often?

The metal of the first reinforced door leading to Otto’s (and Peter’s) lab folds like wet cardboard under Peter’s hands as he pushes it to the side. Peter feels guilty for about two seconds, but then he is practically suplexed by a rush of anxiety and the guilt fades. 

He destroys the second door just as easily. 

Peter stops in the doorway and wonders, for a moment, if his danger-sense is wrong, because there, standing innocently in the center of the room, work goggles on and looking incredibly confused, is Otto: four limbs and all. Otto pulls his goggles down and they hang limply around his neck like a necklace. He then, rightfully, blurts out, “What the fuck?”

But Peter still feels like he could upchuck at any minute, so something definitely is wrong, and Peter might not trust himself in a lot of different ways, but he does trust his gut: his spider-bite-enhanced, danger-sensing gut. 

“Whatcha working on?” Peter - Spider-Man - asks, all casual like this isn’t a potentially make-or-break moment, like he didn’t just commit some (pretty heavy) breaking-and-entering, and Otto stares at him blankly in return. 

(There is a tingling. A nudge.)

“I’ll replace the door,” Peter continues conversationally, inching further inside the room and wondering if perhaps Otto’s self preservation skills are somehow worse than Peter’s, because he hasn’t done anything other than stare blankly at Peter upon his lab being broken into. “Sorry, I thought there was something going on in here. For the sake of the old ticker, though,” Peter pats his chest and can remember Ben saying the same thing - patting his chest in the same way - and the reminder doesn’t hurt, just stings a little, and would Johnny be alright with visiting Ben and May’s graves? They’d like to meet him, “Mind telling me what you’re working on?”

Otto’s confusion is evident, but Peter has to give him a hand because he bounces back from having his lab broken into by a spider-themed vigilante remarkably well, “Why the hell would I tell you? This is private property and my own private labs: I don’t have to tell you jackshit.”

“Fair,” Peter agrees, “And like, totally get it, but I have this feeling, right? Like- like- you know how when you feel like someone is watching you on the subway and then you look up and there is someone watching you, only they’re also, like, holding an open bag of peanuts but you’re deathly allergic to peanuts - airborne allergies, am I right? - so that’s really bad news for you but you hopefully caught it early enough that you can use your EpiPen and not, like, die?”

Silence.

“Spider-Man, with none of the due respect, because you just destroyed two of my fucking doors, what the absolute hell are you saying?” Which. Ouch. Peter thought that his analogy was actually pretty spot on. Otto steps away from the table which is good, good news, Peter feels no less nauseous but he needs to take the wins as they come. 

“I am the EpiPen and also the feeling of dread,” Peter clarifies, because maybe Otto didn’t get his analogy but he’s sticking with it. Peter’s loyal like that, “You are the person allergic to peanuts. The arms are your peanuts.”

Instantly, Otto is on the defensive again, rather than being begrudgingly exasperated, “Arms? How do you know about the arms?” 

He’s saying something, blah blah blah, maybe it’s about peanuts, but Peter stops paying attention as the two pathways forward reveal themselves to him.

The first pathway: Peter reveals the fact that the multiverse exists.

The second pathway: Peter doesn’t fucking do that, because it’s a shitty idea.

“EpiPen,” Peter gestures to himself, probably cutting off Otto in the process but he needs the analogy to really sink in, “Peanuts. Airborne allergies.”

“Yeah, yeah, you said that already, now-”

Peter stops paying attention again as he gets close enough to the table to look at it and yep, those are the limbs. All four of them. Peter probably interrupts his boss again, pointing to the part that would be fused to Otto’s spine, “It has a chip, right? What if it corrodes?”

Spluttering, Otto gestures his hands around wildly, “Well I’d replace it before that happens! The thing isn’t on me forever, y’know, nothing permanent. Just temporary shit - an extra set of hands in the lab, then I’d take them off when I don’t need ‘em.”

“What if, hypothetically, you fused them to your body forever and then the chip malfunctioned and started messing with your head and then you went evil.”

“Is this another shit analogy?”

“No, it’s a hypothetical, aren’t you listening?”

“Look, Peter, I dunno what you’re goin’ on about, or why the hell you broke two of my doors-”

Peter freezes. Not daring to turn around and face Otto, he echoes, “Peter?

“For fucks sake that’s three times you’ve interrupted me. And no shit you’re Peter, don’t play dumb.”

“Would you mind playing dumb?” Peter can’t help but ask, a little desperate but mostly pleading, but Otto isn’t the type to back down, to leave something like this alone. He’s a scientist, above all else: he pokes and prods and makes connections and figures things out. Even when Peter would really prefer that he didn’t

“I mean,” Peter can tell that Otto is making some accompanying gesture at him, even though he hasn’t turned to look, “Look at you. You even sound exactly the same. The only thing that’s changed is your funky getup. Am I not supposed to realize? Newsflash, dork, you’re the only one who could possibly know about the arms. And that was a really shitty analogy.” Otto is quiet for a few moments, “Plus you wear your suit under your clothes sometimes and I’ve seen the red and blue. And I saw you lift a lot of heavy things that your shrimpy frame should not be able to handle.”

The other Doc Ock had known Spider-Man was Peter Parker, too. Maybe that was just something that happened across all universes: great power means great responsibility, Peter sticks with the spider-schtick, Parkers have shit luck, and Otto Octavius knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Whatever, sure, Peter feels like crawling inside of his own skin at the idea of someone knowing his identity when he hasn’t explicitly told them, but what the hell, now is not the time to freak out. He’s on the job, goddamnit.

Peter tugs off the mask and turns to face Otto, leaning up against the table. The industrial magnet in his gut feels more like a normal magnet now, which probably means something sorta-decent (Peter is hesitant to call anything good).

“Look, Otto,” Peter’s a dumbass, Otto knows that Peter is a dumbass, and perhaps they know one another too well because Otto pulls over a stool and takes a seat, looking both surprised (maybe he hadn’t been entirely sure that Spider-Man was Peter, but now that Peter’s fucking confirmed it for him there’s no going back) and patient. Alright then, “I’ve met you before. ‘Cause,” Fuck it. Peter’s going to tell the multiversal variant of one of Spider-Man’s main villains about the multiverse. A villain who happens to also be a genius and could probably puzzle out the multiverse if properly motivated. But- but the villain is Octo, and this is still Otto, he’s not gone yet, so Peter powers through, “I, like, fucked around with the multiverse. Met another Spider-Man, and in his world you were a villain. All, like, corrupted from the arms. Four arms. Doctor Octopus.” 

Otto makes a face, and yeah, Peter would too if he found out that Doctor Octopus was his villain name. It was pretty lame. 

Peter stands up, puts on his best serious face, and Otto is trying really hard not to laugh at him. Peter appreciates the effort, even though it doesn’t do much to help him maintain a straight face, “Look. Robot arms are pretty freaking cool. You want them? Great. But you also have a horrible track record with the robot arms, so can you please let me help you with them and then we’ll pretend like none of this ever happened?”

Please don’t be gone yet, Peter quietly begs, Please let me do this. He doesn’t want to lose someone again. Peter likes Otto: thinks of him as a friend, an equal, a coworker. They’re normal, sorta, because normal people don’t build the stuff they build, but it’s as close to normal as Peter thinks he’ll ever be able to get. 

Otto straightens his back and Peter is glad the stool is tall because if it had been a short one then Peter would be physically looking down on Otto, which would be incredibly awkward. As is, they’re eye-level, “Yeah, okay,” Otto agrees, “But you’re fixing the doors.”

It takes a moment for the words to sink in and Peter probably squeezes Otto’s shoulder a bit too hard when he walks over and claps one of them in relief, but the guy doesn’t even flinch. He just sits there, patiently, fondly, and Peter thinks that maybe - maybe - Otto doesn’t want to lose this chance at normalcy either. 

Ruefully, Peter thinks that maybe it’s lucky that he didn’t have such a huge amount of existential dread and anxiety when May was alive, because even she would have been weirded out by him pacing on the ceiling. May was pretty good at rolling with the punches - Peter winces at his own phrasing - but pacing on her ceiling probably would have been a bit too strange. But Peter likes it. There’s nothing in the way of his pacing (like furniture) and he can make laps around the space above his kitchen and living room in an endless oval-shape. 

It helps Peter focus: to keep on moving. 

For all his attempts and rules and tricks to prevent himself from ever being surprised, Peter still finds himself utterly off-balance at times, and so he compartmentalizes. He puts things in two lists: “Things That Surprise (or have surprised) Peter Parker” and “Things That Do NOT Surprise Peter Parker.” 

The first list is relatively long: Spider-Man being so intimately trusted, the Fantastic Four paying his rent without a single complaint, the fact that Miles thinks that revealing his hero identity to his parents is a bad idea when Peter knows for a fact that nothing he could say would destroy their relationship (and that’s only from the second hand information that Peter has about them), the fact that Miles wants to introduce Peter to his parents and doesn’t realize that is a much worse idea than revealing his identity because, like, how the hell was Miles supposed to introduce Peter?

“Hi Mom, hi Dad: this is Peter, the adult man I spend a lot of my free time with - but don’t ask what, ‘cause it’s a private secret I can’t trust you with. Also he’s working for a person who he knows could be about two seconds away from committing some uncertain level of crime at any given moment but it’s not a big deal, don’t worry about it, Peter has it under control because he’s always had everything under control, nothing’s ever gotten out of control EVER-!”

But maybe Peter’s just projecting his anxieties onto the situation. The number of people that met Peter first - knew Peter first - that were told about Spider-Man later on was exactly one and a half: Otto and MJ. Ned and May had found out by accident, and then Peter had been outed to the rest of the world, and MJ guessed that he was Spider-Man right as he had been debating whether to tell her about Spider-Man or not, which is why she existed as a half-point. 

Everyone else - Miles, Johnny, Matt, and all the rest - knew Spider-Man first. They were all in the hero gig too, so it’s different. 

Peter isn’t brave like Miles: he would never be brave enough to face Miles’ parents and have the courage to say hey I’ve been teaching your kid how to avoid being shot at. He barely even wanted to tell Otto, and that had far higher stakes. Miles wants to introduce Peter to his parents at the same time that he tells them that he was bit by a spider and now has some super-freaky powers, which is… a lot. But Miles wants him there. So Peter will be there.

(The second list - of things that don’t surprise Peter - is pretty short, for all of Peter’s overthinking and trying to avoid being surprised, but it contains a lot of information in just three words: bad things happening.)

Between Peter’s paying day and unpaid night job, along with the fact that he still takes pictures for the Bugle and helps Miles with his homework (and with whatever else Miles needs that Peter is able to provide, and even the stuff he isn’t able to do), he tends to be incredibly busy. 

But he takes a half day off work - a personal day - and asks Johnny to meet him at a graveyard. 

Peter stops at the entrance of the cemetery, eyes tracing the wrought iron fencing and the way metal manages to look dainty in its cursive scrawl - the name of the cemetery - even as he doesn’t truly see it. Doesn’t really take it in. 

Then there is a warmth along Peter’s arm - Johnny has always run hot - and Peter turns his head to look at him with a smile that he hopes conveys at least half of the warmth that Johnny always provides him, “Hey.” 

“Hey,” Johnny greets back, and he leans further into Peter’s side, “Everything okay?”

Peter shrugs, “I dunno. But I wanted you to meet some people.” 

Johnny takes a fortifying breath, but he only sounds vaguely nervous - not annoyed or bored or confused - as he says, “I hope they like me.” 

“Don’t worry,” Peter leads the way, crossing under the dainty iron entrance, “It’s not a tough crowd.”

They walk along the rows of gravestones until they reach May and Ben, and Peter settles himself down in front of their graves on the grass. Johnny joins him. “This is my Uncle Ben and my Aunt May,” Peter introduces, gesturing towards their respective graves, “Ben, May: this is Johnny. My boyfriend.” 

Johnny elbows Peter a little bit, “You could have let them warm up to me first before you drop the big news!” Peter laughs. May would have laughed too, and Ben would have pretend to be serious and stern but his eyes would give him away, “Hi Mr. and Mrs. Parker,” Johnny greets, “It’s nice to meet you.” 

Peter lists toward Johnny, resting his head on Johnny’s shoulder, humming lightly, “May and Ben raised me, y’know. My parents died when I was younger, and left me with them. I don’t remember my parents a whole lot. It’s always been… well, them, I guess. Ben died in an accident, uhm, freshman year? Maybe a bit before, I can’t… It all sort of blends. And May passed away during my last year of high school. She knew about Spider-Man. It’s… It’s because of her that I became Spider-Man.” 

“What was she like?” Johnny’s voice is soft, but not patronizing, and he tilts his head so that it thunks lightly against Peter’s, then rests on top of it. It’s not suffocating. Peter isn’t trapped. 

He’s secure.

“She was…” Peter doesn’t know how to put it into words: the way Aunt May made everything bearable. The way she always took his side, the way she wasn’t related to him by blood but that when he pictures the word mom it’s her face that comes to mind. The way she’s the reason why Peter’s moral compass is so firmly locked in place: the reason why Spider-Man could never be a job or a chore, because being able to help people is supposed to be an honor, “She was my mom. The best mom I could’ve ever asked for.”

Peter tells Johnny stories: about May finding out about Spider-Man, about how they used Spider-Man to promote the shelter she was working at and how Peter would be a stuttering mess in front of the crowds, but also about stories from the time before Spider-Man. Like when him and Ben stayed up all night working on Peter’s family tree project in second grade. Ben answered all of Peter’s endless questions and told him about the person in each of the little pictures they’d managed to find, and then held Peter tight when he’d asked “Does that mean I’m not yours and May’s kid?” through his sobs, and Ben had said, pressing a feather-light kiss against Peter’s temple, “You’ll always be my boy.”

It leads into stories about playdates with Ned, which turns into stories about highschool and Flash Thompson and Betty and all the other people who Peter remembers but who don’t remember him. 

All the stories that have been resting inside Peter for so long - going unheard, unremembered, unspoken about - are vomited out of him and Peter sometimes spills into two or three stories at the same time, jumbling his sentences in his urgency to get them out, to know that someone else will remember - will know - that Peter has made a mark on the world (he’s here, he’s here, he’s here).

And then Peter runs out of stories. Not because there aren’t more - there are so many moments, so many memories, Peter lived eighteen years and no one can remember it but him - but because he gets so choked up that he can’t say anything else. 

“Can I tell them a story?” Johnny asks, tightening the arm he had wrapped around Peter during the second story: a reminder that Johnny is here. He’s listening. 

“Yeah,” Peter whispers, “They’d like that.”

And in a hushed voice, Johnny tells May and Ben that he’s had a crush on Spider-Man since he was fourteen and he saw a YouTube video of the also-fourteen and newly-emerged hero Spider-Man catch a bus in his footie-pajama suit. It was before Johnny had his powers, and he’d been neck deep in hero worship. 

Then Johnny turned into the Human Torch and he managed to meet Spider-Man - the Spider-Man! - in real life and it was everything Johnny had ever dreamed of. And then it was more, because finding out that Spider-Man isn’t just a name but a person - a dork with too big of a heart, who likes street food and rom-coms and who has memorized seven-hundred and thirty two digits of pi - felt like something out of a fairytale.

“They say don’t meet your heroes,” Johnny turns his face in, his nose and lips pressing against Peter’s head, and Peter can feel the faint touch of a kiss. The words are slightly muffled, but Peter catches every one of them, “But I’ve never regretted meeting mine.”

When they leave the cemetery, Johnny asks, “Do you think they would have liked me?” 

Peter laughs through his tears, and sobs through his laughter, and Johnny folds him into a hug under a starless night sky. They’re the same height but Peter feels so small. Johnny holds Peter tight enough that he can’t shatter any more, holds all of Peter’s pieces together while never trying to force them to fit, and he holds him close enough that Peter can feel his heart beating. And Peter loves him. Peter loves him so much.

“They would have loved you.”

They are working on the robot arms when Otto nudges him in the side, nearly disrupting Peter’s careful work on attachment components - as in, the part that attaches the arms to the body, which is kinda super fucking important - in the process. He’s giggling almost like a child and it sets off so many alarm bells in Peter’s head, but he only has the energy to shoot the person who is supposed to be his boss a sideways glare.

“What?” Peter tries to infuse every ounce of exasperation into the one word.

Otto giggles again and it's honestly slightly disturbing, “Once the arms are done, we should take them for a test drive.”

“And what, exactly, would that entail?”

Peter’s stupid boss doesn’t answer, his giggles morphing into full-blown laughter, and when he’s sure that Otto can’t see his face, Peter allows himself to smile.

Mr. Morales shakes Peter’s hand hard enough that if he had been a normal human, he would have yelped in pain and maybe even thought that the bones were broken. As is, however, Peter looks the man in the eyes and shakes his hand back firmly and says, “Hi Mr. Morales, hi Mrs. Morales. Thank you for having me in your home.” 

Peter can hear a mild scuffle upstairs and then the sound of feet racing down the stairs, and Miles squeezes between his parents, grabbing Peter’s wrist with a flurry of words. Peter catches science project and need your help and Mom, we’ll be just a sec and Peter I think you’ll like it and Peter only puts the breaks on long enough to toe his shoes off just inside the door, lining them up neatly alongside Mrs. Morales’, and nudging Miles’ haphazardly kicked off sneakers back into line. 

Then he’s following Miles, because Miles said he needed Peter, and Peter was always going to be there.

…

They have dinner. Peter may or may not say “Thank you” a thousand times because he misses home-cooked meals and the smell of the food makes him think of family dinners and how even though his family was small, it never felt like it. Mr. Morales grills him on everything from his education, to his current job, to how he met Miles, and he’s in the middle of asking Peter, in politer words, what the hell he thought he was doing, when Miles stands up with a clang of his fork. 

“I’m Spider-Man”

Mrs. Morales’ jaw drops. Mr. Morales splutters. Peter sighs to himself, folds his napkin, and also stands up, “I’m, uhm. Also Spider-Man.”

What follows is a lot of chaos.

At the end of a very long (and probably overdue) explanation, Mrs. Morales glares at Peter with a look that could kill a person, if given enough time, like she is wishing him a slow and painful death, while Mr. Morales claps Peter on the shoulder just once and says, with a watery and grateful voice that makes Peter want to cry, “Thanks for taking care of our boy.” 

Our boy. Peter gets it. Gets the fear, the terror. He understands Mrs. Morales’ hatred more than he understands Mr. Morales’ relief. 

Ben had hated the idea of Peter walking to school, he got so nervous about something happening. And even though May had known that Peter could bench a truck, she would still make sure to stock up on hand warmers during the winter because that’s what she could do: make sure that Peter’s hands had enough circulation in them to be able to catch a truck. 

Peter never told her that the Stark suit was heated because it made her feel better to be able to do something.

(Somehow, they - even Mrs. Morales, by the end of the night - don’t blame him for exposing their son to the bullshit sort of things that Spider-Man sees. They don’t blame him, and Peter doesn’t understand why until, as Miles is showing his dad his invisibility powers, Mrs. Morales leans over and says, “He would have gone out anyway, huh?”

It’s a pretty easy question, “Without a doubt.” 

Peter probably isn’t supposed to hear the “Ay, Dios mío, mijo,” that she mutters under her breath. To Peter’s face she says, “I figured. He’s…” She trails off, at a loss.

“He’s good,” Peter says softly, when it seems like Mrs. Morales isn’t going to say anything else, “He’s too good to be Spider-Man.” Glancing over at Miles, Peter figures that he’s too busy to be listening to their conversation and continues, “It’s not excusable,” Peter says in a rush, “He was in danger. He got hurt. You don’t have to forgive me but I- I was there, I was like that, too. Younger than him and on my own, and I saw… I saw too much of myself in him. I knew he wouldn’t stop - not when he thought he could do something - and I. It’s so scary, to think about him going through the same thing I did, so I’m sorry - I’m so sorry I couldn’t convince him not to stop - but I can’t be sorry for helping.”

Mrs. Morales lets out a long, low breath, “Good. You’re both good.” 

Peter cries. Just a little.)

A month after Peter first told Otto, in no uncertain terms, If you fuck around with the robo-arms on your own I will punt you into the sun - and then gestured towards the two reinforced metal doors that Peter had torn through with laughable ease to really drive the point home - the metal limbs were (sort of) done. 

As far as Peter had figured, they had circumvented the main issues of the robotic arms - lab accidents, fusing the thing to Otto’s spinal cord, not building an artificial intelligence that would make the arms semi-autonomous (“Otto,” Peter had asked upon hearing that idea, “Why the fuck would you do that.”) - meaning they should be fine. Peter made Otto sign a waiver that stated that if something went wrong and Otto became Octo, Peter could officially be guilt-free about that happening because it was, officially and on paper, not his fault.

Of course, Peter would feel guilty regardless, but it’s the principle of it all. 

Practical tests were, of course, necessary, and Peter had offered up the idea of stacking and unstacking cups, folding pieces of paper, and changing a lightbulb. Otto threw all precaution out the window and asked if he could fight Peter.

“Otto, what? Say that again,” Otto opens his mouth and Peter holds up a hand, “Actually shut up. You want to do what? - shut up I’m not asking - Why the hell would you ask to fistfight me with those things? That’s, like, such an ethical issue!”

“You’re sturdy!” Otto defends, “And it’s not like I’m trying to kill you or anything, Jesus. Just, I dunno, toss you around. And then we can do your more refined tests after! It’s perfectly reasonable.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s totally unethical, and unsafe, and definitely stretching your morals because one thing leads to another and-!”

“I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars.”

…Ten thousand dollars would be furniture for a new apartment. 

“Deal.”

They end up arranging a time to meet some Tuesday in the middle of the night, in an attempt to draw less attention and avoid making a scene. Otto picks the location - some warehouse that is set to be destroyed - and if Peter had seen a few feet past the dollar signs flashing in his eyes and the picture of him and Johnny sitting on a couch in his (their) apartment, then he might have thought to wonder why it was so important to Otto to make sure they were fine to completely wreck a place. 

At the very least, Peter has the forethought to wear his other suit (which has still been kept out of the media’s eye, somehow, despite the fact that eighty-percent of Peter’s outings were now in the stealth suit rather than the Spider-Man suit) which was sturdier and more padded than the Spider-Man suit. Better for blunt-force trauma, and all that.

Or so Peter thought. 

Because Otto says, “Hold still, I want to try something,” and then accidentally hurdles Peter through multiple solid surfaces and a lot of somethings (his ribs, for one) break and something else (his head) gets rattled around so hard that Peter can’t quite see straight afterward, so maybe the extra padding actually accounts to jack-shit. 

The sound of Otto loudly swearing echos and bounces around in Peter’s head, and when Otto’s head appears in Peter’s line of sight, there are five of him, “Fuck you,” Peter mutters, and the sound of his own voice hurts, so that’s how he knows its bad. Peter also knows better than to pull his mask off entirely, but he pulls it up slightly - enough to reveal his mouth - and hacks out a wad of spit and blood.

“I’m so sorry, so sorry, sorry, shit, I’m sorry,” Otto is repeating the words like a mantra, his voice getting higher with each repetition, “Fuck, I didn’t realize they were that strong, I’m so-”

“Shhh,” Peter hushes groggily, and his next glob of spit contains a tooth. Luckily, those grow back. At least for Peter, “Head. Spinning. Gimme sec.” 

Otto falls silent. Thank Thor. Peter takes a few minutes to catch his breath. It’s… kinda nice, if he’s being honest. Normally Peter never gets a breather in a fight. Eventually the world stops spinning (as much), and Peter pulls his mask back into place and stands up, “Okay, let’s go.” 

“Are you crazy?” Otto screeches, catching himself from being too loud at the last moment. It’s incredibly considerate of him considering Peter can see sounds right now, and he shrugs. 

“Probably? But I’m fine. Been through worse. This time, throw some of the other shit around here, and not me. Fine tune how much power they have,” Peter suggests, “And also I’m upping my payment to fifteen thousand.”

…

They destroy the warehouse. It’s honestly some of the most fun Peter has had in a while, despite the general feelings of ouch every time he moves, and they end the tests with some light sparring, then debrief at the end. He tells Otto that it’s going to be his job to remember everything they went over, because Peter can still see soundwaves. 

Otto looks incredibly guilty in between the rushes of adrenaline from throwing heavy shit, but Peter isn’t too worried. If anything, it’s nice to know that his Otto doesn’t have (too much of) a taste for violence.

The next morning, the Daily Bugle drops an article “Masked Menace Destroys Warehouse!” and Peter immediately texts Otto the link.

Peter: 17k now.

Otto: I am so sorry

Peter: 17k and promise me u wont go evil

Otto: 18k plus a promise

Peter: i see this as nothing but a win

Otto: Can I add mandated therapy?

Peter is bent over the blueprints for an updated version of Otto’s old prosthetic limb models - with the success of the robot arms, and the seamless way Otto can command them, the pair had wanted to revisit some of Otto’s earlier prosthetic models and see how they could integrate the new technology - when his vision goes fuzzy around the edges, followed by the hair on the back of his neck standing up. 

Straightening, Peter blinks, hard, trying to clear his eyes even though he knows it's futile.

“Peter? Y’with me?” Otto doesn’t touch him - knows better than to try to shake Peter out of his daze - but the concern that rounds out the edge of his words snaps Peter a bit more inside of his own body. Now that Otto knows that Peter is Spider-Man, he’s been more conscientious about checking in with Peter when he starts to drift.

“Somethings wrong,” Peter mutters, and he’s peeling off his lab coat seconds later. Otto goes to the other side of the room, pushes aside tools on his messy workbench, and the screech of metal feels like a thousand nails being hammered inside Peter’s skull. His body - his senses - are like a livewire, “I gotta go, Otto, I-”

“Sure, sure,” Otto dismisses, finding what he was looking for and tossing it at Peter with an aborted, “Don’t crush it!”

Peter could catch a fly and keep it alive. He doesn’t fucking crush the thing. And the thing is…? 

“Put it in your ear. I made a com-set - durable as hell and shouldn’t break or anything. I won’t be listenin’ in all the time, don’t worry, but I figured having something on hand - to, to reach out, if you want - would be…” Otto shrugs. He’s not embarrassed - Otto doesn’t get embarrassed, Peter has long realized, after walking in on the guy screaming the lyrics of Dolly Parton’s Jolene to his unimpressed audience of one (the underwater robot) - but uncertain. Peter can tell by the way Otto shoves his hands into his lab coat, the way his spine curls in on itself, the way his eyes flit to the side, that he doesn’t know if he should be reaching out like this: if Peter wants - or will even accept - his help. 

Peter shoves the com-set into his ear without a second's thought, even as he catalogs all of Otto’s uncertainty, “How does it work?”

Then Peter is swinging through the air, eyes sharp and ears straining, but most of all letting his instincts guide him. 

Then his instincts say FUCKING DODGE and Peter lets go of his webs and lets his body fall. He attaches a web to the side of a building and yanks, pulling himself sharply to the right. A spear flies past him with a woosh of air, and Peter makes sure to catch it with a web and stick it to the side of a building so it doesn’t end up impaling some random person walking below. 

Not many people go after him with spears, and by the look of the weapon, Peter knows who it is. Fucking Kraven.

Kraven is a bitch to fight for a lot of reasons.

One: he looks at Peter like he’s a slab of meat that he can’t wait to grill, which is unnerving and also gross. 

Two: his literal only goal is capturing Peter for no fucking reason, other than the fact that he’s a hunter. He’s not trying to rob a bank, there’s no greater scheme to turn the greater New York City population into lizards, no wrong place wrong time and Peter accidentally making a lifelong enemy: just… Kraven the Hunter. And he’s hunting. And he happens to love hunting Peter. 

Peter can respect a ‘get rich quick’ scheme, strange goals (such as the lizards), or undying vengeance. He gets it, he respects it, but the hunting-bros have always been so fucking weird to him, and Kraven is, like, the epitome of a hunting-bro. 

Three: Kraven doesn’t wear underwear under his loincloth and it’s nasty as hell. 

A quick scan finds Kraven perched on the flat roof of a skyscraper that’s quite literally a quarter of a mile away, because of course Kraven can throw a spear a quarter mile distance with exact accuracy and enough strength to skewer Peter. 

That’s just how he is. It would be respectable if he wasn’t hunting Peter like an animal. 

He taps the com-set, and doesn’t wait for Otto’s voice to filter in, “It’s Kraven. He’s just after me, so there shouldn’t be any greater schemes to look out for.”

“Is that supposed to be better?” Otto’s voice is tinny in Peter’s ear, and Peter huffs a not-quite-laugh.

“Better than someone that targets civilians. Kraven only hurts other people if they get in the way, or if he thinks he can use them as bait, so it’s easier to fight him alone and away from other people,” Peter replies, matter-of-fact. 

Otto sighs, “I think you need better self-preservation skills.”

“Join the club!” 

“See? That’s not as reassuring as you think it is.”

Fighting Kraven is like dancing with an incredibly sweaty hockey player: surprisingly graceful, but also very, very gross. 

But it’s not supposed to be like that: not at the start, at least. Kraven is the type to sneak and plan and use his mind to create some trap for Spider-Man, so the fact that it seems like his plan boiled down to “throw spear then dodge” is weird, especially since Peter outmatches Kraven in literally everything. And when Peter has Kraven almost entirely handled, Kraven jumps off the roof. 

It’s a seventy-four floor building.

So Peter jumps after him, because there’s no fucking way that this bitch just jumped off a building. He can’t just grab Kraven with his webs and then suddenly stop moving since Kraven is already in motion at a relatively high velocity (Peter Three had been very firm in his warnings about that sort of maneuver at a great enough distance), so he fires off his one web-shooter and attaches it to the front of Kraven’s chest, yanking himself toward Kraven, while with the other hand he attaches a web to a nearby building. Peter grabs the back of Kraven’s weird and cunty little vest, and as they transition from falling to swinging, their momentum decreases.

Peter’s danger sense flashes and he pushes it to the side because of course carrying the person whose only goal is to kill Peter isn’t safe. 

Then warmth blooms along Peter’s arm, and it’s not the sort of warmth that comes from Johnny and his high body temperature: it’s a white-hot pain of severed tendons, of damaged neves, and Peter would have lost his grip on Kraven and dropped him if it weren’t for his sticky fingers, because his entire lower arm goes numb and tingly and also blindingly painful almost instantly. 

They’re still too high for Peter to drop Kraven, and right as the idea to web him to the side of a building appears in Peter’s mind, Kraven is grabbing onto Peter’s arm and using his absurd amount of strength to haul himself upward, and then the same knife that severed the tendons in Peter’s arm is buried up to the hilt in Peter’s gut. Peter still has control of the upper portion of the arm that isn’t currently keeping them in the air, so he rips it away from Kraven and elbows him in the back of the neck, knocking him out instantly. 

Kraven’s body goes limp, and all of Kraven’s two-hundred plus pounds bear down on the knife still lodged inside of Peter’s gut, and it drags downward. Peter doesn’t even have the right enough mind to swear, the pain is so bad. There is a tingling in his arm that feels less like numbness and severed nerves and more like paralysis, like shock, like there is too much blood that is no longer in him, and Peter sticks himself to the side of a building and mentally apologizes for smearing his blood along the window of some poor office worker who he can hear screaming. 

Webbing Kraven to the side of the building, Peter pokes his head around the smears of blood (and Kraven’s limp body) and makes a telephone sign with his working arm. One of the office workers is already on it, and gives Peter a thumbs up, which he returns. 

He can see his hand shaking. Or maybe his vision is wavering. Or maybe his whole body is shaking, because there is a lot of blood on the window.

Okay.

Why does he feel so dizzy?

Oh. The blood. 

Peter’s feet unstick, and his vision goes dark.

Peter’s on the ground. He doesn’t quite know how he got there, he can’t quite see, and all of his movements are led by his wavering instincts rather than any sort of rationality. He hasn’t pulled the blade out of his gut yet, even though it's not doing much to stop the blood flow due to the fact that it was dragged down a solid six inches from its original entry point, because something in him says no. 

At least it doesn’t go through him.

He’s in an alleyway - out of sight - because he hadn’t been able to keep swinging. He thinks. 

Peter empties the contents of his stomach next to a dumpster, the mask rolled up to the bridge of his nose, and can’t catch his breath. 

He can’t breathe.

Shakily, Peter taps the com-set with his working hand, but can’t make his tongue move. Staggering, Peter realizes he can’t feel the coolness of the brick wall against his body. He’s already cold. He’s so cold.

“Peter?” Otto asks, when Peter doesn’t say anything. 

He tries to say something - anything - form the words help me or it hurts or I fucked up and nothing comes out. Nothing comes out but a gag as Peter hurls again, and he slumps down (probably into his own vomit), legs no longer able to carry him, and everything hurts so fucking much that it doesn’t hurt at all. 

“What was that? What’s going on? Peter?”

Peter’s faced death a lot of times. He’s thought to himself “Guess this is it,” so many times that Peter doesn’t even know what ‘it’ is anymore. 

“It” could be a lot of things 

It is a lot of things, because “it” is his life, “it” is the end of his life, all and everything in between. 

Peter thinks he’s dying. He thinks that this is it. 

Peter delivers jokes as if they were serious, and serious things as if they were jokes, continuously breaking his own heart in the process when no one realizes that his jokes are actually a cry for help and his serious statements are just playful teasing. He is a room full of echoes, consisting of every experience he’s ever had - every person, every gentle touch, every punch, every ache and love and raw, sharp, painful hurt - and Peter cannot find his own voice inside of all the chaos. It’s lost.

He’s lost. He’s lost. 

(Haha, just kidding, Peter’s head adds, because he can’t handle the truth unless it's packaged prettily like a joke or a punchline or a “just kidding” because otherwise it’s far too real. Otherwise it’s real, and Peter doesn’t know what to do with that. Doesn’t know how to exist with that much hurt inside of him.

He doesn’t know.)

He’s lost and he’s cold.

And then there is warmth. There is warmth. The warmth that once bloomed along his arm and in the center of his very self have long gone cold and his fingers were freezing, once upon a time, but now they are not. There is warmth in his hands and Peter thinks that it’s the sun. He thinks that it is the sun. It’s dark inside, inside the world of Peter’s closed eyes, but the sun is in Peter’s hands.