AN: I apologise for the lateness of this one, it needed a lot of editing and I needed a couple of days off from writing. This also addresses something a lot of you brought up with the last chapter. I'm still not entirely happy with it, but I'm sick of looking at it.

Chapter Fourteen

Tony and Bruce got into the elevator and began heading down to the workshop, a SHIELD recovery team had made sure Tony had been delivered a good number of the attack bots they fought on New Years Eve and Tony was looking forward to start taking them apart and seeing what made them tick.

Bruce was giving him a strange look and frankly it was beginning to piss him off, so he raised his eyebrow at him, "Yes? Is there something bothering you, oh wise, Bruce, master of the guilt trip?"

"Well, yes, actually, now you've brought it up," he said, "I would have thought you'd have been straight on to Jarvis, the second we left the room, watching the cameras to see what they're doing."

"Oh," said Tony, "well, there is no surveillance in the rooms on floor 47."

"What?" said Bruce hitting the emergency stop button on the elevator, bringing it to a shuddering stop which forced them both to balance themselves by holding onto the wall.

"Um, would mind telling me exactly why you felt the need to do that, Brucie?" said Tony.

"Sorry," he said, looking slightly sheepish, "well, they do it in the movies all the time."

"For the love of…" Tony hit the emergency button the elevator creaked into starting again, "Shall we do that again without the emergency procedures?"

"Sorry," said Bruce again, "but why in the name of Roddenberry would you put Shadow in a room that Jarvis wasn't watching twenty-four-seven?"

"Do you mean aside from how very illegal it would be?" he said, "If his under-age brother should start stripping off to jump in the shower while he's here and I had it on camera? Or how illegal in general it would be to film someone in what would be considered their bedroom without their knowledge and permission? Aside from that, you mean?"

"Yes, aside from that, obviously," said Bruce, "because you've got cameras everywhere else in the building."

"Yeah, in the public areas," he said, "for security, all the R&D floors, the elevators, all the Avengers floors, the workshop, corridors, detention cells, that's all good and legal. Floor 47 though is private guest accommodation, and yeah, I'm watching the door, Jarvis is monitoring the outside, but I can't watch in the room."

"You've got cameras in the penthouse!" he said, "You've got cameras in my apartment!"

"Yes, but you know they're there," he said "and now you half own the building, you also half own the security, so it's fine."

"How are you going to be watching him all the time then, if you can't actually watch him?" said Bruce.

"Well why do you think I invited him to drink beers with us?" said Tony, "Because of his oh-so-sunny personality? No, because we're going to have to slyly encourage him to venture out of his room. Gotta make friends, play nicely."

"Oh Fury is going to be so pissed," said Bruce as the elevator came to a stop at the workshop and they stepped out.

"Oh I know," said Tony with a large grin, "and the best part is, there's not a damn thing he can do about it."

"You're playing with fire, Tony," said Bruce, going to the workbench which was piled with robot parts, "the next time you fuck up, he's going to come up with some creative way to indirectly punish you for it, you realise that, don't you?"

"Yes, I know," he said, "but fuck him. You'll see give it a few days once Puck has settled in, he'll be like part of the furniture."

"Maybe if the furniture is a set of black out curtains," said Bruce, "I really hope this doesn't come back to bite you on the ass, Tony."

"Oh come on," said Tony, "don't be such a Debbie Downer, it'll be fine."

"I'm not sure who you're trying to convince more, Tony," said Bruce, "me or you."

"It's you," he said, "definitely you."

Though now he'd said it out loud, he wasn't really sure that was the case, he'd just have to try his best and hopefully, their house guest would come around and open up to them.

That's what he hoped at least.

x-x-x

Sometimes it was easy to almost completely forget that they had a 'house guest' because they saw him so infrequently, when he did show his face, well, chin, it always took Tony half a second to remember that he was in fact staying in Avengers tower and wasn't a tall, broody intruder.

Tony had privately admitted to himself, and not to Bruce, because Bruce would never let him hear the end of it, that his plan to 'get Shadow to open up' was flawed to begin with, because he'd vastly underestimated both how busy he himself was going to be, and how much time Shadow would spend out of the building.

The most they saw him was on the late evening when they'd see his younger brother swing past the tower, then a few moments later, swing away again, carrying Shadow on his back. They hardly ever saw them return as it would always be so late at night. Tony wondered how the kid managed to stay awake in school when he was on the streets until the early hours of the morning fighting muggers. At least his brother got to sleep most of the day, at least that was what Tony assumed he was doing.

Bruce and Tony had been incredibly busy themselves though, so it was hard to find an opportunity to see Shadow around the tower. Since the robot attack, they'd been spending a lot of time in the workshop, in fact almost all of their free time. They were taking apart some of the more complete specimens they'd recovered from the street. It was largely hampered by the fact that most of the heads which the more complicated circuitry had been contained in, had been damaged to deactivate the bots so even for two guys like them, it was really slowing the investigation down.

SHIELD had been unhappy about the number of specimens that Tony had appropriated for himself, as their own people wanted more to look at, but Tony was determined he was going to figure out just where the hell these things had come from, he was not ready to admit defeat yet.

Tony had called it quits for the evening when Bruce had excused himself to go do one of his volunteer sessions. Bruce often went to free clinics around the city to help out, though lately he'd also been frequenting a centre for trauma victims as out-patients, which was something so far removed from Bruce would normally do, Tony had teased him and sung, "Bruce's got a girlfriend" when he left.

Tony had headed up to the main Avengers floor with the intent of throwing out some of the food which had gone off. He needed to do something, some pointless menial task which would take his mind off things and clear his head and it was a good a task as any that he could be getting on with.

Tasha and Barton were always busy with SHIELD assignments so they hardly ever dropped by, Steve had his own apartment downtown and only really came to the tower for training and meetings, and Thor was still in Asgard, so the only reason to keep it stocked was for Shadow, since he and Bruce had their own kitchens.

The problem was of course that the food kept going off, and this was the third time in as many weeks that Tony was having to throw out the rotten food, since he wouldn't give cleaners clearance to any of the Avengers floors.

Shadow was eating a little, the cereal in the Tupperware tub had gone down some, the milk always got used, occasionally a few slices of bread, a single slice of cooked ham from a packet of ten, or small hunks of cheese from a huge block, an apple or two, a bag of potato chips here and there, the occasional cookie.

But he never took anything one could make a proper meal out of, nothing substantial, the freezer was full and hadn't been touched, tins of food still lined the cupboards, but everything else in the fridge kept going off and Tony had to wonder how the man was getting away with eating so little and still managing to go out every night and chase down muggers and car thieves.

When he'd sat down to review the footage with Jarvis, Shadow was almost like a scavenger, he'd slink in, look around take a tiny morsel of food and slink off again. He was going to have to find the time and an excuse to get Shadow out of his room and talk to him. The main point of the probation was to make sure he wasn't a huge danger to the general public, which Tony already suspected was the case, but for his own private satisfaction, he wanted to unlock a bit of the mystery for himself.

"Well I'll be damned," Tony muttered under his breath as the elevator doors opened and he saw that Shadow was actually there on the Avengers floor, standing inside the kitchenette area, making himself a hot drink by the electric kettle.

Laid on the counter by one of the high stools was a copy of the previous days newspaper, and a book which Tony couldn't read the title of until he got closer and then smirked as he realised it was Jurassic Park, one of the few books whose movie lived up to the adaptation and that he'd read himself more than once.

"Hey there, Puck," said Tony, casually strolling in, seeing the man's shoulders flinch. Now he was closer he could see he was making tea, English style, of course, you could take the man out of country, but you couldn't take the country out of the man. "I was beginning to wonder if you were even still around, you really live up to your namesake, we never seem to actually see you much, except when you're swinging by the windows of course."

Shadow deposited his tea bag into the trash can and turned to face him, holding his mug of tea in one hand. Well, face was a very loose interpretation of the word, seeing as how the guy always wore a mask and had his hood drawn over as well, if Tony ever spotted the bottom of his nose, he counted that as practical eye contact.

"I'll get out of your way," said Shadow quietly, moving around the corner to grab his book.

"No, don't," said Tony, opening the cupboard under the sink and grabbing a trash bag from a roll, "stay, I'm only here to throw away some of this rotten food, I won't be long."

Shadow seated himself at the counter as Tony opened the fridge, shaking his head at the amount of food he was going to have to throw away.

"You waste a lot of food," said Shadow.

Tony turned slowly, looking at him in disbelief, he'd picked up his book at the half way point, and seemed to be reading it again, ignoring Tony since he'd made his comment.

"I'm not wasting food," said Tony, pointing his hand at the fridge, "why aren't you eating any of it?"

"It's not my food to take," said Shadow, taking a sip of his tea, "my brother brings a sandwich for me when we go on patrol. I admit I have taken a little on the days I have been very hungry, but I don't want to be accused of stealing food which doesn't belong to me."

Tony was almost angry about this, ok, he was a little angry about this, "I told you to help yourself to the fridge, me and Bruce have our own kitchens, the only reason it's this stocked in the first place is because you're here."

"Well I wasn't made aware of that," said Shadow, "you should save yourself the money and not buy as much if the intention was to be for my benefit."

Tony seethed. Ungrateful bastard. He began pulling packets and items from the fridge that had gone off and throwing them into the trash bag, if Shadow wanted to martyr himself with self-imposed starvation, that was fine with Tony, he'd tell Jarvis to stop stocking the fridge.

"By the way, both Hammond and Malcolm die in the end," said Tony, turning as he finished and tying off the bag, depositing it in the main trash can.

"I know," said Shadow, taking another sip of tea, "I've read it before."

"Why don't you read something else then?" said Tony, deciding to make himself a cup of coffee while he was there, since his petty attempt to spoil the ending of Shadow's book had been scuppered.

"Because it's the only one I have," said Shadow.

"Well there's a book shelf over there," said Tony, pointing, as he quickly made himself a mug of instant coffee, "there's nothing stopping you from reading any of those books."

"They don't belong to me," said Shadow, not turning his head to see where Tony was pointing.

"Fucking hell, Puck," said Tony running his hand over his face, "I know you're pissed that we're making you do this probation thing and that we're essentially keeping you away from your brother, but you don't have to keep up with this martyr shit. You can borrow the books, you could keep them for all I care, I never have time to read them anyway, they're only there so there's something for the others to read if they get bored when they're hanging about the tower."

Shadow closed his book and placed it on the counter, "I have angered you."

"Yeah," said Tony, "I'm not keeping you prisoner here, you can come and go as you please, so I really don't like being made to feel like I've locked you away in the dungeon and thrown away the key."

"I don't wish to be locked away," said Shadow.

Tony made a growl of frustration, "No, I wasn't threatening to lock you away, Jesus fucking Christ. What I'm saying is you've been here for like three weeks, you barely leave your room, you can use the gym, you can eat the food, you can read the books, no one is jump down your throat because you wanted to make an omelette or read Moby Dick. You're not a prisoner, you're a guest."

"Duly noted," said Shadow, "though you appear to be jumping down my throat for not doing those things."

"Fucking hell," said Tony, shaking his head, "your brother is probably glad to be getting a break from you if this is how you act when you're at home."

"Is there something I can do?" asked Shadow, a note of condescension in his voice, "to make it so that you are no longer displeased with my lack of socialising and that these lectures, as fun as they are, desist?"

"Yes," said Tony, "yes there is actually something you can do." At last an opportunity, he had no idea why, but his heart was pounding in his ears he was so frustrated.

"Then pray, tell," said Shadow.

"First you can go get your damn physical from Bruce tomorrow," said Tony, "and you can do it without giving him any shit about the Other Guy. Bruce and Hulk are two people who share a living space, trust me, they could not be more different. Second, you can try and make the effort to have a five minute conversation with one of us every now and then. How are we supposed to deem that you're trustworthy if you won't let us see that you can be trusted? You volunteered to do this."

"I'm only doing this for him," said Shadow, "if it were up to me, he'd be off the streets, but he wants to be Spider-man, he needs to be Spider-man, so I am doing this so he can continue."

"You could stop him," said Tony, "he's just a kid."

"You've met him," said Shadow, "how much control do you think I have over him? This is the compromise, this is how I make sure he doesn't get himself killed. I have as much control over my brother, as your brother has over you, i.e., as much as he is willing to allow me."

"I don't have a brother," said Tony.

"Oh?" said Shadow, "I read the newspapers, Stark. A few months ago, hardly a day went by without there being a picture of you being removed from one drinking establishment or another by your brother, there have been fewer of late, but I hazard that the quantity you drink has only diminished enough so that he no longer has to worry about you and scold you."

Well, damn, he was talking about Bruce. Well, he definitely had the drinking part right, that was for sure.

"Well, he's not my brother," said Tony, "he's my best friend he-"

Shadow interrupted him, great time for him suddenly to get chatty. "Do you not love him? Does he not love you? Would you not die for him? Do you not tell him things you would never tell another kind of friend, no matter how close? Do you not seek his approval in matters and then feel guilty when you disappoint him?"

"Well, yes but-"

He was interrupted again, cheeky bastard! "Then Banner is as much your brother as… Spider-man is mine."

"In that case," said Tony, leaning across the counter, "stop giving my brother so much shit, or you'll have me to deal with, have I made myself clear?"

There was a long pause before Shadow spoke again.

"As crystal," he said.

Tony nodded his head, then he went over to the book shelf and pulled out three books that he'd read himself more than once and walked back over to the kitchen counter and plonked them in front of Shadow.

"Here," he said, "Merry Christmas."

"It's January," said Shadow.

"Then Merry Martin Luther King day," said Tony, "read 'em, keep 'em, toss 'em, I don't care." He turned his back on Shadow and began walking towards the door, then paused as he heard Shadow speak quietly.

"Thank you," he said.

Tony nodded, "And start eating the fucking food."