I'm sorry it's been a bit of a wait for this one. I had a very long, unpleasant weekend. One of my furrbabies died unexpectedly and while I was able to hold him, it was still devastating. So writing has been . . . not the first thing on my mind.
But then today, I felt the story pushing at me, wanting to be finished, so I obeyed. I've read over it a few times and I'm satisfied, but if there are any glaring typos or something as embarrassing as a tense change, please lt me know.
Uh . . . let's see. This one came about from reading the plethora of fics where Peter refuses to call Tony 'Tony', despite repeated requests.
Here's the thing: my own name is one people like to shorten and nickname, which is great for them, but I don't answer to those names. My name is my name, and that is what I have chosen to go by. Therefore, I demand that people respect my choice and I will not answer to anything else. I had the same response/issue/problem in the X-Files fandom and Mulder's name, though I'm not sure if it's better or worse that I find it to be a problem instead of an endearment/term of affection.
So this is my take on The Name Thing. I hope you enjoy and as always, please let me know what you think. I lovelovelove hearing from you guys!
Any Other Name
Respect takes many forms, but at its heart, it is all the same.
It is universal.
So it would stand to reason that respect would be a thing that is universally recognized, if not practiced.
. . . well. One would think.
But there were as many ways to disrespect someone as there were to respect them, and a frustrating percentage of those ways were subtle and even disguised as humor or — worse, and horrifyingly — legitimate respect.
This was a lesson Peter Parker would learn firsthand from one of the most unlikely people imaginable (and no, it was not a Hobbit named Bilbo Baggins. Even he wasn't that much of a nerd, thank you): Jessica Jones, who was not known for her respectful manner toward . . . well, anyone, really. Even the people she actually respected rarely saw that side of her.
Her little brouhaha with Peter came about in a rather unusual way. The young woman, having officially joined the Defenders some five months earlier, had spent most of her time observing the people at the Compound but rarely interacted directly with any of them — except Tony Stark. The two of them got on like the proverbial house on fire, to most people's surprise, but Tony had a deep-seeded appreciation not just for Jessica's blunt, tactless habit of telling the truth regardless of a person's feelings, but also her practice of treating him like a grown, intelligent, capable man. Jessica was deeply appreciative of the fact that not only could Tony not be less judgmental if he sat down and made an effort, but he also empathized with her history and issued, but not once did he pity her. So once the initial groundwork was laid, it took maybe twelve, thirteen minutes for the pair to become insanely protective of each other (trust took considerably longer, but neither took that personally; it wasn't like their reasons were invalid). And at first by extension, then from personal interactions, she became something of a sist—nah, no, more like a cousin, to Peter Parker.
It therefore followed that Jessica despised the Rogue Avengers with a passion, would cheerfully rip Wanda's spine out through her mouth at the first opportunity, and had sworn a blood oath to kill Steve Rogers as soon as his purpose as cannon fodder was fulfilled (something she would likely share with James Rhodes, who had sworn the same oath). She knew Peter and Tony had developed a parental relationship, though neither of them ever openly acknowledged it, a fact that made her roll her eyes even though she understood: Tony had been betrayed too many times to willingly make himself that vulnerable, and Peter had negative self-esteem, so he could not believe that Tony Stark, Iron Man, saw him as important in his own right, let alone as a son (and when Jess found out who had so thoroughly convinced him he was a burden to everyone for everything . . . even Kilgrave would approve of her plans).
The problem, Jessica quickly saw, was that because the boy had no personal self-esteem, he was rather easy to manipulate. And the Rogue Avengers, at first led by Romanova, took full advantage of that. Now, to be fair, Peter didn't know about Siberia, so while he had a few issues with Rogers and his team, he lacked the knowledge to understand why Tony flinched just at hearing Steve Rogers' name and did a truly impressive amount of mental, physical, and technological gymnastics to avoid being in the same room with any of them — and he flat-out refused to meet one of them alone. But Peter was young, impressionable, saw the best in everyone, and was so naïve it was truly disturbing.
They were also The Avengers, the modern world's first team of superheroes, which meant Peter, lacking knowledge he really should have had, was star-struck before the first official meeting.
And though Tony had tried his best to keep Peter away from the team, it was impossible. The Accords committee had made his presence at the Compound for a set amount of hours a week a requirement of the pardons, under the label of 'overseer', which everyone hated with a passion. He didn't have to spend that much time with the group, thankfully, but for nine months, he still had to be in the building to ensure they didn't cause trouble or go haring off on a 'mission' the first chance they could. The problem was that he refused to be separated from Peter for that long — which meant that Peter spent probably half his life at the Compound, either in a lab or training with various members of the Defenders. And while he didn't go out of his way to find any of Rogers' team, he also didn't try to hide himself away, so their first meeting was both inevitable and less than four days after they returned.
Naturally, Tony had not taken it well, though he'd been resigned to it, and had managed to remain civil during that meeting. However, he'd also refused to give them any information apart from Peter being his personal intern, followed by a stern warning to stay away from the boy unless he sought them out (idly, Jess wondered what kind of bargaining had taken place for Tony to agree to that) and they were completely, totally forbidden to look for more information. Peter Parker was none of their business, The End, and if they violated that rule, hellfire and brimstone would rain down.
He'd been deadly serious, too, which made Jess wonder just why he was letting the 22 attempts by the Rogues to break into Peter's personal quarters go unpunished. She couldn't ask, because technically, she wasn't supposed to know, but Pepper and FRIDAY despised the group even more than Jess did, and the three of them had formed a mini-support group, wherein they bitched and moaned about their various problems and people they couldn't stand (Hope frequently joined them, too, but usually after dealing with her father). So finding out about the numerous, repeated attempts to violate Peter's privacy pissed her off more than a little, and Tony's lack of action puzzled her to no end. But after some thought, it was easy enough to see that he had a plan of some sort, and that plan had an official line or number of attempts or some rule the group as a whole had to break.
As that had yet to happen — and he was either unaware of their violation of his privacy, or didn't understand how serious a problem it was — Peter had begun to tentatively seek the Rogues out, because Barton discovered he was Spiderman fairly quickly but they gave him no trouble about it and actually treated him like a member of the team.
On the surface.
Scratch that surface, though, and the ugly truth was clear: between Peter's lack of knowledge regarding the Rogues' actions and behavior toward Tony prior to the Accords, along with the complete truth of what had happened not just in Siberia, but also when Tony went to the Raft, and compounded by the man's refusal to be in their presence if he could avoid it, the Rogues took advantage and quickly began to work on driving a wedge between Peter and Tony, or at least creating friction, which would lead to doubt and decreasing trust from Peter.
Their main goal was simple: if they could lure Spiderman to their side, they would finally have the leverage they needed over Tony to 'put things back the way they were'. It started small, with subtle jabs at Tony's intelligence, competence, attitude, unreliability . . . only they made sure to laugh gently while they were speaking, treating it as a joke among friends, and since Peter didn't have a mean bone in his body (and was friends with MJ), he really thought they liked Tony, ideological differences aside. He was also used to the bullying tactics favored by Flash (loud, brash, obnoxious, and completely lacking subtlety or humor), so it never occurred to him that they meant every word.
Jessica vacillated for weeks on whether or not she should intervene. On the one hand, it was sickening to see them using a child for petty revenge and breathtakingly selfish personal motives — and their methods were clearly thought out and well-planned, at least as far as Jessica had seen. They knew exactly what they were doing. Her anger at this was made that much worse since she was one of three people who truly understood how much Tony hated himself for his decision to bring Peter to Germany. His intentions had been noble, sure, but that didn't change the outcome, nor did it make his decision right. He hated himself even more because even now, he wouldn't change things, because that choice had brought Peter into his life.
But he still loathed himself for being so desperate and so unwilling to stop in the moment to rethink things that he took a minor (not a child, no, but still not mentally or emotionally mature enough to handle what was to come) out of the country to an argument, a fight, that wasn't yet his problem or his responsibility.
The Rogues, on the other hand, showed no remorse or hesitation at using Peter, both to get to Tony and to further their own ends.
And Jessica hated emotional manipulation more than anything but mind-rape (it was a very, very good thing that Wanda had been corralled to Kamar-Taj or she would have been dead four minutes after meeting Jessica).
On the other hand, she had learned a lot about Peter by observing him, both on his own and with Tony, and had quickly realized he did best when he was allowed to come to his own realizations. If someone simply told him something, he almost always took their side to be polite and avoid offense, only to later wonder if he really thought/agreed with what he'd been told, or if he was going along with it to please the other person.
But after she saw Wilson and Barton slipping him five dollars each after he again refused Tony's progressively desperate requests for Peter to start calling him Tony, her resolve wavered dangerously. When she saw Tony literally flinch more than a few times after Peter called him 'Mister Stark', she decided to act, because it was clear that Peter wasn't going to come to this realization on his own. He just didn't have the emotional experience to even realize there was a problem, let alone understand it.
His expression when she cornered him on the roof and took his web-shooters before he knew she was there was priceless and it took considerable effort for Jess to keep her composure. She wasn't going to lecture Peter, or yell at him, because she knew that his habit of using 'Mister Stark' was his way of showing respect, something cultivated by his aunt and uncle, supplemented by his lack of self-esteem, fed by the awe he still felt at being Tony Stark's protégé, and twisted by the Rogues. Not all of them knew just how much Tony hated being called Mister Stark by people he liked, but the group knew how badly he wanted Peter to call him Tony, and so they took great delight in getting his mentee to hurt him in the name of respect and admiration.
Jessica had to give Romanova credit: she was a mediocre spy and an equally mediocre Black Widow (her PI skills, combined with FRIDAY, had gotten her the bulk of the woman's Red Room records and they did not sugarcoat things. Romanova was the best of her class, yes, but her class had been the second-to-last one of the program before it was disbanded and completely re-vamped; Howard Stark's generation had seen the absolute best of the best Black Widows), but her manipulation skills were second to none — when they were used on people who were susceptible to those tactics. Peter, unfortunately, was one of them. And that meant that Jess needed to set him up with Matt; there wasn't anyone better at being able to identify lies, which was a skill Peter badly needed.
"Je—Jessica!" the young man stuttered, giving her a wide-eyed look of astonishment as she firmly pushed him into one of the chairs Tony had put on the roof a few months earlier. "What—why—why—"
"Breathe, Parker," Jess interrupted, fondness welling up at his flustered incoherence, even as she remembered the day he'd quit trying to call her Miss Jones. She flat refused to acknowledge him when he did it, but it still took nearly a week to wear him down. The combination of memory and flustered kid also helped remind her that she wasn't bringing the wrath of God down on him; she was just going to explain a few things he honestly didn't understand. "Good," she said approvingly when he obediently took a deep breath and then looked up at her, eyes wide with curiosity now.
Showtime, Jess.
"Okay, I'm just gonna say it," she said abruptly, startling him a little. But he had learned patience in the last year and said nothing as she began to pace in front of him, mildly annoyed at herself for not planning this part of it out. She'd never been one for speeches or monologues, and it hadn't occurred to her that preparing something might be a good idea.
Well. It looked like everyone was going to learn something new today.
"Why do you refuse to call Tony 'Tony'?" she asked quietly after she'd come to a stop and dropped into the chair in front of him. Startled, he blinked at her several times before shaking his head in bewilderment.
"Because . . . because his name is Mister Stark and it's disrespectful to call adults by their first names," he said slowly, unconsciously leaning back when Jess blew out a deep breath.
"Okay, let's start there, then," was her blunt response, earning another set of puzzled blinks. "Yes, assuming you have the right to address an adult so informally without permission is very disrespectful, and not something you should do," she began, holding his gaze. "But when anyone asks you to call them a specific name, unless you're in school and it's one of your teachers, then you do what they're asking, because they have clearly told you what they want."
And again with the confused blinks. The boy wasn't going to have any eyelashes left by the time they were done if he kept that up.
Jess had to fight down a laugh at that image, though she made a mental note to mention it to Tony. He'd think it was hilarious and might even do an AI rendering of what that would look like, which would delight Peter to no end, even as he died of embarrassment. But she was wandering.
"Okay, let's try this," she said, suddenly remembering what FRIDAY had told her several weeks ago. "You asked Wilson not to call you Petey-Pie, right?"
A nod.
"Okay. So if he ignored you and kept calling you that, would you be okay with that?"
More startled blinking, but this time, it was followed by obvious thought . . . and then, finally, dawning realization. Unfortunately, said realization was outweighed by confusion and more than a little panic.
"But . . . but he's Mister Stark," the boy wailed, looking pitiful. "He deserves to be addressed with respect and courtesy. And — and I'm just Peter," he finished, looking down and shrinking into himself.
Jess couldn't hold back this sigh and leaned forward, placing a gentle hand on his knee. "You're right," she agreed, giving him a small smile when he looked up. "He deserves respect. But let me ask you this: how many times has he asked you to call him Tony?"
Brown eyebrows beetled together, making Peter look unnervingly like the teddy bear Trish had had when they were kids. It was adorable.
"Uh . . . a lot," he confessed quietly, looking down again.
"Right," Jess agreed, leaning back. "And that should be all you need, Pete. He's told you and told you and told you what he wants, and you're disrespecting him by so blatantly ignoring that."
Those warm brown eyes went wide with horror at her blunt words and he actually choked on his tongue, he was trying so hard to speak. Taking pity on him, Jess didn't let him flounder for long.
"So you need to start calling him Tony," was all she said, catching and holding his gaze and refusing to let him look away. "But I'm going to explain why, because I think it'll help with that complex of yours."
He stuttered again in a failed attempt to deny he possessed said complex, but again, Jess didn't let him get far.
"One of the main reasons he hates it is because 'Mister Stark' will forever be associated with Howard, and that's . . . those aren't memories he enjoys," she began gently, unconsciously softening her demeanor when she finally saw just how horrified Peter was at the notion he'd hurt his mentor's (dad's) feelings. "Another is that 'Mister Stark' is what he's called by people who know they aren't close enough to him to be on a first-name basis, but they don't actually respect him enough to call him Doctor Stark, which is his correct title."
This had clearly not occurred to the young man and his eyes went wide with horror yet again, making Jess mutter a curse to herself. "Don't!" she said sharply, cutting off his self-flagellation before he could get going. "He's never wanted that from you, or he would have said so. Tony isn't shy about expressing himself."
This truth stopped Peter in his tracks and he smiled despite himself, making Jess relax a bit.
"And last, he . . . he considers you one of his people, and his people don't stand on ceremony with him, any more than he does. I mean, how often does he call Rhodes 'Rhodes'?" she asked, biting down a smile as she watched understanding finally dawn on him.
But it was promptly washed away under a wave of confusion.
"But then . . . why does everyone but Mr Rogers call him Stark and keep asking me to call him Mister Stark?" he asked, and all the humor in the situation drained away.
Jess took a deep breath.
"It's because they don't respect him, or like him," she explained concisely, somehow managing to keep her own feelings about the group under wraps and out of her voice. "They don't respect him enough to call him Mister, and I doubt any of them except maybe Romanova would believe he has several doctorates. And none of them really like him, so 'Tony' is out, at least as a token of friendship."
"But—" Peter began to object, only to trail off when Jess shook her head.
"Think about what I said and look back over your interactions with them," she instructed him, and sat back to watch, idly wishing for a drink, while he obeyed her, clearly replaying memories. And from his darkening expression, he was finally seeing the truth.
The rage that blossomed across his face was both shocking and satisfying; never in a million years would Jess have thought Peter capable of such dark emotions, but this was an excellent sign. He didn't need to become the walking personification of anger she herself often was, or the black hole of bitterness Tony frequently fell prey to, but if he was going to survive as a superhero, he would need some kind of hard edge or he'd never be able to hang on to the core of himself, even as gentle as that core was.
"They've been screwing with me from the beginning, haven't they?" the young man hissed, sitting straight up and pinning her with a furious gaze. "All along, they've been . . . but why?"
That last question was a pitiful whisper, full of despair and hurt, but the anger hadn't faded from his eyes, which was a good thing, because it meant he was able to think and reason — and he hadn't forgotten the facts he'd only just learned.
Despite coming here for this exact purpose, Jessica hesitated before answering. Peter needed to truly understand what the Rogues were, yes, but she hated being the one to kill some of the idealism that made him glow like a newly-formed star (ugh, she was definitely spending too much time with Tony. Before she'd met him, she could barely tell you what a star was, and now she was composing mini-poems to one? Dammit, she needed a drink).
But she still answered him.
"From what I've seen, there are two reasons," she began candidly, leaning back a little in a failed effort to ease the tension thrumming through his body. "The main one is that if they can convince you that they're right about the Accords and everything that goes with them, and you join their side, then they'll have the leverage to force Tony to make it all go away. They're too stupid to understand that literally can't happen, but that's the primary goal. That's why they keep trying to break into your room: looking for dirt or maybe blackmail material."
Wide eyes, followed by a slow, thoughtful nod, was his only response for a few minutes, and Jessica let him think. She needed the time to find the best wording for the rest of her answer, anyway.
"Okay," Peter said quietly after a few minutes, giving her an unnervingly (for him) even look. "And the second?"
"I . . ." she began, only to break into a deep sigh. She was surprised to discover that she really didn't want to tell him, because this was going to hurt him badly — but she knew that given the choice between hurting himself and hurting Tony, Peter would willingly throw himself off the Empire State Building without his web-shooters.
And if a dark, angry part of herself wanted to see the Rogues be blindsided by the awakening of their pawn and subsequently losing the tiny bit of power they'd managed to accumulate, well . . . hell, yes, she was most definitely looking forward to that.
But above all else, she knew that telling Peter everything now would be better for everyone; that way, nothing was dragged out, he wouldn't suffer through doubting himself and having second, third, eighteenth thoughts. And the positive changes the knowledge would create in his and Tony's relationship was worth just about anything.
"They want to hurt Tony," she told him quietly but with no hesitation. "All of them blame him for their circumstances, because not one of them is able or willing to acknowledge that they are responsible for their own actions. But other than Rogers, Tony honestly doesn't care about them. He doesn't want to be near them, because they're so hateful, but on a personal level, he doesn't care about them or their feelings and he sure as hell isn't willing to help them or make things better or easier for them. And they know that."
She fixed Peter with a serious look, refusing to let him glance away as she finished her thought.
"Since they can't get close enough to him to get revenge directly, and Pepper and Rhodes despise them, they decided to use you, by . . ."
She trailed off as another wave of fury washed over Peter, inciting him to come to his feet so he could storm around the roof, spewing some seriously impressive insults and a few curses she noted for her own use later. Outwardly calm, she watched him work his way through his emotions, making no effort to calm him down. He was pissed and needed to vent, and she was superfluous to that. When he finally flung himself back into his chair, his eyes were black with rage, but everything else about him was calm.
Shockingly calm.
Terrifyingly calm.
Jessica was actually unnerved by this, and very little scared her. But if any of the Rogues had entered Peter's eyesight right then, Jessica was a little afraid that he wouldn't hesitate before throwing them off the roof.
And for someone as inherently gentle as he was, that was . . . well, terrifying.
Especially since he was also a genius and both Tony and Hope van Dyne had been teaching him the fine art of rapid analysis — meaning that she didn't actually need to say it for him to get it.
Had she mentioned she needed a drink?
"They're using my respect and esteem for my mentor to disrespect and hurt him," Peter stated in a voice so cold, frost blossomed on the lower windows. "I can't . . ."
He interrupted himself with a bitter scoff and pulled his knees to his chest, the fury draining away so quickly, Jess blinked in confusion, and was caught completely off-guard when he looked at her with teary eyes so full of hurt, of pain, that she would have killed every member of Rogers' team for that reason alone, and plaintively asked, "What do I do? I'm not — I'm not Mist—I'm not Tony, or you. I don't know how to tell people off. I—I can't . . ."
Now this? This she could answer, and the relief at being able to help was overwhelming . . . and yet, not something she was comfortable with.
But as she looked at Peter and saw his innocence, his heart, his drive, and his determination to be good for the world and for himself, she saw the future as clear as day and knew she wouldn't have a choice. Before long, she'd be just as enamored with the kid as Tony and Pepper.
And no, it wasn't the worst thing that could happen, but she didn't intend to rush the process along, either.
But she was wandering again.
"You don't have to," she said gently, smiling despite herself when his brows crinkled with confusion. "All you have to do is stop playing their game. That's literally it. But you'll have to stop meeting them alone, too."
Peter's bitter snort still surprised her, even after she saw the changes wrought by new understandings, and he abruptly stood up, eyes dark and icy with resolve. He looked so much like Tony in that moment that it was both frightening and heartwarming, and Jess relaxed.
He'd be okay.
She was still looking forward to the smackdown with vicious glee, though.
To her irritation, though not to her surprise, she wasn't there the first time Peter called Tony 'Tony', and FRIDAY refused to show her the video. She did get a nice picture of Tony's face when he registered what his kid just said, and if she sniffled and teared up a little—
Like hell she did. She was Jessica Fucking Jones.
Still. Peter understanding what Tony wanted from him and why, and finally giving it to him, eased a ball of tension even Jessica hadn't realized was there, and things with the Accords and recruitment for new teams were going so smoothly that she found herself looking around suspiciously, wondering if this was some kind of set-up. She'd suspect Strange of pulling a prank, but the man had no sense of humor whatsoever — and that was coming from her, Jessica 'I hate you all' Jones. But damned if Stephen Strange didn't have her beat with his complete lack of enjoyment of life outside his Sanctum.
Life went on as normal. It was irritating, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Until the mandatory, monthly team meeting three weeks after Peter stopped calling Tony 'Mister Stark' and also cut ties with the Rogues. He'd even gone so far as to refuse to be in a room alone with any of them, and had no qualms about asking FRIDAY to call someone to come back if they tried to corner him. It was hilarious to watch, really, and Jess was very proud of the way Peter had matured since that night on the roof. At her suggestion and Tony's strong support, he'd started spending time with Matt Murdock, learning how use all of his senses to read people, both the obvious intentions and the hidden motives.
(according to Matt, it was a work in progress. A long work in progress. The kid tried hard, but since he himself was so honest, he always took everyone at face value as well, and breaking him of that habit was going to be — direct quote — "A fucking nightmare to accomplish. But when I'm done, I won't be able to tell his lies from his truth."
So they all had something to look forward to.)
While her mind was wandering — and it really needed to quit that shit, because one day, it wasn't going to come back — the meeting had passed uneventfully and people were getting ready to leave.
"All right, Kiddo, it's Obstacle Course Day," Tony said, resting a hand on Peter's shoulder and getting an excited grin in response. "I came prepared this time; there's a confetti cannon down there, if you can beat Deadpool's time."
Peter laughed delightedly in response and came lithely to his feet, making a point of putting himself between Tony and the Rogues, who were still seated at the table. All of them wore an expression of dissatisfaction; Barton was clearly the most unhappy, though Rogers was a close second, and Romanova was just as blatantly scheming to get herself back on Peter's good side.
"It better not be red this time, Dad," he replied — and Jessica nearly choked. Rogers did, coughing violently, while the rest of them gaped at the pair in horrified understanding. "It's just too confusing to know who we're congratulating with red confetti."
Tony shuddered at some memory before firmly shaking his head. "Nope, not red. Purple and green, because you, my son, are going to kick everyone's ass and deserve the royal treatment."
And with that, they sauntered out of the room, excitedly comparing notes about a new strategy Peter wanted to try. Another clear 'Dad' echoed down the hall and Rogers and Company collectively turned green. They had failed and knew it . . . but worse, Peter knew what they'd been trying to do and had just given them the best 'fuck you' Jessica might ever have seen.
Well, no, not the best, but it was definitely in the Top 5.
She didn't bother speaking to any of the assholes, as there was no point and no reason. The lesson had been well and truly given . . . and so had the insult.
If anyone was actually surprised several weeks later that the morons finally managed to violate whatever privacy clause Tony had written into their pardons, well . . . oh, please. The only people stupid enough and oblivious enough to be surprised were the Rogues.
If Jessica finagled a recording of that meeting, where they were informed of their newly-restricted pardons status, complete with the reasons why it was happening and their immediate move to new, UN-approved Accords accommodations instead of the Compound . . . fuck, yeah, she did. And if people heard that she played it at night to help put her to sleep, well . . . Matt was a lying liar who lied.
She watched it every morning after she woke up and finished her first cup of coffee; it was the best way to guarantee she had at least thirty good minutes a day.
And to think: all of it started from something as simple as a name.
~~~
fin