Spider-Son & Iron Dad two shots

Voicemails and Distractions

a/n: a short little collection of voicemails. this was gonna be longer and something entirely different but then my cat peed on my bed so I am currently writing this at 11:27pm with like forty minutes to go from the due date AH OKAY ENJOY

Spooktober 29: Confession

Tony woke up from the nightmare with a stuttering gasp, the sweat dripping from his face. The room was moving around as his body swayed with his breaths, and he had to shut his eyes tightly to keep the motion sickness from getting to his stomach.

He inhaled deeply through his nose, and held the breath despite the clawing grasp of panic it held on his throat. He slowly exhaled, and did it again.

"Pep?" He asked quietly, his voice wavering. He looked over to her spot in the bed. Pepper Potts, light of his life, still deeply asleep and no doubt still recovering from the very long weekend of company meetings—She finally looked relaxed now, her strawberry ("Did you know there's only one thing on earth I'm allergic to?") blonde hair splayed out on the satin pillow beneath her like a fiery halo.

Tony inhaled again slowly and leaned down, kissing her forehead before slipping out of the bed. His angel should sleep some more. It was a miracle in of itself that she stayed resting while Tony had another one of his fits.

They had been getting worse since the airport... since Serbia. The memories of the shield, of his friend, the betrayal, the heartbreak and the regretful anger, his mother's voice, the Winter Soldier's blank stare—it all haunted him. It all collaged together on nights like these, trying to patch the holes left from the broken team, and it didn't do much good to replace nothing with a negative, but he was trying his best to make due with it.

Tony made his way down to the lab, his hands itching to do something, to build something, fix something, make it all okay somewhere else when the holes in his emotional state couldn't be fixed.

He's tried to find other things to distract himself.

He went to India, as per Pepper's suggestion. He tried to center himself, tried to have some fun at a wedding, tried to forget everything else. It could have worked to relax him, maybe. Tony seriously doubted it, but things happen— and happen they did, because the distress call he received out of the blue from Peter Parker's suit had him reeling and cursing in a holy space.

("Thank god this place has WiFi, or you would be toast right now. Thank Ganesh while you're at it.")

Tony scoffed at the memory, shaking his head as he entered the big room. That was a whole other thing. That darn kid. That stupidly smart, stupidly stubborn, web-wearing-webhead.

Affection shouldn't be the first thing that came to mind when the teenager popped up in his head. He was a cardiac event ready to happen. But still, Tony found himself in awe, wanting to help the kid along on his journey to being a hero, or whatever.

Besides, thinking of better ways to protect the fourteen— ("I'm fifteen.")—fifteen-year old kid in his superhero suit was a pretty good distraction from the mental image of snow and the crashing of a car that couldn't get out of his head.

"FRI, pull up the voicemails from the kid," Tony sat down in a chair and rolled to the center of the garage. "Happy sent them over to me."

"Yes, Boss. Should I only start play the ones you haven't listened to?"

Tony drummed his finger on his chin, trying to gauge how tired he really was and how much distraction he needed. He heard his mom's pleading voice ringing quietly through his ears and shivered, but covered the motion with a fake shrug. "Eh. Just do whatever."