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Peter was never going to be a normal kid; he was Tony Stark’s son, and with that brought a whole world of responsibility and reputation that was unfairly both a burden and blessing. Normal was never a label Tony could apply to himself even, so it didn’t bother him at first to think of his child as anything but.
But then.
But then it became clear that things weren’t adding up with Peter. He started falling short of different markers, different tests. He was only a year old, then two years old. He could walk, but chose to crawl everywhere instead still. He didn’t speak at all. He was in the low percentiles of weight and height for kids his age because they had a hard time getting him to eat and keep it down.
At three, most kids are learning to count on their fingers or name some basic colors. Peter still didn’t speak and wouldn’t let anyone hold him willingly. Tony’s entire schedule had to shift around when Peter would eat or sleep, because the kid’s health was so poor.
Tony didn’t plan on ever becoming a father, but once Peter was in his arms he imagined a lot of things that others probably dreamt of as well: the first time he’d get called dad, his son’s best steps, trips to Disney World where he could put those ridiculous ears on his son’s curly hair.
Those things didn’t exactly happen, and for awhile, Tony was sure it was him. He was the fuck up. He couldn’t father, so Peter wasn’t where he needed to be.
But then.
Peter got older and older, and the excuses that Tony had built up seemed more and more implausible. Normal became a word he despised. What the fuck was normal, anyway? And what was normal for a four-year-old?
Despite his genius, it took an embarrassingly long time for Tony to work it out. He had several doctors look at Peter over his short years, but if any of them suspected Peter’s diagnosis, then they never dared to share it with Tony. He often wonders if Peter had been anyone else’s kid, if maybe he’d have been diagnosed sooner.
Of course, diagnosis is another one of those words that Tony has a different relationship with.
It happened mostly by accident; it was the middle of January and bitterly cold out. Tony was traveling with Peter out of necessity. If he could have avoided this particular business trip, he would have, but now he’s got a kid in the middle of a meltdown and a shortening window to make it to the air field for take off.
It takes both him and Happy to wrestle Peter into his coat, mittens, and thick woolen hat, but once he’s dressed he falls quiet. Tony can breathe a sigh of relief and finish grabbing the last few items. They make it to the car where Tony decides it’s best to keep Peter bundled up rather than face a repeat because he removed the hat and mittens, and Peter doesn’t look bothered by the extra layers anyway.
He stays quiet on the ride, he stays quiet in Tony’s arms when he treks from car to jet. Once on board, Tony doesn’t put him down because it’s so unusual. Peter doesn’t allow him to hold him for long usually, but today he is sedate, drowsily looking over his father’s shoulder.
“You feeling okay, buddy?” Now Tony’s worried his kid is sick, and their flight isn’t exactly short.
Of course, Peter doesn’t respond. He gets strapped in for the flight, but before take off Tony does remove the gloves and hat so he can slip on the sound canceling headphones he made for Peter. Once wheels are up, Peter is out.
Happy looks between him and the kid, eyebrow raised. Unsurprisingly, planes aren’t Peter’s favorite experience. Tony just shrugs, pleased for a moment of quiet. He debates between getting some shut eye as well, or whether or not to squeeze in a few trials on his tablet.
Peter wakes up about an hour before they land. Tony doesn’t even realize it, because his kid is sitting quietly, eyes wide awake but staring at Happy as he snores. Peter catches his father looking at him, and his little fingers start drumming against his knee. His jaw slackens and his lips move - for a moment, Tony is sure that Pete’s about to say something to him, and he leans forward in his seat, his heartbeat speeding up.
But then.
The moment comes and goes. Peter looks away, out the window. He keeps drumming his fingers, opening and closing his fist.
It’s happened many times before, but every time it’s like a bucket of ice water gets dumped over his head. Tony thinks it’s finally going to happen, then it doesn’t, and the rush of disappointment is so great that it sends him spiraling for a day. Then he becomes even more disappointed in himself for putting so much pressure on his kid. In his worst moments, sometimes he sees a version of himself shaking Peter - trying by any means necessarily to elicit a verbal response. He would never, but he still feels like shit for his moments of weakness.
People used to try and comfort him by reminding Tony of the old wives’ tale that a late start to speech often heralded a mark of genius. Peter is smart - he’s just as independent as others his age, maybe even more so, but Tony doesn’t want the placation of others. He doesn’t need to put expectations on Peter, and after everything they’ve already been through together, it’s something he’s found relative peace with.
They land. Peter protests the mittens being put back on, but it’s a contained protest that lasts only a minute. Tony quickly pulls the hat on over the headphones, because the private side of this airport is a lot busier and noisier than the one in New York, then they’re out the door and waiting for Happy to pull around in their car.
Peter’s placation of this particular trip hangs over his head from the airway to the hotel. When they’re inside, it doesn’t last. They knew it wouldn’t, but it tugs at him when Peter bodily throws himself onto the floor with a loud yell as he tries to undress him into pjs.
While most hotel beds have a solid base where nothing can roll under, this one does not, and Peter immediately crawls under it and continues crying for another hour while Tony gets food delivered and tries to tempt him out with pizza. It does and doesn’t work, as many things do with Peter; he stops crying, but he doesn’t come out.
It’s getting late, so Tony miserably half crawls under the bed as much as possible. He keeps some distance between him and Peter, who’s directly in the center of the bed, his hands and knees braced up against the bottom. He watches his dad crawl so his head and shoulders are under the bed silently, his big owlish eyes blinking at him.
“Hey bud. Wanna go to bed?” Tony sighs. This might be their bed for the evening. He looks up at the small tear in the bottom of the springs above him. Traces it with a finger. He refuses to yank and grab Peter out of there - he’s not immune to bad moments, but they’re more manageable as time goes by.
They’re lying there quietly when he feels a soft tapping at the corner of his mouth. Tony looks at Peter from the corner of his eye, afraid to move. There’s a blurry view of a mass of curls near his head. The tapping turns into a soft brush; it outlines his goatee and his chin before moving across his nose and mouth. Peter rests his tiny palm there - not pressing down, but it’s enough that Tony starts to feel a little claustrophobic.
Feeling his breath? Tony thinks. He isn’t sure. Peter is so still for so long; it’s been an odd day, for sure. Peter is often manic in his movements during the day - won’t still sit, crawling around and often banging at things with his wrist. He knows now to be gentle with Tony; Tony knows his four-year-old can be unbelievably gentle.
“Hey buddy,” he whispers. “I’m getting tired. Aren’t you?”
The hand disappears. He can hear Peter crawling out the other side, so Tony pushes himself out from under the bed in time to see Peter half crawling half galloping across the room to the plate of pizza now next to Tony’s hip. He takes a few bites awhile Tony pulls down the covers and turns off the main light in the room. He doesn’t bother changing Peter out of his clothes, and he’s debating whether or not he wants to break the spell by brushing Peter’s teeth or waiting until morning.
Outside, a car revs its engine. Once, twice. Three times, and Peter’s starting to become more agitated each time. His eyes dilate and nostrils flare. Tony peers out the window at the ridiculous Aston Martin outside and frowns. He picks up the noise cancelling headphones and puts them back on Peter before he can become too worked up. He flinches away from Tony, crawling back under the bed.
Tony sighs, resigning himself to it for the night. He slips on his glasses and pulls up some work on a tablet, waiting to see if Peter will fall asleep himself under there or not. He’s surprised when Peter comes back out and sits next to his feet by the chair. He starts tapping at his feet - a very slow and methodical pattern for a four-year-old to carry out. Peter looks up at him, biting his lip, then looks back down at Tony’s feet.
It’s been a tactile day for Peter. He does fall asleep on the floor, and Tony waits until it’s deep enough that he can move him to to bed without waking him. He thinks about removing the headphones, but instead gently pushes them more firmly in place. It’s late in the morning, and he knows there will be guests up and about in a matter of a couple of hours. He’d prefer Peter sleep as long as possible, for the simple reason he’d like to sleep in past five.
They make it past six. It’s a success. Tony watches his kid lift one side of the headphones off his ear, then replace it. Then does it again.
It’s not exactly a lightbulb moment, but close to. During the rest of the trip, Tony realizes how much easier it seems for Peter when he’s got the noise canceling device on. There’s a stimulation issue, he realizes, and he’s known for some time that the TV seems to agitate Peter, but he thought it might just be how young he was. Now, he’s realizing that it’s all input.
Tony feels truly stupid for one of the first times in his adult life. There are tears about it.
Things start falling more and more into place. They try weighted blankets and jackets and all kinds of sensory items to see what Peter responds to.
Tony gets to hold his kid for several hours on row with the aid of some a couple different devices - no small feat for them. He cries about that too - not in front of Peter, but later. Tony should have known - should have seen the signs earlier - but he’s been trained to look for such a select set of markers that he’s limited his entire view of cognitive behavior in kids.
They go to Disney World, and Peter rides up high on Tony’s shoulders. They keep the headphones on, so Tony doesn’t get to see his kid in the classic ears, but that’s okay. Peter finds an ice cream he enjoys eating, and it melts into Tony’s hair. They take frequent breaks in dimly lit areas. Tony makes sure to let Peter have his space in regularly timed intervals to stave off overstimulation of any physical kind, and he throws all the money he has into skipping lines and making sure no one else touches his kid. Peter doesn’t often show joy and happiness in fits of giggles and smiles like other kids, but Tony can tell he’s having a good time.
They do manage a couple of photos with Mickey and Minnie standing nearby. Tony knows to anyone else who sees these pictures that Peter looks like a regular kid hanging out at Disney World.
And they’d be right.
The tapping and the hand motions take a bit longer to figure out, because they’re flexible. Their own language, changing and growing over time. Tony pays much closer attention now though. He has FRIDAY record everything. Not everything has meaning - Peter is tactile learner, so sometimes his hand wringing doesn’t seem to mean a single thing - but there are more patterns than not.
Tony decides not to seek further medical advice on Peter for now. He deep dives into readings and research on his own, but there’s such an appalling lack of nonverbal spectrum adolescents that he idly plays with the idea of getting another degree.
There’s only one thing he needs to become an expert in though, and that’s Peter. He gets frustrated when he tries to tell other people that his kid can and will communicate and they just look at him like he’s being an eccentric asshole, but Happy and Rhodey and Pepper seem to slowly see enough for themselves. Peter doesn’t tap or touch them, but they see him approach Tony enough over the years.
Tony builds a sensory lab for Peter for his sixth birthday. He also modifies his own lab so that Peter can spend time in there as well; Peter starts tinkering with an old circuit board. Tony learns to teach by example in a way he hasn’t before; sometimes, for all their worth, his words can do nothing.
“You’re a lot less chatty these days,” Rhodey tells him.
“Well yeah,” Tony scoffs. “I’ve learned that talking can’t get me everywhere.”
There are days when he misses blasting his favorite records on repeat through the entire penthouse; there are still many days when Peter’s screams echo down the halls and through the windows. His kid is stubborn, but also resilient. His kid doesn’t speak, but is still communicating. His kid doesn’t like to eat anything blue or wear anything other than 100% cotton sweatpants, but Tony learns. He used to think of himself as a fast learner, but now he knows there’s no such thing really when parenting.
Peter changes, just as much as any kid does. As he gets older, he still doesn’t really talk. He clearly can - Tony has caught him mouthing words, sometimes whispering things he’s heard around him either on the TV or from FRIDAY.
Tony does get his first dad. It comes so long after he expects it, that it’s shocking and he drops what he’s doing - a very expensive module. Peter is watching him, a lot more eye to eye focus than is expressly usual for him, when he says it so softly Tony doesn’t believe it at first.
“Dad.”
A shatter.
But then.
“FRIDAY? Did he…” It’s that bucket of ice being thrown over him. He doesn’t need it to happen, and yet it means more than it should.
“He did, boss.”
Peter has already turned around and started reading whatever it is he’s got on his lap. He’s got his favorite hoodie on - hood drawn up. He chews on the end of one of the drawstrings.
“FRIDAY.”
“I’ve sent the recording to multiple servers, sir.”
Later, Tony will listen to it on repeat. Enhanced and cleaned up. His kid’s voice is delicate, soft, but perfect. Impossibly clear for something thus far little used.
Tony doesn’t tell anyone about it. He doesn’t expect it to happen again, and it doesn’t. Tony does figure out Peter’s new abbreviated hand sign for dad though.
It feels just as good.