Peter could not really believe what he was seeing, but the best he could describe it was a mini-Tats.
Tats with about six times as many cowlicks.
Tats immediately post-bed.
“Who are you?” the mongrel child snarled at him. Actually snarled. Like a certain devil Peter was sometimes ashamed to call his friend.
“Spiderman,” he said. It didn’t sound as convincing as it had in his head.
“Yeah, I see that, ya poser,” this delinquent snapped at him. “Piss off; only room for one.”
Well, yeah. Certainly with that attitude.
He didn’t appear to know that he was actively on fire. Peter pinched the flame on the very corner of his shoulder out and the kid had the nerve to slap his hand away and squint even harder.
“What? You think I’m scared of you, huh?” he asked, “Just ‘cause you’ve seen my face? Well, I got news for you pal—”
“The whole city’s on fire,” Peter observed quickly.
“Yeah, and?”
“I am here to help you make the city un-on-fire.”
The kid reeled back and looked quickly between Peter and the orange, and rapidly becoming orange-er cityscape. He squirmed a little in the decision. Then his whole demeanor changed. He hurled big puppy-eyes right into the center of Peter’s very soul.
“It wasn’t supposed to go like this,” he said, devastated.
Peter laughed.
“It never is. Come on, let’s go help the firefighters.”
The next Spidey he ran into was not so little. He was definitely Miles but all grown up. Bigger and way more relaxed. Peter literally ran into him in the street and started apologizing, then the Spidey Sense went off and he stopped halfway through.
The big Miles gaped at him. He was Peter’s height with some serious shoulders and a blue backpack.
“You’re like me,” he said.
Whoops, sorry man. Gotta run.
“Wait. How are you--?”
He had zero experience with big Mileses; especially big Mileses who did not know about the verses. And anyways, he was just passing through this time.
“Wait! Peter! I know your face!”
Nope, nope, no, you do not!
“Holy shit, what the hell is that?”
Quick, quick like a bunny. Into the hole and out of sight.
A few days later, he fell into a verse he totally didn’t mean to and looked right into a face with two enormous shiny yellow eyes.
He only screamed a little bit.
Just a smidge.
A short human with black hair emerged from somewhere behind the horrible yellow-eyed monster to chase him around a lab, telling him to calm the hell down as though a fucking monster was not in their midst. She asked him who the hell he was, but he was busy and so didn’t hear it the first couple of times.
Eventually she managed to corner him and stood, blocking his path, in front of him; she demanded that he explain himself.
He made her promise that the monster behind her would stay exactly where it was before any explaining happened. She told him it was her monster and crossed her heart. He almost trusted her. Then explained that he’d caught wind of a distress signal out this way and did she happen to know anyone named ‘Spiderman?’
The answer was unsatisfactory.
Then the answer was glaring there right in front of him and he was more than ready to nope it on out of there before Peni, the name of the angry short person, grabbed the front of his suit and reminded him that that was her monster over there.
Yeah, no. That was worse.
He’d seen Pacific Rim once and he didn’t want to ride this ride anymore.
He decided he’d earned a break after all this and went home. Miles wasn’t there, but Matt was. He was not, unfortunately, too interested or sympathetic about Peter’s recent trials and miseries. But he did sit and munch on fries with him at McDonalds until he felt a little less like he needed to go find a sink cabinet and curl up in it.
When he did finally manage to track down Miles, he was even less sympathetic.
“I’ve always wanted to be a mecha,” he told Peter, showing him with jerky punches just how prepared he was for this task.
“I would rather be a giant sea spider than a mecha any day of the week,” he said.
Miles popped a finger at him cheerfully.
“Be careful what you wish for,” he said.
Yeah, be careful wHAT YOU FUCKING WISH FOR.
“Babe, what’s wrong?” MJ asked muzzily into the darkness of their bedroom.
Nothing. Everything was absolutely fine. Unspeakably fine.
“Peter, you’re shaking. What’s going on? Another nightmare?”
No, no. See, a nightmare would require, at least at some point, sleep. And Peter wasn’t about to fucking sleep. Not when he knew what was lurking in the ocean. He’d never sleep again, actually. That was the best plan he’d ever thought of ever.
“C’mere. Here, turn over. That’s it. Hey, I got you. I’ll protect you from the big bad wolf tonight.”
Oh, what he’d give for some wolv—No. Abandon that thought ASAP, Parker. That’s what got you in this mess to begin with.
“Baby, relax. You’re okay. You’re safe.”
Maybe, if he pressed in close enough, he could make himself believe it.
A nice, normal day at school. He was having a nice, normal day at school. Two seminars. Couple of lab hours. A resolutely normal day at fucking school.
And no one was going to fuck this up for him. Not even the interdimensional Spidey Sense, no, that asshole could go right to hell.
He was having a nice. Normal. Day at school.
He set aside a tray of samples neatly soaked through with solution. They’d be ready in the morning for testing. He picked up the next tray and picked out a new sterilized pipette.
Someone wearing heavy boots passed by the door.
He ignored this hideous omen and pulled up enough solution for the next batch of samples and started doling it out very carefully. With enough focus to almost drown out the next set of heavy boots.
And their friends. And those friends’ friends.
Someone was talking to the lab manager at the door and Peter upped the speed on his pipetting. He finished the tray in record time, set it next to the other one and tore off his goggles and gloves. The lab manager leaned into the room nervously.
“Hey, uh, Peter?” she asked.
Nope, nope, nope.
Nice.
Normal.
Day at school.
He shucked his coat at the opposite door and stuffed his folder of seminar papers in his mouth while he yanked on his sweater.
“There are some guys from SHIELD looking for you? They say that they’ve got a job for Spiderman?”
“Tell them Spiderman has a court order which involves zero Spiderman-ing,” Peter told her. Then tossed his bag over his shoulder and climbed into one of the far sinks to open the window above it.
He didn’t have to turn around to see the lab manager’s eyebrow.
“This is strange and suspicious behavior,” she noted carefully.
“No, this is self-preservation,” he told her. He climbed out the window and up the side of the building.
“Dude, it’s even weirder when you do it without the mask,” his manager said behind him.
“Peter. There are SHIELD agents at the front door.”
No, there weren’t.
“Babe.”
Seriously there weren’t. Don’t worry babe, it was a power of suggestion kind of thing. He was willing them away with his mind.
“Peter, avoiding them will not make them stop. It will only make them more tenacious.”
But. But. But. Sea spiders.
“Here, I’ll hold your hand while you tell them to fuck off.”
Thank Jesus for Mary Jane.
He was a pushover and an idiot. But mostly a pushover, Gwen informed him as he laid himself out nice and flat and miserable across the edge of the roof next to her.
“You can say ‘no,’ you know that right?”
Yes, he knew that. But he also knew that he would drown himself in guilt if he did.
“Dude, you’ve already died for the cause once. Just tell them no next time.”
Yes, absolutely. Fair and completely understandable. Extremely reasonable as well. Except that he was physically incapable of saying ‘no’ to anyone in his life and always had been.
“You’re a mess.”
“I am a mess.”
“Well, saying it out loud is the first step of the process, I guess. Talk to B. about it. He’s put out a blanket ‘no’ on everything as far as I can tell.”
“He’s just gonna make me say no until I forget once and then he’s gonna hit me for it and start over.”
It was a painful way to learn. B. was always much nicer to Miles when it came to these things.
“It’s ‘cause he loves you. I can’t help you man. Unless you want a ‘just say no to drugs’ video. Pretty sure I can dig one of them up for you.”
Ugh. No, Gwen. That was actually torture.
“See? You’re making progress already.”
Ugh.
“Dude, just say—”
“I can’t say ‘no.’”
Tats chewed on his tongue and then clicked it. He swiveled around, then slumped down in his computer chair so that he was looking at Peter, sitting on his bed, over the flat of his chest.
He gave Peter a single finger gun.
“Therapy,” he said.
Peter snorted.
“I don’t need—”
“Shut the fuck up. You want help? Therapy. Shit works miracles. Don’t talk to me until you agree.”
Uuuuuuugh.
He didn’t need therapy.
“Everyone needs therapy. Just different kinds. We’ve all been fucked by either God or the world. You don’t get over that kind of trauma by throwing web at it.” Tats sniffed and swiveled back towards his desktop. He carried on typing without sitting up at all. “You gotta find the roots, man,” he said sagely.
“Therapy,” B. said without looking up from his blueprints on the living room floor.
“I don’t need—”
“Kid, you are the only one present who’s died and lived to tell the tale. You, more than any other Spidey right now, need therapy. Oodles of therapy. Probably years, if we’re being honest here.”
Peter did not like how B. called him kid. He was not a kid. Miles was a kid. Tats was—okay, Tats was about the same age but that wasn’t the point.
“You wanna know why Tats is so fresh-looking?”
Ugh. Yeah, let him guess.
“Therapy?”
“Ding ding ding! He can be taught.”
God, Spidermen were the worst.
“B. I don’t need therapy, I just need to learn how to say no. If they think I’m not a pushover then they’ll stop asking me. I just need to do it like once.”
B. rounded on him with a malicious gleam in his eye.
“So, I heard B. put you back in training,” Gwen said, looking over him while he stared up at sky.
“I’m avoiding all of you,” he said.
“You’re doing a great job,” Gwen told him. “You should go back home if you want to avoid us.”
Absolutely not.
“Why not?”
Because Miles.
“Miles? What’s Miles gonna do?”
Miles was going to tease him relentlessly about being a trainee and no one would believe him because Miles had them all fooled into thinking he was a sweet, innocent kid with not a malignant bone in his body.
Lies.
Miles had befriended MJ and May and now misbehavior found its way swiftly back to a higher power.
Dangerous.
This severely curtailed the types of teasing Peter had available to him. Also severely curtailed a lot of fun interactions with Matt.
Unfortunate.
You get wasted one time with Matthew and suddenly your wife’s there to pick you up. They weren’t even that wasted. No one had even puked (until they’d gotten home at least).
“Dude.”
“Dude,” he said back. He covered his eyes.
“Mr. Parker,” a guy in a full face shield greeted him when he answered the door.
“Mr. uh. SHIELD man,” Peter greeted back. The guy chuckled.
“We’d like your—”
Now was the moment!
“No.”
Silence.
“I beg your pardon?” the SHIELD agent said. Peter felt just about giddy.
“I said ‘no.’ No, I’m not working for you. No, I’m not working with you. No, I’m not doing anything tonight except watching Netflix with my wife. No, I’m not some convenient tool for you all to call upon when you’ve got no more options. I’m not Spiderman anymore, there’s another Spiderman. If you’ve got a problem, go ask him. Or go find the judge who told me I can’t be Spiderman anymore.”
More silence.
The agent bowed his head.
“Message received, Mr. Parker,” he said.
Ah.
Good.
Wow. It worked.
He closed the door and the boots walked away and he hopped onto the couch and accepted all MJ’s cheers and praise and pets with grace.
“You’re in a better mood these days,” Gwen said, standing over him this time. “You wanna help me piss off Murderdock? I left him alone for three days and he’s starting to test his limits again.”
Absolutely.