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It started in Tony’s Wakandan hospital room, where everyone with more medical knowledge than brain cells worked tirelessly to keep his tired heart beating. He was limp and pale on the bed, soot and ash and blood slowly recolouring the white fabric of his pillow and sheets while Shuri and Strange and Helen Cho rushed around with the fatigued air of people who had found their second wind in victory.
It was three days before Pepper Stark was allowed to see her husband, who looked frail and lopsided as he slept, IVs feeding him fluids and medication through the one arm that had survived his plight. Pepper couldn’t mind, she’d rather have most of her husband than none of him, she reasoned while gently cleaning off his face as she did so often after he stumbled into their bed after a messy tinkering session. She had no doubt that he would be fashioning himself a new arm as soon as he could, even though Princess Shuri had offered to kit out something similar to Bucky Barnes’ for Tony. Pepper had kindly declined, aware than her husband wouldn’t trust something to be attached to him if he hadn’t made it.
She video called Morgan and Happy from Tony’s bedside, explaining what had happened even though Morgan didn’t understand how serious it was. She wasn’t aware of her father’s heart problems or his weakened system, so after some reassurance that she would see her parents soon, Morgan wandered off to play in the living room.
Unlike Morgan, Happy understood much more and stayed on the line with Pepper for another hour, discussing his prognosis and what he could do around the house to make it easier for when he came home. Pepper choked up a bit at his thoughtfulness and said she would message him later when she’d gotten some sleep. With her husband’s hand carefully cradled in her own, she fell asleep in the large armchair beside his bed.
Pepper was woken up some time later by the sound of the exterior door swishing open and the loud rushing of air in the small decontamination chamber. Tony’s room was dark, though there were lots of small spots of light around the room from the advanced equipment in the room. The interior door swung open quietly, letting a beam of sterile white light into the room before it was hushed and the door closed.
In the dim, Pepper could make out the young and mostly healed features of Peter Parker, whom she had shared many dinners with and gotten to know quite well before Everything happened those five years ago. She smiled tiredly at him, knowing the boy would be able to see her face much better in the dark than she could see him.
“Hi Peter,” she said softly.
Peter’s footsteps padded around the bed until he was curled up on the chair nearest to Pepper’s. “Hey Ms Potts - no wait, Mrs Stark,” he awkwardly whispered. Pepper found herself smiling at the boy.
“It’s okay Peter. You can call me Pepper, you know that,” she said.
Peter didn’t reply for a while. He was staring at Tony, at the empty space on the right side of the bed and the sallow bruises and healing burns that crept out from under the sheets. “I’m sorry,” Peter said.
Pepper knew why he was apologising, if there was anyone more self-flagellating than her husband it was her husband’s protege. Her eyes strained and found Peter’s right hand in the dark, wrapped in gauze and bandages right up to the fingertips. He’d been the first to get to Tony, vaulting over everything in his path to take the gauntlet off of Tony. Pepper wasn’t sure what the boy was aiming to achieve, but he’d slammed into Tony and right as Tony snapped his fingers, Peter’s hand was braced on the only part of Tony not covered by the armor.
Strange had pulled Pepper aside on the second day of Tony’s treatment to discuss how lucky he was. She would never forget the conversation, held in a small sitting area, private enough to deliver bad news, she’d thought when she’d followed the doctor. Her husband’s entire right arm was gone. It wasn’t burned, it didn’t need to be removed; it was gone. There were significant burns and internal bruising extending right down his right side and edging towards his left, and had Peter not been touching Tony where he was, the energy of the Infinity Stones would have simply burned through Tony’s entire chest.
As it was, Peter redirected the energy and gave it another pathway out. Instead of toasting Tony’s vital organs to ash, it had screamed up Peter’s arm, but without enough time to get far enough to cause damage before Tony clicked his fingers. Peter would be fine, Strange had said. The damage was limited to his lower arm and hand, and even with the colossal amount of residual energy teaming through the tissue, the boy’s advanced healing would mean a complete recovery.
Pepper smiled over at Peter. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Peter. You’re the reason he’s still here. He’s going to be fine,” she told him.
Peter made a wounded noise in the back of his throat. “He just looks so…”
“Small?” Pepper suggested with a tiny wry grin.
Peter snorted. “Don’t let him hear you mock him while he sleeps.” Pepper chuckled at the indignant expression her husband would almost definitely be pulling at them had he been awake and alert. The silence past the quiet laughter was sobering.
“You should get some rest, Peter,” Pepper said.
“I couldn’t sleep. Not knowing how he was. I missed so much, you got married and had a kid and if I’d just been a little faster Mr Stark could have been home by now. Not...” Peter sniffed wetly and gestured at the bed.
Pepper fondly sighed at the boy with the hero complex and the big heart. “Tony is going to be just fine, Peter. Morgan is with Happy, she all she knows is that her dad is sick but will be coming home soon,” she reached over without thinking and carded a hand through Peter’s curls. “Stay here and get some sleep, Pete, I promise I’ll wake you if anything changes,” she soothed.
And Peter drifted off with his head on Pepper’s armrest, her hand tucked in his hair where she fell asleep combing her fingers through it.
At some point in the night, Rhodey slumped into a seat beside Peter and fell into a slumber, his legs swung over the boy’s lap and arm across his face to block out the faint light of near dawn.
When Tony finally woke up, a week and a half after he snapped his fingers, the first thing he blearily noticed wasn’t the lack of arm on his right side, or the twinkling lights and runes of brilliant technology and actual magic, it was the presence of his wife, sleeping in a cushy armchair next to his bed, with her hand loosely grasping his even in sleep. Her head was at a horrible angle that would hurt when she woke, but Tony didn’t have the energy to do more than move his own head and so couldn’t correct it.
Beside her, on a couch shoved up against the armchair he could see the mass of brown curls and knot of gangly limbs that could only belong to Peter ( he did it. Peter was back, everyone was back and Thanos was gone. It wasn’t a dream ). Peter’s head was next to Pepper’s other hand, hair ruffled as though Pepper had been playing with it as he fell asleep, just like she did to Morgan when their daughter couldn’t sleep.
On the other end of the couch, Rhodey was snoring, spread out with one leg over Peter and the other hanging to the floor. His leg braces were propped up nearby, in reaching distance if he had to get up in a hurry. Rhodey’s face was turned into the couch cushions, away from the purple and golden light of the sunrise coming in through the window behind Tony’s bed. Tony thought that he could make out some drool on the cushions by his friend’s open mouth.
Finally, over by the door, relaxed on the tile floor and leaning against the wall was Nebula. She didn’t need sleep as often as humans, Tony knew, and she was also prone to refusing rest unless she was somewhere absolutely safe and comfortable, but she was there, head tilted back against the wall and dark eyes resting closed. Her frame was relaxed, dressed in leather pants and her own boots, as well as a baggy shirt and fleece lined jacket. One of her swords was gripped across her lap in a relaxed hand, though as Tony drifted back to sleep, he knew that the next nurse to walk through that door would be in for a surprise.
One year later and surprise sleepovers in Tony and Pepper’s bedroom were becoming a Thing. For the most part it was Peter’s fault; he struggled with insomnia and nightmares interchangeably, terrified to fall asleep and wake up and find everything had changed. So Peter took to sleeping in Tony and Pepper’s room, first nervously, sneaking into their walk in wardrobe where they’d find him the next morning, then the floor at the foot of their bed, and then, when Tony had decided that he’d had enough of accidentally kicking Peter awake when he woke to use the bathroom at three in the morning, finally in their bed.
It got easier with time and therapy, but Peter struggled to sleep alone in his own room across the hall, and Tony and Pepper never minded when he curled up in their bed with them. Peter would tuck himself into Pepper’s side, with Tony’s prosthetic stretched out across the pillows to card through his hair. Peter would fall asleep to their heartbeats and breathing, and the gentle whirring of the arm he helped Tony build. Tony didn’t mind. He liked having the kid close.
Morgan didn’t understand why her ‘brother’, the one she’d heard about for years that was gone but-suddenly-not gone, slept in her mom and dad’s bed, but nonetheless took it as a reason to also sleep in their bed. She liked to sleep sprawled half on top of her dad, spread out like a starfish so that she accidentally kicked Peter in her sleep. With one hand flat on her dad’s chest, the other held the arm of a bedraggled bear dressed in a coat and hat, where it was wedged between Peter’s shoulder and Morgan’s chest.
When Harley came to stay he got in on the sleepover in mom and dad’s room action too. Tony once woke up dazedly to find Harley setting up camp at the foot of their bed, shuffling himself until he was stretched out just past Tony’s feet, pillow on Pepper’s side of the bed and a bunched up blanket on Tony’s.
“What the fuck are you doin’?” Tony asked, glaring at the foot of the bed where he toed Harley in the leg.
“Shut the fuck up and go back to sleep, what does it look like I’m doin’?” Harley grumbled back, rolling over and colliding with the footboard loudly. He swore again.
“Mom, Harley’s swearin’ ‘gain,” Morgan mumbled, eyes still closed. Pepper didn’t respond to her daughter but she did aim a sleepy nudge at Harley’s shoulder in reprimand. Peter just snuffled in his sleep and shuffled over until he was facing Morgan and Tony.
Tony sighed without any real annoyance and went back to sleep.
Of course Rhodey found out about the unplanned sleepovers. Peter said something over dinner and suddenly Tony is the only one who doesn’t want Friday showing him photos of the lot of them piled on the poor California King - that’s possibly being upgraded to an Alaskan King for Christmas so Tony doesn’t wake up with Morgan’s elbow in his eye socket again.
That night, once Peter’s slunk in between them, Morgan’s bounced over Tony’s rib cage, and Harley’s told Tony to shut up, Rhodey marches on in with a duvet under one arm and the specially filled silent chiropractic bean bag Tony had made for his back and legs dragging behind him. He sets it down at Tony’s bedside, grinning brightly in the dark at his friend who is covered in children, and promptly spends twenty minutes fucking around in the dark to make it the best spot in the room.
The bean bag is filled with a gel that moulds to Rhodey’s hips and back, made for him after he’d confessed to Tony that lying flat aches quite bad. It’s a giant thing, made even more plush with the addition of three pillows, a duvet, a small alarm clock, and a sleep mask. Rhodey falls asleep and snores loud enough to disturb Peter into kicking Harley, who swears at Tony, who glares at his friend who draped over the bean bag on the floor with all the space in the world.
Nebula doesn’t like to sleep. When she stays at the Stark house she will often wander around in the dark, keeping an eye on the inhabitants and watching the stars reflect in the lake. Some nights though, she will silently let herself into the master bedroom, where after years of knowing the Starks, she feels comfortable being. Nebula will look at the crowded bed fondly, and adjust Harley’s blanket from where he’s kicked it off, gently remove Morgan’s needle-like feet from Tony where she is unconsciously kicking her father in the groin, and brush her fingers over Pepper’s hand where she rests it on top of the duvet.
She usually leaves Rhodey be, sometimes knocking his foot into a better position for his legs, and Peter is so buried in the middle of the bed that she can’t do anything to him without waking the entire room, but sometimes Nebula can carefully press her fingers to Tony’s neck, to feel the slow pulse harmonise with his breathing.
Once assured that everyone in the house is fine, she will take a position at the foot of the bed, on the floor with full view of the doorway. From there, Nebula can sleep freely knowing that she’s the first thing an intruder will encounter when they enter the room.
When Happy comes over early the next morning and lets himself in to a silent house, he expects something bad, only for Friday to quietly direct his attention up the stairs and into the master bedroom. It’s large with white-washed wood and a California King that hasn’t been replaced by something bigger, a window seat where a book and a stuffed spider sit, and thick carpeting that had been newly installed a week ago.
Rhodey is luxuriously splayed out on top of his bean bag, snoring loudly with an ugly eye mask printed like a 70’s couch on his face. Harley is mumbling in his sleep nonsensically, draped over the foot of the bed like a large floppy dog. Pepper is spooning Peter, who is face to face with Morgan’s teddy bear. Morgan herself is mostly on top of Tony’s chest, drooling into his shirt without a care in the world. Happy’s boss is deeply asleep too, hot rod red prosthetic stretched out towards Pepper and Peter, while his other hand holds Morgan steady on his chest, like he did when she was a baby. And Nebula is awake and watching him from her spot on the floor, not a weapon in sight though daring Happy to wake up the rest of their family.
Which he doesn’t. In fact, Happy decides to have an early morning nap in the squashy armchair Pepper keeps in the corner of the room.
When Tony wakes up to find seven other people in his room he decides he’s finally going to do it. Once he spits out Morgan’s hair, untangles his prosthetic hand from Peter’s curls, and gets his foot out from under Harley’s ass, he’s going to order an Alaskan King and all of the custom crap that comes with such a large mattress, and everyone is going to deal with it.
Tony never does get around to ordering that bed.