Chapter Text
Peter wasn’t having such high hopes anymore.
His life wasn’t turning in any unexpected directions, those were long gone at this point.
He still got nightmares and felt fingers trace his body when he least expected but he just clenched his hands and waited it out.
Spider-Man was absolutely thriving . He’d been saving people left and right, helping little kids and getting cats out of trees.
After all, the city never sleeps.
Tony teases him sometimes, says things like ‘if you want an easy job head to Rochester or something.’ He says it as if Peter could ever leave Queens. As if he’d trade this home for another like it was a recyclable.
The voices telling him that he’s in danger don’t frighten him anymore. It gets to him but logically, if he was in danger his spidey-sense would stab him in the neck. His hair would stand on edge and he’d throw on his suit easily.
Tony has to ground him sometimes, other times he can’t. His mentor holds him gently and rubs his back. He tells him that it’s not that night anymore.
When Peter lays in the darkness at two in the morning he can feel it. He can feel his body being pushed into the sheets and his backside trembles with remembrance. His throat closes and more times than not he ends up throwing up and staring at the ceiling. He rips the blankets from his bed with shaky hands and lays on the bare mattress in solitude.
Once in a while Tony will check on him to see the trembling teenager, shivering and not from the cold. His soft whispers and hand holding aren’t always enough to help, but Peter appreciates the effort. It’s more than he thinks he’s worth.
“The therapy isn’t helping.” Peter mutters as Tony pushes him through said doors.
The man sighs. “Then it can’t hurt.”
Peter goes twice a month.
Twice a months for a year he talks about that fucking night, it’s making it worse. Tony sits next to him and holds back his gags as Peter tell the nice lady about that night. It seems like new detail emerge from thin air and she gives him pills for the stress.
Tony buys him a frappuccino and they walk around the park once a week.
Peter gives him a weird look the first time. “You don’t have to do this.”
Tony shrugs. “Family bonding, you need someone to look up to and I fully intend on being that person as long as I can.”
He doesn’t question it again. He answers his mentor’s questions and laughs along to his jokes and he forgets. For forty five minutes he forgets that his body is permanently dirty beneath his clothes. Forty five minutes and he listens intently to Tony talk about new projects, about Pepper and anything they can think of.
It’s the constant variable in his life.
When he has a bad day, he walks into Tony’s lab and prays he isn’t too busy. For Peter, he never is. Peter should know but he still doesn’t.
“Mr. Stark, can we go for a walk?”
Tony nods immediately and smiles. “Sure, kid. You want a coffee or whatever that slushie thing is that you like?”
Peter enjoys these days, when he gets back he hugs the man with cold hands and says thank you.
“Don’t sweat it, Pete.” Tony says in his ear.
The showers after these days are peaceful and relaxing. He doesn’t burn his skin with the water (too much, that is) and the soap makes him squeaky clean.
Other days the soap goes down the drain as thick as blood and his eyes focus on the scalding water to keep from envisioning the scratches along his back and the nail-prints the scared his hip bones forever.
He thinks of Tony’s words to keep from smashing his head on the shower walls.
“Family bonding…”
The water and soap drip from Peter’s body and it occurs to him: the thing that happened to him doesn’t define him. He is whole, he will be okay. Maybe not soon, maybe not in five years, but he will be. He closes his eyes and thinks about how it was before the boy touched him as he cried. He was naive, innocent, invincible.
Peter reaches until his hands slip on the metal dial. He turns off the water and steps away from the shower.