"Hey, Stark, I'm talking to you!" The older boy called.

Tony kept going. 'Keep going, don't stop to let them catch up, you're safe once you get to your class.' He repeated in his head, remembering the advice that his counsellor gave him. 'Ignore the bullies.'

"Stark!" He called again. Persistent. Right. He'd have to stay behind after class finished so he didn't get beaten up. It was science, so his teacher wouldn't mind if he stayed in the classroom a little longer. Then he'd go to the library, and hope that he could evade the bullies for the rest of the day. He'd obviously done something wrong today, yesterday, or sometime recently.
Maybe he breathed near the bullies and they thought he'd infected the nitrogen or something.

That was an interesting idea, actually. He could probably bend chemical structure to get it to bond with nitrogen.

Anyway, he needed to hurry up. He couldn't get caught out here, while there were no teachers around. Maybe if he got into the corridor in time…

"Stark." The boy hissed, right behind him. "After school. Don't run today, or we'll get you worse next time."

(Tony remembers that one very clearly. His father got very annoyed at the school for letting his son get beaten up, and he demanded a reduction in Tony's tuition until the beating stopped. He got it, but it didn't help Tony's broken bones. He had to be on crutches for months.)

"No, Tony, you can't sit here. You're too close to us."

"Oh." Tony said, and sat several tables away. Everyone avoided him. He had a ring of empty tables all around him.

He told himself that being left alone was really better than being bullied constantly. But in all honesty, he was too lonely to care about the bullying at all.

"Hey, did you hear? Stark asked Robin out."

"Seriously? I thought he couldn't get any worse."

"No surprise, though. I mean, come on! He's easily that bad."

Tony blinked, trying to ignore the whispers all around him. This was worse than anything he'd ever faced at this school. He'd only asked Robin to dance with him once at the school dance. There wasn't too much wrong with that, was there?

Well, he knew exactly what was wrong with it, exactly, with many bruises to show for it, but that didn't mean he had to care. At all. He could deal with this.

(Maybe he did decide to hide it for a long time, long after everyone that mattered thought it anyway and it was okay to like guys too.)

"Steve, you talk about me as if I'm a bully. Some big bully who keeps stealing your lunch money or something." Tony snapped.

"You have done nothing but bully people and be rude for as long as I've known you, Stark."

Tony nodded. "Okay. Call me a bully." He said. "I don't care. I've been called worse."

Steve blinked. "I'm sure you've been called worse, Stark. Maybe you've deserved it, too. But that attitude is not what I expect from you. You should care about your own image if you don't want to be pinned for everything you do, like how the Avengers are blamed for everything that ever gets destroyed in fights, and you are our public image."

Tony shrugged and left the room.

"Steve." Bruce said sharply. "Apologize. Haven't you read Tony's file? Don't you bother to know anything about him before getting into these kinds of arguments with him? Because the way you're going about this rivalry you have with him, all you're doing is losing one argument after another and making yourself look bad."

Steve frowned. "I don't need to read about Stark to know that he is a bully."

"You need to read it to know that Stark was bullied at school for all thirteen years of his education. His main charity deals with exactly that problem. You need to apologise, Steve."