A Family of Flaws

Chapter Eighteen; Things Feel Normal

*Tony's POV*

Things had been normal again. Slowly, the anxiety had been trickling away, and his vocalization around people had expanded from Pepper, Happy, and Rhodey to Bruce and Natasha as well. They were the easiest to talk to on the team; quiet, but they could hold a conversation, and they knew when to give someone space.

The rest of the team had seemed excited, apparently hearing about Tony starting to expand his comfort bubble. However, he wasn't quite ready to talk to the whole team yet. He could hardly talk to two people at the same time without having a freak-out moment. But things were so much better, and the whole team was giving him the space he needed for the time being.

In all honesty, Tony was hoping to talk with someone new today, most likely Wanda (which would lead to him talking to Vision, no doubt) but it all depended on how he was feeling in a few hours.

Today had been a great day so far, Pepper was getting to stay home today, even if she had work. So they had breakfast before cuddling on the couch, Tony helping out with the stacks of paperwork that his fiancé had to deal with.

Then they moved on to lunch, which was rushed as Pepper remembered a virtual meeting she had to attend, leaving her rushing off about fifteen minutes ago. Since then, Tony had been on his phone scrolling through pointless apps as he sipped some coffee.

  His thoughts flashed momentarily to the conversation Pepper and Tony had about Peter Parker, the teenager that they were thinking could be Tony's intern. He hadn't made any move to contact the kid yet, but he felt like he should get his personal life under control before he ventured into teenager territory.

  Once he was talking with the whole team again, he might think about sending an e-mail to Parker about an internship at the tower. Of course, Tony wasn't just going to let the kid become his personal intern immediately. At first, he'll just work on the low levels and bring Tony coffee, the usual stuff for new interns, but once he's more experienced he'll be moved to the higher labs or Tony's personal lab.

"Friday, put a reminder for me to e-mail Peter Parker about an internship." Tony called out distractedly. "Do it in about a week..." He trailed off and took a deep breathe. "Hopefully things will be back to normal by then." He mumbled to himself, pushing his messy hair out of his face as he stood up and stretched.

"Of course, boss." Friday chimed as an answer, sounding polite as ever. Satisfied, Tony walked into the kitchen and sat at one of the bar stools, where his laptop sat on the counter. He had been dying to pull up the training room footage of Natasha training with Spider-Man.

Tony had been very invested in getting the spider-themed vigilante/hero to join the team or at least have some communication with them, but things clearly hadn't been going his way lately. He was afraid to miss any important information, not the mention how curious he was to learn more about the spider.

The video was played through six or seven times before Tony really tried to pull information from it, at the moment he was just trying to assess the upcoming hero. He seemed rather small if that made sense. And his voice was almost too high. But there was no way Spider-Man was any younger than eighteen. No teenager or child would be capable of doing all the things the spider had done, right?

Still, Tony couldn't quite pay attention to the video feed as he kept noticing more and more worrying details. This guy was skinny, but he had lean muscles. And he was definitely short. Whether he was an adult or not, he was short either way. Standing at about five feet and maybe five inches, but that was pushing it.

There were other things that weren't adding up either. Spider-Man's limbs were a little too long for the rest of his body, a common trait with teenagers. And he seemed to be a little awkward in his body, another thing similar with teenagers. Tony bit his lip and zoomed in on a well-angled frame that showed Spider-Man very well.