Chapter Text
Peter doesn’t notice until he’s washing up and some of the splatters won’t come off. They’re small, faint, and look just like the acrylic paint he’s been using all afternoon. It’s not unusual for him to have rainbow flecks up his arms, ink between his fingers, charcoal smudges on his nose. Your stereotypical artist. But these won’t come off no matter how hard he scrubs.
Peter drops the nail brush in the utility sink, stunned.
It’s soulstain.
He’s only seen it on other people. You only get it after you’ve met your soulmate. Some people never get it at all. These splatters, whatever they are, belong to someone else. It means that the water still dripping down Peter’s hands is on someone else’s hands, too, right now, somewhere in the world.
“May!” Peter yells, voice cracking on the vowel.
He can’t believe this is happening. Peter doesn’t even know who it is or when it happened and he’s so excited right now that he might pass out.
May runs into the makeshift art studio they converted from the apartment’s laundry room. Her hair is half up, makeup partially on. She’s getting ready for another twelve hour graveyard shift at the hospital. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Look!” Peter shoves his hands in her face.
She takes an exasperated step back. “What am I looking at?”
“They’re not mine.” Peter breathes, lowering his arms to inspect the splatters again. They’re red, but soulstain always appears muted. Peter can’t decide if the color is more ruby or scarlet. He touches one of them tentatively. It doesn’t feel like anything. It’s just there. Existing.
Wow.
“Really?” May bends forward, squinting behind her glasses. “That’s not paint?”
“N-no. At least, it’s not mine. Maybe they’re an artist too?”
And wouldn’t that be something. Peter tries to imagine it, working all day next to someone, side by side, in this cramped little room while they create beautiful things together. Playfully flicking a watercolor brush at them and then darting away. Drawing lopsided hearts on their cheek with the leftover charcoal on his fingers.
Peter’s chest squeezes. He wants that. He wants that so bad.
May squeals and pulls him into a hug, dancing them around in circles. Peter laughs and pushes her away. He’s still wearing his apron and it’s always a mess after a session.
“I’ll get paint all over you.”
“I don’t care. This is so exciting!” May cups his cheek in one of her hands. “I’m so happy for you.”
“I don’t even know who it is.”
And he really doesn’t. No idea. It has to be someone he met today, but they could have just passed each other on the street when he went out to buy coffee. Over eight million people live in New York. It could be anyone.
May plucks a paintbrush from the bucket of clean water next to the utility sink. She presents it to him like a queen bestowing a sword to a knight. “Use this and ask.”
--
Tony hates blood. It’s sticky and hard to get out of your clothes and it smells. Usually he leaves extraction to Natasha, but she was unavailable. In Tokyo to deal with some Yakuza. So Tony had to get his own hands dirty.
The man strapped to the chair in front of him groans, head hanging limply against his chest. Blood and other fluids drip down to swirl into the rusted metal drain built into the concrete floor. Tony’s lip curls and he turns away.
“Take care of that.” He says to no one in particular, waving a dismissive hand. It’s not his problem any more. Someone else can deal with it. He doesn’t care who.
Pepper offers a rag when he exits the room. It’s damp. “And? Did you find out who stole the shipment?”
Tony wipes his hands clean as he walks, the sound of Pepper’s stilettos following him down the hall. “Justin Hammer, as we suspected.”
“He must be getting desperate to go this far. Do you want me to arrange a meet?”
“No.” Tony shakes his head, tossing the dirty rag on the ground. Housekeeping will find it later. “That’ll just tip him off.”
Pepper delicately steps over it without a word as Tony stabs the button to call the elevator. It dings open immediately. “So what’s our next move?”
“We make an example of him. I don’t want more shits like Hammer getting any ideas. It’s time to remind this city what it means when you fuck with the Merchant of Death.” Tony leans back against the elevator walls. They’re lined in velvet.
“Penthouse, sir?” JARVIS asks over the intercom. “My scans detect biological matter on your suit.”
Pepper answers for him. “Yes, thank you, JARVIS.”
Tony closes his eyes and listens to the elevator music on the ride up. It’s an instrumental cover of AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds. Tension radiates from his shoulders the whole way.
“I’ll wait for you here, shall I?” Pepper says when they arrive at the penthouse, taking a seat on the half-moon couch. Her laptop is already open and on and she begins typing without waiting for a response.
Tony stalks off to the bathroom. The shower is running and the room is full of steam when he enters. A fresh towel is folded on the counter next to a sweating glass of whiskey. Pepper really is worth the millions he pays her.
He strips and throws the whiskey back in one shot. The liquid burns down his throat, scrubbing him clean from the inside. He steps into the shower and lets the scalding water also burn him. Eyes closed, the water sprays directly onto his face, through his hair, and down across the scars crisscrossing his spine. A satisfied rumble vibrates in his chest.
Tony needed this. Next time he’ll just wait for Nat to come home. He’s never had a taste for hitting someone who can’t hit back. It feels dirty. Even if it is necessary sometimes.
He only notices the message when he pours soap into his hand. The words are small and carefully painted down the length of his forearm in neat cursive.
Hi, I’m Peter Parker. Who are you?
Tony blinks water out of his eyes and stares. This cannot be happening. He’s too old for this shit.
Pepper’s mouth falls open when he storms back into the living room, naked and dripping all over the marble foyer. Modesty is the last thing Tony is concerned with right now. She’s seen worse.
“Pepper,” He barks, “Find out who Peter Parker is immediately.”
--
Peter obsessively checks his arm the rest of the day. The only sign of his soulmate had been the rivulets of water that sluiced over his entire body right after he wrote the message, an echo of a shower. Peter watched in rapt fascination and bated breath, waiting for a response that never came.
He eventually forced himself to sleep, trying not to think about what the silence might mean. Hoping he’ll wake up to something.
He doesn’t.
In the morning his arm only contains the remnants of his own words. They flaked away during the night, littering his bedsheets with indigo paint chips. Peter swallows his disappointment. It’s bitter and tastes like rejection.
Maybe he should write a new one. Maybe they didn’t see it. Maybe-
Peter stops anxiously ringing his hands together in his lap. The sunlight filtering in through his bedroom window highlights a dark shadow on his knuckles. It’s mottled purple. Bruised. Peter rubs his thumb over the knuckle of his pointer finger, where the discoloration is the worst.
His soulmate is not an artist like him, then. That wasn’t paint sprayed up his arm yesterday. It was blood. His soulmate punched someone. Repeatedly, for their knuckles to look like this.
The concept should scare him, but it doesn’t. Not even a little. Peter just wishes he could help. It probably hurts.
--
The kid paints ice cubes across his knuckles. Tony watches them appear, one by one, while his hand grips the steering wheel of his Audi e-tron. They’re misshapen and partially melted. Realistic. He tries not to find it cute.
Pepper produced a file on Peter Parker late last night with only a confused frown. An adult by law but really just a kid, living in Queens with his aunt. Their age gap is laughable. It’s larger than Peter has been alive. And according to the file, he’s a good kid. The best. Impeccable grades with an even more impeccable community service record. An art prodigy.
Tony won’t go near that with a ten foot pole. Not even he’s that messed up. Tony would ruin him.
So he did the only sensible thing any man could. He locked the file in his safe, swore Pepper to secrecy on what little she knew, and drowned himself in whiskey. Covered the question on his arm and tried to forget Peter Parker’s pretty face. It mostly worked. Once Tony finally passed out.
He has nothing to show for it this morning, except for a foul mood and a fouler headache.
Something starts to form above the ice cubes, along his middle metacarpal. It’s an impression of lips, full and gently pursed into a kiss. As if to take the pain away from the bruising. Tony nearly swerves into oncoming traffic.
This kid is going to kill him.
He flips an illegal U-turn, ignoring the cacophony of angry horns. His meeting with Rhodey can wait. He needs to invest in a pair of gloves. Now.
--
It’s been two months. Every day Peter sends something new, nothing long, just a tiny snippet. He mixes up the placement and the media. Sometimes it’s a watercolor mandala on his thigh with a few encouraging words in the center like have a good day or thinking of you. Sometimes it’s ink doodles between his fingers, stick figures waving hello or shooting stars trailing behind make a wish.
And every day it’s the same. No response. Silence.
Peter eats a bit less, strains to smile a bit more, and perseveres. He has to. There must be a reason why they’re silent. Even if it hurts, even if Peter doesn’t understand it and his heart is a little broken, they’re soulmates and Peter has to remind them that he’s here. He’s not going away. He won’t.
He’s currently sitting on the bathroom counter in nothing but his boxers, painting a bouquet of wildflowers on the bottoms of his feet. They’re pressed together in the basin of the sink while Peter works. The stems run along the arches and broaden into blooms across his toes. The brush tickles, just a bit, and Peter struggles not to squirm. He’s meticulous, methodical. Doesn’t let himself think that this gift will probably go unanswered too. Because gifts should be freely given without expectation.
He’s so engrossed in the painting, humming a tuneless song to himself, that he doesn’t notice the soulstain until movement in the vanity’s reflection catches his eye. A movement that’s not his. Peter pauses mid-brushstroke and glances up. There’s a shadow of a hand sliding up his bicep, and then another gripping onto his waist.
Oh, no-
More soulstain appears. First a mouth and then what looks like teeth, nipping at the skin below his collarbone. Peter’s palms darken as his soulmate touches the other person back.
No, no, no-
The wood handle of his favorite paintbrush snaps in half. The broken pieces clatter into the sink basin, next to his feet still covered in wildflowers.
The mouth slides lower, leaving a trail of coral lipstick, and bites again. And again. Hickeys slowly bloom across Peter’s chest. His eyes sting as he watches each appear. He can’t look away.
Please, no-
The hands caress everything in their path, leaving behind residue of a clear substance on Peter’s skin. Slipping lower and lower while all Peter can do is watch in mute horror. Until the shadows disappear beneath his boxers. Until that mouth is probably tasting Peter’s soulmate right now.
He whines, high and distressed. Shattered. He finally squeezes his eyes shut.
He doesn’t want to see. Doesn’t want to know.
He’s not sure how long he sits there. How long he waits for it to be over. He’s terrified of opening his eyes too soon and seeing it again. At least May is working another graveyard shift. If she found him, if she saw him like this, begging under his breath for it to stop-
Peter opens his eyes. The hands are gone. Only the hickeys remain as a reminder that it happened at all.
Relief washes over him, quickly followed by a wave of white hot fury. It floods his veins, straightens his spine. His jaw clenches so tight that it aches. Peter swipes a shaking hand over the bottoms of his feet, smearing the wildflowers as he coats his fingers in the oily paint. He drags it across his chest, over and over until he’s covered in a muddled mess of colors like a tragic Monet.
Then Peter finally let’s himself cry.
--
The messages stop. Tony shouldn’t miss them, shouldn’t want them back. But god help him, he does. They were the one spec of brightness in the never ending darkness of Tony’s life.
Sure, he might have taken them for granted at first. Hid them away under layers of clothing. Tried to pretend he didn’t secretly covet each one in the privacy of his bed at night and think about the person on the other end. Busied himself with publicly destroying Justin Hammer and anyone else associated with Hammer’s pathetic gang (it didn’t take long; Natasha and Pepper are nothing if not efficient). When it was over, when Hammer sniveled and swore retribution, Tony drank so much that he couldn’t think anything at all.
And then the messages stopped.
Tony knows why. Knows what he did. Knows exactly what fucking someone else would do to someone like Peter Parker. And he did it anyway. Did it on purpose.
Tony didn’t think he would regret it this much.
--
Peter picks at his food while MJ and Ned chat about college. Ned no longer has classes on Fridays (something about Professor Vanko disappearing a few months ago without notice and his university couldn’t find a replacement) and MJ is home for the weekend from MIT. They unceremoniously kidnapped him for dim sum the moment MJ arrived back in town.
“How’s the showcase coming along, Peter?” Ned asks around a mouthful of pork bun, shoving an elbow into MJ’s side when she mutters gross.
“Ok, I guess. It’s taking longer than I would have wanted.” Peter hasn’t been happy with any of his pieces lately. They’re not coming out right. They feel stagnant and stale and uninspired.
MJ tilts her head. “Isn’t it only a few months away?”
“I can’t wait!” Ned grins when Peter nods. There’s something green in his teeth, like a piece of bok choy or seaweed. MJ points it out with a grimace before Peter can warn him. Ned flushes and uses the camera on his phone like a mirror to remove it with a fingernail.
“May gave us advanced tickets. She said the gallery is already sold out.” MJ casually stirs her matcha milk tea with a compostable straw, swirling the yellow boba at the bottom into a miniature whirpool. “She also said she has an extra.”
Peter’s lungs constrict. He hasn’t told them, so he attempts to play it off. “May might bring a date.”
MJ stares. Her gaze is flat. Damn. He clears his throat nervously and maintains eye contact. He really, really doesn’t want to talk about this.
And then her eyes widen, shifting diagonal on his face. Ned sees it too. He quickly snaps a photo with his phone and shows the screen to Peter.
“What the heck is that?”
It’s blood. Dark and fresh, oozing from a gash that’s just split open along the top of his left cheekbone.
“I-it’s nothing.” Peter stammers, jolting out of his chair. “I have to g-go.”
He ignores their protests as he runs out of the restaurant.
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. He’s noticed other injuries before. Like the bruises on his knuckles. Or the faded scars crisscrossing his back. Those were the worst. Most of the time they’re small, nothing serious. But the injuries occur often enough that Peter suspects his soulmate has questionable hobbies, a dangerous job, or both. And May’s a nurse. He knows what a graze from a bullet looks like.
Heart pounding, Peter ducks into an empty alleyway. He strips down to his briefs behind a dumpster, mindlessly tossing his clothes onto the ground so he can inspect the rest of his body.
Nothing. There’s nothing else. Thank god.
Peter’s knees are like jello. He’s been angry and jealous and confused but-
It appears so suddenly that Peter swears he can actually feel it. A hole punches through the front of his abdomen and out the back. It immediately erupts with blood, cascading down his hips and dripping off his knee like a crimson waterfall. Peter moans in alarm and covers the wound with both hands as if he can stop the bleeding.
For a moment Peter’s not sure what else to do. He just stands there, frozen and hyperventilating. Useless. His mind is vacant with panic. Then the blood begins to flow through his fingers and Peter realizes his soulmate must be holding the wound, now, too.
It spurs Peter back into action. He grapples with his jacket on the ground, frantically rummaging in the inside pocket to pull out the mini sketch pad that he takes with him everywhere in case he’s struck by inspiration. Attached to it is a ballpoint pen. His fingers tremble so violently that he can’t remove the cap, so he rips it off with his teeth.
The ink skitters and jumps across his skin in his haste to write, inconsistently flowing from the nib. There’s at least enough to form mostly legible words on the back of his hand.
Where R U?
Peter’s tries to keep his expectations low. They might already be on their way to the hospital. They might not even be conscious anymore. At least Peter knows they’re still alive. Soulstain disappears when you’re dead.
So he waits.
And waits.
Almost ten minutes pass before the first letter appears on Peter’s stomach, bloated and painted in his soulmate’s blood. It takes almost five more for the message to be finished. A location.
The breath Peter’s been holding surges out in a dizzying whoosh.
--
Peter is prettier than the photo in Tony’s file. He’s flushed and sweaty and real as he bursts through the back door of the pub that Tony is hiding in. His eyes are frantic until they settle on him, collapsed on the sticky parquet floor. Tony’s back is resting against the bar counter, suit jacket and white dress shirt hanging open over his chest. He holds a half empty bottle of Tullamore DEW in one hand and a lit cigar in the other.
If Peter is shocked to learn that his soulmate is both a man and a much older one at that, it doesn’t show on his face. He drops to his knees by Tony’s side, breathing heavily from exertion. “What happened?”
Tony’s wry isn’t it obvious earns him an unamused frown. Even that expression is attractive. Tony likes how the corners of his lips pull down and his nose crinkles. Despite his best effort, all it took was one minute in this kid’s presence for Tony to be summarily charmed.
Without asking for permission, Peter lifts up a corner of the bar rag that Tony doused in vodka and pressed against his abdomen. He winces at the sight of the jagged hole, even though Tony knows he’s already seen a mirror of it on his own body. “Why didn’t you call the police?”
Tony snorts and Peter’s frown deepens. His eyes are a warm, doe brown, reflecting sparks of gold when they catch the dim light leaking in through the boarded up windows. Tony turns away and knocks back a long pull from the whiskey bottle. It sloshes in his unsteady grip and some of it spills down into his neatly trimmed beard. Tony tells himself it’s the blood loss making him lightheaded.
“Ok, no police.” Peter mutters, replacing the rag over the wound. “What do you want me to do?”
Tony wants to invent a time machine and prevent this clusterfuck of a day from ever happening. Wants to jump Ivan Vanko before he jumped them. Wants to forget the memory of Maria Hill’s dead body crumpled in the street where he left her.
“Do you have a phone?” Tony asks instead. His is broken. It took the bullet meant for his heart.
“Um, yeah.” Peter digs a flip phone out of the back pocket of his jeans. They’re ripped at the knee and discolored with what looks like old paint. “Here.”
Tony dials Pepper’s number while puffing on his cigar. The smoke tastes like hickory and clove and adrenaline. She picks up on the third ring.
“Who the hell is this?”
Tony rolls his eyes. She must be terrified. She never swears.
“Relax, Nagatha Christie. I’m fine.” Tony pointedly ignores Peter mouthing you don’t look fine. “Come get me.”
He hangs up and texts her the address with instructions to bring Helen Cho, thumbs leaving bloody fingerprints on the keyboard. He thinks about wiping it off before handing it back to Peter, but decides it’s not worth the effort. He’ll buy him a new one. That brick dinosaur should have died in the Cretaceous Period.
“Make yourself comfortable. The cavalry will be here soon.”
Peter cautiously slides into position next to him on the floor until his legs are straight and pressed into the flesh of Tony’s thigh. His cheeks are flushed an adorable shade of pink.
Fuck it.
Tony slings an arm around his shoulders to pull him closer. His smaller frame fits perfectly against Tony’s side, like a puzzle piece slotting home. Slowly, carefully, Peter rests his head on Tony’s bare chest, right over his heart. He sighs happily and Tony shivers.
They sit quietly together for a time, comforted by the sound of their own breathing. Tony lets his mind wander, as it often does. It doesn’t take him long to conclude that he will never let Peter go. He knows when to admit defeat. It feels a lot like love.
Peter’s curls tickle as he cranes his neck to look up at Tony’s face. “Who are you?”
Tony leans down to whisper his name against Peter’s lips.
--