Chapter Text
The video starts, as all Christine Everhart Truth Seeker interviews do, with a black-and-white montage of paparazzi footage of her subject.
Peter Parker, unlike many actors and artists out there, has a limited pool of candid video. He’s of the reclusive kind, despite the Internet constantly wanting more of him.
Fortunately, Christine’s thorough. She’s an old hat at the tabloid game. The first footage is almost ten years old now, a short video capturing Peter Parker somersaulting over a rundown car in Queens, another, a backflip against a wall. Then, an angle from behind a filming crew as he falls off a second story window and rolls into a pose, arms out stretched, chin barely clipping against his bent knee he braced for landing. The director yells CUT!, then Parker is being helped up by the actor he’s doing stunt work for.
The montage picks up, showing clips of Peter’s earlier roles on HBO and a few pap photos from his early days in LA, where he was constantly serving as a shield for the infamous Gwen Stacy. There’s a voiceover now, a racket of different voices saying his name—as a video of his first Met Gala appearance plays, photos of his Ralph Lauren spread, then a video of Peter leaving a club with a small group—Harry Osborn leading the charge. The audio starts mentioning main role, Tony Stark, directorial debut, and—there they are.
The pap photos, in New York. Leaving the penthouse, entering a high-end restaurant, getting on a helicopter.
There’s a clip of the film. Peter Parker lets out a bloodcurdling scream in front of filming cameras, then he curls into himself on the foul-looking floor, shaking erratically.
Behind the cameras, Tony Stark’s lips curl slightly. Good. Cut, his cool, dismissive voice speaks over the voiceover, and the montage ends.
The screen goes black for a few seconds, before it brightens into Christine Everhart’s podcast studio. It’s a coffee-warm studio—objectively tasteful, despite the mustard yellow sectional. Christine herself sits to the right, her long, blond hair swept to the side, so the audience can clearly see her warm, teethy smile. Peter Parker sits to the left of the sofa, rigid, looking like he bit into a lemon.
“Good morning, truth seekers,” Christine starts, and Peter visibly jerks next to her. “Ready to hear it?
“Ten years ago, as I love to boast, I exposed Hollywood tycoon Tony Stark for his mistreatment of personnel on the sets of the Agent Red franchise. Over time, the world forgave him, thought he was a changed man as he professed taking responsibility for his actions. We saw signs of the Hollywood royal taking his career seriously and respecting his fellow artists, but… What if I were to tell you it has all been a farce? That Tony Stark continues to be a cancer in the entertainment industry? Being a worser monster than we had originally been exposed to? Well today, in front of me, on my infamous yellow sofa, sits Academy Award-winning Peter Parker to tell us more. Peter is best known to the world for his roles as Edwin Wallace, the troubled protagonist in the thriller Portrait of a Spider Lily, Tony Stark’s directorial debut. He’s also known for his soul-crushing portrayal of Will Crafton in the British indie film Salto. The former film got Peter his first ever Best Actor nomination and win, and Tony Stark, his best Director award two years ago, before Peter disappeared, quite jarringly many say, from public view. The latter film just hit theaters nationwide, and has already received several nominations for the upcoming award season.
“Now, Peter, the British film Salto came as a surprise to many. You were a well-kept secret during production and filming—no one was aware that you were the lead. Everything was done abroad, a private gymnastic center in the south of France, with a supporting cast of seasoned British and French actors and no American in sight. Your face in the trailer sent the Internet into a craze, and your tweet replying to the official trailer, and I quote—‘This might as well be my biopic, smiley-face’, imploded social media, and has driven thousands upon thousands in droves to the theaters these past two months. For good reason, of course, your co-star Olivier de Beauvoir, who plays your character’s ruthless and abusive coach, could be Tony Stark’s long-lost twin.
“It’s been three months to the day of your infamous tweet, from which you never offered any clarification, but today, you promised the world that you would expand on it and more. Now, before we get into the thick of this… It’s been some time since the public has laid their eyes on you, Mr. Parker, hasn’t it? You had cheeks two years ago, rosy and full. That seems to be the trend these days—leave the screen, come back three full sizes smaller.”
Peter just stares at her unblinkingly. “Is that a question, Christine?”
“It’s an observation,” she says, all smiles. “Is it to make a comeback more appealing to the entertainment business? We all know heroin chic is unfortunately back in Hollywood.”
“This relates to Mis—Tony—how? I thought this was your long-awaited exposé sequel on him. Not me.”
“It’s okay to have several motives in this business, Peter. I plan to get your story. All of it. Good and bad. You can bring down Tony while simultaneously taking his place.”
“I don’t want to—” The screen closes-up on Peter letting out a small scoff. “My publicist warned me about doing this with you.”
“Why?” Christine seems to genuinely ask. The screen pans to her. “I’m the best. I expose truths people are afraid to admit. And I’ll do anything to expose corruption and abusers of power. Dare I say—the world would be better off without them…” The journalist pauses, tilting her head, giving him an inquisitive smile, “Don’t you think so, too?”
The screen quickly captures a smile from Peter, the first he breaks since entering the studio. “Yeah… That’s why I ended up choosing you.”
It takes about an hour and a half after the Truth Seeker podcast episode premieres on Christine Everhart’s socials. By then, the YouTube video version has reached a million views and then some. The clip farming on social media has officially breached pop culture containment; Aunt May called twice in the past ten minutes, causing Murdock to set her contact to DND. MJ’s PA had confirmed that the TV at the café two blocks away had lit up with his red-carpet headshots alongside Stark’s own.
His phone vibrates from the center of the table, between him, and Murdock and MJ on the other side of table. Peter eyes MJ, who stops monitoring her own phone, and waits until she gives him a stern nod. He swipes the screen to answer the call and taps on the speaker button.
“I’m suing you both for libel,” Stark’s voice fills the room with electric current and an immediate tension that could slice Peter’s head off. Peter tucks his hands between his thighs and the chair and tries not to collapse at the sound of Stark’s anger. He doesn’t know if he wants to yell, apologize, beg, die—his eyes flicker up for help. He feels tears well up, fuck—he hasn’t heard Mr. Stark’s voice in so long, oh god. Murdock’s already leaning against the edge of the table, turning the phone’s speaker towards him.
“You can’t sue for libel, Mr. Stark. You will lose that fight quick. Peter possesses verifiable evidence—”
“Who the fuck is that?”
Murdock scowls, opens his mouth, but Peter beats him to it. “That’s my lawyer,” Peter blurts out, hoping that sounded as firm as it did in his head.
Peter hears the man laugh hysterically over the line, like he’s about to corner Peter against a wall, making him beg for absolution, but he can’t. He can’t. He’s far away. Probably California. Or somewhere in the Caribbean. Tony hates New York winters. God, Peter wants to both drop to his knees and stab him in the ribs, at the same time if he can. “You were prepared for this, of course you were.” Tony sounds almost impressed. “You’re smart underneath it all, aren’t you, kid?”
Peter feels like the color red. Furious, humiliated, hot, horny, all of the above.
“Did you call just to harass my client?” MJ says then, tapping the phone to face her person.
There’s a pause on the other side of the line, but Tony recovers quickly. “Ah. Michelle Jones. How’s Stacy doing?”
Peter watches MJ’s eyes go wide before narrowing into an equally enraged scowl as Murdock. It only occurs to Peter then that he probably chose the worst team possible to deal with a Tony Stark confrontation. Mr. Stark has a particular, singular talent of getting under people’s skin. And MJ and Murdock are very receptive to that sort of skill—too receptive sometimes. All the time. Always.
“Mind if I talk to Peter alone?” Mr. Stark adds and MJ and Murdock deliver the sternest noes Peter’s heard in his life.
“We’ll file a restraining order,” MJ says.
“Over what? Did you even vet what the kid said to Everhart? He even said he started everything. Where is she, huh? She there, too? Yoohoo, Christine, didn’t know you were still pining over me. It’s been ten years, baby. Get over it.”
“She’s not here,” Peter speaks up, his heart racing all over again.
“Ah, he speaks. Kid, come on, get Robert Kardashian and Tree out of there. Let’s talk. You can think for yourself, can’t you, pup?”
“Tony Stark—”
“You have no right—”
Oh, fuck this—Peter swipes the phone off the table and mad dashes to the bathroom down the hall, to MJ and Murdock’s dismay. He hears their chairs scrape against the floor as he locks the door behind him, his legs turning into jelly in an instant, the bravado seeping out of him in milliseconds. He sinks down against the door and tries to will his hand from shaking so much. He nears his cell to his mouth and breathes out, “Fuck. You.”
“Yeah, I got that. Your little tantrum with Christine? Overkill. Unnecessary.”
“Peter, open this—”
“It’s all true, and you know it,” Peter scrambles to say, to sound assured and vengeful and strong. “You—you deserve to be exposed, and I don’t regret exposing you. I—”
“Oh, you will,” Tony says, without missing a beat. So self-assured and commanding, that Peter’s breath shutters in his chest.
It starts to ache. The walls he’s built up, the reinforcement he’s built to deal with this exact thing—Tony. Tony’s voice, Tony’s arrogance, his power, his dominion over all things Peter. He can’t fight this, he can’t—It hurts to fight, to go against his order, his law—
“Oh, fuck you!” Peter yells, just to silence the desperation surging inside him. The desperation wants attention; it will do anything to invoke Stark’s undivided attention. “God!” The door behind him shakes even more, a frantic, angry cacophony of Peters and open the doors. “You think I wanted to—to be this? You fucked me up, Mr. Stark, God, fuck—”
“Ah,” the man drawls, and there’s something in the intonation that makes Peter shudder, shiver, melt, combust. “I see.” Peter’s breath catches, as the man’s tone turns darker, cruel. “But didn’t you want this, Pete? To be at my feet? That’s what you told me. I remember you begging for it.”
“Mr. Stark.”
“Hm?” The deep, vibrating hum against his sensitive ear goes directly south.
Peter twitches, toes curling inside his socks. Can’t hold back the unexpected whine. The shaking behind him abruptly stops. An enraged thefuck?, then the doorknob rattles like a stampede.
“Nn-no,” Peter breathes out, trying not to lose himself to, to—“I told you I was yours, and you disposed of me. You let me go. You left me alone. I was—I was alone, you asshole. So yeah, fuck you. Enjoy my so-called fucking tantrum.”
Tony laughs again. “You want to be mine? Fine. Alright. Be careful what you wish for.”
And before Peter can think of anything to say to that ominous threat, the call disconnects.
The next morning, when Peter descends the stairs to the first floor of his home, the open-concept space appears to be an aftermath of a war between screens and sheets of paper. Somewhere behind a door left ajar, he hears the scanning and printing sounds of a printer he forgot he owned.
“Hey, coffee?” Ned—his PA, is the first to notice him. He’s the only one in Peter’s line of sight, at least. Peter shakes his head mutely and vaguely signals the casualty littered along the kitchen counter, the round table, and the living room’s coffee table and couches. He hears a murmured conversation from somewhere—the hallway’s bathroom maybe. “Oh, yeah, everyone was here this morning—”
“Everyone?”
“Yeah,” Ned doesn’t elaborate. “Michelle Jones’s still in your office though.”
Peter hears MJ raise her voice—in heavily accented Spanish. She must be talking to someone on Morales’s team, if he had to guess. He nods, already eyeing a lone Starbucks paper bag next to the stovetop. “Is that for me?”
Ned notices it, peeks inside—“Almond croissant. I’ll give you half if you don’t tell your nutritionist I gave it to you.”
“Deal. Ms. Everhart basically diagnosed me with an eating disorder yesterday. Fuck my nutritionist.”
“Hell yeah,” Ned gives him a bright smile. He slides it across the counter separating them, and Peter catches it before it falls to the floor. “Sorry for being out yesterday. I know it was a big day—”
“Dude, come on, you guys had a sonogram. Don’t apologize. How’s Betty?”
“Everything’s good. Baby’s good, but, dude—how are you? I mean, fuck Tony Stark, geesh.”
“I know,” Peter sags against the counter and wolfs down the cold, gummy pastry. He feels his face getting warm, remembering how agonizingly quick he fell apart in Tony’s auditory presence. It was just his voice, god, he’s done for. “MJ’s assistant told you how he threatened to sue me?”
Ned makes a pained expression. “Uh, but he did.”
“What? No, he didn’t.”
“Yeah, he did. Everyone was—wait, you don’t know?”
Peter stares at him.
Ned scrambles to pull out his phone and Peter rushes to jump over the counter to get to his side. From across the living room, MJ swings open the office door. She’s dressed in a blood red pantsuit, the rage emanating from her body almost palatable in the air. Peter’s stomach drops to the floor as she storms towards them.
“Tony Stark sued the fucking movie,” MJ tells him, summarizing whatever TMZ or People article Ned was about to pull up. “Pepper fucking Potts filed bright and early this morning at 3am like some—this clusterfuck has been out there for hours while we slept. Everyone’s picked up on it by now—her team claims that since the movie is based on his likeness, citing your biopic tweet and the podcast episode with Christine, then Stark is entitled and owed royalties off the box office.”
Peter just stares, unwilling to believe the reality unfurling itself in front of his eyes. “He can do that?” he whispers.
“Considering Murdock punched through your office desk this morning—so far, yes, but we’re working on it, okay? We’ll figure it out. We’re your team, Pete, and we knew Stark wouldn’t just take this. We knew this was a possibility, I mean, it’s Stark. He was always going to strike back.” Peter and Ned share a look at that. She rolls her eyes. “Just need Miles to get back to me before we move forward—fuck. Let me take this. It’s Everhart again.” Peter and Ned watch her head back to the office, this time, talking in English once she swipes to accept the call.
“Sorry about your desk. I heard it break,” Ned nudges. Peter shakes his head.
“She says it’s my office, but we all know it’s hers.”
“Yeah, but I liked that desk. Was sturdy.”
“This is my fault,” Peter admits to his friend. He sags against the counter again. “Yesterday—I kind of was a little desperate. It’s why they confiscated my phone—I took it hostage to talk to him.”
Ned chuckles at that. “Did you sign a conservatorship? How do you take your own phone hostage?”
“We had a game plan,” Peter shrugs, his fingers already breaking the paper bag in front of him into eighths, sixteenths. He blows on the pieces, letting them join the chaos on the floor on the other side of the counter. He’s starting to feel like he can’t breathe deeply—his breaths are starting to get stuck at the top of his sternum. “Intimidate him from confronting me altogether. I—I let him get to me.”
“Mission impossible,” Ned mutters. “It’s Tony Stark.”
“Yeah, but then, I locked myself in the bathroom and basically blamed him for pushing me to do this, and he said ‘you want to be mine, fine, then get fucked’. Didn’t know he would literally take my money.”
Ned’s jaw drops slightly, his brows crunching up. “So, this is your fault.”
“Ned,” Peter whines. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“Did you tell Michelle?”
“She overheard—”
“No, I mean,” Ned jerks his head over his shoulder and lowers his voice. “I mean, have you told her—”
All at once, three doors inside his home open abruptly, and they both startle, almost knocking their heads together. Peter’s head jerks up, and he immediately stiffens at MJ’s haunted face as she steps into the room again. Her phone is limply held in her hand—it’s lit up on a group chat, but he can’t see the content from there. Murdock and one of his paralegals come running down the hall, the lawyer calling out Michelle’s name.
The last to arrive is MJ’s assistant. She calls for MJ too, but MJ only has eyes for Peter.
Peter feels like his heart is blocking his airway now. It’s suddenly really, really hard to breathe.
“Peter,” MJ says slowly. “What haven’t you told us?”
Peter tries to form a question—what… about what—but he can’t, his mouth opens, but nothing comes out. He hears it in the distance. The wet coughing. The haggard breaths. He purses his lips together, but he can still hear them. It’s not him, but it should’ve been.
“Stark’s releasing an exposé in seven minutes. On you.” MJ shakes her head in disbelief. “Pete—is there anything—anything, Pete, worth exposing? Something that only Stark knows?”
Out of the corner of his eye, there’s a prone, familiar body against the sofa’s back. This time, sunlight rather than moonlight shines on the dirty blond locks. He blinks and the body is gone. He blinks and there’s drops of blood leading to MJ’s Louboutin heels. He blinks and they’re gone. But they were there. They were. A long time ago. In another high-rise. Another night. They were there. They. Hm. It’s getting so hard. To.
Peter’s breath hitches, his body refusing to take another, the edges of his vision go dark.
“Yes.”
If there was anyone to blame for Peter’s current state of affairs, that person would be the one and only Gwen Stacy.
Gwen Stacy was the one that ruined his life.
That’s to say, meeting Gwen Stacy irrevocably changed the trajectory of his life. Objectively, it’s true. Ever since their brief friendship, it’s been a one-way, non-return trip towards debauchery, entropy, mental deterioration—all things Hollywood. (All things Tony Stark.)
Gwen Stacy was the catalyst—at least, in Peter’s eyes.
Back when, on the night they met, Peter was nobody, nothing but Ryan Wilkins’ stunt double for Ghost Mission 2—a sequel no one asked for.
That night, he had just finished filming three scenes back-to-back—his shoulder was sore, his right hand was bandaged up, and he wanted to rest, but the crew members he had befriended were talking all day about going out, Cliff has an in to Horus’ after party, so he stumbled after them into the unusually warm LA night, and immediately got separated from them at the house party they had driven to. Peter had disliked the environment instantly—it was highly stimulating, booming bass, fruity scents, musky colognes, rank weed, sticky floors, damp bodies, purple-blue-red strobe lights—he had moved through the crowd to find an exit to a lawn, or a pool, or a sparsely-populated upstairs.
He ducked under arms. He slipped through bodies. He marched up sticky marble stairs. Balanced himself. Ducked again. Zig-zagged heated bodies. And then—he found sanctuary. He found it in a bedroom—empty, outside muted once he clicked the door shut. He had patted his pocket to make sure his phone was still there, when he heard her voice.
“Hey, you, help.”
He didn’t think twice. He headed towards the voice, the only other door in the room, and entered a bright, white bathroom. And there she was. Gwen Stacy. Daisy Buchanan herself. Half-dressed, pupils blown, smoking a cig, legs jittering. Peter gave himself a full five seconds to be star-stunned before offering to… help.
“I need to pee,” she had told him, gesturing to her tight, form-fitting leggings. “They’re too tight.”
“And you want me to pull them down?”
“Please.”
That didn’t work. So, Peter got to know her hip intimately. He bit at the fabric while she laughed, ruffling his hair as he worked his front teeth against the thin, rubbery leather, his nose rubbing against bare skin, his knees protesting against the hard tile beneath them, his shoulder still sore. From the corner of his eye, he saw a glittery tank top dunked inside the toilet bowl. Ah, that explained… well. He pulled the fabric apart as his teeth wore down the material, his blood rushing to his ears as Gwen Stacy tightened her hold on his hair before softening her grip again.
“Hell yeah,” she encouraged. “Keep going. Fuck, so—tight.”
Hilariously ironic, if anyone had been listening in. Peter tore her pants off, and Gwen Stacy sat down, bra-only, on the toilet, and let out a groan as she relieved herself on her dunked, discarded top. Peter had a quick glance of her bare body before looking away.
“Want my jacket?” he offered, just to say something. None of it had felt real.
From the corner of his eye, her electric-blue eyes studied him for a second, as she took a quick drag of her cig, “Duh.”
And that was the start of their friendship—walking out of the house with Peter shirtless, Gwen Stacy wearing his jacket as a make-shift skirt, and his “I <3 NY” shirt as a shirt, as God intended. They wordlessly rode the same rideshare and passed out in Gwen’s flat upon arrival. The next morning, Peter made Pillsbury biscuits he found in her empty fridge. The pop of the can startled her awake, and she promptly pulled a file from a drawer filled with prescription bottles, and made him sign it.
His third NDA in his life—the third of many, many, many NDAs coming his way.
Back then, that morning seemed like the pinnacle of his Hollywood adventure. The sole encounter with an A-lister he’ll fondly refer to for the rest of his days. The one he’ll allude to in Reddit in vague details, the one he’ll blush about to his future wife. It had felt like a 10-hour long fever dream, concluding with silently eating dry, plain biscuits at ten in the morning in Gwen fucking Stacy’s luxurious flat as she recovered from whatever cursed cocktail of alcohol and drugs she had ingested the night before.
“Could I have my shirt back?” Jesus, Peter had gnawed through her leggings like a dog. God—his cheeks flushed remembering how he sweated into her hip. Dear god—someone put him down.
She gave him a small smirk that instantly transported him to when he first saw her breakthrough role in the modern-retelling of The Great Gatsby. Absolutely entranced. She could’ve woven him up into a web and taken him apart there and then.
Disturbing, in hindsight, how easy he can be.
“I’ll give you a shirt,” she had said. “What’s your hurry?”
“I have a shoot after lunch,” he stammered out. “And I don’t know where I am.” His phone was dead. Gwen Stacy’s flat was devoid of charging ports and cables. Peter was still a little star-struck and terrified to ask where they were.
“I’ll come with,” she simply said, and the rest was history. She drove him to the shooting location, her Jeep blasting old 2010s dubstep into his eardrums, the A/C cold as the Arctic, making his pecs rubbing against a super silky button-up—that he would later be stopped for, Parker, is that Versace?—even harder. Everyone did a double take when he got ready at hair and makeup, but the nail in the coffin was when the director made eye contact with Gwen, and immediately started ass-kissing. The director that doesn’t even know Peter’s name—or job.
At the time, Peter thought Gwen Stacy was regretting entertaining the idea of a stunt actor lap dog, as she did nothing but smirk at the director’s praise, but he couldn’t be more wrong. Gwen Stacy—as he had come to know through their raw, vulnerable friendship—lived off her fans’ attention and would wither away into a shell of a person when alone. She depended on moments like that—people needing her, people praising her, people benefiting from her presence. She thrived on people like Peter showing up in her life.
Peter lucked out meeting Gwen Stacy—seventy-two hours later he had an audition for an HBO show (a role he didn’t get). And Gwen Stacy lucked out meeting Peter Parker. Peter can now count in two hands the times he’s driven her to a discreet nurse to administer her stomach pumps. He’s held her as she drunkenly ranted, on a nightly basis, about an ex whose name sounded like an athlete of some sort. He became her live-in chef, making her breakfasts her stomach could handle after a hard night out.
(Mind you, this all happened on a daily basis for two full weeks.)
Paparazzi would catch them one day. Heading out for an early dinner. They would find out his name less than twenty-four hours later. Four hours actually—to be exact. At that dinner, they met up with her agent, Gwen told him to move into her spare room, and they both gave him deets on another audition. This one he would eventually get, probably with a lot of eye-batting and money under the table from Gwen herself. So, he canceled his return ticket to New York after postponing it twice before, played a deranged villain mind-controlled by an alien alongside the Sam Wilson in the third season of HBO Max’s Falcon, and once the season aired that fall, his character on the show became the subject of I can fix him debates on online forums.
Doing his first press interview next to Sam Wilson, Maria Hill, and director-slash-show creator-slash-veteran-slash-Purple Heart recipient James-I said call me Bucky, kid-Barnes was the moment he realized there was no going back, no more pinching himself, no more arm-breaking stunts. His face and body had value, his voice had worth, his name was attached to a popular fictional character called Venom. He had an image to uphold, to shape, to expand upon.
After taping a late-night show interview in New York, James Barnes pulled him aside and flicked him a business card. Peter had stared at it. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” Barnes had said. Peter reached for his phone, and Barnes tutted in annoyance. “Not literally. Listen, you’re going to need your own agent, not leech off someone else’s. Call this number—not now, I mean take the card, kid. Michelle’s young, but she’s good. She’s a Jones kid. The family knows the industry inside and out. She’ll help you navigate the sharks.”
“Thanks,” Peter had said.
He called once he was back in California, and met Michelle Jones and her million papers to sign at an agency the next day.
He immediately rushed home to Gwen, to tell her all about the auditions he had lined up.
He couldn’t get past the news of getting an agent.
Gwen launched pillow missiles at him, screamed that he was a manipulative parasite that couldn’t act to save his life, stormed to his room and launched another round of shirt missiles before collapsing on the floor in tears. But that time, she didn’t allow him to console her.
In his defense, he never thought Gwen’s notorious ex’s whose name sounded like some athlete of some sort was an agent.
Or stood for Michelle Jones.
Or was a woman.
Afterwards, as MJ—a talent manager, not some big-league sports superstar—had her team browse for apartments for him, Peter temporarily moved into a 5-star hotel, banking on what was left over of his Falcon check.
And there, in a room cozier, yet emptier than Gwen Stacy’s flat, he wondered for the first time—but not for the last, if he was cut out for all this.