#condition commentary

and also.  ALSO!  I think the move was also an inflection point for Tony.

Peter was SO GOOD in the subbasement. he was responding to all of Tony’s manipulations exactly right.  he was shaping up to this sweet, biddable boy and every increase in freedom only made him better

cue the move up to the penthouse.  Tony’s expectation was probably that this pattern would continue.  more freedom/privileges = more gratitude. Except very shortly, things start to fall apart. every increase in freedom after that gets a backlash. 

Peter wins the ability to roam free, and he proves he doesn’t trust Tony by trying to find out if his people are alive. then has the nerve to LIE about it, badly and Tony’s forced to smack him down

He deals well enough with Darcy’s introduction, but his behavior becomes eratic. he stops eating, starts drinking, and now Tony has to monitor his basic health. otoh, he’s eager for sex, so overall, Tony chooses to count it as a win. Time to move things forward.

Tony brings the crime family to the penthouse.  It’s both a new freedom and a test: Peter seems to be sexually pliant now, but is he really? plus, new people. he left Peter with Bucky before, but he trusts Bucky’s loyalty. bringing in others is half a step closer to a risk - none of them will help Peter, but his behavior, good or bad, reflects on Tony.

Peter fails that test *miserably*. He lashes out worse than he’s ever done in private. 

From that point on, any and all advances in freedom or privilege freeze. People asked, before, whether Tony was bullshitting when he said he liked Peter for his brain, and I’ve explained that he wasn’t bullshitting, but he’s made a tactical error.  

I knew that was true, but I couldn’t pin down the source of the clusterfuck.  where did Tony’s plan go wrong?  now I’m confident it was right there.  I think Tony had plans for more privileges, but he put the brakes on, hard, and decided Peter couldn’t be trusted.

Tony expected a backlash early on, but Peter kept rewarding his methods, slowly but surely.  More freedom and more privileges led to more gratitude, more affection. Tony gives him the biggest step of all - nicer accommodations, inside Tony’s home - and he handles that very sweetly, but he starts to see Peter “backslide” with additional freedoms.  Peter settles down when Tony gives him the cold shoulder, so that’s okay, but if more freedom = more trouble, Tony decides he’s just going to leave things where they are. 

it’s funny how you can learn something new about your own fic with a reread.  I needed a pacing check on Condition for the next bits (I know where I’m going next, just deciding how to get there) and that means a start-to-finish reread, for me. 

and I realized that moving upstairs was like...the death knell for Peter’s mental health.  you’d think that was a point at which his quality of life improved, right? but that was the goal he was hanging onto the entire time he was in the subbasement.  once he moves upstairs, things rapidly deteriorate because there is no obvious “next.” 

now, I knew Peter’s mental health deteriorated around that time, but I pinned it mentally Tony making it clear how inescapable things are (convincing him not to send Aunt May a letter, explicitly stating he was never letting him go, FRIDAY having the power to knock him unconscious, etc).  and it’s all tangled up, like, obviously those are all things that stopped him from having a “next” after the move, but

I think, really, the move led to an inevitable decline. Peter pinned too many hopes on the possibilities of Upstairs, and then discovered that Nothing Really Changed. 

in some ways he’s hit the lowest point, in some ways he hasn’t (how’s that for a clear answer? lol)

I know you didn’t ask, but I’m sure people are wondering about updates so I’m going to  - unfortunately, I don’t think I can keep working on it until life returns to something resembling normal.  I have a history of depression myself and while I’m still mentally healthy, my coping mechanisms are shot to hell right now. living alone and working from home, I normally rely heavily on going out with friends to maintain, which is obviously not possible atm. that makes it too dangerous to put myself in that mental space right now

*crying*  imagine me reading 90% of this ask with a frown, becoming increasingly concerned about where the fuck this was going or whether it was a super weird form a spam

and then I lost my shit.  Thank you for that.

I feel like any good kidnapping fic NEEDS that backslide, otherwise where else are you getting the conflict? Tony’s not gonna just take away *all* his privileges because it’s too drastic. He definitely overestimated Peter’s emotional intelligence and didn’t take into account that Peter would lash out in cases where it was futile to resist Tony’s control and that it would make things more difficult. He forgot that he’s still dealing with an irrational teenager.

lol, kudos to you for holding onto that thread long enough to catch that.  

there are three possible things that are going on with Tony here, and I’m undecided on which of them is the case:

Tony forgot, or didn’t think about it in the moment

Tony assumed that Peter’s newfound masochism rendered the problem moot and/or flipped it to a thing he enjoyed

Tony didn’t care and/or got off on violating Peter’s boundaries

I’m honestly not sure which one I prefer. lucky for me, I don’t have to decide, since it’s a strict pov on Peter, and Peter is apparently at a point where reinforcing his boundaries doesn’t even occur to him as an option.