Sometimes Peter wondered how much he needed all three jobs he had. He did this for a plethora of reasons; it ate up all his time, he barely slept and sometimes it just...demanded more from him than he could give without finding which straw would break the camel’s back. Maybe that’s why he liked it. He liked not having time to think, barely able to breathe. The adrenaline was what hooked him after a while, not the morality. Especially when it came to his night job. The morals threw him in, the sheer burning, all encompassing need to make right what his predecessors had not. However, that had only been the lure, the bait if you will, the real trap was the thrill, the pleasure, the pain numbing adrenaline that allowed emptiness Peter had never felt before, albeit a temporary retreat. It’d reach out of the shadows, like a monster in the stories Ben used to tell, and pull the greyscale boy closer, wrapping its clawed hands around his fragile throat, doing everything but squeezing.
That he was used to, it was a song he could dance a beat to. Tonight, however, had been something else. One of the worst nights he’d had in a good while. Since...since Black Cat had earned her place in a Chicago overcoat. He missed Felicia, especially in the moments that followed the thought of her. It wasn’t a romantic yearning, he’d determined. Simply loneliness. He’d nearly dragged himself there, before checking himself. He couldn’t go there now, he’d surely die, if the new owner was who he’d decided it would be in his paranoid mind. Loneliness was ironic. That’s another deduction he’d made. He’d had a lot of company tonight, a group of torpedos and hatchetmen if he was being exact. Not preferably company, that the Spider-Man would admit, but company nonetheless. Maybe this was the company that made him loneliest. Peter had always been a solitary boy, and it seemed adulthood...may be considered quite the same. Well. He had his spiders now. He always seemed to have his new family. Goddamnit.
These thoughts drifted through the boy’s mind as he hauled himself through the window, what felt like bile clawing at his raw throat—raw from shouting? From being choked? Pete couldn’t be sure. He didn’t stand up on the other side, instead he fell in an ungracious heap of dark clothes and blood. Squinting. He was squinting for one reason or another. His vision was obscured on his left side causing an imbalance, and Peter couldn’t quite decide if it was a broken goggle or a swollen eye at the root of this new issue. Maybe both in retrospect. His whole mask needed repairs—Peter could tell by the way his face throbbed and burned, the way each pulse of his thrumming heart caused a painless throb over his body. Noir could hear the way blood rushed round his ears like a roaring engine as he lay, waiting for the world to stop spinning and the air to return to his lungs. The spinning didn’t ease, his throat scratched with each laboured breath, and the adrenaline was quickly deserting him. Peter never liked this part. Each breath would slowly begin to hurt due to the broken ribs, the knick in his side making his uniform wet. Each movement of his wrist to stitch himself would burn, due to how he’d pulled his arm strangely swinging at just the wrong angle, probably cracking his wrist when he punched a pill, making a brodie just as he did so. Removing his mask and gloves would sting, because oxygen would finally be able to spit it’s acidic affects on all his cuts. Hell, even breathing would hurt for now, until the dark bruises around his throat healed.
No work tomorrow. That seemed like the most likely situation as Peter hauled himself up, laying flush against the wall, heart fluttering. He’d been working overtime, and he was about to get the green roll from a gumshoe gig, so...one day couldn’t hurt. However money wasn’t his main concern as he coughed, the stabbing pain in his side coaxing the weak cough into an eye watering choke. The apartment was dark, but he knew he was alone—he’d let Calloway out before going off on patrol. The apartment was dark, bare and yet so stuffy. Way too stuffy. That was his verdict as a gloved, wet hand began clawing at the damaged mask, peeling it from his face. The Spider-Man couldn’t resist a hiss (a sound he was considerably better at since the growth of his fangs) as the air hit his face, bitter from the rain. It rained a lot on Earth 90214. It added to Peter’s strange energy—the smell of damp plaster, cigarettes and rain. However, this wet wasn’t rain. It came from the injuries littering his gray face. A similar substance was sure to be on the wall once Peter shed his long coat, which is what he’d began doing, trying to resist showing any sign of discomfort as his battered, bruised body screamed. He’d need to clean that, lest someone ask next time they swung by.
Soon enough, Peter was scarcely clad in his uniform, only wearing the pilots jacket, trousers and boots. The bottom half wasn’t as important, the knee length boots (despite being somewhat irritating to one’s senses at times) could be tolerable. It was the clothes stained with black draped over his form that required the most attention. Although, all Pete really wanted was sleep. Sleep, a hug, painkillers, whiskey. Anything to help. All Peter did, however, was stuff a glove in his mouth to muffle his discomfort. Didn’t he always do that? Hide how he always felt, that was. Maybe that was why he was so damn angry all the time, why he was okay with feeling nothing.
And so Peter Benjamin continued thusly, abandoning clothes in need of repair, to fix his own broken body first. Eventually, the blood had mostly stopped, and the boy was patched like a rag doll. It hurt, it all hurt, but he was a few paces further from death as he lay on the mattress he called a bed, shirtless. With a fuzzy mind, he tried to think about his next move with the city he called his own, but instead nothing came. Only sleep now. He craved sleep like a drug, one he rarely caved to.
In hindsight, one may see that the darkness does choke. But only slightly. A bit at a time. Like the frog in the pot of water and doesn’t realise he’s being boiled alive. The frog died because it never realised what was happening before it was too late. However, the frog wasn’t stubborn, only oblivious. This is in comparison to Peter. Pete is stubborn he doesn’t ask for help. He decided he didn’t deserve it. Peter doesn’t deserve a lot of things in his own mind. Maybe that’s why he’s a chaste masochist.