IronDad Bingo Fic #6

Trope: Bullying

Trigger Warning!!! Lots of self hate. Small mention of suicide and self harm.

Requested by anon. Thank you for the request!

The tabloids have always been known for their blatant hatred for the mess of a human being named Tony Stark. Of course, there were those select few reporters and articles that highlighted his few wholesome qualities, but people weren’t quite as drawn towards opinions not laced with drama and hostility.

The first truly demeaning article published about him that he could actually recall was when he was about 14 years old, attending a special gala with his parents during his Christmas break. His father had been giving a speech, and, yeah, Tony had snuck a couple drinks over the course of the evening, but this guy started choking on an olive in the middle of his father’s spiel and he didn’t even have any time to think before he was jumping into action. What was he supposed to do? Ignore the poor man? But in his drunken haze and fervent panic, he couldn’t quite remember the typical operating procedure to perform for a choking person, so he acted on instinct and reeled back his fist to send a punch straight into the man’s gut. It worked though, and the olive went sailing across the room, but the idiot demanded to press charges after he caught his breath and realized he was a Stark. And, of course, since no one else had witnessed the event in its entirety, young Tony had been labeled as a hostile, drunk, know-it-all without an ounce of human decency at the age of 14, and that title followed him all through his teenage years and into adulthood. The choking man had been set on getting his money and he wasn’t at all put out by the fact that it would require tearing down a somewhat innocent boy in the process.

His father had been pissed, even after Tony had finished explaining his side of the story. The press had been having an absolute field day with the abomination of a human being that turned out of Howard Stark’s son and Howard was beyond livid… and his mother, well… she had been disappointed. She didn’t speak a word to her son for nearly three days after the event. How could Tony blame them though? He had never done anything particularly noble, and he wasn’t known to be a truth-teller, but he had just wanted to help. He supposed that was what happened when you tried to help a person, so he didn’t go out of his way to try it out again.

After that, trouble just seemed to follow him. The press disregarded his accomplishments and highlighted the many many mistakes that only seemed to worsen the older he became. You couldn’t really blame the people either, because the mischief Tony Stark got up to was pure reporting gold. It granted them thousands, if not millions, of extra readers every time he didn’t something particularly stupid. The non-scientific community weren’t quite as interested in his inborn genius, and his amazing creations, lectures he gave, and ideas he had. People had always, and would always, be drawn to drama. And Tony Stark was the absolute Drama King.

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