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Steve’s brows furrowed together in concern, and he started to type out a lengthy response before someone cleared their throat. He froze, his eyes shifting forward to meet the hard gaze of Director Fury. The man raised a menacing brow, and Steve straightened up, smiling sheepishly. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“Someone better be dead or dying, Rogers,” Fury huffed, frowning before he returned to the team’s after-action debrief.
Tony shifted in his seat on the other side of the conference table, throwing a look towards his husband, silently inquiring with his eyes, What’s wrong? Steve waved a dismissive hand, shaking his head. Not now.
He tried to show real interest for the rest of their meeting, really, but it wasn’t his fault that his attention was pulled elsewhere. Steve read and re-read the texts between him and Morgan, trying to decipher the cryptic messages. Why would she be looking for those specific items, and what about it did she not want Tony to know?
A couple of things clicked into place when Steve glanced over the list again. One: Bleach and ammonia should never, ever come into contact. Two: He needed to get the fuck out of there if Morgan was doing what he thought she was doing.
Steve pushed away from the conference table so abruptly that each and every person in the room turned to gawk at him; some in curiosity, some in annoyance.
Fury barked out, “Rogers! Do you have—”
“I gotta go,” he responded bluntly, rising from his chair.
“What?” Tony squawked, staring now. “Steve!”
“Wait, we’re not even halfway done with the — where the hell is he going?” Clint’s question was the last thing Steve heard as he shoved his way out of the conference room and made a beeline to the private elevators that led up to the Avengers Tower apartments. His phone was vibrating in his pocket the entire way, and then abruptly stopped; he knew Fury would keep Tony in that meeting until they were well and done, and for once he was grateful for it.
The penthouse was unusually quiet when Steve arrived, nothing but the sounds of the centralized air conditioning system and the low rumble of the washing machine down the hallway. He checked in the laundry room first, then the hall bathroom, and then approached her bedroom. Knocking lightly against the door, he said, “Morgan? Can I come in?”
Silence. After a moment, Steve pushed the door wider, seeing that her room was unoccupied. He’d pivoted to continue his search before he noticed something odd: Her mattress was bare. Sheets and comforters were nowhere to be seen, and her pillows rested precariously on top of her chair full of clothes.
“Morgan?” Steve called out louder, moving back towards the living room. The sound of running water from the master bedroom caught his attention, and he barged into his and Tony’s room, following the noises being made in their en suite. Steve opened the door, catching the sight of his daughter hunched over the double vanity sink with the previously missing sheets in hand. “What are you doing in here?”
Morgan visibly jumped at the sound of his voice, a shrill shriek escaping her lips. Her eyes were wide when her head snapped to look at him. “Oh my God! Make some noise when you move! You’re, like, a freakin’ cat.”
Steve stifled his laughter, disguising it as a cough. “Not my fault you inherited your father’s crap hearing. I was calling for you.”
“Well, you found me, so if you could just… you know. Leave.” Morgan barely spared a glance at him before returning to the sink, letting the water run as she scrubbed at the drenched sheets.
“No can do. I had to make sure you weren’t making some sort of gas bomb up here.”
Morgan snorted, shaking her head slightly. “Don’t worry,” she said indignantly, “J saw all the shi — uh, stuff I was grabbing and immediately alerted me to how dumb I was.”
“Oh, yeah? His words exactly?” Steve teased, stepping further into the bathroom. He scanned the contents she had accumulated on the counter: Bleach, stain remover, and other cleaning items he didn’t quite recognize. Thank the Lord for attentive artificial intelligence, Steve thought to himself.
A redness swept across Morgan’s cheeks, and her face pinched slightly. She didn’t give him an answer, just continued to wash the slowly disappearing stains from the fabric in her hands. Steve decided not to push her, realizing in the silence that his eleven-year-old daughter was actually embarrassed. His eyes zeroed-in on the lemon-shaped lemon juice container, however, and couldn’t help from asking, “What’s the lemon juice for?”
Morgan looked at him from the corner of her eye before slouching forward. “Uh… to help it smell nicer.”
“Morg, I don’t think—” Steve caught himself. “Listen, this kind of stuff is completely normal, there’s nothing to be—”
“That’s so easy for you to say. You’re a boy. You didn’t wake up on the Japanese flag this morning!”
Steve chortled, and then slapped his hand over his mouth. “I’m sorry, it just came out. I didn’t mean to—”
“Papa, it’s not funny!” she complained, turning even redder. Her bottom lip jutted out in a pout.
“It’s… it’s a little funny,” he replied, pressing his mouth into a thin line. Steve looked at her then, really took a look at her, and his vision started to blur at the edges from unbidden tears. His baby girl was growing up so fast.
And then, another thought: He had no idea what to do in this situation. Sure, he knew women got their monthlies, and his Ma had given him the birds-and-the-bees talk once upon a time, but he still grew up in a time when sexual education in schools was barely getting its legs under itself.
In hindsight, Steve probably should’ve paid more attention to those pamphlets.
“Why didn’t you want your dad to know?” Steve inquired delicately, still curious as to why she had texted him instead of Tony.
“What does Dad know about girls?” Morgan shot back, brows drawing up skeptically. The expression on her face made her look so much like Tony that it was uncanny.
“Well…” Yeah, okay, so she missed Tony’s genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist phase. Maybe it was better to keep her in the dark about it for as long as possible. “You’re right. Yeah, your dad knows nothing about girls,” Steve said instead.
“…you don’t know anything about this either, do y—”
“No, no, I don’t. Unless you girls still use menstrual belts in this century…”
Morgan made a noise in the back of her throat, almost pained. Under her breath, she said, “I should’ve just called Mom or MJ.”
Now that was an idea. After Steve convinced Morgan to throw the rest of the sheets into the wash and take a long shower, he pulled out his phone to shoot Pepper a text.
Before he could type out something along the lines of, our daughter is bleeding and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, Pepper called him on the line. There was a lot of “Why didn’t you call me sooner?” and “Oh, she’s growing up so fast” and “Gas bomb? Did you just say ‘gas bomb’?” She eventually told him about the feminine hygiene products stocked under the sink of the guest bathrooms, and she stayed on the phone as she instructed both Steve and Morgan on how to use the wing flaps. (There was an unspoken agreement between the three of them never to talk about it again, and that was completely fine by him.)
When Tony finally came up to the penthouse, Steve and Morgan were sitting on the stools in front of their kitchen island, silver spoons scooping out ice cream directly from the tub. “I can’t believe you left me like that!” were the first words Steve’s husband said to him when he was close enough to hear.
“Fury was insufferable as always,” Tony continued, folding his blazer over his forearm. “I’m pretty sure he started repeating his sentences just to punish us because of how you — are you two really eating straight out of the damn tub?”
Steve nodded dramatically, shoving another spoonful of neapolitan ice cream into his mouth. “Figured it was a special occasion.”
“Yeah, so special I get to celebrate it every month,” Morgan deadpanned, incredibly nonchalant in her delivery. Steve almost choked on his laugh.
Tony stood there for a few moments, brow wrinkled, before the lightbulb finally lit up in his head. A myriad of emotions appeared on his face all at once. Quietly, he moved around the counter after swiping his own spoon from the drawer. Tony dragged the other stool between his husband and daughter, sighing, “Pass me the ice cream.”
