tony stark whump

"he hit me and it felt like a kiss."

steve's abusive again (but it's actually kinda different) 

set before all the marvel movies; its a college au this time not a high school au !!

tw: what a damn shock it's abuse again

~NO POV~

Tony Stark did not know what love was. He didn't know what it was like to be loved, and he didn't know what it was like to love in return. He'd watched his parents fall out of love very early on in his childhood, and he'd always been aware that his father never loved him. Maybe at some point, his mother did, but she was never around anymore, so she didn't love him anymore either.

If Tony had to think of who loved him, he'd struggle. Maybe Jarvis loved him, but Jarvis was on Howard's payroll, and the only reason he was there was because of his job. So Jarvis might care for him, but Tony was sure that Jarvis didn't actually love him. It was the same thing with Ana. Ana and Jarvis were just there for their salary.

He'd watched Ana and Jarvis in love, though. And even though they were old, they still loved each other just as much as they did when they were young. Tony didn't know them young, because he wasn't alive, but he'd been told stories from the elderly couple.

Ana and Jarvis were the only reason Tony believed in love.

He just didn't know what it was like to be loved, to feel love.

Howard didn't love Tony, and Tony was painfully aware of that. What Howard loved to do, though, was hit Tony. Tony never really knew why his father was abusive, and he never bothered to find out. He just let the abuse happen until he could finally go off to college and escape the house he lived in that never really felt like home.

When Tony finally went to college, he was fourteen. And as a fourteen year old with terrible social skills, trauma and anxiety, he wasn't the best with people. He was smart, incredibly fucking smart, but when it came to being with people, he was suddenly the dumbest in the room.

Because of how bad his upbringing was, how bad his view on love, and right and wrong was, he had no way to protect himself from falling into the cycle of abuse. Tony thought going into a relationship would mean finding love, but it wasn't. He only ended up trapped in abusive situations, and he couldn't get out of them because it was all he knew.

He didn't know what love was, so he confused it with pain. He thought, if Howard hurt him, when he was supposed to love him, then maybe if other people did too, it was okay. Maybe Love is Pain. Abuse was all he knew, so abuse was easy to fall back into despite the fact that he ran off to college early to escape it.

see what i did there

He was fourteen years old when he got his first girlfriend. He probably should've known it'd be bad the moment it started, because his girlfriend was eighteen, and even if it wasn't illegal, the age gap was still significantly large. Four years didn't seem like much to a lot of people, but the difference in maturity was a lot.

Although Tony grew up very fast, he was still immature and childish. He barely knew how to take care of himself and was terrible at asking for help.

Sunset Bain, his very first girlfriend, was completely aware of this, and she didn't care. She used Tony for her own satisfaction. She used the fact that Tony was young and naive, and easily manipulable to gain SI's company secrets and designs and gave them off to her own family company.

Sunset was never physically abusive, which is probably why Tony didn't realise she was bad for him, but she was definitely emotionally abusive. She messed with Tony's head, made him vulnerable and left him torn.