Chapter Summary: In which it both begins and ends.
It is a fiery thing, this burning ball of gaseous terror
It scalds skin, shredding dermis and revealing a nebula of trauma – a spiraling parchment of a soul
The closer the sun gets the more it withers down
The first time they hangout they play with Star Wars figurines and Legos. Skip leads them through make-believe like he can bend reality to his whim. He crafts stories that swim between tangible and fantasy and Peter sometimes has to remind himself that Skip is 16 and hasn't played make-believe for years.
[Sometimes, Peter worries this is all a brilliant dream, or even that Skip is doing this out of pity. (Because who would willingly spend time with a nerdy orphan like him?)]
Skip is always in control. With him, the world feels like he built it from the ground up; it's crafted for himself with words and imagery that combine into a beautiful cacophony of chaos and order. Conversations feel like a game of leading and following, with Peter always watching – one step behind and stumbling to keep up.
Skip always plays whatever Peter wants and never makes him feel childish. They stay up later than they should and eat too much junk food, but Aunt May and Uncle Ben still think Skip's fit for babysitting Peter.
Which is exactly what happens. It doesn't even feel strange that his best friend is baby-sitting him; the dynamic stays the same and they move forward. His Aunt and Uncle begin going on more and more dates and Skip and Peter see an influx of playdates.
It's during the eighth date night and the first time they're alone for a full night sleepover that Skip brings out the magazine.
They've been best friends for five months now – but friends for even longer. So, when Skip says he wants to pick the game it's an incredible surprise that slaps him in the face with an astonishing amount of guilt. It feels like a bucket of cold water shocking his system because he goes over every playdate, every minute spent with Skip – every file in his carefully organized brain – to see if Skip has ever picked the game, or the movie, or the food, and he finds… nothing.
His brain goes through a quick shutdown. Warning signs scream violently; 'does not compute' blinks out at every corner. His mind reviews his files again but is left once more with a blaring red sign that confirms 'there is no information to suggest that Skip Westcott has ever chosen anything in this friendship'.
The guilt makes his limbs feel numb and he nods mutely, willing to do practically anything if it would make this overwhelming shame disappear.
(He'll look back and laugh hollowly at the irony that it was Skip's lack of choosing anything that leads to an event that revolves around choice – that his lack of choice made Peter believe he had no choice.
The essence of his trauma was focused on choice before he even knew its importance.)
There's a hand on his lower back that leads him to his bedroom and Skip seems to be trilling with an excited energy. It makes Peter giddy with anticipation.
(He was so, so stupid!
Stupid Peter. Stupid, stupid, stupid –)
There is a magazine with strange, uncomfortable, pictures and Peter suddenly feels nauseous. He can find no explainable reason as to why he is so scared now, but the room begins to tilt from its immensity.
He feels faint and it takes a few minutes before his mind catches up with his body.
(The bed is soft. Skip's hand is hard.
His clothes are light. Skip's hands are heavy.
The room feels crowded. His stomach feels empty.
His heart feels fast. The time goes slow.
The paper flutters noisily. His hands shake quietly.)
Skip's weight on him is a wake-up call to the wrongness of the situation. (To the wrongness of the magazine and its devastatingly terrifying contents.) Skip's eyes are heavy with an emotion Peter doesn't understand yet, but makes his skin crawl because it feels wrong, wronguncomfortable, don't look at me like –
Skip's hands are over his mouth before he can voice his concerns.
"Einstein, we never do anything I want so let's play my game tonight. Let's conduct an experiment of our own! Let's see if we can touch each other like the people in this magazine. Doesn't that sound fun?"
The hands leave his mouth, and his tongue works against him before he can filter.
"Please, Skip! I don't wanna – !"
The hand is back on his mouth before he can finish the sentence. Skip's face morphs into exaggerated hurt and disappointment and Peter feels a thousand times worse so he nods, shakily. He feels he owes Skip this, he feels like a bad friend.
(And isn't he? Oh god, isn't he?)
This nod of affirmation is in no way true consent because Peter is so scared he could cry, hell he could even wet his pants – but when he looks back at this moment, all he can see is: 'Oh god, I agreed to it'.
Or in better (more harmful) words: 'I wanted it'.
(His feelings remind him that this is only happening because he never let Skip choose.
The brief logical parts of his brain surface at this and laugh because that was the point. He was fucking making it so he could guilt trip you, you idiot! Stupid Peter and your stupid heart and –
His emotions drown out the logic before it can ever sink in.)
Skip takes his hand off of Peter's mouth and leans in slowly, caressing Peter's cheek as he whispers into his ear, husky voice all the more chilling paired with the words it says.
"Your Aunt and Uncle will hate you if you tell them about this. This has gotta be our secret experiment, from now on. You're not allowed to tell, and if you do, you won't like what will happen. You wouldn't have anyone left. This is something that stays between friends and they'll know you betrayed me if you tell. The only rule is to not tell. But all of this? It's okay. Because this is an experiment for real friends, not parents, and aunts and uncles. And you're my real friend, right Peter? You won't tell?"
Peter nods again, not trusting his tongue and unsure if it could form words with how heavy it feels.
(He feels like he's choking and oh god, he's dying.
He's dying and it's his fault, it's his fault, his fault - )
Skip's eyes flick back to Peter's and gaze, hungrily? Yes, that's the word for it. They take in his prone form hungrily.
Peter's on his back and he's never felt more caged in and something hard is poking his leg and he's vaguely aware of the tears in his eyes, but he never says stop because God knows, he owes Skip this and –
He's unaware how long it takes but when it all ends – when he's left sticky and naked and oh so utterly confused and hurt – Skip tells him he was a good boy and that he did so very good for him. But, the words don't send a swell of pride to his heart like they normally would and he's not left feeling like he's on cloud 9.
Instead, the words feel like a thick black smoke suffocating his soul and they crush out his first sob of the evening, broken and hysterical.
Skip helps him back into his clothes – leaving a few last lingering touches that burn his skin – before he leads them back to the living room couch.
Skip puts on a movie and acts like nothing ever happened. Peter wonders if this is normal, but he knows the fear in his heart wouldn't be there if this wasn't something very, very wrong.
But, the first thing his mind decides is that it's him that's messed up. That there must be something fundamentally screwed in his brain to think a simple game so terrifying. Because why on Earth would his best friend ever hurt him when Skip was the one who was supposed to protect him?
(His present self laughs again at the irony, humorlessly.
Why indeed?)
He cries through the movie as silently as he can and tries to ignore the sting of betrayal pinging in his heart when Skip makes no move to comfort him
His Aunt and Uncle come home at the end of the night and he doesn't tell.
He doesn't tell, he'll never tell, he can't – they'll hate him, oh god, they'll hate him.
They'll hate him.
(He ignores the part of his brain that implicitly knows that they could never hate him. He ignores that it may just be himself that hates him. That he might not be telling because there is something in him that feels he might deserve this.
He ignores that they're probably the only ones who could help him because Peter's always been a strange boy. He has always been too smart for his peers and too bizarre for his teachers so he's always only ever had his Aunt and Uncle. He is a boy of loneliness and He couldn't lose them too.
There was a reason Skip was his first friend after all.)
Skip doesn't touch him again for two weeks – until it's another date night and no one will be home for hours and oh god if he could drown in one moment for hours he has.
He's drowned in the eternity of one second a thousand times over.
It goes like this for two more years. He is a follower of a play he doesn't understand. He is a slave to a heart that beats out of his fragile, paper-thin chest. He is a shell of make-believe and fantasy laughing and crying without comprehension.
He is stuck in a confused limbo in the weeks in between. He's either irritable or depressed and his emotions feel out of his control and he just wants to know how to make his body listen to him. In the middle of the night, he wakes up to a fear so heart-stopping and all-encompassing that he thinks he knows what it's like to have a gun to his head. But he can't control it. He snaps at his Aunt May and he cries over his broken water glass and he has no idea why he can't control himself.
(Everything feels so far out of his control.)
When they're not 'experimenting', they're playing like normal and it's so different from the strangeness of the experiment that Peter can go weeks without fear and gut-churning anxiety at Skip's presence – which is not to say that he doesn't constantly think about the magazine and the touches and the fear, just that the fear of Skip as an entity goes away for a while. Until date night comes and he remembers and he feels ashamed because he's afraid of his best friend and why does he feel so guilty and scared and why is he frightened of his friend and why–
His curiosity helps him discover what's happening when he's ten – ten months after he meets Skip and four months and three date nights after the experiments start.
(One word that feels like lead on his tongue and coats his throat in acid.)
It doesn't help him understand, but at least it lets him know.
(And isn't it strange that there's such a difference between the two.)
He still doesn't tell.
It's two years and sixteen date nights later before the 'experiments' and the fear ends.
(But that's such a lie because of course he's terrified and he's thirteen but he still wets his bed from nightmares and he flinches away from unexpected touch and he spaces out for no reason and he works on projects for hours on end because he can't sleep, he can't, and it takes him a year after Skip leaves before he lets Ned stay the night and he's only functioning because he refuses to think about it, he can't, and now he's fourteen and his Uncle's gone and it's his fault and –
He's better. But he's not okay.)
It takes two years and ten months for Skip to leave. Seven of these months are spent wondering how he'd ever survived without Skip; the rest are spent wishing he had never met him.
Peter had just turned twelve when Skip leaves for college.
(He's gone.)
It takes almost four more years before he returns.
(When Peter turned 12-years-old he was free.
If only for a little while.)