Peter Parker’s apartment was unusually dark.
Miles’s window at home faced the road. It also faced East, meaning he had the combined light of the sunrise and the laundromat sign across the street to keep things bright. Even at night, the residual glow of nearby buildings leaked through his blinds. He’d never minded the illumination before; it was just part of living in the city. But after the spider bite and several nights of over-stimulation, every sound and noise and sight pounding into his skull like an anvil, he’d learned to appreciate a dim space. The main room of Peter’s apartment had a singular alley-facing window, so natural light wasn’t really an option.
The Spider-Man suit hanging off the back of Peter’s bathroom door was almost invisible, the red webbing across the black fabric being the only thing keeping it from blending into the shadows entirely. If Miles squinted his eyes just right, he could almost imagine it was a person sitting eerily still. Just watching.
But it wasn’t. It was his own suit, the one he’d deliberately slipped onto a wire hanger and hung from the only hook Miles could find in Peter’s apartment. The place wasn’t dirty, but from the clothes scattered about the floor and the mostly barren fridge, Miles could tell Peter didn’t spend a lot of time there. How could he? He spent most of his days working and most of his nights patrolling as Spider-Man. If there was one person with an excuse for not tidying up frequently enough, it was Peter Parker.
Peter had looked at Miles like he was crazy when he asked for a place to hang his suit for the night. “You hang your suit?” He’d asked incredulously. The look of surprise on his bruised face wasn’t judgemental. It was something closer to amusement and respect blended together.
Miles nodded. “D-don’t you?”
“Nah.” Miles watched as Peter started peeling off his suit from the neck down, breath hitching in pain when the spandex had to be peeled from a patch of dried blood at his waist. He gave up and tied the suit sleeves around his hips like a belt so he could walk to the bathroom to change without flashing his boxers. “I always gotta scrub out the blood first. Then I usually just throw it over the shower curtain rod to dry.”
Miles always took, possibly over zealous, care of his suits. They were something more to him than just costumes. They were a part of him. When he slipped into the suit and swung around Manhattan, he wasn’t Miles anymore. He was Spider-Man. And being Spider-Man meant showing civilians that he liked being Spidey. So his appearance, despite the fact that the suits were constantly getting torn or dirty or bloody, was incredibly important to him. If he couldn’t control whether he was sweaty or covered in debris, he could at least try to be wrinkle free.
Miles and Peter had just gotten back from taking care of a bank robbery in Midtown. It wasn’t the worst thing they’d ever dealt with; just a small group of guys with a seemingly endless supply of ammo in their automatic weapons. But they were unorganized and ultimately not impossible to take down.
Difficulties only arose when one of the robbers took a hostage, and Miles was so focused on the gun aimed at her head that he didn’t feel the gun aimed at him. He only had time to hear the shot before he was being forcefully kicked to the side, Peter jumping faster than humanly possible (because neither of them are totally human, anymore) and shoving him out of harm’s way. Miles’s ribs were bruised pretty bad from the kick, and he’d taken some facial damage from the butt of a robber’s gun. Peter was the one who’d gotten the short end of the stick, ending up with an open wound in his side just above his hip where the bullet meant for Miles’s head had grazed him as he flew through the air.
The black eye and busted lip Miles was sporting looked worse than they actually were, but he knew his mom would freak when he came home and had expressed his concerns outwardly to Peter. The older man had only shrugged and said, “Just crash at my place. If you heal as fast as I do you’ll look fine by the morning.”
The invitation had caught Miles off guard, and he didn’t accept until Peter reassured him several times that Miles sleeping on his couch wouldn’t be an inconvenience. “Seriously, dude,” Peter had said, “it’s not a big deal. I’ll even call your mom if you want, tell her you got caught up helping me with something at F.E.A.S.T. in Midtown and my apartment was closer than yours.”
That much wasn’t a lie; Peter’s apartment was closer to the bank robbery than Miles’s back in Harlem. But given that Rio Morales knew her son was Spider-Man, and therefore knew he was acquainted with the Original Spidey, Miles saw no reason to lie to her. He called her and said that he was okay, but would be crashing with Spider-Man until tomorrow for the sake of convenience. She’d given him the okay, but only after making him swear that he was really alright and safe for the evening.
Miles actually did feel safe with Peter, despite the fact that the lock on his living room window was broken from months of opening and closing it to enter and exit as Spider-Man. Despite the modest size of Peter’s apartment (it was a studio; a single L-shaped room with a kitchenette, a bathroom, and a “bedroom” separated from the main living space by a curtain), Miles almost felt at home on the worn out sofa. Maybe it was because there were pictures all over the walls, an assortment of photos ranging from Peter and May to artistic shots of NYC landmarks. Maybe it was the way Peter had offered to get Miles dinner from the Chinese restaurant across the street, because the fridge was pitifully empty and Peter was always hungry after big missions, so he figured Miles would be too.
Or maybe it was just because it was nice being around someone Miles could relate to on an emotional and physical level. His mother was a saint, and he wouldn’t trade his best friend, Ganke, for anything. But Peter had a deeper understanding of what Miles was going through than his family ever would. Because, so far, Peter was the only other guy in New York who was bitten by a radioactive spider. He was the first, actually. The father of a two person spider-mutant legacy.
Soothed by the ever-present noise outside Peter’s apartment and weighed down by the exhaustion sitting deep in his bones, a result of the night’s vigilante activities, Miles tugged the quilt Peter had given him (a flowery thing, definitely a hand-me-down from May) up toward his chin and managed to fall asleep.
“Miles?”
He squinted into the darkness, trying and failing to survey his surroundings. For a moment Miles thought he was still in Peter’s apartment, but he was no longer lying on the soft cushions of the living room sofa. He was standing now, clad in the first real Spidey suit he’d ever owned; the one Peter gifted to him before he went on vacation with Mary Jane. The red and blue costume was startlingly bright against the inky blackness around him.
He took a step forward. The soles of his high tops slapped against the nondescript ground, and the sound echoed and bounced around him. “Hello? Who’s there?”
“It wasn’t supposed to end like this, Miles.”
He spun on his heel, trying in vain to identify the source of the voice. The only silhouette he could see was his own, his costume and bare face staring back at him in the reflection of a nearby wall he hadn’t noticed before. It was smooth as ice but dark as night, a vertical plane of obsidian blocking his path.
He blinked at himself. The whites of his eyes shined against the void before him. Where’s my mask? Peter said to never take off my mask.
“You should have been there.”
The voice was more distinct, now, almost as if it were moving toward him. Something colorful was taking shape in the distance.
He extended the tip of a gloved finger and poked his reflection. The seemingly solid surface before him warped, his image rippling like water. “Been where? Where are we?”
“I was supposed to make it out.”
Miles wasn’t alone anymore. The blob of color was fully formed, now, and it was easy to identify the limping gait of Peter Parker. “Peter? Is that you? Are you alright?”
“No, Miles. I’m not alright.”
Miles almost missed it among the red fabric and black webbing of the Spider-Man suit, but a quickly-growing patch of crimson was expanding from the middle of Peter’s chest. His hand was splayed over the area in a sad attempt to staunch the bleeding, but dark liquid seeped between his fingers and dripped slowly to the ground. He was hurt. Bad.
“Oh my god, what happened?” Miles tried stepping closer, his instincts telling him to help his mentor, to make sure he was okay. But he was denied passage by the wall before him. Peter was on the other side, injured and alone.
“Will you tell MJ what happened to me, Miles? That I love her? Why we’ll never get to have that wedding at Trinity Church that she’s dreamed of since she was a little girl?”
“I don’t even know what happened! Just let me through! I want to help you!”
Peter dropped to one knee and ripped his mask off. His hair was crazy, brown strands standing up in a million different directions, but Miles was more focused on the aura of defeat radiating from him. “Tell her it wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t being reckless with myself this time. I took the bullet for someone else.”
Miles’s heart stuttered in his chest. “Who?”
Peter’s face, which was usually creased with the lines of a smile or hidden beneath his mask, was as stone cold as Miles had ever seen it. “You, Miles. I took it for you.”
A howling wind blew Miles backward. The wall faded in the distance, Peter’s crumpled image disappearing with it, and he was forced into endless darkness.
His neck snapped forward as he was thrown into a sitting position, chin banging against his chest while his spine was smashed uncomfortably against the straight back of a wooden chair.
“Choose.”
The darkness parted like a curtain to reveal two more chairs several feet away, both occupied by the startlingly familiar forms of Rio Morales and Ganke Lee. Rio and Ganke looked toward Miles with wide eyes, lips moving like they were saying something important. No noise escaped.
Between them, still clad in the formal uniform he’d been wearing at his award ceremony, was Miles’s father.
“D-dad? How are you here?”
“Choose, Miles.”
That’s when Miles noticed the NYPD standard issue Glock in his dad’s hand. One finger was delicately wrapped around the trigger, poised to pull, but the barrel of the gun was aimed upward toward the nonexistent ceiling.
“Choose what?”
“Who lives.”
Miles looked at his mother. She was in a pantsuit; she’d probably been at a city counting meeting. Ganke was wearing his Brooklyn Visions Academy blazer over a t-shirt and jeans. So normal. Such mundane attire for people being threatened with death.
“Why? Why do I have to choose?”
“You can’t have them both. You know that. That’s too easy.”
“I love them, Dad. I can protect them. I-I’m powerful now! I can keep them safe.”
“Oh? Can you?” Miles’s father, gun still aimed toward the sky, pulled the trigger. His ears rang with the resulting pop, and he watched with equal parts fear and fascination as the smoke coiling from the barrel of the gun lazily drifted upward as if it were chasing the bullet toward an invisible target.
The scene changed. His mom and Ganke dissolved like cotton candy in water, little bits of light and color swirling backward and away. His father was nowhere to be found. Miles was alone again.
Until he saw Phin.
The last time he’d seen Phin Mason, spoken to her, was in the sky above Harlem just before the Nuform reactor went nuclear. He’d used his Venom abilities to absorb the excess power and was moments away from losing control until Phin slung him over her shoulder and shot toward the sky with those mechanized boots of hers. Phin’s a genius. Was a genius. She had so much potential. So much going for her.
Phin, from what Miles could figure, had been vaporized the second he lost control of the Nuform explosion energy. He’d watched it branch out from him in a seismic display, arcs of yellow and orange energy branching off and outward as he plummeted toward the Earth.
But there she was, completely intact, lying on the dark ground in front of him. There were no visible injuries. She was even wearing the uniform from their old high school, a pleated skirt and colored blazer. But despite her normal physical appearance, the utter lack of life behind her open eyes was all too telling.
“Phin, no. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. You weren’t supposed to die!”
He tried to jump forward, to jump toward her, but he was still stuck in the wooden chair from before. His hands were bound at the wrists, legs stuck to the pegs of the chair with his own white webbing.
The stiff muscles in Phin’s neck contracted, twisted, and suddenly her lifeless gaze was trained on him. Miles realized with a pang that her hair was down, the curly tendrils framing her face. She never wore her hair down. “But I did die. And you let it happen.”
“I didn’t, I swear! I wanted to save you! To save everyone.”
Phin started breaking apart like his mother and Ganke had, pieces of essence floating up and away into the empty blackness. Miles used his rage and confusion to break out of his restraints and run toward her, uselessly trying to grab onto the bits of her that remained. But soon she was gone, Miles’s clenched fists full of nothing but air. The darkness moved toward him, compressing him, squeezing him, swallowing him whole. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t—
“Miles, hey. C’mon, man, you gotta wake up. Miles! Mi— whoa! Okay, okay. Cool down. Hey! It’s just me, alright? It’s Peter.”
The darkness, previously black as space, was now broken apart with bits of spontaneous light. A soft yellow glow from the corner of the room. Striped lines of blue against the wall above the couch.
The couch. Miles was back on Peter’s couch. He tried to wrap his fingers in the familiar fabric like a lifeline, but realized his hands were being restrained.
Peter was sitting next to him on the sofa. He was in a rumpled Empire State University t-shirt and pajama bottoms, looking very startled, eyebrows creased in concern as he held Miles by his wrists to keep him from thrashing. “Hey man. You with me?”
Miles nodded. He tried speaking, but had to cough around the dryness in his throat. His voice came out in a rushed wrasp. “Yeah, yeah. I’m with you.” Peter released his hands and Miles began rubbing the feeling back into his wrists. The guy had quite the grip. “Why’re you awake? Is everything okay? Is there a mission?”
Peter shook his head. “No, no mission. Everything’s fine. I came out to check on you.”
“Check on me? Why?”
“You… You were shouting, Miles. I guess you didn’t mean to?”
Miles paused his ministrations, hands dropping limply into his lap. “Definitely not.” His dream flashed before his eyes as he blinked; Peter, bleeding out and begging Miles to pass on his final words. His mom and Ganke and the gun in his dad’s hands. Phin, lying on the ground, breaking apart before him.
Something like realization dashed across Peter’s face, and his lips curled into a tight smile. “Ah. Okay. I get it.”
Miles’s shoulders turned inward as he crumpled in on himself. He didn’t like that Peter had read him so easily. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“Don’t sweat it. You’re not the only one with nightmares.”
The knowledge that Peter wasn’t as indestructible as he seemed reassured Miles, somehow. He liked knowing that having super strength didn’t mean he had to be fearless. “You get them too?”
“Sure. Have for years. Ever since I started the Spidey gig, really.”
“Are they always about Spider-Man stuff?”
“Hah. Yeah, no. Not quite. ” Miles immediately felt bad for asking. Peter looked haunted, in a way. Whatever those dreams were about still affected Peter Parker in his waking hours. Miles didn’t know much about Peter’s life outside of Spider-Man, and knew even less about his childhood. But the fact that he’d never heard anything about Peter’s parents and that both Ben and May Parker were dead meant Peter hadn’t exactly had it easy growing up.
Miles must have been staring, because Peter nudged him with an elbow. He winced when his bruised ribs jostled and Peter cringed in sympathy. “Damn. My bad. Forgot about that. But, uh...Do you wanna talk about it? Your dream?”
A pre-programmed response of No, no, thanks though was thick on his tongue. Why would he burden Peter with his own terrors? His own concerns? Pete had so much on his plate already; work, F.E.A.S.T., Spider-Man. May’s death last year, a death Miles knew Peter blamed himself for. Peter had told him about Norman Osborn and his misguided development of Devil’s Breath. He’d recounted the story in bland terms, but the emotion was still visible when he talked about how time and time again, he’d failed to contain the deadly gas before it was too late. Peter felt responsible for all of the lives lost, the deaths he could have prevented if he’d just acted a bit faster.
“Perfect example,” Peter had said to Miles all those months ago, back before the bite and before Miles knew Pete was Spider-Man. “ If the other guy’s bigger, you’ve gotta be quicker.”
Miles had no doubt that Peter was quick. He’d proven it time and time again in a multitude of different situations. But Oscorp was bigger. Way bigger. Peter wasn’t going to be able to outswing them.
That realization brought Miles a degree of comfort, despite the strife it had caused his mentor. His own tussle with Roxxon and the Underground over Nuform had a lot of parallels with the Devil’s Breath situation. People in danger, people sick, some people dying. Having only a modicum of control over the situation. Solving the problem and saving the day, but losing someone you love in the process. Miles wasn’t alone in his grief, and he tried to keep that in mind as he took in Peter’s open expression.
“It was about you,” Miles said finally, unable to make eye contact. He glanced from his twiddling thumbs to the frayed corners of his quilt, then to the yellow glow peeking its way around the partially opened curtain of the bedroom area of the apartment. Peter must have switched a lamp on before coming to wake him. “Not in a bad way.”
Peter laughed a little. “I’d hope not. I’d hate to be anyone’s tormenter.”
“You were hurt. Dying, I think.”
The momentary humor of the situation dissipated. “Oh,” Peter said plainly. “Being hurt and dying. I’ve got experience with both. I must say, they’re two of my least favorite things.”
Miles appreciated the break in tension Peter’s joke provided, but he knew if he stopped talking now he wouldn’t start again, so he pressed on. “It was so dark. Like, everywhere. And after you disappeared my mom and Ganke showed up. “And—“ he choked on his own words, “my dad was there. He was threatening to kill them.”
He wanted to talk about Phin too. To describe the way she’d looked in death purely so he could get it off his chest. But the loss of his best friend was too new, the wound too fresh. He wouldn’t be able to talk about her for a long while.
“Miles, I...I’m so sorry.”
“He said I had to choose. That having both of them was too easy and that if I kept being Spider-Man I wouldn’t be able to protect them.” Peter didn’t speak, and Miles finally looked up so he could identify the cause of his silence.
Peter looked tired. Not just because he was awoken in the middle of the night; it was as if he were reliving his own nightmares somewhere deep within his mind. A movie reel he couldn’t pause no matter how gruesome the scenes were. But he broke out of his stupor moments later, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning deeper into the back of the couch. “Do you remember the day I came back from vacation? When we met at the water tower?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“You asked me if the job ever got easier.”
Miles nodded. “And you said some parts did, but some parts didn't.”
“I hate that you had to find out the way you did. But this?” Peter motioned to the room at large with a lazy arm. “The nightmares, the urge to control uncontrollable variables. All of it. This is one of the parts that never gets easier.”
Miles knew it, had known it. Had felt it at his dad’s funeral, even before he had his powers. Had felt it again at May’s, even stronger that time, because his world was changing, abilities intensifying, and he was learning to shoulder the idea of being bestowed with a great responsibility. He felt it so strongly that he thought he’d burst when he looked at Phin, at the soft smile on her face and the winter wind whipping her hair as she said, “Let go, Miles. It’s okay. Just let go.”
He did let go. And then she was gone.
“But I keep going,” Peter added. “Because it helps counteract the bad parts. You’ve got your own perspective in all of this— you don’t have to feel the same way. But a little part of me thinks that if I can go out every day, put on that silly skin tight suit and swing around and save some people, it’ll make up for the ones I couldn't. You know?”
Miles thought back to those days when Peter was out of town, and the safety of New York was in his incredibly naive hands. He learned a lot those weeks; evasive maneuvers, combat technique. But most of all, he learned to appreciate the importance of family. Community. Teo and his bodega were just as important as Gloria and her restaurant, or Hailey and her murals. Every time Miles went out and stopped a mugging, saved someone from a house fire, or kept Rhino from demolishing another building, he wasn’t just saving lives. He was protecting livelihoods.
The apartment was still dark, Peter’s lamp doing little to light the space. But Miles’s suit, hanging off the back of bathroom door, didn’t look so threatening anymore. It looked...Ready. Waiting for him to make his next move. Still daunting, but hanging over him with a promise of new beginnings opposed to past traumas.
“Yeah. I think I do know.”