“Mr. Stark, what’s your stance on the Oxford comma?”
The baddie that Peter’s fighting gives him a flabbergasted look from where she’s trying to disconnect her trapped ankle from the rest of her body on the ground. Stark’s suit whirs overhead as he dodges another spray of fire from the freak with wings. Peter pauses on an overhang to catch his breath and watch the progress of the fight overhead.
Stark hasn’t responded yet; all that’s coming through the speaker is harsh panting and muttered curses. That’s fair. He probably hasn’t done this much cardio in a hot minute. Wings is flying circles around him up there, sending him into tight loops and nosedives to avoid the onslaught of bullets from the guy’s assault rifle.
His charge pipes up from her ankle prison to demand, “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
Peter pulls his eyes away from the spectacle in the air to address his baddie. She’s managed to wriggle out of her heeled boot--which looks ridiculously painful to fight in, if Peter has anything to say about it--and is presently struggling to dislodge her huge fucking broadsword from where it has taken up a webbed residence on the wall. He fiddles with the adjuster for his new web-slingers and sticks the lady’s other boot against the wall so that the sword can have a neighbor. A manicured hand follows suit and she cries out in frustration.
Mr. Stark is still heaving into his right ear, so Peter figures he should give him a break. He aims upward and braces against the railing beside him as his web makes contact with the massive wings of Stark’s antagonizer.
The guy squawks when his feathered appendage is course-corrected. Peter’s hard pressed to keep a grip on the rail in his other hand; the man is superhumanly strong and each beat of his wings pulls at the tendons in Peter’s arms. Stark takes the opportunity to tackle the guy out of the air and the two of them come crashing to the ground in a blur of feathers and screeching metal.
The woman gets the brunt of the landing; her accomplice wipes out on the ground right next to her and she ends up spitting feathers from her mouth. Peter alights from his perch and monitors Stark’s progress as he disentangles himself from Wings, who must have been knocked out in the fall.
Wallflower releases another scream of frustration and Peter tosses a short length of web over her mouth because Jesus, that shit’s piercing, and he gets enough hearing damage as it is.
Mr. Stark heaves a breath in and removes his faceplate to reveal a sweating, flushed profile and two exasperated eyes. Peter grins: he’s excited to be served some shit on a silver platter. “Kid, the only thing about the Oxford Comma that concerns me is that you pull it out of your ass and focus on your work.”
“You haven’t answered the question, Old Sport.”
Mr. Stark sits his ancient ass on a curb stop and sighs so loud that the audio over the earpiece crackles. Peter leaves him to his cardiovascular discomfort and turns to dismantle the binding which is barely managing to contain Wallflower and her intimidating weapon. The sword comes loose from the wall and sits heavy in his hands. Wings moans in pain from where he’s napping on the ground and begins to stir. Peter decides that it’s probably a good time to call the cops, so he switches off his comm and pulls out his burner.
What a fucking world. The call goes through and Mr. Stark mutters something vulgar under his breath as his hips creak in response to standing up.
The rest of the patrol goes off without incident, and soon Peter finds himself standing face to face with Mr. Stark, struggling to choose another date during which both of their schedules align so that they can meet again. It all feels horribly corporate and adult and Peter has to fling himself off of a few roofs more recklessly than usual afterward to shake the sedentary feeling which has attempted to take root in the pit of his stomach.
He doesn’t get a straight answer from Mr. Stark about his original question until it comes up during a phone call which has dissolved into an argument over his web-slingers the next evening.
He’s mid-fight when the question comes screaming to the front of his conscience. He interrupts whatever Stark’s half yelling into his ear to ask, “Seriously, do you use the Oxford Comma?”
The line is silent and his huge, terrifying opponent lunges at him, blasting through a block and slicing his forearm open. Peter exclaims in pain and Stark asks, “Do I need to come out there? What just happened?”
Peter’s pissy and he executes what Matt likes to call “extremely offensive maneuvers” against the thing as he hisses, “I’m fighting the fucking lizard mafia, Mr. Stark, but I can’t focus until you answer--ahhh, ow, ahhhhh--my very important--fuck fuck nooo stop--what was I saying. Oh, important inquiry.” He draws the phone away from his ear to scream, “That hurt, you reptilian bitch!”
A noise like a ratchet screwdriver hums over the line. “I don’t know what you want me to say, kiddo. You think I went to so many years of college for a liberal arts education? A comma doesn’t really matter to me one way or the other,” Stark supplies after some hesitation.
Peter wipes at his bloody nose through his mask and pushes air out against the flow. It hurts worse than the cut on his arm. He takes a moment to grunt his way through disabling the lizard’s Wolverine-Esque brass knuckles. The ratcheting on Stark’s side tapers off. Peter gets his arms under control and leans into a swing. “I get that man, but it’s really important to me that you answer yes or no.”
Adrenaline pulses in his peripheral vision as he watches the beast he’s fighting squirm its way up the wall adjacent to the one upon which he’s chosen to rest. He waits until it gets close enough to see the strange, iridescent sheen on each asymmetric scale adorning the surface of its skin, and then he leaps up to the next floor in a bid to bait it up to the roof.
Mr. Stark must hear the way he’s breathing around the nosebleed because he says, “Fine, you obsessive little weirdo, you want an answer? I wouldn’t use it. The less punctuation mucking up a sentence, the better. Concision is essential, and another comma’s just gonna drag the thought on longer. Hey--hey, kid. Listen to me: take a raincheck on whatever you’ve gotten yourself into. C’mere for the night so I know you won’t choke in your sleep.”
Peter considers it. He was supposed to be working on this with Matt and Wade anyway. Maybe it’s wise to beat a hasty retreat. The thing doesn’t seem to have tired at all, and they’ve been going at it for an hour now. He needs the lab at the tower to fix some issues with his web-slingers this week regardless. May as well get it done now. “Okay. Be there in twenty,” he pants out before hanging up.
He changes course, eyes set on the tallest building within sight. He’s racing across the rooftop; the horrible, fractured breathing of the mutant can’t be five yards behind him. He raises his arm, aims, fires.
Nothing happens. The button doesn’t even depress. He tries again and then again with the other hand and his stomach drops when his efforts yield no results. The adrenaline creeps back into his head, sharpens the distinctions between his blindspots and his field of certainty. He’s running out of building.
He feels a plunging vertigo. He’s back in his first suit, nearly a year ago, and Matt has just taken a bullet for him after saving his ass. He’s piecing Wade together after an ambush gone south. He’s being stabbed and thrown and shot and crushed and left to freeze. His lower leg aches in time with the pounding of his feet on the rooftop.
The sound of his pursuer creeping closer draws him back to the present. It’s impossibly grating, almost overwhelms his hearing now that he’s off the phone. Like the thing is somehow inhaling into its esophagus and there’s nothing but a void where its stomach should be. Like smooth muscle is keeping the air trapped in that hot emptiness. Like the air is ripping through its insides and there are no lungs for it to use. Or too many pairs of lungs, all working and failing at once.
Or like there are teeth. Everywhere.
Peter doesn’t particularly want to meet his end by jumping off of a high rise, but he figures it’s preferable to whatever the thing which is definitely hunting him now might desire to do if it catches up--once it catches up. The roof ends soon, but it’ll get him before he’s allowed the mercy of jumping.
Peter gets ready to leap anyway. The Sense screams at the base of his neck.
His pursuer is gone with a spray of gunfire which Peter doesn’t hear because of the pounding blood in his ears. He skids to a stop and whips around to face whatever’s left of it, but black blood has already leaked a puddle around the thing’s ruined head on the ground six feet before him. Whoever killed it has to have incredible aim.
He squints, searching for where the attack may have originated. A moving form catches his eye from the edge of a building a little lower and about a block away. Someone’s broad back, illuminated by the moon and the light pollution from below. As the figure turns to climb onto the fire escape, Peter catches a flash of metal on an exposed left hand.
Mr. Barnes.
Peter pulls his foot out of the puddle and retches over the side of the building, which can’t be eight feet away.
He gathers himself and asks Karen to pull up the quickest route to the tower on foot.
He calls Matt on the way, if only to stave off the panic bubbling at the back of his throat. Wade is with him, which is unsurprising since they live together now. It’s a nice bonus regardless. He fills them in on the nature of the thing--the monster, he calls it, even though its disreputes his story and renders his depiction of the fight one-dimensional--and the newfound dangers of the group to which it belonged in life. Matt sits on the information, digesting, but Wade describes to him a similar encounter from an excursion in South America. He hangs up after Wade begins detailing the way its skin peeled off of its body after he boiled it alive.
Passerby are looking at him with growing fear and curiosity, but Peter tries not to pay them any mind. He limps along the sidewalk, cradling his stinging arm which is freely bleeding all over the spider emblem on his chest. His nose is still going inside the mask and all he can hope is that he isn’t leaving too much obvious DNA evidence behind.
When he reaches the tower, Mr. Stark buzzes him into the lab. He’s sat at his primary workbench, going through some kind of holographic blueprint. Mr. Barnes is draped all over the ratty ass couch in the corner scribbling notes into a worn paperback. He shed the assassin gear at some point and now sports a muscle tee, flannel pajama pants, and old-man white-guy sandals. He’s changed his hair since Peter last saw him a few months ago. It’s cropped close on the sides, but obviously he couldn’t quite give up the man bun look because a miniature version of its predecessor perches atop his head. Peter takes note of the fashion choice as he approaches Stark.
He plops down on the stool next to him and yanks off the mask, staring at the blood staining its interior. The sight is grotesque and it reminds him of the oily blood slicking the sole of his boot. He hiccups against a sob in his throat.
Stark looks away from whatever has his attention occupied to give Peter’s injuries a cursory glance. Blood drips from Peter’s nose onto the floor. Mr. Stark watches the journey of one of the drops and looks at the tile where it lands for a couple seconds too long. He jerks back to himself and jumps up to dig around in a chest of drawers next to Mr. Barnes.
Peter’s eyes water and he doesn’t try to stop the tears from falling. They mix with the blood from his nose and taste like sweat. He feels that sensation of being hunted creep back into his head. It’s like the Spidey Sense has gone feral. Off the fucking rails.
Mr. Stark returns with a suture kit and copious bandaging supplies. Mr. Barnes sets his book aside and stretches upside down on the couch like a cat. The sight of his toes flexing in his sandals makes Peter hiccup hysterically again. Stark taps lightly on his injured forearm and he holds it out for inspection.
Mr. Barnes slinks over to the two of them to watch the proceedings. He breaks the silence before Mr. Stark sets about stitching the wound closed, which Peter is grateful for because he hates the sound of thread sliding through flesh. Barnes crosses his arms and asks, “The fuck were you doing, kid?”
Mr. Stark starts on the first suture and Peter distracts himself by tracing what is visible of the boundary between skin and metal on Mr. Barnes’s left side. “I was going to have backup, but I figured I could handle it myself,” he replies. His voice is still thick with tears and he can’t pronounce his “n’s” like he should be able to.
Mr. Stark snorts and says, “Thought you were just going to come straight here.”
“I tried, but the web-slingers jammed.” The words get stuck behind something in his nose.
That earns a wrinkled brow. “Barnes said you were booking it across a roof. Said he had to shoot the thing down while it was lunging at you.”
Mr. Barnes shoves a hunk of metal aside and hops onto the counter. Peter takes a deep, hesitant breath as Mr. Stark ties off another stitch. “I told you over the phone that it was the lizard mafia, but I guess it’s more like a group of victims of some botched experiment who are trying to make a name for themselves in the organized crime scene. The thing I was fighting was one of the stronger ones. I was supposed to be working with Daredevil and Deadpool, but they had to reschedule, or something. I guess I thought I could take it since I took that lizard thing a couple--couple months back.” He has to take a break to catch his breath.
Mr. Barnes frowns. “I couldn’t see anything but the fucker’s silhouette when it was chasing you. How big was it? I swear I thought it--I don’t know, expanded? When it jumped for you.” He gestures with his hands to emphasize the change in size. Peter shivers and Mr. Stark makes a noise of irritation with him.
“Hold still, I’m on the last one. Answers can wait until you’re not bleeding all over my clean floors. Barnes, get something for that nose, will you?”
Peter realizes his nose is still running red. It throbs like it’s broken, and all he can think is that it’s going to match Matt’s.
He grins at that and cries out when it shifts something in his face that reverberates in his sinuses. Stark smacks his hand away from where it had reflexively risen and wraps a bandage too tight around his arm.
Ned gapes when he walks into school the next day. He duly informs him that he looks like pan-seared shit. Peter thanks him and then MJ catches sight of his crooked nose from across the hall. Her eyes light up and Peter definitely should have stayed home, if nothing else then to avoid the bruised ego.
She fucking teleports across the room with them long legs of hers and she and Ned both look at him like hungry sharks because the one thing they truly desire in life is the demise of his self confidence and pride. Before either of them can open their mouths, however, Peter’s hindbrain takes over and he blurts around his nose, “What do y’all think of the Oxford Comma?” The “comma” comes out as “cobba” and everything. Truly, these are the end times.
MJ looks stricken and Ned takes a step back. MJ recovers quickly, as per fucking usual, and retorts, “How about asking what I think of your busted ass face, Parker, Jesus.” Ned’s wide eyes stare between the two of them.
“How about you answer the question, Dr. Opinionated?” Now you’ve got ‘em, Pete. Good fucking comeback, that was.
Ned spectates the ensuing staring contest with a kind of morbid fascination and says, “I hate it when people don’t use the Oxford Comma. You know it’s also called a serial comma? Its entire purpose is to facilitate the communication of a list. Why wouldn’t someone want to facilitate communication?”
MJ waggles her eyebrows at Peter to try to get him to break. He sticks his tongue out in retaliation. She addresses Ned without turning her unblinking eyes away: “I agree. It’s an important clarifying tool. I’m going to punch Parker in the face now.”
She wins the contest by default because Peter flinches away from her mocking fist. She stops a centimeter short of the bridge of his nose and he steps around it.
Ned applauds MJ’s victory and they move in the direction of first period while Peter starts in on his recount of last night’s activities.
Wade laughs at him for a solid five minutes when he arrives at the offices of Nelson, Murdock, and Page that afternoon. He takes one look at the shape of Peter’s swollen face and dissolves into fits of hysterical laughter. This draws Matt’s attention, who emerges from his office to see why his idiot significant other is causing a ruckus while he’s probably working very hard to keep someone from getting evicted. He elbows Wade hard in the side, but this only serves to make him double over and start howling with mirth. This sound draws Foggy Nelson and Ms. Page from their respective spaces and they share an unimpressed look before turning to Murdock expectantly.
And then Matt just. Picks Wade up. Hoists him, actually. Tosses him patiently and easily over his shoulder. Like he’s a fifty pound sack of horse feed and not pushing 150% of Matt’s body weight. And he walks calmly over to the open window of the waiting room and shoves Wade bodily out of the small opening.
There isn’t a fire escape on the other side of that window. Just an alley three stories below. There aren’t even any dumpsters to break his fall. Matt slams the window closed with enough force to shake it in its frame.
Foggy Nelson and Ms. Page nod sharply at Matt and return to what they were doing before the interruption. Peter gawks at their backs. Matt strolls back over to lean against the reception desk and be intimidating about what are apparently several unacceptable injuries for which he expects Peter to make excuses.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to Peter when he finds himself spilling his guts to him about the same event for the second time in a 24 hour period. He describes the terror of being hunted, the sounds and textures and lifetimes that had flashed before him and blurred into oblivion. When he’s finished, he finds that he’s wandered over to the desk against which Matt still leans and is now sitting on it, looking hopelessly down at his crossed legs.
Matt taps at the bridge of his glasses and asks, “How’d you break your nose?”
Peter thinks. He doesn’t remember the event that caused it, just that there was a point during the fight when he’d noticed the smell of blood and found that it was suddenly the only smell available to him. Matt hums and pushes off of the desk to amble over to the window. He shoves it open with the same force he used to close it and yells, “GET UP HERE, SHITHEAD.”
There’s a scuffle and what Peter desperately hopes isn’t the squeal of a rat and Wade’s voice, at a volume comparable to Matt’s, replies, “GIMME A MINUTE.”
Matt shrinks back from the noise and apparently decides not to grace Wade with a reply. Instead he turns and asks Peter if he’d like some coffee.
Peter wants some of Matt’s coffee about as much as Matt wants a giant potted plant stinking up the corner of his office. He promises to make sure that happens if even a drop of that toxic waste comes within five feet of him.
Matt nods sagely in response to this and tilts his head to listen to whatever the fuck Wade is still doing in the alley. His face contorts into a look of disgust and he shakes his head as if to rid himself of some horrible image. He crosses to the kitchenette and starts fucking around in the cabinet and Peter swears he hears the distant shriek of another rat from below.
Peter ends up spending the next couple of hours trying to get Murdock’s braille printer to cooperate with the connection to his computer. Apparently all the thing desires to do at the moment is take a nap because he keeps turning it back on, expecting it to stay that way until he turns it off, and then being disappointed five minutes later as it slips back into that place where electronics go when they aren’t on.
Wade watches this with much sympathy, as apparently the printer’s twin sibling at his and Matt’s place decides to crap out in an identical fashion on a bi-weekly basis.
The whole thing is viscerally, intensely frustrating and by the end of it all Peter wants to do is join the newly discovered colony of rats in the alley. He expresses this desire to Wade, who chuckles without looking up from whatever he’s doing on his laptop. When Peter presses him about it, the only clarification he receives is the drawled word “networking”, which is the singularly most terrifying thing that Wade has ever said.
It’s right around the time the office is packing up for the day that Peter thinks to ask Wade. The question comes to the front of his mind as he’s watching Wade lean into Matt’s office to let him know that he’s ready to go.
“Wade, do you know what the Oxford Comma is?” Peter asks Wade’s ugly fucking polo.
A scarred head pulls itself suspiciously away from Matt’s door frame to squint at him. “Depends on why you ask.”
“Just wanna know what you think about it.”
Wade leans the rest of himself back into the waiting room to say, “I use it for business interactions and written propositions for sex. Don’t bother with texts or personal notes.”
“Ugh, gross, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
Matt’s voice pipes up from inside his office to say, “I’ve been asking that question for years, kid.”
“Most of those propositions were written to you!” Wade argues.
Peter needs to get out of this conversation before he has to cut his ears off. He asks Murdock’s voice what he thinks of the comma.
Before that voice can answer, Foggy Nelson’s joins the conversation. It’s attached to the man himself, who is holding a bulging briefcase and standing by the closed door of Ms. Page’s office. He’s wearing the big tan trenchcoat from the first time Peter met him. That thing still sets him on edge. Apparently it is frequently “borrowed” by both Murdock and Ms. Page, because Peter’s seen all three of them wearing it more than once. Murdock once accessorized it with a fedora and a plaid scarf as if he thought it was socially acceptable to do that kind of thing outside of the time period between 1910 and 1920. He had the audacity to wear it to court so that Ms. Page couldn’t choke him out with the scarf until they got back to the privacy of the office that afternoon.
Foggy tucks his free hand into one of six visible pockets and says, “I’m going to answer this for Matt because I’m the only professional person that this office employs: yes, the serial comma is important. Punctuation in the world of legalese is essential to the interpretation of documents, regulations, testimony, even laws. A missing or misplaced comma could make or break a case, so everything that goes through this firm undergoes strict grammatical scrutiny.”
“Commas also change the way a screen reader might read out a text or an excerpt,” Matt adds. Wade’s face makes a sour expression at the mention of screen readers.
Ms. Page’s door opens and she tumbles out behind a cardboard box which is full to bursting with newspaper clippings, printouts, and transaction receipts. She shoves the box out of the door frame so that she can close the door behind her, but not before Peter sees walls covered in tackboards set up like the ones used by conspiracy theorists in shitty youtube videos. Foggy Nelson resolutely ignores the contents of the box, which portends that something in there has not been obtained legally.
Ms. Page blows a stray hair out of her mouth and asks, “What are you all talking about?”
God, Peter loves Ms. Page. He wants to be Ms. Page when he grows up. She’s such a goddamn force of nature. Her presence freaks him the fuck out and he wonders what she does instead of sleeping. Whether or not she needs coffee to stay awake or if she just happens until she wants to take a break from happening.
Matt’s hand finds the hinges of his door and then it deduces where the handle is and he pulls it closed behind him as he, too, emerges from his den of work-related horrors. He produces his folded cane from wherever he keeps it on his person and takes Wade’s offered elbow. “Semantics, Karen.”
Ms. Page chortles at that as if there’s an inside joke hidden in the phrase, and the five of them head out to antagonize the growing darkness.