Bucky knew that Peter could take care of himself.
Really, he did. Peter had been taking care of himself for almost a year now, from what Bucky could gather. The kid was resourceful and smart.
But…well, he was still just a kid. Sixteen fucking years old. And Bucky worried, alright? Because Peter had been overwhelmed earlier after the dinner with the rest of the team, and he had agreed not to stay out too late.
Bucky glanced at the clock again for the fifth time in as many minutes. 3:27.
This was not 'not too late'.
He hadn't told the kid he was going to wait up, but he couldn't suppress the urge to do so. He just wanted to make sure Peter was alright when he got back.
Steve had gone to bed around midnight, unconcerned about Peter. Of course, Bucky had told him that Peter had gone to bed when Steve had arrived after dinner, and Steve had chalked up Bucky's restlessness and hidden worry to Peter's reaction at dinner, but still Bucky kind of wanted to throw a shoe at his friend for his calm attitude. He knew Steve would be worried if he knew the truth, and he would help Bucky as much as he could, but Bucky had promised Peter that he would keep this secret from everyone, including Steve, and he wasn't about to break it just because he was feeling a bit worried antsy.
He glanced at the clock again. 3:28.
He would have gone out looking already, but…well, there was a little voice in his head telling him that Peter had left with no intention of coming back. Finding Peter now…well, it would just be awkward. Peter would have to tell him that he didn't plan to return, and Peter would probably feel bad about that. The teenager must have left this way so that he didn't have to have some sort of confrontation to tell him he was leaving.
But – what if Peter hadn't meant to leave? He argued with himself. What if he was in trouble?
Indecision kept him at bay, not really watching the documentary playing across the screen that JARVIS had pulled up for him. He thought it was about bees, but it just as easily could have been about home building. He had mentally checked out after one AM hit.
Thinking about the clock made him look at it again. 3:29. He sighed, tapping his thumbs together.
"Sergeant Barnes," JARVIS' soft voice pulled him from his thoughts about the Spider kid. He looked at the ceiling, even though Tony chided everyone for doing just that often enough, because JARVIS wasn't in the ceiling but was everywhere around them.
"Please gather an extra change of clothes for Master Peter," JARVIS instructed in his usual placid voice. "I have sent pertinent details to your phone."
"JARVIS, what's wrong?" Bucky said urgently, getting to his feet and moving quickly to Peter's room.
JARVIS paused, and the silence only allowed for Bucky's worry to increase. He hadn't been here for very long, in the grand scheme of things, but he knew enough about the AI that he knew JARVIS never hesitated.
"Spiderman is unconscious at the base of an alley near the East Village," was all JARVIS said when he finally spoke.
Bucky froze in front of Peter's dresser, words repeating themselves in his mind and feeling not only alarm for Peter's predicament and wellbeing, but also for the implications of what JARVIS had said.
"You know?" he finally demanded, grabbing a tee shirt, pair of jeans, and some tennis shoes before making his way to the elevator, grabbing his phone on the way from where he'd left it on the couch. "How did you find out?"
"I don't have video surveillance of the bedrooms or bathrooms," JARVIS said, "But I do have surveillance of the windows on the outside of the Tower. Master Peter departed by way of his own bedroom window. With other clues pieced together through public video footage, it was obvious from there."
"Don't tell Tony," Bucky uncharacteristically ordered, and then swiftly added, "Don't tell anyone."
"Of course not," JARVIS actually sounded offended at the idea. "I would never reveal the secrets of those inhabiting the Tower unless they directly affect the safety of anyone else."
Bucky didn't have anything to say to that, so he didn't. As the elevator opened into the garage, he opened his phone to the directions JARVIS had sent him on where to find Peter.
He hoped the kid was okay.
Bucky found Peter's form quickly thanks to JARVIS' directions. He was at the mouth of an alley, just in a shadow cast by a smelly dumpster and somehow curled up while on his back. It looked wildly uncomfortable, and Bucky wondered just how Peter had managed to land in such a position. Had someone managed to get the jump on him and knock him out? That didn't seem possible, not for Spiderman. But Bucky knew that Spiderman was actually a struggling teenage boy, just recently come back from being homeless, so perhaps he was sick and recovering and it hadn't been a good idea after all for him to go out in his vigilante alter-ego.
Kneeling down quickly next to Peter's small form, Bucky kicked himself repeatedly for letting him go outside in his condition. Clearly Peter didn't know what was best for him health wise, and he needed someone else to make sure he was taking care of himself. Bucky thought that Peter might find that idea slightly patronizing, but he knew for a fact that if Pepper hadn't been taking care of Tony in the same way since she had known him in the beginning, the billionaire would have died at least a decade ago.
He wasn't thinking about that at the moment though, much more concerned with checking Peter over to make sure nothing was broken. He felt along his arms and his legs, but there was nothing there that he could detect. He definitely had a sprained wrist and a twisted ankle, though. He could already see the swelling, and worried about Peter's healing factor, that it would allow the injury to get that bad. Of course, he didn't know how strong Peter's healing factor truly was, but somehow he felt that right now, it wasn't doing its job as it should.
It was when he felt and prodded along Peter's chest, checking for broken ribs, that he pressed down in one spot and Peter let out a choked gasp, stirring for the first time and waking up. He flailed, clearly panicking about someone kneeling over him, and Bucky quickly put both hands on Peter's shoulders to keep him from moving too much, wishing that Peter's mask was off so he could see his expression to communicate.
"Hey, shh, sh," Bucky hushed the alarmed teen. "It's okay, it's me, it's Bucky. You have a couple of broken ribs and some sprained joints – don't move too much."
Peter's scared gasps died down as he realized where he was, the white eyes of his Spiderman mask turned toward Bucky's face. A hand – the one without the sprained wrist – pressed into his midsection in an attempt to ward off the pain.
"I brought you some clothes to change into," Bucky murmured, patting Peter's shoulder before pulling his hands away and grabbing the bag he'd brought to carry said clothes. "No one else is coming – you're safe to change here. You need some help?"
Peter shook his head, accepting the tee shirt with a wince that Bucky could only see by a slight tightening of the jaw through the mask. He pulled it on slowly over the Spidey uniform, and Bucky spared a moment to be grateful that the shirt he'd grabbed had long sleeves to cover the familiar blue and red design. The jeans he'd grabbed went on with more difficulty than the shirt, with the swelling of Peter's ankle making it harder, but he managed. It was only after the clothes were on that Peter removed the mask, but he had such a hard time with it due to the sprained wrist that Bucky insisted on helping him to remove the gloves and the boots to prevent further aggravating Peter's wrist.
With the boots removed – Peter grimacing through the entire process – Bucky sucked in a breath at the deep purple bruising around the ankle. He didn't think Peter's foot would be able to fit into his tennis shoes like this, let alone walk on it.
"Yeah, we'll just skip your shoes," he told Peter in no uncertain terms. "You can't walk on this, anyway – I'll just carry you back to the Tower."
Peter looked up at him, clearly ready to protest, before his jaw tightened and he looked away, but not before Bucky saw the tears glistening in his eyes. It threw Bucky off a bit, because he had never once seen Peter this close to crying, and like this – hair tousled and sweaty, clothes swimming around his small frame – he looked incredibly young. And Bucky didn't know if he was ready to cry from pain, or frustration, or…any of the other things that Bucky just didn't understand yet after having to suppress, ignore, and dismiss his own emotions for so long he'd forgotten exactly what it felt like, let alone what it looked like.
"We'll get some binding for your ribs when we get back," Bucky went on after a pause. "And some braces for your wrist and your ankle. We should be safe – Steve doesn't get up until six, so we have a couple of hours to get you into your bed."
Peter looked back at him, and it took Bucky a moment to recognize the look in Peter's eyes as – as defeated. It threw him again, because Peter had been doing mostly alright before he'd left, and he didn't know what might have happened to have put that look on Peter's face. It was too strong of an emotion for a mere mugging gone wrong, but Bucky couldn't think of anything that might have put Peter in the condition he was in without it being physical. And his uniform wasn't twisted or scrunched or wrinkled, so no one had done anything…that way.
He decided to leave it aside for the moment in favor of getting Peter back to the Tower without too many people noticing them. He decided to carry him piggyback, so that Peter could have a straight line of support against his chest when Bucky stood up straight, so that his injuries were not further aggravated. He carried the bag across his front like a papoose so that it didn't get in the way, because no way was he letting Peter put it on his own back, no matter how he reached for it to try and assist.
It was a good thing he was skilled at hiding in plain sight, because despite the ridiculous appearance they no doubt made as he trekked through Manhattan, no one batted an eye at the scene – of the two people he counted who saw them. But, he allowed, perhaps that was just because New Yorkers just truly didn't give a fuck what other people did, too used to seeing all sorts of things in the big city.
Twenty minutes later, Peter was sitting on the closed toilet seat in Bucky's personal bathroom, trying to tell him with shakes of his head that he didn't need his help taking off the suit. He kept wincing though, and Bucky refused to budge on this, because Peter needed help and was clearly trying to hide something – probably another injury, though Bucky didn't know why – and he knew already that the kid had a concussion, so clearly he wasn't operating on all cylinders.
"Kid, the sooner we get your suit off, the sooner we can get you all taped up and you can go to bed," Bucky argued, feeling very tired. The scene was familiar, and he knew that he had had these same kind of arguments in the past when Steve was small and sickly, even if he couldn't clearly remember any particular instance. But where logic usually worked with Steve – 50% counted as 'usually', right? – Peter refused to be swayed.
"Is it because it hurts too much?" Bucky suddenly realized, and could have kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner. "Here, I have…"—he moved over to the cabinet under the sink, easily locating one of the many pill bottles—"I have these pain meds; Bruce developed them for Steve a while back, and yeah I know it's technically illegal to take drugs that aren't prescribed to you like this, but it'll work even with your advanced metabolism and we can't exactly tell someone you need narcotics about eight times stronger than is technically healthy for the human body without raising several questions…" He sighed and stopped when he saw Peter shaking his head again.
"I don't know what to tell you, Pete," he said, rubbing his eyes with one hand. "You need to be bandaged up, and you can't do it yourself, but you need to get out of that suit so that you can keep Spiderman a secret, and you need to do it before your ankle swells even worse and we have to cut it off. What do you need from me?"
Peter gazed at him steadily, several emotions that Bucky couldn't identify flickering through his eyes like cars passing on a freeway. He waited for Peter to reach some sort of conclusion, ready to argue again if need be, but finally Peter nodded in resigned acquiescence, raising his arms so that Bucky could tug the uniform off.
Bucky set the pill bottle on the counter and hurried to help Peter with the suit before he could change his mind and rediscover his obstinacy once again.
There was a zipper in the back, which Bucky quickly slid down, swallowing to hold back his sadness at seeing the ribs protruding from the boy's back. Two of them had skin stretched over that had turned a deep purple, a clear sign of broken ribs from that side, too.
He pulled his eyes from that at the moment though, leaning back to tug the uniform past Peter's bony and protruding shoulders, moving carefully to avoid jostling any injuries more than necessary.
It was when he got the sleeves down to Peter's elbows that he thought he might have discovered what Peter was so intent on hiding, as angry red skin curled down the entirety of his forearms like they'd been rubbed raw with a copper sponge. It looked like each of his veins – even the tiny ones – were swollen underneath the pale skin. He glanced up at Peter, but the boy had his head turned away, jaw tight and chewing on his lip.
He looked back at the arms, not sure what the cause of the redness was but deciding to hold off on asking Peter about it.
It was when he got the sleeves off though that he saw a spot on each of Peter's wrists that looked like particularly angry spider bites (yes, he saw the irony in that). He held Peter's wrist for a moment, examining the spots but determining that whatever it was causing the spots and the redness trailing from them up his arm was due to something wrong with Peter's body and not an outside source. He could address that later, then.
He let Peter's arm drop down to his lap, carrying on with peeling the rest of the suit off Peter's body.
At least the kid was wearing underwear, he thought distantly, as he knelt on the cool tile to remove the leg of the suit more carefully over the sprained and swollen ankle than he did with the other one. Peter was probably self-conscious enough without that added complication.
It was quick work to bind Peter's ribs up and wrap up his ankle, as he was well trained in first aid and the movements came naturally and without thought. It was as he was wrapping the Velcro of the wrist brace around to secure it in place that he finally questioned. "So, how'd the injuries happen?"
Peter looked very tired when he gestured vaguely with the uninjured hand before moving it downward in something of a swooping motion. Bucky stared blankly, trying to figure out what the movements meant but coming up empty.
"You…fell?" he guessed. Peter nodded, and pointed at the ceiling before moving his hand in the downward swooping motion again. It was no clearer this time than it had been last time, and he didn't even have a facial expression to go by, because Peter just looked tired.
"What'd you fall from?" Bucky pressed. "Because these injuries are worse than if you had just tripped."
Peter pointed at the ceiling again, and it took another moment, but it finally clicked and Bucky's eyes widened.
"You fell off a roof?" he exclaimed, though really it was just to be certain that his brain wasn't exaggerating what he thought might have happened. And, sure enough, Peter nodded.
"How – what – but your…" Bucky trailed off when his eyes fell on Peter's reddened wrists and arms again, and it clicked. He'd been about to ask how Peter possibly could have fallen off a roof when he had his webs, but that combined with knowing his arms were covered with what looked like a rash, he had a pretty good guess why Peter had fallen.
"Your webs are biological," Bucky realized. "And they're not working anymore."
Peter looked away, not denying it, which may as well have been a big fat 'yes'. Bucky's lips twisted as he pondered what to do, how he could help the kid, and he moved back over to the cabinet under the sink, coming back up with a tube.
"I always use this cream when my shoulder aches or itches," Bucky said, opening the tube and squeezing out some of the cream he'd always thought smelled a bit like strawberries, even though it was advertised as unscented. "Maybe it'll help you a little…"
Peter held out his arm in weary acceptance, and Bucky carefully spread it around, being especially careful with the bumps on his wrists that he'd now figured out were his spinnerets. Jesus, that was weird, that they came out of his body. Kinda cool, though. He spread cream on the other wrist, but he didn't remove the brace to get to the spots underneath that could have used the cream. The sprain, he felt, was probably more painful and important at the moment.
Bucky left briefly to fetch a pair of sweatpants and a tee shirt that Peter could more easily get into and sleep in than the other clothes he'd had, and then carried Peter silently to his bedroom, depositing him gently on the bed.
Peter refused the pain medication, and Bucky decided not to push on that one. Besides, he didn't know how truly advanced Peter's metabolism was – he didn't want to do anything that might make him feel worse. Instead, he ceded to Peter's wishes on the matter before telling him to knock on the wall if he needed anything – Bucky's room was just on the other side.
And after that, there was nothing else to do but allow Peter to sleep.
Peter's sleep was restless. Not only was he in pain from the injuries of the night, but his brain just would not let him go to sleep without turning over, picking at, and extensively pondering the ramifications of Deadpool having…having a crush on him.
Really, there was nothing new to think about from earlier that night. Or, morning. But he couldn't just…forget about it. He didn't know what to do about the situation, and that's what was keeping him awake.
He was glad that Bucky hadn't been angry that he'd stayed out so late, though. And he was extraordinarily patient with him while he was getting him back to the Tower and wrapping up his injuries, even when Peter was telling him repeated no's about certain things. Bucky just…did his best to help, and it was a relief to know for sure that he wasn't going to be kicked out for all the trouble he'd caused.
He hadn't even made a big deal about the spinnerets, or about falling off a roof. Oh, Peter could see the concern there. He knew that Bucky didn't like it, felt helpless as to what to do. But he kept that under control and just tried doing his best to get things to help Peter feel better.
And the cream did feel nice on his arms. He wasn't sure exactly what was in the cream, but he knew that it wasn't just a normal moisturizer. And somehow, the medicine in it helped to cool the stinging tugging a bit – even in the arm that hadn't gotten it around that spinneret, though there was admittedly not as much relief for that one as the other one. But Peter was more than willing to take what he could get.
He didn't know what to do about Deadpool, though. He didn't know what he could do. Obviously it was his fault for not keeping his distance from the mercenary from the beginning, but as much as he beat himself up for that, there was no going back in time and rewriting history. He had to deal with it now.
But he was sixteen. He had been in exactly one (1) relationship, and that hadn't gone well, at all. He hadn't even been through a break-up – she had just…
Anyway. He didn't know how to do this. He wasn't desirable, he knew that. He wasn't used to attention coming his way; he didn't know what to do about it.
He stared up at the ceiling, eyes wide open and refusing sleep. Was he overreacting? Deadpool had never actually…said anything about liking him. Maybe he wouldn't, ever. Maybe he would never have to worry about what to say to him, how to let him down gently because he was still a teenager. Nothing would ever happen with the other man, because as soon as he found out that Peter was sixteen that would be it. He would understand – he would.
Except…that meant that Peter needed to actually tell him that he was indeed sixteen. And he didn't know how to do that, not really. He struggled with his anxiety in writing out messages, he had learned early on, and pantomiming an age was more difficult than one would think. Oh, he could point to himself and hold up the necessary fingers, but without talking about age beforehand in the conversation, it was difficult for the other person to know what he was talking about. He had tried it before, and didn't feel like having a repeat experience.
But how could he tell Deadpool that he was just a teenager, without it seeming like he was only telling him because he knew about the man's crush? He didn't want to embarrass the merc, but he also didn't want to seem presumptuous about it, either.
Sure, Wade had never done anything overt to show that he liked Peter, and maybe he never would. He did have self-esteem issues, though – not the least of which included the certainty that there had never been an uglier man (his words, not Peter's). So he probably hadn't told Peter anything or asked him out because he was certain Peter would say no. But that didn't mean that he wouldn't still flirt with him and compliment him and do all he could to make sure Peter was as okay as he could be, with the little bit of personal information that he had on him.
Looking back, now having the proper lenses to see through, Peter knew that Wade had been obvious about it almost from the beginning. But the question was, did he know he was being obvious? Was he trying to drop hints? Did he think that Peter's easy acceptance to it was encouragement to keep going? Or worse, did he think that Peter noticed and just didn't care?
Peter blew out a breath of frustration and turned his face into the pillow. He didn't know what to do with this information. He didn't know how to get rid of this guilt he was feeling that he had led Wade on, or that maybe Wade thought Peter just didn't care about him. Were they really even friends? Or had Wade always been angling for a relationship of the romantic sort with him? What could Peter really even trust now?
He didn't know what to do or where to start. Sure, he thought Wade was attractive, notwithstanding the awful scarring he had only seen bits and glimpses of. He had a nice body, muscular in all the right places and several inches taller than himself. And more than that, he was kind. Even without the promise of anything more, he tried helping Peter when Peter didn't know the first thing about how to help himself. He was patient with him, filling in the gaps where Peter couldn't speak but always pausing to figure out what Peter's clumsy pantomimes and gestures meant. Even with only one person who could speak, he still had the patience to create a conversation. And he was generous and thoughtful, and Peter thought about how Wade had been looking for – to him – a random homeless kid for an entire week now and was actually stressing out about not being able to find him. Wade wanted to hide his kindness and pretend he was just a heartless merc, but he really wasn't. Peter knew the man cared more than he was willing to admit.
But, even with all of that…Peter didn't think he was attracted to Wade. He was just…a good guy. A guy who had to be at least thirty, by Peter's guess.
He wanted Wade to know that he was only saying no because he was a teenager. He didn't want him thinking that he hated Wade, or that he thought he was ugly, or anything else except that it just didn't work that way – not for Peter.
But he didn't have the first clue how to do that without revealing his face to him.
Sighing again, Peter finally closed his eyes, the sandy feeling and the weight of his lids dragging them down. Maybe he would have more ideas when he woke up.
Tony didn't know how long he had been awake this time. JARVIS had practically given up a while ago at trying to get him to go to bed, though he did make the occasional pointed, snarky comment now and again.
Tony didn't care. He was stuck on this one problem, and he just wished that he could figure it out. But this wasn't something that he had an equation for; this wasn't rocket science – ho, no. That would be easy.
People were so much more difficult. His therapist suggested several times that this was due to how he was raised, with an emotionally absent father and going through school at such a young age that he had never learned how to truly make friends with his peers. They were always so much older than him, and had no interest in making nice with the younger boy, unless it was for his money or his connections. But then after they'd used him enough, they dropped him like last year's fashion magazine.
These weren't real relationships, he knew, and so he only knew how to put on a public persona of what people expected him to be. He'd never had the opportunity to cultivate a relationship at that age when most people did, and it set him back substantially.
He was getting better now, he knew. He'd had Rhodey at MIT, but Rhodey was an oddball like he was so he couldn't really use that as proper data. Pepper he eventually became friends with, but only because she started out as an employee, and she was the one who eventually figured out what he was like and worked with it, and they became friends in the process. Same went for Happy, for that matter.
And so his grand total of friendships up until two years ago was three people. And then Loki and the Avengers happened, and then Secretly Hydra In Every Last Department happened, and suddenly there were seven more people who had moved into his Tower and somehow, through stealing food and arguments about movies, they had become his friends.
But he still had to work at it – at normal, human interaction. He didn't always pick up on social cues, subtle or otherwise, and he offended people often enough with his nonexistent social skills that he generally tried keeping to himself. Better an asshole semi-recluse than an asshole in everyone's faces all the time.
This wasn't so possible when living with the others, though. Steve especially was insistent on making everyone there a family, and he always gave Tony such a disappointed, sad puppy dog face when Tony made his excuses to miss team dinner or impromptu movie nights. And Clint wasn't much better – his pouty face would not be out of place on a baby, and it made Tony feel guilty when he was on the receiving end of that look, never mind that he recognized that Clint was manipulating him that way on purpose.
So Tony was getting better. He was building a family here, something he had hardly dared to hope for when he had initially invited the rest of them to move in to the Tower after the Battle of New York (as the media called it) had left most of them uncomfortable within SHIELD's walls. Clint had been dealing with his coworkers and former friends skirting around him at the base, and Natasha went where Clint did. Steve had been longing for friendships and connections that he just couldn't get with baby agents and seasoned agents alike gazing upon him as some sort of idol. Bruce was always uncomfortable with any sort of government offshoot, and would have run to some third world country if Tony hadn't brought him in. And Thor…well, Thor didn't really need a home and wasn't here all that often anyway, but Tony was already taking in the rest of the set and another person – regardless of the fact that this was a demigod who could rival Steve in the amount he ate – was really no big deal. Thor knew that he had a home here when he wanted, and when he wasn't in London with Jane or on Asgard doing whatever it was that princes did.
And then, when Steve and Natasha had been called in for a three-month assignment in DC and called him up only a month in that they needed help taking down SHIELDra, Tony hadn't been surprised when they had come back with another man who – hey, look at that – could help all of them with psychological issues. That wasn't the reason Tony had fabricated a new floor for him, but dang he came in handy keeping them all calm and talking each of them down from a panic attack within the first few months living there. God bless Sam Wilson.
And then, months after that, Bucky Barnes had been readily accepted into their little family, too. Bucky was like that quiet emo kid at the family reunions, whom everyone loved but no one was sure how to talk to except that one cousin who knew the kid before his emo phase and stuck with him through it.
And Tony loved Steve, because he was family now, and so when he had found out what Barnes had done to his parents…well, he would admit that there was some drinking involved after this discovery. But after the hangover had subsided and he had gone on an inventing binge, he had been all for welcoming Steve's family into their family, too. He was disappointed that he couldn't design and decorate a floor all for Bucky, but he had to admit that it made sense for Bucky to be with Steve for now.
So Bucky had slowly but surely began to recover. He was still quiet most of the time, but the cloud of doom and depression hanging over him had slowly begun to lift. And after he'd met that homeless kid, the cloud lifted at an even faster rate. He didn't think it would ever completely disappear, but at the very least Barnes already spoke more. And that was something big, he knew. He could easily see that this kid – this Peter – was good for him. Maybe even more than Steve was good for him.
And so it was no big thing on his part to welcome Peter into the Tower, too. The kid spoke even less than Bucky – he was completely mute – but he had an energy about him that he could see the appeal in Bucky's eyes to take care of the teenager.
(And so what if it was technically illegal to house a minor – clearly a runaway – without informing any of the authorities? Tony has done far worse than that in his time, so if and when people did find out, it would be easy enough to throw some money around to get rid of the problem. It wasn't a bad illegal thing they were doing – it was helping the kid. As far as he was concerned, this was a good way to bribe the authorities spend his money.)
So now there were eight others living there. Or seven and a half, because Thor was only there sometimes. And Tony just kept remembering their discussion about Spiderman, and possible clues to his identity.
The thing was, he was still pretty sure that Spiderman was a teenager, despite Steve's suggestion that it was a teacher. And he was definitely sure that Spiderman was male, no matter what anyone else said.
And he had looked at the calendar again. Several months ago, Spidey sightings had increased around the same time he had gone silent and his use of webs had decreased drastically. Something had happened in Spiderman's life to cause this change – something big, Tony was certain of it.
The most obvious change was, of course, his silence. It was something that bloggers and Tumblr users and random citizens on the news focused on the most. Because before, in the videos Tony could find, Spidey had used his voice and his snark as a weapon. It was a distraction, something to get the villain angry enough to get sloppy, and Tony was equally certain it was a way of calming Spidey's nerves while fighting a monster five times his size.
What could have possibly made the vigilante go silent? Tony was just as clueless as everyone else on that front, and it wasn't a feeling he particularly enjoyed. He was pretty sure it wasn't an injury, if only because of the other changes people had noticed in the guy.
But something that Tony was pretty sure only he had noticed up to this point was the way that Spiderman fought. Before the change, it had been light, careless almost. Like everything was too easy for him and he was toying with the villain. Now though, there was a rawness to it – a desperation, almost. And he was slower. Not too noticeably, but enough that he seemed to take more hits than he had before. It was like before he had been almost psychic, knowing that things were going to happen before they did, but now it was like he barely noticed and was constantly on the defensive.
Tony didn't know what to make of it. He was pretty sure that if he had had a normal childhood and learned how to interpret people, that his genius intellect would take care of the rest right now and he would have some idea of what had happened to the young vigilante.
But because he didn't know, he was trying to do what he could, because even if the guy wasn't a kid – hey, maybe he'd graduated high school and that's why he was out more now, who knew? – then he still needed help. And Tony had been skeptical, two years ago, when he had begun to get some idea of what they were all trying to achieve, living in the Tower. But they had proved him wrong, and although he was the first to admit that he often butted heads with all of the Avengers (even Brucie bear, though he could never stay upset for long with that adorably ruffled look on his face) he would also be the first to jump in to help them.
And even if it turned out that Spiderman was like Thor, and would only pop in on occasion, Tony wanted to offer that family bond to the red and blue clad vigilante. He was curious who the guy was, sure, but mostly he just wanted to let him know that he had people in his corner, if he wanted it. It was clear that he had some form of anxiety, or PTSD, or something that had caused all these changes, and Tony knew that feeling the warmth of family could help, so long as he was willing to accept it.
But all of that was moot until he found the Spider-kid, so Tony was doing what he could to figure out what he would need.
It would just take some time.