It's Genius, Actually

Pancakes and Texts

"Sir, I'm afraid there's no known location of Leo Valdez in my database."

Tony steepled his hands on his temple and rested his elbows on the table.

He'd looked and looked, and manually looked again. All he could find on the kid was foster home records after his mother's death dating up to a few years ago. After that, he was sent to a school for troubled kids. Roughly a year later, he disappeared.

And he meant completely dropped off the grid. No aliases, no accounts, no nothing. According to the world, Leo Valdez no longer existed.

He thought teenagers these days were supposed to be glued to technology, so why did it seem like this guy hadn't touched a computer since he was six (when he built one for show and tell, found in a town newspaper).

"Have the drones found anything? Or my internet search?" He asked the voice coming out of a speaker above him.

"No, sir. They both came up dull, although there are some very strange things related to your search on Google-"

"Don't bother. I don't want to know," Tony said, cutting her off.

"Are you sure?" Tony thought he detected a hidden sigh in her response but was too tired to deal with it right now.

"Well, keep searching," he said, looking out the window which the boy in question had jumped out of not two days ago. Tony wrapped his hands around his coffee mug tightly.

"We'll find him."

~~~

He did not, in fact, find him.

Tony searched and scoured everything he could get his hands on to find him. His friends noticed the difference, but when they asked he just muttered something about a new invention and staggered off to his lab.

At first, his goal was to find the kid simply out of genuine curiosity and excitement. But after one, two, three months now of absolutely nothing, it became more and more out of irritation and the irrational need to solve the enigma that was Leo Valdez.

Outside his lab, pacing fervently in the kitchen was Steve Rogers, who was probably the most worried about Tony and did not for a second believe his lie about 'some new invention'.

"We have to figure out what's wrong with him. He's too prideful and stubborn to let us help him with whatever's been eating him up, but for god's sake, he needs to sleep! Or eat, or something!"

"I agree. He hasn't even noticed my prank in his bathroom because on the rare occasion he sleeps it's anywhere but his own room," Clint paused to flip the blueberry pancakes he was cooking that morning.

It was a tradition he'd started ever since the team had found out the skilled marksman had kids. He'd become quite skilled at cooking when his wife was pregnant and even better at handling children.

"My money's on a piece of code or whatever. Something he's trying to crack, but can't. So he spends all the ungodly hours of the day searching for a way around it, or through, and that's what's getting him looking like an extra from the walking dead."

"Right. That sounds... logical. Are those pancakes done? I want backup when I talk to him," Steve said, finishing his water and putting it in the sink.

"Do you want me or the pancakes?" Clint asked, pointing at Steve with the spatula.

"Preferably both. Not sure where he's at mentally right now."

"Okay. Well, I'm almost finished. You want any?"

~~~

"Tony."

Tony woke with a jolt, looking around his lab groggily. He saw he was at his desk, computer in front of him with some half-hearted code typed in incorrectly.