Chapter Summary: A week can hold for nothing but an hour can last infinity.

Light in spheres of heat trapped near

The flimsy protection of a photo veneer

Sunlight streaming heavenly beams

(The closer he gets the louder I scream)

Peter's life could be described as a tragedy. It was a series of unfortunate events that rivalled each other in levels of emotional brutality and tore apart his poorly constructed plan for his life ever since it began its downward spiral at the tender age of seven – protect Uncle Ben, protect Aunt May, never be helpless again, fight back, protect, protect, protect.

He had failed a lot at it. Although, failing implied that he had done something to make his goals unattainable in the first place. And, no, Peter had never done anything to have his life be a storybook of misfortune.

Peter was just unlucky like that.

(He'd been putting the 'e' in dad since he was born and there was nothing more to say on that matter.

Unless you included the fact that that was the main reason he was trying not to view Mr. Stark as a father figure.)

But, Peter knew that there were those with less than him, those with more abuse to face, and even those with more grief, so he tried not to complain. After all, complaining about things he couldn't control didn't make them go away.

(But it did let off an awful lot of steam.)

Surprisingly, being Spider-Man helped with dealing with his bad draw in life. He saw children curled in alleyways under newspapers, half-starved and helpless and watched the impoverished be robbed of their last dollar bills. Sure, he had always helped them and been able to get them out of their bad circumstances – and no he was not jealous that nobody had done the same for him – but still. Living through those circumstances in the first place was traumatizing in and of itself.

Peter knew trauma like the back of his hand and understood that he could always add more to his laundry list of issues, but adding Skip back in an entirely separate column was something he only let himself think in his darkest nightmares. It had been a week since he had arrived and Aunt May was leaving for her Saturday shift again and promised to bring Thai for dinner.

And, 'no, you are not allowed to go Spider-manning or visit Ned because Skip's a guest and you should spend some time with him. Also, did you forget how grounded you are right now?'

The cycle of unfortunate events that had swarmed through his life had left him alone and in fear at the mercy of Skip and still unsure if Skip would even try anything. After all, he had left him alone the last weekend, hadn't he?

(Maybe Peter could be strong. Maybe he could fight back.

Maybe he could be free.)

But, no. Peter's life was too unlucky for that kind of break.

It happened the same way it always did – in his room, his sanctuary, and without anyone home to hear his pleas and save him from his own personal monster.

(Cold hands, cold eyes – he's so cold, cold, cold –

He is suffocating from the empty chasm of his chest as Skip strips his soul bare to the wintery elements of his cruelty.)

Peter's muscles tensed and he felt like his head would explode from the pressure. Skip's hand was heavy on his thigh and, as it slowly glided upward, he couldn't help but stop breathing entirely. His chest felt tight and his body was frozen, only his pulse fluttered beneath his skin with anxiety. His jaw clamped down upon his breath, choking him with his own closed mouth and flaring nostrils.

"Stop," he whimpered, feeling pathetically useless as tears began to prickle at his eyes.

Skip leaned in, his lips brushing against Peter's ear and dipping further to nose at his neck as he smirked into the junction of his shoulder. Peter shivered in disgust and nervous apprehension when a light tickle of teeth rubbed against his sensitive skin.

"Oh, Einstein. I thought you were smarter than that," he whispered, voice low and dark, "you know I can't stop now."

Skip's thumb reached up to caress under Peter's eye, catching a teardrop right as it fell over the precipice of his eyelid and rubbing it into the skin of his cheek with a disturbingly tender touch.

When talking about survival instincts, people only ever mentioned fight or flight. There was never any recollection of freeze, no mention of defensiveness.

Fight or flight made it seem simple – like the layers to the atmosphere just didn't exist and sunlight beat heavy and untamed. If there weren't any layers, the Earth would have died out years ago. But there were because things weren't black or white, one or the other. They just were.

But Peter froze because freezing was natural. His body stiffened like a coiled spring locked and ready to pop in an eruption of movement but blocked off by an instinctual desire to not provoke the threat.

There were the runners, the ones who fled with their tails tucked between their legs and found somewhere, anywhere, to escape to. There were the people whose fear turned them into blind sprinters racing as if the world was falling at their heels.

There were the fighters. The vicious, clawing underdogs who never stood down and limped forward evermore.

Then, there were the hiders. The ones who tucked themselves in corners and slinked away into shadows.

But freezing was the cruelest of all human reactions – locking oneself in their suffering and keeping them in a state of suspended terror.

Peter had thought he was a fighter. He had pushed himself up on broken arms and lifted the weight of cities on his shoulders.

(Metaphorically, of course, though buildings were heavy enough on their own.)

Peter had bounced back like a rubber band, twanging and pinging like a stretched-out wire as time after time people died and crumbled in his hands. He had clawed his way to victory with punctured lungs and split lips, facing down the barrel of a gun unflinchingly.

And yet, here he froze with the chill of hell creeping down his spine. There was nothing in the world besides Skip that could change his fiery spirit into an ice-cold lump of coal.

Because Peter panicked at the slightest sight of silver hair. His world narrowed down to a point and he tipped from the firm threshold of reality into some muted in-between. Peter's world was filled with snowflakes spiraling in the numbness of winter-time forming rigid icy hands that caressed and grabbed and held him down upon the cotton sheets atop his bed. He was an ice sculpture locked in a dance he had only just begun to understand, being carved out with a chisel held in the hands of the sun.

He was melting, sure, but even his core remained the unflinching ice of pure horror. The only thing that suns could do to a sculpture made entirely out of cold crystal was destroy them – melt them down to their basest particles.

There was no room for thawing here, no place for finding him hidden amongst the melt of himself.

(Peter remembers Ben's face as a mugger held a gun to his head and wonders why he didn't realize that freezing was something he seemed born for if only in the moments that mattered most.)

Skip's face curved into a pleased smile as he leaned back to stare Peter head-on and Peter felt his icy heart chip a little in response.

"What's wrong, Petey-Pie? Are you scared?" Skip crooned, eyes malignant and dark, turning light blue stormy. He angled his head forward and met Peter's lips and Peter tightened his mouth in response, trying his best to keep Skip's aggressive tongue out of his mouth. Skip bit his lip warningly before sliding his thumb from under Peter's eye to his jaw and pushed hard until Peter had no choice but to open his mouth or risk his skin bruising. The kiss turned into that of a group of uncoordinated dancers falling over each other to reach something before the other – like a brutal tumble down a hillside, tripping and stumbling and clawing for dominance.

It wasn't normal, Peter thought, it wasn't normal that he was just sitting there, letting it happen.

But he was. He was petrified in place as his limbs struggled to move, to do anything.

He pushed and pushed but nothing in him budged.

(Well, perhaps a little of his sanity.)

He was shaking, he noted absently. He was shaking and trembling, but he still couldn't push the monster choking him with his tongue and blistering him with his hands off his body.

He wondered what Mr. Stark would think of him, shame filling his gut as the tears flowed faster. Silence permeated the room and even the soft sounds of flesh upon flesh were lost to the numbness Peter began to feel. What would people think if they knew Spider-Man couldn't fight back? What would they say?

(Peter wants this, doesn't he? That's why he's sitting as tense as a statue and not beating the crap out of this man. Peter must want this.

Why would he want this?)

He began to block it all out – he was still alert, but his senses dulled to the negative and he shook with relief that his body wasn't picking up the words Skip had pulled away from his mouth to murmur in his ear.

The world was clear and sharp but he was hiding in a corner of his mind reciting the periodic table and trying to ignore all the sensations violating his body.

He looked to the window but the light felt wrong. Everything felt tilted and fuzzy with tears as the curves of sunlight beat through the window in spiraling prisms of orange and yellow. It felt like he was looking at the room underwater. The air was pressured and dense, cocooning him like a particularly heavy weighted blanket.

Skip was further now, Peter noted with a clenched jaw, touching and hurting and –

It happened the same way it always did.

It felt like years wrapped up into minutes as Skip loomed over his soul like a particularly gruesome shadow.

Skip didn't even acknowledge it happened as he left, his hands leaving scorching trails on Peter's cold, cold, cold skin.

(When Peter was 16 it happened the same way it always did.)