Four weeks
It’s four weeks after becoming Spiderman, and three after the fight with his aunt when Peter turns on the morning news on a Monday when he finds out the girl he took home, Eden Kasley, killed herself. Nothing about how, or why, or where, but she's gone and he had a chance to stop it.
The grief hits him while he's eating breakfast. His spoon quietly slips back into the bowl from where it rested between his fingers and his cereal turns to ash in his mouth. It’s suffocating in a way, because he didn't know this girl. This girl, Eden Kasley was someone's daughter, someone's sister, cousin, someone important. He knows the grief isn't from a personal anguish, but the loss of life.
He’s too sick now, in the bathroom in his usual position hovering over the toilet bowl. Too sick to realize that it wasn't his fault. It wasn't his fault that Eden went out the way she did or the way her life played out but he blames himself nonetheless.
Peter is fourteen, and young, and weirdly grieving and also stupid.
And because Peter is fourteen, and young, and weirdly grieving and stupid, he hates himself for it.
He hates himself so badly that he refuses to eat for days and ends up skipping school with the excuse of a fever to go out on patrol.
Even when his vision blurs and his landings are more stiff than usual he keeps going.
Today, he’s out until the sun starts to set and bathe the city in orange.
He’s currently–probably some 200 feet in the air, on a blue-pointed roof somewhere down in Hell's Kitchen. The wind’s light, but just enough for him to shiver when he flips off of the top and down to a more leveled-out area of the roof. He leans back on the haunches of his feet, closing his eyes on the bright lights of the city and listening for any trouble nearby.
Almost instantly, his senses zero in on the sound of someone screaming in the distance and he leaps off the edge before swinging towards the sound.
He’s crawling down the side of a grimy building when he sees the owner of the scream, It’s a kid, no older than 11 or 12. His hair is dirty blonde and there's a pair of glasses with thin rims threatening to fall from where they're dangling off of his left ear.
He’s being Crowded into a corner by two other guys, no masks so this either wasn't planned or, these pair of idiots are about to have a good time behind bars.
“I– don’t know what you want!” The boy's voice is shaky and littered with cracks. He’s clenching his left arm against his chest and shifting his feet. “I already gave you m..my bag and!–and my stuff so just go!”
He’s brave, Peter thinks.
Idiot number one opens his mouth to reply, but Spiderman beats him to it by jumping down from the walk and clocking him in the jaw.
“Guess you could say I, beat you to the punch there huh?” The hit lands perfectly– unlike his joke– and he drops right next to Idiot number two. Who, instead of clapping, grunts, and immediately tries to take a swing at him.
“Aw the joke wasn't that bad c’mon man humor me” He pivots right then down, dodging the initial punch before his Spidey-sense tingles to the left of him.
When he whips his head around the tip of a knife is nearing his face. He webs one guys hand to another before whirling them both into the brick wall.. “Tough crowd much?”
“Go to hell freak.” he says before promptly spitting at the hero's feet
He fake gasps and dramatically brings up his hands to cover his masked lips. “Such a potty mouth!”
After making a quick call to the cops and leaving a note, he makes his way over to the boy.
By now, he’s huddled in the corner of the trashcan on the other side of the alley. Spiderman
crouches and gently pats the younger’s arm, “Hey buddy, it’s all good now, those guys are taken care of”
The boy tenses at the contact but raises his head anyway, eyes full of unshed tears. “I-I can go home now right?”
Peter slowly helps the boy to his feet and brushes his hair out of his face.
“Of course, but it is pretty late, why don't I walk you home?”
The boy gathers the things that fell out of his bag before gripping onto Peter’s hand “O-Okay.”
By the time the two of them are complex way from the boy's own, he can hear that the cops have been arrived in the alley, and he’s learned that the boys name is Anthony.
He tells him that he is in fact 11 and that he’s going to the eighth grade this year. He lives with his mom but still gets to see his dad on weekends sometimes.
Anthony’s all shy smiles and giggles on the walk back, so when he gets quieter and the beat of his heart gets a tick faster, Peter gets worried.
“So, Why were you out here so late to begin with anyway?” he tries to make his voice sound as normal as possible, hoping that the nonchalant nature of his tone would gethim an honest answer.
Anthony shifts uncomfortably as they stop in front of the steps to his house. It's blue, maybe a lighter shade of it–Peter can’t tell because of the dark–and the paint’s peeling a little but it looks nice. A bike sits on the porch with a helmet and a pair of knee pads hanging off of one of the handlebars.
“My mom's boyfriend got mad at me today,” Anthony says. His voice is quiet again, and he sounds a little ashamed. “I got my paints on the wall and–and, I didn’t mean to, and I said sorry- and he–he said it was ok but I was still scared.”
Peter's thumb brushes over the boy's knuckles as he works the rushed explanation through his head. Sure the implications were a little worrying but he shouldn't jump to conclusions so fast.
“Why were you scared?”
There’s a beat of silence before Anthony answers.
“I thought he was gonna hit me”
Peter Lets his eyes flicker quickly down to Anthony's face before they return to the street.
“Has he hit you before?”
Anthony’s walking slower now, taking time to rock on his feet, staring at them.
“No, Mom’s old boyfriend used to though–hit me, when he got mad,” and Peter tries to best to keep his breathing easy and his posture unchanged, open.
“But then he got taken away and we moved, Troy never hits, and he's never mean to me and he doesn’t yell but-” He closes his mouth. Cutting off his shaky voice to swipe a hand over his eyes.
“Sometimes it just feels like one day he’ll start being mean.”
“I'm-I’m scared Spiderman.”
Peter’s heart breaks along with the boy’s voice cracks when he says the Hero’s name, small and weak and needing to be comforted.
He rubs Anthony's back before leading him up the steps and onto the white porch that creaks under them.
“It’s ok to be scared y’know? Scared of change, of people. But we have to remember all people are different. Some bad, some good, as long as you have someone in your corner you trust, the bad people can never get to you.”
“Like my mom?” the boy sniffles out
“Do you think you’d be less scared if you told your mom?”
“I think so.” He’s stopped whipping his eyes and his left hand is back in peters right
“Maybe,” Peter pauses. He pauses because he knows that he’s going to sound like a total fucking hypocrite and a tiny voice in his head is going to be mocking him for this tonight but he pushes on anyway. “-Maybe you should. Being brave. Even when you’re uncertain, or scared,” His thumb starts to rub again, this time on the boys knuckles. “can make all the difference.”
Anthony pries his eyes away from the floor and knocks on the door.
He bites the inside of his bottom lip before he speaks “I…I'll try.” his voice doesn't shake this time, he's a little louder, and he’s got a determined look on his face.
Not more than another second passes before a short ginger woman is throwing the door open with a face of worry that morphs into one of relief as she sees Anthony in front of her.
“Tony!” She wails into the boy's shoulder, pulling away, fussing. Checking him over for any injuries. Peter, wow–a little overwhelmed with all the parental love in his face, opps to stare at the bike to the right of them.
“T-Thank you, Thank you so much.” When he looks back, Anthony's mom is wriggling her hands together with tears in the corners of her brown eyes.
“All in a night's work Ms.Anthonys mom” He does a little bow and she laughs.
“I should have introduced myself–I’m Ms.Autree.” She extends a freckled hand out to his and he does the same, gently shaking her hand before dropping it again.
A couple of moments pass before Peter speaks up again.
In those moments, Peter can feel his stomach trying to escape his body and raid the trashcans for slop.
“Well it's been great, but I gotta get swinging, y’know, crime and all that jazz.” He points behind him and Ms.Autree grabs Anthony's hand
“Oh! Yes yes, thank you again Spiderman.” She turns and opens the door, walking through it. Anthony follows behind her but stops and turns around as the door’s about to close, a slither of his face peaking out to see Peters back.
“Hey, Spiderman?”
Peter pauses on the second step down to turn and look at the boy through the gap.
“Yeah, Tony?”
“It’s okay to be scared.”
“I know.”
Click.