#starker-stories formerly starkestories

[starker-stories]

Long Lenses

It’s been awhile since I posted something new & original. This has been sitting forgotten in my WIPs for a bit. Lost it, found it, posting it.

Also on AO3

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Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark Characters: Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Quentin Beck, May Parker (Spider-Man) Additional Tags: Cheating, College Student Peter Parker, Closeted Character, Arguing, Happy Ending, Manipulation, Closeted Tony Stark, Press and Tabloids, Secret Relationship, Homophobic Language, used only once, Outing, Offscreen Pepper Potts, Cheating isn't Starker

Summary:  “You’d much rather give the world the image of a happily married heterosexual man than to have the world know that you just go through the motions with her and are secretly as gay as I am,” Peter said bitterly. -------------------------------------------------------------------

“Stay,” Peter said, lying in bed still long before dawn on Sunday morning. He watched Tony dress.

“You know I can’t.” Tony made sure that his suit was appropriately rumpled, his shirt pulled out on one side, his tie askew. He took a drink, rinsed his mouth with the strong scotch. Sloshed a little out of the glass onto his shirt to make the picture believable.

“Stay.” Peter reached out his hand. Tony bent over and kissed Peter, who frowned. “I hate it when you smell like that. Almost as much as I hate the way you smell on Saturday afternoon when you get here. I don’t know what’s worse, watching you pretend to be a drunk or having you smell like her.”

“Peter, you knew the terms when you said yes.”

“And I knew the terms when you said you were going to leave her. When’s that gonna happen, huh?”

Tony sighed. “I hate it when you wake up.”

“You’d rather just sneak out and leave me to wake up to an empty bed,” Peter said angrily.

“Look, she knows I go out with friends on Saturday night. She hates it and gives me hell for it, but I’m here every single Saturday. I have ‘business meetings’ scheduled every Wednesday. Which, since she’s still my PA, she knows I don’t.”

“After which you’re always out the door before ten.”

“Peter, if you don’t like it, I just won’t do it anymore, okay?”

“I’m that fucking inconsequential to you?”

“You know that’s not true. I love you.”

“Not enough to leave her.”

“Things are complicated.”

“Of course they are. You’d much rather give the world the image of a happily married heterosexual man than to have the world know that you just go through the motions with her and are secretly as gay as I am,” Peter said bitterly.

Tony sighed and headed for the door. “Whatever Peter.”

Before the door shut, with a tear strained voice, “Will I see you Wednesday?”

His answer was a closed door.

It didn’t stop him from fixing dinner for two after his last class on Wednesday afternoon. Or waiting nervously to see if the door to the apartment Tony paid for would open by Tony’s key. Almost two hours late, it did.

Tony leaned over and gave Peter a peck on the cheek. “Sorry. I tried to get out as soon as I could, but things ran long.”

He always smelled like her on Wednesdays but this time her perfume was stronger than normal. “It’s okay. I just turned the lasagna down when I noticed you were running late.”

Tony sat at the kitchenette table and watched as Peter laid the dinner. “How was class? Professor Martinez still giving you a hard time?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.” Peter smiled as Tony poured the wine for both of them. “I thought I’d take fifteen hours next semester instead of twelve. Other than physics, the rest is a breeze. I can handle more work.” He paused. “Is that going to be okay? It’s going to cost more.”

“If you think you can handle the course load, you know I have no problem with that, baby. I want you to get whatever you can out of school. Fifteen hours a semester? And if you take summer courses, you can graduate in three years.”

Peter laughed. “One more than it took you.”

“Yeah baby, but I got all my prereqs done while I was in high school. You had to trudge through all that last year.”

“I just didn’t want to take summer classes, that’s all. You mentioned something about a yacht,” Peter said teasingly.

“Yeah, well…”

Peter tried to hide his disappointment. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“It’s just that the press… every time I take the boat out, they’re out there with their long lenses. Fuck, last time they caught me and Pep nude sunbathing with a drone.”

Peter’s lips drew into a sharp line. He’d seen those pictures of course. Nude sunbathing wasn’t the half of what they’d caught. “Summer classes are fine,” he said tersely.

“I’m sorry baby.” Tony reached his hand across the table and took Peter’s in it.

Peter shrugged. “It is what it is, right?”

“I was thinking…” Tony smiled. “I’d take a hell of a hit in the prenup, but if she caught me with another woman… We still couldn’t be public, but as a single man I’d have a lot more time to spend with you.”

Peter brightened. “You’d do that?”

“Pretty sure she already suspects something. It wouldn’t be hard to convince her. To have some ‘well meaning’ friend of hers catch me with a girlfriend and tell her.”

“Then I’d just have to share you with your girlfriend. There’d have to be one, right?”

“Just for show.”

“Why can’t it just be us? No one would care.”

“I still do business in a lot of parts of the world where they do care.”

“I’ll never have you to myself, will I?”

“You’ll always be the only one who I love. Why do we have to fight? I get to see you so little, I hate to spend it fighting.”

Peter smiled. “I can think of much better ways to spend the next two hours.”

~~~~~

It wasn’t difficult to make a device to disguise his voice. Finding a payphone in a New York suburb was harder, but he hacked into the phone company’s computer and got a list of every functional payphone within twenty miles of a train stop. Getting there untraceably was another challenge. But trains were anonymous and cab drivers even more so when you behaved normally without anything odd to set you apart from dozens of other fares. The phone was a lot closer to the train station than he thought, so he decided that after his call, he’d just walk back there. Even more anonymous.

Finding a reporter with a grudge against Tony Stark wasn’t hard at all. Finding one who had the clout to push a controversial story past frightened editors narrowed the field down to one, Quentin Beck.

“Mr. Beck? I’ve got some news about Tony Stark you might be interested in.”

“I doubt it. I’d need sources and those dry up as soon as Stark starts throwing his money around.”

“He’s having an affair.”

“I thought you said news. Everyone knows that he cheats on his wife.”

“With another man?” Peter added.

“You have my attention. That’s a hell of an accusation. I’ll need details and undeniable proof.”

“Details I can give you. Proof, you’ll have to get on your own.”

“Details then,” Beck said tersely.

“They meet every week.”

“How do you know this?”

“I see him go in. I know who lives there.”

“How do you know that he’s not seeing a woman there? Because like I said, that’s no news at all.”

“The women living in that building are either old or with kids,” Peter expected Beck to take the bait sooner than that. He was having to improvise.

“Lotta women with kids screw around.”

“The only man living in that building is a queer. Stark’s gotta be at least twice his age. It’s sick.” It hurt Peter to have to refer to both of them like that, but Beck was still resisting.

“Address?”

Peter gave him the address of the building he lived in. “He’s there every Saturday. I don’t know if there’s any other time. I’ve seen him go in. My shift ends at two and I’ve never seen him come out, so he stays until after that.” There were three different all night businesses on the same block as his apartment. It wasn’t unbelievable that someone in one of them could’ve seen Tony go into his building.

“Who are you? So I can credit you.”

Peter laughed. “I’m not losing my job over this.”

“So you’re just a concerned citizen.”

“Yep. I don’t like perverts passing themselves off as good married men.”

~~~~~

It was easy for Peter to take the intercom in his apartment apart and disconnect the buzzer to let Tony in on Saturday afternoon.

“Something’s wrong with my door thing.” Peter explained as he came down to the door. He was barefoot and wearing shorts so short they were barely covered by the hem of his t-shirt. “I can hear the doorbell ring, but I can’t buzz anyone in. My pizza last night was almost sent back. Fortunately the delivery guy phoned me.” He leaned up and gave Tony a quick peck on the cheek as he shut the glass lobby door behind him.

“Glad to see you’re in a better mood tonight.” Tony smiled and caught Peter by the waist returning his peck with a more substantial kiss.

“I get to have you in my bed all night, of course I’m in a better mood.” Peter smiled, took Tony’s hand and led him up the stairs to his apartment which was over a block of small shops.

There was no arguing, no demands, no pouting. Peter had no idea if Beck actually took his tip seriously or not. But it was a last ditch effort to finally have Tony be his. Tony would never know how Quentin Beck got his information. He was one of the reporters who dogged him ceaselessly and one he hadn’t been able to control. Peter was fairly certain that Tony would believe it was just bad luck and Beck following him trying to get dirt on something else.

Upstairs, Tony took apart Peter’s intercom and found the singed wire he made to look like an ordinary short.

“Thank you. It’s so hard to get the super up to do anything around here. I’m not complaining. It’s a nice apartment, close to school, and right on the subway, so it’s perfect. But you know… they try to get away with doing as little work as possible.”

Tony laughed. “I should buy the building.”

“It’s a little down market for you, don’t you think?”

~~~~~

It was one of the best Saturday nights they’d had in a long time. Especially since Peter pretended to be very hard asleep when Tony got up to leave. He grumbled a little and turned over but then drifted (or seemed to) right back off.

Now all he had to do was wait for the papers. It was probably too late to make it into Sunday’s but Monday morning? Peter didn’t buy a copy. He didn’t want the evidence lying around his apartment. But the library at school had subscriptions to every New York paper. It wasn’t in the paper Beck worked for. Peter was about to give up, disappointed that his scheming came to nothing. Then he saw the tabloid. It didn’t have a byline for Quentin Beck, just ‘staff’. Peter supposed that when his editor shot him down, Beck decided that a paycheck was worth more than a byline.

The pictures were remarkably clear. Peter winced at seeing how clear his face was in addition to Tony’s. He winced harder when he read the article and found out that either Beck or the tabloid’s staff had discovered his name from the apartment’s records. And even worse, they had copies of checks from Tony’s private account that showed he paid Peter’s rent.

He ran home from the school library. There were reporters outside his door. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I forgot my chemistry text. I need to get back before my next class. Why are you here? Let me through! Don’t touch me!” He twisted out of the reporter’s grasp. He was shaking so hard he couldn’t get his key to work. They were shouting questions at him and cameras were going off around him. Three tries later, he was inside the lobby where reporters weren’t allowed to go. He didn’t wait for the elevator but ran up the stairs. He pulled the curtains shut and curled up in the middle of the bed, crying. 

Clearly, he had not thought this through. He had grossly miscalculated and he regretted his decision tremendously. Instead of doing something to assure him of finally having Tony all to himself, he might have driven him away permanently.

Peter sat staring at his phone, hoping Tony would call. It rang often, but he didn’t answer. Tony had a special ringtone. All other calls, even from his friends, he rejected. Tony didn’t call. Peter imagined he was busy trying to put out the fires on his end. After a few hours, he tried to call Tony. It rang once and then went straight to voicemail. He didn’t leave a message. He waited another hour to the same results. The next call, two hours later, he left a voicemail.

“Tony, I’m scared. They’re outside my door. I… I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I’m locked in and I’m alone and I don’t know what’s going on.” He was crying. “What happened, Tony? Please call me back. Please. I know… I know things have to be bad for you too. But I’m scared, Tony. I’m scared.” 

Not only might he lose Tony, but his whole life was about to be ruined. If they had the rent checks, they would find other things too. Like his school schedule. Like the fact that Tony was paying his tuition. That he’d set up an account for Peter to pay for groceries and books and other little things. Oh god, they might even find out his aunt’s name and number.

“May? Has anyone… Have you…” Peter was sobbing.

“Peter, what’s going on? I went to work and my friend showed me the paper. You and Tony Stark? Is that true? I know they can make pictures up to look like whatever they want.”

“It’s true. It was a secret. It was supposed to stay a secret. I don’t know how they found out. They’re outside my door. I could barely get into my apartment building.”

“He’s married, Peter. How could you!”

“He said he was going to leave her. He said he loved me.”

May sighed. “Sweetie, they don’t ever leave their wives, you know that. Men like Tony Stark… he buys and sells people like they were nothing.”

“He isn’t like that, May. He… he was going to leave her. He had a plan and everything. It was just going to take time. He loves me and I love him.” He sniffled and tried to stop crying. “Are you okay? They haven’t bothered you, have they?”

“I’ve had some calls but I hung up on them. But no one’s been here at the apartment though. Not like your place. The internet has the story already. I saw your picture trying to get into your building.” She paused. “Is it true he pays for your rent?”

“Y-y-yeah.” He was sniffling again. “And my tuition and everything else.”

“So you don’t have a job like you told me.”

“I used to. When I told you, I was an intern at Stark Industries, that was true. But it only lasted a few months before Tony and I… I’m sorry May. I didn’t want to lie to you, but it had to be a secret. He couldn’t have anyone knowing.” He started crying again. “Now everybody knows. And he isn’t calling me back.”

“Peter, even if everything you said is true, that he loves you and was going to leave his wife, he can’t call you right now. If… I don’t even know how to explain this to you… you’re young. You don’t know what it’s like to be married.”

“Not you and Ben… that never happened between you, did it?” Peter sounded afraid.

“No, no. Neither of us were like that. But you hear about it from friends. There are friends I have at the hospital whose husbands cheated on them. It’s… messy. It’s complicated. And that’s without being famous and the press hounding them all the time. This can’t be easy for his wife. Think about her. I don’t mean to be harsh, sweetie, but you just ruined her life.”

“I’m not the first affair he’s had,” Peter said defensively.

“But you’re the one he got caught with. And the only man.”

“Not even that.”

“Okay. But you’re the one she can’t deny or push under the carpet or pretend she doesn’t know about.”

“I don’t care about her,” Peter said angrily.

“That’s obvious,” May said, with a little anger of her own.

“It’s not my fault.”

“Whose is it? You knew he was married. The whole world knows he’s married. Sure, it took both of you, but you didn’t have to say yes. How long has this been going on?”

“About a year and a half.”

“Peter!”

“We’re in love. He doesn’t love her. He hasn’t loved her for a long time. Even before me.”

“I can believe that man has no morals, but you? I thought…”

“I’m in love with him,” Peter interrupted her. “That’s all I know. I’m in love with him.” Peter was sobbing. “You don’t know him like I do. Nobody does. He’s different when he’s with me.”

“Well, I’m not going to talk to anyone about it. I didn’t know anything and obviously, I still don’t know anything. I thought I knew you but…”

“You do. You just don’t get it. We fell in love. That’s not something you can control.”

“But you can control acting on it. I’m sorry you’re in the mess you’re in, but it’s a mess you made for yourself. You have to think of the other people whose lives you ruined by choosing to sleep with a married man.”

~~~~~

It was after midnight before Tony’s ringtone played on Peter’s phone. “Tony?” he asked hesitantly.

“Yeah baby. I’m so sorry. I should’ve known… I never meant for you to be caught up in this. The damn fucking reporters follow me everywhere.”

“Are you okay?”

“I will be. Like was going to happen with my plan, I’m gonna take a hell of a hit to the pocket by the prenup. She insisted on a cheating clause, knowing my lack of ability to keep it in my pants. But she never would’ve pulled that trigger unless something went public.”

“But you can manage that, right?”

“It’s not gonna send me to the poorhouse, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m not. You know I don’t love you for your money. I hope you do.”

“I know baby. Bad joke. Sorry.”

“Are you still at home?”

“Nope. I mean, it’s still going to be my home once the separation’s over and done with. The building belongs to the company and the company belongs to me. I’ll need to buy out her share of the penthouse, but that’s not a problem. It was just prudent that I be the one to leave right now. Give her time to cool down, let the lawyers hash things out.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d call.” He paused. “Ever.”

“Really? Doubt me that much?”

Peter sighed heavily. “Things don’t usually work out well for the ‘other woman’.”

“Yeah, but the guy usually isn’t in love with the ‘other woman’. I love you.”

“Still? Even though…” He sighed again. “The other woman turned out to be the other man?”

“It’s kind of a relief, actually. I mean, yeah, life is gonna be hard for awhile, but then we can be together.”

“You still want that?”

“You still want me?” Tony asked.

“Yeah, Tony. I’m kind of in love with you.” He paused, twirling the fringe on his bedspread in his fingers. “My aunt kinda hates me.”

“I’m sorry. The whole homewrecker thing?” Tony asked.

“Yeah. She doesn’t understand.”

“It doesn’t help that the papers are… fucking ruthless. But what’s done is done. No putting this genie back in his closet,” he laughed wryly.

“I’m sorry Tony.”

“Not your fault baby. It just never happened before because I never stayed with the same person for more than a few nights. After a year and a half, my habits got picked up on. Traveling to the same place on a regular schedule. Someone was bound to catch me sooner or later.”

“So what’s gonna happen now?” Peter asked.

“Well, I could always have Happy drive by and pick you up to bring you to my suite at the Plaza.”

“What‽”

Tony chuckled. “Not like we have to keep it a secret anymore. Not like the whole world doesn’t know I’m into guys after today’s headlines. Not like she can sue me twice for cheating on her. The only question is how much heat are you willing to bear to be with me. Because it’s gonna get really hot for you, baby. They’re gonna dig out every nasty word in the thesaurus and print them.”

“Do I get to be with you?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Let them print,” Peter said with fierce determination. “I’ll send them a list in case their thesaurus isn’t complete.”