that the chemistry's correct
Peter wakes up with a crick in his neck and the distinct aftertaste of ash in his mouth. At this odd occurrence, he scrunches his face with distaste and a shudder. He’s never had the most pleasant uprising in the morning, typically getting lost under the heat and safety his covers provided him, and today is no different.
He shifts positions so he’s lying on his side, tucking his legs close to his chest and pulling up his blanket, which smells like mothballs, up to his chin. He promptly attempts to go back to sleep before Aunt May comes and tells him he’s late for school.
Peter has exactly 3 full beats of comfort until he startles and falls off the lounge chair he was sleeping on, causing him to land harshly on his backside. He thunks his head against the carpeted ground, which he doubts the hygiene of, with a defeated sigh and a groan.
There was a low chance that this was all a nightmare, however, Peter is unfortunately still stuck on the idea that this was all a very crazy dream caused by the (near) death experience on Titan, and that he’ll wake up in a hospital bed with Aunt May hovering over him.
Obviously, this isn't the case, especially if the internal monologue of the voices in his head (which is a weird thing to admit, he’ll be honest) is anything to go by.
“Being so stubborn seems to be a secondary power for you.” The voice that sounds the most like Shuri comments idly. Peter relents that, yes, he’s probably the world's hardest-headed and stubborn person.
Well, at least his world.
That thought goes ahead and makes him sad again, for the fifteenth million time since he arrived.
Peter misses his friends. He misses MJ’s pessimistic attitude, Ned’s geeky nerdy hangouts, Gwen and her odd sense of humor, Harry and his slightly ignorant rich-boy attitude, Johnny and his (literal) flamboyance - hell he even misses his villain gallery, which to be completely honest isn’t very large - but he’s close to getting Black Cat!… probably.
He misses the life he’s made for himself among the hero community, and the family he’s made as a result of being Spider-Man. He feels like a fish out of water, plucked from his home, with everything he knows and loves literally a world away.
The analogy is fitting, especially because he finds it difficult to breathe. His overwhelming amount of anxiety and feeling of complex emotions he can only describe as green, is starting to make him feel choked up.
Peter swallows around the lump in his throat, willing the tears that are brimming in his eyes not to fall.
He cannot afford to dwell on his fears; it’s not logical.
It’s something he learned when he was training to be a bit more… subtle. Which is a relatively hard feat when you go out and fight crime in bright red and blue for a living.
Anyway, back when Natasha told him he should learn the basics of espionage with her to make recon easier and less… of a mess that it usually is (because apparently making jokes during missions like he does is ‘unprofessional’ and ‘really make other heroes not want to work with you’), she told him that fear and insecurity make people do dumb things. At the time, Peter thought she was talking about the thugs in the field who would let things slip too easily at the slightest hint of something going wrong. But now Peter thinks she might have been referring to him and his impulse issue.
Either way, Peter is self-aware enough that he understands that he’s a very emotion-driven person. His emotions of longing and fear of not being able to get back are going to drive him to do rash things.
What Peter needs is to get himself into a relatively safe and capable research environment and to calm down.
It’s a monumental task, or at least he thinks it is. He’s no stranger to being poor or even being homeless, but Gotham is a different beast. The whole city is…weird.
He’s unsure if his spidey sense is going haywire because of the strange environment, the fact that this isn’t his universe, or because danger seeps into every crevice of the city. Honestly the last one may be true, the city, from his light skimming of research, proved to have an extensive list of heroes that are somewhat affiliated with the Justice Leauge, and yet he woke up in a lab with handfuls of dead bodies sitting in an unsued locker room, so clearly theyre either overworked or are just not doing theyre job period.
Considering that Nightfeather dude had to be pulled away from talking to Peter, who, to be fair, looked like he was ready to leap off the roof, Peter is going to go with overworked and spread thin.
He shakes off his worried thinking and digs out the notebook from his backpack right next to him. The original owner's loopy, girlish cursive handwriting sears into his eyes, making him wince and remember that the deceased was a person, too. It only makes Peter feel even more guilty.
Peter flips to the middle of the notebook where he’s marked down his potential theories and the list of absolute essentials he needs to get, as long as he’s stuck here in Gotham.
A lot of it is lab-based and requires money, but the tasks get easier the further down the list he goes. He has clothing, although it’s a solid two outfits, and the gym outfit he stole smells like sweat and cheap perfume. Peters's mouth twists, he could probably shoplift from a Walmart - if they even have that in this universe. He doesn’t typically promote shoplifting; it’s still a crime, but a billionaire isn’t going to go broke over Peter stealing a couple of pairs of pants.
Despite having relatively affluent friends like Harry, Johnny, or even Tony, Peter has always had an ‘eat the rich’ attitude. He’s a broke New Yorker at heart after all. Peter still thinks that there is no such thing as an ethical billionaire, however, he will admit that the Billionaires and overall well-off friends he’s unfortunately associated with aren’t necessarily money hungry, nor are they the devil himself.
Peter eyes the mentions of money on his list, and cringes. The 8 dollars he spent on a frankly massive Torta and drink made a dent in his funds, however, the food was filling for the moment, and Peter can't really work on an empty stomach whatsoever, so it was really an investment if you think about it hard enough.
There was a cough that sounded vaguely like a gruff ‘Delusional’, a smack like somebody getting hit, and then the voice that sounded a lot like Quill whining.
Peter is beginning to think these hallucinations aren’t actually a figment of his brain trying to work through a traumatic experience, and are actually there. He draws a blank at that prospect, and just nods and moves on, not wanting to deal with that shitshow until he’s mentally stable enough to process it.
“That was a surprisingly mature answer, I’m shocked he worked it out that quickly.” The old scientist guy says, and Peter ignores how insulting it sounds in favor of getting a pen out and scribbling some more things down.
He needs a source of money, which seems to be his biggest problem, and he also needs to get a source of food, because unfortunately, Peter literally runs on food. Oh, the woes of having a superpowered metabolism.
Peter chews on his lip thoughtfully, and then bites the bullet and just writes down soup kitchen under everything else. If worse comes to worst, he’ll just accept the help. He crushes down his guilt by rationalizing that once he has money, he’ll donate back what he had taken.
Sam sucks his teeth and tsks in his head, clearly disappointed, “You need to accept help without feeling guilty for taking away resources that are meant for you.” Peter ignores the voice and packs up his things back in his bag; the only thing truly on his mind at the moment is finding a way to get clean.
The goop in his hair has made his curls heavy and likely wild, not that he has a mirror to tell, and they also appear like they do when in a gel cast (a term he only really knows from Harry who time and time again has attempted to force Peter into a hair care routine, and has failed more times than Peter can count). And don't get Peter started on the smell; he smells like chemicals and a dead body, but not because he’s wearing a dead person's clothes, but because his skin itself smells like it was close to rotting and going through the stages of decay.
He shudders violently at the thought of his body dying, and then gets up with his bag strapped onto his back. Peter looks around at the bookstore with new eyes, not seeing the state of decay it was in last night because he was too tired to care, but now that he’s really looking at everything, he can see why it was abandoned.
The smell of mildew is strong, but the actual infestation of black mold is even worse. By Peter’s guess, there seemed to be some sort of flood in this section of town, leaving the buildings abandoned and shockingly not rifled through. But it also left everything with severe mold and damage.
He grimaces as he looks at the lounge chair he was sleeping on and sees the literal fungus growing from the couch. Peter has to find a better base to come back to, at least for now, until he scrounges up enough money for at least a hotel.
Sighing, and ignoring the way the carpet squishes underneath his steps like it’s held its moisture, he goes back to the small window from where he came. It’s easier to just plain stick to the walls now that he isn’t starving, injured, and the fact that it’s dry outside helps a bunch.
Peter peeks his head out the window, making sure nobody is there, which there is, but thankfully, Gotham follows the same ‘If it doesn’t affect me, it’s not my business’ attitude that New Yorkers basically founded. He makes brief eye contact with an older man slumped against a dumpster, but all he does is let out a drunk groan and slips further down.
He jumps down onto the concrete alleyway with sore muscles and knees that pop satisfyingly. It feels good to stretch his limbs and breathe the fresh…ish air of the city. Actually, Peter scrunches his nose. This part of town reeks of iron and gunpowder, which makes sense since the place has literally been named Crime Alley by its inhabitants. It’s not the most pleasant smell, and the city has an overall grime of pollution, but Peter will just have to adapt and get used to it.
Which is another unfortunate fact that he has to make do with, he thinks while walking down the street, which seemed more lively at night than it does now. At least now that it's daylight, though Peter doesn’t know how long that's going to last since it seems he woke up in the middle of the day, he can observe Gotham's residents more closely.
The people are shifty-eyed and set off his spidey-sense is a way that the whole city has seemed to do, at first Peter had figured it was due to literally waking up in a new unknown environment, and then he assumed it was because he was in a different universe, but in actuality Peter has deduced that it’s because Gothams residence - or hell even the city itself - is capable and willing to harm someone. It’s not necessarily a malicious feeling with every person he passes by; it seems to be more like a survival instinct to some of the people he passes, but to others, Peter gets the gist that they would harm someone without a second thought for their gain.
Another grimace makes its way on his face, earning a side eye from a girl who’s passing by. It’s only when Peter smells the strong scent of mildew again that he realizes that he went in a big circle around the block.
Peter sighs and taps on the side of the earbud Karen has concentrated herself to. “Hey, Karen?” She responds with a soft ‘Good afternoon Peter’ which makes Peter smile, at least he has one thing from his old life here with him (he feels more so than hears the indignation of the voices in his head), and requests that she lead him to the closest gym.
◇◇◇
As it turns out, the closest gym was right around the corner, and Peter isn’t as observant as he initially thought himself to be. To be completely fair, though, he was kind of stuck in his own head trying to get a gauge on this city and its inhabitants, although maybe the borough called ‘Crime Alley’ wasn’t the best place to start in his assessments.
Just like the Book Nook, the self-proclaimed ‘Jay’s GYM’ had a little side window of thick marbled glass that led to a locker room. Peter felt a bit like a creep, standing on top of a crate with his sharp eyes looking from side to side, tracking the shadows in the locker room and listening closely to every door closed and opened.
When the locker room finally cleared, with all the people going either back into the gym or to the showers, Peter very carefully pried the window frame off and set it down by his feet.
Peter grimaced at the smallness of the window and went in headfirst. He landed with a little flourish that was for no one other than himself, landing sturdily on his hands and then going on his feet.
His joints popped, making him feel like an old man, and frankly, despite being 16, he really does feel weary beyond his years. Peter pushes that stray thought and goes over to what he assumes is an empty locker and pushes his bag in there. He takes out his stolen Gotham Heights hoodie and the toiletry bag. He honestly is cringing at the thought of having to put back on the grimy pants and underwear, not to mention the socks he’s wearing are not his size and keep slipping down his heel with every step he takes.
However, he has to make do.
Peter sneaks by the two stalls that are clearly occupied and goes to the one farthest from other people. The shower is nice, with a locking stall and seems to be relatively clean, which was not what he expected given the state of the city. What isn’t so nice is the lack of toiletries that he really has.
In the toiletry bag, there's maybe 2 ounces of fruity-smelling shampoo — really it’s worth a single squeeze — that he needs to make last, and a bar of Dove soap that seems to be on its last few washes. Thankfully, there's deodorant and some other random hygiene products. Peter supposes that tomorrow he can just put some of this cherry scented perfume on and dry shampoo to hide how filthy he really is — but only if it comes to that.
He cringes once again at the lack of loofah or wash cloth, but considering what his situation is, he’s grateful. The shower is quick and warm, but Peter savors every second of it. There is no towel, but he changes while he’s still damp, getting his clothes wet and making Peter shiver.
The only downside of finally getting out of the shower after 10 minutes, with his hair smelling like strawberries and his skin like sickly sweet cherries, was the fact that now he actually has to face the responsibility of trying to make money in a frankly shady city.
Peter is no stranger to doing somewhat shady things for money. While his parents were well off and Aunt May and Uncle Ben were both a nurse and a firefighter, respectively, they all still lived in New York.
After his parents died, all the money they had earned over the years was sent to a trust for Peter to inherit when he turned 18. When they had died, it was up to May and Ben to plan the funeral, which took a lot out of their funds, and to make up for the money used, Ben took up a side gig as a mechanic.
Peter’s almost completely sure that what Ben was doing was somewhat illegal, he had no licensing and no shop, just working out of the garage of the house his parents had left in their name. Later, when Ultron destroyed half of New York, the house was destroyed, and along with it was the garage. At that point, May and Ben had worked overtime, which was a given due to the nature of their jobs, and they had reached a point of stability where they didn't have to take extra jobs.
When Ben died, May lost her job at the hospital. The grief and all the preparations of the funeral, plus having to take care of Peter, got to her. Peter had felt guilty at the time, he still does, he’s the reason Ben died after all, but he made up for it by taking shady jobs. He would work on people's cars and bikes, paint people's houses, deliver mystery packages that might’ve had something illegal in them, mow lawns, and a bunch of other jobs that were menial and relatively easy to come by.
So Peter isn’t a stranger to hardships, but that doesn’t mean Gotham would make it easy for him to find a job.
He exits the shower area to go back to the locker for his things. The door opens with a loud creak, and as he shoulders his bag and looks up Peter finally has the chance to see his reflection for the first time since he came here.
It’s a bit jaw-dropping. Though that’s dramatic, his appearance really is drastic. The curls on his head, even though they’re wet, have a very distinct stark white streak among the chocolate brown it’s contrasting.
His eyes trail the chunk of curls and push them out of the way to closely analyze his eyes. Peter’s eye bags are not only a killer dark purple, and heavy as if he hadn’t rested in years, but they make him look like the living dead. But his main focus is on the color of his eyes. What were once Bambi-brown eyes are now an angry green with gold peaking through and surrounding his pupil. They’re gorgeous and unnerving, and the sight of them makes him want to tear his eyes out.
He’s filled with the unexplainable emotion of pure, angry, green. His eyes were his mother's, their shape, his father's. But now they're virtually unrecognizable. The reflection that stares back at him is barely his own, it's like looking at a stranger.
The only thing calming him down and catching his attention is a faint glowing, almost too faint for the human eye to register, and it's peeking out from the side of his neck.
Peter frowns, his breathing getting under control, and pulls down the collar of his hoodie. What he sees is frankly gorgeous, which is such a 180 from his previous emotions about changes in his appearance.
What it is, is golden swirls trailing from the side of his neck and curling down to— upon lifting his hoodie — his hipbones. The swirls look like a painting made from stardust, something MJ would definitely doodle on herself while bored in class. With the design catching his attention and making him focus all his attention on tracing its design with his eyes.
Peter must’ve spent too much time focusing his attention on it, because the barest nudge from his tingle brings him out of his daze. He rushes to put himself together and snatches his bag, and peeks his head out the window.
The coast is, once again, clear, and he makes the move to go in feet first, confident in his landing. The only ones to see his perfect landing are the alley cats, who are lazily staring at him with bored expressions. Well, he guesses it's okay. Not everyone can be his biggest fan, but he’s sure they’ll warm up to him if he ends up staying on the streets for very long.
He frowns, thinking about his new situation and his newfound changes to his appearance. They have to be related to his waking up in a test tube, but without a solid theory as to how the test tube caused it, he has no idea how to get rid of the cosmetic changes.
It pains him to think about a world where he won't look into a mirror and see his mother's eyes staring back at him.
Peter sighs and stretches, limbs still aching from sleeping in the weird angle that the chair forced him into. Gotham’s air is slightly cooler now, which either means it's later in the day — geez, he really wasted time being a narcissist and looking at himself — or some kind of storm is brewing. The shadows on the ground stretch further than they did earlier, and the sun’s just barely peeking out from behind a thick gray cloud.
He doesn’t exactly have a watch, but if he had to guess, it’s late afternoon. And with the city beginning to stir in that dangerous way, Gotham (from what Peter has gathered) constantly seems to, he knows he has to act fast if he wants to avoid trouble. Or at least the kind he’s not actively looking for.
Peter finds a high ledge right across the way from an… okay-looking park where a few scarce people are walking their dogs or simply walking by. He perches himself atop it with a flourish — more of a habit than a strategy — and pulls out his tattered notebook again, flipping to a fresh page. He clicks his pen twice. Then again. Then once more, just for rhythm.
Jobs (that don’t suck or require a fake ID):
Odd jobs (maybe Craigslist? Does that exist here?)
Freelance tech support (if he can find access to computers)
Street performing (juggling? Parkour tricks? God, maybe he’s losing it)
Ask Karen to scan for open cash-based employment
Masked hero gig…? (Note: figure out what the non-bat/bird vigilante policy is here)
“Hey, Karen,” Peter mutters, eyes flicking across the page. “Can you scan local servers for any cash-based gigs that don’t involve selling drugs, needles, or organs?”
Karen responds in that comforting, AI-assistant way of hers: “Searching for local listings… Warning: Gotham City has a 68% increase in underground black-market listings compared to the global average. Shall I filter those out?”
“Yeah… Definitely. Let’s…let’s avoid waking up to a bed full of horse head.”
Peter waits while Karen sifts through the mess that is Gotham’s digital ecosystem. It's almost calming, like having her buzzing in his ear brings some kind of order to the chaos.
That is, until the voices start up again.
“Honestly, you’d probably make a great little conman. Slap on a trench coat, start selling tech off the back of a truck—boom, empire built.” Peter thinks he’s the little raccoon alien thing - he gets an offended squawk at that - and his mood falters a bit with a frown.
Peter sighs. “Not helping, dude.”
“I’m just saying. You gotta adapt to survive.”
He runs a hand through his damp hair, he smells strongly like the overly sweet shampoo and perfume he put on, and catches sight of a man across the street yelling at a kid who’d bumped into him. The kid shrinks away, clutching a ratty backpack, and Peter feels something twist in his gut.
Right. That part of him—the one that can’t just watch and not help—is still alive and well. It’s a small comfort, at the very least, to find that he hasn’t completely lost everything. Peter still has his empathy and humanity.
The same cannot be said about this man though, and Peter’s eyes narrow, cataloging the hostile movements being displayed.
As the man raises a hand, Peter’s body moves before he thinks. He drops from the ledge in a silent arc and dashes across the street, his feet hitting the ground with soft thuds. One hand snakes out, snatching the man’s wrist just before it can connect with the kid.
“Don’t,” Peter says, voice low. Not a threat. Not exactly. But not a suggestion, either.
The man scowls. “Mind your business, freak.”
Peter shrugs, stepping between the man and the kid. “Bad day doesn’t mean you get to ruin someone else’s.”
The man glares for another long beat before muttering something under his breath and storming off. The kid bolts in the opposite direction.
Peter exhales and leans back against a light pole. That weird Gotham static—like a low buzz under his skin—flares for a second and then simmers back down. He knows someone saw that. Peter curses himself for it, he’s not meant to bring attention to himself as a civilian while here.
But that kid could’ve seriously gotten hurt if he hadn’t stepped in. He huffs and goes back to his backpack, praying that no one will confront him about his chivalry. Peter imagines that good deeds done out of the kindness of someone's heart aren’t exactly common around here.
Karen speaks up after he starts walking away from the park with his items in hand. “I found three potential cash-based jobs within a 2-mile radius. Two involve manual labor, one is janitorial work at a 24-hour laundromat.”
Peter snorts. “Guess it’s time to live out the American dream, huh? Child Labor.”
“I also located an abandoned tech repair kiosk inside an old mall. You may be able to scavenge parts and flip them for cash.”
That perks him up, considerably so in fact. “Now that’s more my speed.”
He flips the hood of his hoodie and bolts off down the alleyway, sticking to shadows and rooftops when he can. The city groans around him—pipes hissing, windows rattling, sirens wailing somewhere in the distance. He knows better than to assume Gotham ever sleeps. It doesn’t. It broods.
He finally finds the Mall after two hours of following directions from Karen, the sun has long since set by the time he arrives, and he's avoided getting mugged exactly 4 times. Peter cringes at the sight of the mall once he breaks in through some broken boards on the front of the place. It’s really a shell of itself — broken glass, graffiti, vines curling up from the cracks in the floor. But Peter sees potential. There’s power in the building, which surprises him. A few of the storefronts are boarded up, but that tech store Karen mentioned? It’s surprisingly untouched.
Peter breaks in through a vent and drops down into the heart of the kiosk. It’s dusty, but there are some salvageable parts—an old motherboard, cracked tablet screens, a soldering station that might still work.
And more importantly, privacy.
The small stroke of luck makes him smile.
“Okay,” he mutters, settling into the stool behind the counter. “I can definitely work with this.”
Outside, Gotham rumbles on, rain and thunder pitter pattering on the windows into white noise. But for the first time since he woke up here, Peter doesn’t feel completely adrift.
He has a lot of work to do.