Fantastic Job

Tony stared at the woman in front of him, still not comprehending, “Who are you again?”

She growled under her breath, “I don’t want to go through this anymore than you do, To- Stark.” She corrected, verbally putting space between them, “Are you going to take this fucking kid or not?”

Right. The kid. He looked tiredly over to the tiny living person sitting on his couch. It was all fun and good over text and phone, but there was no ignoring the situation anymore. He had made a lot of bad decisions in the past, continued to make decisions, and now a human being was forever entrenched in the hole he had been digging himself into for decades now.

“Why now, though?” He asked, and he had almost certainly asked this question before. Maybe inviting her over while he still had a hangover wasn’t the brightest idea. But he may have agreed to that while he was drunk. The question was still valid, and he didn’t remember the answer he’d gotten before, so he repeated it anyway, “He’s walking and talking and already a mini-adult at this point.”

She looked at him with withering disgust, “Peter’s five, Stark.”

“And if you put up with him for this long, then you can do it for thirteen more years.” He waved off.

“Well, I can’t.” She snapped, setting the papers down with a sharp rustle, “He’s a fucking pain, it’s only gotten worse as he’s gotten older, and I don’t have the comfort of a steady job to support myself. Compared to all that, you’ve basically got your life in order.”

‘Basically’ was doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement, he noted, evidenced by the fact that he couldn’t remember the last time he had swept the floors.

“I should just take you to court.” He mumbled, “Let them figure this out.”

“Don’t kid yourself, neither of us can afford the fees.” She pulled out a cigarette to light it, “But if you try to take this argument further I might be tempted.” There was a pause as she took a drag from it, looking at him inquisitively, “Well, are you?”

He was tired, that’s what he was. Fucking tired of this conversation, of the constant emails, of all the responsibilities he had to deal with. He just wanted everything to stop. Especially this.

“Christ, whatever.” He finally settled on saying, “I’ll keep an eye on him. For the next thirteen years.”

They got much more independent at the teens, yeah? He could wait that out. Maybe.

The woman – whose name he had really forgotten at this point and who hated him to the point that she wouldn’t remind him of it – relaxed slightly, nodding, “Good. That’s- I mean, thanks. I’ll bring his stuff over and get him situated over the next two weeks, if that works for you.”

It didn’t work for him at all. But he wasn’t exactly getting a say in here, was he? Putting it off would only make the conversation go longer.

Given that he was a mechanic, it was more accurate to say that Tony’s home was built around the garage, instead of the other way around.

Dozens of barely functioning cars were parked inside it, there were probably paint cans somewhere inside here that had lived through Y2K despite him putting the most effort into keeping this part of the house clean, and Tony could safely say that it was the place he was happiest. Whatever that meant. Fuck, he was getting philosophical again. It was the fumes from the cleaning supplies that caused this, he swore.

There were only a few rooms that weren’t the garage, and while he cleaned them every so often, even he had to admit that they weren’t exactly the standard of cleanliness toddlers should be living in. They were slobbery little creatures, from his memory.

He’d been putting it off for days now, so in a burst of energy at 3 in the morning, he had gotten a broom and a cloth, to give the one extra bedroom a cursory surface clean in anticipation for the boy who would be living there soon. Otherwise his other stuff would arrive on top of what was already there and he would never bother to get to it.

His own flesh and blood. His son. It still felt impossible that this was happening. He was so damn tired all the time, he really didn’t have the bandwidth to put more effort in here without doing something drastic. It would be alright if simply avoided doing the things that had annoyed him the most about his parents when he was this age, right? It didn’t have to be hard.

“Take a look around this lap of luxury, kid.” Tony brandished his hands out to gesture to the entire room, “It’s all yours now.”

Peter clutched his tiny backpack close to his chest, eyes the size of dinner plates as he looked around. Stammering over his words for a second before settling on saying, “You have a nice home, Mister… Dad?”

“Sure, Mister Dad will do.” He said, shuddering a little at the d-word. It coated the inside of his mouth with an oily feeling. But this was still a child. He shouldn’t belittle his thoughts.

There was a new car for him to work on – a real medical mystery of a Corolla – and he would rather be working on it right now. Just as soon as he got this out of the way.

“Okay, if we can speed this tour up a little.” He ducked around Peter to open the door to his room for him. With as much flair as a douchebag about to present a brand-new weapons system, he ushered Peter inside, “And this is your room!”

Peter audibly gasped as he looked inside, “This is all my stuff!”

“You didn’t expect to see it here?” Tony asked, raised an eyebrow, “Where did you think your mother was packing all your stuff and sending it to?”

Peter shrugged, “Throwing away?”

God, he wished. He spent three hours unpacking all this stuff and putting it away while still keeping them in reach of little child hands.

“Well, all your toys are here, and you know you like them.” His mother had said something about him being very particular of his possessions, whatever that meant, “So, you can entertain yourself while I go deal with some work, okay?”

Peter nodded, still rooted carefully to the spot, looking around the room.

Whatever. Tony left him to it in favor of heading down to the garage.

Tony wasn’t cut out for fatherhood, really. He never pretended to be, either, yet Peter’s mother had considered him to be an acceptable caretaker knowing all that, so he must meet the bare minimum requirements at least.

So he left pizza on the coffee table for dinner – put a little note so that the tyke could know that that’s what it was for – and disappeared back to his garage, mostly to fix cars, but sometimes to have a few drinks. More than sometimes, too.

In the few weeks he had been here, Tony could already tell that Peter was a good, quiet kid. Knew to can it with the questions, unlike how Tony had been as a child, and that was made the process so much more bearable.

They had a system. A good system. And it worked just fine.

He had a reminder set up on his phone for when he had to head down to the local elementary school to get him enrolled when the next school year started, and if they keep following the pattern laid out so far, it would fulfill all his responsibilities for a few years.

Wait. Goddammit. He’d forgotten the doctor’s appointments.

Now, Tony was never a person who got close to people. He was a hell of mechanic, but that was the only thing keeping him in the town’s good graces.

But Steve was as close to Tony as anyone could be really, and it was strange even for him to go completely silent on everything. No Twitter, no Facebook, didn’t even bother responding to Steve’s personal messages. And yet anyone he asked confirmed that the garage was functioning just fine.

“How addicted is this guy to the internet if a few days of silence is enough for you to set out a wellness check?” Bucky asked, following him from the tiny parking area and up to the door of the place. He wasn’t as close to Tony as Steve, but he was still up there in the list, and had been the first to respond to Steve’s plea for help.

“You have no idea.” Steve laughed, “I think we’re the crazy ones, Buck, for barely spending a few hours a day online. He’s always active.”

“Stop. No. Don’t talk about it like that’s a good thing.” Bucky grumbled, pressing the doorbell. Somewhere inside the house, the corresponding bell could be heard trilling. Despite this, it took several minutes of more waiting and knocking and doorbell-ringing for heavy boots to stomp against floors and the door to be pulled open.

Tony looked at them like he did most people, with impatience and annoyance. Like he was already counting down the seconds to when he could stop listening to them talk. But then he recognized them, and the annoyance gave way to more of an exhausted indifference.

“Cap. Barnes. Don’t suppose you’ve busted up a car recently? Cause I’d love to help, but this Subaru has a radiator which is fucked in ways I cannot describe without being graphic.”

“No, unfortunately – or, fortunately? – never mind, I wanted to just check up on you.” Steve explained, relieved to see his face looking pretty much as it always did, which gave him the courage to continue, “You haven’t been responding much recently. Or, like, at all.”

Tony scoffed, “Yeah, it was because some old fling was making it absolutely unbearable to be online. You know how it is. I’m laying low for the time being, in case anyone else tries to baby trap me.”

Bucky openly laughed at that, “Who’s going around trying to baby trap you?”

Tony’s eyes twinkled, an expression that had gotten rarer over the years, yet always remained as sincere as ever, “You’d be surprised, Buckaroo. I happen to be a very empathetic man open to being taken advantage of crotch goblins that randos claim are mine.”

“Sure.” Bucky said, injecting more dry sarcasm into the words than was necessary, “So if that’s all, then we should be going-”

“Hey, come on.” Steve grabbed him by the arm, stopping the other man from fully walking away, “It’s been a while since we’ve seen your face. Let’s catch up a bit.” He wasn’t convinced that Tony was truly okay. The guy was a liar, and really loved his drinks. Him skipping out on bar nights was unusual. And cause for concern.

Tony rolled his eyes, “Eh, whatever. But I’ve already ordered food for lunch, so I can’t get more for the two of you. All you get is beer.”

“We don’t mind.” Steve assured him, looking around the place carefully as they were let inside. It wasn’t particularly clean, but also wasn’t as dirty as his place had been previously, either. Nothing that could point to some drastic shift in mental state.

“Sit down over there, if you’ve somehow forgotten what sofas are.” Tony pointed over his shoulder to the living room while he himself rooted about in the fridge for the beers.

He was turning around and walking back to them when he tripped over something that was out of Steve’s sight. The mechanic swore slightly and kicked the object to the side before calling out, “Stop leaving your toys lying about, Peter!”

That was when Steve noticed the kid sitting at the top of the stairs.

Tony had handed him a can, but Steve’s fingers had gone so slack that it slipped right through.

“Damn, just say you don’t want it.” Tony rolled his eyes, scooping up the can and putting it on the coffee table, most likely for himself once the pressure had cooled off a little. Steve didn’t care very much, eyes still fixed on the tiny kid wandering down to grab the toy, looking at the two of them with wide eyes, and then just as quickly disappearing back upstairs.

“What the hell, Stark.” Bucky was the first to put words to the confusion Steve was going through. What the hell, indeed.

Tony groaned, “Didn’t I already explain what was going on here? That was like. The first thing I told you when you so benevolently came to my doorstep. Don’t act fucking surprised now.”

“You said it like a joke!” Steve replied defensively, “What, did one of your exes actually baby trap you?”

Tony scoffed, “Don’t be ridiculous. She ditched the kid with me and left. Said something about just not having the money or stability for him.” That was a little more believable. Still sad, though. And…

“You shouldn’t be talking about these things in front of the kid.” Steve warned, “He can hear you, you know? These walls might as well be made of paper.”

“It’s fine.” Tony assured him with way too much confidence, already cracking open the beer can Steve had dropped, “He barely speaks, anyway. How’s he supposed to understand adult talk?”

“Because listening and speaking are different things?” Steve struggled to make sense of the conversation they were currently having. What was the mother’s life like if Tony Stark was stable in comparison? Also: “He can’t speak well?”

“He speaks fine.” Tony insisted, “Just that he doesn’t do it often enough. Bit slow in that aspect.”

Huh. Delays in speech development really didn’t mean much, and sometimes six-year-olds were just quiet kids. But it was something to keep an eye out.

“I’m a trained tutor for kids with learning difficulties.” He reminded the guy, just in case, “If you ever need a hand, we’ll be there for you.”

Tony grinned, a little bitter, but mostly aimed at himself, “Aw, thanks. You already know that I’m fucking that kid up forever.”

“Not true.” Bucky denied whole-heartedly, “We’re reaching out a hand, in case your kid needs it.”

Tony eased a little, “In that case, sure. Peter!” He raised his voice a little, only to receive no answer.

Calling twice more led to no reply either, and Tony huffed, “Kid gets lost in his head randomly.” He explained, climbing up the stairs three at a time. From the above landing, they both could hear Tony’s lowered crooning voice, “Hey, Petey bear. You wanna meet me my friends?”

A few seconds later, Tony came down, followed closely by Peter, who looked at Steve and Bucky in brief glances between examining the wallpaper with an intensity that bordered on hilarious. Tony had to break the ice by whispering to him uncomfortably, “Tell them your name and sh-stuff.”

He nodded, and it was as if he had rehearsed it a million times over when he said, “Hello. I’m Peter Parker. I like Legos. And you?” He was tapping each of his other fingers onto his thumb on both his hands as he waited for a response, looking between them with an expression Steve couldn’t grasp.

Mind-reading wasn’t needed. What mattered was meeting the kid where he was at. So, Steve smiled and replied, “I’m Steve Rogers and I like reading historical accounts. This is my pal, Bucky.”

Peter nodded seriously and stopped tapping to instead flex his hands out a few times, “Nice to meet you, Mr Rogers. And Bucky.”

Bucky’s eyes twinkled a little as he nodded in return. For a second, Steve grasped for a discussion topic, only to catch onto the tiny colorful brick Peter had clenched in his hand. Ah, Legos.

“Were you making something before?”

“Legos.” Peter nodded, his shoulders loosening lightly, “It’s a tower set.”

“He’s been putting together the same one and taking it apart over and over again.” Tony told them conspiratorially, “The kid’s a little weirdo.”

“So he takes after his dad?” Bucky returned. Steve snorted, even as Tony pouted and took a final sip of his beer, groaning a little as he tried to tip it over.

“Ugh. Shit.” He threw it into the trash can tucked beside the TV setup, “Okay, I gotta get back to work. You guys got anything more to waste my time?”

Steve shook his head, moving towards the door, before looking at Peter, who had already begun climbing the stairs and retreating to his room. Bucky had already pinned Tony with a judgmental look, who raised his hands defensively, “I know, I know, I’m quitting the alcohol now that there’s a kid in the picture. Sometimes I just need social lubricant, though!”

“We’re your friends, Tony. You shouldn’t need social lubricant with us.” Bucky groaned, “Also I know that garage is soundproofed to fuck. Don’t tell me you leave the kid unsupervised while you work in there?” Uncomfortable silence followed. Steve was certain his migraine was shared by Bucky, “Jesus Christ. Okay, you need to get a babysitter, because you can’t be trusted with this.”

“We’ll all help watch him for you.” Steve added kindly, because their entire friend group was made up of assholes, but would drop everything to help with this crisis.

Tony nodded, defeated, “He’s a good kid.” He argued, “I don’t need help with him.”

“Yeah, well, children need a little more than that.” Steve pointed out, “It’s not your fault.” This had all probably happened very quickly. He expected Tony to be a bit more of a mess.

Or maybe this was Tony being a mess. No sane person would somehow keep a child under wraps in this tiny ass town.

Peter was turning six this year. The right age to be enrolled into first grade.

Tony took him down to the elementary school – it was a small town, there was only one – on the last day for enrollment to be eligible because he had sincerely forgotten about all that. And he kept hitting Remind Me Later on his phone when it tried to interrupt his tinkering with that reminder. That was on the phone designers, not him.

Still, he caught it on the last day, thankfully. In the morning even!

Eleven forty was early when he was nursing a bitch of a hangover.

He also wasn’t entirely sure how one would go about enrolling a kid into school. His memories of his childhood were only the traumatizing ones, so he didn’t know how the process had worked twenty years. The only reason he even knew what the date of the deadline was because Steve and his annoying ass teacher know-how had told him about it.

To be safe, he brought Peter along. In case they needed him to fill something out or take a picture or… he didn’t fucking know. Maybe there were questions that Tony wouldn’t know the answer to that he would?

Regardless, Tony had told the kid to get dressed, and then put him in the passenger seat of his car, to make the ten minute drive to the school. It was going to be quick and simple. Several tedious minutes of putting in stupid details onto a piece of paper and making monotonous small talk. An easy way to ruin his entire day, but worth the pain in the long term. Or so he had thought.

Now, he was rethinking his decision to bring Peter along.

“Come on, I brought you all the way here. You could make it a little easier on me.” He groaned, nudging Peter through the doors. The kid had fallen completely silent in the car. Tony hadn’t had much experience with taking Peter on drives – when the kid sometimes snuck in while he was working in the garage, he had always left quickly because of the noise of the engines freaking him out. Tony had always dismissed it as something that could be eased into later. You couldn’t just not stand cars for the rest of your life. And this was phase one of easing the kid into it.

If he expected Peter to calm down slightly after leaving the car, that didn’t work. He flinched constantly, tapping his fingers against his thumb in that way of his as his other motions simply got stiffer and more skittish the more time they spent inside the reception.

“Hey, none of that.” Tony sighed, putting a hand on Peter’s wrist, “You’re gonna give me a bad name if it looks like I’ve traumatized you. And I’ve been doing a bang up job with you, right?”

Peter paused a little, before nodding. Tony was going to interpret that as him not quite understanding him because of the volume and not him thinking about whether Tony’s parenting was alright.

But Peter’s behavior got whinier the longer they stayed there. He kept tugging Tony’s arm to the door, when the man was clearly trying to have a conversation.

Something had to snap eventually.

“Peter, I am trying to have a conversation for your future right now and I need you to be quiet.” Tony turned on him, nerves run thin. He wasn’t going to yell because they were in a school and he wasn’t going to become known for yelling at his spawn, but goddamn did he want to.

Peter looked so stricken that he might as well have done that anyway.

“Well?” He demanded, “What’s so important?”

Tears were gathering around the kid’s eyes. Lips began quivering as he shook his head and pointed to the exit. Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“Fine. If you don’t want to let me enroll you, then you don’t have to go to elementary school.” He decided, dragging Peter out of the door before this could grow into more of a scene. The brat had the nerve to stumble a little and gripe at the touch, despite having been so eager to get out of there.

He pressed the gas pedal on the car just a little too hard on the way back, trying to snatch a bit of the speed he needed to imagine leaving all his worries behind.

It was barely above the speed limit. Peter had no reason to start wailing. Tony was convinced that he did it simply to take a cheese grater to Tony’s brain.

Tony didn’t know what he was thinking, calling Peter a good kid.

Show weakness one time at the middle school, and suddenly his attitude changed completely. He started picking at his food, not even taking out the toppings he didn’t like, but scooping away the rest of the food that was in contact with the offending ingredient as well.

He obsessively kept the lights of his room off, and wouldn’t turn on the ceiling fan at all, for reasons that Tony had kept asking him to explain, yet never received a response for.

And then there was also the screaming fits.

They came and went, once maybe a month or so, but jarring nonetheless. One minute he’d be his normal restrained self, and the next it was like he was being tortured for information by the CIA. The reasons for this were also as inconclusive as Peter’s weird fan obsession, but it was so much more annoying. And embarrassingly, this always happened when he was in cramped stores, where this behavior was the least appreciated.

At some point, he gave up on taking Peter along whenever he thought to make a grocery run. If he wasn’t going to act like a person fit to take out into public, then that was just fine by Tony.

Steve was the first to introduce the possibility of some extenuating circumstances to him.

“Uh, Tony, have you considered that Peter may have some sensitivities?” He asked cautiously, “That could be the reason why he doesn’t react well to the fluorescent lights of your house. And his problem with crowded spaces.”

“Maybe…” Tony frowned, “The hell am I supposed to do about it, though? Kid can’t get a word out on what he needs me to do.”

“Because he doesn’t have the language to be able to lay it out for you. Children have a lot of trouble with that.” Steve said as if Tony was the child, “You should consider getting him tested at the child psychologist department of the hospital. Maybe something like ASD?”

Tony scoffed, “He’s got my genetics. No way I screwed him up in that department.” It was the only thing he had to offer, anyway. Fuck, the dull weight on his shoulders was back again. And there was a dryness in his throat.

Steve looked at him all too knowingly, “I’ll take Peter to my house for the day.” He suggested, “The kid doesn’t get out much, so he’d like to meet Sam’s family next door.”

“Yeah, fine. Do that.” Tony sniffed, putting down a reminder on his phone to get Peter tested anyway.

A month later – he got fucking busy alright – and the results were clear in his hand. Definitely autistic.

“Huh.” He whistled, looking it over, “Guess this explains some things.”

“In particular, it’s interfering with his ability to read and write, along with his short-term memory and communication.” The psychologist explained briskly, “You probably know this, as he’s said to be homeschooled, but Peter won’t be able to do public school without some help from people trained to guide him, and help him reach these goals in his own time.”

That wasn’t the reason he had decided to ‘homeschool’ Peter, but sure, if that made it seem like a better parent to this woman, then he really was that intuitive. Maybe he had understood instinctively that the environment would be a greater hell on Peter than it was on other students. Greatest dad of all time, he was.

“There aren’t many people who are specialized for that in this town.” Steve was already there to meet him halfway when Tony called, still struggling to come to terms with it, “But, luckily for you, I can handle it. Peter and I have a good rapport, anyway, with how much he’s at my house.”

…How many times had Tony sent him off to Steve’s when he didn’t feel like dealing with the kid? He couldn’t quite recall, but maybe it was getting to be too much.

“Sure. Whatever. If you think that’ll help.” He decided, checking out from the conversation.

Peter had hazy memories of his mother’s apartment, small and empty and dark.

These got quickly replaced by Tony’s house, which had big cars and was always too loud.

He lived there. Except he didn’t always spend time there like other people did when they lived at homes. Tony didn’t have much time for him, always working on something or drinking. But that was fine, because Steve or Bucky always came by to get him, and Peter could stay over at their house. Or Nat’s house. Or Bruce’s place.

Peter spent a lot of time staying over with other people, compared to how much he stayed at his dad’s place. He thought that his dad didn’t like him for some reason. Maybe because Peter got overwhelmed easily and acted out. It wasn’t his fault. But it also made him different and difficult.

While other kids like Sam’s nephews got to go to proper school, Peter wasn’t allowed, because Tony had gotten mad the day he tried to enroll him, and after he did the test with the white labcoat people, the teachers had said on the phone that they didn’t have the ‘resources’ to deal with Peter.

So now Steve taught Peter.

Steve was a good teacher. He was patient and kind and didn’t rush when something wasn’t clicking right in Peter’s head. Information tended to rattle about when he got distracted by things, and Steve had taught him how to back up and try again when that happened.

He had a nice bedroom at Steve’s house, too. It had nice colors, and no noises loud enough to scratched the inside of his skull. Which was good, because he was almost sure that he spent more time here in a week than Tony’s place. He would try to prove it, but he always forgot to keep track.

Right now, he was eating a sandwich Steve had made, half-listening to the man behind him, who had set the phone down with a harsh sigh. Tony was upset when he sighed like that, but unlike Tony, Peter was confident that Steve wasn’t mad at him.

Steve had never been mad at Peter.

“Sorry, bud, seems like your dad’s… busy.” He told Peter, without having to be asked, “So you’ll have to stay over here for the night.”

“Okay.” Peter agreed. He didn’t know how much Tony worked, or if the man simply didn’t want to be around Peter, but it didn’t bother him. He liked Steve’s place better, anyway.

Steve called Tony Peter’s dad. All the time. Which was weird, because none of the dads he learned about acted like Tony. If anything, Steve was more of a dad to him.

The engines weren’t running that night, when he woke up from his sleep in his bed at Tony’s house. That was a relief, at least.

It wasn’t easy to lull himself back to sleep once he was up, but Tony got really made at him when he turned on the lights to will the time away until it was time to wake up properly, so Peter would have to force himself to go to sleep anyway.

His throat felt scratchy, so if he drank some water, it might make him feel relaxed enough to fall asleep, right? He wasn’t sure if that was how it worked, but he decided to venture downstairs, anyway.

He realized that this was a mistake, when he was on the staircase, and realized that Tony wasn’t asleep.

It was very dark, and Peter’s Steve-assigned bedtime had been a while ago, so if Tony wasn’t asleep, and he wasn’t working on his cars either, that meant he was having a Very Bad Day.

Peter didn’t see them happening to Tony very much, but his mother had had them a bunch, and he knew that Tony did, because of things Steve said sometimes to Bucky right before he would surprise Peter with an impromptu sleepover. He’d just never been around to see it happening.

Bad Days were hard to pick up on, and they looked different every time they happened, so Peter never quite realized they were happening until the person having the Bad Day told him outright. But Very Bad Days were always the same.

Tony was lying on the couch, and every so often he would take a sip out of his bad-smelling alcoholic drink, and take harsh breaths. Numbly, Peter remembered making the same noises when he got upset, or when everything got too much.

Was… Tony upset? What was Peter supposed to do about it?

His mother had drank too. Different drinks, but still ones he wasn’t allowed to touch. She cried, too. Mostly when he was supposed to be asleep. Peter had never tried to help her, and she had left him. Would Tony leave Peter, too? Maybe that was good. Maybe then Steve will take him forever. He liked Steve more, anyway-

He had to firmly stop those thoughts. Steve had told him that Tony was responsible for him, and that meant Tony was meant to take care of him, once he got the help he needed. Peter should give some of that help, right?

He came downstairs cautiously, turning on a light – one of the soft ones, that still made Tony groan – and carefully ventured out, “Tony?”

A grunt. That was fine. Sometimes, Steve had explained that the kids in his library group had trouble speaking, because they were ‘overwhelmed’. Peter had the opposite problem, or something like that, according to Steve. He forgot what the man said on the topic.

“Can I help?” Peter asked nervously, trying to think of things Steve had said to him when he was having a difficult time, or what he had sometimes wanted people to ask, “Do you need some water?”

Tony didn’t respond to that, just lying still. Peter got him water anyway, getting a glass for each of them. It was too quiet right now. Tony’s sobs had slowed down, but they didn’t sound any less aggrieved.  Peter’s skin was crawling, and he tried to fill that gaping silence with words as he pushed the cold glass into Tony’s hands, “Bucky tells you to drink water after some time, right? I don’t really get it because there’s a lot of water in beer, anyway, but he always gives good advice, so we should trust him-”

“Peter,” Tony interrupted him, speaking for the first time in that interaction, “Just shut up, and give me a second of peace.”

Peter’s jaw clamped shut.

Tony let out a sigh, “Finally, he fucking listens. Go back to bed, I need some me-time.”

Steve had told him that Tony didn’t hate Peter, no matter how much it looked like it did. And Tony might be a liar, but Steve wasn’t, so Tony must not hate Peter.

But even if he didn’t hate Peter, he certainly didn’t like him. Always seemed miserable around him, really. Had Peter done something, to make him upset?

He didn’t have any idea what it was, but Peter knew without a doubt when he went back to bed, feeling utterly incapable of falling back to sleep, that he was making Tony miserable.

Years passed, and Peter’s thirteenth birthday came and went.

He hated party poppers and the sound of squeaking balloons, so they had a plain party. Mostly it was Steve and Bucky and Tony’s other friends, and some kids from the library reading group, but he didn’t like them much.

Tony hadn’t come, and a lot of the grownups kept making little comments about it. Not Steve though. Or Natasha, who brought him a plushy that was soft and made him want to cuddle with.

Bucky got him a little graduation cap, saying it was because he was at the age of leaving middle school and moving onto high school curriculum.

Sometimes Peter got worried, because if he wasn’t in school, how would he know if he was falling behind from the other kids? He knew he didn’t talk on the same level as the ones in books and stuff, which Steve said ‘weren’t a good comparison’, but the kids in the reading groups he went to at the library were sometimes better and sometimes worse at talking.

But Steve told him that he was perfectly on par with middle school students. He knew the syllabus and everything, just as he should at his age level. They made sure, because Steve made him take an extra important test from their usual weekly (a little important) and monthly (more important) tests.

Peter felt… proud of himself, looking at his test score. It was high. Almost an A.

That was two weeks ago, maybe. And now Tony was taking Peter out to a diner. Was it to celebrate that?

He didn’t remember telling Tony about the test, but he did put it up on the fridge, where the man told him all important things should go. Maybe Steve mentioned it? If there was another reason for this visit, Tony hadn’t told Peter about it, as they went inside.

This diner was Peter’s favorite restaurant. He didn’t mind much even when they added in a music player over the speakers, because it was always soothing, blurry music. It was familiar and nice and one of the five places they went out to eat at.

Their regular table was open, which was also good. They sat down, and looked through the menus – well, Tony looked, Peter was going to get the same thing he always got here.

“Here, buddy, why don’t you order yours?” Tony asked when the waiter came over. Peter tensed up a little, because Tony always ordered. It was fine, though. Steve and Bucky were teaching him to talk to strangers – good strangers, that is.

So he put on a smile and said, “I’ll have the pulled pork sandwich.”

“Oh, sorry, that menu item got taken down.” The waiter said, her voice pitched up and words slowed, and he hated when people did that around him because they always did that around him even when they didn’t do that to the other kids Peter’s age.

Well, that wasn’t true. They had done that to everyone when Peter was little. But once he got older, they stopped doing that to the other kids. But kept it up with him.

He also always got the pulled pork sandwich here.

“You can get something else! Just take your time.” She continued, “And what will you have, sir?”

Tony was saying something to her, but Peter didn’t bother paying attention, instead fixating on the menu in front of him. The people in the table next to them were talking and it was loud. The fluorescent lights were buzzing extra today, too. He squinted at the letters, because with all the noise reading was becoming difficult.

He looked through each menu item, struggling to figure out what they meant by each, and relying more on the picture to piece together what they meant.

How much time passed by, he wasn’t sure. But it wasn’t long enough for him to get through the first page when suddenly there was a hand in front of him, snapping loudly in a way that always annoyed him, and yet Tony did anyway, because he knew it caught Peter’s attention.

“Come on, it’s been fifteen minutes, don’t see anything that looks good?” Tony asked, his words short and clipped.

Peter fidgeted, tapping his fingertips onto his thumb, “It- sorry, I haven’t read it all yet. I need a little more time.”

Tony groaned, “Seriously, kid? Two pages of what barely even amounts to fifty words. And you can’t figure out in more than five minutes? What’s Steve been teaching you?”

“Steve’s been teaching me loads of things.” Peter said defensively, “You can ask him, I’m on level-”

“Of course he says that.” Tony cut him off with a helpless wave, “He gets a discount off me fixing his beat up junker from teaching you, and no smart man will give that up. But I’m not seeing results. You can barely talk to people, reading has to be a whole thing with you, all I ever see you do or talk about are those cheap plastic bricks of yours.”

Peter liked his Legos. He spent a lot of time on them, and that was because he liked them. So he stayed silent. Even though he met up with other kids all the time, both special like him and special not like him. It was easier to talk with them then to a person he had not been expecting to have to talk to. Why couldn’t Tony understand all that?

His dad was lost in his own ramblings, though, “I don’t think Steve’s doing as much as you think he is, tyke. This was a fun try and all, but we should pack it in and send you to real school this fall.”

“What?” Peter said, and his voice sounded small even to his own ears.

Tony looked at him, with his eyes squinched up, “Shit, are you going to scream? Stop it, Pete, I have this blasted headache all day and a meltdown is the last thing I need.”

It was the last thing Peter needed too, so he took a deep breath, like Bucky taught him, and carefully planned out his next words before speaking.

“I think. I would like to go to regular school.” He said. Which was true. He’d been hoping to go in the school bus to the town’s public school for years now. But he watched a lot of movies and stuff, and the middle schools were always loud and bright and exhausting to look at, so he had given up on that.

But he still thought about what it would be like. He still entertained the thought secretly of going there. But he had never told Steve that, because Steve was working so hard to teach him and that would probably hurt his feelings.

Had Tony asked Steve about this before, or would the man be upset once Peter told him?

There was also the little snag of: “But did you have to wait until now to tell me?”

It was late July. Barely even a month between when the school would open.

“Honestly, it just occurred to me now.” Tony replied, reaching over to tap on Peter’s menu, nails scraping against the laminated plastic in what he could only describe as torture, “And this? Utterly unacceptable. I need you to stop being handled with the kid gloves, and proper school is the best way to go about that.”

He nodded. The lump in his throat was a little too big to form words around.

“And he’ll have the macaroni and cheese, since apparently nothing else is sticking out to him.” Tony smiled at the waiter when she came by again.

Peter thought that mac and cheese at diners was too greasy, and the sauce was always weirdly tangy. He didn’t say anything, and proceeded to pick at his food all through dinner.

“Are you sure that this is the best idea for Peter?” Steve asked, not for the first time.

“He doesn’t have any problem with it. And I think we’ve kept him from the real world for too long.” Tony dismissed, “Unless you think that your teaching skills haven’t prepared him enough to communicate with people.”

Steve narrowed his eyes, “Peter’s a good student, and he picks things up fast. Sometimes communication is a little hard for him, but he socializes fine for his age. That’s not the issue. Putting him in an unreasonably stressful environment is the real issue, and I don’t see you doing enough to take that into account. You can’t count on him to speak up if he’s uncomfortable because you know that he doesn’t communicate well when stressed.”

Tony scoffed, “You implying that I stress him out, Rogers? I’m doing my level best in this situation-”

“No one said that-” Steve gritted out, raising his voice a little, only for Bucky to quickly interject between the two of them.

“Okay, that’s enough out of both of you. Remember the walls are thin as hell.” He said lowly, “Tony, we’re simply concerned about Peter’s wellbeing, since we’re more familiar with how he is in a social and educational environment, and his needs in that regard. Steve, neither of us really get a say in here. If Tony wants to send him to public school, he can.”

“Exactly.” Tony gave him finger guns, “I have full parental rights, I get final say.” He paused to think it over, “But he talks to you guys more. I’m more of the hands-off type of parent. If it’s that much of a drag on him, he might open up to you more, so keep an ear out for that.”

“Obviously.” Steve rolled his eyes, with entirely too much attitude for someone who got exactly what he was asking for. Tony really couldn’t deal with this shit from every direction. Couldn’t they see he was somewhat trying?

He was drawn to his phone again as a pop notification sounded. An alert from something he’d ordered. A gift for Peter, actually. Who says he wasn’t attentive when it mattered?

“Come on, Peter, we’re leaving.” He clapped his hands, catching the attention of the boy who was previously carefully shuffling through Steve’s collection of vacuum sealed collectible cards.

Peter stood up obediently, nodding towards Steve in that serious way of his, “Bye, dad.”

Tony snorted, “God, we gotta break that habit before he calls one of his real teachers that.”

Peter wasn’t good at new things. They made his gut clench and his mind dizzy with worry. Because no one ever explained what the ‘new thing’ entailed well enough to know what to truly expect. Steve had taught him to ask people to elaborate when he was confused, but when he did that with Tony, the man had gotten very quickly frustrated with him. So did a lot of people.

He didn’t want to bother the others either, so he was going to face the newness of high school by himself, this time.

Carefully packing things into his bag and picking out clothes for the day – it was a week away, but Peter didn’t want to leave anything for the last minute – was where Peter was when a glossy box was placed onto his table, right on top of his half-built Lego Devil Dinosaur.

“Here, kid.” Tony said. Peter didn’t even look at the box as he quickly moved it off the model before more damage could be done. Tony groaned beside him, “Come on, I got you a gift! If you haven’t finished that model in three years, you’re never going to be able to do it. Might as well let it get wrecked before throwing it out with the rest of the junk.”

Usually, his gifts were Lego models, because Tony knew for sure that he liked them. This… wasn’t.

Peter inspected the picture of headphones that was on top of the box because Tony wanted him to, though he was slightly more worried about checking the damage done to his broken model. There was a name of the make and the company, but that didn’t mean anything to him, so he instead looked at the features listed on the sides for an explanation.

“Noise canceling headphones.” Tony explained cheerfully, before he had the chance to figure it out himself, “So you don’t completely embarrass yourself by having one of those sensory fits of yours on the first day of school.”

“Thanks, Tony.” He agreed on autopilot. Tony made an aggrieved noise and backed away. Peter took a quick breath, and ventured to ask a question, “Did I do… something wrong?” Because Tony made noises like that often, and they didn’t sound happy, and he had no way to confirm this, but he made them a lot around Peter, so maybe it was Peter’s fault?

Tony sniffed, “There you go, making me look like the bad guy.” He left the room before Peter could parse what that even met.

First day of school. Peter wasn’t sure what that would entail, but he knew that everyone would be new to high school, just like him, so it wouldn’t matter. Or, at least, that was what he was assuming.

Tony put up a big fuss about having to get up early in the morning, from now on until forever.

“Seriously, kid, couldn’t you have thrown out some of those useless factoids about plastic toys to tell the difference between your lefts and your rights?” He asked blearily as he took a sip of his coffee mug.

Peter could tell the difference between his lefts and his rights. The twenty minute walk home from the school also had a lot of turns that he needed to remember, and he tended to get too easily distracted to remember the order in which all the directions were, and Steve said he needed to experience the route with someone watching him a few times before taking the risk of letting him go alone.

He stayed quiet as he sat in the backseat, locking the door securely beside him. He never liked the front seat, where the cars always seemed to be coming too close to him. Tony preferred to have him there because it was apparently easier to see if Peter was messing with his ride, but in recent times he stopped doing that. Maybe because he trusted Peter to not do anything to the car?

Tony yawned as the car rolled to a stop, “Okay, out you get, kid. Be here the second school lets out, or I will leave you at the curb.”

“Okay, Tony.” He said, sweeping up his bag and running through a quick checklist of things to say when leaving, “Goodbye, and have a nice day.”

He had forgotten to wait for a response, he realized only after the door slammed shut behind him, but Tony was already pealing away from the drop off point, so it probably wasn’t much of an issue. He took a deep breath and looked at the building in front of him. A high school.

A few kids were milling about, and he couldn’t tell whether they were the same age or if they had been here for a few years – he was terrible at telling ages – and it would be especially mortifying if the first people he turned to ask for help also didn’t know where to go, so he kept his head down and hurried inside.

Peter had hazy recollections of coming to a regular school once. His memory wasn’t the best, (that was why he liked working on the same models over and over again) so he couldn’t be certain, but the noise of a dozen different voices echoing up and down the corridors seemed to be an exact replica of the grating sounds.

People put themselves through this… for fun?

At least Tony’s gift was going to get used, he decided, as he pulled on the headphones he had worn around his neck just to assure Tony that he was making use of the gift.

He didn’t much like the pressure pinching into his ears from the rims of the headphones, but compared to the noise around him, it was almost a relief.

It didn’t turn off all noise by essence, it turned out. There was a noise-canceling mode that had to be enabled, he’d realized from painstakingly reading the manual. Which he did right then, as he looked through his schedule and the floor plan to see where his first class would be held.

So far, so good.

“Mister Parker, you aren’t allowed to have electronics out in class.” The teacher – whose name he had already forgotten – brought that to a halt, “We’re here to learn, and its disrespectful to break the rules so flagrantly.”

His voice came in clearly, it was more the background noises that were almost completely counteracted by ‘light ambience mode’. Still, Peter took the headphones off, to make sure the man could see he wasn’t listening to anything at all when he replied, “Uh. Sorry. Background noise bothers me.”

“Well, suffice it to say, you’ll only be hearing me talking while in this class.” The teacher replied, waving his hand towards Peter, “So put those away, please and thank you. Before I confiscate it.”

Peter did as instructed, but the teacher had been lying when he said that they would only be hearing him talk. The classroom was filled with sound. Air vents were hissing weird. Ceiling fans clicked as they spun above his head, and every time it happened, he flinched, because it sounded like the contraption was going to fall down on top of him.

A girl beside him was eating gum, and the sound of her chewing set him off too. Plastic wrapping scrunched up all around him as people opened stationery for the first time that school year, and everything hurt.

Someone was laughing, he noted underneath all that awful noise. Right behind him there was quiet giggling, instead of being soft, it was sharp and spiky. Mean.

He zipped his bag up, headphones safe inside, and tried to ignore thoughts of who they were laughing at.

Classes were. Something.

Peter had managed to get through them, at least, so that was good. Even though he didn’t remember most of what was discussed, and even what he did remember didn’t quite click, he could repeat it back to some extent.

It wasn’t any busier than what Steve’s lessons had been like. Contrary to Tony’s insinuations, Peter was actually working on a lot of things while under Steve’s tutelage. What threw him off were all the people. They were all around him. Moving. Coughing. Making sounds that were so small yet wore down his nerves with every repeat infraction.

But he liked to learn. And he wanted to learn. So he could hold it together there, while he adjusted. Anyways, it was the lunch period that posed the greatest threat to him.

Compared to the classrooms lit by large windows letting in natural light and incandescent light bulbs, the cafeteria only had air vents and fluorescent lights. The extra flickery kind that always made his head hurt.

The food smelled sharp and unappetizing even if it hadn’t all been mixed together, so at least Peter wouldn’t have to eat it, as Steve had had the foresight to insist packing a lunch for Peter and leaving it in the fridge when he dropped Peter off at Tony’s last night.

He ended up eating alone, from the most isolated part of the cafeteria, watching other kids talk amongst themselves and unsure of how to feel about the fact that no one had so much as looked over at him all day. He didn’t even like talking while he ate, so there wasn’t any reason to complain as he finished his lunch early and let it sit heavily in his stomach, still looking around him.

Steve’s lessons were much better than this. Why had Tony made him transfer here again?

The only thing the man had ever been worried about Peter falling behind on was socialization. It was supposed to be good for you. And Tony had plenty of friends that still liked him, so he had to know something about that. Which meant Peter should at least put in an effort to start one conversation.

Carefully, he stood up and made his way over to the second emptiest table in the room, where three kids were sitting far apart from each other, completely immersed in their phones. One guy, with a Star Wars pattern on his hoodie, looked up when he sat down a seat away from him.

Peter thought on what to say, before settling on, “I like your jacket.”

“…Hi?” the boy replied, before smiling slightly, “And, er, thanks. We have a homeroom together, don’t we?”

Peter sincerely had no idea. Faces were hard for him to remember on a good day. But it seemed to be a rhetorical question, because he didn’t wait for Peter to respond before continuing, “I don’t remember you from middle school. You new in town?”

“No, uh, I’ve-” he struggled with the words.

One of the other kids looked up from where he was scrolling his phone, squinting at the two, “He’s that mechanic’s son. You know the guy who no one can stand but gets the best results? He had a son hanging around sometimes, according to my dad. He said the kid had to be homeschooled, ‘cause inhaling the exhaust fumes made him go soft in the head.”

Peter frowned, taking offense at the direct insult. Thankfully, even the boy he was talking to looked at the new guy weirdly, “Don’t say that, he’s right here.”

“Sorry,” the guy said carefully, and his head moved a little, but Peter looked at his expression for barely a second before his eyes were darting away uncomfortably, “Thought you had a hearing problem or something. Those things on your ears were to help you hear?”

“I don’t,” Peter replied, before elaborating, “Sometimes I hear too much, and it’s upsetting. Which is a hearing problem, I suppose.”

They all looked at him for a second, and the conversation didn’t grow from there. Peter really didn’t understand why people talked so much to each other. This experience was dull.

“Goodbye, I guess.” He decided, shifting away and back to his own table. There was nothing more to say, in his opinion. Or, well, there was plenty of things to say, but if talked to much, without their input, then it’ll be weirder, so he should just… walk away.

The rest of the school day was much easier than the first, because he knew what to expect now, structure wise. Just understanding the subject matter was tiring, compared to Steve’s lessons. There were a lot of homework assignments on top of that, which was new. But he managed to walk out of there alive, which was good enough for him.

The bells signaling the end of each block still startled him every time they rang, so he was especially grateful for the headphones. Lockers were a nightmare, because they were supposed to stack all their books in there, and the order of organization didn’t hold up after more than a few days, with how the classes were arranged. It was annoying.

When he came outside, shading his eyes with one hand and pulling out his phone with the other, already planning to call Steve in case Tony wasn’t there. Surprisingly, Tony’s own car was parked in front of the school entrance, blocking a bike lane as he waited for Peter.

Peter flushed and rushed forward to get into the passenger seat, “You’re not supposed to do that.” He reminded Tony carefully, gripping the safety belt tightly as he tried to click it into place.

Tony scoffed, the entire car jolting as he looked lazily back to check the road behind them was clear, “How did I raise such a goody-two shoes?”

By not raising him. Peter thought silently but did not offer any verbal input.

They were quiet, except for the incessant noise that came from any type of travel, until Tony cursed lightly under his breath, “Okay, first day, I’m supposed to ask how it went, like all those soccer moms in the movies. So, how was school?”

“I don’t think the other students like me very much.” Peter admitted.

Tony tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, “Well, you’re kind of a weirdo. Bet you used up all your charisma points getting Steve and Bucky and Nat on your side.”

Peter kept his eyes fixed on his shoes, vision blurring a little.

Overall, school was a big change. But in some ways, nothing had changed. He was still alone – somehow lonelier – and he spent the weekends over with Steve permanently going over all the coursework to make sure he understood it, but that was it. Tony was still Tony. Peter was still Peter. Life trudged on, now with a new schedule to adhere to.

Then, one day in late September, one month into high school, Peter came outside. Only to find no car waiting for him.

Which was utterly fine. Tony could just be running late. These things happened, even as panic seared through him. Peter could just wait.

So, he settled down on the stairs to wait. Almost immediately, he found himself springing back up to walk around jitterily, avoiding the gazes of curious students walking past him.

“Why don’t you just walk home?” Someone he didn’t recognize but must have some connection to him asked. And Peter couldn’t bring himself to explain that he still couldn’t remember the directions. So he just shook his head and walked off, keeping an obsessive eye on the entrance.

Steve could be called, the thought came to him as the minutes turned to an hour. Steve would be here in minutes if Peter called him.

But Tony had been puffing himself up about how great he was for dealing with Peter’s schedule, and if he called Steve, Tony would get offended.

He gripped his arms, watching as the sky became tinted orange.

This seriously sucked.