Not many people know the true color of anger. That’s something you only find when you stare right down the barrel of its gun, as its flames spread through your chest like wildfire, as the feeling of it sets so deep on your bones that you aren’t sure if there is anything but anger.
Peter cursed, looking down at his hands as a few drops of blood track down around his wrist. Nervous habit. He’d already reopened that scab twice this week. Sighing, he reached for a paper towel and pressed it against the wound, frustration tugging at him. His restlessness reminded him that he wasn’t really in control, that the unseen weather that shifted beneath his skin were too strong to manage. He was just the captain of the ship, fighting for his life in unpredictable, violent seas— and these days, it felt like a sinking ship.
He held the paper towel to his hand for another few minutes, always spooked by how much blood can come from one tiny flesh wound, and as he leaned against the counter, a beam of sunlight caught his eye.
It danced in the dim-lit kitchen, dust particles floating in the air lit up like fine glitter, and Peter couldn’t rip his eyes away.
Anger is strange, as far as emotions go.
Anger is being aware of your own pride and coward and bitterness, watching it destroy relationships— and people— yet being powerless to stop it. Like cold hands pressing down around his throat until his lungs strained for air, anger clouded his thoughts and twisted his words and, sometimes, it felt like his body belonged to somebody else.
Anger is staring at the gentle sunlight and not being able to feel its warmth.
—
This is how to disappear.
Not with a big spectacle, but slowly. By shutting down, by forgetting how to smile, and by watching relationships fail and fall like sieged cities at war.
But unlike sieged cities, his bridges never burned. Instead, they crumbled like ancient ruins, alone and abandoned as the earth reclaimed what she once owned. People he once called friends don’t ever call anymore, and people he once called lovers— well, they might as well just not exist. He’d like to play the victim but he’s smart enough to recognize that he’s actually just the problem.
He’d closed himself off, subconsciously at first but then intentionally as it became harder and harder to exist alongside the anger and darkness that lived within him.
To protect the world he loved so much, he had to separate himself from it. His words shoot to kill and he didn’t want that, not anymore. He wanted peace but him and peace never really got along.
Knowing this, his last resort was to retreat. So he became a shell of a person that pretended he was still here.
—
Peter would do anything to run from this anger. He’d climb mountains and he’d swim oceans, except neither of those were an option right now, and instead he stared at the pre-rolled joint between his fingers and found a way to fly away.
Now, he was laying on his back on the roof of his building, staring at the starless sky.
Air burned in his lungs like fire in a dragon’s belly, like words as sharp as daggers. He picked up the phone and listened to it ring.
“Peter?”
“Yeah.“
“Is there a reason you’re calling me at this hour?” Tony’s voice crackled through the phone lines, confused and groggy.
Shit, the time.
“Sorry,” Peter took a breath, “but I have to tell you. I can’t do the internship anymore.”
There was a long silence. “Wow. Um, you’ve given this some thought?”
“Yeah, I think so.” He kept his voice flat, though it took effort.
“That’s… I’m gonna be honest, Pete, I didn’t expect this.”
“I know.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it more in the morning?”
Peter hesitated. He thought he’d made the decision already, but now he was thinking maybe it was just the marijuana talking. Torn, he didn’t respond.
“Peter?”
“Shit, I don’t know, Mr. Stark.”
“What do you mean?”
He couldn’t tell Tony what he really meant. He didn’t know how. Because telling the truth required him to be vulnerable and that was something he couldn’t ever be. Not in this lifetime, at least.
Self-hatred simmered and threatened to bubble over. Why was he like this? Why couldn’t he open up and talk?
He knew the answer even if he didn’t want to admit it to himself. Without saying anything more, he hung up the phone and hoped that Tony didn’t call back.
—
May loved him, he knew, and maybe that’s what hurt the most. She tethered him back to Earth, with her love and everything she’s done for him. But now, with his energy waning, keeping up artful appearances with her was tiring.
But she was busy these days, and for that Peter was grateful. He was pretty sure she was seeing someone, but unlike his old self he didn’t have the guts to ask.
Right now, Peter was home alone, middle of the day in March. He hadn’t left the apartment in a week— which has got to be a new record.
The doorbell rang, and when Peter opened it he gave a blank stare, for a moment too long, before shutting the door in Tony’s face.
“Hey!” Came the indignant response, muffled by a closed door. “Really?”
Peter swallowed past a growing lump in his throat, but Tony wasn’t giving up that easy. Peter should’ve known. His knocking grew more incessant by the minute, and finally Peter opened it again.
“What do you want?”
“To take you to lunch.” Tony stepped past Peter into the house.
“Come on in,” Peter muttered under his breath.
“You know, your aunt sure does have a great place here. Hey, shouldn’t you be in class right now?”
“Yeah.”
Tony stares at him for a moment with a look Peter can’t quite read. After a few too many seconds of silence, Tony sighs and then starts to walk back toward the door.
“You coming or not?”
Peter’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t ask to go.”
“I know. I did.”
“I didn’t ask you to come here.”
Tony stared at him then, hardened on the surface but Peter could see traces of hurt.
“I know,” Tony said.
“Look, I told you, I’m not doing the internship anymore. You don’t have to be here.” Peter’s words felt like the color of anger, spilling out too fast for him to catch up.
Tony nodded slowly, eyes blank and turning cold. “Look, did I do something?”
“No.”
“Great.” Tony sounded fed up, and Peter didn’t blame him. “Lunch is a no-go. Got it.”
Peter watched him walk out the door with a terrifying helplessness in the pit of his stomach. Why was he driving Tony away? Tony was the only person who truly understood everything that happened to him, especially as Spider-Man. He was the only one who could really push Peter’s engineering abilities. But more importantly, he might be the last person left who really knows Peter.
Or, at least, knew Peter.
But he couldn’t control the anger that forced his hand or the bitterness that bit his tongue when he wanted to cry out for help.
As if on cue, like a twisted joke, Tony faced Peter one more time.
“I’m just confused, kid. But if you want to talk to me, I’ll listen.”
“Respectfully,” he said emptily, “it’s none of your business.”
“Right. Of course.” Tony glanced down the hall and sighed. “Bye, kid.”
When the door closed, Peter felt his face crumple and the sting of tears.
Again, the color of anger was bright behind Peter’s eyes; here was someone offering their help and Peter was too prideful to take it. He picked at the scab on his knuckle, unthinkingly, and as anger surged again he tore the skin clean off, shutting his eyes as the blood welled up and dripped around his hand. The wound felt cold in the open air.
He sat back on the barstool, pressing another paper towel to his knuckles and cursing his own name, Tony’s name, and the world.
—
Peter went to class the next week. He was exhausted and drained, but at least he went. Community college isn’t the easiest to attend.
His bedroom door creaked as he opened it, back from a long, muggy day wandering the classrooms and quads.
The four walls of his room were safe and familiar, and when he was in here, alone, he could pretend that he didn’t exist. That the world didn’t exist, that nothing existed expect whatever’s inside of this poster-covered box.
He breathed out a sigh of relief as the door shut behind him, swinging his backpack around to hang it in the edge of the chair. His desk was messy, covered in printed scientific papers and engineering textbooks he hadn’t looked at in weeks.
Something caught his eye. He blinked down at a printed photo of him and MJ, shiny from disposable camera film. His heart skipped a beat.
He remembered the day as if it were yesterday, not a year ago.
High school seniors, him and MJ stared up out of the image, frozen in time. Peter swallowed, confusion pushed out of the forefront as emotions he’d long since shoved away began to resurface.
This version of Peter and MJ haven’t broken up yet. She hasn’t moved halfway across the country yet. This Peter doesn’t know the color of anger.
He looked into his own eyes, wondering how the hell one person could change so much in an only a handful of months.
His gaze shifted to MJ.
He won’t ever stop thinking she’s beautiful. He stared at the photo, at the way her curly hair fell so perfectly, at the way she’s smiling at the camera like she never needed anything more from life except this, except him.
For a second, he wondered what she was doing right now. All the way out in California, he wondered if she was studying for an exam, or at the dining hall with friends.
He wondered if she ever thought of him.
He couldn’t stop the lump in his throat from swelling, and he sat down as bitter stray tears rolled down his cheeks.
Why did he let her go?
Regret and shame are a deadly combination and they were nipping at his ankles, and for a moment he felt like a dead man walking.
—
Peter thought of himself as more of a stoner. But tonight, he was drinking alone. The photo of him and MJ haunted him more than he’d like to admit, and alcohol was effective at numbing the pain. It burned in his throat and in his stomach.
Already drunk, the walls of his room that were so comforting earlier now felt like they might start to close on him, so he opened the window and climbed out. His spider senses began to emerge; it had been a while since he had even put them to use.
He flexed his hands, stretching them out as he clung to the side of his building. Then, he shot a web out to the building across the alley, and jumped. His limbs felt slow, a combination of a rusty skill set and the alcohol.
He hit the brick wall, hard and with a thud that reverberated across the building. Thankfully, he didn’t fall, but the noise was probably loud enough to wake people inside, and his wrists ached.
He had no time, though, because he heard a window slide open and shot his webs up to the roof, waiting for them to catch before pulling himself up.
They didn’t catch— he misjudged the throw. Instead, the webs fell somewhere behind him, and in his attempt to dispel the web he lost his footing and tumbled down a story or two. Frantic, he shot another web out to anchor him to the wall, but then he was shaken and dangling four stories in the air.
Someone stuck their head out of the window.
Quickly, he swung down to the ground and then away around the corner. Once he was in the clear, he cursed and looked down at his palms, knowing that soon they’ll be bruised from the impact.
While the close call sobered him up a bit, the dark feelings inside of him broke loose like caged animals.
Tonight, he looked anger in the face.
—
Tony’s living room was dark and quiet as Peter shut the window behind him. He wasn’t thinking, he was just following the drunken bitterness as it led him down the hall and into the kitchen, and his chest buzzed with it.
He didn’t know what he was doing, nor what he might say to Tony, but the cold anger dragged him by his collar and he didn’t know how to break free from its grip. Or maybe he just didn’t want to.
He picked at the scab, still not quite healed over, and winced at the sting. He didn’t even realize it was bleeding until it was too late.
“Get down,” shouted Tony’s voice, and Peter almost jumped out of his skin. He turned, hands up.
Upon recognizing Peter, Tony swiftly locked the safety and dropped the gun to his side, cursing.
“Jesus Christ, Peter,” he muttered angrily.
“Who else is going to break into your fiftieth floor?” Peter whispered, eyes cast down.
Tony stared in disbelief.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he said, after a moment, more bewildered now than upset.
Peter searched for an answer, but with every second that passed he felt his walls start to crumble. Like a swinging pendulum, Peter was quickly shifting from anger to despair.
“You’re bleeding,” Tony said. Peter looked down.
“It’s fine.” His voice shook.
Tony reached for a paper towel, folding it up and holding it against the back of Peter’s hand. Tony’s touch was soft and gentle, but sitting in this dark room wasn’t fixing the sinking feeling in Peter’s chest.
The color of despair was much darker and much more dangerous. Where anger burned, despair smoldered.
It felt like emptiness in his stomach, plummeting down to the center of the earth, and as that fear gripped him he looked up at Tony desperately.
But he didn’t know what to say. Like a child who couldn’t use his words, he saw familiar tears blur his vision.
“Peter, what—“
Peter interrupted, words shaky.
“Can we go for a drive?”
—
“I’m assuming this has something to do with you dropping my program,” Tony said, as they hit the freeway.
Peter nodded numbly.
“I’d like to hear about it.”
“Can’t,” he whispered.
“I won’t judge. Promise.”
Peter pressed his lips together tightly, trying to hold in the emotions that gripped him.
“I swear, Pete, I want to help.”
“I know,” he breathed through gritted teeth.
“Great.”
Peter took a deep breath.
“Do you know what it’s like to— to not think you deserve anything good?” he whispered. His words were chosen carefully, but still sounded broken.
Tony sighed, glancing over at Peter for a second before shifting his eyes back to the road.
“Tony, I— I’m so sick of this.” His words trembled, and he didn’t even try to conceal it anymore. His fight was gone.
“I know.”
“You don’t—“
“I do. I know.”
Peter shut his eyes, wiping at the tears, trying to regain his composure. But for some strange reason the sobs wouldn’t stop coming, one after the other so quickly that he could hardly breathe.
Sitting there, hunched over in the passenger seat of Tony’s car, he fell apart. Torn at the seams.
“Look, kid, it’s a rough patch. But that’s all it is.”
“You don’t know that.”
Tony stayed quiet as the highway lights blurred together.
“What if— what if I’m the kind of person that isn’t supposed to be happy?” Peter inhaled shakily. He didn’t bother wiping the tears this time. “What if everything good in my life has already passed? B-because I let it go?” The photo of him and MJ smiling up at him flashed in his mind.
“What do you mean?”
“I hurt people, Tony,” he sobbed. “I hurt people and I pushed them away because I don’t deserve good. And they— I know they’re better off without me.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I just— I— I get so angry.” Fear tingled in his chest, almost as if he were afraid to say it out loud. Because maybe saying it out loud made it real. “And my words shoot to kill. And I don’t want that anymore, but I can’t change, and MJ won’t come back, and I don’t even want her to come back because I know I’ll just hurt her again.”
Tony didn’t respond, and took in Peter’s choked words with a comforting silence.
“I— I found a photo of us. MJ and me. I don’t know where it came from.”
“Yeah, I put that there.”
“What?”
“I— yeah. I just— I was worried about you.”
“That is so fucked up,” Peter hissed, turning to look at Tony incredulously, pendulum swinging back into anger. Tears still stained his cheeks.
“Hey, I’m sorry—“
“What, you think you own the place? Sneaking around in my room?”
“Just once. Did you even flip the photo over?”
“No?” Said Peter in disdain.
“Okay, well, you would’ve seen my note.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
There was a tense quiet for a moment.
“Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that,” Tony murmured. “But listen. We both know you’re more than just an intern. You’re part of a team now, and you’re my responsibility.”
“Really? I’m just someone to be responsible for?”
“No— I mean, yes. In a way. But I also care about you, and this— this path you’re on now, it’s serious. Do you understand that?”
Something in his tone held a certain type of fear he had tried to conceal.
A steady lump formed in the back of Peter’s throat as he processed Tony’s words. He nodded.
They drove on for another fifteen minutes, as the radio quietly ran in the background.
Self-hatred and self-pity were two sides of the same coin, Peter realized. He couldn’t have one without the other.
He thought about what he said earlier, about how maybe some people aren’t meant to get better. Maybe some people are the villains in their own story and in everyone else’s. He thought about the millions of lonely people, just like that old Beatles song, and how he finally understood where they all might come from.
Because pushing everyone away was so much easier than fighting the burning anger and smoldering despair.
He didn’t even realize he was crying again until Tony broke the silence.
“Pete, you’re not the only one to feel like this. You were never the only one.”
Peter shook his head, unable to respond, squinted, blurry eyes finding the horizon ahead of them.
“I know it’s hard right now, and it hurts, and you can’t see a way out.” Tony’s voice was calm, and Peter leaned into it. “But just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”
Like being in a dark room, Peter thought. Tony turned down the radio.
“And what you said earlier— about how some people don’t beat it?” Tony continued softly. “It’s true. Mental illness, brain chemistry, it’s all deadly stuff. This is— this is not easy, yeah?“
Peter nodded, staring straight ahead.
“Look, kid, what I’m trying to say is there is no right answer. Whatever you’ve said or done, to MJ or to anybody else, that’s not all you are. It’s one piece, sure. But you are so much more.”
“I don’t know about that.”
Peter Parker never looked smaller than right here in Tony’s passenger seat, and Tony knew he had to do something. He searched for the words to make this right.
“Well, I do.” Tony glanced at him for a moment, at Peter’s bloodshot eyes, at his dark circles and messy hair, but saw more than that. “I know you, kid. I took you on because you have spirit, and drive, and… and kindness. I saw the good in you. Do you remember?”
Peter covered his face with his hands, Tony’s words starting to become too much.
“Do you remember when I showed you that YouTube clip of you stopping that train? I wasn’t impressed by the strength it took. I mean, I was, but I— I was more impressed by the lengths you would go to stop people from suffering. You didn’t have to do that, put yourself in danger like that, but you did. Because you knew you could stop people from getting hurt.”
Tony cleared his throat and continued. “Do you remember back in Germany? Even then, when we were fighting for our lives, you didn’t shoot to kill. You don’t do this shit for the fun of it, Peter. You don’t do it for the glory, or any thirst for blood. You do it because you can, and because you think you should.”
Peter couldn’t respond. Tears pooled in his eyes.
“I know I’m talking a lot,” Tony said, sounding a bit choked up. “If you had flipped over the photo, you would’ve read this all. But what I’m trying to say— or what I’m trying to do—“ he stopped for a second as he stumbled over his words. “I’m just trying to remind you of the person you are.”
“Person I was,” Peter breathed, muffled by his hands still covering his face.
“No, I meant what I said.” Tony sighed. “I told you, it’s just a rough patch. You’ll see things differently soon.”
Peter didn’t have anything to say to that. Exhaustion creeped into his bones, and he looked up at Tony with wide, wet eyes when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Remember, kid, you’re stuck with me.” Tony gave a gentle, sad smile. “If you shut me out, I’ll just find my way back in.“
Peter nodded, small and subtle, and finally let the tears fall.