Sock on the Door (For Peter)

[st_x5_494]

It was sometime in the afternoon when Alec returned to the room. He hadn't been back since he came upon a sock on the door and so he spent the night with someone else. He had to give Peter props for the amount of times the kid was using the sock, but he was slightly surprised every time he'd come in, take one look at Peter, and just know nothing happened. Alec often wondered what the hell was wrong with Peter since it seemed like they were both willing to get busy with one another, but at least he was having sex and at the end of the day, that was wall that mattered.

When he pushed through the door, he called out a 'hey! I'm back." In case Peter cared, which Alec knew he would.

Comments

[st_arkintern]

Peter's sprawled on his bed reading a book when Alec comes in. When he looks up, he's got a bruise and a bandaid on his nose.

"I tripped and fell into the table," he answers before Alec can ask.

[st_x5_494]

Alec paused and took in Peter's state. Then he deadpanned. "Yeah, that wasn't suspiciously practice or delivered quickly without previous inquiry."

He tugged off his shirt as he walked towards his room. "What actually happened?" He paused and from the room, the question came. "Did Liz punch you?"

[st_arkintern]

Peter shuts the book, then looks up at Alec, frowning.

"I tripped and fell into the table," he answers again. "My feet got tangled in the sheets."

Peter attempts to steer the conversation in another direction.

"Where did you stay the night?"

[st_x5_494]

"With Pike, but I didn't fall out of bed. I stayed in it."

He emerged from his room with a new shirt on and looked at Peter's nose again. He was a little disappointed that Liz didn't punch him because then she'd be making progress. Although Alec suspected Peter might be the sort of guy who would let a girl punch him if he thought he deserved it. Alec certainly was.

"How do you get tangled in sheets." He was trying to picture it. His eyes narrowed a little as if to try and see through him. "Were you two experimenting in bed and you got clumsy?" Alec doubted it, but.

[st_arkintern]

Peter tries to keep his gaze steady, his expression even. This, however doesn't stop the red from rising to his face.

"No," he says too quickly. And then, realizing his error, he says: "No, we're not."

Then, in an attempt to deflect:

"Doesn't Pike have a boyfriend anyway?"

[st_x5_494]

Alec wondered briefly if he should try to help Peter learn a better poker face, but the truth was Alec thought it was too much fun to be able to clearly see through Peter's ruses.

"uhuh." He looked like he wasn't buying it.

"She's not official yet. Casual sex is still on the table. She calls me Man Candy." He winked. That last part was mostly to try and get a rise out of Peter. Alec was quite aware that his arrangement with Pike was probably going to come quickly to an end unless that other Gnome guy fucked things up royally.

He crossed his arms lightly over his chest. "Are you really not going to give me the full story about your nose? Otherwise I might have to start filling in the blanks and I have a pretty wild imagination."

[st_arkintern]

"Man Candy?"

Peter shakes his head. He doesn't even want to think about that right now. Especially since Alec wasn't letting up on needing the full story.

There was no way he was getting out of this.

"We were messing around. I panicked," he says. "Satisfied?"

He hopes so because that was already more detail than he wanted to give.

[st_x5_494]

It was both believable and unbelievable at the same time. Believable because he knew they were doing something, but unbelievable that Peter would be so clumsy and mess it up - but the Alec thought about it a little longer and, no.. no that was definitely Peter.

An amused and interested grin crossed his expression and he waggled his eyebrows a little. "Messing around huh? Which base did you get to? Second? Third? Homerun?" Alec did not think for a second Peter had sex, but he couldn't help the teasing.

[st_arkintern]

"I don't even know what the bases are anymore," Peter says, because if his relationship with Liz was a baseball game, the bases had been discarded and the two of them were just running around in the outfield somewhere.

[st_x5_494]

Alec tried to figure out what that meant. "Do you... need a map? I know this is your first girlfriend and everything..."

[st_arkintern]

"No, I know what I'm doing. I have the internet, Alec!"

Had the internet, anyway. And unfortunately, even the swath of knowledge the internet had offered, it could not prepare Peter Parker for his first relationship or any of the physical or emotional complications that came with it.

[st_x5_494]

"You don't have it here to, I don't even know - search for answers?" Is that what Peter would have done? Alec realized - yes. "This isn't like a school project where all the answers are in some textbooks or something."

He paused, then couldn't help himself. "Were you trying some complicated sex thing from a porn movie you saw and you fell down?"

Alec might have been there, just the once, but that position had been really hard to maintain.

[st_arkintern]

Peter presses his face into the mattress and pretends Alec did not just say that.

[st_x5_494]

Alec paused. Did he actually make a right assumption? He looked over Peter who looked a little ridiculous face down in his mattress.

"You want to talk about it?" His tone changed a little, not entire serious, but a lot more like a dude talking to another dude about girls than a guy poking fun at another. "Everything okay?"

[st_arkintern]

"No," Peter mumbles into the mattress. His nose is throbbing but he doesn't look up.

"I am the most awkward person in the world," he mumbles into the mattress. Probably worlds. Peter's pretty sure he could out-awkward most people in most realities.

[st_x5_494]

Alec sat down because he figured sitting down was less intimidating. "Yeah, you are." He wasn't about to lie to the kid. "But I bet she is too." Unless she was like Rachel had been compared to her.

He paused. "The broke the first three condoms I ever tried to put on because I was too excited and Rachel had to put one on for me." An admission Alec would beat the shit out of Peter for saying to anyone else. ever.

[st_arkintern]

"Not as awkward as me," Peter mumbles into the mattress.

There's a brief pause before Alec speaks again and Peter is still continuing the long, dragged-out process of dying of embarrassment right here on the bed in front of Alec when he tells him about the condom.

Peter finally shifts his head up from the mattress -- just enough so he can still see Alec.

"Really?" he asks. This doesn't seem like something Alec would make up just to make him feel better, but...

[st_x5_494]

He rolled his eyes. "Don't make me say it again. But yeah. So don't think you're the only one who's awkward." He wouldn't be repeating what he said though. That information was to die in this room.

"How bad did you fuck up?"

[st_arkintern]

Peter pushes himself up off the bed and sits upright. Peter extends a pinky.

"You need to promise this does not leave this room," he says. He hasn't talked to anyone else about this.

[st_x5_494]

He looked at Peter like 'this is not legally binding' but then sighed and reached forward. "You think I told you what I just did and was expecting you to go telling the rest of the inn?"

[st_arkintern]

"Well, no," Peter says, putting the full extent of his awkwardness on display by simply existing awkwardly on the bed. There was something awkward about the way he said that, something awkward about the way his face looked while he said it, and something awkward about the way his body shifted immediately afterwards.

Peter withdraws his hand. He wonders if Alec finds it offensive he asked him to promise. But this is kind of big. Probably not as big as breaking a condom three times, which was why it was a given that he wouldn't talk about it, even without a promise. This is probably minor in the grand scheme of things, at least to Alec. The sort of thing he wouldn't think twice about mentioning because it was so insignificant.

"I just..."

Peter dampens his lips.

"...keep putting a break on things, and it's sometimes really awkward, like this morning--"

Peter clamps his mouth shut, then he opens it again. It takes a moment before he's finally able to push the words forward, and when he's finally able to pull them loose, they come out quickly:

"I don't know if I'm satisfying her because I can't do things yet."

Mortification overcomes Peter and he suddenly wishes he was talking to Alec from the other side of a bathroom door instead of face-to-face, but then that would just remind him of everything that happened this morning. Sure, they talked afterwards and everything was fine, but that didn't stop the embarrassment from seeping into him slowly like rust corroding vibranium.

[st_x5_494]

Alec listened and could practically feel his awkward and his embarrassment like he was Molly or something. He paused for a moment and then reached out and grabbed the book Peter had been reading. He opened it as if reading, though he definitely wasn't. He was giving Peter less one-on-one attention.

"Why do you think you're not satisfying her? Did she say something?" He paused, flipping a page and casually adding. "Or she sigh or something?" Nothing was worst than the face a woman made when you finished and they were completely unsatisfied and almost said 'that's it'? It had only ever happened to Alec once for him to learn.

[st_arkintern]

"No," Peter says, because she didn't. "She was really enjoying herself last night, I guess--"

If this morning was any indication.

"--and, I don't know, I said we should stop and then we did and then stuff happened--" He can't even begin to be specific about what happened this morning. "--and I just think that even if she wouldn't ever expect it or say it that she's disappointed."

[st_x5_494]

Alec took that in and actually considered it, which meant that he pretended to read a couple of pages. He thought about asking Peter what he wanted to do about it, but decided a different route.

"Alright. So, you know how we guys like, when we get turned on and sometimes if nothing happens it's like, really uncomfortable?" He glanced up from the book to see if Peter understood. He really hoped he wouldn't have to talk about how girls got aroused too, but maybe Peter was that oblivious. Alec hoped not. "It's way better to go take care of it than let it go away, right? But often times it goes away quickly if things are... stimulated."

Had anyone ever told Alec he'd be having this conversation, ever, he'd have laughed so hard he'd have thrown up.

"For girls it takes a lot longer to climb that mountain and get to the top, if you catch my drift. So if they reach the top and aren't pushed over the edge, sometimes the climb down takes a longer time for them than us. Plus the whole -" Alec made a circled gesture to his crotch as an example. "This doesn't go away as easy for them." Since they didn't get a hard on to just go soft.

Was he making sense? Alec didn't think he as good at this.

"Anyways... it's also really hard for girls to take care of that themselves unlike us." He went back to 'reading' the book. "It's this whole process for most of them. They can't just pump a few times and feel better."

[st_arkintern]

Peter understands this. But there's one thing he doesn't understand:

"What should I do, then?" He has no idea.