Work Text:
Nights like these are among Tony’s favourites.
Pepper is away for the week in Copenhagen, closing a deal with a Danish renewable energy company that they have had ongoing correspondence with for the past three years. That leaves Tony in the lab, free to stay awake as late as he wants without the worry that Pepper will venture down and demand he fall asleep in their bed instead of the couch in the lab for once.
Coming up on two in the morning, he has already downed three cups of coffee and half a box of pizza. Tony is halfway through dismantling a faulty thruster on the Iron Man suit, when it occurs to him suddenly why, even if the circumstances should lead to him having a perfect night, there is still something empty and sad sitting on his chest.
Peter isn’t here.
For the last eight months, Peter has spent almost every single weekend at the tower. Pepper is away or knee-deep in meetings more than half of the time, so it’s usually just the two of them as they lock themselves down in the lab or drive down to this hole-in-the-wall Chinese place that the kid loves or watch the Star-Wars movies for the millionth time. It has slowly yet surely become a part of Tony’s routine, a familiar facet of his day-to-day life.
The kid has pried his way into Tony life (and, to be perfectly honest, his heart, even if he would never admit it) as much as Pepper and Rhodey and Happy have, at this point.
But Peter isn’t at the tower tonight.
On Wednesday, when he showed up for lab day, all anxious hands and nails chewed raw, Peter had quietly asked him if it would be okay if he would skip coming over Friday night, because he and Ned had a sleepover planned. Tony had to stifle a laugh at how ridiculous it was that Peter was even asking him permission instead of just telling him that he wouldn’t be able to come, but if there’s one thing he’s learned about Peter Parker since meeting him, it’s that the kid is something barely short of a fucking angel.
Tony doesn’t regret giving the fifteen-year-old the go-ahead to only come over on Saturday afternoon, but he is really starting to feel the kid’s absence right about now. If Peter were here, they would have retired from the lab about four hours ago, watching a movie, and already been passed out on the couch. Tony has even made an embarrassing habit of carrying the boy to the guest bedroom every time he inevitably passes out on his shoulder.
It’s not like he can just call the kid because he misses him (the mere thought makes him cringe in humiliation), so the billionaire breathes out all of his mushy emotions and keeps working, twisting and screwing and banging.
Ten minutes have gone by when his phone starts to ring.
He immediately assumes that it’s Pepper, because it’s eight in the morning in Denmark and she’s been getting up at six o’clock sharp for as long as he’s known her, but is delightfully surprised when he picks up his phone to see that it’s the kid.
“Hey, kid.” Tony answers warmly. “I’m surprised you’re not asleep yet. Your record for staying up over here is, what, one in the morning? I’m offended. What does Ted have that I don’t?”
Silence. Thick, deafening, horrible silence. Something uncomfortable rises in Tony’s chest, sitting heavy on his heart. He tries to chalk it up to his ever-whispering anxiety and its complete inability to let him rest for the briefest of moments, but the silence stretches on.
“Kid?” He repeats, tapping his fingers against the workbench as he tries to quiet the fears that are bubbling to the surface. “You there?”
The line is silent for another five seconds before Peter answers, voice quiet and shaking and absolutely destroyed. Tony’s heart skips a beat. “Mr. Stark?”
“Peter.” The fear bubbles over. Tony sits up straighter, rigid with deep confusion. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
His heart plummets impossibly further when he hears the kid’s quiet sobs on the other line. They are heartbreaking and muffled and make Tony sick with fear. Who hurt this kid? Who caused these tears? Was it his friend? “Mr. Stark. Mr. Stark.”
That’s it. Tony’s hand flies over the keys of his computer, demanding FRIDAY track the location of the call. It pings in an upscale neighbourhood in Queens, not far from Midtown High. “I’ve got your location right here, kid. Do you want me to come? Are you hurt? Did someone hurt you? Just say the word and I’m there.”
Peter hiccups into the phone. “I need- I need- I need clothes. I need to get dressed. Please. I need to- I need clothes.”
Tony stands, nearly tripping over his feet in his haste to get to the elevator. “I’m coming, okay? I’m getting you a change of clothes and then I’m coming right away, okay, Pete? Are you at Ned’s?”
The call disconnects.
-
Three and a half minutes later (he has never gone this fast in the suit in his entire life), Tony lands on the sidewalk in front of the house that Peter’s location was tracked to, landing so heavily that he cracks the sidewalk.
The house in front of him is large (something ripped straight out of an interior design magazine) and almost entirely glass, with windows that are nearly the size of the main one in the penthouse and a walkway that clearly has a team of gardeners working on it obsessively. It reeks of obnoxious wealth, the kind that has to scream from the highest rooftops. There is a slew of cars in the driveway, ranging from beat-up to luxurious, and clearly a party that is happening within, if the music that is vibrating against the pavement and the shadows of drunken teenagers are any indications.
This is definitely not Ned’s house.
Tony steps forward. There is no immediate sign of the kid, no big eyes peeking out at him from somewhere, no disheveled teenager sitting on the front lawn, nothing. He disengages from the suit, which leaves the flannel pajama pants and Fleetwood Mac hoodie (both from Tony’s own collection) held loosely in his hands.
He makes it to the front door, raising his fist to knock and preparing to demand that someone tell him where his kid is, when he notices a hunched figure buried in the ginormous rose bushes on either side of the front door.
“Kid?”
To his horror, the figure crouched in the fucking bush is, in fact, Peter Parker. He is crumpled in the shrubbery, hidden carefully from view, eyes blowing wide when he catches Tony’s gaze. He flinches gently, almost imperceptibly, eyes glassy and distant, before his face crumples and he starts to sob so loudly that it startles the billionaire.
“Pete.” Tony crouches down, heart lodged in his throat. He places his hands on either side of the kid’s trembling shoulders, trying to drag him out of the bush, but Peter fights against him and starts babbling nonsensical things.
“It’s cold, it’s cold, I need to- I need to get dressed.” He bawls, rubbing his watery eyes with a harsh fist. “Everyone laughed. Everyone’s laughing. They’re all gonna’ see and they’re gonna’ laugh.”
It’s only then that Tony realises that the teenager is completely nude; stripped down to his socks. Acidic horror washes over him, seizing his heart and leaving him absolutely speechless, for a moment. He kicks back into gear quickly, unravelling the folded clothes and quickly helping Peter shrug into them. Once the pants are pulled halfway up his legs, he allows Tony to gently drag him out of the bush and finished getting dressed.
“Where’s your friend?” Tony asks, swallowing mouthfuls of horror and rage as the kid shivers and sobs and stumbles. He looks drunk. “I thought you were at Ned’s?”
The kid doesn’t answer, one clammy hand gripping Tony’s elbow as he sits there in the middle of the walkway, scooting further behind Tony, as if he’s trying to hide from whatever is inside the house. They can both still hear a party raging on inside.
“I wanna’ go home.”
Tony rubs his arms, trying to bring some warmth back into his shivering bones, despite the mid-May heat in the air. “I’ll fly you back to your aunt’s place, buddy-”
“No!” Peter latches onto him once more, squeezing his arms almost painfully. Tony winces. “No, I don’t want to get in trouble, please-”
“Okay, okay, shh, you won’t get in trouble. It’s okay. I’ll take you back to the tower then, alright? Is that okay, buddy?”
Tony stares into the kid’s eyes, trying to gauge a reaction, but the only thing he finds is a pain so potent that he cannot even begin to understand why someone would purposefully put the pain there, in the mind of the kindest, smartest, funniest kid Tony has ever met, but he knows that they are going to pay.
-
He puts the kid to sleep in the guest bedroom next to his own (Peter passed out while they flew back to the tower, cheek pushed against Tony’s armoured shoulder), settles into the island stool in the kitchen, and does what he does best; research.
He easily discovers that the address that he picked the kid up from belongs to Patrick and Monica Thompson, a married couple in their mid-forties who own a highly successful fitness brand. They have a son who just turned sixteen named Eugene who, as the pieces slide together in front of Tony like a disturbing jigsaw puzzle, attends Midtown High and is in several of Peter’s classes.
Flash.
There’s no doubt in Tony’s mind that this is the little sociopath that has, apparently, been bullying his kid for the last two years. Tony still remembers last December, when Peter showed up to the lab with a busted lip, and the billionaire was so angry that he could have crushed the screwdriver in his hands in a clean snap.
Tony spends hours like that, hunched over his laptop and committing every little piece of information about this kid’s life to memory. By the time morning sunlight is lazily stretching through the windows and FRIDAY informs him that Peter is awake and making his way to the living room, Tony could tell you Flash’ great-great-grandmother's maiden name.
“Hey, buddy.” He tucks away all of his research when Peter enters, sliding down next to him on the couch. He’s still wearing the hoodie and pants that Tony gave him, cheeks a splotchy red colour in what Tony can only assume is embarrassment. “Did you sleep good?”
Peter shrugs, eyes on the floor. “I guess.”
Tony sighs, shifting so that he’s facing the kid more than the rest of the room. He decides to rip off the Band-Aid, or else he’ll just let last night’s events stew quietly between them forever. “I know that house belongs to Flash.”
The kid’s lip wobbles before he brushes a hand over it. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For lying to you about- about going to Ned’s. And for making you come all the way out to Queens in the middle of the night to pick me up. I’m sorry.”
Tony shakes his head at the apology. He would never sleep again for the kid. He would relieve his months in Afghanistan, spend a decade in the wormhole, dream of the Siberian cave every night for the rest of his life, all for this kid that he has known for less than a year. It scares him sometimes; how much he cares for Peter, how much he would do to keep the kid happy and unharmed. Flying to Queens in the dead of night and pulling his naked body out of a rose bush is nothing.
“Don’t worry about that, kid.” He waves off the apology, sighing deeply as he tries to think of the best way to proceed. “It wasn’t a big deal. If you’re in trouble like that, even if it has nothing to do with Spider-Man, I want you to call me, yeah?”
Peter nods, chewing on his lip, even though he looks like he couldn’t believe him any less.
“What happened last night?” Tony asks, because it seems like the most sensible route. In the months that he has become increasingly close to the kid, he has slowly cataloged the best way to handle getting information out of him. Peter doesn’t respond to anger or demands, only a carefully planned patience and a lot of muffled emotions. He learned that the hard way.
The teenager shrugs.
“Kid, come on.” Tony deadpans. “I’m not just gonna’ let this go because you don’t want to talk about it. I’m not mad at you for anything, okay? Tell me what’s going on in that big brain of yours.”
Another half shrug, before Peter clears his throat and starts to speak in a voice so quiet that the billionaire strains to hear him. “It was just... it’s so stupid. It was just supposed to be a party. I’m so... I should've known better.”
Tony’s response to the self-deprecation is automatic, almost punched out of the depths of his stomach. “Don’t say that.”
Peter presses his lips together, looking so... sad. It’s awful to watch, the way his eyes are bowed in self-hatred, the way he’s blinking rapidly to keep from crying. Something swells inside of Tony’s chest, something quietly protective.
“How did you end up at that- kid's house?” A few choice words about the Flash prick are on the tip of his tongue, but he holds them back.
“It’s been getting better lately. The- the bullying stuff, I mean.” Peter visibly cringes at the description. “For the last few weeks, maybe even a month or two, people have just been... I don’t know, nicer, I guess? Flash hasn’t been bothering me as much, and some of the upperclassmen have been cooler to me. I thought... I don’t know what I thought. I thought it was finally gonna’ be over, you know? Like, everyone was just growing out of shoving my head down toilets.”
Tony nearly flinches. He’s never heard that story before, and he doesn’t want to.
“Anyways, a few days ago, Flash invited me to a party at his house.” Peter continues, voice wavering slightly. “I thought it was like... it thought it was a peace offering, basically. It was so stupid. I should’ve just gone to Ned’s.”
Peter’s hands start to tremble, and before Tony can think twice, he reaches over and takes the kid’s hand in his own to give it a reassuring squeeze. Peter doesn’t acknowledge the gesture verbally, but he takes a deep breath and squeezes back.
“When I got to Flash’ house, there was, like, already twenty or thirty people there. As soon as Flash noticed I was there, he just looked so... excited, I guess? I thought it was weird, but he looked kind of drunk, so I didn’t think much of it. He kept giving me drinks, and topping it up every time I was almost finished, and I didn’t just wanna’ say no, because then I’d really be a loser, right?”
The older man agrees wholeheartedly (motivated by his endless years of drinking, all because he wanted to impress a group of seniors at M.I.T), but he lets Peter continue, mainly because he’s afraid the kid will never get to this point again if he stops now.
“After a while, when I could barely even stand up, Flash just started... there was so many people... I was trying to fight them off, but I didn’t want to- want to hurt anyone and...” A tear slips down the boy’s cheek, down his quivering chin.
Something cold and horrifying slides down Tony like ice cubes, a chill of terror that makes it impossible to hear what happens next but just as hard to stop listening. He steps in when the kid starts to panic, breaths coming out shallow. “Take a deep breath, buddy. It’s alright. Keep going. You’re okay.”
“They started... they made me take off all my clothes.”
Tony’s stomach drops down to his toes and even further, buried below the dirty earth. Panic grips his heart, squeezing and squeezing until he breathes out a meager, horrified, “Peter.”
They make eye contact, and the kid must notice the panic plunged deep within him, because he almost frantically shakes his head. “Oh, no, it’s nothing- it's nothing like that.”
The relief is so overwhelming that if he wasn’t sitting down, his knees would have buckled.
“It was just to- it was- they were trying to embarrass me.” The teenager mumbles, wiping his face with the cuff of his sleeve. He looks so young, so devastated. “After... they threw all of my clothes in the pool and then they- they threw me out of the house and l-locked the door.”
Peter is sobbing in earnest now, hiding his face in his hands and trembling from head to toe. Tony wraps an arm around him and pulls his head to his chest, rubbing his quaking back. “Hey, hey, shh, it’s okay. You’re alright. I’m here, buddy. Don’t cry.”
“I was so em-embarrassed.” Peter cries, shivering, and Tony feels his heart split clean in two. Cold, all-consuming fury is humming in his veins, whispering all the ways he could make those rotten kids pay for what they have done to Peter.
Peter, who is the sun. Peter, who is kind in a way that is almost unfathomable. Peter, who is endlessly trusting of a world that has only beat him down in life. Peter, who puts every single person in his life, good or bad, above himself. Peter, who is Tony’s reason to get up most mornings.
“I don’t know why they hate me so much.” The kid pulls away to wipe his face angrily. “I never- I never did anything wrong. It’s been like this since kindergarten.”
The billionaire’s eyes bug out of his head. “They’ve been bullying you since you were five?”
The fifteen-year-old starts to pick at a loose thread on the couch, hiccupping. “Not, like, those exact people, but yeah, since I was five, I guess.”
Tony shakes his head. “What does your aunt have to say about all of this?”
“She doesn’t know.”
“What?”
“She did at first.” The kid explains. “Her and Ben used to have to come down to my school all the time, but my teachers never wanted to do anything about. And then- and then in fifth grade, there was this kid in my class, Tyler, and he was just... awful. When he... he broke my arm right after Christmas break, and May and Ben freaked out at the principle, told him they were going to pull me out of that school and go to the news with the story, so they expelled Tyler.”
An itch under Tony’s skin makes him want to spend the next three hours finding out everything he can about everyone involved in Peter’s suffering (and everyone who swept it under the rug), but he knows that there is no use. There are some battles that he doesn’t have the right to fight.
“After that... Tyler had a lot of friends, you know? And it just seemed- everyone started hating me. No one in my class would even look at me. Once I started middle school, the bullying started again, and I just didn’t say anything. May and Ben would ask sometimes if anyone was giving me any trouble, and I would just lie, because it was easier to be made fun of a little than labelled a tattletale. They would have really kicked my ass then.”
“We’re going to get this fixed.” Tony says, and he’s never been more assured of anything in his life. “I’m going to fix this.”
“No, Mr. Stark, it’s not a big deal-”
Tony cuts him off, absolutely seething. “Yes, it is. It’s the biggest deal. You’ve been getting bullied for, what, ten fucking years? Well, no more. I’m involved now and, I swear to God, I’m gonna’ make those little fuckers scared to even-”
“Stop.” The kid looks genuinely panicked now. “You can’t just... they’re kids. Kids do dumb shit- stuff all the time. By the time that they’re in college they’ll probably be embarrassed by all of this. Hopefully. Maybe not Flash. He’s probably going to be an asshole forever.”
“You’re a kid too. And this shit isn’t just teenagers being stupid, bud. They’re tormenting you.”
Peter stares at him for a long time, chewing on his lip and seeming to contemplate whether or not to give Tony his blessing to handle it (he doesn’t know it yet, but Tony has big plans even if he doesn’t get the go-ahead), before he sighs heavily.
“Fine. Just... don’t be a lunatic, okay?” He mumbles, picking at a thread on the couch. “I don’t want Pepper to be mad at me if you end up in prison.”
Tony snorts, reaching over to ruffle the kid’s curls. Peter ducks out of the way half-heartedly, laughing genuinely for the first time since Tony found him in the bushes, and the sound is music to the billionaire’s ears. He wants to sit every fucking student at Midtown High down and lecture them on how they don’t deserve the even breathe the same air as Peter Benjamin Parker, but that feels counterproductive.
“Pepper is physically incapable of being mad at you.”
The first thing he’ll do is talk to Flash’ parents. That seems like a good place to start. He’ll sit Mr. and Mrs. Lifestyle Brand down and tell them, plainly, that if Satan reincarnated keeps bothering Peter, there will be hell to pay. If that doesn’t work, the kid will be getting a visit from Tony personally.
“Never again.” Tony promises the quiet air, as Peter begins to fall back asleep on his shoulder. Morning sunlight paints a beautiful picture across the floor, flooding the penthouse gloriously. It’s a promise he intends to keep with every strained beat of his heart (the same heart that beats for Peter only). “Never again.”