Peter/Tony
Peter sighs in defeat as he stands outside his guardian’s apartment door.
Home sweet home.
It’s after 7. He’s late.
He unlocks the door and strolls inside, hoping that maybe this once, he’ll be allowed to just go to his room in peace. He makes it all the way down the hallway, and is almost at his door when he’s caught in the act.”
“Finally decide to come home to your poor worried guardians, Petey?” A high pitched, sickeningly sweet voice comes from behind him. He turns around with a smile that probably looks a lot more like a grimace.
“Oh, hi Diane…today ran long since it was the first day. Mr. Stark had a lot of things he needed to show me before we could get started. Is that okay?”
Maybe if he’s extra polite tonight, he’ll get to go to sleep uninjured.
Diane smiles and shows all of her teeth, like an animal hunting it’s prey. He tries not to flinch as she saunters over and wraps an arm around his shoulders.
“Why wouldn’t that be okay?” She coos. “You’re probably starving from all the hard work you’ve done today.”
Peter knows this has to be some sort of set up, but he actually is starving. All he’s eaten today was a child sized portion of school cafeteria lasagne.
“Uhh yeah I guess I am, a little bit.”
She smiles again and leads him to the kitchen by the shoulders, where he sees Bill at the kitchen table, smirking, with a pizza box in front of him.
“Peter, so glad you finally made it home safe and sound, champ. We were so worried when you didn’t show up for dinner.”
Peter tries his best not to let his true emotions show, since he’s clearly already in trouble for not being home in time to cook them dinner. And he is really hungry, and the one slice of pizza left in the box looks extremely appetizing. He decides his best course of action is just to keep quiet and see what happens.
Bill follows his eyes to the pizza, and feigns surprise. “Oh I’m so sorry, Petey, you must be starved after a hard day of work. It would be so horrible if the person you were relying on for dinner didn’t provide you with any, wouldn’t it?”
He makes eye contract with Peter, clearly expecting an answer to his rhetorical question.
“Um, yes sir.” Peter responds quietly. Diane quickly whacks his head with her hand and latches her hand onto his brown curls on the back of his head, pulling his neck slightly back.
“Now, Peter dear,” she says right in his ear as she keeps her death grip on his head. “What did we say about the mumbling?”
Peter gasps at the pain shooting through his scalp. “Not to do it, ma’am, I’m sorry.” He groans out.
Immediately, she lets go and pets the spot on his head with her hand, in a gesture that Peter is sure is supposed to be soothing, but just puts him on edge.
Bill picks up the slice of pizza that has been holding all of Peter’s attention since he walked in the room, and holds it out to him.
Peter hesitates taking it, expecting to be hit or something, but Bill keeps gesturing him forwards. Peter reaches out his hand, but before he could take the slice, Bill drops it facedown on the kitchen floor.
Peter just sighs, disappointed in himself for having the smallest hope that he would actually get to eat. He glares angrily at Bill’s stupid smiling face before turning around to go to his room for the night.
“Ah ah ah,” Bill calls after him. “Where are you going? Are you turning down the food I so generously saved for you?”
Peter groans internally and hopes desperately that his face doesn’t show how annoyed he is since Diane is staring right at him, arms crossed. He really just wants to go hide out in his room. He would gladly give up the dinner just to be left in peace, but that wouldn’t satisfy his guardians sick desire to entertain themselves with his misery.
He turns back around to Bill, who is standing over the pizza on the ground gesturing towards it expectantly.
Well, eating a piece of pizza off the floor definitely isn’t the worst thing he’s had to do. Peter reaches down to grab it, and isn’t surprised in the least when Bill knocks him over with a swift kick to his stomach.
The force of it knocks the wind out of him, and he needs to take a second on the ground to catch his breath. Before he can get his bearings, hands force him to his knees and pull his arms behind his back. Next thing he knows, there’s a zip tie around his hands, holding his arms together at the small of his back.
Bill has a grip on the back of his hair, his scalp still tender from where Diane had yanked his hair earlier, and the man shoves him towards the ground where the slice of pizza lays. It looks like it’s been stepped on at some point during this exchange, cheese and sauce squishing out the sides.
“We own you, just like a fucking mutt.” Bill growls directly in Peter’s ear from behind, pushing his face down into the pizza slice. “Clearly you don’t know that well enough, so now you get to eat dinner like one.”
Peter was about to whip around and bite one of Bill’s fingers off like a fucking mutt too if he didn’t shut up soon, but he was still holding out hope that if he just complied, then maybe he would be allowed to go to bed.
He takes a deep breath, and takes a bite of the floor pizza that his face is currently being shoved into. It honestly isn’t even that bad, and he’s the one who cleans this floor, so he knows it really isn’t very dirty. He sucks it up and eats the damn pizza, leaving only some sauce on the floor as evidence. When he finishes, Bill releases his hold on Peter’s hair and lets him fall to the ground.
Peter hears him snort with laughter as him and Diane exit the kitchen together. Peter lays there silently until he hears them settle down in the living room watching TV, and he deems it safe to sneak into his room. He breaks the zip tie as soon as he gets a safe distance away, and makes a quick stop in the bathroom to wipe off the pizza sauce from his face.
He can’t believe Bill forced him eat pizza off the floor. Actually, scratch that, he definitely can believe it. He’s such an asshole. Peter supposes he should be thankful he got dinner at all. A slice of floor pizza is still probably better than no dinner at all, right?
He still has some time left before Bill and Diane go to bed and lock his door on the way. That’s the only time it feels safe for him to go on patrol. They sometimes will barge in on him while he’s in his room, but never after they’ve locked him into his prison cell of a bedroom for the night. It stays locked from 9pm until 5 or 6 in the morning when Bill gets up to leave for work. God forbid Peter have to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.
He doesn’t really feel like messing with any homework tonight, so he grabs his backpack and pulls out some electronics he swiped from the dumpster the other day on his way home from school. He wants to see if he can strip them for parts he can maybe sell for cash to get some extra food, or maybe see if he can collect enough supplies to build a laptop. He would have to keep it at school of course. Bill and Diane don’t allow him to have any form of communication with the outside world. He only has a cell phone because Ned got it for him and his guardians don’t know it exists.
Before he knows it, it’s 9pm and he hears the regular footsteps approaching his door and the lock clicking shut. Perfect.
He gets ready as fast as he can before launching himself out the window and into the night. It’s go time.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Friday came all too soon, and Tony was in the back of a car with Happy at the wheel, nursing a headache with a scotch in hand, making the long trek towards the Avengers compound for another super fun team bonding weekend.
His life has really gone to shit lately. How’d that happen? Yesterday he actually tried to do his job, which isn’t something that happens too often, so he thought Pepper would be grateful or happy or something. Instead, after the meeting he showed up to, she came after him accusing him of having a drink before he came, saying he’s lucky she’s the only one who knows him so well to notice. So what? If he doesn’t have a drink every few hours, he gets shaky. Would she rather him have tremors, or show up a little tipsy? She should be happy he’s making the effort to show up at all.
A few hours after that, he was back in his lab, since clearly Pepper didn’t want to see him at any of the other meetings that were scheduled that day, when she came barging in to his space, angry about the kid. How did she even find out about that? Tony did make him an official intern though the company. The kid was being paid for his time like Tony had promised him, but Pepper definitely doesn’t look into every single intern that’s hired. That would be ridiculous.
Anyway, she invaded his sacred lab space to tell him he “wasn’t responsible enough to be alone with a teenager especially if he was drinking” and all this other shit. Eventually Tony just had to tell her to leave and hope she lets it go.
And the kid. That’s another thing. His powers were impressive, sure, but Tony would never admit that to him of course. His attitude is already bad enough as it is. The last thing the kid needs is an ego to go along with the anger issues.
Tony kind of gets it, he supposes. The kid is in foster care after all. Tony’s looked into his records. The kid had been orphaned twice over by age 10. He’s got a valid reason to be angry. Tony tried to be understanding at first, but that damn kid just has a way of getting under his skin. He really tried to be the bigger man and work things out, but Peter wasn’t having any of it. He doesn’t really know what to do. Maybe everyone else is right and he really isn’t capable of training someone.
Tony’s taken by surprise when his door opens all of a sudden. Huh. He’s here. He was really lost in his thoughts for a while. He leaves his drink in the car and straightens out his suit when he stands up. Time to fake that he’s completely put together for the next two days.
He strolls casually into the common room, where everyone usually meets up, and is very thankful that he had that drink in the car when Steve and his friend Sam are the only two present. Sam waves at him genially as he enters the room. Tony just nods, not trusting himself to be able to unclench his fists if he takes them out of his pockets.
“Wilson, Rogers,” he acknowledges them each with a nod. “Where are the other members of the hero squad? I thought we were supposed to go out for lunch or something.”
Wilson snorts a laugh and Steve just shakes his head, irritated.
“Lunch was 3 hours ago, Stark. I know you’re rich enough to have a watch somewhere under that fancy suit.” Sam chuckles. It wasn’t insulting though. No, Sam was actually a nice guy. Tony couldn’t trust him because the man is such good friends with Steve, but he had to admit, he didn’t really mind Sam’s company all that much.
He smiled back and made a show of pulling back his sleeve to reveal his definitely expensive looking watch.
“Huh, would you look at that. You guys don’t eat lunch at 3:30 pm?”
Sam chuckled a bit again, but Steve was not amused.
“No, Tony. We don’t. And we’d appreciate it if you would actually show up to more than 50% of the events we plan.” Steve said, clearly annoyed.
Sam excuses himself to go find the others, leaving him and Steve alone.
“Oh relax, Stevie.” Tony replies, taking a seat across from them, in the farthest chair he could get away with, and trying to relax. “I’ve been very busy. I’ve managed to secure us one Spider-Kid, just as you requested.”
Steve’s eyes widen slightly. “Really? You found him? Did you bring him with you?” He glanced around like Tony might be hiding the kid in another room or something.
“Oh yeah, I left him in my lab with the specific instructions to make the biggest explosion possible.” Steve’s eyes widen again, this time with fear.
“No, Steve, of course I didn’t bring him.”
Steve relaxes again, but looks disappointed. “Why not? The team would love to meet him.”
Tony chuckles. “No, trust me, you really wouldn’t.”
“Oh, come on, Tony. He’s a kid. What’s so bad about him?” Steve wonders.
“Oh let’s see. He’s arrogant, rude, he knows exactly how to get under your skin to irritate you the most. I think that must be one of his powers.”
“Are you describing yourself, Tony?” Natasha asks, sitting down on the armrest of his chair. The rest of the team is making their way into the room. It looks like their group today is him, Nat, Steve, Sam, Thor, and Bruce today.
“Oh ha ha hilarious Nat.” He replies. “No, actually, I’m talking about Spider-boy. Kid’s a nightmare to work with.”
“The Man of Spiders?” Thor asks, takeout container in one hand, chop sticks in the other, eating what looks like lo mein from their go to Chinese place. “Steve has told us that you will be training him to fight alongside our team. Is he not as kind as he seems?”
Tony sighs. “No, Thor, he is not. I really don’t understand how Spider-Man and this kid are the same person, because Peter is a little shit, not a hero.”
“You should bring him next time.” Bruce suggests. “Maybe we’ll be able to help you, or him.”
Tony shrugs. “Maybe. We’ll see. Anyway, where’s Robin Hood and Honey, I shrunk myself?”
“Clint and Scott are skipping out on this week to be with their kids.” Steve answers. Tony just rolls his eyes. Why do they get to skip just because they have children? Maybe Tony will adopt one just as an excuse to stop coming.
“And of course Wanda and Vision are still on their European vacation their taking together.” Steve continues. “So this is everyone. And tonight for team bonding we’re having….a cards and board game night!”
The whole room except for Steve groans. “Come on, guys. It’ll be fun. And it’s mandatory, so get up and move to the tables.”
This is going to be literal torture.