Work Text:
peter knows quentin.
well, he doesn’t know his real name. and he doesn’t know where he’s from, and he doesn’t know how old he is, and he doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not anymore but he does know that the older man preys on pain like a shark hunting blood and that pure agony is the only thing peter’s good at feeling anymore.
so when the world’s tumbling away from his feet in front of his very eyes, falling quicker and quicker as seconds go by, he does the only thing he can think of, the only thing that can pull quentin’s attention from manipulating nick fury into a bundle of confused paranoia, and screams.
he screams into the water, crying at the reflection that stares back at him. it isn’t hard to conjure up all the pain and agony that he knows will be an unmissable opportunity to quentin’s low level need for anguish.
he screams for natasha, who never knew him too well but still smiled at him every chance she got. he screams for his aunt, who looks a little older and a little more grey as each day passes them with less income than the one before. he screams for the half of the population that lost five years of their lives and for the other half who had to live in pain and fear and confusion.
he stops screaming and thinks of tony; the only father figure he’d known besides his uncle, a man who could have never given him the world but would’ve been damned if anything would’ve tried to stop him. a man who aged five years and then some, who grew with a child, a family, and who still chose to bring back the missing half of the earth’s population because nothing was ever enough for him and he’d fight till his last breath to protect a world that never deserved him.
in some ways, the silent tears that follow are more agonising than the screams.
despite the low roar of the venice festival, the slow manoeuvring of the canal, peter hears quentin before he sees him. he can hear his footsteps from three streets away, but he knows he’ll never run; the anchor in his stomach almost prevents him from doing so.
“you know i have drones watching you everywhere you go, right?” quentin says, that masquerading softness still somewhat present in the snarl if he listens hard enough.
peter looks out at the canal, down to where it opens into the ocean, and breathes out all the air in his lungs.
“i won’t let you hurt anyone else.”
quentin tuts and comes to a stop a couple feet away from where peter’s crouched into a ball. he has to fight the urge to spin around, the spider sense engraved into him so deeply that it’s instinctive as he flinches forward, away from the danger.
“i don’t think you have much choice, peter.”
peter swallows.
because, of course, he can feel the hand in his hair before it actually happens. quentin yanks at the brown strands atop his head, pulling his head backwards until he’s staring straight into the eyes of a man he’s genuinely terrified of, and for what?
“do you?”
and he pulls peter back, right back so he’s splayed out on the floor and he’s so surprised that he can’t use the super strength he really should be used to by now, and quentin’s on top of him pressing down on his chest as he taunts him and it’s like someone else controlling him as his leg reaches from behind and curls around quentin’s neck, surprising him enough that he relents his crushing weight for just half a second.
half a second, as peter has figured out in one too many battles, is more than enough time for the table to flip.
he gets to his feet, shaking straight through to his toes but still standing, still glaring. quentin’s nothing but a man with some well placed tricks up his sleeve.
so why does the quirk of his eyebrow make peter’s stomach flip in mind numbing terror?
they both stand there, peter breathing heavy through reddened eyes and twitching eyebrows, quentin watching his every move with such a calculating look that it’s almost like he’s staring right through him.
“you know, i was expecting something bigger.”
peter stops breathing for a second, the very husk of quentin’s voice shocking him straight back to his subconscious. it takes all of his willpower to refocus, to take a deep breath and jolt himself from the grasp of dissociation.
“iron man’s sidekick.” he says, kicking a rock with his feet. his hands are clasped behind his back, making his frame look ten times bigger than peter’s trembling body. “it’s got a ring to it. however, i wasn’t expecting a child.”
he purses his lips together and muses over it for a second, the crease under his left eye deepening.
“but this is much better.”
“you’re sick.” peter breathes out, struggling to keep the stutter out of his words. “you need help.”
“what i need-!” he shouts, hands curling into fists. peter flinches back and lets his body curl itself into defensive mode, his hands bracing near the floor. “you’re a child. i won’t let you get in the way.”
he lunges at peter, but he’s weak and unskilled. peter easily dodges it, watching the anger grow in quentin’s eyes as he reaches for his pocket and pulls his eyebrows together.
he says something else as he presses a button on the little controller on his arm, but peter can’t hear it. he’s too busy focusing on the fact that he’s spinning down the roads of queens at a hundred miles an hour, spinning and spinning till he feels sick and dizzy and he’s sure he’s about to throw up or pass out or both and then it all stops and he’s outside his apartment.
he takes a breath, trying to calm the hyperventilation. he and tony used to work on his anxiety and the panic attacks he sometimes got in battle, but it had never stopped them for good. ever since tony had died, peter hadn’t touched a single pill or tried any exercise they’d created together. it made his anxiety worse, but maybe that was better than feeling nothing.
“i had wished not to do this.” quentin’s voice breaks through his haze, and then there’s a hand in his hair again, but when he spins there’s nothing there and he can’t see a thing but the streets of his hometown and the building he grew up on. “you’re an annoying little shit, you know.”
he pulls hard, hard enough that peter falls to the ground, thrashing wildly while his hands flail this way and that. he’s too busy trying to shake quentin’s hand that he misses the moment his apartment building bursts into flames in front of his very eyes.
it’s hot, so hot that it feels like the flames are enveloping him, and there’s debris everywhere and everything is silent suddenly except for the sound of aunt may screaming and screaming and peter’s up and running.
“may!” he screams, voice hoarse. “may! i’m coming! i’m coming, i’m-”
he trips over something, and then there’s a weight on his back, pinning him to the ground as he watches his only living family member stumble out of the building with injuries peter’s never even seen before.
he thrashes violently, banging his head off something off to his left, and he’d push himself up, he’d get up and use his super strength but he’s so weak and may’s still in front of him crying and shaking and he can’t do anything but watch as she fades from him and he’s left staring at a pile of dust on the floor of an unfamiliar derelict planet.
peter blinks. the pressure on his back is gone, so he jumps up and spins, only to be met with more of the same empty, dusty red planet and different piles of ash scattered along the ground carefully.
he takes a breath, steadying himself on his knees, the same knees covered in simple jeans because stupid peter parker didn’t think to bring his suit with him and was so stupidly overcome with emotion that he couldn’t think straight enough to grab a weapon against the most powerful-
wait. he did bring his suit.
he looks down again, and his shirt is gone, his stomach and chest littered with long slashes bleeding down to the hem of his pants. they’re lashes, and peter quickly throws his arms up to protect his face as a long whip, connected to nothing but empty air, comes down to strike him straight across the face.
it hits his arms instead, the pain ricocheting throughout his body straight to his toes. he screams out when something pulls his arms up, binding them above his head to a pole, as the whip comes down again and again and again.
it’s so painful, and he can feel the blood dripping down his body, can hear his own screams of agony and nothing else. the silence is deafening, but his cries break it all up until it’s just bouncing around his brain until he can’t think or feel or see.
and all of a sudden he’s back on the streets of italy.
he’s a little further from the canal, and his suit is intact beside a couple rips in the sleeve from his fingernails. he looks up through wet eyes, his blurry vision making out quentin’s shape looming above him. he looks twelve feet tall from here, large and strong as he tilts his head mockingly towards peter’s crumpled body.
“how pathetic.” he hums, crouching down to where peter’s still half lying on the concrete. he picks him up by the collar of his suit, barely struggling.
he starts squirming, using all the energy he can muster because his torso still aches with phantom pains and quentin’s grabbing him by the throat and he can’t breathe but it’s going straight to his head until he can’t move and he can’t scream.
“children should stick to what they know.” he murmurs, enjoying the way peter’s eyes bug as he squeezes harder. “you’re involved in a game you have no place in.”
he drops peter to the ground again, letting him gasp on the floor like a fish out of water. he heaves, attempting to crawl towards any civilianisation he can find. he doesn’t get too far before quentin steps on his fingers, crushing them beneath his boot. he grins as peter screams out again, warbled and broken and quiet so he can’t even hope someone has heard him.
“beck.” he croaks out as the older man kneels down to him, watching him struggle to his knees and then pushing him back down easily.
quentin just smiles at him, a sick grin that stretches his face in half, so close that peter can feel his breath on him, can feel the dizziness flooding his head so he can’t even see quentin’s face anymore. it just looks like a dark circle, swirling and patchy and he can’t see he can’t see he can’t see.
“oh peter,” quentin says and grabs him by the throat again, squeezing in second intervals and watching him squirm and choke and heave. “you don’t even know my real name.”
he stands and peter can’t even breathe before kicks him in the face, the pain exploding behind his eyes like his brain’s tearing itself from the inside out. he crumples on his side, blood pouring from his nose, and tries to ignore the boot making its home in his ribs.
“you think you know everything.” quentin spits, his kicks so strong that peter’s sure he’s broken a few ribs. “you hero’s. acting like you’re gods grace while you take things and spit on those who make it for you.”
he steps over peter’s shivering body, bending down so close that his face swims in peter’s vision. he can’t focus on any one thing, so the darkness that must reside in his eyes follow his face right to the neck.
“you took everything from me.”
he picks peter up by the shoulders, pulling him to a sitting position only to strike him in the face with brass covered knuckles. peter can feel the broken cheekbone before it happens.
“you stole my invention, my lifeline.”
his face is a scene of fury, so wildly angry that peter flinches from the spit flying. he looks like he’ll break his teeth if he clenches his jaw any harder.
peter chokes on the blood at the back of his mouth, barely registering as quentin binds his wrists together and pulls him to the floor so he’s lying face down. his hair is sticky with thick blood, a feeling he won’t forget for as long as he lives.
he tries to get up, really he does, but it’s like he’s as weak as he was before the spider bite, like no matter how tight quentin holds him he’ll still be able to paralyse him with just his eyes.
he leans down, both hands clasping around peter’s wrists. the feeling of metal is cool on his skin, the mechanical fingers so oddly familiar that he wrenches his eyes open and looks down to his hands.
quentin’s palms are covered with the same prototype tony used to make the iron man suit that would mould over his hands. the metal stretches halfway up his forearm, obviously not advanced technology, but incredibly useful and stronger all the same.
“where did you get that?” peter croaks, a far away feeling of blood trickling from his nose to the corner of his lip. quentin only smirks at him, something evil hidden in his otherwise empty eyes.
“oh these?” he says and flexes his hands. “stole them right from mr. stark’s basement. no security around a tiny lake house. cute kid, by the way.”
and then he twists his hands and breaks both of peter’s wrists in one swift movement, like his bones are rice paper.
peter screams, the pain threading its way up his arms until he’s numb from the shoulder down. the screaming is only slight, because his brain immediately dissociates to block the overwhelming pain from drowning him as he falls back to the floor, cradling his wrists to his chest.
he can’t even speak, can’t do anything but stare and stare and stare because it hurts so bad that his brain’s short wiring to block out the agony and he can hear quentin spitting at him and he can faintly feel kicks against his broken ribs and he can hear himself screaming but he can’t feel the pain anymore so it’s all just kind of fuzzy.
he watches quentin bend down to his level, watches him shake his head and laugh and poke him in the cheek like he’s a doll. he grabs his hair, fingers gripping the brown curls like a vice. there’s a coldness about his eyes, something icy about the way they’re so blue and large yet so impossibly empty.
“oh peter.” he coos, fingers going soft. he cards them through his hair, all gentle and it’s then that peter jolts and he starts crying. “perhaps if tony had been here, things would’ve been different.”
he tuts, softly swiping the tears away with the pad of his thumb on peter’s cheek, so gentle that he finds himself subconsciously leaning into the touch even though his chest hurts and his ribs hurt and his wrists are broken and he’s sure his ankles are too because they’re flopped almost a hundred and eighty degrees the wrong way but he can’t feel the pain yet so maybe it’s all another illusion.
“but he’s not.” it’s said gently, too gently, like his voice is soft butter and it’s leaking out into peter’s mind and he’s gone from anger and violence to tiny strokes and a soft voice and he doesn’t think he’ll ever trust anything ever again.
he strokes peter’s head once more and then brings his right hand down, the one covered in a hardened metal much stronger than used for a whole iron man suit, and punches peter straight in the jaw.
he can feel the teeth floating near his tongue before he actually feels the pain of them tearing from gums. he turns and spits them out, the blood rushing through his mouth and down his throat until he can’t even breathe and he turns onto his knees and throws up violently, all over his shirt and his hands and the cobblestone street of northern italy.
he half expects quentin to chastise him but when he sinks to the floor just metres from the pool of bloody vomit, he’s gone.
“is this...is this real?” he chokes, rubbing his face against the floor to feel for the glasses. his heart sinks when he remembers giving quentin EDITH, handing him the only lifeline he’s left to use to defeat him.
he looks at his body, at the blood smeared across multiple open wounds, at the collapsed limbs of his wrists and of his ankles, at the vomit sticking to his shirt and the ends of his hair and thinks, yeah, this is real.