Amy go play with her dollhouse upstairs?"

Dot wrinkles her nose. "You want me to go away," she accuses.

Howlett snorts. "Got it in one, pipsqueak."

Ororo shoots him a warning glance that nearly curdles Bruce's blood, but Dot ignores both of them to toss her ponytail like one the felonious cheerleaders from that afternoon. "If you don't like me anymore," she says plainly, "then I don't like you, either. We'll be enemies, like Perry and Doctor Doofenshmirtz."

Bruce swears he feels his eyebrow twitch. "Ignoring the fact that they're not really enemies—"

"And we'll fight forever!" Dot half-shouts, her lower lip quivering as she pushes away from the counter. "And on your birthday, I won't even make you a card!"

He reaches to snag her by her arm—or, barring that, the strap of her overalls—but she darts away too quickly, a flash of possibly crying blonde six-year-old. Worse, Amy pops her head back up as her "fairy god sister" stomps up the stairs, and her disapproving glare cuts right into the softest part of Bruce's chest. "You made Dot cry," she points out.

Bruce massages his forehead. "I don't think she's crying, sweetheart, I think—"

"Making people cry isn't nice," she continues, her severe, chiding tone reminding Bruce of all of their long talks about respect. Ororo chokes back a laugh, and Bruce swallows down his urge to snap at her. "I'm going to go make her feel better, since you were mean."

"Good idea," Bruce encourages, but the girl still scowls at him as she trudges after her best friend.

Howlett at least waits for silence to settle over the room before remarking, "Your teenagers gonna come in and wreck something, or can we check over this search warrant now?"

"The quicker we deal with it, the better," Bruce admits, and they're literally one paragraph in when the boys return from their walk with both the dogs.

==

"The hell are you even doing here?" Fury demands, startling Bruce right out of his haze.

He rubs his eyes, waiting for his vision to clear as the emergency lights cast long, eerie shadows along the relatively rural road. The accident's already caused two fatalities—three, maybe, depending on whether the other passenger reaches the hospital in time—and two dazed men still sit in the back of the other ambulance, trying to wrap their heads around the pick-up truck that'd plowed into oncoming traffic. "Drugs, probably," one of the officers'd said, shaking his head. "We're seeing a real up-tick in driving while fucked up around here."

"Cassidy," his captain'd growled, but he'd just shrugged as he'd wandered off.

The shrill ring of the on-duty cell phone still echoes in Bruce's ears, and he tries to clear the cobwebs out of his head as he shifts to glance at his boss. He'd dragged Teddy out of bed, explaining the situation as he'd guided the teenager to the couch and hoped against hope that none of the other kids stirred. But even clothes and a splash of cold water on his face'd failed to wake him up, and his gas station coffee smells acrid and tastes even worse.

He works to ignore both as he swallows. "I'm on duty for the week, since everyone else is out of town."

"Technically, sure," Fury answers, his hands on his hips. "Except I told the cops to forward their calls to me during the conference. A little professional courtesy, at least for a couple days."

Bruce frowns. "Why?"

"Because unlike you, I've got a wife at home to help manage my houseful of trouble." He snorts at that, shaking his head, and Fury raises an eyebrow. "At the risk of impugning your parenting skills, what backup are you looking at with Tony and the rest of the team upstate?"

Bruce considers rolling his eyes at the question's very premise—after all, he and Tony boast a pretty substantial friend group, never mind their professional acquaintances and enormous network of Urban Ascent contacts—but the longer he thinks about it, the more he realizes that nine-tenths of their support system is currently asleep in a hotel upstate. He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Will you accept 'a high school student with a heart of gold' as an answer?"

Fury smirks. "He gonna call in a ton of favors after this?"

Bruce sighs into his unappealing coffee. "You have no idea."

Chuckling, his boss reaches over and, in an unusual sign of affection, claps him on the shoulder. "Take it from somebody with experience: the only thing worse than single parenting a house full of kids for a couple days is doing it while you're running on fumes. Head home, catch a couple hours of sleep, and I'll see you in the morning." He pauses, his jaw twitching slightly. "With running water, hopefully."

This time, Bruce actually smiles. "Pepper and I might actually mutiny if you confiscate our caffeine again," he warns.

"A risk I'm willing to take," Fury replies, and he squeezes Bruce's shoulder before walking to join a group of police officers.

At home, Bruce staggers up the stairs like a zombie, barely managing to toe off his shoes before collapsing onto the mattress. He sleeps heavily despite the bed's emptiness, and he only wakes up when someone shoves at his shoulder.

"Wha?" he asks as he raises his head, his vision sleep-blurred and his cheek slightly crusty.

Miles sighs and rolls his eyes. "We're late for school and Amy says her stomach hurts," he reports, and Bruce swears as he half-rolls, half-trips out of bed.

==

"Uh," Jane says from the doorway.

Bruce jerks his chin up off his fist hard enough that his glasses nearly fall off. "I'm awake," he says quickly, not entirely lying. When he reaches for his coffee mug, he discovers it's empty.

Again.

He rubs the sleep from his eyes. "I'm actually awake," he promises, "just drifting a little."

"I'm not worried about the drifting," Jane replies, walking into his office. For the first time, he realizes she's holding a stack of brown case folders. "Judge Brassels's assistant just called."

Bruce stops eyeing the folders to frown at her. "And?"

She worries her lips together. "Remember that day the court scheduling software crashed?"

A sudden prickle of dread crawls up his spine. "Yes."

"There are two sentencings and a probation revocation hearing that never got rescheduled after the crash." Bruce actually groans aloud, but Jane—apparently learning ruthless efficiency at the Pepper Potts School of Trial Assisting—just drops the pile of folders onto his desk. "The defendants are here," she continues, "and the judge doesn't want to cancel."

He rolls his lips together. "And Fury?" Jane tips her head to one side, and he resists his urge to sigh. "Still dealing with facilities, I'm guessing?"

"Still dealing with something that involves yelling," she replies with a shrug, and he massages his forehead. "Do you want more coffee while you review the files?"

"I'm not sure coffee will save me from this nightmare," he grumbles, "but please."

==

"I'm really sorry," Amy says, sniffling slightly, "but I felt so icky and then Nurse Jill—"

"I know, honey," Bruce soothes, reaching back to pat Amy's leg. She smiles bravely at him, a little glimmer of her normal self, and he basks in it until he starts drifting into the next lane. He jerks the wheel, almost overcorrecting, and waits until they reach a stop light to rub his eyes.

Bruce'd arrived back in his office from the hour-long, evidentiary probation revocation hearing to six calls from Amy's school and, worse, one very terse call from Kurt Wagner. "I am in permanency planning meetings all day," he'd reported sourly, "and I can't—"

Mercifully, Bruce's almost-full voicemail had interrupted him before his explanation turned into grousing.

"We need to go back to the office," Bruce says as the light changes, glancing back at Amy through the review mirror. Her face resembles the newly green stoplight, a nice complement to the fever that her school nurse'd uncovered. "But I have the iPad, so you can lay on Nick's couch and watch Netflix until the end of the day."

Amy narrows her eyes. "Nick as in Beth's daddy?" she asks earnestly.

Bruce bites back a laugh. "Not sure how he feels about that title, but yes, that Nick."

She smiles when he squeezes her ankle.

They fall into an easy silence after that—Amy with her head cushioned against the window, Bruce half-listening to NPR—until they pull onto the main stretch that leads to the judicial complex. The traffic's atrocious thanks to the lunch hour, and he grits his teeth against the usual stop-and-go gridlock. He just about thanks Amy for her patience when she suddenly blurts, "Uh-oh."

The dread from that morning returns, tendrils that curl around Bruce's stomach, and he draws in a fortifying breath as he glances over his shoulder. "You okay, sweetheart?" he asks hopefully.

"No," she answers, her voice quivering—and then, less than a full second later, she throws up all over her lap.

Bruce stares at the rapidly spreading mess, feeling helpless and, for the first time since Tony left Sunday night, a little panicked. He only really stops gaping when the car behind him honks frantically

The horn blast startles Amy out of her own shock, and she blinks twice before bursting into uncontrollable tears.

"Oh, sweetheart," Bruce murmurs, and he discreetly rolls down the windows as he starts looking for a parking spot.

==

"Hey, intellectual big guy and love of my life, how about you wake up now?"

Bruce blinks slowly awake, sleep drunk and, thanks to the glare of the afternoon sun, instantly blind. He grumbles and shields his eyes—and, as a consequence, reveals Tony's smirking face. He's a little rumpled around the edges, his sleeves rolled up and his tie completely missing in action, but somehow, he's the most beautiful thing Bruce's ever seen.

He stretches out an arm to run his fingers through Tony's already rumpled hair, and Tony smiles. "Miss me?" he teases.

Bruce rolls his eyes. "I didn't—" he starts to protest, but the second he scoots forward, Tony physically shoves him back against the couch cushions. He frowns, ready to protest, but his husband just gestures to his lap. Or, more specifically, to the damp-haired seven-year-old who sleeps with her head pillowed on his thigh.

She stirs just enough to crush her favorite stuffed animal to her chest, and Bruce almost melts.

But more importantly, the sight of a pajama-clad Amy somehow clears away the haze, and Bruce remembers everything about the last forty-eight hours: the hearings, the search warrant, the nightmarishly late night at the crime scene, Amy throwing up in the back of the Prius. What's worse, he remembers settling down with Amy on Nick's office couch after a hasty bath at home, promising to watch Netflix with her until her stomach calmed down.

He can't recall falling asleep, though. Or—

He frowns slightly. "When'd you get back?"

"Just now." Bruce feels his brow crease, and Tony reaches up to smooth out the worry lines. "Pepper called around the time our least self-sufficient foundling barfed all over the backseat. Decided you needed a crisis conference pinch hitter."

Bruce sighs. "Stop calling it a crisis conference," he complains. "It's just—"

"Exactly as the prophecy foretold, my sweet summer doctor," Tony cuts him off, and Bruce rolls his eyes even as his husband leans in to kiss him.

The kiss feels like coming home, not that Bruce plans on admitting it aloud. No, Tony and his theories about bad conference weeks cycling like the star signs can definitely wait until—

"Are you two really kissing in my damn office?"

Nick's voice sounds thicker and darker than usual, and Bruce breaks the kiss to glance over at his boss's desk. Nick sits upright in his desk chair, his clothes still perfectly undisturbed, but when he scrubs a hand over his face, Bruce cocks his head to one side. "Were you asleep?" he wonders aloud.

Tony lights up like a Christmas tree and nods emphatically. Nick, however, just levels them both a death-glare. "Take your sick child home before you infect this whole damn office," he commands. "And, more importantly, neither of you saw a damn thing. Understood?"

Tony raises his hand. "My healthy fear of your wrath is pretty well-documented, so don't worry. Mum is absolutely the word."

(Three days later, someone tacks up a photograph of Fury in the break room. He's reclined in his desk chair, his head tipped back as he snores. Underneath, a bright red caption reads The Crisis Conference Claims Another Victim.

At the staff meeting that morning, Tony shrugs. "Don't look at me," he says. "I like my gainful employment, and I'd be a very bad kept man."

And behind his coffee mug, Bruce smiles.)