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Tony
After he kisses Morgan goodnight and shuts her bedroom door shut, Tony calls Peter.
Peter's excuse for his absence is that he’s busy with school and Decathlon and being Spider-Man, even though Tony’s been offering him a ride. It’s been two months. Before Europe, Peter came over consistently. Even the texts have tapered down.
After a minute of ringing, Tony gets sent to voicemail.
Again.
Tony knows teenagers don’t prioritize hanging out with his middle aged mentor and family, but Peter loves Tony’s lab and seeing Morgan and telling them all about his most recent interests…
It isn’t a coincidence the contact dropped after Peter returned from Europe. Tony is strictly on the homefront now, but he still watched and watches the news. He knows what happened there.
Maybe seeing Beck kill himself hurt the kid more than he’s willing to admit.
Tony sighs and sends another text, wishing the kid well and inviting him over.
====
Peter
Peter wakes up thinking, Only a kiss.
It had been difficult beating Beck, especially when he had smiled a smug smile and said, I’ll always be with you, Pete, before blowing his head off.
But what happened in the bar? It had been nothing really. Only a kiss.
<The hairs on the back of Peter’s arms stood. Beck leaned in, and Peter froze as he kissed him, hard, his hand holding the back of Peter’s head. Beck’s hand roamed across Peter’s crotch until he felt him through his pants and squeezed. Did the people in the bar think they were boyfriends? Did Beck think this was a date- he’d just told him about MJ, they’d just been talking about MJ and Tony and the future and why was he touching him? Why was he touching why-
Beck broke free and smiled a smile that had seemed so much more friendly not one minute before, Edith still on the bridge of his nose. “That’s how we give luck, on my Earth.” Peter couldn’t breathe. That should’ve made him feel better, but it didn’t. Beck patted his knee. “Go get your girl.” He winked and Peter gave him a fake smile, not knowing what to do other than walk out of the bar and pretend that had never, ever happened.>
Only a kiss. Only a kiss. This is what he tells himself every time he wakes up, when Beck inevitably grabs hold of his thoughts before he’s even brushed his teeth. If you wanted to, you would have stopped him.
“Bye, honey!” May sticks her head into the room. “I’ll see you for dinner, right?”
Peter smiles and reassures her he’ll be home for dinner, after Decatholon practice. As soon as he hears the front door close, the smile drains off his face.
He feels Beck’s mouth on his. He feels Beck’s hands on him.
He doesn’t bother packing for school- he isn’t going. As soon as he woke up he knew he wasn’t going. He can’t handle another day of trying to concentrate on his literature analysis and trigonometric equations when the only thing on his mind is that bar, that stupid bar that was Beck’s creation . Instead, he changes into his suit and climbs out of the window. Peter spends the day swinging around the city, going all the way to Brooklyn before circling back. He helps New Yorkers do mundane things like carry groceries and feed pigeons, and it helps calm him down. If he’s in the air, the wind whooshing past his ears, the city’s yells and horns honking and general chaos reaching him from above, he can remind himself he’s in control of his body and that he’s in Queens.
Not in Skip’s apartment.
Not in Europe. Not in that bar. Not with Beck.
Queens.
But when he’s not moving? When he’s forced to be in the apartment, or when he’s sitting in school? Beck comes to him, his fingers brushing his crotch and the other holding his head in place. There are hands on his legs, on his arms where Skip held him, on his stomach. Beck and Skip morph together, but it’s Beck most of the time that takes the lead. In his thoughts, in his flashbacks. Peter doesn’t know why. He had it pretty bad at first after Skip, but… he got therapy for that. He had a support system for that. It had gotten better: no horrible flashbacks in four years. Until now. Those hands, they’re on him. They’re just on him.
Skipping and swinging around Queens is so enticing he does it again. And again. And soon, it’s Friday, and Ned’s blowing up his phone, asking where he is and if he’s okay.
Just busy with important stuff, Peter texts him. Stuff being code for classified Avengers business. It’s the only thing that’ll get Ned to leave him alone.
====
“Peter, are you okay?”
Peter snaps out of his thoughts. He was thinking of the people in that bar, and how they were all Beck’s henchmen, and how they all did nothing. How he did nothing.
May had been trying to show him a video of a dog from Facebook.
He gives her an embarrassed smile. “Yeah, just thinking about something due for school. Sorry. What’s that?”
May sets her phone down and gives him a half teasing half concerned look, her eyebrows knitted together. “You mean how you haven’t been going?” she says softly.
Peter starts. Last year, he’d hacked into the school’s system and stopped those emails from being sent. He didn’t realize it didn’t transfer over to this year’s system. They must have changed it.
May pulls her chair closer to him, but she doesn’t grab his hand like she normally does when she has one of these talks. She goes back to her salad while she talks. “Kiddo, I don’t want to pressure you to talk about anything. I’ve noticed you haven’t been showering again.”
Peter swallows his shame.
“You don’t need to feel bad. I know you haven’t gone to Dr. Fretz in awhile, but if you need to, I have the funds to send you. And if you just want to talk to me, you can.” She leans forward and gives him a quick kiss on the forehead- the only type of touch that wouldn’t send him into a panic attack for about a year after Skip hurt him. “I’ll call the school and tell them you’re sick. I just… I love you, and I’m here for you, all right?”
Peter nods, and May masterly changes the topic back to the Facebook dog.
====
Peter can’t be a victim again.
That’s how we give luck, on my Earth
Peter can’t handle the weight of the truth; why didn’t he say no?
He knows why. In that moment, he went back to what he had learned when Skip raped him: just stop and freeze and wait until its over because if you don’t, he’ll hurt you more. It was just a freeze response, and it wasn’t his choice. Not really. It was just his brain and his body deciding what to do in a split second to keep him safe, and they didn’t realize in that moment he wasn’t the same eight year old kid anymore.
Just because he knows these things logically didn’t mean his heart understood. His heart tells him it was nothing.
But if it had been nothing like he’s spent the last two months telling himself it was, then why hadn’t he showered in two weeks, afraid to take off his clothes? Why did he feel these hands on him, on his neck and on his thigh where Beck had touched? Why did he feel this darkness?
Peter felt like Beck had put a festering blackness inside of his skin, inside of chest right in front of sternum. He wanted it out. He wanted it out.
On Monday morning, he doesn’t go to school. It’s mid-October, and the leaves are starting to fall. There’s a breeze coming in, and Peter likes feeling like his body is a part of it. He goes to the park, leans into the wind, looks at the leaves.
He can’t go on like this.
He wants to talk to someone who knows Beck, so he takes a deep breath to steady himself and calls Tony.
====
They meet up two and a half hours later. Tony sits beside him on the park bench, and Peter can’t help but chuckle at his get up. He’s wearing a baggy t, a baseball cap, and sunglasses.
Tony smirks as he takes the coffee cup Peter offers him. “Hey, I’m just trying to avoid the camera vultures.”
They sit in comforting but awkward silence for a minute, sipping their lukewarm coffees and watching a group of children on the opposite side of the park play in the playground.
“Morgan misses you,” Tony says.
“I miss her too.”
A car alarm goes off in the distance. Peter can sense Tony holding himself from asking why Peter asked him to meet here. He tries not to let himself feel bad that Tony drove over two hours to get here to see him. He should get to the point. He focuses on the gravel pathway a yard away from their feet. “How long was Beck your employee?” he asks.
Tony’s eye twitches. “Four years.”
“What was he like, behavior wise?”
“A total asshole. He yelled all the time and I let it slide since he was smart as hell, but he threw a stapler once. That’s what got him fired.” Tony glances at Peter. “Have you been thinking of Beck a lot?”
“Yeah,” Peter says, digging a hole in the dirt with his shoe.” I have been thinking about him a lot. And I just have some shit I need to get off my chest.”
Only a kiss.
Not only a kiss. A kiss. A hold. A touch. Was that enough?
“I don’t know if it’s enough. I want you to- to tell me it was enough.”
“Okay.”
“Can I just tell you what happened?”
Tony nods, setting his empty cup down. He’s looking at Peter, but Peter just keeps looking at the gravel. Eye contact would be too much right now.
“When I gave him EDITH, we were in a bar. I told him about everything going with MJ and how I felt about almost losing you...” Peter grips the edge of the bench tightly.
“You can tell me, kid. Whatever it is.”
Peter's mind reviews the speech he thought of earlier. He wants to tell Tony. He can do this, even if he's shaking.
He can do this.
“After I gave him EDITH, Beck kissed me. And then he- touched me. And I don’t know, I just froze and I can’t stop thinking about it and how I wish I would’ve just fucking punched him or gotten away but I’ve just been pretending it was nothing but it wasn’t nothing! I haven’t told anyone and I just can’t carry this by myself, you know?” Peter took in shaky breaths. “I just can’t.”
“Shit, kid.” Tony lets out a breath. Peter braves looking up at him, and Tony holds his gaze fiercely. “That was enough, Peter.” He holds out his hand for Peter to take. “Tell it to me.”
Peter swallows and holds Tony’s hand. He feels a squeeze, an encouragement. “It was enough.”
“It was enough,” Tony affirms.
====
They are sitting in Tony’s lab when Peter gets a flashback, a hand on his thigh, a tongue in his mouth.
Tony leads Peter to the guest room and quickly comes back with a cup of tea. When Peter tells him he wanted to be alone, he complies.
“Come back whenever you want, kid. Or just holler if you need anything.”
Peter nods, wrapping his hands around the mug, letting the heat ground him.
Soon the hands go away.
He is here.
He feels safe.