You're my escape- A Peter Parker Love Story

Apologies

Her foot bobbed on the bar of the stool as she watched Tony examine her work. He tapped the capped end of his pen along the notebook as he silently analyzed her equations and drawn out work.

"I can feel your anger from here-" Tony set his pen down as he looked up at her. "Is something wrong?" The dry tone made her foot stop its relentless bouncing.

She shook her head as she kept her eyes on his hand as it hovered over her notes. She traced the old scars on his knuckles from accidental slips of tools- probably from tweaking all his robotics over the years.

"Uh-huh-" He looked her over with narrow eyes. He sighed and sat up on his stool to turn towards her. His hands laid in his lap with no intention of going back to her homework. "Can we skip the part where you bounce around what's bothering you and just get to explaining the issue so I can try to fix it?"

She held her breath for a moment to avoid telling him. But the look in his eyes built over the top of her imploding anger and created a dangerous concoction waiting to blow at any moment. Instead of holding it in, she let out it in one long exhale. "It's Peter."

His eyes narrowed as he pursed his lips and stood causally from his chair. "Of course it is," he told her offhandedly as he turned away from her to leisurely make his way towards his liquor chair in the corner of his workshop. She watched him pour himself a drink then place two square ice cubes in the glass and stir it with his finger. As he turned back to her he lifted his soaked finger to slurp up the drip of liquor. "What is it? Lover's quarrel?" He rose a sharp brow to accentuate his attempt of humor.

She ignored the insinuation as she shook her head. Her eyes fell to her clenched fists in her lap. The purple bruises reminded her of their conversation, of how he told her she was ruined. "He doesn't understand," she explained quietly.

Tony hummed as he walked back to the stool in front of her. He moved it closer to her before he sat back down. As he settled in his seat his knees bumped against hers without any intent to stop themselves. "Doesn't understand what, exactly?"

She pulled in a long warm breath and held it in her lungs in hopes of it fixing everything. But even with her lungs on the verge of bursting she still felt... less than. She blew the hot air out and lifted her shoulders meekly. "He doesn't understand what it means to be..." She took in another shaky breath. "To be grateful for all that I've been through." She looked up at him to see if her explanation made any sort of sense. When she saw his pinched brows she dove deeper. "He asked who Madame B. was and I told him, then he got mad when I said I was grateful for her."

His eyebrows pulled apart before skyrocketing up his forehead. Several deep wrinkles cut into his forehead. He cocked his head to the side as he lifted his glass to take a drink.

She watched the ice cubes clink about as he tilted the glass back. In one swift gulp he had downed the entirety of his drink showcasing his expertise on the subject. She watched the glass as he lowered it to set beside her homework. She refused to lift her gaze, even when his hand left the glass to settle on his lap.

"Do you want to know a question that no one has ever asked me?"

She shrugged as she sluggishly lifted her gaze to look at him.

He ignored her lack of enthusiasm as he pressed on. "No one has ever asked me how I felt about being taken hostage and nearly dying. No one ever stopped to take the time to ask, 'Tony, how do you feel about everything that's happened to you'? You know, aside from the hired psychiatrists-" he waved his hand at that like it was a mute point. "What matters is that the people closest to me never asked because- well, I think it was because they just assumed it was horrible and I never wanted to talk about it."