st_arkintern | Tony Stark Voice Test

"Don't sweat the small stuff." Tony replied, scooting back a few feet. "We're discussing a model of applicability here."

While Tony was on track to graduate summa cum laude from MIT and inherit a Fortune 500 company by the time he was Peter's age, he at least had an appreciation for the idea of living a normal life in the boy's case. And more than that, it was more than true he had violently enabled Peter's descent into chronic heroism. To be the one mentoring him to get halfway "on track" was ironic at best.

"Live the "best years of your life" and all that. Has anyone actually told you that, kid? Never listen to someone who peaked in high school. Anyway, you know what I mean."

Peter does not know what he means, but he still nods anyway.

"Yeah, yeah... of course."

Tony sighed at the faux-knowing look in the boy's eyes. Peter always managed to look lost, some times more than others.

"Okay. Different approach. I'm Aunt May. Persuade me."

"Persuade you?" Peter repeats, taken aback. He's not entirely sure how he could.

And perhaps worse, looking at Tony and trying to imagine May was almost impossible. They didn't look or act anything like one another.

"Okay," Peter says, taking a breath. He looks down at his hands, tries to put himself in the I'm really talking to May and not Tony mindset, then turns to look at Tony.

"May, I wanted to talk to you about the whole Spider-Man thing."

That seems like a good place to start.

"I know that you're worried about me. I know I'd be worried about me, too." It's true. "Especially because of everything that happened with Ben."

That had been a big part of why he'd kept it secret from her in the first place.

"But I really thought about it for a long time. Even before I decided to be Spider-Man," he says, "and I think if I can help other people, I need to."

This is somewhat embarrassing to admit to Tony, but he really is trying.

"So... I really just want to talk about the things you're worried about and figure out if there's some way we can meet halfway."

Cold silence filled the room for a long moment after Peter had finished talking. His expression was hard, frozen in a mask of barely-there composure.

"This," He gestured all around Peter, "Is not up for discussion." His words were quiet, but they struck like knives.

Tony's silence sends a chill up Peter's spine. Did he say something wrong? He really hopes that --

And then Tony opens his mouth.

And then Peter wishes he hadn't.

Immediately, his mind is scrambling for the perfect words. He's sifting through his mental filing cabinets of May knowledge, frantically trying to figure out what she'd want to hear.

But he knows that the only thing she'd really want was for him to just agree with her.

But he can't.

"I know you don't want to discuss it," Peter begins, "but I want to because I think that it --"

Peter swallows. He hates the idea of clashing with May.

"I think that it's important for you to know why I was doing all this, and why I was doing it behind your back."

"Oh, Peter, please!" Tony threw up his hands, the mask of control quickly slipping.

"Is there a good reason why the Avengers needed a high-schooler to do their dirty work for them?! All this--this sneaking around, lying to my face, I expected some of that as you got older but THIS? It's like you'd gone off and joined a cult!"

Peter tenses. What is he supposed to say to that?

"I," he starts, and he can't seem to figure out what word he should use after that. "It's not like that."

Gone is the deliberate composure of a few minutes ago.

"I knew you were going to be afraid for me if you knew what I was doing," he argues. "I didn't want you to be afraid, but I still wanted to help people."

He swallows.

"No one made me do this," he says. "I chose to do it."

"You are fifteen years old." Each word was pointed, as harsh as the look Tony was casting on Peter.

"You could be the most noble person in existence, but it won't change the fact you're still young! And that's what scares me. Not just the thought of you tossing yourself into danger, but the thought of someone taking advantage of that good will." Tony was closed off, arms folded across his stomach.

"The suit? Stays locked up. Anyone saying it's a good idea to wear it? Staying away. I don't care how good a grant they're paying out."

Peter bristles with irritation.

"Didn't you tell me that age was just a number?" he asks. "What does it matter that I'm young?"

Peter doesn't think it matters, even if other people think it does.

"Someone's going to take advantage of me eventually," he says. "Even if you take away the suit, nothing's going to change that. It's still going to happen."

This much is true. Peter can't believe he'll go through the rest of his life without having someone take advantage of him.

"And I can't let that stop me from being able to help people. I can't. And even if you take the suit away..."

Peter stops there.

"Listen," Tony slowly rises from his seat. "You're fashioning yourself the guardian of Queens. Fine. I am the guardian of you. Do you know what that means?"

Tony let the question hang in the air, locking Peter into a glare that challenged his will and dared him to say another word.

"It means that no matter how strong you are, no matter how many bad guys you take on, no matter how many superheroes you rub elbows with, I am responsible for you. This is not punishment for lying to me. This is me doing whatever I can to prevent you running off and getting yourself killed."

Tony chewed the insides of his lip. His own adrenaline was pumping.

"I know why you lied, I know why you're doing what you're doing. At the end of the day, maybe I can't stop you. But if something happened to you?" Tony threw up his hands before letting them fall back down. "...I couldn't go on, Peter."

Logically, Peter knows this is practice.

Emotionally, it doesn't feel like it is.

He knows, even as he fights against it, that this should be the one time where he should be calm and cool and practiced because those are all the things he's going to need to be when May comes through the doors and finds him and Tony waiting for her.

But he's not calm, because when he hears Tony say these things, it's like he's not just May saying them, it's like Tony's saying them too.

"Why couldn't you just support me instead?" he asks. "Why not instead of stopping me, you help me? I know I'm going to do this and you even say you can't stop me, so what good is telling me no going to do for either of us?"

Another silence. It's wasn't cold like before, but it was heavy.

Tony broke the stillness, approaching Peter slowly, and lowering himself into the space beside the boy on the bottom bunk.

"Why this?" He asked, watching the side of Peter's face. "Why not something else? There are so many other ways out there to help others aside from being a superhero. With your smarts...you could be any of them."

"There's a lot of people out there who are smart," Peter says. "A lot of them are way smarter than me."

People like Tony.

"But there's only one person that can do what I can do."

Yet another pause, yet Tony was nodding slightly as Peter finished speaking.

"...Alright." He was the first to break, turning his eyes towards his knees.

"Alright, kid." Tony enunciated his words with a sort of finality that was concretely him. "That was...I think you've got the basics down. Maybe a little less combatting but I think we've got something workable."

Peter takes a breath. He's been aching for Tony's approval the entire time, and finally he has it. So many emotions have been churning inside of him ever since this conversation started, but right now, relief and happiness rise to the forefront.

"Thank you," Peter says breathily.

He's sure Tony never had this problem before; no one would ever take his suit away.

Peter looks down at his hands for a second, then back over at Tony.

"I watched the YouTube video of the press conference," he says. Peter'd been fairly young when Iron Man first became a thing. "What'd you do after everyone found out?"

May isn't everyone, but this is probably as close as Tony got to someone he loved finding out. Maybe Ms. Potts knew before any of them; maybe Happy, too. But Peter can't be sure.

"Uh." Tony scratched his eye idly, too emotionally exhausted to spin a fittingly heroic narrative or even adopt a fittingly heroic posture.

"Well. The government immediately attempted to seize my work as I slowly died from metal poisoning." Another pause. "It all worked out in the end, of course."

Peter feels too embarrassed to actually admit that he watched Tony in the courtroom on YouTube, too; he's sure if he did, he'd just come across as a fanboy. But Tony had been so cool, so self-assured and there's a small part of Peter that wishes he could have that sort of easy self-confidence.

But there's one thing that Peter doesn't know.

"You were dying?"

"Palladium poisoning's a bitch, kid." Tony tapped the center of his chest, where the arc reactor once rested.

"Really hit rock bottom with that one. Bad scene." He was so off hand with the way he described those days, it was as if he were describing a somewhat embarrassing bender.

Peter tries to imagine what hitting rock bottom would be like for Tony, but much as he tries, his usually-active imagination isn't able to pull together anything.

He wants to tell Tony that he's glad he's okay, but he doesn't want to sound too sentimental. Peter doesn't know why he's not okay with saying it to Tony, because he'd be okay with saying it to anyone else. Maybe it's because Tony's not very sentimental and he's not entirely sure how he'd react to it.

He swallows back his reservations and just says it.

"I'm really glad you're okay," he tells him. "I'm sure it can't be easy being an Avenger sometimes."

And that might have been part of why he rejected Tony's offer; he knew he wasn't ready for that sort of responsibility yet. Just taking care of Queens was enough for awhile.

He still had plenty of time.

"Heh." Tony's voice was as dry as always, but the corner of his eyes wrinkled with his smirk at Peter's sentiment. It was rare to be the recipient of such earnest words.

"...Here's the thing about being an Avenger." Tony summoned the will to meet Peter's eyes once more.

"We answer to the world. Take governments. Governments can lie. They can take. They can decide you're not worth it." The first few statements come easily, though his throat tightens with the next. "You've got teammates. Teammates, though...they can disagree. They leave. Meanwhile, one day you're on top of the world with the masses and the next they're turning their backs."

He chuckles again, though the smirk doesn't reach his eyes.

"You've got to answer to Aunt May, Spider-Man. But she'll be in your corner no matter how badly you screw the pooch."

Edited 2018-07-24 07:28 (UTC)

Before everything that happened in Berlin, Peter couldn't imagine a reality in which the Avengers would disagree to the point where they'd rather break up than reconcile. He was sure even before he became Spider-Man that they had to have their share of disagreements. They had disagreements at school just working on school projects; it had to be far worse between their team when the decisions were much more important than who was writing the essay and who was putting together the Powerpoint presentation.

This was the safety of the world at stake. They had to be able to overcome their differences. Peter couldn't imagine them not doing so.

Right?

Peter knew firsthand the reception some of the superheroes had. He'd visited the superhero subreddit religiously for awhile, but some of the discussion just ended up being toxic. No one, it seemed, really considered the challenges -- even those who defended the Avengers without question. Their arguments all seemed to boil down to "He saved us before, you don't think he was trying to save us now?" rather than anything that actually discussed the difficulty of being a superhero. They all though being a superhero was easy; many of them wanted to be superheroes; many more didn't understand what it was like being one.

"I can be in your corner, Mr. Stark."

The words come out solid and definitive, as if Peter's given this considerable thought and there's no doubt that this is something he wants to do. Peter's sure there's other people in Tony's life -- other Mays -- who are there to support him. But Peter knows that sometimes people need more than that.

And if Peter can do that... Peter wants to.

Tony's eyebrows shot up at that.

"Whoa, time out. Is--is that what you were getting out of this? No, no. That's my line as the sagely retiree here." He made a back-and-forth motion between the two of them.

"You have enough to worry about surviving puberty without throwing me into the mix, alright? Alright."

Peter frowns at that.

"I'm surviving puberty fine," he protests, mildly embarrassed. "I can handle it!"

Besides, Tony was always looking after him. Maybe not in the best way or in the way Peter wanted him to, but...

This was something he could do for him, if Tony'd just allow it.

Tony leaned over to gently cup the bridge of his nose with a few fingers. He was seldom one to redden, but this was as close as he had gotten for a long time. Having a fifteen year old insist on reassuring him wasn't something he was sure he could handle.

It was better than Peter insisting on inducing a panic attack, he supposed...

"Okay. Okay. I'm...I'm just gonna take the compliment."

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