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Once everything had calmed down after the world’s brush with destruction (it only really took a few days), Miles managed to sneak off to visit May Parker again, on a promised visit to Peter in the hospital.“I think knowing that you’re okay will do him some good,” she said as they walked through the hospital doors. Miles just nodded and followed her to the reception desk. “May Parker. I’m here to see my nephew.”The receptionist smiled up at her sympathetically and glanced over at Miles. “And is the kid with you?” she asked, almost accusingly.“Friend of the family,” May replied matter-of-factly, resting a firm hand on Miles’ shoulder. “For real, this time,” she added, and the receptionist relaxed (only a little).“Of course. I’m sure you know the way by now.”“Thank you.”Miles didn’t say anything as May hastily lead him away from the desk and further into the hospital. They climbed up several flights of stairs and wound through a number of sterile white corridors, until they arrived at a glass-walled ward containing a single bed and a copious amount of bleeping machinery. A grey-haired man in a suit, with a bushy moustache gracing his upper lip, was waiting outside.He looked up as May approached, and offered her a respectful nod. May returned it, curt.“Mrs Parker,” he grunted, and Miles swore he’d heard this man’s voice before. But he was already walking away, and May was leading him into the ward before he could figure it out.At first, there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the room. Their only company was the machinery and IV bags, until Miles finally registered the still form in the bed, wrapped in bandages and hooked up to the monitors. What little hair he had left splayed out against pillows that practically dwarfed him, and his ghostly skin was almost lost to the whiteness of the bedsheets. A mechanical hissing filled the room, matching the forced rise and fall of the man’s chest (he was intubated, the tubing taped to his face looking like a parasite).“Hey there, scamp,” May started, taking a seat by the bed and taking hold of her nephew’s hand. “How’re you holding up? Doc says you’ll be coming off the ventilator soon, and after that, they can get to waking you up. Exciting, huh?”Miles decided to look around for a chair, anywhere but by the bed.“Your boss was here just now,” May carried on, “I guess he feels pretty bad, calling you a ‘menace’ for all those years. Invited me and MJ over for tea. Tea, Peter. You know what his wife is like, it’ll only be tea. I don’t even like tea.”…He was intruding. Time to find a chair elsewhere.“You know that kid you saved? The one like you?”Miles froze. Should he stay for this?“He’s right here. Came along to visit.”He should stay.“Kid. You wanna say hi?”Yep. Staying. Turn around. Get a proper look at his face; half-bandaged, broken nose and a black eye.“Hi,” Miles began, shuffling towards the bed, “I, uhh… Um… First… thanks. For saving me. At the collider, I…” he took a deep breath, “My name is Miles. Probably should’ve started with that. I’ve uh… I’ve been taking care of things for you. Soo, you don’t have to worry about waking up to utter chaos, heh…”No reaction, of course. But May offered him a reassuring smile at least.“You should see him in action,” she added. “Definitely picked up on some of your tricks.”Miles looked away, sheepish. “I wouldn’t say I’m that good.”“Don’t sell yourself short, kid.”May did most of the talking after that, with Miles going back to awkwardly looking about the room. When it was time to leave, he gave a small wave to Peter in his hospital bed and followed May.“Thanks for coming,” May said in the elevator. “The doctors said that having people come to talk to him would do some good, but…”Miles didn’t ask her to finish. He just nodded, and May went quiet. A few more words passed between them at the door, before they both went their separate ways.He made the journey back to his dorm in costume, swinging through the streets, keeping an eye out for thugs, and mulling over the day’s events in his head. He had an assignment due on Monday, his parents had asked him to stay home for the weekend, one of his professors had given him a permission form for a trip to the science centre…Peter’s condition at the hospital…He’d understood since that first night in the collider that Peter Parker, the hero of New York, was just another person like anyone else in the city, but there had still been that sense of godliness that the world regarded him with that lingered through everything that came after. Finally seeing him today, with no mask or grand disaster to warp perception finally brought home the fact that he was as human as Miles, and parked it in the garage to say ‘hey, this thought belongs right here, and there’s nothing you can do about it’.Then there were May’s words in the elevator…Miles had seen the news following Peter’s hospitalisation. Every single news agency had sunk their teeth into the media fire caused by Spiderman’s identity reveal and sensationalised it. Interviews with fans, haters, enemies… apparently nearly everyone got to be interviewed on live television about this, but… May and Mary-Jane had been the only two people with any actual connection to Peter, from what Miles could see. Hardly anyone had been put onscreen with the words “friend to Peter Parker” alongside them. The closest most people got had just been “Co-Worker” or “Colleague”.Was he really that lonely? Miles asked himself. Did the city’s idol, the man who could have been his mentor, really spend the last ten years with nearly no one?That couldn’t be right…One of the perks to being Spiderman was being able to visit his predecessor in the hospital without much hassle. After convincing the receptionist that yes, he was Peter Parker’s successor, and no, he wasn’t just another rabid fan trying to get a picture with a superhero (which, in Miles’ opinion, was pretty vile, all things considered), he was lead to the ward by a nurse, where he sat beside the bed and tried to make awkwardly one-sided conversation for half an hour.He was on his latest visit, in costume with Aunt May, when he finally thought to ask a question that had been pressing him for days.“Do they know when he’ll wake up?” he asked from his perch on the windowsill. There wasn’t much space between all the vases full of flowers, but he made do.May’s face was grim as she mulled her answer over.“No,” she said quietly. “They don’t.”There was an ‘if’ hanging in the air above their heads, looming expectantly, a bomb waiting to drop. Whispers and unsure looks between the doctors acted as the drone of the plane carrying it. Miles had caught the words ‘head trauma’ and ‘complications’ multiple times in the past week and a half, and he’d played patient enough times for his mom to know what that meant.“What… what did they mean by ‘complications’?”He feels childish, asking like this, but it’s the only way he can say it.May must not have expected him to ask, if the raising of her eyebrows was any indication.“You know about that?”Miles shrugged. “I overheard a few things, but… none of it was specific.”Grim silence descended over the room. Miles felt choked as he waited for an answer.“He… he coded during surgery…” she croaked… “There was some neurological damage, and… they’re not sure how bad it is yet…”A frigid dread made its home in Miles’ gut, and he spent the rest of the visit in silence.The next time he visited, Peter started choking. Immediately, he hit the call button and let the nurses do their job. The last thing he heard before leaving the room were the ragged gasps and coughs of a man who had just been taken off intubation.
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Hospitals were ugly places, in J. Jonah Jameson’s opinion. Care was overpriced (he’d been to the UK, free universal healthcare was fucking marvellous, as it turned out), sickness hung in the air alongside copious amounts of chemicals (it couldn’t be helped, with the sheer number of patients coming in for diseases), the people who weren’t doctors were usually either stressed, dying, or a combination of the two.Maybe he was just being bitter, as he sat in a hard-plastic chair that dug into him harder with every attempt to make himself more comfortable. Nothing good happened to him that involved a hospital. Prime example being the hospital bed beside him, which he’d grown all too familiar with in the past two weeks. In it, a pasty-faced Peter Parker was propped up by pillows, ragged blond hair haloed around him, his wheezy breaths punctuated by the bleeping heart monitor.“Damn you, Parker, and your stupid, sticky fingers,” he grumbled, shifting again, much to the protest of the chair and his bones. “Trust you to be the one I get attached to.”Eventually, he gave up his battle with the chair and brought out a magazine he’d brought along with him and flipped through to an article his wife insisted he read. Blasted Spiderman still adorned the front cover, and he didn’t even give today’s bogus, attention-seeking headline a second glance. At least whoever wrote the article he was after seemed half-decent.There was a side article on something about the photography industry. He’d leave this one behind for Parker.Halfway through the article, a quiet groan interrupted his reading. Then another. Louder this time, and he looked up to see blue eyes struggling to open.He would never admit to the wave of utter relief he felt washing over him.“Parker,” he said softly, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Come on, now. You’re okay.”Dread made its unhappy home in Jameson’s gut when he heard the rhythm of the monitors pick up, and Peter’s breathing began to hitch.It turned to disgust when the boy suddenly pitched forward and threw up.“Jesus Chri-, Nurse! I need a nurse in here!”Peter was shaking, arms wrapped tightly around himself and gasping as vomit dripped down his front.Jameson sighed, “You never make this easy, do you, Parker?”All he got was a wet, ragged gasp in response.Followed by panicked wailing.“Nurse!” Jameson called again. Where was that damn call button?It took a grand display of utter stubbornness in order for the nurses to let Jameson stay. After Peter had been cleaned up and checked over, he was finally allowed back into the ward, where the young man lay back in the bed, calm but no less bewildered by what was going on around him.“I called your wife,” Jameson grunted as he returned to the chair. Once again, his bones lost the battle with the plastic. “She’s on her way right now.”Peter’s gratitude was wordless, but Jameson saw a dazed confusion on his face as well.And pain.“Did they give you the good stuff?” he grunted, squinting up at the IV drip hooked to Peter’s arm. “Want me to yell at them for you?”“Uuhnh,” was all Peter managed, and a half-hearted wave of the hand.“Huh… normally, I’m yelling at you… or about you… damn menace…”Clearly, there was something off about what he’d just said, because Peter looked even more confused.“H… uuh?”He didn’t know. Of course.Jonah sighed, and held up the magazine he’d been reading earlier, the cover image plainly obvious.SPIDER-MAN: UNMASKEDWHO IS PETER PARKER?The horror on Peter’s face made Jonah feel ill himself, as the young man flailed his arms and pointed frantically at the magazine, stuttering in panic. Words were failing him miserably, but Jonah knew enough about Peter to understand,
How could this happen?
Guilt was a rarely-felt thing for Jonah, and not that he’d admit it, but… he felt it now.“Fisk had you dumped outside the Bugle, kid,” he explained firmly, cutting off Peter’s garbled rambling like a knife through butter. “Jacobs and I found you.”Understandably, Peter looked hurt. And frustrated. And resigned. His posture crumbled, shoulders dropped, he didn’t look Jonah in the eye… he started picking at the monitor clipped onto his finger.“Leave it alone, Parker,” Jonah warned, and he did. “Look, what matters is that you’re alive, capiche?”Peter nodded, “Mm,” but didn’t say a word. It was unnerving, in Jonah’s opinion. Normally, he had something to say…To be fair, neither did he. What could he possibly say to try make him feel better?“What hurts?” he attempted, and that got him to at least glance in his direction.A moment of silence settled between them, before Peter raised a shaking hand to his face, gesturing down to his neck and all along the right side of his chest. It matched up fairly well with all the damage Jonah had seen that night, just two weeks ago. Poor brat had looked like a half-crushed soda can.“You need any more painkillers?”A shake of the head, no.“Right. Well-.”He was interrupted by the sound of the door opening, and a frizzy-haired nurse came in, pushing a cart piled with medical equipment. Jonah caught green eyes and funky-looking glasses, focused solely on Peter.There was something unsettling about the sudden glee in her eyes when she saw the blond.“Peter Parker,” she said, and the sharpness with which she said it sent a prickling sensation down Jonah’s spine.Then he saw Peter look up…And the absolute terror in his eyes sealed the notion that something was wrong.The nurse didn’t seem to notice as she picked out a syringe from the cart. “I’m here to administer some medications for you, Peter Parker. Now, hold out your arm for me.”Immediately, Peter shook his head, “Uh-uh,” and tried to back away, only to for pillows and a headboard to block his way.Still unfazed, the nurse moved forward. There was no nametag on her uniform…That needle looked very threatening, from where Jonah was standing.Seeing Peter so distressed (almost hyperventilating) was stressing him out.Time to intervene.Abruptly, he stood up, a stern set to his jaw.“Ma’am, I think you should come back later,” he said, keeping it courteous. “He’s not in any state to be taking any meds.”To his irritation, he was very quickly brushed off. “Oh, I’m sure he’s fine, aren’t you Peter.”… What was this, fucking amateur hour? This woman clearly didn’t have Parker’s best interests in mind. Was she even a nurse?By this point, Peter was shaking his head and mumbling under his breath. He was so unusually quiet that Jonah couldn’t make out what he was saying…“See?” the nurse practically squawked, and Jonah’s trust in her dropped even lower, if that was possible. “Now, let’s get this over with, okay, Peter Parker?”Suddenly, Peter responded with a sudden, strangled “Augch!”What the hell was that?Peter just continued to shout and wave his arms about, his words mangled beyond comprehension, but he didn’t seem to notice.The ‘nurse’ certainly did.And for some reason, she started to grin, wide, and sharper than the glinting needle in her hand.“Well, if you insist,” she tittered, slowly backing off, but looking no less like some sort of hungry animal. “I’ll see you again, Peter Parker.”And with that, she left, taking the syringe and cart with her. That disgusting grin didn’t leave her face, even as Jonah glared daggers into her back, and that weird frizzy hairdo that really should’ve been tied up better if she was actually a nurse.“Creepy bitch,” Jonah growled once the door shut, and he turned back to Peter. The boy was curled in on himself, sweating and shaking. “Crap, again? Come on, kid. She’s gone.”Peter just shook his head, mumbling and hugging his knees tightly.With a sigh, Jonah sat back down next to him, and waited for Mrs Parker to arrive.Seeing MJ brought Peter to tears almost immediately. He broke down into gross sobs the moment he was in her arms, shaking and pawing weakly at her hair.“M… mm.”“Ssh, shh, it’s okay. It’s okay. I’m right here.”“A-a-… Nhh!”“I know. It’s okay. We’ll be okay. Ssh-sh.”Content that Peter wasn’t going to be left alone to the mercy of any other sinister-looking nurses, Jonah left to go home and tell his wife over dinner.
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Peter felt ragged. His head pounded in a blur of painkillers and angry noise, his back seared in pain with every move he made. When he breathed, it burned in his lungs, and he could feel the thud of his heart in his ribs like a damning drum. Fear dogged his thoughts, hungry and persistent even as MJ held him close and told him he was alright.“We’re not. We’re really not,” he tried to protest, but the words got lost in translation before they’d even left his brain, and all that came out was a mangled mess of sound and no actual words.It made him feel ill.The doctors said it was likely a type of dysarthria, brought on by damage to the speech of the brain, either from the initial trauma or surgical complications. Peter could only nod, leaning heavily against MJ’s shoulder as the man in front of them listed every little thing that had happened to him, detached and professional. Head trauma, major crush damage to his chest, spinal injury, the long-term, the short-term, the permanent… it all rolled together into a trouncing dread until he couldn’t focus anymore and let the world dissolve into static.He just wanted to go home.“Mister Parker?”It was raining outside. The greyness of the clouds was seeping into the room, into him, weighing on his bones.“Mister Parker.”Could he sleep now? Please?“Peter.”“Mm?” Everything turned sharp all of a sudden. The pain snapped back into the forefront of his mind. “M… Hhuh…?”Patient, ever-wonderful, MJ tilted his head so he was looking at her. “He wants to talk about treatment, honey.”“Uhn…”Moving felt like trying to force rusty gears to move, even with the simple motion of shifting his attention to the doctor, in his blinding white coat and the stinging detachment of his face, his bones screeched at him in protest.“So,” the doctor clipped, and he launched back into his monologue, “I’ve prescribed some physical therapy sessions to help you regain your mobility faster, and I have the contact details of a number of speech therapists that I recommend you get into contact with. Sooner, rather than later.”“Thank you,” MJ said. Before the conversation could be left at that, Peter took her hand and made a noise to get her attention. “Peter?”With an unsteady hand, Peter began tracing out a series of patterns onto MJ’s palm, repeating it until she picked out the shapes of letters in his motions.H O M E ?It was a relief when understanding dawned on her face, and she turned back to the doctor. He wasn’t completely incapable of being understood.“When can he go home?” she asked.There was a moment as the doctor readjusted his glasses and flipped through a page on his clipboard, before speaking.“We’d like to keep you in for another two weeks, at least,” he started. “While your healing is… admittedly remarkable, your injuries were severe, and needed a good deal of extensive surgery. You’re certainly recovering, but not enough right now that it’d be safe for you go to home. You’ll probably need a wheelchair for some time afterwards, too.”Peter nodded. He understood perfectly, and with how he felt right now, the trip home didn’t sound ideal.The doctor said a few more things and checked some of the equipment that Peter was hooked up to, before leaving the couple to it.Only then did MJ’s composure drop, and she let herself deflate a little, the air flooding from her lungs as her eyes slid shut and her head drooped against Peter’s shoulder.Peter knew that sigh very well. It was the one he came home to after a particularly bad fight (the kind that left him with broken ribs and in need of stitches), or when he missed an important date (too many came to mind). The one that told him something was wrong, and it needed talking about.If only he could actually say anything. But all Peter could do was hold her hand and run a hand through her hair in a feeble attempt to comfort her.S O R R Y , traced over and over again on her palm with his thumb.“Don’t be,” MJ murmured, pressing up against him on the bed. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t ask for this.”Somewhere in the back of Peter’s numbed mind, a voice was loudly proclaiming otherwise.For once, he ignored it. MJ was more important than arguing with himself.Everything hurt through the painkillers being fed into his system, but he pushed it aside and focused on the wonderful woman in his arms, trying not to break down.He couldn’t fall apart. No matter how close he felt to it.
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“Is it done?”She made absolutely no effort to hide her grin, “Nope,” and went straight to her desk.Obviously, it was cause for her… partner… to bristle, in a metallic chorus of feathers that skittered through the room like angry insects, looking for something to take it out on.“Why not?”There was anger in that voice; an indignant danger that she should really tread carefully around, but instead, she chose to laugh. Loud, gleeful, wild, it definitely struck a nerve in the man lurking the corner of her night-lit office.“Oh, you need to lighten up,” she chuckled, despite the death-glare she was so blatantly receiving. “Learn to have some fun, like I do. After all, what’s the hurry? The new guy’s a rookie, and Parker, well, you should’ve seen him, it was beautiful.”“Your point?”“My point is that we can have some fun with this. Why kill him now? Let’s watch him squirm for a bit, play some cat and mouse. Or should it be bug and bird, since…?”“What about this is ‘fun’ to you, Octavius? Because from where I’m standing-,”“Perching.”“Stop that. From where I’m standing, you’ve just told me that you let that stupid little pest that’s been making fools out of us for ten fucking years live! What the fuck sort of definition of ‘fun’ is that?”“The best kind,” she purred. Where was her assistant with her coffee? “The kind of fun you had as a kid, when you’d go out in the sun and see how long it takes ants to fry under a magnifying glass.”Her partner didn’t say anything, but the glint in his eyes at the ants analogy was enough prompting to continue.“Oh, you should’ve seen him. Incy Wincy Spidey can’t climb up the spout again.”“How so?”“Well, let’s see… broken spine, smashed-in face, crushed chest, that’s not exactly good for anyone, is it?”“No shit. But that doesn’t explain why you didn’t kill him.”“Well, first of all, there were witnesses…”“Isn’t that why you made a slow-acting poison?”“…And like I said before, I figured it would be more fun to let him live.”“Why?!”“Dear god, it’s like you’re not even listening to me, the little shit is paralysed, or at the very least he’ll be trundling around in a wheelchair for the next few months, and after that, it’s crutches. Newbie won’t be getting any dynamic duo action anytime soon, if ever.”“That’s all the reason why we could be killing him now!”“And it’s all the reason not to. Peter Parker is vulnerable, everyone knows who he is, and I mean everyone. Pretty sure the whole world knows by now, if not at least anywhere that has internet. Ever wonder why the bastard wore a mask?”“Because he’s an asshole?”“Because he cares about people. You hide your identity, your enemies don’t know who you are, your loved ones are safe. That’s why he wore the mask, and that’s something we can use. Are you getting what I’m saying yet?”“So, we kill his wife? And that old hag he used to live with? Okay, let’s go.”God, her smile had better not have dropped. “Not yet. Let him squirm for a while. Tear his brain apart with paranoia, grab some popcorn and soda, enjoy the show. Then we kill him.”“Huh… That does sound fun.”“Now you get it. Finally. Also, his brain-to-mouth train is screwed, did I mention that?”“How long do you want to wait, then? I know you get bored quickly.”“You know what? I don’t actually know. I guess we’ll just have to be… spontaneous.”“Hm… Fun… I am beginning to like your idea of fun…”
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MJ couldn’t spend every second of every day in the hospital with him. She slept on a pull-out couch in the hospital room for the first night, but a text from work in the morning sparked a heated, if one-sided debate. Peter wasn’t about to get in the way of his wife’s career, but in turn, MJ was adamant against leaving him alone in a hospital, where he was clearly freaking out.“I’m not!” Peter wanted to say, but yet again, the words were minced on the way out and he was left frustrated and struggling not to start a tirade of grumbling.At least MJ understood the words behind his rambling, even if it added more fuel to the fire. “You are absolutely freaking out, Peter Parker! I didn’t see you settle down all night last night, you are cagey around the nurses, I couldn’t even leave to go to the bathroom yesterday without you watching me leave like I’m going to… drop dead at any second.”Peter winced. That… really stung…MJ let out a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry, that was… that was low. I’m not mad at you, I just…” Another sigh, she was doing this a lot lately. “…Something’s stressing you out, and it’s stressing me out. I just want you to be okay.”Now it was Peter’s turn to deflate. He couldn’t fault MJ for this.“I can afford to miss a few rehearsals,” MJ continued. “It’s early days, everyone on the team understands.”Everyone knows, were the words lurking about in Peter’s head. He felt the bed sink as MJ sat down next to him.“What’s bothering you?” she asked softly. “You’ve been tense all night.”“Mmnh,” Peter managed, not looking at her. How was he supposed to tell her? Even if he could speak straight, his mind was too fogged over to put together a coherent explanation. MJ put his hand in hers, but with what he wanted to say, they’d be there forever.Instead, he reached round to fumble for the magazine lying on the bedside table, the one that Jonah had left him. Pain burned along his arm and back, but he managed to grab it and show MJ the front cover, which had his name and picture plastered obnoxiously over it. Through the thick covering of bandages on half his face, he gave her the most worried look he could manage.MJ nodded, “I see what you’re on about.” Another sigh, “Dammit.”“Mm?”“Sorry, it’s just… we’ve been getting a lot of trouble from reporters since… you know… Nosy pricks won’t take no for an answer…”“O…” Peter’s expression turned grim. He should’ve thought about that.“It’s fine, they’re just… annoying.” They resolved for MJ to stay for a few days, but then Peter insisted she get back to work. She had a life outside of worrying after him. MJ was reluctant, but agreed for Peter’s peace of mind.A nurse came in to drop off breakfast for the two. Peter’s plate remained untouched by the time Aunt May poked her head through the door, a large bag in her hand.“Peter,” she gasped, surging over and engulfing her nephew in a tight hug. “You’re okay.”Whining softly, Peter returned the hug as best he could, a fresh pain blooming across his back.“I can’t believe I missed seeing you wake up, and it was Jameson’s mug you woke up to. Is there something you’re not telling me?”The ensuing laughter hurt like hell, forcing tears out of his eyes and searing through his chest, but it was worth it for the smile on his Aunt May’s face. A strained one, but a smile, nonetheless. “You gave us a real scare, honey,” she murmured, pressing a firm kiss against his forehead. “I am so glad you’re alright.”Were his eyes meant to sting more after hearing that?“I’m sorry,” he tried, but the attempt was futile, yet again and all that came out was a nonsensical mumble that made his aunt frown. “I’m sorry.”“Is everything alright?” she asked.“M-Mh…”“There was some… damage,” MJ explained softly, and the frown deepened. “We’re going to sort out some speech therapy soon.”“Oh, sweetheart. You’ve really been put through the wringer this time.”Peter shook his head, nope. No, he was not going to cry in front of his already stressed-out family. Just smile; it’s not that bad. After all, you could be dead. It could be so… so much worse.Gentle hands wiped at his eyes, and he flinched.“Hhu…”Aunt May’s frown had shifted in tone by the time he focused back on her. “Peter Benjamin Parker, if I catch you trying to pull the wool over my eyes again, it’ll be cheeseburgers from here on out.”“Uuuoh!” Peter protested, and Aunt May chuckled.“If you ever want to eat kosher junk food again, then you need to be honest with us. Capiche?”Peter nodded eagerly. “Ngh.” Capiche.“There you go. Also,” May held up a large shopping bag, “I got you some things. Figured you’d get bored here with just the stuffy old doctors.”Peter perked up at that, and he swore the room looked just a little brighter.Stuck in between the pages of one of his physics textbooks was a crumpled note. Peter didn’t notice until he opened it and the paper fluttered into his lap.
DON’T FORGET!!! for Peter:
Textbooks
Laptop
Glasses
Science mags
Card from Miles
From who?Frowning, Peter searched around for any sign of the aforementioned card, under his sheets, in the drawer in the bedside table, going so far as to hang off the bed to try and look under it.That turned out to be a mistake, and the next thing he knew, he was toppling off the side and onto the floor. Something started bleeping frantically, and he screamed out in the fresh agony that seared through his entire body. Legs, chest, back, all of it burned like he’d been dropped into hell.“Sweet baby Jesus, what’s going on in here?”Peter didn’t recognise the voice, but the sight of a seafoam green uniform and work shoes, blurred with tears, had his gut tying knots around his stomach.“What the hell are you doing? Terry! Terry, I need some help here!”Footsteps thundered in his head with the piercing bleep of whatever monitor Peter had set off. Strong arms lifted him up off the floor, and he tried kicking away from whoever was picking him up, to no avail. Next thing he knew, he was back on the bed and two nurses were crowding over him, one of them reattaching the heart monitor to his chest while the other ducked back under the bed.“Kid,” the female nurse began sternly, and Peter was suddenly seeing his aunt in nurse’s scrubs, “I don’t know what happened, but you really need to keep your tush in that bed. You’re not Spider-Man in here.”Meek and clutching his chest, Peter nodded in agreement.The other nurse; a rather muscled-looking man who definitely worked out; reappeared from under the bed reappeared from under the bed holding an envelope, wonkily sealed in colourful tape.“Is this what you were after?” he asked.Another nod, yes, and the nurse handed the envelope to him.“Next time something falls under your bed, ask someone else to help,” the lady nurse grumbled as she pulled the blanket over him. Her hair was greying and there was a firm steel in her eyes, but that was where the similarities with Aunt May ended.Peter nodded, “Mm.”“Good. My name’s Edith, and this is Terry. We work this ward most days, so if you need anything, just give us a shout.”Peter gave them a thumbs up, and the two nurses seemed satisfied with that. Edith left, Terry lingered a little, staring, before following. Once Peter was certain that they were gone, he set his sights on the decent-sized envelope that he gingerly held in his hands. His name, Peter Parker, was written on it in bright markers and looked like it whoever had written it had copy-pasted a piece of street art onto it.Peter frowned. Who was Miles? He didn’t know anyone called Miles.But his Aunt May had seen this letter as important, enough so that she brought it to him, out of all the letters and gifts she had said were piling up on the front door. What else was there to do besides open it?Inside was one of those blank cards that you could add your own design to, and drawn on it was a bright, stylised portrait of himself on a webbed background of red and blue, “Thank You” written in swooping letters. Opening the card revealed another drawing, this time of vibrant figures swooping through skyscrapers. One of them looked like him, then another was in white, two wore black, there was a robot, and… was that a pig?Blinking away the confusion, he looked over the message on the other side.
To Peter Parker
You don’t really know me, but I’m that kid you saved at the collider. Thank you for that.
I took care of Fisk and the collider for you, with some help from a few friends. I wish you’d gotten to meet them, but I guess pictures will have to do.
A lot happened after you were hurt, and I don’t think I could explain it in a card, but you should ask your Aunt May for the whole story.
You’ve been an inspiration to me, and I hope you get better soon.
Sincerely,
Miles Morales
Peter frowned. Miles Morales? He didn’t know anyone with that name, did he? And… there had been kid at the collider? His memories of the event were fuzzy at best, but… at least the kid was okay, but what was he doing fighting violent multi-billionaires? Even with help, that was dangerous.This Miles seemed to know Aunt May, he’d have to ask her about this.At the moment, though, his bones felt heavy and his eyes ached. He set the card on the bedside table and went to sleep.He woke up to a buzzing in his skull. Persistent, alien, familiar.Then it was gone, and he felt… empty. Alone in the ocean.He went back to sleep.
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A few days later, Peter had his first physical therapy appointment.“Now, this isn’t an excuse to be swinging off the walls, kid,” Edith muttered whilst Peter flipped through the laminated ‘talk cards’ she’d printed out for him. “If you ask me, you shouldn’t even be getting out of bed yet.”Terry shot the older nurse a look as he brought in a hospital wheelchair, “Edie, he’s only going to be doing some basic exercises and a few assessments. Hardly anything stressful.”Edith’s frown darkened, “Anyone else would be getting another week of bed rest, at least. How damn soon do folks need another kid in spandex kickboxing criminals?”It wasn’t exactly kickboxing, but Peter wasn’t about to object anytime soon. Edith was one of those people whose opinions were about as flappagle as an elephant in a windstorm. She’d maybe get along with Jameson…Or not, he decided, as the image slowly formed in his head, and it turned out far less amiable than he’d hoped.Finished with the cards (which included such inappropriate, clearly-Edith-brand gems such as ‘Fuck off’, ‘Leave me alone’, and ‘1 photo = $60’), he set them aside and tried to get the attention of the two nurses arguing over him.“Ah-m…”“Edith, he has superpowers.”
“Hello…”
“Your point?”
“I’m right here.”
His physical therapy appointment was in a different part of the hospital. People’s glances barely lingered on him as Terry wheeled him through the corridors, but he felt them like particles of frost on the back of his neck.“Hey, Peter? Try to sit up straight, you know what Doctor Serris said.”Oh… He hadn’t noticed. The pain didn’t subside much when he did straighten up, though.The physical therapy room was well-lit with open windows and equipment spaced throughout. Treadmills, frames, crutches and so forth. A young woman in a blue shirt, with her dark hair tied back in a bun was sat at a desk in a corner, typing on a computer. She introduced herself as Peter’s therapist; Louiza Janz, and she seemed nice enough as she walked over, introduced herself and made some small talk with Terry. They seemed to know each other.“So, Peter,” Louiza began, “Do you know what this involves?”In all honesty, Peter wasn’t sure. His doctor may have talked to him about it at some point, but he couldn’t remember. He mimed his answer as best he could.“Right. Well, I’ll talk you through the process, and then we’ll get started. Do you want a drink?” Peter probably shouldn’t have been surprised that he didn’t have to get out of the wheelchair yet. As Terry had said earlier, the session was mostly just physical assessments and simple movement exercises. Bend your knee, press against this board, relax whilst I test your reflexes with this hammer.… The last one wasn’t nearly as extreme as it sounded. It just felt weird on his knees.“Well, your deep muscle reflexes are intact, which is good,” Louiza remarked at the end of the session. “You are experiencing some trouble with active motor function, but that’s to be expected. I’m honestly surprised that’s the only thing affected, given it was your Lumbar and Sacral nerves… I might have to double check your other scans, see if anywhere else…”Peter nodded. He was currently trying to rub the numbness out of his legs from the reflex hammer tests. Louiza was sat on her desk, looking through her notes.“But I’ve already noticed some improvement. Remarkable… Peter, could you sit back up? Thank you. How are you feeling?”Tired… his legs ached and his head hurt. Aunt May was supposed to be visiting him today, and he’d barely slept the night before…He gave Louiza a smile and a thumbs up.“Good. I’ll fetch someone to take you back to IC. Get some rest, okay? Today might’ve been tougher than you expected, but that’s because you’re not used to having to fight your own body to move. It’ll get easier, trust me. Your nerve connections will regenerate, probably better than anyone else, thanks to your… abilities. Things will get better.”He hoped so. Peter fell asleep almost the moment he got back into his hospital bed, not even staying awake long enough for Edith to bring him lunch.When he woke up several hours later, his Spider-Sense was blaring again, buzzing as if someone had trapped wasps in there. It was insistent and loud, shouting ‘find me, find me, pay attention, find me’ over and over until he shoved it into the corner to eat the sandwiches Edith had left him. The clock on the wall read 14:21.14:23, and Aunt May was at the door.“Hey there, Peanut,” she greeted. Peter grinned and waved at her in.She wasn’t alone. Right on her heels was a young boy in a hoodie, hardly any older than fourteen…Something clicked, and Peter’s Spider-Sense was back at the forefront of his mind, parading about like it was the fourth of July.It was him.The kid…Of course. How could he have forgotten that? The fight with Green Goblin, seeing that hoodie and its owner falling through the air, swooping down to rescue him and leaving him on the scaffolding with a promise and a heart pounding with hope and elation over no longer being alone. Now Peter remembered, if hazily, the rubble crashing down on him and his last words with the boy before sending him off with the goober.Then Fisk…How much of that had the boy seen? Did he remember to tie his shoelaces? What had happened after that?Stunned, Peter could only stare as Aunt May and the boy came over.“U… u…”
“You’re like me.”
“Peter, I’d like you to meet someone.”The kid was halfway between hiding behind Aunt May and stepping forward. A shy one, then. “Uuh, hi. It’s… good to see you again.”Peter nodded, likewise.“I stopped the Collider for you,” he said. “I’m Miles, by the way. Miles Morales. Not sure if I actually… ever told you that, heh…”Miles Morales. Where had he heard that name before?Oh, yeah. The card.“This yours?” he tried, pointing at it.“Uh, yep. That… that’s my work. Probably not all that-.”“Nh,” Peter protested, offering Miles a thumbs up and holding out his hand, smiling.His handshake felt like paper in Miles’ grip. When he let go, he shot Aunt May a questioning look.“Yeah, I guess… you’ve got a lot of questions,” she admitted. “It’s about time you knew everything.” When Miles and Aunt May finished relating the events following his hospitalisation, Peter was practically dizzy from all the information spinning around in his head. Or maybe that was the meds. Terry had come in halfway through Miles’ dramatic retelling of the final fight with Kingpin to replace his IV.“H-huh,” he managed, and Miles nodded,“Yeah. It’s a lot.”Still reeling from yet another revelation, Peter picked up Miles’ card and pointed to the image of the costumed figures inside.“Mm?”“Yep. That’s them. That’s Peter B., that’s Gwen, Spider-Ham, trench coat is Peter Benjamin Parker, the guy from the thirties. That’s Peni’s robot, and that’s Spider-Ham. And there’s me.”Peter blinked down at the second black-suited figure, the one with red highlights.So, Miles had taken up the mantle.“Are you okay?” he mimed, and Miles nodded.“I’m good, yeah. It… it took some getting used to, but… I’ve got help.”That was a relief, he thought, casting a grateful look to Aunt May.“No way in hell I’m letting either of you tough this out alone,” she said.For Miles’ sake, Peter knew that was true.
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There was a tremor in his right hand. Minute, barely-there, but there enough for Peter to notice. He brought it up with Louiza at is next appointment, who hummed and hawed and examined his hand as if it were a glove she was thinking of buying for a few minutes before ducking behind her desk and brought out one of those grip tools that Peter had seen in fitness videos.“Tremors like that are a pain to sort out,” she explained, half lying on her desk to hand the device over. “The only ‘quick fix’ I could offer you is surgery, but that’s far from ideal. And given it’s such a minor tremor, it’s more likely an issue with the nerve connections in your arm, because of the trauma. Or it’s just a muscular injury that’ll sort itself out soon enough. In the meantime, those might help you out.”Peter nodded and took the piece of equipment. It was surprisingly heavy in his hand for how small it was.“If it gets any worse, let me know.”Nodding, Peter gave the tool an experimental squeeze. Then another question wormed its way into his head, and he took out a little notebook and pen he’d been keeping in one of the pockets on the wheelchair to scribble it out.
‘What if nothing changes?’
“Give it a few months,” Louiza said. “If it stays the same, I’ll run a few tests to figure out the exact cause of the tremor.”It wasn’t a solid answer, but it was an answer nonetheless. Peter thanked her and wheeled himself to the door, where Terry was waiting to take him back to his room. The bandages that had covered half his face were finally off, and through the now-normal ache of his jaw and eye socket, his skin felt tingly and new. MJ was there with him, and as soon as the doctor had left, she kissed the bridge of his nose and held up her little handheld mirror for him to see.Mottled, ugly bruising smeared the right side of his face, and his eye was still half-shut from swelling. Peter smiled and gave his wife a kiss, no longer hampered by the thick gauze and able to feel every bit of it, fresh and familiar. Miles came to visit. After trying to compliment his costume, Peter just quieted down and lay back in his chair (he’d been allowed to take himself around his room and the ICU lobby as long as he had help getting in and out of bed), talk cards and notepad at the ready as the boy animatedly recounted everything Spider-Man related he’d done in the past few weeks. Thwarting robberies, taking out muggers, a scuffle with a homeless Tombstone and Rhino, it was all rather run-of-the-mill business if you compared it to his first fight.Speaking of, thinking about that still made Peter’s gut twist.“…so I had to do this kinda corkscrew twist thing as I fell,” Miles rambled, having wandered up to the ceiling, “otherwise I’d get caught in all the scaffolding. I picked that one up from Gwen, she said some stuff about dancing, so I looked up a few videos on ViewStream to help me with like, motions and stuff. Turns out Trapeze de Lune have some pretty awesome routines.”Peter frowned, something about what Miles just said sticking to him like briars, cold like that time he got stuck in a walk-in refrigerator, back when he’d been delivering pizzas to pay rent.He shook it off, and kept listening to Miles’ stories as the tremor picked up in his arm. The gifts were starting to pile up, and it was starting to get a bit ridiculous.Peter appreciated the well-wishes and the thank-yous, no doubt about it, but there was a limit to how much could physically fit in a hospital room without everything getting in the way. Someone had sent an entire bouquet of helium balloons, and Miles had tripped over them before they’d been taken away on account of them being ‘a potential health risk’. MJ and him had started building towers out of the cards to pass time on visits (Miles’ card still had the place of honour on his bedside table, though) and Edith was getting sick of throwing away all the food that was being sent over, complaining of it being a waste.“Hospital policy, kid,” she’d grunted, when he’d asked if it couldn’t just be donated for everyone else to have. “Can’t risk an uncooked pastry getting someone sick, even if it does have three hours’ worth of work put into it. Only folks who can bring in outside food for patients are family, and even then, there are rules.”Fair enough.“Then there’s the horror stories…”Oh, no… “Have you had a look at those speech therapists yet?”Thunder rumbled outside, rain lashing against the windows in malcontent. Peter had come back from another physical therapy session to see MJ waiting for him, hair damp and coat dripping. They’d talked about their days, Peter typing out his replies on his laptop, until they got to this point.‘Not yet’ Peter typed.“Do you want to have a look now? I’ll be honest, I miss listening to you talk about science.”Peter nodded, and MJ joined him on the bed, clutching his hand as he brought up Ogle and typed out the first name she gave him.
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“Heading home today, eh?”Adjusting the collar of his shirt, Peter offered Terry a strained smile. Once he got home, reaching high shelves would be much harder, if the pain from simply putting on a shirt was anything to go by.But it was getting better, and he could finally go home with MJ. He had an appointment scheduled with a speech therapist for next week, Miles was doing well with his Spider-Man duties, he was improving in physical therapy. Nothing adverse had happened lately… he could almost let himself say things were going well.“I’m gonna miss you, Petey,” Terry smiled, patting Peter on his good shoulder. “And my brother’s gonna miss getting free science help from Spider-Man.”They both laughed at that.“Keep in touch?” Terry asked, and he shyly held out a folded piece of paper. “Don’t tell Edith,” he added in a conspiratory whisper.Peter readily accepted it.“I’ll call you,” he mimed, and Terry’s smile was one of genuine fondness. MJ arrived early, her eagerness matching Peter’s in the way she hugged him and planted an admittedly sloppy kiss on his lips. He almost didn’t notice the slight frazzled look to her hair, but chalked it up to the weather and kissed her back.“Ready to go home?” MJ asked softly.Peter nodded, yes. A thousand times, yes. He missed his bed, he missed his wife, he missed eating actual food… he even missed his shitty neighbours who yelled at ungodly hours and left their trash at the door for weeks.“I missed you so much,” she murmured, straightening up and turning towards Terry. “Thank you for looking after him.”“Just doing my job, Mrs Parker,” Terry said sheepishly.“And you’ve done a wonderful job of it. Really.”“Ah, don’t mention it. Just get this guy home, he’s stir-crazy.”“Already on it. We just need to fill out some paperwork.”“Don’t let me keep you. Take care, okay?” In the hotel lobby, MJ slowed to a stop and leaned down to whisper into Peter’s ear,“Brace yourself.”Before Peter could even utter out a confused “Huh?”, he was being pushed through the hospital doors.Lights flashing everywhere. Question after question, so many eyes on him.Peter almost screamed, What the fuck was happening? It was too loud, too bright, not safe not safe not safe“Mr and Mrs Parker?”Too much too much it was all static. He could see blue through the blinding haze too much too much The last thing Jefferson Davis expected to happen whilst on break was for Spider-Man (the new one) of all people to talk him into chauffeuring Spider-Man (the original), of all people, home.“Now, why would I decide to do that?” he challenged, watching as this costumed boy attempted to stare him down.Surprisingly, he was holding his own.“Folks have been mobbing his family all month,” Spider-Man explained, in that definitely-fake-deep-voice of his. “Trying to get pictures, interviews, just because they’re Mr Parker’s family. A few tried to sneak into his hospital room.”Jefferson raised an eyebrow, knowing, but still sceptical. “Your point?”“Officer, those crazies will lose their minds once they see he’s out of the hospital. They definitely won’t leave him alone, and last I checked-.”“You ‘checked’?”“I visit him. Anyways, last I checked, he’s not in good shape for that sort of thing. Might not even get out the hospital.”“So you want me, a cop on duty, to drive him home.”The kid nodded (dear god, he was tiny), “Yes, sir. Please.”“Can’t he just drive?”“He doesn’t have a car. Family always gets there on foot.”“Why not just call him a cab, then?”There was a momentary pause.“Because I trust you. And folks’ll listen to a cop.”“Why me specifically?”Another pause…“You… came highly recommended?”And there was the long-awaited voice break.It seemed his resolve broke with it.“Fine,” he huffed. “I’ll take the superhero home.”For a moment, it seemed like the boy was about to hug him again, but he managed to restrain himself this time.“Thank you, officer. I-I won’t forget this.”“You’d better not, because you owe me for this.”“Got it. Uh… thanks again, and… I’ll see you later.”“You want me to go now?”“Yes please. Also, uh… you know how he was… crushed by a building?”“Yes?”“Well, uh… he looks like it…”With that, he thwipped away, and that was how he found himself pulling up in front of a hospital thronged with reporters, photographers, clamouring people with smartphones… all crowding around the plate glass doors where two figures were being bombarded with unwanted attention. A redhead and a blond, both easily recognisable, even from this distance.A quick burst from the sirens stilled the chaos enough for him to get out and forge a path through the crowd, where Peter Parker and his wife were being damn near harassed by the public.The caged panic in Peter Parker’s eyes was obvious to anyone who wasn’t obnoxiously flashing a camera in his face. Above him, his wife looked about ready to smack someone.“Mr and Mrs Parker?” he greeted, and Parker’s eyes seemed to look straight through him.He looked a wreck. Dulled eyes deeply ringed, the asymmetry of his face, just noticeable enough for Jefferson to know something was off, and the stiffness to his posture all screamed of pain. He could barely see any semblance of the masked vigilante or the photos of a young man on the tabloids.His wife, on the other hand, was very much recognisable. Jefferson had seen her before; Rio liked to buy DVD copies of local theatre productions, and Mary-Jane Watson-Parker was a key cast member in several of them.“Officer,” she returned, eyes narrow and cold. If looks could kill… “Is something the matter?”The translation that came to Jefferson’s mind read as follows: “Bother my husband and I’ll end you.”“A friend of yours said you might need a ride home,” he said quietly, hoping that none of the countless microphones, mobiles or recorders being waved in their direction could pick up what he was saying. “I can see why, now.”There was a long pause between them, and what might have been almost-silence in any other situation was very much the opposite. Mrs Watson eventually nodded and let him lead them through the crowd to his cruiser. Jefferson opened the back door and let the couple clamber in. Parker’s movements were stiff and forced as he hauled himself out of his wheelchair and pulled his legs in after him.Parker seemed to have come out of whatever daze he’d been in by the time Jefferson put the wheelchair in the trunk, got back behind the wheel and started off. A particularly brave (or rather just annoyingly stupid) reporter dove out of his way, and the mob tried pursuing for a few paces until he was out of reach.“So,” he began, glancing at his mirror to see the couple huddled up together in the backseat. At least they had their seatbelts on. “Where are we headed?”Mary-Jane, holding tightly onto her husband, gave Jefferson the address. They lived in Queens, not too far off, and he took the next turn towards their destination.“Is that kinda mob normal?” he asked.“It is now,” the redhead huffed.Parker mumbled something under his breath, face half-hidden in his wife’s shoulder, holding her hand as she stroked his hair.“How long until we get there?”“About half an hour, give or take traffic.”“Thank you.”“You’re welcome, ma’am.”They settled back into silence. Jefferson only cast the occasional glance to the rear-view mirror to check on his passengers. Parker seemed to have fallen asleep, only to jolt and hiss in pain when the car drove over a speed bump.He looked… incredibly small, compared to the costumed vigilante he’d encountered over the last ten years. Jefferson had expected the man under the mask to be just as arrogant and seemingly unfazed by anything that got thrown in his direction, but instead he just looked exhausted, barely holding up against what he’d been through just a month ago.The way he looked at his wife reminded Jefferson of how he looked at Rio, after a rough day at work where he saw things that chilled him to the bone, or got dragged into an altercation that left him coming home with bruises and bandages.He turned on the radio. Peter had always hated crowds. At Jameson’s work parties (which he somehow got invited to), he kept to himself and hid away in the darkest corner with a can of whatever soda was on offer, going the whole night on just that and snacks swiped from the buffet table. Afterwards, he’d play chaperone to drunk co-workers with Jameson before returning home with a quip and a wave.The number of flashing lights and reporters that had greeted him outside the hospital doors hit him like a brick wall, and he was intimately familiar with what brick walls felt like.He remembered being used to it. Used to the fame, the praise, the clamour of questions.They hit a speedbump and he gasped, pain lancing through his ribs and spine.No…He was used to having a mask between him and the public eye, hiding him, protecting him and the people he loved.And those people hadn’t been crowding around Spider-Man…They’d been crowding Peter Parker…Peter Parker didn’t do crowds. He didn’t do fame, or interviews, or flashing lights that halfway blinded him and sent his Spider-Sense reeling. He didn’t do news articles with his face plastered on them, spilling every little detail of him to the public and grasping at straws for some sort of sickening scandal that never happened.Everyone knew who he was now. They knew his name, his face, his address.His family…All of it…“Peter. Peter, breathe. It’s okay.”MJ was hugging him, stroking his hair and kissing his forehead.“A-ah…”“Breathe,” she repeated. “You’re okay. Just breathe, okay? I’m sorry I didn’t warn you.”Peter shook his head, “No. Don’t be sorry.” “Nh, vf… nnh.”“I know you’re stressed,” MJ continued. “And I can’t imagine how awful this must be for you right now. But we’ll figure this out. Okay?”Peter’s head was still reeling, and booming with the sound of his heartbeat, but he nodded, and tried to steady his breathing through the sharp pain of his ribs.His hand in MJ’s was shaking. Violently. “Thank you, Officer. This would’ve been much more difficult if you hadn’t showed up.”Jefferson pulled the wheelchair out of the trunk and struggled to fold it whilst Parker silently waited for him.“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “The other Spider-Man asked me to help out.”“Still, thank you,” Mrs Watson repeated. “We haven’t gotten a moment’s peace since… you know.”“So I’ve heard,” Jefferson grunted as he finally got the chair unfolded. “There. You two are free to go.” He glanced down at Parker, being helped into his chair by his wife. “Stay safe, okay?”“Of course,” Watson said. Parker looked up at him, wordless but grateful. “Have a good day, Officer.”“And you.”
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He came back to find the woman cackling at her desk, almost falling off her chair with how fiercely overcome she was with mania.“Who died?”“LOOK HIM UP!” Octavius shrieked. “HIS FACE! IT’S FUCKING PRICELESS AHHAAHAA!”Rolling his eyes, he joined her at the desk, craning over her shaking form and that ridiculous hair of hers to see a Bugle news article, featuring photos of the brat. In a wheelchair. Looking like he’d just walked in on two old men getting busy. With handcuffs.A tickle rose up in his throat, rising higher and higher, until he too was gleefully squawking, almost doubled over in laughter,“I guess you were right!”
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Both the elevators were broken.Peter and MJ lived on the ninth floor.He really, really hated this. Stupid, cheapskate, prettied-up apartme-.“Hey.”MJ was leaning over him, almost nose to nose. Hair tickling his face. She didn’t look half as frustrated as he felt.“I know this looks bad,” she said, “but we can call someone in to fix this. In the meantime, we could ask Aunt May if she could let us stay?”Peter managed a smile, “What would I do without you?”“I'll call her, then, and we can get out before the mob catches up. I can come back later and get some stuff to stay over with.”“Mhm.”Sharing a kiss, they geared up to leave again. Peter kept his hood up on the trip to Aunt May’s, slipping into an exhausted doze halfway through the bus ride. MJ tried to be as gentle as possible when she wheeled him off the bus, but the slight jolt from hitting the sidewalk was enough to wake him up with a hiss.Aunt May greeted them both with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. The pull-out couch was already set up in the living room, and Peter recognised the bedsheets as the ones from his old room.He really wanted to go straight to sleep, but MJ and Aunt May insisted he needed to eat first. So he hovered in the kitchen whilst the two best people in his life made an early dinner and shooed him away whenever he tried to help.Part of him wanted to protest, insisting that he wasn’t helpless and could still make his way around a kitchen. Another part felt guilty that he couldn’t do anything and that he was causing so much trouble.9The rest was just tired. So, so tired. And he hadn’t even done anything today.Dinner was served, and Peter managed most of it through the uncomfortable knot that had formed out of his stomach. Afterwards, MJ put her coat back on and gave Peter a kiss on the cheek.“I’m going to go grab some things from home,” she said, “I’ll be back soon, okay?”“Mh,” Peter mumbled, hugging MJ as tightly as he could for as long as he could get away with, and reluctantly watched her leave. He didn’t close the door until she was out of sight.In the kitchen, Aunt May was washing the dishes.“When MJ gets back, maybe we can-… Peter?”Clattering dishes, then footsteps fast approaching. The blurred figure of Aunt May appeared in front of him, kneeling down to his level and cupping his face in her hands.“Oh, sweetheart,” she sighed, gently wiping her thumb across his cheek, and that was when Peter finally realised that he was crying. Not just crying, but full-blown bawling, thick sobs wracking his chest and snot and tears streaming down his face. He could barely breathe, hardly saw through it all as Aunt May brought him back to the kitchen, where she took a seat in front of him and wiped away the tears with a tissue.“What’s the matter, hon?” she asked softly.Peter just cried. Harder than he had in years, whilst his Aunt just held him in her arms, whispering sweet nothings to him and cleaning up his face every now and then. Each lurching sob struck him hard enough to hurt, his chest heaving and face contorted with pain and despair, hands shaking as he hugged himself tight.Eventually, the tears ran dry, and Peter’s sobs stuttered down to feeble, shaking hiccups. Everything hurt. His head, his chest, his eyes. The tissues felt scratchy on his face.“How long have you been holding that in?” Aunt May asked.Would you believe me if I said I didn’t know? were the words in Peter’s head. Words that choked and died before they even made it to this throat, and all he could do was whimper and shrug.Aunt May sighed, “Today’s been rough, hasn’t it?”He nodded. His head hurt.“Why don’t you go lie down for a bit? MJ shouldn’t be long.”Peter shook his head, no. He didn’t want to sit around, doing nothing.If Aunt May disagreed with him, she didn’t remark on it. “Okay. Do you want to help tidy up, then?”Yes. Yes, that sounded good. He could do something, he could help. Helping would take his mind off things. MJ came back just as Peter’s nerves were about to peak, and the first thing he did when she came through the door was rush over and hug her.“Hey,” MJ said, nearly falling over from how suddenly Peter had wrapped his arms around her, “what’s all this?”“Mm,” Peter mumbled, his face pressed into MJ’s torso.“Okay, then. Can I… take my shoes off, or are we going to be like this for the whole night? Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice that you’re hugging me, but… my feet hurt. I picked the wrong pair of shoes for all of this.”“Oh.” Peter sheepishly pulled away, giving MJ some space. He hovered by the couch-bed, wondering what to do next, when Mary-Jane came up behind him and engulfed him in a hug of his own. “Eep!”He almost threw himself out of his wheelchair, and might have if MJ hadn’t held onto him.“It’s just me, silly,” she chuckled, ruffling his hair and kissing the back of his neck. Giving him a last squeeze, she stood back up and sat down on the couch-bed in front of him. “You’re so tense, all of a sudden. What’s the matter?”Sheepish, Peter looked away, hands fidgeting.“Do you need something to write on?”Yes.“Hold on a second. Let me go get you some paper."MJ got up and went to the kitchen, leaving Peter to yet again watch her disappear from sight. The fidgeting kicked up a notch, even as he heard MJ rummaging through the kitchen drawers.He didn’t have to wait long before she came back in with a pad of paper and a pen. She handed them to him and sat back down, watching him patiently.For a moment, Peter just stared at the blank page in his lap, the pen hovering just above it, stuck.
‘I feel’
No. No, that wasn’t… just scribble it out, start again.
‘Everyone’
Nope.
‘I don’t’
No. Start again. Start. Scratch it out. Start again. Nope. Scribble it out, start over.Before long, he had a page full of scribbles and no actual words to show.With a huff, he turned to the next page, only for the same process to start up all over again. His frustration mounted, his motions with the pen becoming more forceful, almost tearing through the paper.“Hey,” MJ interrupted, holding his hands still. “You don’t have to write anything if it’s giving you trouble, okay? It’s fine.”Sighing, Peter relented, and let MJ bring him into a hug. The pad and pen slipped onto the floor.They stayed like that for an unknown length of time, even when Peter’s back began to protest the awkward angle he was holding. Aunt May might have come through the room at some point to go upstairs, he wasn’t sure.“Do you want to watch a movie?” MJ asked eventually, and Peter pulled away to nod. “Okay. You pick something out, I just need to get changed.”Making a noise of agreement, Peter let MJ get up and head upstairs with one of the bags she’d brought over, before arching his back with a low groan, feeling his bones grate back into their usual place. He needed to keep an eye on that. The last thing he wanted was his back being permanently fucked over after a simple hug, of all things.Rolling himself over to the DVD cabinet, Peter ignored his own advice in leaning forward to look for something to watch. Aunt May didn’t have many horror movies, and the ones she did have (5/13, The Elm’s Nightmare, etc.) were rather… hardcore. MJ hated romcoms, of which Aunt May had plenty. Those were out of the question.Eventually, he settled on something fun; Holly Grale and the Maltese Python. He pried it out from between Adder’s Back and The Van Lady (what was it with his Aunt and English movies?) and began setting it up. MJ came back down in a dressing gown.“Did you manage to pick something?” she asked.Peter held up the DVD case, “Mmhm.”“A classic. Nice.”Halfway through the film, MJ fell asleep, her breathing evening out and her eyes sliding shut. When Peter noticed, he checked the clock. It only read quarter to eight, but it was pitch black outside, and he found himself struggling to stay awake.He switched of the television, and tried to settle himself down to sleep without jostling MJ too much, who had fallen asleep with her arms wrapped around him.Nothing felt comfortable as he tried to sleep. Lying on his back still wasn’t something he was used to, and sleeping on his side so he could hold his wife… hurt…Nothing was going back to normal anytime soon.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Much to the surprise of the Parker household, there was no crowd clamouring around the doors and windows to May’s house the next day. Or the next. Or the day after that.“You’re finally out, and that’s when they leave us alone?” May remarked, peering out of the windows. “Don’t get me wrong, that’s great, but… it’s biza-. Never mind, I see some. Nosy little…”She didn’t properly finish that sentence, but Peter knew his Aunt well enough to finish it for her.“It’s better than a mob of rabid reporters, at least,” MJ said as she put on her coat, ready to go to rehearsal. “I’ll see you at eight, honey.” She bent down to give Peter a kiss. “And don’t coop yourself up all day, alright? Catch some sun in the garden or something.” Her voice dropped, “Watch the news. A lot’s happened in the past month, you should catch up on it, even if your face does pop up on there.”Smiling, Peter waved her goodbye, and tried to ignore the way his stomach had turned into a butter churn. The door closed, and he lingered for a moment before going to help Aunt May clean up breakfast. She’d turned the radio on, tuned to an 80s radio station.“Are you sure you don’t want to join me and the girls for coffee?” she asked, and Peter shook his head, again, no. She frowned at him, “Definitely? Because MJ’s right. You have to get out eventually.”Still, Peter shook his head, and to his relief, Aunt May didn’t push.She left a few hours later, and Peter was alone in the house for the first time since he’d arrived.Now what? Peter wondered, looking about the living room for… something. Part of him considered putting a movie on, or channel surfing for the rest of the morning, but he’d watched Aunt May’s movie collection too many times already over the years, and the idea of flicking through channels just seemed boring. So his gaze bypassed the television, and the open copy of today’s Daily Bugle on the coffee table. There was an empty coffee mug next to it.Coffee sounded good. He took the mug into the kitchen and started making himself a pot of coffee. The kettle was boiling, a clean mug was waiting to be filled, and Peter was hauling himself up by one arm to reach the cupboard, his legs limp and useless.He’d only tried standing once, during physical therapy. It had failed miserably, and he’d have fallen to the floor if Terry hadn’t been there to hold him up. Being able to move his legs (even that took some effort) didn’t mean he could hold his weight, as it turned out. His nerves weren’t that well-healed yet.MJ and May would be throwing a fit if they saw him doing this. His back was certainly upset with him, the pain broadcasting all over his body as he reached…There. Coffee acquired. Now he just had to lower himself back into his chair without making a fool of himself.He really hoped no one was trying to watch him through the windows……There weren’t, were there?Rubbing his back, Peter took a glance at the kitchen windows. Nope. No one there, and his Spider-Sense was blissfully silent. He was just being ridiculous. He should just make his coffee and get on with… whatever it was he ended up doing today. He had a headache, and it was getting on his nerves. There was a twitch in his leg, and his hands shook with an infuriating buzz that he only barely noticed, but whenever he tried to sit still, it seemed to get worse. If it weren’t for his injuries, he’d probably be pacing the ceiling by now.The molecular physics textbook in his lap had been held open to the same page for nearly ten minutes, and he hadn’t even gotten past the first paragraph. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know what he was reading, he’d been to the lecture on this chapter, he’d read through it twice already, but today was the day he was having trouble focusing for more than thirty seconds.He needed more coffee. He was halfway through his fourth mug when he realised he’d forgotten to check if he’d been drinking decaf.Shit… Caffeine overloads sucked. Peter’s Spider-Sense had been nagging at him for over an hour, and while he knew it was more than likely because of how much coffee he’d had, it was still stressful as all hell. The constant ringing of dread in his skull had him making rounds through the house, glancing through every window as he passed them. He knew he was being paranoid, but the creeping sensation that something was about to go wrong wouldn’t let up, and he couldn’t focus on anything else.With a frustrated groan, he pulled himself onto the couch and buried his face into the cushions. Waiting out the oncoming crash became a little more bearable once he’d properly settled on the couch and switched on the TV for some background noise. Seeing his face on almost every news channel he flicked through was… uncomfortable, especially when paired with footage of him dressed as Spider-Man, but eventually, the focus shifted to Miles’ escapades, and he zoned out to the sound of Jameson’s shouting.Until a thunderous knocking BANG BANG BANG slammed into him, jolting him so hard that he fell off the couch. The air was practically stabbed out of his lungs, all he could do was clutch himself and roll over in agony.The banging on the front door continued, hardly ceasing BANG BANG BANG, and Peter wondered vaguely through the pain if the door would be able hold. His Spider-Sense was flaring up again, warnings firing off like bullets.
BANG BANG BANG
“PARKER!”And now there was yelling. Wonderful. As if he needed more stress at this moment.With as much breath as he could muster, he shouted at the door. All that came out was a rasping wheeze that stung his ribs. He still couldn’t drag himself up, his chair only barely out of reach.
BANG BANG BANG
Whoever was trying to break the door down wasn’t giving up, “OPEN UP, PARKER!”Alright, alright. As soon as he could breathe right.“I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE!”That wasn’t threatening at all…Groaning, Peter pushed himself into a sitting position and crawled to his wheelchair.Just as he was getting settled in the chair, the ‘knocking’ stopped, and another voice cut off the angry one,“Whoa, man. Where’s the fire?”“Back off, shrimp. I’ve got business with the bastard behind this door.”“Really?” Peter heard, and the voice sounded… familiar. “Name-calling? That’s low, man. Didn’t your mom teach you that-?” Clakt! “Hey! Did you just…? You just threw a rock at me!”“And I’ll throw another if you don’t piss off.”That one, too.“What is your issue? Jeez, and I thought Fisk had problems. Look, just leave the guy alone, he doesn’t want to deal with you, beef or no.”The newcomer sounded like he was talking from above whoever was at the doorstep, and like they were faking a deep voice.“I mean it!”“And I don’t care. Leave Peter alone.”“Oh, because you two are such good friends, aren’t you? All buddy-buddy, huh? Well, you-.”“Dude, drop it. I don’t know what your deal is, but you’re being a huge asshole right now. Peter, as Spider-Man, risks his life for ten years to keep your sorry, angry butt safe, and this is how you’re treating him? Coming to his house like a one-man mob with pitchforks?”Peter recognised the voice now, forced to a deeper tone as it was. Miles.“I won’t tell you again,” the stranger hissed. “Piss. Off.”“No.”“You-.”“Sir, if you don’t leave, I will web you to this house, all wrapped up for the cops to collect you. What you’re doing is grounds for harassment, and Peter can absolutely press charges against you. He’s probably called them already.”The sudden authoritative tone in Miles’ voice, unhampered by his blatantly awful attempt to disguise it, caught Peter off guard, and judging from the tense silence on the other side of the door, the stranger was just as surprised.Wasn’t calling the cops a little excessive?“You wouldn’t,” the stranger growled. “Do you know who I am?”“I would, even if I did know who you were. Because harassment is harassment, no matter how much money you have. Now leave.”Wow. Was this really a thirteen-year-old he was hearing? Peter couldn’t even get that tone down at twenty-six.A long silence filled the air, until Peter heard the distinct thud of footsteps and a sharp call of “This isn’t over!” With bated breath, he waited for the footsteps to dwindle down to nothing, then a little longer…Another knock startled him out of his brief daze, despite it being much softer and friendlier than the one before. Could knocking be called friendly? After what had just occurred, Peter was considering it.“Can I come in now?” It was Miles. How did he go from stern to boyish so quickly? “I think he’s gone.”Blinking, Peter fumbled with the door, pulling it open to find a costumed Miles peering down at him from the wall, lensed eyes wide open.“Hi,” he greeted, and Peter gave him a little wave and a smile. “You okay, man?”Peter nodded, pushing back a little to let Miles in. Before he did, however, he took a glance at the street outside. A hunched figure in a black jacket was storming away from the house. He pointed to them and shot Miles a questioning look.The boy just shrugged, “I don’t know. He seemed pretty pissed, though.”Frowning, Peter let the matter go, and Miles flipped down to the doorstep. He certainly seemed more confident in the way he moved compared to his first visit in costume.“Home alone, huh?”Peter nodded, and pointed to the kitchen. He held up one of his cards, which read “Would you like something to eat?”“Dude, I’m starving,” Miles exclaimed, surging straight towards the kitchen ahead of Peter. Then he slowed down and looked at him sheepishly. “That’s… okay, right?”Peter nodded vigorously, gesturing that he could go ahead. His hands were still shaking. Must be the coffee.“Thanks. I’ve been getting hungry really quick lately. Is that normal?”Yup. Peter got out his notebook and wrote,
“Boosted metabolism. Burns calories faster, esp with the Spider-Man stuff.”
“Oh, yeah… I think B, the other Peter, said something about that. He mostly went on about baby powder though…”
“Good advice. You followed it?”
“Yeah, your Aunt won’t stop reminding me.”
“Good. Don’t make my mistakes.”
Miles laughed at that, and Peter felt a sudden swell of warmth in his chest bubbling up to his throat. It seemed he had something new to add to his list of things he wanted to protect.“Since you’re here,” he wrote, “how about I teach you a few things?” Peter knew he had a list of things he wished he’d known in his early days as Spider-Man.He just hadn’t realised it was so long. Miles was halfway through his fourth peanut butter sandwich, and Peter was nowhere near finished typing up the list on his laptop as they sat in the living room.“You know you don’t have to teach me everything at once, right?” Miles said through a mouthful of food. He still had his mask half on, at Peter’s insistence. “Peeping toms,” he’d written, and although the kid’s glance through the window was sceptical, he thankfully listened. “I mean, we’ve got all the time in the world, right? It’s not like you’re gonna glitch out of existence like the other guys.”“Mm,” Peter replied, looking at the screen. Before he could let his thoughts wander too far, he faced the laptop towards Miles. The boy continued eating as he squinted at the screen, perching rather than sat on his chair. That was familiar. Peter remembered himself doing that as a teenager, even before the bite. He still did it, actually, and it drove Aunt May crazy.“What do you mean with this one? Number six,” Miles asked, pointing at the screen. “‘Small stuff’ is… kinda vague…”Pulling the laptop back to himself, Peter tapped out a response,
“Kittens stuck in trees, helping kids find their parents. That sort of stuff. People trust it more.”
“Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. I know this dude, from my old school, he thought he was too cool to like you. Then one day he came in saying you helped him get back home after he fell asleep on the bus and got lost. Wouldn’t shut up about you after that.”That got a chuckle out of him.“Thanks for all of this, by the way,” Miles said. “It was… it was scary enough, even once I realised, and… I can’t imagine how you, um… yeah…” He looked away; cheeks tinted pink. “Thanks.”For a long moment, they were both quiet; Miles embarrassed, Peter at a loss for words.What could he possibly say to that? Well, not actually saying it, but… never mind.Carefully, as if he were approaching a flighty horse, he laid a hand on Miles’ shoulder, offering him a reassuring smile when he looked up.Nothing was going to happen to this kid. Not on his watch. Peter sent Miles home with a mini radio to listen to police frequencies with, and a number of other supplies that he might need. Web cartridges, first-aid kits, etc, etc. Then for the next few days, he spent every spare moment in the Shed, pouring over books and schematics, tinkering with various gadgets that he’d put together over the years. There was a fresh vigour behind it, and it didn’t go unnoticed.“That’s the most lively I’ve seen him in weeks,” MJ said one night, whilst Peter had fallen asleep over some books in the living room, and Aunt May had brought out a bottle of wine after dinner. “Not that I’m complaining, it’s just… a little out of nowhere.”“The kid does that,” May shrugged, wine glass in hand, bottle on the table. They’d vacated to the kitchen when they’d noticed Peter’s dozing. “I’m not sure how, but he just… breathes new life into people, y’know? If it weren’t for him, I don’t think any of us would be where we are now.”There were far more connotations in that statement than MJ wanted to think about.“Maybe we could invite him to stay for dinner,” MJ suggested.May had taken to swirling her glass in thought, “Maybe. Might be difficult, with school and his parents.”“They don’t know.” It wasn’t a question.May shook her head, “No. I’ve tried to get him to tell them, but… he hasn’t done anything about it.”“He’ll pull a Peter Parker if we don’t do something.”“I do not want another kid bleeding out on the living room carpet.”Silence. May poured herself another glass.“Peter’s got that speech therapy appointment, tomorrow, right?”“Yep. I’m going with him. People keep hounding me on the way to rehearsals, he’ll hate going out tomorrow.”“He never did like crowds. Has he opened any of those gifts yet? They’re piling up on the doorstep again.”“With the way he looks at them, you’d think he gets dizzy just seeing them.”“I don’t blame him. It’s a literal mountain at this point. And who knows what sorts of crazies have sent him… stuff?”“Please stop. I don’t need to be thinking of that before going to bed.”“You’re welcome.”“Oh, my go-. Hand over that bottle, May.” Someone was shaking him. Someone with gentle hands and no ill will towards him, if the absence of impending dread was anything to go by.Still weighed down by sleep, he pried open his eyes to see a blur of red hair and blue eyes.“Mmmh…”“We gotta make the bed, sweetie,” MJ murmured, planting a kiss on his forehead. “Come on, up you get.”Mumbling, Peter pushed himself up and fell into his chair, helping MJ pull out the couch bed and sort out the sheets. He couldn’t help but notice the slight flush to her cheeks. She and Aunt May must have been sharing a bottle of Rioja. That was nice. Things had been so tense lately, they both needed to enjoy themselves.The bed was made, they got changed and huddled up together under the sheets.“Speech therapy tomorrow,” MJ murmured into his hair. “Do you want me to go in with you?”Nothing.MJ frowned, “Peter? Peeter.”Still, nothing. Peter had fallen back asleep.“Oh, honey. Okay. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Why hadn’t he emailed to reschedule the appointment? Not even halfway to the bus stop, and he was already being hounded by people wanting autographs and photos.“Hey, Spider-Man!”“Ignore them,” MJ hissed, surging forward and taking him with her. “They’ll give up eventually.”Peter just nodded, and let MJ push him the rest of the way. His own arms could only get him so far so fast.The wait at the bus stop was agonising, with an expectant gaggle of people peering over them both like vultures. When the bus finally pulled in, Peter wasted no time in getting on, MJ hot on his heels, and thank god, no one else got on who didn’t actually need a ride. The bus driver’s eyes lingered on him a little too long, and he was quick to show his pass and get situated in the wheelchair space.A child was staring at him, so he gave him a little wave and turned his attention back to MJ, who looked as uncomfortable as he felt. Gently taking her hand in his, Peter tried to give her the most reassuring smile he could manage.She smiled back, and that was it for a while.A few minutes later, Peter felt something tugging on his sleeve, and looked to see the same little boy from earlier, looking up at him with big blue eyes and clutching a sheet of paper in one hand. He couldn’t be much older than six, and there was a Spider-Man cap on his head.Unsure of what to do, he waved at the kid again. Still saying nothing, the boy reached up and pushed the paper into his hand and tottered back to his mother.Blinking in surprise, Peter looked down at the folded paper in his hand. It was slightly crumpled, and he unfolded it to reveal a messy crayon drawing of two people… shooting water guns?... at a black square. There was a scribbly green arrow pointing to the figure in red and blue (with white stripes), and in neater handwriting, the words “GET WELL SOON” were written in pen. The other figure was coloured red and black, and looked an awful lot like…Oh. Oh! Peter’s eyebrows shot up. He got it now. A wonky grin twitched at his lips as he glanced over to the kid and gave him a thumbs up. He had his face pressed into his mother’s leg, but she noticed and offered him a smile before turning back to her son, murmuring something to him that he didn’t catch.Still smiling, Peter showed the drawing to MJ, and it brought a smile to her face too.They stayed like that until they got off the bus, and quickly made their way through the streets to the building where Peter had his appointment.That was where they parted ways, with a final kiss and goodbye, MJ carried on towards work, and Peter went inside.He found himself in a blandly decorated lobby, with a single receptionist at the desk and several rows of seating. A television broadcasted one of the city news channels, something about Stark Industries’ usual charity donations plateauing for the first time in five years.At the desk, the receptionist barely glanced at him as he pushed forward the paper explaining why he was here.“Doctor Mensch will see you in fifteen minutes,” the receptionist said, sounding bored. “Your name will pop up on the screen above me, he’s on the fifth floor in Office 7, it’ll be on your left.” He gave another bored glance before adding, “The elevator is over there.”Giving a small noise of thanks, Peter rolled over to the waiting area and pulled out his phone.When it was time for his appointment, Peter entered the elevator, taking it to the fifth floor. The metal box around him shuddered to a start, and he went tense until the ascent smoothed out.God, he hated these things. Too much noise around him, too enclosed…At least it was only five floors up...The elevator at home still wasn’t working. When MJ had called in to ask about it, there turned out to be a structural fault that would apparently take a while to be addressed.
Ding!
That was his stop. The doors opened, and Peter rolled out into a corridor lined with office doors. Heading down it, he found himself at Office 7. A plaque on the door read “Doctor Jacob Mensch, Speech Therapist” in bold lettering.He knocked twice, and was quickly met with a sharp “Come in!”So he did.The man in front of him had light brown hair in a ponytail, and black-framed glasses.“Mr Peter Parker?”Peter nodded.“Excellent. I’m Dr Mensch. I’ll be the one working with you on this. Now, get yourself settled, I just need to sort out some of these files, and then we can begin.” The session consisted of a lot of shouting and incomprehensible noisemaking, which left Peter red-faced with embarrassment as Dr Mensch took notes and asked him question after question.“I know these exercises seem ridiculous,” Dr Mensch said, “but they work, and you’ll get used to them eventually.”Naturally, Peter said nothing.“So, we’ve not made any notable progress, but that’s to be expected from the first session. Today’s more of a learning experience, and today, we’ve learned that you are capable of controlled speech, if limited. Vowel sounds are good, but your main issue is consonants, plosives, and forming words.”Okay.“I can’t promise you any results at this point. But your… uniqueness… allows for some optimism.”That was okay. He was sent off with a list of exercises and a date for a second appointment for next week. Thankfully, the journey home was uneventful, and he got back to Aunt May’s without much hassle.Aunt May was there when he arrived.“How’d it go?” she asked.“Good,” Peter tried to say, but the word didn’t make it out of his mouth intact. He tried anyway. Doctor’s orders.“I’m making lunch. Would you like to help?”Yes. Yes he would. Wheeling into the kitchen after Aunt May, Peter got the job of making sandwiches and mumbling a wordless summary of his day. The little drawing he’d received on the bus got pinned to the corkboard.“It’s nice to hear you talking again,” Aunt May said, ruffling Peter’s hair. “Even if I can’t understand a word of what you say.”“Heh… Mm.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The following weeks were much the same as the first. Stay home, keep himself busy for most of the day, receive the occasional visit from Miles if the kid had the time, think of things to teach him, go to his appointments and do the ‘homeworks’ he received from those, eat, sleep, and so on. There were parallel grooves being worked into the back yard from his frequent in and outs from the Shed, May had chewed him out more than once for climbing up the stairs unsupervised to fetch textbooks from his room (“Ask for help, dammit!”), and the elevator at home still wasn’t fixed, no matter how many times MJ called to ask.They made their way around that issue, though.Moving his legs was getting easier, much to his satisfaction. Now he could shake out the restless buzz that set in whenever he sat around for too long. He still couldn’t hold his weight, though. Louiza said they’d work on it once he could actually kick a ball further than two inches.He got around to texting Terry, as he’d promised. The nurse was elated to see that he was doing okay, and his younger brother insisted on joining the conversation. Terry had to hold him back from bragging about his ‘new best friend Spider-Man’ at high school.‘Some other time,’ Peter promised during a video call, not wanting the kid to be too disappointed. He could feel Aunt May rolling her eyes at him in the background of the conversation.Unwanted fame aside, this was nice, Peter decided. With the attention being shared between himself, Miles and other heroes in the world, it wasn’t quite as overwhelming as the first day had been. Jameson’s ranting about ‘civil privacy’ on both the Daily Bugle News Channel and that podcast of his may have had something to do with the lack of people at his door.It still didn’t erase the prickling sensation that crawled up his spine every time he left the house, though. But he chalked it up to cold and made sure to put on a coat before he left.Almost a month had passed since he’d left the hospital, and he finally found it in himself to just… go out for a bit. After MJ left for rehearsal (“The backdrops are finally done, I’ll have to take some pictures to show you”), he helped Aunt May around the house for about an hour before grabbing a coat, his bus pass and wallet, and a book, just in case.“And where are you headed off to, mister?” Aunt May asked, whilst he was checking that he had everything he needed. Where did he put his keys? “Your next appointment isn’t until Thursday.”“Out for a walk” “A-a… Aoh… ff, mm,” Peter attempted, and it was times like this when he really hated how his tongue felt like a lead weight in his mouth. “Mmf,” He pointed to the door.As soon as the words clicked into place for her, Aunt May’s face lit up.“It’s about time,” she teased, walking over to him and fiercely ruffling his hair. “I thought you’d never leave. Now, go have fun, okay? Maybe get a haircut while you’re at it.”That got a laugh out of him. Short and quiet, but a laugh all the same; one that made Aunt May’s eyes glitter with mirth.“Take care, okay?” she said planting a kiss on Peter’s forehead. “Don’t overexert yourself, and the only hero business I want to hear about today is you helping lost kids find their parents. Got it?”“Got it.” “Ngh,” Peter nodded, hugging Aunt May before double checking that he had everything he needed. Bus pass, wallet, phone, his keys were in his hand… All sorted. “See you later.” “Ss, ah.”There weren’t any people waiting on the sidewalk to take photos as he left, waving goodbye to Aunt May, and no one gave him a second glance at the bus stop. He got onto the first bus into the city, and the only stares he got were from two toddlers in the seats across from him, but no one said anything. Someone offered to help him with his wheelchair when he was getting off the bus, but that was it.It seemed people were finally starting to forget his face as that of Spiderman’s.His phone buzzed. MJ wanted to know how he was doing. He rolled down to a nearby burger joint and sent a Picaboo captioned “Tasting freedom. You want anything?” The image was blurry and gave an impressive view of his nostrils in lieu of his intended grin, but the burger sign was clear enough.MJ was quick to reply with a picture of an impressive table spread of food.
MJ – “I’m good. Theatre has a byo buffet thing going. Those cupcakes are going down. Have fun btw.”
P – “Those are some very nice cupcakes.”
MJ – “Enjoy your burger! Movie night tonight?”
P – “I’ll get popcorn”
Smiling, Peter sent a few more messages (mostly consisting of ‘I love you’s) and entered the burger place. Ordering was less of a hassle than he had expected. Sure, he had to write down what he wanted, and the cashier had trouble reading his handwriting, but he honestly didn’t mind that. He just wanted to enjoy his burger and spend some time wandering about the city, and maybe bump into Miles if he got lucky.However, the world had different plans.Well… maybe not the whole world. More like a certain Officer Davis, in full uniform.“Mr Parker?”Fucking… he almost choked on his burger. How had the guy snuck up on him?“Mmf?” he mumbled, swallowing loudly. Thankfully, the officer didn’t seem to mind.“May I sit?” Davis asked.“Mm. Zhuh,” Peter managed, gesturing to the empty seat opposite him.Still wearing that no-nonsense expression, the police officer sat down.“So,” he began, “How are you?”Peter gave a thumbs up, and brought out his phone. He opened the notes app and typed,
‘Sorry. Talking is hard right now. Is this ok?’
Davis raised an eyebrow at him, “It’s fine. Do you… mind if I ask…?”Tap tap,‘Hit my head in that earthquake thing. Damaged speech.’“I thought you had some sort of… super healing or something.”Peter frowned, typing, ‘It’s not perfect.’“I see. So, no more Spider-Man business.”God, he hoped that wasn’t the case. ‘I’m getting help. It will take a while, but I’ll be back soon.”“Okay. That’s… good, I guess. Less pressure on the new guy.”Peter nodded.“Speaking of, do you… talk to him at all?”
“Yes. Showing him the ropes.”
Davis looked wholly unimpressed. “You realise he’s a kid, right? I have a son his age, his name is Miles.”Peter knew. He knew very well that Miles was frightfully young to be doing this, and if he had the option, he’d put a stop to it, but…
“I know.”
“And..?”
“?”
Wrong answer. Davis’s face immediately steeled.“He’s a kid, and you’re making him run around pulling the same stunts you have? Putting himself in danger for… for what? For some ‘legacy’ of yours? To boost your damn eg-.”“No!”Even he’d been shocked by his outburst. It was the clearest he’d spoken since Fisk…His hands were trembling as he wrote his response,“I would never force him to be Spiderman. I have given him every opportunity to stop, I always tell him that he has a choice in this. But this is his choice.”Jefferson said nothing, so Peter kept typing. Like hell he was going to mince this,
“I’m sorry. I’m doing what I can to keep him safe. Teaching him the things I wish I’d known when I was his age. If I could stop him, I would. But I don’t get to choose for him.”
Still, nothing.
‘I’m sorry.’
Was someone chopping onions in the kitchen?They were both quiet for a long while. Long enough that people stopped staring.Slowly, Officer Davis stood up. Peter couldn’t look at him.“I’m sorry for bothering you,” he said.Peter shook his head, ‘No. I get it. I worry too.’“You’ll keep him safe, right?”
‘I promise. I’m doing everything I can. I won’t let him do this alone.”
“Thank you. Look, man, I shouldn’t have pushed your buttons like that. That was out of line.”
‘it’s fine’
“It’s just… I worry.”Peter nodded. He understood.“Take care, okay?”Another nod, and Davis turned and walked away.Peter watched him leave, and he felt… cold… He forced down the rest of his meal and left, making sure to drop some change in the tip jar on his way past the counter.Where was the nearest grocery shop? And when was the next bus home? May knew something was wrong when Peter got home sooner than she’d expected, and his only response to her “How was your walk?” was silence. Not even the slightest peep.“Peter?”She came downstairs to find her nephew hanging up his coat by the door, his movements slow and stiff…“Peter.”He didn’t look at her until she was right next to him, and when their eyes met, she knew something was definitely wrong. The little inklings of worry and exhaustion that she’d been seeing for weeks seemed to have culminated in his eyes and the droop of his shoulders, a great weight having been dropped down onto him.“Let’s get you something to drink,” May offered, resting a hand on Peter’s shoulder as they both headed to the kitchen. She firmly got him to wait at the table whilst she filled the kettle and got out the hot chocolate powder. No one ever got too old for hot chocolate.Whilst the kettle boiled, and May hunted around for marshmallows, she heard the scratching of a pen against paper. Good, he was letting her help.The kettle finished boiling, she filled two mugs with hot water and cocoa powder, topped them both off with marshmallows, and put one in front of Peter.“Did something happen?” she asked gently.Peter sighed and pushed a sheet of paper forward.
‘I met Miles’ dad again today.’
“Okay.”
‘He was upset with me. Doesn’t want a kid doing what I do, and he’s worried. Still doesn’t know that Miles is the kid he’s worrying about.’
“Right.”
‘I feel bad.’
“Honey…”
‘Because I worry about him too. It scares me to think he might end up like me.
‘Is this how you felt? All these years worrying for me? Should I be telling Miles to stop?’
May sighed, “Peter. I won’t lie to you, MJ and I worry ourselves sick over some of the things you’ve gotten yourself into. And it has been tough.”He looked crushed.“Would I feel better if you stopped? Maybe. Would it be good for you? I don’t think so. You care so much for everyone else, and knowing you, if you don’t do your absolute best, it tears you apart.”Peter nodded.“That’s why I supported you. It’s why I’m helping you support Miles. It’s why you’re supporting him. Because he wants this.”Gradually, the invisible weight on Peter’s shoulders lifted, and he managed a smile.“There’s my boy. Keep your head up, okay? As long as Miles has us, he’ll be okay. We all will.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Peter’s Spider-Sense had been acting up in the past few days. Random spikes of noise here and there, saying that something was happening, but not specifying what. It was always the same crackling, electrical tone that bounced at the base of his skull and had him shooting up ramrod straight, looking for whatever had caused it, only to find nothing. He swore at some point, a black substance started rippling in the corners of his vision whenever it happened. If anyone noticed, then they never said anything.It got worse at night, when sleep was interrupted by the feeling of being crushed and electrocuted at the same time, and he all but fell out of the bed, nearly taking MJ with him.One night, he woke up screaming, light and shattered glass fracturing across his vision, noise howling in his head like hungry dogs after a fox. Yellow and purple all over-.“Peter! Peter, wake up! Peter!”Hands on his shoulders, claws in his skin, digging, pushing, tearing, stop stop stop
Thud!
“Aaaoooww!”He’d fallen out of the bed, sending complete and utter agony searing through his torso. As he rolled around on the floor, tears streaming down his face, he heard MJ and Aunt May talking.“Peter? Peter, sweetie, look at me. Look at me, honey.”MJ was kneeling over him, patting his face, trying to get him to focus on her. His screams died down to pained moans, but the pain wasn’t any less than before.“I know, honey, I know. Just breathe for me. Can you do that?”With perhaps more force than was strictly necessary, Peter sucked in a breath through gritted teeth. His chest burned, there were probably tears trickling down his face if the warm wetness on his cheeks was anything to go by.“There you go. Keep doing that. Aunt May’s getting some painkillers.”Peter kept breathing. Long, deep breaths, keeping his eyes screwed shut as MJ switched on a lamp. He only pried his eyes open when he heard footsteps, and Aunt May was coming over with a glass of water and the aforementioned painkillers.“Think you can sit up?” May asked as she knelt down beside him. With a grunt, Peter hauled himself up into a sitting position, his back twinging with every movement. “Easy, now.”Once Peter had taken the painkillers and crawled back into bed, MJ latched onto him and buried her face in his hair.“Are you alright?” she asked softly.Peter’s attempt for an answer was cut off by a yawn that made MJ giggle.“I know that, silly. What about your back? And… before… what was that?”Both of them frowned, Peter with confusion and MJ with definite worry.“Peter,” MJ murmured. “You’re worrying me. If something’s wrong, then you need to tell me.”Peter didn’t say anything.“You woke up screaming. It wasn’t pain.”How the hell was he supposed to respond to that?“We’ll figure it out,” “Mff… Nn…” he promised, taking MJ’s hand and tracing out TIRED and LATER, to which she nodded.“We can talk in the morning,” she agreed. “Try to go back to sleep.” MJ didn’t get the opportunity that morning. They overslept, and she had to rush out to get the bus, barely having the time to grab a slice of toast and kiss Peter goodbye before rushing out of the door.As for Peter, he hadn’t even gotten out of bed, and was sitting there, bewildered by the whirlwind that had been his wife.“Well, at least you have time for breakfast,” Aunt May chuckled, ruffling his hair. “Are you getting up, or is it a breakfast in bed kinda morning?”It turned out to be a rather relaxed morning, even after the events of the previous night. After breakfast, Aunt May left for a shopping trip with some friends, and Peter was left to get ready for the rest of the day.Just as he was finishing up trying to make something presentable out of his hair (Aunt May was right, he needed to see a barber), he heard a knock at the kitchen window.It was Miles, upside down and waving at him. Shaking his head, Peter went to the door and let him in.“Hey, man,” he greeted, clambering onto the ceiling. “You good?”Closing the door, Peter gave a thumbs up.“Good. School’s off today, and things were pretty quiet, so I figured I’d swing by.” He blinked. “That… that was not intentional, I am so sorry.”Peter couldn’t help laughing at that.
‘So are you doing ok? I don’t really have anything new to teach right now, but if it’s homework that you need help with then I can take a look.’
“Uuh, actually, I came here to ask about something else. Um… do you… know any sign language? Just cause… I’ve been brushing up on it, and I figured it’d be easier on you, since… y’know, writing everything is time-consuming and-.”Before Miles could get carried away, Peter held up a hand.‘I don’t actually know that much,’ Peter admitted. ‘I signed up for classes but didn’t keep up with them. Stupid, I know.’“I can teach you!” Miles said excitedly. “My great-grandma was like, super deaf, so my mom taught me sign language, and now I can teach you. If… if you want to, that is. I just… it’s the least I could do for you, y’know?”
‘That would be great. Thanks M.’
Miles’ mask shifted in a grin, “Sweet,” and he slipped his backpack off his shoulders, dropping it onto the kitchen table with a ground-shaking thump that would’ve left anyone else wide-eyed and worrying about the kid’s shoulders.“I borrowed these from school,” Miles continued. “I haven’t exactly looked at them, but I figured you’d want to keep teaching yourself when I wasn’t around. There’s also this really good channel on ViewStream that…” Half an hour in, and Peter was hit with another one of those shocks from his sixth sense, yet again jolting him ramrod straight with a sharp cry of… fear? Pain? … that startled Miles into dropping the cards in his hand.“Whoa, man, you okay? What’s happening?”Miles wasn’t getting this?The shock was gone just as quickly as it had appeared, leaving Peter shaky and trying to blink the staticky colours out of his vision.He barely felt Miles’ small hand shaking his shoulder. “Peter? Is it your back?”Blinking and shaking his head, Peter cast Miles a worried look. He picked up his notebook,
‘Didn’t you get anything?’
Please say yes, please say yes…“No, I… I didn’t. Wait, was that your Spidey-sense going off?”Peter nodded. Something cold had settled in his gut.“But… I didn’t feel anything. And you just froze, like you’d been electrocuted. Is that normal?”In all honesty? Peter thought, No. He hadn’t reacted to his sixth sense like that since the early days after the bite, when he’d had no idea what those random spikes of dread meant besides something is wrong and you’re about to DIE.He’d been a dramatic little shit back then, apparently.‘I’m okay,’ he wrote, clumsily trying to say it at the same time. ‘Probably just because I hit my head.’Miles didn’t look convinced. “Are you sure?”Peter nodded again. ‘It’s fine. Can we keep going?’“…Okay.” An hour passed, and it happened again. Again, Peter yelled. This time, it was louder.Again, Miles was at his side, that same expression on his face. “Peter, you… you’re really worrying me.”Peter sighed. The kid wasn’t about to let this go. Not this time.“What’s going on?”
‘It’s like a glitch.’
The kid’s eyes widened the moment he’d processed what Peter had just written. “What, like… like your atoms are freaking out?”Shit. Probably should’ve worded that better. Peter hastily shook his head and scribbled on the page,
‘It’s just my head. I’m not going to disappear from existence any time soon. Promise.’
He didn’t look any less nervous.
‘It’s probably nothing. It’s only started in the last week.’
“N-No, you… you’ve been like this before.”
‘?’
“It was… it was just small, I figured it was just because you were still in rough shape, but… sometimes you would freeze up and look all… panicky. Like someone set off firecrackers under your bed or something.”Blinking, Peter searched his memory, and… yes… this had been happening before. But… not nearly as frequent as this. Or as bad, never once did like he was being invaded until recently…
‘We’ll keep an eye on it.’
“Okay.” A few hours passed, thankfully without incident, and Miles had calmed down by the time his police radio came up with an alert that needed his attention. By then, Peter had managed to learn and recite the alphabet with only a little bit of help, and some basic phrases. He had one of the sign language books in his lap as he waved Miles off. Once the boy was out of sight, he went back inside and returned to pouring over the books.Yet again, he was interrupted by another shock.“A-agh!” Peter yelped, gritting his teeth as his spine crackled with tension, making him shoot upright, knocking over several books. “Rrghff!”For a long moment, he sat there and did his best to breathe, waiting for the sensation to fade away. The crackling of his brain eventually did, but a low hum persisted.Why was he even surprised anymore? Sighing, he got himself a glass of water and something to eat. Hopefully, that would calm his nerves.It didn’t. The humming just got louder, and louder, and louder, until it was a ringing drone that compounded in his skull and overflowed into his eyes, fuck, fuck, this wasn’t good. Noise flooded his vision in technicolour madness, all purple and yellow shards flashing through him. Through the tolling bells of his brain, Peter vaguely heard the ringing of an actual bell; the doorbell. With psychedelic noise filling his vision, he somehow made his way to the door, and opened it.Red and blue everywhere. A stranger staring down at him.Peter’s heart froze.Chameleon.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Even after being crushed by a building and a mountain-sized billionaire with a grudge in quick succession, even after being hospitalised and spending weeks without getting into a fight, Peter was glad to know that he could still swing a punch. The impostor was sent flying off the doorstep, landing on the paving stones with a grunt.“Seriously?” the man shouted.Peter grabbed the baseball bat (one of several) that Aunt May kept at the front door, and held it aloft. He was all but growling, vision filled with shapes and colours (had someone fucking drugged him? That was just starting to become a possibility), ears still ringing violently.“Okay, okay! I get it, this is weird for you! Can I just explain?”He was back on his feet, hands in the air, but mercifully wasn’t coming any closer. All but growling, Peter shifted his trembling grip on the baseball bat.“Do you need a minute?” the impostor asked. “You look like you’re freaking out. A lot.”They stayed like that for a long while, Peter with the baseball bat but probably not all that threatening in a wheelchair, and a brown-haired man with his face wearing a brown jacket and dark pants, all of which were becoming clearer the longer Peter looked.Bit by bit, the ringing faded to a bearable hum, and the colours dissolved from sight. Peter was left rubbing the tension from his eyes as the bat slipped from his hand, landing with a clatter. His hands shook and he felt rattled, but… he wasn’t scared anymore. There was no looming threat on his shoulders, just… a calm, almost gentle familiarity.He knew this man.Carefully, he looked up. ‘Impostor’ hadn’t moved.“Y… y-yu…”Peter Parker nodded, “Yup.”“Mm.”“Can I… come in?”“O-oh! Mhm.”Quickly, sheepishly, Peter backed out of the doorway, gesturing for… Other Peter?… to come in. He nudged the baseball bat out of sight.Other Peter (they’d have to figure something out about that. What had he introduced himself as to Miles? Peter Ben Parker?) quickly jogged to the front doorstep, and Peter got a closer look at him. Brown hair, brown eyes, a nose broken out of shape, stubble… It honestly was like looking at some sort of mirror. Of course… if said mirror was about a decade older, and… well… not quite accurate. Maybe ‘portrait without a reference’ was a better description.His double came in, and he closed the door.This was… incredibly awkward…What sort of things did people say in conversation with alternate-reality versions of themselves? Probably apologise for punching each other on sight, he should-.“So… you look like shit,” Other Peter supplied before he could open his mouth, and the sudden, brutal honesty was enough to make him chuckle.“N’ye… yerrold,” he snickered, laughter rising up in his throat, apologies forgotten for now.“Hey! I’m 37, that’s not old!”Peter just kept laughing.Until he couldn’t. A stab of pain cut him short, and he was suddenly gasping in hitched lungfuls of air, clutching at his chest.“Shit. Hey, buddy, just… just stop for a moment, okay? Let the pain stop.”When? When was it going to stop? Peter B Parker was not a jealous man.“Jealousy is an ugly little thing for the ones who have everything but happiness,” his Aunt May had told him once, and the words had stuck to him like prototype web-fluid. Probably because he was just starting work on it when she’d said it.But Peter was tired, and run down, and running on empty when it came to happiness. It led him to wish that he was better, that he did more, that he had the unattainable. It led to wanting, and the unhappy weight in his skull when he saw everyone else living their best lives whilst he was wallowing in self-pity and bitterness. It led to him feeling a sharp spike in his chest when he saw the face of another Spiderman, another Peter Parker, plastered on every telescreen one fateful night, received as a hero and loved by seemingly everyone.Was it jealousy, to want what he had? To wish that he, too, could be better? Did that make him a bad person?He didn’t like to think about it.A part of him was resentful, and he’d admit to feeling bitter towards a version of himself that had it all put together before him.It was honestly a shock, seeing his counterpart in person for the first time. Peter had expected to see the man on the broadcasts; perfect, proud, undamaged; when he went to visit Aunt May.Instead, he came face to face with, well... himself. His near-double looked exhausted, as if he’d been used as a rottweiler’s chew-toy. Miles hadn’t told Peter much about what had happened in that first fight at the collider, but he knew that Kingpin packed a punch, especially when pissed off. Of course this other Peter wouldn’t get out unscathed.He didn’t have it in him to feel bitter anymore, seeing the wheezing young man in front of him, almost in tears, probably barely even old enough to own a house or apartment. Dishevelled blond hair looking half hacked off, the left side of his face littered with pale scars, nose broken out of shape.Dear god, this sucked. When the pain had subsided enough for him to breathe through it, Peter managed to look the other Peter in the eye. He looked as tired as Peter felt.“Kingpin hit you hard, huh?”Peter nodded. What had his counterpart been expecting? Someone stronger, probably. Someone already back on his feet and helping Miles.“How long have you been out of hospital?”
‘A month.’
“That’s good to hear. So… how’s things? Besides… that.”… They were really bad at this, weren’t they?“Miles is doing good,” he signed clumsily, hoping that he was using the right gestures from the single lesson he’d only had a few hours ago.To his surprise, Other Peter nodded. “Yeah, I saw him on the way over. What’s with that look? Of course I know sign language, I took classes in college.”“I flopped,” Peter didn’t so much sign as poorly mime it out, because goddammit, he didn’t ask Miles if there was a gesture for that. “Miles is teaching me.” That one, he’d learned.“Really? Heh, he’s a good kid. Hey, have you got any decaf? I’ve had too much of the regular already, but nothing says ‘awkwardly bonding with your alternate-universe counterpart’ like coffee.” Peter B was regaling him with stories of the junk he’d found in his recently-cleared apartment when the door opened, revealing Aunt May, walking in with loaded shopping bags and-.“Hey there, kiddo!” Peter B beamed.“You got here!” the little girl squealed, rushing towards Peter B in a blur of black hair and cannoning into him. “You got the Goober!”“Well, your instructions were half in Japanese, but yeah. I figured them out.”Giggling and bouncing on her feet, the little girl pulled away from B,And her eyes found Peter. Those oddly bright, brown eyes.Something pinged in his skull, not nearly as violent or disorienting it had been when B showed up, but still with that same familiarity.“You,” she murmured. “I… I saw you, you…”“Goldilocks here made it out of the hospital,” B grinned, ruffling Peter’s hair fondly. “Still working off a few bumps here and there, but he’s okay.”The slack-jawed look on the girl’s face morphed into a grin, and she threw herself at Peter in another hug. It was a shock on his still-tender ribs, and she gripped him tighter than her small frame would ever suggest.“I’m so glad you’re okay!” she shouted, and all Peter could do was look from B to Aunt May in bewilderment. Both of them just looked amused. “I’m Peni. I was one of the Spider-People who got dragged here by the collider. Ooh! And this is Sp//dr!”She held out her hand to reveal a blue spider nestled comfortably in her palm, beady red eyes glinting at Peter curiously.Another ping, almost identical to the last one. All he could really do was stare. Could spiders talk in Peni’s dimension? Because this little arachnid honestly seemed as if it was saying hello.Or he was going crazy, that was also likely.His silence seemed to put Peni off, because the smile began to slip from her face,“I guess… it’s not that awes-.”And Aunt May swooped in, “Peter’s had some trouble talking since the collider. We’re working on it.”Peni’s face lit right back up, “Oh! We have thought-to-speech devices for that back home! I can go back and get one for you if you want.”Well, that was a generous offer. Nevertheless, Peter shook his head.“Thank you,” he attempted. “But I’m working on it.”“I didn’t get any of that at all,” Peni said bluntly. “Are you sure you don’t want me to get you one?”Chuckling, Peter shook his head again and brought out his notebook. He wrote ‘Thank you, but I’ll be better soon. Don’t worry about it.’“Okay. Ooh, it’s so good to see you. We were really worried that you wouldn’t make it. But now you have, and you’re getting better, so it’s okay now!”She launched into a stream of talking that Peter didn’t find it in himself to interrupt, and apparently, neither did B. So whilst Aunt May went to the kitchen (B quickly following), Peter listened to Peni go from being glad he was alive, to detailing her side of what happened two months ago and then talking about her mech and the spider. Peter didn’t say a word (although whether he could get one in or not was unlikely), but it seemed the more he listened to the girl, the more enthused she became, becoming so animated that she was practically bouncing on the coffee table. She’d brought out a holographic whiteboard (Peter definitely had to ask her about the science of that at some point. A wristwatch managed to project a screen that big?) when they heard more knocking at the front door, quick and excited, if knocking could be called excited.“Could someone get that?” May called from the kitchen, and Peni wasted no time in hopping down off the table and yanking open the front door.“Miles!” she squeaked, throwing herself into the Spider’s arms. Then she almost leaped over his shoulder at someone else stood behind him that Peter couldn’t see. “And Peter! Hi!”“Hey there, kitten.”Peter looked up from his notebook, eyebrows knitting together. Was that Nicolas Cage?He didn’t have to wait long for an answer as people in spider costumes began to file in. Of course, he recognised Miles right off the bat, but then came someone with goggles and a black trench coat, a white-suited Spider, and… a pig in a Spider-Man cos-?Then it clicked, ooohhh. These were the people on Miles’ card.The newcomers’ eyes eventually found him, and he was suddenly bombarded with a torrent of pingpingpingpinghellotherewhosthisuwupingpingping, sending him mentally reeling with the sudden noise in his brain, all colour and ringing and dear god, this was much less fun than he’d maybe hoped.Just smile and wave, Peter. Smile and wave.Despite the masks, Peter felt eyes on him. For once, he only felt mildly uncomfortable with the sudden attention, he himself feeling curious about these new people like him, and probably staring for longer than was polite.The pig was the first to come up to him, hopping up onto the couch beside him and holding out his hand,“What’s up, doc?”Immediately, Peter snorted with laughter, clamping a hand over his mouth in a vain attempt to stop himself. Was that even legal? Could they get sued for this?Thankfully, Spider-Ham didn’t seem fazed by it, and shook his free hand, which was halfway outstretched towards him anyway.“Ah, someone with good taste,” he remarked as Peter tried desperately to calm himself. “Nice to know you’re doing well. Name’s Peter Porker, by the way. But Ham works just as well, for obvious reasons.”Obvious…? Oh. Oh, yeah. There were four Peters. That was going to be fun in the long term.“Nice to meet you,” “Mmhnzz,” he said clumsily, chest still shuddering with laughter. In the back of his mind, part of him apparently felt confused at his own words.“Did you hit yer head or something?” Ham asked, only sounding half serious. “Because I got absolutely none of that.”Peter nodded, rapping his knuckles against his head for emphasis.Ham blinked, “Oh. You mean I’m right?”“Mhm.”“Dang.”Peter B chose that moment to come in, holding a tray filled with mugs and two pots. “So you all made it! Great! Hey, Miles.”The huddle of Spider-People all chorused in greeting, and finally, the eyes left Peter’s back.Aunt May came in.“Hopefully,” she said, “this visit won’t leave me setting up another FundUs page to fix the holes the walls.”Peter frowned at that. Holes in the walls? When did Aunt May have to…?Never mind, he remembered. Although the thought wasn’t at all a good one…He stayed quiet as everyone found a place to perch. Aunt May took the last space on the couch, Miles decided to hang out on the ceiling with… Spider-Woman, was it? The man in the trench coat (Peter Benjamin, from 1933, probably) just sat cross-legged on the floor and Peni hopped onto the armrest next to Peter. Only B remained standing, even after he’d set the tray on the coffee table and most people had a mug of either tea or coffee in their hands. Everyone seemed to jump into their own conversations with each other, so he just leaned back and let it all wash over him, the buzz of conversation accompanied by the low hum in the back of his skull that was apparently becoming a permanent staple in his life at the moment.Until Peni suddenly burst out with “I FORGOT THE GOOBER!”, nearly knocking both herself and Peter off the couch in her panic.A swirling vortex opened up and swallowed her, and in that same instant, Peter’s body stiffened, and he was sent rolling off the couch. But not before kicking Ham. Hard.“Hey, what the heck?! Kiddo?”Through the deafening static between Peter’s ears, he vaguely heard murmurs of worry and Aunt May’s “not again” as people crowded around him.He groaned as someone picked him up and put him back on the couch, then another jolt ripped through him. This time he screamed, and there were hands holding him in place.This was… so much worse than the usual attacks.“I got it! I-! Huh? What happened? I-Is he okay?”“He’s fine,” Peter heard. “Just… needs some painkillers, that’s all.”Peter almost scoffed. Something told him that this wasn’t something painkillers would fix.Eventually, the static and the pain subsided, and he was able to sit up and actually see all the worried faces looking down at him, and feel it himself. Grey like rain, rebounding like a wound-up spring, heavy like lead.Until the girl in white broke the silence, and Peter actually looked and saw…“What the hell was that?!”Gwen… Gwen Stacy.How hadn’t he noticed earlier? Alternate worlds, Miles mentioning her time and time again…He felt sick.“Your head was glitching again, wasn’t it?” Miles asked fearfully, and everyone looked up at him, horrified.Everyone started talking at once.“Again?”“Glitching? Like us, when…?”“You didn’t say anything?”“How long has this been going on?”“Does it still hurt?”It was too much. The overlapping questions, the compounding fear that seemed to be leaking into him from everyone else…He was going to throw up, or faint, or maybe both. Some screaming might be involved.Then Peter B jumped in to save the day.“Okay one at a time, people!” he shouted over the din, and blissfully, everyone quieted down. Peter could breathe…Aunt May was quick to round on him again, “What in God’s name was that?”Peter suppressed a groan. She was never going to let this one go… Eventually, everyone calmed down, and Aunt May stopped hounding Peter about what had happened (but not before getting every little detail from him and Miles first). He was allowed to sit back with some water and painkillers and attempt conversation with the other Spider-People.Although… Gwen refused to look at him.Aunt May was in the kitchen with B, worriedly making a fresh pot of coffee. Decaf, naturally.“That boy is terrible,” she growled under her breath. “Over a month, and I only find out today, that he’s been having seizures.” A heavy sigh tugged at her shoulders. “He’ll have to see a doctor for this. And MJ’s going to lose it.”“Look,” Peter B offered, “I know you’re scared, I’m sure he is, too, but… maybe it really is his Spider-Sense. I don’t know seizures, but I know Spider stuff. Do you know how I felt the first few times it acted up? Like I some asshole had tazed me.”May didn’t look convinced. At all.“I’m being serious,” B pressed. “Maybe I wasn’t kicking myself and everyone else off of the couch, but I did almost get hit by a car because my dumb ass chose ‘freeze’ out of every possible option to the early warning system I had literally just had installed.”“Your point?”“I’m getting there, don’t worry, here it is: those seizures, just now? They happened when Peni warped to her world and back. Both times, on the dot. Peni’s been working non-stop on finding a way for us to meet back up since she got home, opening portals and all.”Slowly, May nodded. “Alright… And, of course…”“We don’t believe in coincidence,” B finished. “We can’t be sure until he sees a doctor, but it’s a theory. Better than nothing, right?”Peni chose that moment to make her presence known, stepping in with a sheepish expression.“I know someone who can help,” she offered, scuffing her boot on the linoleum. “He helped me with the goobers, but he’s also good with biology and stuff. Maybe I could ask him? Save you a trip to the hospital?”May blinked, “That’s… quite a relief,” she said. “Thank you, Peni.”She smiled at that. From the living room, Peter could be heard laughing, probably at Ham.“We’ll figure this out,” Aunt May decided, as Peni went to the sink to fill her glass with water. “In the meantime, how’ve you been, Peter?” By the time MJ got home, most of the Spiders had filed out of the house, leaving only the three human Peters and Aunt May to keep chatting over coffee.(Notably, every time someone left to return to their own world, Peter felt the shocks again.)“Hey, honey, I got your-… favourite… what?”Peter shouldn’t have laughed as hard as he did. Once he’d calmed down and his ribs were smarting in protest to his amusement, he managed to ‘introduce’ the other Peters (there were a lot of hand gestures and attempts at sign language, all of which dissolved into hopeless flailing as Peter B watched, the asshole).They ended up introducing themselves, 1930s Peter, still wearing his mask, offering a polite handshake, whilst Peter B just looked at her, red-faced and avoiding eye contact.In his defence, it was rather weird, introducing his wife to… himself……That thought was going to be put away for now.Eventually, the two other Peters went home, even after May offered for them to stay for dinner. Peter B said something about a date, and 1930s Peter left with a line about how crime never stopped to have dinner. The ‘shocks’ were almost expected at this point, and once they’d subsided, his mind felt… strangely quiet.He made to clamber into his wheelchair and head into the kitchen, but was stopped by MJ. She looked worried, and Peter mentally braced himself. He wasn’t even sure what for, but from the look on MJ’s face, something was definitely not great. Nothing got past her.“Emh?” he asked softly, reaching to take one of MJ’s hands.“Your hands are shaking,” she stated simply.Peter blinked, were they? and looked at his hands to see that yes, they were indeed shaking. “Huh.”MJ sat down next to him, still frowning. “Are you okay?”Peter just nodded, “Mhm,” and he wasn’t lying or trying to downplay anything. All that seemed to be wrong was the shaking and the shocks, but the latter was being worked on and the former was probably because he’d had too much coffee throughout the day, even if it was decaf.There was also the tremor, but again, it was being worked on. He’d been doing all the exercises that Louiza had assigned for him.“What about last night?” MJ continued. “We still need to talk about that.”They did, didn’t they?And with that realisation, it was as if the universe decided to drop a giant weight on his shoulders. He felt himself sag into the couch cushions and a heavy rush of air escaped his lungs.“Peter,” MJ pressed, squeezing his hand. “Talk to me.”Where did he start? All of it was pressing down on him, tumbling over and clamouring to be released, but trying to put together words and an explanation for what was suddenly crashing into him was like trying to find the end of the Sellotape. Miles, the shocks, the publicity, the looming dread that he somehow managed to forget about most days but probably shouldn’t be, his frustration over how long his recovery was taking, Gwen…Dear god…“It’s a lot to unpack,” he signed, trying to sound out the words and desperately hoping he was using the right hand gestures because he’d only just started learning, dammit.“You’re going to have to write that down, honey,” MJ admitted. “Also, where did you learn sign language?”Smiling despite the situation, Peter scribbled down the words with an added ‘Miles and the other Peter are teaching me’.MJ allowed a smile of her own, “That’s good. I’ll have to start learning too. And… with the whole ‘unpacking’ thing… we’ll figure it out. One step at a time.”Peter nodded, and Aunt May picked that moment to poke her head into the room.“You can figure it out after dinner,” she told them both. “Come on, I made veggie lasagne, hop to it.”Peter snorted. Such marvellous tact from his Aunt, as usual.His shoulders felt a little lighter. Not feather-light, but… lighter.
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“It’s been over a month.”Move, the clack of the metal chess piece snapping onto the magnetised board.“And?”Feathers rattling. Honestly, what was the point in that stupid ruff?“Parker is still alive.”Move, a black pawn stepping forward.“And?”A white knight took the pawn.“We’re playing chess.”Shrug, a black bishop crossed the board. “So?”More bristling, along went his rook, “So, when are we going to actually put that plan of yours into action? Everyone is sitting pretty, and I’m not seeing a lot of toying, like you promised.”A black pawn made its lazy way across the board. “Be patient, we’ll get there.”“Well, hurry up.” White pawn jerked forward.“We will. As soon as he’s comfy.”“Seems he’s already there.”“Give him a little longer, then we’ll get him. Completely out of nowhere, maybe catch his wife in the crossfire. It’ll break him, I promise.”“What about that Aunt of his? The one he’s living with?”Pause. The room is hot and cold at the same time.“We don’t have to worry about her.”The black rook surged forward.The white queen took it. She was all out of rooks. “What’s your deal?”“Nothing. Shut up and play the game.”“It’s your turn.”She huffed. Fine. She shifted her king. “There. Go.”White bishop to his right. “I still think we should be doing something.”The black knight took position. “I’ll fuck up his elevator again, happy?”He took a moment, before moving his queen. “Mmm.”The black queen snapped into place, “Check mate.”“What?!”She cackled, mirthful and sharp. “Check. Mate. This is what patience gets you, Aidy.”
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Peter B visited often, helping him with sign language when Miles was busy, and they figured out the name thing. He was ‘B’, Peter was ‘Peanut’ after Aunt May had called him that in front of everyone, much to his embarrassment.“You still use that nickname?” B had snickered.“Shut up!” “Szzshhfffm!” he’d mumbled despairingly, muffled by his hands over his face. When B kept laughing, he gave the universal sign of “fuck you”.1930s Peter, naturally, became ‘Noir’, once the term had been explained to him. He’d just nodded and went back to the Cubix puzzle in his hands. His visits were rare, and usually only because Peni and Ham dragged him over.B’s visits were second only to Peni, who came into see him almost every day, usually to talk about science and show off her mech. She was sweet, and got excited about seemingly every little thing that came her way, including teaching him how to use the smartwatch-shaped dimension-hopping Goober. He had yet to travel through worlds, though.Gwen didn’t visit him. He saw her swinging through the city with Miles on the news a few times, but… she never stopped by.That was alright. Peni’s enthusiasm was a good enough distraction anyway. A whole millennium between them meant big differences. Differences that the little girl wanted to explore, and would drag Peter along with her. Something about Aunt May, adult supervision and ‘getting his ass out of the house more than once a month’. They mostly went to Central Park, where the girl would climb trees and pet dogs.Days were passing, and Peter was slowly getting better. He was still bound to the wheelchair, but he could kick things about well enough, which was… promising, according to Louiza.Days of visits from the other Spider-People (some of them, at least) turned to two weeks, before Peni introduced him to Miguel O’Hara, under the pretence of finding an answer to the ‘glitch’ problem.O’Hara was blunt, and clearly not a people person. To quote Peni, he had “the emotional intelligence of a flatworm”, driven more by scientific curiosity than any desire to be nice, tense and clearly wanting to go home as soon as possible.Peter was silently glad that the man wasn’t an actual medical professional as he stiffly fitted a wire headset onto his head.“You need a haircut,” he grunted, the longest sentence he’d said since Peni had given him the run-down on why he’d been called over.Aunt May decided to betray him with a muttered, “If he’d reassemble his hair clippers already, he’d be getting one.” O’Hara had the audacity to chuckle, and Peter craned his neck to shoot a wounded look in his Aunt’s direction.Peni was setting up a holographic monitor, and after snapping a few cables in place, and getting the go-ahead from Miguel, she flicked it on, and an abnormally large floating brain flickered into existence. Noir walked in from the kitchen, saw it, then walked out again without saying a word.“That,” O’Hara announced, pointing to the brain hologram, “Is your brain.”There was a collective murmur of interest from everyone in the room, and the image of Peter’s brain bloomed with colour, prompting a chorus of oohs and aahs, like elementary schoolers in a space museum.Miguel continued, “The headset is receiving live feedback on what’s going on in, uh… wait, which one are you?”“He’s Peanut,” B supplied. “I’m B, and trench coat is Noir. The pig is self-explanatory.”Behind his sunglasses, Miguel blinked, but made no comment. He went back to the brain hologram.“We’re worried about seizures, right?” he asked simply. Peter and Aunt May nodded. “So, what we’re looking for is an overabundance of activity in the corpus callosum. That’s the cause of most seizures, especially regarding epilepsy.”No one said anything. Miguel surged onward.“Peni, system check?”“Sure.”Before Peter could attempt to ask what Miguel meant by that, Peni pinched him on the neck.“Ach!” he yelped, and the hologram lit up like a tacky Hanukkah sweater.“Everything’s in order,” Peni said, adding a whispered “sorry” in Peter’s ear.“You could have warned me,” he signed sullenly , only for his heart to twinge at the sight of Peni’s saddened expression. Still, he held firm, and she went back to poking at the hologram projector.“Ready?” Miguel said.“No,” Peter wanted to say, but... he didn’t really have a choice in the matter.Peni nodded, then warped out of the living room. As usual, Peter tensed with the sudden crackling in his skull. It was always worse when they did it right next to him.At least he was getting used to it, he thought, stiffening again as Peni came back. Each time, light bloomed across the hologram, bright and fleeting, but very, very real.Miguel had a notebook and was immediately scribbling away in it, muttering, “Instantaneous response, too much to be coincidence…”Meanwhile, everyone else was quietly murmuring to each other, whilst Peter felt awkwardly like a lab rat being poked at for study. He shifted in his chair, staring at the hologram of his brain as it flickered and pulsed with light, and Peni was fiddling with the little projector on the floor.“Lyla has a copy of the footage now,” she said to Miguel.“Good, good. Can you rewind to one of the bursts for me?”“Yep.”Whilst the two future Spiders poured over the floating brain, Peter saw fit to take off the headset and back away. He went ignored as he wheeled into the kitchen, where Gwen and Noir had taken up residence on the ceiling. The black-suited Spider was fiddling with the Cubix puzzle, as usual, whilst Gwen munched on a sandwich, dropping bits of cheese onto the table.In the living room, Miguel’s curious, barely-understood muttering took on a concerning edge, then tapered off completely. That did not bode well.“What is it?” Peter heard Aunt May ask.“Hm?” Miguel mumbled. “Uh, I’m… not sure…”Aunt May’s voice took on a dangerous edge, “You’re ‘not sure’?”Shit, Peter thought, hastily rolling back into the living room to find pretty much the same scene he’d left, but he felt the tension in the air as if it were a solid object.Miguel’s face was blank, “I’m a geneticist. Brains aren’t exactly my forte, so I need more information before I can make a… I guess the correct word is diagnosis.”Aunt May didn’t look at all placated.“I’ll need more brain scans,” Miguel continued, and Peter felt a residual prickle on his scalp from the scanner, “From all of you, actually. Spider-hybrid physiology is already different, I think it’s safe to say that there are some neurological differences as well, which, of course, will cause a discrepancy between this scan and one of a normal human brain. Best to explore all our angles and make sure anything I find is just standard for us.”Still tense, Aunt May nodded and backed down. Miguel seemed satisfied and started packing away his things.“I’ll be back later with some more compact scanners for each of you,” he said. “I’d like you all to wear them throughout the day, for a week at least. Sleep in them, actually. The more readings, the better.”All the Spiders in the room nodded and murmured in assent. They shared a final few pleasantries before Miguel warped away. Peter’s head crackled and his shoulders shot up to his ears. Ugh, he needed to get used to that.But in the meantime, lunch. A week and a half later, after griping with B about the scanners (“compact” Miguel said. Yeah, bullshit. They were literal collars that pinched their skin, bleeped into their skulls, and had everyone wearing turtlenecks for the whole week), Miguel got back to them, a flickering hologram in Aunt May’s living room whilst she and all the Spiders were all gathered there upon his request. Why he couldn’t just join them in Miles’ world, no one knew. Honestly, no one cared, especially not Peter. He was nursing the dinging remnants of a headache from everyone warping into the world at once.“Good news!” Miguel announced loudly. “You do not have epilepsy. Or cancer. None of you do!”“What?” May questioned, casting a stern, disapproving look in the Peters’ direction. “Since when were we looking for cancer?”Caught in the headlights, Peter shrugged helplessly. Miguel continued,“Rather, you all have a weird extra piece of brain hanging out in your skulls. Honestly, it’s fascinating. All of you have it, even me. Although mine is... rather small compared to the rest of-.”B snorted, “That’s what she said.” Then Peter was trying not to fall out of his chair whilst MJ looked at them both in disapproval. Noir just stood there, silent and likely very confused underneath his mask.“Oh, get shocked,” Miguel snarled, flipping them off. “I’m making a potentially ground-breaking scientific discovery here regarding the anatomy of spider-human hybrids, and you’re making dick jokes?”A woman flickered into view for a moment. “To be fair, you completely set yourself up for it.”“Oh, shock off, Lyla!”“Geez.” She disappeared.Still visibly simmering in anger, Miguel brought up several brain holograms.“These are the scans I got from each of you,” he snapped. “The highlighted section is the part that I was worried about regarding... ugh, do I really have to call you Peanut?”Peter nodded, trying to stifle his chuckles.“It’d be a mess if you didn’t,” Noir murmured.“Fine, fine, Peanut. Back to the subject. I didn’t want to alarm you earlier, but you have this... abnormality in your brain, a cluster of nerves located just below the amygdala that isn’t present in normal humans, Judging from the live feedback, that was where Peanut's reactions to the warps are localised.”Aunt May perked up. “The amygdala? What about the hypothalamus?”“And you took the words out of my mouth. Perfect. Yes, good, you’re keeping up, good, thank you. Anyway. The hypothalamus is receiving the signals and triggering the sympathetic nerve system.”“But why?”“I’m getting there. I asked all of you to wear scanners for a while, and here’s what I got. You all have the same reactions to stimuli in a fight, if a little... pre-emptive. I’m assuming that’s your ‘Spider-Sense’ going, correct? Because I don't have it.” A hand made it's way to his chin, "Aside from the buzzing when I met you," he amended to himself.There were nods from a few of the group.“My theory is,” Miguel began again, “that this new nerve cluster is where your ‘Sense’ is coming from. It’s another physical change brought on by the mutation, which makes sense, because there’s no psychological explanation for it. I’ve run your scans by every human comparison I can think of, and no human in recorded history has anything like this. Except all of you. And me, but it’s admittedly inferior, understandably because I don’t have the ‘Sense’ for danger, it’s just... more of a social thing. Anyway, my point is-,”“What does this have to do with Peter’s seizures?” Gwen asked impatiently. “That’s the whole reason we asked you, for him. Not so you can go on a science bender. It’s fascinating, sure, but not important right now.”Miguel looked miffed. Gwen looked miffed right back. He grit his teeth and got to the point.“Peter’s ‘seizures’ aren’t actually seizures,” he stated. “It’s an oversensitive fight or flight response, triggered by interdimensional warping. Why warping specifically, I don’t know yet, but it explains the ‘shocks’ he’s described from before any of us showed up. Peni was using this world as a soundboard whilst we were building a more stable hopper.”Miles piped up, “He had his head shoved into the collider beam,” and everyone stared at him.There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Peter braced himself for an oncoming storm.“You didn’t think to tell me that?!” Miguel exploded, throwing his hands in the air and knocking off his sunglasses with the motion.“You never asked!” Miles protested. “Besides, a lot happened in that fight, you can’t expect me to remember everything at once!”“It would’ve been shocking helpful!”“Well, now you know! Better late than never, right?”Miguel was too pissed off for words at this point, his words devolving into barking gibberish and enraged hand gestures. It was quite the sight to see.Once he calmed down, he just pinched the bridge of his nose and cut off the holo-call, leaving everyone to stare at empty space in amusement. He flickered back to yell a quick ‘shock you all, I’m going to… look some things over, I don’t shocking know’, and then disappeared for good.Peni finally broke out in chuckles, shoulders shaking as she leaned back into Noir’s chest whilst the still-masked man looked down at her. Peter couldn’t see his face, but something told him that the man in black was looking at the girl with fondness. The other Spider-people all began buzzing into action, Miles and Gwen chatting with each other and channel surfing whilst Ham followed Aunt May to the kitchen. B opened up the book he’d brought along with him (“He couldn’t have waited a few more chapters?” he’d grumbled just before Miguel had started the call) and started reading.As for Peter, the moment he registered that everyone’s attention was occupied, he felt himself deflate like a busted tire, melting into the couch cushions in a rush of air. Curled up next to him, MJ was the only one who noticed. With a sigh of her own, she pulled him into her arms, letting him bury his face into her neck and cling onto her like a very stressed monkey.“You’re okay,” she murmured, kissing his hair. “You don’t need to worry about it anymore, okay?”Then B decided to contribute, “It definitely explains the migraines. I had them for a week after the bite, and they sucked.”“Same,” Peter signed, face still buried in MJ’s shoulder. “Hmmrr,” he mumbled.“I had them for ten days,” Gwen threw over her shoulder. “I couldn’t get out of bed for the first three, my dad thought I was dying.”“Really?” Miles asked, looking concerned. “I was… I was fine after the first night. Although my head felt like it was vibrating.”“Lucky!” “Mmh!” Peter whined, muffled by MJ's shoulder.“You guys are weak,” Peni scoffed, “Mine lasted a month! Practically comatose for two weeks!”Mild alarm flared through Peter’s thoughts, but… it was muted. Craning his neck away from MJ’s shoulder, he saw Noir yet again looking down at the girl in his lap, likely very worried for her. But it went unnoticed as she went back to explaining the workings of the holograms to Noir, who was enraptured back into silence.Peter would have to invite him on his and Peni’s trip to the science museum.That could wait, though. Right now, he was hugging his wife, and soaking in the buzz of calm that surrounded him.He felt one of the weights on his shoulders lift.
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“How’re you feeling today, Peter?”It was coming up to two months since Peter had left the hospital. Three since he’d been put there. Visits from the other Spider-People were slowing down, Miles was becoming more and more adept at being Spider-Man with each passing day, and the publicity was starting to pick up again now that he was going out more often and Jameson’s angry rambling was beginning to lose its effect on people. More than once, he’d been hounded for interviews by overbearing journalists who might have been stalking him, and every time he got off the bus in the more densely populated areas of New York, someone wanted an autograph and a photo. The hype over his identity hadn’t gone down all that much. All he’d really had, as it turned out, was a very angry public figure who was starting to lose his impact the more he went on about the right to privacy. It picked up even more when he started wearing his web-shooters out in public, after seeing someone almost get hit by a car. The person was fine, thankfully. Miles had been there, and the person was just left a little startled. But the feeling of utter helplessness when his Spider-Sense had fought to launch him into action, and he’d been unable to do anything, had stressed him out so much that he couldn’t even eat the burgers that he and B had gotten afterwards.So, the next day, when getting ready for a speech appointment, he’d snapped the metal bands around his wrists, ignoring the odd look he received from Aunt May.The extra attention was worth the comfort.Right now, he was at physical therapy, offering Louiza a thumbs up and a nod.“I-I… aahm… o-oh…mh,” he mumbled, the words still garbled, but forming better than they had a few weeks ago.“And your speech is improving. Wonderful. How about your legs? You’ve been doing those exercises, right?”“Mhm.” Peter lifted his leg to demonstrate, holding it straight for about thirty seconds before he shakily lowered it.Louiza nodded, “Good, good. I think we’re ready to work on getting you back on your feet. For real this time.”On his feet? As in, standing up and walking? Not that god-awful failed attempt two weeks ago when Louiza had been late getting to her office?Peter felt himself beaming. An hour later, however, he concluded that standing up sucked. Peter’s everything ached from being forced to move in ways it hadn’t done in months, and the session consisted mainly of trying and failing to stop himself from falling. His face got very well-acquainted with the two-barred (he forgot the name of it) apparatus that he was using for support.By the end of it, his nose was throbbing and he felt very much like sulking.“Honestly?” Louiza began, offering Peter an icepack. “That went as well as I expected. We’ll try again next time, but I don’t recommend you try this at home, I don’t want a call from your wife. Stick to the normal exercises, okay?”Ice pack pressed to his face, Peter just nodded.He left the hospital and took the bus to Central Park. Along the way, his head crackled (he was getting used to it, thankfully), and Peni was waiting for him at the gates with a tote bag, bouncing on her feet and staring sparkly-eyed at passing dogs. When she saw him, she dashed over and hugged him, and he followed her into the park. They settled in an open spot and Peni shared the snacks she’d brought with her for a while before wandering off to pet some passing dogs.Peter was left to guard the food from birds, munching on a sandwich as he did so. His chest buzzed with warmth as he watched Peni walk up to a man and ask immediately if she could pet his Saint Bernard.It wasn’t long until he felt a shadow looming over him, his neck prickling and head humming a low threat as a figure approached from behind.Turning around, he found himself face to face with a scowl and brown hair.His heart sank…“Parker,” Harry Osborn growled.…Right down to his feet. Knowing that another Peter got to live was as much comforting as it was upsetting.Her Peter never got to be Spiderman. He never even got to graduate high school, or go to college, or marry MJ like his Uncle Ben had always teased him about.But visiting these other worlds, she got to catch a glimpse of who he could have been. A photographer, a scientist, a detective. It was a mixed bag of good and bad feelings, but Gwen realised she wouldn’t have it any other way.But it still hurt to see them.B was bearable, at least. He was older, more cynical, sassed to perfection and a far cry from the quiet shut-in she’d loved like family. Noir was... well, he was Noir. Never taking off his mask, tossing slang around like it was going out of style. It was easiest, talking to him, if Gwen was being honest with herself.But Peanut? God, he was just… the worst. Not that he meant to be. But he was just so… earnest, so bright. Out of all the Peters, he had to be the one who resembled hers the most. The one who lit up in that particular way whenever he was with his Aunt, the one who got beat to shit and looked like it when she next saw him, the one who still had a childish glee about him regarding anything to do with science, and it struck so, so many chords in her heart.Why did it have to be so difficult? She’d gotten over B already, why couldn’t she do the same with Peanut?She was swinging through Miles’ city, patrolling for him whilst he was with his parents and trying to uphold the whole ‘normal person’ façade. Her thoughts were heavy and every other news-board seemed to have “Peanut” Peter’s face plastered on it. She wanted to go home, but Miles had been really freaking out over the surprise family dinner, she couldn’t just ditch him.She kept swinging, barely keeping track of the streets below her, ignoring the tiny figures pointing up at her. An expanse of green vaguely suggested she’d reached Central Park, and she let herself drop down to land on a streetlamp. It was quiet, for early afternoon, with only a few people walking with family, and a number of dog owners with their pooches. There was a kid wandering about and petting them.Gwen wasn’t much of a dog person.But those were some cute puppies. And she needed a moment to relax anyway. Ten minutes tops, then she was back to the rooftops.Someone passed beneath the lamppost, with a curly-haired puppy tripping over itself trying to keep up.Okay, maybe 15 minutes.As she scanned the park for somewhere to sit, her eyes found a wheelchair and a shock of hair the colour of peanut butter, next to another person who was standing.Gwen’s eyes narrowed, Wait…Was that Peanut? Who was the guy with him?Gwen’s eyes narrowed. The other man was looming over Peter, shoulders bunched, fists clenched, scowl visible even from where Gwen was standing. Peter looked depressingly small compared to him, hair still rather ragged despite the recent haircut, his body sinking back in his chair in an obvious, painfully familiar attempt to disappear.Gwen caught herself squinting again, this time at the stranger. Ruffled suit jacket, brown hair, those angry brown eyes…Was that Harry Osborn? He looked pissed, and Peter honestly didn’t blame him.“Ha… Har-,” Peter attempted, the sounds stuttering and stumbling. “Hho- How are… ynnh?”Fuck. Fuck, fuck,ffuckfuckfuck…“Don’t play dumb,” Harry growled. “You know exactly what’s going on.”Honestly? No. Peter hadn’t heard from Harry in years, and the last time they’d seen each other had been… four years ago, just before…No. No, that wasn’t… he didn’t…“I-I, um…” Peter started, but nothing was forming in his head. What on earth could he possibly say to him?Harry’s scowl deepened, “Aren’t you going to say anything? No ‘sorry’, no reason? Not even an excuse? Because you’re good at those.”No excuses. None at all. Harry carried on, shouting, raging, his face red and spittle flying from his lips.“You ruined my life! You turned my father into a monster!”I didn’t ask for that! Peter wanted to shout. I’m not the one who made him like that!“What’s worse?! You never told me a fucking thing!”
What could I have told you?!
“Are you going to say anything, Parker? Or are you going to hide behind a mask like the goddamn coward you-.”Thwap! Web to the face, but it wasn’t Peter’s.“Gee, Osborn. I know your dad is a prick, but do you really have to follow his example?”A white suit and hood, it was Gwen. Perched on a lamppost, eyes narrowed towards the scene.Peter could almost grin if it weren’t for Harry’s muffled roars and the scowl as he viciously ripped the webbing off his mouth.“What the fuck are you?!” he spat, almost snarling up at the white-suited Spider. “Aren’t there enough of you freaks?!”“Yeah, I like my Harry way more. Sorry, Peanut, this world kinda stinks.”“It’s fine,” Peter signed, trying not to laugh. It wouldn’t do to fuel Harry’s ire.His face twisted in an ugly way that made Peter’s heart sting, “Fuck you, Parker! Fuck you, and your freak friends!”And with that, he stormed off, followed by the bemused stares of passers-by and one frowning woman who had her hands over her daughter’s ears.Gwen hopped down in front of him, “What was that about?”“Long story,” Peter signed, grimacing in Osborn’s direction. “I don’t want to talk about it.”“I won’t push,” Gwen conceded, to his relief. “What are you even doing out here on your own? Are you on a date with MJ or something?”Peter laughed and shook his head.“I’m w-wi-… Pehmm,” he tried, pointing towards the black-haired girl in question as she was being slobbered by a Labrador. He signed, “She really likes dogs.”“Huh, cute. Tell her I said hi.”“Ok.”“You’re doing great, by the way!” Gwen threw back, before webbing back into the city.Peter felt warm. Then Peni ran over and shoved a drool-covered hand in his face.“These dogs give the best kisses!” she shouted.
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It was inevitable that Miles’ visits to the Parker household wouldn’t go unnoticed, even out of costume. The bus route he took to Queens passed straight through his mom’s route to work, and his dad’s patrol area, of course he’d get caught sooner or later.It didn’t make it any less heart-attack-inducing when he received a text from his dad saying he’d seen Miles in the area and was going to pick him up for dinner (“Just send me your location and I’ll be right over”). Before Miles could panic his way out of the house, he’d sent the damn text. Then the doorbell was ringing and an oblivious Peanut was opening the door, and oh, god, he was so screwed-.“H-e-eh-…ah…”Miles could hear the unspoken “oh fuck” from the kitchen. His dad’s voice boomed through the house, probably reaching the basement.“Mister Parker,” he began, and Miles prayed that the ground would swallow him up and erase his existence from time and memory. Meanwhile Peanut was sweating up a tsunami, a strained grin plastered to his face.“Offz…mnh,” he stumbled, hands fumbling over the signs as his brain raced for an explanation, a reason, an escape, something to keep him from fucking up and exposing Miles. His trusty Wheel of Excuses flew off the pivot and rolled into the far reaches of his useless, stupid brain. “Ha-how… may… I… he-hel…” His face twitched. “H-heh… hell… Y-y-y… ough.”His heart was booming in his skull. How one man could terrify him so much was a mystery that just made him all the more frightened. No wonder Miles could get so scary when the situation called for it. Was this sort of thing genetic or did Miles just learn it over time? Was it some sort of authority osmosis? Man, this man was… he was tall, would Miles grow up to be like that? That was both horrifying and amazing. He was staring, they were both staring at each other, this man had very intense eyes, and big eyebrows. Should he say something? He should probably say something.“My son said he was in the area,” Officer Davis said, just as Peter was opening his mouth to garble something stupid. “I was wondering if you’d seen him around.”A blurred litany of “shit” was racing through Peter’s brain. He couldn’t lie to this man; it would simultaneously feel like he was kicking an innocent puppy and getting curb stomped by Kraven.“U-uuuaah,” Peter croaked, his everything failing him. Fuck, he probably looked demented.And then Aunt May swooped in to rescue him, yet again.“Can I help you, officer?” she asked kindly, and Peter gratefully hid behind her.“Mrs Parker?” Davis said.“That’s me. And I’m sure you know who my nephew is. Can I ask what this is about?”“I’m looking for my son, he’s in the area.”“Oh, you mean Miles?”Peter’s brain short-circuited. A smashing glass sound effect split through his skull.Unless that was actually his skull. He sort of hoped it was.“You know my son?” Davis’ voice had an edge to it, sharper than the one he’d reserved seemingly exclusively for Peter.“Of course. He’s been visiting every so often since my nephew here was put in the hospital. You’ve raised a wonderful young man, Officer Davis.”The resulting silence was screaming.“I see there’s an explanation required. Would you like to come in for some coffee? Peter, go put the kettle on.” She looked back to Officer Davis, “Come on in, Miles is in the kitchen. Peter, what’d I tell you? Coffee, go. And get that cake out of the fridge, too.”Not wanting to argue, Peter fled the scene, heading for the kitchen where Miles was bouncing around, more than likely close to jumping up and pacing on the ceiling.“What’s going on?” he asked fretfully.“Aunt May is handling it,” Peter signed shakily, getting the coffee ready.Meanwhile, at the front door, May and Jefferson were having a stand-off.“Can I ask how you know my son?” Jefferson asked suspiciously, only for May’s expression to soften in sadness and sympathy.“Well, from what he’s told me, his uncle was killed just around here. Is that true?”“Yes.”“Hm. He’s been coming around, looking for closure. Peter did that when… we lost Ben. Then he got caught in the rain, and… I couldn’t just leave him out there. And he’s been visiting a lot since then.”“I’m sorry if he bothered you. He-.”“Oh, no, not at all. He’s been wonderful, actually. Started teaching Peter sign language after he came home, it’s… it’s been good for him. Both of them, I think.”Jefferson didn’t quite know what to say.“He’s been teaching?” he asked dumbly.“Yep. Sign language. Which is surprising, since Peter almost flunked every language he tried to take in high school.” The woman paused, blinking. “Why don’t you come in? The coffee should be ready soon enough.”He floundered for a moment, but quickly gave in. He wasn’t on a deadline anyway. Following Mrs Parker inside, he was led into the kitchen, where Miles was getting some mugs out of a cupboard. Parker signed something to him, and while Jefferson didn’t understand what he was trying to say, it made Miles laugh.Parker seemed to be doing better than the last time they’d crossed paths. He still looked worn out, with bags under his eyes, but he’d gotten a haircut and was sitting up straighter than he had the last time they’d crossed paths. There was a light to his eyes that he hadn’t caught before, and he suddenly found it hard to believe that this was the arrogant vigilante who’d spent the last ten years leaping about the city like a madman.Miles caught sight of him, and the smile turned sheepish.“Hey, dad.”“Miles.” He wasn’t about to chew his son out right in front of one of his idols, that would just be cruel.“How was work? Catch any crooks?”Goddamn this was awkward. “You’ve got a good kid there, Officer.”They'd disappeared to the living room with coffee whilst Peter and Miles kept up with the sign language.“Thank you. And, uh… your nephew…”May chuckled, “You don’t have to be nice for our sakes. Miles told us what you think of Peter’s work. It’s not anything new.”“Yeah, I…”“It’s nothing personal.”“Do you mind his visits? I can talk to Miles if you don’t-.”May shook her head, “I’ve told you already, he’s been a delight to have over. And it’s been good for Peter to have someone treat him like a person besides his family. The whole ‘celebrity’ crap doesn’t agree with him all that much.”“I thought he loved it,” Jefferson frowned, thinking back to all the snarking and the waving whenever cameras had been in Spider-Man’s vicinity.“Not without the mask.”Jefferson kept his mouth shut. Jefferson and Miles were both quiet as they got into the cruiser; Miles took the backseat, refusing to meet his dad’s eyes in the rear-view mirror.Jefferson sighed, “Miles-.”“I know you’re mad,” Miles said suddenly, catching him off guard.“I… Maybe a little,” Jefferson admitted, keeping his voice level. “You’ve been going out here without letting me or your mom know. You could’ve been hurt and we wouldn’t know.”“I know, Dad.”“Do you? Miles, you’re not invincible.”“I know.”“You… what were you even doing there in the first place? Queens is quite the distance, it’s not like there’s anyone you know here.”“It’s where Uncle Aaron died,” Miles said, voice sharp and strained. “I just… It was on the news, I know why it happened, but… I don’t know. I thought it would help.”Jefferson didn’t speak until they’d reached a traffic light.“You could’ve told me,” he said gently. “I would’ve taken you.”“I… I wanted to do it myself.”“I see. How’d Parker get involved.”“I got caught in the rain. His Aunt let me stay for a bit. She’s nice. Then Peter got out of the hospital, and… I wanted to visit.”“Yeah.”“You saw him. You gave him that ride home, right?”“I did.”“He’s hurt bad, Dad. I know you hate him, but… you still helped him.”Jefferson didn’t say anything.“I wanted to help.”“With the sign language? You haven’t had to use that in three years.”“Yeah. I got the books from the school library.”“I’m glad you’ve been applying yourself to something, Miles, but next time, tell me or your Mom first, okay? We worry about you, and that’s not about to change anytime soon.”“I will, Dad.”“Promise?”“Promise.” “That went well.”Peter’s still-thumping heart didn’t agree with those words, and Aunt May gave him a pointed look.“You know as well as I do that he shouldn’t keep this a secret any longer than he should.”Peter nodded.“Look, honey. You need to trust this.”“I know.”