7th Missing Scene
Peter sat with his feet on the sofa. A bowl of chicken noodle soup on his knees. He was picking at it. Tony watched him for a few moments, waiting for Peter to speak first. It was difficult for Tony to bite his tongue but May told him it was important that he let Peter speak first.
Last night, the Avengers took care of that son of a bastard, Beck. But as Tony was happily teaching the jackass a lesson for hurting a sweet, smart, good kid like Peter, he realized he didn’t know what exactly it was that Beck did. At the same time, Tony didn’t even feel the need to ask. Peter was upset and said someone was hurting him. That was enough for Tony. But after dumping Beck’s ass in a small aircraft, and shipping him off to the middle of no where, Tony started questioning things.
He started thinking about how Beck could have hurt Peter. That led to some dark assumptions. But thoughts and assumptions weren’t the truth, and Tony wanted the truth. So he called May.
She thought it would be good for Peter to talk about his “traumatic experience” with a trusted adult. So she didn’t tell him anything that happened, and said to let Peter explain it in his own words. The phrase traumatic experience really got the assumptions rolling, but Tony tried his best to push them back. He needed to let Peter open up on his own.
Now the only problem was, Peter had been sitting on this couch for the past twenty two minutes and the only words he uttered were: I didn’t have lunch, maybe chicken soup please, and thank you, Mr. Stark.
The kid’s white socks were blending into the couch, and his jeans were rolled up at the ankles, like always. But his eyes had dark circles under them, and he was practically being swallowed by a big hoodie.
“Are you tired?” Tony mentally kicked himself. Shit. That was an assumption. He wasn’t supposed to make those.
“A little.” Peter said, tapping his fingers against the bowl he was holding.
The air conditioner was humming strikingly loud compared to the silence that surrounded them.
Tony shifted in his seat. Peter pulled his knees closer, a new habit of his which only served to make Tony more uncomfortable.
He cleared his throat, “Look, kid. You don’t have to tell me anything if you’re uncomfortable.” Peter’s shoulder’s relaxed a little. “But I know your aunt wants you to talk about it.” His shoulders tensed.
“How about, instead of starting with the big question, you tell me what a typical day was like for you with this guy in your house.”
Peter snorted a half-laugh, half-cry, looking wearily at his soup.
“Okay. Um.” Tony shook his head, “You know what? Screw it. I’m throwing my assumptions out there, and you tell me if I’m right or wrong. Got it? Okay, great. So... here we go. Uh.”
It was rare for thee Tony Stark to be at a loss for words, but he was suddenly tongue tied. All the theories he had earlier were lost. Well, he still had one dark thought weighting on his mind.
“Did he hit you?”
Peter looked at his lap, face burning, but nodded.
“On your face?”
Peter nodded again.
“Anywhere else?”
The kid was shrinking into himself, trembling from head to toe. Tony felt sick.
“Mr. Stark. Please. I can’t, I can’t do this.”
“Okay. Alright. Absolutely. Let’s see... uh, did he lock you in a dark room and starve you?”
That got a small smile. Very subtle, very soft, but a smile nonetheless.
“Mr. Stark.” Peter said, still smiling.
“Yeah?”
“What kind of movies do you watch?“
Tony leaned back against the armchair, chuckling. “All the classics, Pete. I gotta show you Sarah’s Key. That one had a kid locked in the closet.”
“Was that made before or after Dinosaurs roamed the Earth?”
Smartass, Tony thought while dragging a tired hand over his face. At least the kid was back to being his old self again. Guilt began to build in his chest. Damn, he was going to have to go back to asking really personal questions that will make Peter clam up again.
Maybe he shouldn’t pry. It wasn’t his place. He was just the kid’s mentor. Not even. The kid happened to have some unreasonable, excessive admiration for him, and in return, Tony admired the kid. It was a friendship, he supposed. But, like May said, he was an adult, and Peter did trust him. So maybe he should pry. Maybe Peter needed to talk about it, even if he really didn’t want to.
“You’re real funny, Mr. Parker. But I’ll have you know I’m not that old. At least I was around in the 80s. You missed a great time kid. So crack all the jokes you want.”
Peter’s smile softened, “I’m only teasing, Mr. Stark.”
“I know, Mr. Parker.”
“So...” Peter placed his soup on the coffee table in front of him. “What do you say we watch that movie you were talking about? And then when May comes to pick me up, we can say we talked things through?”
Tony’s eyebrow shot to the sky. “You want to lie to your aunt? You? Mr. Honesty? Mr. Stealing is Wrong? Mr. Moral Compass?”
Peter drew in a long breath and hunched forward, resting his chin on his knees. “You’d be surprised how much I lied these past few weeks.”
Was the kid actually feeling guilty? Seriously? He was smart enough to know that it wasn’t his fault. Any of his behavior durning an abusive situation was justified in some way.
“You felt like you had to lie because Beck was manipulating you. That’s not on you, kid. That’s on him.”
“But -“
“No. No buts.” Crap, he was supposed to let the kid speak as much as possible. “Wait, okay, say what you were gonna say.”
“I was just going to say, it’s sorta on me too because -“
“No. It’s not on you. Sorry, had to throw that in there, go on.”
“Mr. Stark, I should have said something sooner. I - I should have told May. I should have told my friends, my teachers, someone! But I let him do it.” Peter’s eyes immediately filled with tears faster than a glass fills with water. He looked away, breaking eye contact in hopes to maintain his composure.
“Peter...” he sighed, “yes, okay, you probably should have told someone earlier. It would have saved you a lot of hurt. But again, that’s not on you, kid. You have to understand that blaming yourself is an easy thing to do but you shouldn’t do it.”
When Peter blinked, a few tears slipped out and dribbled down his face. He didn’t bother to wipe them way. His hands were wrapped too tightly around his knees.
“Look, kid. When I first met you, I realized we had a lot more in common than I originally thought. You blew me away with the whole “bad things happen because of you” speech. All I could think about was the kid in Sokovia who got a building dropped on his head thanks to me. I was responsible for the whole mess in Sokovia. I was responsible for anyone that got hurt. That was on me. Being a hero, or doing whatever it is we do, it comes with this incredible responsibly. And when I couldn’t live up to it, when I made mistakes, I blamed myself until one day, I woke up, and I had no one left. I’m still trying to piece my life back together. I finally reached out to Pepper. I’m getting off track. The point is, you can’t blame yourself for everything bad that happens. Sometimes that human part inside you is going to mess up, and you have to be okay with that. Besides, Beck was an adult, you’re a kid. He shouldn’t have manipulated you like that.”
Peter nodded slowly. “But Mr. Stark, sir, I hear what you are saying. I really do.”
“Good. Fantastic.”
“But you don’t really understand,” Peter paused, wiping away the remaining wet smudges on his cheeks, “I let him do it. I could have stopped him myself but I didn’t. I’m a - a -a rent boy.”
“What?!” Tony couldn’t constrain his reaction that time. “Rent boy? As in, a young male prostitute? How could you say that about yourself?”
“It’s what he called me when we... when I let him... when he made me...” Peter’s voice cracked, and he quickly buried his flushed face in his hands. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Mr. Stark.”
Tony’s insides went cold.
“What happened?” Shit, he didn’t mean to ask that. It just came out. He already had a pretty clear idea now. But again, assumptions weren’t the truth. Maybe, just maybe, Tony was misinterpreting this wrong. God, he hoped so.
“He made me - I let him - he made me sleep with him.”
Tony’s whole body froze over.
“It hurt, but I didn’t stop him because he said he would tell the world I was Spider-Man and now it sounds so stupid because you took care of it. But I was so worried about May, and MJ, and Ned. Even Flash and Liz were starting to become my friends and I was worried any one of them would get hurt. So I just let him, and it really really hurt, Mr. Stark. He did it almost every day.”
The ice in Tony’s guts started to melt into hot sizzling acid. He knew Beck had hurt the kid, but this? This was a whole new level. This was fucking criminal, fucking disgusting, pure evil. If Tony had known yesterday, he would have fucking killed Beck. He had killed more innocent men for far less. Even Obadiah wasn’t that bad! And he hired terrorists to kidnap Tony!
Peter’s gaze dropped down to his hands, no doubt, he was picking up angry body language from Tony. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stark! Please don’t kick me out. I know it was wrong. I’m sorry I’m a useless.”
“Peter stop!” Tony had to strain to keep his voice from breaking. The pain he felt was breathtaking, it was too much to bear. Getting off the armchair, Tony sat on the couch next to Peter and wrapped his arm around his neck. “Don’t ever say that about yourself again. And don’t ever apologize for what that horrendous monstrosity did to you, okay? You hear me?”
Peter nodded, searching Tony’s face for an answer, his admiration still present. He looked at Tony like he could solve the worlds problems. Like he was the solution to everything. That was trust Tony didn’t deserve.
“Oh kid,” he pulled Peter into a warm embrace. Tony wasn’t the hugging type, but he wanted to reassure Peter that touch didn’t always mean pain. Tony’s stomach twisted sharply when Peter stiffened in his embrace. That didn’t happen three weeks ago, when Peter tried to give him a hug in the backseat of Tony’s car.
Beck was a dead man if Tony ever saw him again.
Peter was anything but relaxed, but Tony still held him tight, feeling the kid’s body tremble against his.
“It wasn’t your fault.” Tony murmured into his hair. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Thank you, Mr. Stark. For being so good to me.”
The violations that this innocent kid experienced, fuck. Just fuck. There was a special place in hell for people like Beck.
Peter pulled away and looked at him. His face screwed up, like he was trying to figure out if Tony was angry or not.
“Pete, have you gone to the doctors? Are you still hurt?”
“No doctors yet. May wants me to go but I still really really don’t want to. And I’m fine now. It’s not so bad.”
“You are good at hiding things, I’ll give you that. Which is amazing considering how terrible you were at hiding your Spider-Man suit.”
“Mr. Stark! I am a pro at hiding that suit.”
“In the ceiling? Yeah, real professional. I found it in under two minutes.”
“Well, I’ll have you know it’s not in the ceiling anymore.”
“Let me guess. Closet?”
Peter’s mouth dropped open. “Wh-what? How did you?”
“Like I said, terrible at hiding the suit.”
Peter scrubbed at his eyes and flashed a soft smile. “Shuddup.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you, kid. You have no idea how sorry I am. But I want you to know that I am right here for you. If you want to scream about Beck, I’ll listen. Hell, I’ll join you. Whatever you need, I’m here. I know I haven’t been there for you these past few weeks but I’m gonna fix that.”
Peter leaned back carefully against Tony’s shoulder and closed his eyes. “Can I sleep here, next to you? Not in a creepy way! But like, I can’t sleep very well anymore unless someone else is around.”
“Of course. You get some sleep, I’ll keep watch over you.”