Oh. Not you.
Peter was tired. It had been a long-what was it? Year? Years? He wasn’t quite sure anymore.
It had been a long while, he was sure of that. It had been a long while, and his apartment was still empty. Empty besides the built-ins, the bed, and the lego character-the only real sign he lived there was the clothes messily hung in his closet, and the unmade bed. That was fine, it wasn’t like he spent much time inside of the apartment anyway-he was spiderman full time now, and that didn’t mean hanging around his house all day.
It still didn’t feel nice coming back to, not when he was dead tired, and struggling up to his window just to find that the inside of his apartment was just as cold as outside. He should have worn a coat-now he was going to get sick- again , and this time May wouldn’t…wouldn’t be there to take care of him-or feed him soup. Didn’t matter. He’d have to lay there and suffer-especially if he forgot to pay the power bill-and he got sick.
Surprisingly, the power was still on, and he could turn on the small heater he had jammed in front of his bed. His home was small, it wasn’t going to stay cold too long.
He wasn’t hurt today. He had a nice, quiet neighborly day, even if it was exhausting. He found someone’s missing kid in a mall, he saved a cat from a tree-and he stopped a bus from crushing someone who fell into the street. It was such a calm day he could hardly remember it. It was so much nicer to not remember a day than to remember every gruesome second of a day full of fighting for his-and the city's lives. He had new people to deal with-big baddies, with minions and everything. Kind of felt more like an Avengers thing-even though he was the only one dealing with it.
Mister Stark would be disappointed in the way he turned out. He wanted him to be better-and he wasn’t even in school. Hiding under his middle name in a neighborhood he didn’t belong in, in an apartment he hated, playing superhero all day, and having people request photos of him online to make rent? That’s the opposite of what Mister Stark would want for him.
He was heroing full time-that was already better than what Mister Stark had ever been able to do. He’s heroing full time, going to press conferences, charities, everything Mister Stark could have hoped for Spider-Man, he would be proud to see how far Spider-Man had gone. He was the most-trusted man in New York! It was hard to beat that.
He’s not much of a man-he just barely turned eighteen. He didn’t want any of that stuff for Peter. Spider-man was a second priority. He would be so upset if he could see his habits. Two other buildings had fallen on him, and he hadn’t gone to the hospital, or even Miss Cho. He kept getting hurt , and not doing anything about it. Just let the spider-healing fix it, except it was taking longer-and longer, because he wasn’t eating right-ramen, and canned chef-boyardee weren’t going to help his healing either-Mister Stark would be upset to see Peter like this-he wouldn’t even care about Spider-man if he could see Peter doing so horribly.
Peter Parker doesn’t exist anymore, only Spider-man, and ‘Benjamin’. Mister Ghost Stark would have to take what he could get.
Just because he didn’t want to face what happened. What kept happening, didn’t mean he needed to pretend Peter Parker wasn’t him. All he was doing was hiding behind a name. That wasn’t going to work forever. His issues would come out-and his current situation would make it worse.
He was doing what he could. Did he look like he could afford to go to the hospital-no-besides, none of this mattered. Mister Stark was dead-Miss Natasha was dead-none of the Avengers-or anyone else remembered him-and even May was dead. It didn’t really matter how they would feel right now.
Except it hurts to know that they would want better-and that Peter can’t do better.
He was just going to go to sleep for a while. It was a long day, and it was time to fall into the depths of his mattress, and try and rest the night away. His neighbors-a building over anyway-had offered him about three or so dollars an hour if he watched their son Miles while his uncle was busy. It was their date night.
He’d gotten close to that little family-and their nine year old. It made him anxious-getting close to people who could get hurt if he wasn’t careful. People who were vulnerable-and unable to protect themselves. People who would be easy targets.
Peter didn’t mean to let them get close to ‘Benjamin’ (never Ben. Never) but it kind of just happened , and now he was apparently deemed good enough to watch Miles. Someone who was far too little to defend himself from anything that wanted to hurt him-regardless of who the threat was actually after.
He wasn’t going to try and protect them. He wouldn’t need to, because Benjamin Parker was dead, and Peter Parker never existed. Whenever he tried to protect someone that he knew, it ended up in the worst way. He wasn’t going to use the Parker curse on them.
It was hard to get comfortable. His bones hurt-and his arms weren’t happy about him swinging all day. He tried to settle in with a pillow between his legs, and another extra under his shoulders. Just as he tried to sink in, there was a knock on the door.
That made him internally panic a bit-and for good reason. Maybe he had gotten home later than expected, and Miles was waiting for him alone-or it was some stranger-or even the landlord-did he pay the rent? He’s pretty sure he did-maybe?
He’s been really tired. Days had been blurring together-what day was it? Was it the first? Was he late? He couldn’t be late again-he wasn’t ready to be homeless-especially not in winter.
It could be a villain. Either way he shouldn’t greet the door in his spider-suit. No. He wasn’t wearing it-it was in the floor. He struggled out of bed, and to the door, hardly dressed. His ‘Peter tingle’ went off-either from the anxiety, the rainy city-or the being at the door. He couldn’t tell which so far.
It wasn’t anything he expected. If anything, he would have expected to die first. Mostly because the man at the door had been dead long enough for his memorials to have washed off of their painted walls under the assault of the weather.
Beck. That was the only thing he could think of when the man's face split into a grin. Beck had somehow lived-Peter should have expected him to live, he was an illusionist. He would be the one to live. The man who Peter believed to be surely a creation called him kid, and Peter was sure his stomach was going to come out of his mouth. Peter was going to be sick. The image of him mocking him for the second time made him a little less guilty that Beck was his first kill. Not-kill apparently. Maybe he’d have to do it again-and-and then he would lose what he had again-the face in front of him swirled into something mocking worry, mouthing something he couldn’t hear. Peter was too busy remembering the train. Broken bones, and waking up in with the nicest prisoners he’d seen (not that he’d seen very many nice ones). He doubted prison in New York would be nearly as friendly. No one would save him in a jet this time-much less sew him up. Maybe Beck would just kill him before the pain in his chest did.
When the smokeless-illusion tried to reach for him, he slammed the door. Eliciting a confused grunt from the otherside of the door. He hopped into his suit without thinking-ignoring the noise on the other side of the door as he dove through a window he had apparently left open. No wonder it was so cold.
Beck would find him if he was nearby. Stupid Peter-jumping out of his window, not caring if someone saw him. This is how two-and two gets put together like with M.J. and that whole…nevermind, not important. He needed to go. Needed to go somewhere, alone, and tired-and figure out what happened. What to do, not what happened. There wasn’t much probability of it being anything else.
Peter landed on a roof-somewhere outside of Queens. Somewhere achingly familiar that he didn’t mean to go to. It was fine. Everything was fine. No it wasn’t. Beck was back, and now bad things were going to happen. Bad things that he would have to get the upper hand on, and stop before anyone got hurt-or killer-because he would go that far. He needed to calm down, and remember how to stop Beck.
How could he stop Beck? He was already back-apparently with better gear since he couldn’t even feel the buzz of the drones-it was going to be harder. He was trying to trick him. That-that meant he was better off right? He already had the upper hand because he knew he was trying to trick him. The faint scars scratching up his neck-and the metallic arm were all being used to trick him, because knowing and seeing him be whole would be too obvious. So Beck tried to hide the truth behind details that almost felt real.
It could be someone else-just someone as devious.
The idea that it was a stranger was somehow darker. Beck being back, and after him again was unwelcomed-but it was obviously the easier foe to unravel. Comforting in a way that it shouldn’t be that he’d fought him before and won-even if it was just barely.
Besides no one else would know where he would be. In fact-if Beck was alive he shouldn’t know either. Peter should be the only one to know where Peter was. Stephen said so.
It wasn’t time to think about magic. It was time to think up a place to hide, and a way to undo whatever was going on before someone got hurt.
There was nowhere really for him to go, now was there? He couldn’t go to Mrs Morales, and Officer Davis’ home-they-well officer Davis might be able to help him detective wise, but he wasn’t going to put him into danger just because he wasn’t so sure he could handle the cold-or the exhaustion.
Yes he could. He’d been through worse. He could tough it out while he figured things out. It wouldn’t take long before he was back in his bed, warm as ever. No one would expose him this time-and he wouldn’t be hated. He just had a lot of work and research to get done. It won’t take that long if he keeps going like this. He could be his own guy in the chair-just like he had been doing for a long time.
First he needed to find someplace to rest though, somewhere secluded to rest, and plan out his first move.
A dumpster couldn’t be that bad, could it? No. It would work until he found someplace better.
He needed to rest if he was going to fix this. Rest, and think this over-and figure out how he was going to keep everyone safe.
He would keep everyone safe. He just needed a minute to think.