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Tony hasn’t slept in going on forty-eight hours now. This is the exact same amount of time he’s been an adult again. He also hasn’t seen heads or tails of his team other than, weirdly enough, Steve sending down periodic trays of food every six hours like a mother hen with a sick chick.
Tony was trying not to get all warm and fuzzy at that, but around thirty-two hours, he’d reached that point of ‘literally everything is funny and happy and I should sleep more because this isn’t normal’, and he was staring at a tray of blueberry pancakes that Steve had lovingly made for him. And, by lovingly, we mean, Steve had tried three whole times before he finally got them right and figured out how to flip them.
And he was crying a little.
Really, this is stupid, he doesn’t even see why Steve is the one making him go all stupid and sappy right now anyways, it was Clint and Phil that Tony missed.
Steve had been sort of terrible with him as a baby, but he was good at cooking, and so he had plied the baby with food whenever commanded to. Bucky had been fairly good with him, but within two hours of Tony being turned into an adult he had slipped up and called him buddy, and that’s when Tony had taken his embarrassment, and run.
Tony feels like an asshole right now, because Jarvis said that Bucky felt like shit and wasn’t accepting the passed on messages that he hadn’t done anything wrong and Tony just needed some time alone. Tony felt even worse at that and it made him want to hide for even longer, which probably also made Bucky want to hide for longer.
He let out a little sigh, curling up into a little ball in the corner of his lab. He didn’t remember how he got here. One minute he was absently picking at the pancakes after having shoved a whole one in his mouth without looking much, and the next minute he was crying on the floor in a corner of the lab.
Okay, let’s admit it, his team was fuck all awful at communication and people skills.
Steve’s vocabulary consisted of cuss words and hero speak and his go-to fix for people being upset is literally just to bake for them until they’re either fat, or happy. Usually both. One time, he had said something that made Spiderman cry -which, let me tell you, he’s five foot two inches of teenage hormones and energy drinks, it’s not hard to make him cry. Tony found him crying at a particularly cute squirrel one day- and he spent a full week sending him to school with homemade super soldier sized lunches. It had been a surprisingly good idea to get a turned-mutant teenager to like him, because teenagers like food, and Peter is broke .
Honestly, he probably could have just said he was sorry and Peter would have forgiven him in zero point two five seconds, but, okay.
Natasha once threatened an agent for saying they liked her new haircut. She said she wasn’t sure what they meant by it, though the agent had seemed entirely serious by the compliment - not even a cat call, and honest to god, compliment, on her hair. It’s safe to say, that Natasha doesn’t have good people skills beyond being a spy, and even then, she’s allowed to knife people she doesn’t like. She’d nearly made that guy wet his pants. Natasha is a precious little walnut and she needs to be protected at all costs.
Clint lived about ninety percent of his life in vents. The fact that he’s been married to the same person for five years now, and having been with him for even longer, is completely baffling to all of them. He’s deaf and dyslexic, which is a terrible combination, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at him, because he’s the only one of the group that actually has people skills out of them. When he had first come to live in the tower with them, it had taken Tony an entire month to figure out he was dyslexic and avoided reading like the plague, and Tony had only figured it out in the end because Clint had tried to manipulate him into reading something for him and Tony didn’t read Swahili. Tony had politely told him that he could ask Jarvis to translate everything for him -hell, even send the translation right to his hearing aids if he wanted- and Clint had been so happy he had actually kissed him on the cheek.
Which, of course, had caused Tony’s bad people skills to rear their ugly head and had hid from the man for a full day because affection makes him uncomfortable.
Bruce was like Tony, except worse. Much worse. Okay, granted, the man doesn’t have a full blown panic attack if he gets water on his face, but he does turn green and grow big muscles if you piss him off, and that’s an issue in itself, but he also carried almost as much self hatred and trauma from childhood abuse as Tony does, so they’re sort of even to be honest, but Bruce was currently hiding from them all, as is usual for him actually. Tony is pretty sure the only people he’s not afraid to talk honestly to are Tony and Peter Parker, and that’s because of some mission the two of them shared together that made Hulk trust him.
Thor was… well, you know about the coffee incident, right? Yeah. Thor is Thor. Which is why Thor is probably the only one of them that Tony would talk to right now, because other than a few hugs, he’d been the only one to treat Tony normal while he was a child. Thor is amazing, but actually, he might try to hug Tony if he found him crying, and Tony isn’t sure he’d survive that.
Bucky… obviously didn’t have good people skills. He was aces with babies, apparently, but terrible with adults.
Tony wished Rhodey and Pepper and Happy were here. Things used to be nicer when he had them near. He misses them so bad, but they’re all on the other side of the country right now, being functional. God he’s jealous, what the fuck.
Tony looked up when he heard a chirping, and he felt terrible that he couldn’t bring himself to smile at Dummy. He was exhausted and his head hurt, and he wasn’t sure how long he’s been sitting here for, and honestly, he didn’t know why but he really wanted to go to bed right now, which is completely out of character for him, but he’d give anything to feel comfortable enough to close his eyes right now.
Just past Dummy’s shoulder, he could see a vent opening, and it made his tears dry up a little, accepting Dummy’s help in getting up off the floor, much to the bot’s relief.
It was a little hard getting into the vent while this tired, but he knew that Clint had another nest on this floor level. He had one on pretty much all the levels. He rounded a corner in the tight space and let out a little sigh when he found the pile of pillows and blankets there, collapsing into it with another sigh. One second he was awake, and the next, the world was dark.
***
Phil wasn’t particularly interested in crawling through ducts. Not like Clint was at least. Phil had a love of his husband’s nests though.
There was just something about feeling soft and coddled that appealed to the majority of peoples, but Clint had a need to not only feel soft and warm, but to make others feel that way too.
Natasha didn’t like sleeping in the vents, and none of them blamed her for it. She liked her privacy and being able to sit up without hitting her head.
Phil had to admit, he agreed with that, but at the same time, he liked sleeping with his husband, who felt most comfortable in the enclosed spaces. Which is why he was heaving himself into the vent on Tony’s lab floor, and rounding the corner to where he knew Clint’s nest on this floor was, only to stop as he got there, a little smile on his face as he watched the two figures curled up in the nest together.
They all had been relieved when Jarvis had finally told them Tony was asleep, but he had assumed the man had passed out in the penthouse floor. When he got the text from Clint to meet him in the lab floor vent, he just assumed his husband was finally calming down now that Tony was finally getting out of his funk.
Phil was almost happy to be proven wrong.
He rounded to the other side of the nest, sliding into the warm blankets on Tony’s other side while Clint kept petting into the man’s -unwashed- curls. Tony was dead to the world, cuddled up into Clint’s neck. Phil couldn’t help but think it was utterly adorable.
He pressed his lips to the back of Clint’s hand on Tony’s head, making the archer finally focus on him.
“He’s so soft and self destructive.”
Phil sighed a little, sliding his arms around the engineers waist. “He is.”
Clint sounded sort of emotional. “I love him, why can’t he love himself?”
Phil smiled again. Clint could be saccharine sweet when he wanted to be. “I think he needs a little help.”
Clint almost started bouncing in place before remembering he didn’t want to wake the man up. That was an invitation . “We should help him, huh, Phil? Please?”
Phil hummed, as if thinking about it. “What do you have in mind?”
Clint thought that over for a bit. “He seemed very happy when he was a baby.”
Phil’s eyebrows went up. “That is… a possibly dangerous proposal, Clint.”
Clint shrugged. “I’m not suggesting we turn him into a baby again, just, maybe a little roleplay?”
Phil snorted. “That’s called ageplay, and he’ll probably punch you for suggesting it.”
Clint rolled his eyes. “That’s dumb, we’re not making fun of him, we want him to have fun and relax . That’s way more important that any sort of pride over being an adult.”
Phil hummed, thinking that over. “Alright, we can ask him, but if he says no, back off.”
“Can I at least force him into more vent cuddles?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”