Chapter Summary: A depression is managed - so soft as a storm. He'll drown in his sorrow, he'll never feel warm.

A/N: there is a statement about a religious element that is mocked/insulted mildly but does not necessarily reflect my views. This is from Peter's perspective and I kind of view him as an atheist/agnostic who lives with Christian traditions. I have it in my head that the Peter in this verse prayed for help as a child and never received any and so, even if he did believe in God, he'd really dislike him and believe he was cruel. I know the Peter in the comics prays a few times, but this one won't, and if he will, it will be antagonistic towards God. Again, don't necessarily agree with him, but that's how I view his character. Please know that anything that seems like a diss to religion is not meant as an insult to any of your views or a reflection of how I view religion or God/gods/deities.

It is a blistering heat, this hard-fought sunrise

It rises above the curve of the earth like a reckoning

Balancing on the precipice of nothing

It's weight bears down upon our fragile humanity

He had lost track of the time somewhere around three weeks in.

(It had been a month and no one had said a word about Skip's presence. It had been a month and the demon in their midst continued to thrive off the flesh of Peter – suckling at his soul like he was a particularly ripe fruit.

It had been a month since Skip had arrived, yet here they were.)

"Stark Internship, huh?" Skip questioned with a smirk as Peter sputtered excuses, "Oh, don't even try to lie. I had been wondering if there was something more sinister going on there, but this?"

He laughed, throwing his head back with morbid delight.

"This is so much better than Stark being some kinda Sugar Daddy," he proclaimed, his words slipping like silk off his tongue, deadly and dangerous.

Skip brushed Peter's ear with his lips, speaking in what might have been a seductive voice if it weren't so terrifying to hear, "this is useful, isn't it? I wondered where you ran off to so late and why dear, sweet May would ever let her weak, little boy walk all the way home by himself."

His voice sounded deceptively beautiful sometimes, drawing Peter into some sick state of calm even when his body was wound tight with adrenaline and horror. It fell from Skip's mouth like poisoned wine, sickly sweet and tart all wrapped up in a beautiful sculpture of barbed wire and glimmering fangs.

His words, on the other hand, were as sharp and jagged as shrapnel piercing his chest. The insinuation behind them and the threats lining each syllable never failed to make him clench his fists in a combination of rage and disgust.

(There was always a mark, after. There were always bloody indents scarring his palm for him to trace. A memorial, of sorts. A tribute to his fallen innocence and the hours all blemished by pain.

The marks were wounded crescents left in his skin from his fingernails. The fragile tissue would knit back together fast enough to mock him with that everlasting fact that, 'You aren't human, anymore. You aren't human.'

He would sometimes press into them with his thumb, letting the dull throb of awareness trickle in with the slight pain of it – the slight burn that reminded him that, 'You're still mortal. You're still fallible.' The pain that made him feel alive.)

"I wondered what you were up to," Skip mocked, his eyes narrowed and cold with malicious pleasure, "there could have been so many naughty things you were doing – up so late in the middle of the night like you were. But, being the neighborhood boy scout was unexpected. Though, I guess I can't say I'm surprised."

He leaned back onto the headboard of the bed and examined Peter with a raised eyebrow.

"How'd it happen?" Skip wondered, voice casual and light.

"W-what?" Peter asked, surprised by the question and sudden shift of tone.

He was clutching at his chest tightly as if the fitted fabric of his suit was impeding his breath. He wanted to rip it off, but Skip's glaring eyes seeing him bared and open was a much more terrifying option than the possibility of the constricting material choking him to death.

"Oh, don't be like that Petey Pie," Skip teased unkindly, "you know what I mean. How'd you become Spider-Man? You certainly didn't have any powers last time I saw you. In fact, I distinctly remember you having asthma and being unable to run a mile without fainting."

"U-um," Peter stuttered, wondering if he should say but also knowing that he didn't have a choice either way, "radioactive spider bite."

Skip chuckled, before looking back to Peter's pale and sweaty face and breaking out into greater guffaws.

"You-you're serious?" he asked, though it was clearly rhetorical, "oh that is too funny. And you just couldn't sit by and let people get hurt, could you?"

"With great power comes great responsibility," Peter mumbled, slouching and kicking lightly at the floor with his toe at Skip's condescending tone.

"Ah," Skip nodded sagely, "sanctimonious bullshit. I suppose you want to help others 'cause you can't seem to help yourself. Isn't that right, Peter?"

Peter's posture wilted further inward like a dying flower and he picked at his spandex-clad thigh with a trembling hand. His eyes seared with unshed tears that clung to his eyelashes as if they were the only things that could save them from falling.

(From crashing to the ground like an abandoned satellite hurtling through the atmosphere.)

"Isn't that right, Peter?" Skip repeated, leaning in menacingly.

His words were tight and clipped and Peter straightened his back reflexively in response. He nodded limply and choked a little, grimacing on an unsung sob.

"Well, what do we do now?" he asked and Peter shivered, on the verge of a panic attack with knowing this man – this monster – knew his identity.

"What do we do now?" he echoed, and Peter scathingly thought that he most likely repeated it for dramatic effect.

"You know, I was going to sign off on the new apartment tomorrow," he noted carelessly and Peter felt as though his bones were laden with dread.

"I'd have been out in two days and we'd part it at that. No need to make anyone suspicious. But Peter, you've got enemies. Big ones, ones who don't mind hurting your pretty, little Aunt and ones who won't care that you're a teenager. So where does that bring us?" he inquired, one hand stroking up Peter's leg.

"Do you want me to stay here? Do you want me to protect you, Peter?"

Peter shut his eyes tightly, something in him building as his muscles tensed impossibly tighter.

Skip's mouth brushed his cheek and Peter jumped, pushing himself away from Skip and backing into the wall. He gripped the drywall in his fingers and ground the plaster to dust that gathered and caked beneath his nails. Gouging the wall, he clenched his hand into a fist, collecting the dusty paint and wood in his palm.

"No," he croaked, shaking his head with his eyes clamped tight, "No! No, I don't want that! I want you to leave and never come back! I want you to-o…"

(Too little, too late – it was too late for this now.)

His voice cracked and he started to bawl, curling his arms up to his face and pushing his hot eyes into his forearms as he pulled his hair taut between his fingers.

"I wish," he hiccupped on a loud sob, "I wish I never met you! I wish –"

He moaned and fell to the floor, hiccupping and coughing as he wept. He curved into himself and rocked in a tight ball on the carpet.

"I wish – I wish," he cried.

(He wished. He wished. He wished.

But wishing never worked for anyone and praying was for fools.)

"Oh, if wishes were horses," Skip said, sounding fondly amused.

Peter whined pathetically in response and Skip wrapped his arms around Peter's shoulders, rubbing a deceptively comforting thumb into his sore muscles. Peter leaned into the touch, blind with tears and a heady adrenaline rush of distress.

He tried not to feel comforted by it.

(He wasn't sure it worked.)

When Peter woke up, it was to the smell of pancakes and Skip's cologne seeped into his bedsheets.

He blinked blearily against the bright grey light of the day, squinting at the dark clouds hanging heavily against the Queens skyline. Looking around confusedly, he propped himself on his elbow and massaged his forehead with his thumb and forefinger. His head pounded from the light and he stumbled out of his blankets to close the curtains.

He always closed the curtains so he was confused at the brightness invading his room through his open window.

(He was also confused about his open window.)

Shivering through his boxers and wishing for his regular pajamas, he shuffled to the wall and pulled his blinds shut. Sighing in relief, he stumbled back to his bed and curled into the warmth of his blanket, pressing his fists into his eyes and rubbing the sleep out of them, harshly.

He wondered if sleep would ever make him feel rested again.

(He wondered what would happen next.)

There was a bruise on his wrist from where Skip had grabbed on his arm too harshly, tugging the frozen and bawling teen towards his destruction. Skip's eyes had widened then, and he had rushed to the freezer to retrieve an ice pack to soothe the injury, muttering apologies along the way.

(There is a fine line between hate and love. Peter tried not to feel like that was love.)

He had held Peter as he cried, massaging at his forearm and whispering sweet nothings like he cared.

(For a moment, it felt like he had.)

But, then.

(But, then. But, but, but –

There was always a 'but'.)

Skip had chuckled a little, and said, "good thing it's October. Long sleeves in summer would be pretty suspicious, wouldn't it?"

And Peter had remembered, like a rush of waves returning to the sea from their brief vacation to the shore. Peter remembered his hate to this one man.

(Peter remembered his soul all crushed to splinters under Skip's heel.)

Peter remembered everything – what this was all about.

(What was this all about? What was its purpose, anyway?)

Peter remembered that nothing about this – about Skip rubbing ice into his wounds and kissing his tears away – nothing about this was for him.

This was about selfishness.

This was lined with hate and Peter never wanted to confuse that with love.

He thought it might have been easier had he not known that this act could be done for love. He thought it was so much harder to know that some hands could feel softer than Skip's strange and scary touches. He thought of the pain in his chest and ached because it could have been love.

(It could have been love, and that made it so much worse.)

He thought of first kisses and held onto the emptiness in his heart when he realized that his was stolen at 9 years old. He thought of the ideals of virginity and purity and sobbed for he could not have it.

He couldn't and he didn't think he ever would.

(This would never be love.

It was hate.)

Wrapping the blanket tightly around his shoulders, he huddled into himself and waddled clumsily to the kitchen. His wrist, stained a mottled blue and purple, poked out of the mass around his body like a skeleton's as he reached for the fridge handle, ignoring the lukewarm pancakes spread on the counter.

(He was supposed to heal quickly. He was supposed to see pink-ish skin all silken and supple reach out from muscular arms.)

He looked at his arm and frowned at the grey tone of his skin clinging tight to his fragile bones. He had lost weight, he knew that, but he supposed it was more than he had thought.

(He wondered when people would notice and tried not to think that they might not care enough to see.)

Rustling through the fridge, he sighed and walked back to his room – not hungry, it seemed.

(He was never hungry anymore.)

Skip was at church on Sunday mornings like this. He wanted to be thankful for it – and some lonely part of him was – but he mostly despised it. He mostly wanted to scream at the man, to yell and curse his sin.

(To face the devil head-on and break him with his mighty fists.

But he sometimes wondered who the devil was in the first place. Was he the devil, all tied up in wickedness? Was he a friend to the evil in man? Or was he just a victim of circumstance, falling to hellfire and succumbing to its brutality?

The devil sometimes whispered to him – whispered cruelly in his ear and asked him if he was strong enough for all this. Asked him if it was even worth it to keep moving.

He didn't know the answer yet.)

Grabbing a towel from the linen closet and some pajamas, he trudged his tired body to the bathroom, praying to a God that he didn't believe in for some meaning.

(And everybody laughed inside his head. 'Prayers,' they said, the voices mocking and mean, 'aren't meaningful at all.'

He wondered how they could all fit in there – the devil on his shoulder and the angel in his heart. He wondered where they all came from, so cruel inside his mind.)

Fumbling with the faucet, he shakily turned the water on as high as it could go. Watching it fill, he poured a large dollop of bubble solution into the tub and foamed the soap with his hands. The muggy room filled with the scent of eucalyptus and he tried not to feel suffocated by the steam.

(He keeps trying. He tries and he tries and he tries.

But nothing he does really matters, does it?)

It was close to the top when he turned the stream off. Swishing his hand through the warmth, he settled into the water and it wrapped around him like a cocoon. His eyes scrunched tightly against the warm suds and he pressed his lips closed in a thin line to block any of the liquid and bubbles from reaching his mouth.

The water was hot, hotter than some would deem acceptable, and it tingled painfully across his skin like a wildfire. It made his skin itch with discomfort that almost felt like a punishment.

(He wondered if he deserved it.)

Peter had always felt like there was some spark in him that just couldn't die and he had thought that that might have meant something. Peter had thought it had meant that he mattered – that there was something meaningful in his life.

It was like there was an ember sitting stubbornly in the dying flame of his heart. It was like he wouldn't give up hope, wouldn't vanish into dust.

And that had made him feel invincible.

But when even that sole ember sputters and leaves only a faintly glowing piece of ash, was that really a will to live? Would that tiny, little spark that had once been so vibrant be able to power the same kind spirit it had before?

Peter was tired – a tiredness that didn't bloom from his body, but his soul.

Peter was so very tired. The kind of tired that made you want to fall asleep and never wake up. The kind of tired where life seemed like a blur and anything of importance seemed startlingly trivial, but overwhelming all the same.

The kind of tired where breathing felt like tremendous effort and where he thought his lungs might crumble from the weight of his chest.

He didn't necessarily want to die, but he didn't want to live either. It was like apathy had rooted itself in his heart, leeching away the life out of his bones. He didn't want to die, no, but he sure as hell wasn't living.

He hadn't been living for months.

He sometimes imagined falling asleep and never waking up again. It made him smile, his lips cracking across his face like a fracture in his skin.

But, again, he didn't want to die – just fade away. There was a much larger difference than people thought. It was as if something was perpetually lodged in his throat, weighing down his chest and stealing away his air. It felt like every breath he breathed in was missing something. Like he was choking on nothing but still attaining his required oxygen.

He didn't know if it was words knotting in his lungs, tying his ribcage tight and locking up his veins. He didn't know if he was at the precipice of panic just waiting to be felled.

He just knew that every breath felt like splinters were diving into his soul, and a corset clenched taut upon his body, obstructing the very movement of his torso. Even though his breaths remained steady, his chest felt like it was stuttering in its confines.

Even breathing felt like a chore.

(When he goes, how far will he go? Will he snap like a brittle bamboo stock bent too far?

Will he crash and burn with it, falling like a disgraced angel to the depths of hell below?)

He remembered praying before the call of the universe had swayed his faith into little more than a forgotten dream. He remembered clasped hands and wet eyes screaming at God to save him and being unsurprised when no one answered.

Peter had always been practical.

(Strings are binding his hands together and he has knelt like he has sat down for prayer, but he cannot pray anymore to the nothingness that resonates through him – through the universe.

It had let him down far too many times.)

He wanted to stay beneath the water and slowly flicker out. He wanted to be a lightbulb at the end of its life, short-circuiting on forgotten and rusty wires.

He wanted to fade away.

Some people took showers, some went days without washing.

Peter liked to submerge himself in bathwater and pretend he was drowning.

(When Peter was 16-years-old, he was chopped down from his perch, falling to depression and despair. When Peter was 16, he lost his will to live.)