Chapter Text
On February 11th, 2008, when Peter was still six, Tony disappeared.
Stane tried really hard to make him legally dead in less than two weeks, but Miss Potts, Rhodes and Happy weren’t having any of it. He also tried to take corporative advantage of Peter and make him sing a bunch of things, unfortunately for him, Peter wasn’t stupid and knew that one should never sing something without reading and understating because that was the only useful thing that Tony Stark ever taught him.
On May 1st, after eight-one days gone, Tony come back from the dead.
The first thing he did upon his return was throw a party, second one was lock himself up in his home lab. Peter saw him twice between his return and him losing himself in his lab, and he talked with him a total of zero times.
Seventh days later, Iron Man made his debut.
On May 24th, Tony found out that Stane was the culprit behind his abduction. They had a huge fight, and Tony and Miss Potts had to kill Stane.
On the very next day, Tony announced to the world he was Iron Man.
Two years later, in 2010, Peter was on his room while Tony threw a party down stairs. When Rhodes and him started to fight and they destroyed the house in the process, Peter hide inside his closet.
He was terrified.
Once the fight ended, he braved himself trough the mess of out used to be the living room and found Tony on the ground. Peter tried to help him, but the man, drunk, high, and suicidal, didn’t wanted any help.
On his way out, Tony Stark shove Peter out of his wait hard enough to make him stumble and fell over what used to be a glass table.
Peter didn’t tell no one about it, and two days later when Happy asked him when and how he got hurt before rushing him to the hospital because the curt was infected, he blamed himself for being clumsy.
During the Stark Expo, two days after Stark and Rhodes fight, Peter got lost in the crowd and almost died. He was saved by a fireman on his day off called Ben, who got him out of the way and stayed with him until Miss Potts showed up to find him.
After the fiasco at the Expo, Stark got healthier, or at least he wasn’t actively dying anymore.
He didn’t talked with Peter about what happened after the party and his fight with Rhodes, and Peter didn’t brought it up.
On August 10th, when Peter completed nine, he asked Miss Potts to be sent to a boarding school in England. No one questioned why he wanted to go to the other side of the pound, and he didn’t explained.
Peter got out, and that was all that matter.
On his second week at school, Peter met a girl named Gwen that wasn’t born Gwen just he wasn't born Peter, but it doesn’t matter. She was beautiful, and nice, and intelligent. Gwen’s roommate was a guy named Harry, who was also nice. He was the one who suggest that they should change room and answer for each during roll call. Harry was joking when he said that, but Peter and Gwen didn’t took it was a joke.
Peter’s roommate was a girl named Felicity that didn’t saw any problems with Peter’s and Gwen’s plans and was happy to help.
For the next two years, Peter was free to be what he was. He wasn’t Peter yet, but pretending to be Gwen was better then being who they thought he was.
Peter wasn’t there when the Battle of New York happened.
He didn’t even knew about until after.
Peter was at school, having class and being ignorant to what Stark and his Merry Men were doing. It wasn’t until lunch break, when all the other kids started to be louder then normal out of nowhere, that he found out.
Harry was the one that showed him the live feed of Tony Stark a.k.a Iron Man flying a nuke into a wormhole above New York.
Before that, Peter never tough much about Tony Stark. He was his father, but not his dad. He gave him a house, but not a home. He was there, but barely so. Peter didn’t knew what he thought about Tony Stark, and in that moment he realised that he might never found out.
Tony Stark didn’t ended up dead that day, and Peter found out he was really glad for that.
On December 24, 2012, Harry, Peter, Gwen and Felicity almost got expelled from the boarding school due the raucous the made during the BBC Merlin’s finale. Felicity broke a wind, it wasn’t her intention, but she did it anyway, and Harry cursed so much he got five weeks worth of detention.
One year later, Peter was on his way home for Christmas Break, when Tony Stark, in all his ingenuity and smartass, decided that it would be a great idea to taunt a terrorist after they attacked Happy.
The taxi driver was turning the corner of his street when the Stark Mansion went kaboom.
Tony Stark disappeared for twenty four hours after that.
Rhodes then was kidnapped by the same terrorist, and so was the President.
Tony Stark saved Rhodes, only to found out that Pepper had also being kidnapped.
On Christmas Day, Tony Stark went to save Pepper while Rhodes went to rescue the President.
Pepper ended up somehow saving Tony Stark by killing the Aldrich Killian, the real bad guy behind everything.
Tony Stark then promised Pepper and Peter that he would tried to better and spent more time with them. He sealed his words by making J.A.R.V.I.S remotely destroy all the amour in the Iron Legion.
On January 3rd, Tony undergoes surgery to remove the shrapnel embedded near his heart.
On January 4th, Tony gifted Pepper a necklace containing the shrapnel that was removed from his chest the day prior
On January 5th, Happy woke up from his coma.
On January 6th, Tony revisit the site of the old mansion to throw away his Arc Reactor.
Later, on the same day, he flew all the way to Rose Hill, Tennessee, to talk with a bright young boy that got his attention.
Two days later, Tony started doing therapy.
No long having a mansion in Malibu and being the owner of a giant tower in the middle of Manhattan with his name on it, Tony decided that moving in to his might tower would be the best idea.
Tony also decided that he wanted Peter close to him, so, once the school year ended, he transferred Peter back to the United States and enrolled him in a private middle in Midtown.
In July 2013, Peter said goodbye for now to his friends.
Living in the Stark Tower wasn’t just living in the Stark Tower, it was living in the Avengers Tower.
Peter hated it.
Those adult are strangers.
He barely knew Stark, who was his father, and he remembers when Agent Romanoff used to be Stark’s assistant. But other then that? He doesn’t know those people, and he doesn’t trust them. Thus, Peter kept to himself. He would interact with them if the need arise or if they spoke with him first, but other then that? No, thank you.
For Peter’s sake, most of them aren’t around all the time. The Avengers Tower was more like a place to crash out them actually live for most out them with Dr. Banner being the only staying most of the time and that as due the fact that he and Stark were working on something more than the Avengers thing.
Peter also almost never saw Stark, even though he promised he would tried harder.
In October 2014, during a trip to the comic book store, he met a boy named Ned. Talked for a good time, and when Happy yelled at Peter saying it was time to leave, Ned asked Peter for his email, and Peter gave it to him.
Ned was the first friend Peter made in the United States.
When Peter was still thirteen, he met Harley Keener, a boy who was four days older then him.
“Hey, kid, met Harley,” Stark had introduced them. “He skipped a grade and got a scholar ship at Brooklyn Visions Academy, since his mother is all the way in Tennessee, he will stay with me on the weekends and such from time to time.”
Harley was a scrawny kid, just like Peter, but he was taller then him. Harley was also chattier and charismatic, and he carried himself with confidence, and never shied away from a challenge. Harley was everything Peter knew Stark wished he was, Peter realized that the moment he saw the way Stark laughed when Harley started to talk back to him after only three minutes after his arrival.
Stark’s eyes never light up with Peter the way the did with Harley.
Stark never spared so much of his time for Peter was he did for Harley.
Peter, who was Tony Stark’s son and lived with him for the last seven year, had never made him be there, psychical and mentally, like Harley did.
He envied Harley, and admired him. Peter admired the way he made it look so easy to talk with Tony Stark, to make Tony Stark pay attention. He also envied him because some part of Peter that he thought had already died wanted to be him.
Peter missed having a family. He missed having a mom, and he missed having a dad. Tony Stark might never being his dad, but he was his father and could at least act like such.
But Tony Stark was also Tony Stark, so Peter never expected much from him since the beginning. Yet, seem how nice, and fun, and fatherly and human and funcional Tony Stark was around Harley, Peter started to want it too.
However, once Peter woke up on the morning of his fourteen birthday, two weeks after the arrival of Harley Keener, to an empty house and a notification saying that Stark and Keener went to an amusement park to celebrate Keener's late birthday, Peter crushed all those feeling and burned them in a open fire in the deepest corner of his soul.
Tony Stark would never be his dad and he very clearly wasn’t bothering to be his father either, and Peter was just fine with that.