Dear Heart

Peter's been back at Cool Beans for a little over twenty-four hours before and he remembers, vividly, exactly why he wanted to leave this job for the holy grail of the SI internship. Clint's a nice enough boss, a man who runs half the meetings for the veterans next door, who takes Peter's abrupt departure and subsequent return in stride, jerking his head at the cash register when Peter shows up early for his first shift back, not even talking to him until after the morning rush, where several people tell Peter that they're happy he's back.

"You all right, Pete?" Clint grunts. He's sitting at the counter, pay book and receipts in front of him, pencil behind one ear.

"Yes, sir."

"Don't yes sir me. You get attacked in my shop, you quit, and you come back. In the span of a week. You're giving me whiplash just looking at you."

"Imagine living it," Peter grumbles, mostly to himself. He makes Clint a coffee and pumps in some hazelnut flavor, which Clint will deny liking until he's blue in the face.

Another customer comes in. The door's been repaired, Peter notices, from where Sam shot it to get in after the alpha attacked. Everything looks good as new, except the clinic down the street is still closed, and Peter was nearly raped, and Tony Stark thought that Peter had been hired for sex. Whiplash indeed. Peter makes himself some tea. His throat is sore. He's been trying to think of a way to admit to Aunt May that he's lost the internship, and wonders how long he can hold up under her "How was your day?" habit.

He just feels so...betrayed. Used. Young. Dirty. He feels every inch an omega, and hates Tony Stark for making him feel this way, and wishes, deeply, that he didn't admire Stark so damn much, didn't truly think that Stark would save the world from itself, wishes it was anyone else - that alpha from the other day - anyone else to put him so squarely in his place.

Clint adds up receipts and during a strange mid-morning rush helps out behind the counter. They don't talk, except for Clint's pointed sighs at Peter's playlist playing over Cool Beans's sound system. Peter kind of loves Clint that morning, for not demanding all the answers. He keeps trying to rehearse answers for Aunt May that won't have her marching up to Stark Tower, all righteous, motherly fury.

"I didn't know Stark was operating out of coffee shops now," a too-familiar voice says in time with the bell jingling a new arrival.

Peter has a machine's guts open on the counter, and looks up from under his hair even though he doesn't really have to. He'd know Bucky's voice anywhere. "Not quite."

"Are you a paying customer today, Sergeant?" Clint grunts.

"Am I ever?" Bucky's not deterred by the deflection, too well trained for that. "Seriously, Pete, is Stark not paying you well enough? Is he paying you at all? I thought it was a full-time position over there."

Peter blushes furiously at the idea of Tony Stark, and how much he was or wasn't paying Peter for his services. "It didn't work out." He glances at Bucky, who's flexing his not-quite-working prosthetic. "I'm sorry, Buck. I forgot about your arm. I could - I could ask -"

Bucky holds up a hand, halting the words. "What do you mean it didn't work out? You seemed pretty hired three days ago. Science-geeking it up."

Peter bends over the machine again. The screwdriver wavers in his grip. He mumbles something about the job market.

"Is this some alpha supremacy shit?" Bucky won't back off. Clint glances up at those words. He's a beta, but he lives in a world with alpha supremacy, too. He knows the layers of protection put in place to uphold what should be illegal hiring practices. "I didn't get that vibe, but he sure fits the bill. An alpha who thinks the whole world should bend to him."

"Don't, Bucky, it's fine - really -"

The door bell jingles again and Sam Wilson walks in, smile dropping at the sight of Peter tense behind the counter. "I thought you were moving up in the world, kid."

"Hey," Clint protests, mildly.

"Not that I don't appreciate this old dump, Barton..."

"Alpha supremacist," Bucky fills Sam in.

Peter scrapes a wrist across his eyes. It had been such a long week. He needs to get over to Jersey some time soon to refill his suppressants. He needs to sleep, and not think of Tony Stark's face when he thought Peter was there to sleep with him. He needs to forget the tight fist of desire he had felt for an alpha, that alpha, the alpha that had been offering everything, and money besides. "It's not like that," Peter protests. "It was just - a misunderstanding."

Sam's expression hardens. "Did he put his hands on you?"

Something must have flickered across Peter's face because Sam presses forward. "Because I know that Tony Stark probably thinks he's above the law in this city, but he's not. We can protect you, Peter. Me and Buck - Clint - Natasha - Steve -"

"You can't protect me from every alpha, Sam," Peter points out. "We kind of disproved that theory last week." He looked up at the older men, who looked back at him with varying expressions of pity. "It's fine. I'm used to it."

"Aw, hell kid," Sam begins.

"I know it's not easy -" Bucky says at the same time.

Peter just ducks back down over his work. He blinks quickly, trying not to think of going home to Aunt May, who last night had gotten three types of take-out they couldn't afford as celebration of Peter's new job that no longer existed. He tried not to think of school in the fall, of the hundreds of the most gifted students in New York coming back from internships in LA and China, working for companies like Apple and OsCorp and, yes, Stark Industries, buzzing about MIT and Harvard and a world that seemed ripe for the taking, and Peter, who got all As and changed in a different section of the locker room so as not to "overly arouse and antagonize" the alphas (school words, not his) - Peter will have been here, in the peeling paint of the coffee shop, his options amounting to menial labor or, apparently, prostitution.

He knows the men mean well, but he kind of just wants to be alone today, wants to imagine, for a little while longer, a life in which doors might open for him. He'd settle for a window, even.

A black hand pushes hair behind Peter's ear. "His loss," Sam whispers, and Peter really does think he's about to cry.

"How bout a couple of coffees?" Bucky suggests gruffly. "And make one for yourself, with all that cream and shit. You're skinny."

Peter squares his shoulders, leans, just a little, into the comforting warmth of Sam's hand, and then backs over to the coffee grounds waiting next to the machine. MJ will be by later, full of bluster and activism, ready to change the world with her beat up laptop. Aunt May will understand, will be on his side. And he has Bucky and Sam and Clint, has Steve, has the rest of the VA, has Ned, when he's not busy with his new girlfriend. It's a smaller life, but it's the only life he's ever had, and, perhaps, it's still more than he deserves.

He's almost convinced himself, almost has the coffees ready, almost gotten through this hard part of the morning, when the bell in the doorway jingles one more time.

It's an alpha, the remains of rut pheromones lingering around him. It's an alpha, but Peter doesn't even have to look up before he's identified this particular alpha, from the smell, from the way both Bucky and Sam stiffen, the way Clint gets to his feet, the way the whole shop seems suddenly prepared for a fight.

Peter swallows. Puts the coffees down before they can vibrate out of his shaking hands. "Hi - um, hello Mr. Stark."

"You've got a lot of nerve," Sam begins.

"Peter Parker," Tony says, his voice smooth and untroubled by the heightened scents in the small cafe. "Rising Junior at Midtown High, applied for SI's engineering internship two weeks ago and applied to be my personal assistant four days ago, because Bruce Banner insisted I needed one of those. I hired you because of the idea of soluble adhesives that you submitted with your application." Only then does he seem to notice the other men in the room. He lowers his voice, but his next words are still clear. "You're a very talented teenager, not a prostitute."

"Not a - what?"

"Not now, Bucky," Peter snaps. This is between him and Tony. He wipes his hands on his jeans and then puts them behind his back. They're still shaking. "I thought you made my position with SI pretty clear. Sir."

"You've got to read between the lines a little, kid. Pepper will be the first one to tell you I'm not exactly clear about much." Tony Stark takes off his sunglasses, wiping them absently on the hem on his shirt, which probably costs more than Peter's laptop, a single shirt, perhaps, more expensive than the small apartment he lives in with Aunt May. "She'll also tell you I don't often apologize."

"She's right," Peter snarks before he can help himself.

"I am sorry." Stark is talking, now, to all the men in the small cafe. "I don't like to blame alpha instincts, it sounds too much like an excuse, but there you are. I wasn't in my right mind. I jumped to the wrong conclusions."

"Do I look like a prostitute?" Peter asks, because it's all he's been thinking about. "Or is it just. You know. The omega thing."

Clint's not even pretending to look at the book anymore. "Kid..."

"No, really. Mr. Stark. Clint. Sam? Do I look -" Peter gestures at his body, the compact promise of it, the parts that are all starting to add up, finally, his too-big head suddenly fitting on broad shoulders, his legs catching up with his feet. He knows that in recent months what was once the gawky, awkward body of tweenagehood had started to shift, cellularly, into something appealing. Pretty. He is not, he knows, a hot guy, or even a handsome one. A girl in his art class at school told him that he was pretty, and that's the only word that seems to fit. Older men have started paying attention to him, and the omega part of Peter preens even as the rest of him flushes, embarrassed, scared.

And that's the crux of it. Shows all over Peter's face. Tony Stark, inventor, billionaire, world-turner, had scared him.

Tony is not a good man. He knows he has sins to atone for. But he doesn't like scaring people, doesn't like that he scared Peter, who, despite the bloom and blush of this new body, is still so much a child.

"You're a smart kid," Tony says. "Come back and work with me."

"Why?" Peter challenges. "Are you afraid I'll sue?"

Tony closes his eyes, briefly. This is why he never hired interns. He doesn't know what to say to a teenager with so many hard and fast opinions, a teenager whose world was still so vehemently black and white. He doesn't like to bully children. He remembers, all too well, being a child, and being bullied. "I'm afraid you'll waste your potential."

"I like it here," Peter's voice is quiet. "I know where I stand, here."

"Yeah, kiddo, cuz this is rock bottom."

"If I go back and work with you," Peter begins, "I want it to be only part time. So I can still be here this summer."

Clint's trying to hide a smile and it's not really working.

"Why?" Tony honestly can't see why anyone would choose this crumbling building over his glass skyscrapers.

Peter fidgets, and Bucky speaks for him. He'd been holding his tongue, very politely, during the exchange, but he can hold it no longer. "So we can keep an eye on him. And I'm warning you, Stark, you hurt this kid again? You'll have the police force to contend with."

"And most of Brooklyn," Clint chips in, eyes narrowed.

"And Queens," Sam adds.

Tony's watching Bucky's metal arm gesticulate a moment behind the biological one. He really needs to spend more time on Stark Medical, do another overhaul of the mechanics, actually listen when Bruce talks about what the division needs. He nods. "Sure, we'll work out hours that work for you." He pauses, then adds. "I don't care if you sue me. Well, I do care. Mostly because, no matter how good your case is - and JARVIS got our whole little exchange on film, so it would be pretty solid - almost no judge will rule against a rutting alpha. You'd be in the right, though. You know it and I know it." He lowers his voice, as if it was just the two of them in the room and not a crowd of three other men, all wanting to rip his limbs off. "I'm sorry for scaring you."

Peter opens his mouth. Closes it. Finally says. "Just going to put it out there, I'm expecting a really good recommendation letter from this."

"If you're as good as your application promised, I'll do everything in my power to make sure there's a place for you in whatever college you choose. As long as that college is MIT."

Peter blushes, his eyes skittering back down to the floor. "They're an alpha supremacist university. All the good ones are."

"And I'm one of their biggest donors." Tony shrugs, a practiced motion of feigned nonchalance. "I know we started the summer off on the wrong foot, Pete. That's all on me. Every paper and their blog knows that I don't want an intern, but now that you're here you bet your ass I'll make this summer work for you. You just need to decide how much you want it."

The bell over the door rings again. Peter is wearing his uniform t-shirt and a nametag, but there's so much potential in the small omega that he's practically vibrating with it.

Clint turns back to his books. Bucky and Sam flex their arms a little more but their radio is crackling with voices and they leave, too. Peter puts the machine he was working on back on a counter. For a long minute, as Peter talks to the pair of frat-ish beta customers that walked in, Tony wonders if he had been forgotten.

Then, as Peter turns to start making the drinks, he says, softly, "Okay."

At first Tony wasn't sure he was being spoken to. But Peter's all earnest expression, hair falling in front of his eyes that are locked right on Tony. "Okay," Tony agrees, and it feels like a promise, that moment, their eyes meeting across the scarred and puckered counter.

Then Clint clears his throat, and Peter goes back to work.