forget him
He didn’t answer.
Ten hours went by and there was nothing.
Nada.
They reconvened; this time it was light in Peter B’s verse and dark in Miles’s and Gwen’s.
“Maybe he’s sick or hurt or there’s something big happening in his verse,” Gwen thought out loud miserably.
Miles understood. It was hard on the heart to think that another Spidey could be so callous. Peter sighed and pushed himself up from where he’d parked himself the edge of a concrete barrier. He was up high somewhere, Miles could see part of a city scape behind him.
“Forget him,” he said, “We’ll do it ourselves. We’ve got the three of us, Ham, Peni, and Noir. We’ve done something like this before, we can do it again.”
Miles gathered himself from his disappointment. These things do happen, his mom always said. He shook himself and nodded with a set jaw. Plan B. Okay.
“We can do this,” he said. Peter gave him a grin.
“Now that’s the spirit. Alright, so I talked to Banner and he said—”
“No.”
Peter stopped and both he and Miles turned to Gwen who had her brow set and fists clenched.
“This will work,” she said. “I believe in him. He will answer.”
“Gwen, honey. Sometimes shit just doesn’t work out,” Peter B. started.
“I’m not your fucking ‘honey,’” Gwen snarled, “This guy’s been sobbing in my head for hours now, and I know this other guy can help. He’s a Spiderman, he’s got to—”
She stopped. Looked around in surprise.
“Did you feel that?” she asked.
Uh, no?
“I—hold on—Peter? Is that you? Hold on, let me,” she pushed her hands forward and the space around them rippled a little bit.
“Peter?” Gwen asked again, pressing a little more. Her fingers finally sunk into the space, but it didn’t seem to come back like it was supposed to. She gave a good couple of tugs before whipping her head back to him and Peter.
“Something’s wrong. Help me.”
Miles’s fingers buzzed as they sunk into the space, and Gwen was right, it felt unusually thick, as though they were trying to peel back a huge layer of clay. It had never felt so heavy before. Miles closed his eyes and tried to picture that Peter again. Daffodils and optical illusions.
Daffodils and optical illusions.
Daffodils and—
A hand met his and they all three leapt back in shock.
“Wait, no!” A voice barked from somewhere in front of them. A whole forearm came through before the space could close. It was thin and spindly and coated in a thin black material. Gwen collected herself first and threw herself back into opening the window with twice as much vigor. Miles lunged forward after her and Peter took the opposite side to do the same when they heard on the other side of the window,
“Angel, help me.”
“Help you, what?”
“Just help me, damnit!”
Another set of hands, wrapped in black and accompanied by a truckload of swearing suddenly joined the mix. They didn’t—it was hard to describe. They didn’t seem like they made it through the window like the other hands did.
“Wait! Miles, come here,” Peter suddenly demanded as he tried to wrangle the opening of the window over Gwen’s head.
Miles switched sides with Gwen by ducking under her arm in front of her and Peter grabbed his hand and then the one trying to hold the window open from the other side and slapped them together.
The window fell through and Miles fell with it.
It widened into the usual size, and Miles found himself face to face with a black Spidey suit. One just like his.
“Woah,” Miles breathed.
Except he didn’t. No, the other guy, he’d said that. In Miles’s voice.
“It’s another Miles,” Gwen murmured with awe.
Another Miles. He had a double. He had a double like Peter did.
“Hi,” he said, then felt awkward as hell. How were you supposed to greet your clone? Twin? Alternate universe buddy? Was there a handbook? He needed a handbook.
“Hi,” the other Miles said through his mask, then looked down. Miles looked down with him and realized they were still holding hands. They let go at the same time.
“You’re me,” the other Miles said. Apparently he’d gotten the handbook. He sounded awed, but not stupid.
“Yeah, but taller,” another voice said. Miles looked up and was surprised to see another Spiderman standing there, behind the other Miles’s right shoulder. His Spidey Sense hadn’t noticed her for some reason, that was weird; it was going off like crazy now with the other Miles in front of him. That Spiderman was definitely a she, and Miles found himself wondering if maybe she was an alternate Gwen—they hadn’t found an alternate Gwen yet, had they?
Or maybe she was a different Spiderwoman altogether? Either way, she was very petit and her suit was layered at the joints with black elbow and knee pads. Kind of like a roller derby gal. She definitely had that aura; like she was the kind of person who’d bodily throw you out of the rink and then tell you to stop crying about it already.
“No one asked you,” the other Miles spat over his shoulder.
Was that animosity he sensed going on there?
“He’s got better hair, too,” the Spidey noted.
“Literally no one fucking asked you,” the other Miles snapped.
The roller derby Spidey gasped way loud and clapped her gloves onto the sides of her mask.
“I’m telling Wade you said ‘fuck,’” she announced.
“Hi, sorry,” Peter interrupted. “Don’t mean to butt in here, but are you guys—do y’all happen to know a guy named Peter Parker?”
Both the other Miles and the roller derby Spidey went silent and rigid. Their suit eyes got huge.
“Get up,” the roller derby Spidey ordered her buddy, all traces of humor gone from her voice. He did, immediately and without question. He stepped back with her.
“No, no, no,” Peter said. “It’s not like that, he’s—I’m—Wait, here, see for yourselves.” He pulled off his mask and the other two startled back like a pair of offended birds. They huddled in close and started whispering frantically at each other, sending Peter occasional furtive looks.
“Listen, I’m a Peter Parker, too,” Peter tried to tell them over their whispering. “You guys, you’re on his team, right?”
The whispering halted for a second, then went from frantic to furious. Peter glanced at Miles and then Gwen for support. Gwen decided to take one for the team.
“Hey, we’re not like, trying to pick a fight or anything, really. I promise. We just really need to talk to your Spiderman, uh. Your main Spiderman? It’s really important, do you know where he is? Or maybe where we could find him?”
The other two’s suit eyes went even wider and stayed that way when they looked at each other.
“We buried him,” the derby Spidey announced just as the other Miles said, “He died.”
…what.
WHAT.
“He…died?” Gwen asked. Miles could hear his own disbelief in her voice.
“Yeah,” the derby Spidey said nonchalantly. “Sorry, man. Held his funeral last week. It was a whole thing.”
“A huge deal,” the other Miles agreed. “Streamers and everything.”
“Cake,” the derby Spidey added.
“No beer,” the other Miles said, forlornly. “He never liked beer.”
Peter went through every stage of grief and came out on the other side pissed.
“Are you kidding me? This isn’t a game, you two,” he said, “This is—”
“Life or death?” the derby Spidey poked.
“Sickness or health?” the other Miles goaded like an asshole, wow.
“Someone is dying,” Peter B. said, “And he needs our help. Now. So if you don’t want to—”
“Someone is always dying,” the derby Spidey said over him, suddenly serious again. “Get fucked, big guy, we’ve already too many people got our team.”
Wait.
Wait, wait, wait.
This—this Spidey had a team, that was right! He said he had four Spidermen on his team.
“Hey,” he said to the other Miles, “Did—did your Spidey tell you about the Spiderverse?”
The other Miles went rigid. He definitely had.
“No.”
“This has to do with the Spiderverse,” Miles told him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the other Miles stated, staring him down with the whites of his eyes.
“You do—”
“Hey, kid. Lay the fuck off,” the derby Spidey snarled.
Yikes. She was scary.
“The fuck you want with our Spidey?” she demanded.
“I thought he was dead,” Gwen pointed out; she moved in front of Miles the way the derby Spidey had moved in front of her own.
The derby Spidey twisted her face dangerously to Gwen.
“You wanna go, princess?” she growled.
Holy shit. Angry Spidey.
“Woah, alright, break it up,” Peter said putting his own body between both of their and holding a hand in each direction. “This is not kind, necessary, or helpful. We are all on the same team here.”
“Fuck your team,” the derby Spidey spat. “I ain’t know you from Adam, pal. Talkin’ like you fucking know us.”
“Little Spidey,” a new voice barked. “Stand down.”
And thank Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Hello, Spiderman.
The Spiderman with the tats really had a certain kind of presence to him in his verse. His suit was absurdly red. And absurdly blue. As though he’d walked into a fabric store and said, ‘yes this, but at 2000% saturation.’ He held himself with a stiff, flat back and his arms out at his sides with his hands open.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, low and dangerous, and at first Miles was shocked by the personality shift, but then he realized what was going on here.
Tats Spidey thought they were trying to fight his team. His team.
No one messed with his team, apparently, and came out on the other end unscathed.
Woah. That was some dedication right there.
“Easy, man,” Peter said, now directing his own open palms his way. “We’re not here to fight.”
“You fuckin’ sure?” Tats Spidey demanded, “’Cause the way I see it, you’re over here menacing my fuckin’ kids.”
“Hey, easy, easy. We don’t want shit from your kids, we were just asking where you were,” Peter said.
Tats Spidey’s shoulders didn’t unhunch and he didn’t look behind him, when he asked,
“Bitsy, that true?”
The other Miles stayed statue-still.
“No, it’s true,” he sighed, while deflating. As he dropped his shoulders, Tats Spidey blinked, then stood up out of his hunch. He turned back to the other two with his hands suddenly on his hips.
“Y’all are pickin’ fights again?” he barked. “Come on, we talked about this.”
“They started it,” Little Spidey? Countered immediately.
“Yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it.”
“WOW.”
“Girl, have you met you? You’d fight God if you could.”
“Yeah, and? That bitch and me got problems.”
“Angel, no.”
“Angel, yes.”
What was happening? What was even happening? Miles looked to Gwen and Peter and found them as gob-smacked as himself.
Tats Spidey had stomped over to Little Spidey and given her a firm shove on the shoulder. He seemed to have a lot to say about her temper and she seemed to take strong issue with his assumption that God was not inherently a bitch.
The other Miles seemed to droop further and further into the ground and Miles realized at the same time that Peter realized, based on his face, that he was the most sensible and mature member of the party before them.
Like.
What?
“Hey, can we not?” Bitsy Miles called over at the other two.
They both jolted his way in sudden silence and he kind of flinched and put up a defensive shoulder.
“I’m just saying; these guys were all panic-y and stuff a minute ago, so like, maybe we should hear them out before we get to the curb-stomping again?”
Oh god, Bitsy Miles was the superior Miles. Miles would never live up to that standard.
“Curb-stomping?” Peter repeated in horror.
“That was one time, Bitsy,” Tats Spidey defended.
“Yeah, a whole one time you nearly got your ass tanked.”
Tats Spidey threw up his arms.
“You’re all insubordinate,” he declared. “All of youse. I’m leaving. Figure it out yourselves. I got better things to do than stand around being insulted all night.”
“It’s okay, Spidey, Louis still loves you,” Little Spidey reassured him.
“I’m moving to Alaska.”
“As if you’d last two minutes in Alaska.”
If he was any faster, Tats Spidey would have snapped his own neck.
“You wanna fucking bet?”
“Guys,” and even newer voice said, “I thought we were meeting in Midtown. This is not Midtown.”
This Spidey was so tall, oh my god. How?
“Louis,” Tats Spidey tattled, pointing at finger at Little Spidey, “These two are antagonizing me.”
Louis’s suit was a toned down version of Tat’s Spidey’s; he didn’t have elbow or knee pads. His voice was soft and his accent reminded Miles of his cousins’ up in the Bronx.
“Hey, you two, be nice,” Louis chided. Bitsy Miles relaxed even more and came forward to duck under Louis’s arm while Little Spidey mugged up at Tats Spidey hard and he mugged smugly back down at her. Louis turned to meet Peter’s shell-shocked face and his suit-eyes widened a bit in surprise before settling back down.
“Oh wow, Spidey wasn’t kidding,” he said good-naturedly. “There really are a lot of you. Some of them even tall.”
“LOUIS, HOW COULD YOU?”
Tats Spidey was devastated and just like, beyond dramatic. Given the giggling of the other Miles and Little Spidey, it was now exceedingly clear that he was the main object of bullying on this team. They were a lot. They were hilarious. Now that they weren’t trying to kill them, Miles decided that he liked them all in their own ways. Gwen seemed to, too, as she was trying to hide her own giggling.
Peter wasn’t so sure.
“This is your team?” he verified slowly. Tats Spidey paused in his flailing to address him.
“Yes,” he said. Then thought twice of it. “Well, actually no. This is part of the team. This is the Spidey part of the team.”
“Right. Because there’s more.”
“Yeah, there’s Wade,” Little Spidey added. Tats Spidey shoved her without looking.
“We got three others,” he said.
“Four if you include Spidey Monkey,” Bitsy Miles said thoughtfully before throwing himself into Louis’s other side so as not to catch hands from Little Spidey.
“We’re not speaking of it,” she snarled menacing him through Louis anyways.
“Spidey Monkey,” Peter repeated.
“We’re not speaking of it,” Tats Spidey solemnly agreed.
“Right. So instead you’ve got?”
“Oh. Me, Louis, Little Spidey, and Bitsy,” Tats Spidey introduced, pointing as he went.
Miles kind of wanted to know why Louis didn’t have a codename. Or maybe ‘Louis’ was his code name? He looked up at the guy and he looked back and gave a kind wave.
Louis was cool. Louis could stay.
“Right, so. We’re me, Miles, and Gwen,” Peter said. “And we seriously need your help if you can spare it.”
Tats Spidey cocked his head and put his hands back onto his hips.
“I mean, I probably can’t. But shoot, can’t be as bad as moving to Alaska, whatever it is.”
Tats Spidey and his whole team had fallen silent while Peter tried to explain. All of their masks kind of twitched a little around the eyes every so often and Miles and Gwen couldn’t decide if that was a positive indicator or a negative one. At one point, all of the auxiliary Spideys placed their hands on Tats Spidey while he made a super sad noise, like his heart was breaking.
“So, we were hoping that—”
“Guys we have to help them,” Tats Spidey burst out, twisting out of his whole team’s grip and flailing at them. “This Spidey could be dying? What if he’s dying?”
The other Spideys were not impressed, which Miles didn’t quite know how to interpret. Most of the Spiderpeople he’d met so far were huge softies under those dark, edgy exteriors. When they even had those.
“Peter, Wade said you’re not allowed to do anything stupid for forty-eight hours,” Louis said.
“Forty-eight, schmorty-eight, I’m chill. I’m fine. Look at me, I’ve never been better,” Tats Spidey declared. Which was horrifying.
What on earth had he been doing?
“Dude, you got hit by a truck,” Little Spidey pointed out.
“Yeah, like, days ago. I’m cool. We’re good.”
Good god. Miles took it back. He looked up at Peter who’s eyebrow appeared to have gotten stuck in the middle of his forehead.
“Wade said,” Little Spidey maintained.
“Wade’s fucking old, he don’t know shit.”
Uh-huh. Keep talking, sir.
Bitsy Miles perked up and saw Miles, Gwen, and Peter staring anxiously behind their group. He looked behind him. His whole body flinched like he’d been electrocuted and the huge man behind him slapped a hand over his mouth before he could say anything.
“Wade knows more than you,” Little Spidey argued, unaware of what was happening next to her and jabbing a finger up at her mentor.
“Yeah, no you’re right. He knows a whole lot of nothin’.”
“That’s still more than you.”
“Wow.”
“Pete.”
Tats Spidey went dead still. Slowly, slowly he lifted his head to meet the white, empty-eyed gaze of the man who Miles knew in his verse as Deadpool. The guy he avoided like the plague.
Some things you didn’t have to be taught.
This Deadpool was possibly even bigger than the one who occasionally made the news in Miles’s verse. He didn’t seem as violent or unhinged though. He wasn’t screaming or anything, more like just standing, gently petting Bitsy Miles’s head while he tried to escape. Despite this, Miles glanced over and saw that Peter appeared to be experiencing full-body shivers.
His Spidey Sense was not having this Deadpool.
“Oh hey,” Tats Spidey said. “Fancy meeting you here, Wade.”
Wade—was that Deadpool’s name? Miles couldn’t decide if it suited him or not—released Bitsy Miles and crossed his giant arms with a hum. Tats Spidey became visibly nervous.
“Talkin’ shit, Pete?” Wade asked good naturedly.
“No,” Tats Spidey lied.
“Ah, ‘course not,” Wade hummed. “Hey, Pete. I thought I tied you to your fuckin’ bed; was that not a thing I did two hours ago?”
Silence.
“I got thing,” Tats Spidey said, thumbing over his shoulder.
“Oh,” Deadpool said kindly.
“Yeah, it’s kind of a deal, you know? Lots of uh, things. Important ones. To do. Right now. Anyways, peace, y’all. Good work tonight, think Imma hit the hay early tonight.” He didn’t so much edge away as make a break for it, only to be captured immediately not two seconds into the attempt.
“WADE, PEOPLE ARE DYING,” Tats Spidey shrieked against Wade’s back, shoving at his head as the guy started steadfastly off in the direction of the park exit. The remaining three Spideys on the team watched this with an air of bemusement.
“Yeah, babycakes, that would be you.”
“Other Spideys! Remember? The fever dream—I told you about the fever dream.”
“The one with the lady octopus person, yes I remember her.”
“There were so many Spideys!”
“Don’t worry, boo. We’re gonna get you your meds soon.”
“Double D would let me.”
Deadpool stopped in his tracks and then held Tats Spidey in front of his face like naughty puppy.
“Would he?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Shall we ask him, then?”
“No.”
“Hmm. Funny, that’s exactly what I thought you’d say.”
Something happened over there which Miles couldn’t track, which made Deadpool swear and resulted in Tats Spidey scampering back over to grab at Peter’s shoulders and shake them.
“How can we help?” he asked.
Tats Spidey sat on the merry-go-round in deep thought while the rest of them sat on its edges or, in Wade’s case, crooned at the rogue ducks chilling in the park fountain. He’d named one Sylvester and seemed to be trying to convince it to pick a fight with the big white goose paddling serenely on the other side of the little gardenscape.
Miles wasn’t positive that ducks understood human speech but couldn’t help but be transfixed by Wade’s instigating anyway.
Peter, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to decide what required his adult supervision more, the impending coup or Tats Spidey’s unnerving silence. He made the executive decision, after a few minutes, to hit two birds with one stone and lobbed a handful of web at the duck which scared it off back towards its flock and brought Tats Spidey back to earth.
“I got an idea,” he announced.
The rest of his team went from calm to hella suspicious in a millisecond.
“Does it involve violence?” Bitsy Miles asked.
Tats Spidey scoffed.
“No.”
“Any type of vehicle?” Louis chimed in.
“What? No.”
“Are we gonna fight God?” Little Spidey asked.
Tats Spideys suit eyes locked on her.
“Say that again,” he said. Little Spidey got a little nervous.
“We’re gonna fight God?” she tried again.
Tats Spidey went blank again for a few seconds, then threw himself off the merry-go-round and tackled Wade so that he nearly became one with the man-made pond.
“Phone, phone, phone,” he chanted.
“Buzz off, you’ve got your own,” Wade scolded.
“Phone, phone, phone—I got an idea, give it here!”
“Idea first,” Wade said, producing said phone and holding it high above Spidey’s head. Tats Spidey stood on his toes to try to reach it. Then jerked away, scowling.
“Bitsy,” he barked. Bitsy Miles stiffened to attention. “Can you hear the Spidey in your head?”
“Which one?” Bitsy Miles asked. “Angel’s voice calling me a dumbass is kind of part of my subconscious now.”
“The scream-y one.”
“Yeah, like I said, Angel’s v—”
He got shoved off the swing but took it with grace.
“The ‘help’ guy?” he clarified.
“That’s the one,” Tats Spidey said. He rounded on Miles next. “Itsy, can you hear the voice?”
It..sy?
“Yes, you. Can you hear it or no?”
Why ‘Itsy?’
“Because Bitsy’s that one and y’all are twins. You. Voice. Hear?”
“Yeah, of course,” he said, still feeling kind of slapped stupid by this new nickname.
Tats Spidey rounded on Gwen and Peter and then interrogated Louis and Little Spidey who revealed that no, actually, they couldn’t hear anything. Which took Miles, Gwen, and Peter aback.
“I thought all Spideys would be able to hear him,” Gwen said. “Everyone was calling. Are you guys sure? It felt a little like dream at first. Like, everything was black and then he was shouting right in your ear.”
Little Spidey and Louis exchanged looks and then referred back to Tats Spidey.
“Maybe you have to be spider food to hear it,” Little Spidey said. Louis hummed in agreement and Gwen froze in shock.
“You guys aren’t enhanced?” she asked. Both of them shook their heads.
“We’re just badass,” Little Spidey said.
And holy shit.
No way.
That was.
Miles couldn’t believe that. That was crazy talk. Those two—they were just normal humans. But they were Spidermen—but they were normal humans?? How did that even work? They had to be like, athletes or martial artists or something, they couldn’t just be normal people. They were out here with Tats Spidey which meant they were taking on bank robbers and muggers and people with knives and guns and chemical weapons and shit.
“Alright so, everyone gather round,” Tats Spidey said. No, Miles had whiplash. He couldn’t deal with that right now. Those were normal people who were about to—that’s must have been why Little Spidey couldn’t help Bitsy Miles with the window back there. She wasn’t a Spiderman like Bitsy Miles was, so she couldn’t open a window between verses.
“So,” Tats Spidey said with his hands out in front of him, “I think we’re experiencing a type of clairvoyance.”
Wait, nope. He had Miles’s attention, now.
There was a long pause, then all the Team Red Spideys recoiled in disgust.
“Not this shit again, huh-uh. No more magic,” Little Spidey declared over top her compatriots’ similar complaints.
What the fuck had happened to all these people?
“Everyone pipe down,” Tats Spidey barked over them.
“I thought you were a scientist,” Gwen said uneasily.
“I am,” Tats Spidey said. “And the one does not necessarily disqualify the other, yadda, yadda, yadda, insert religion versus science versus spirituality debate here—but! More importantly, we—all us spider bites—we can hear this guy. And none of y’all normals and Wades can, and this is happening across universes, which shouldn’t be physically possible, if we’re being honest here. So it’s either interdimensional communication using a device of some type, which we don’t have time to study or dig up, or we’re all clairvoyant morons, which at this point would not surprise anyone, anywhere. And if we’ve got this gift, so to speak, or this connection, if that word helps you sleep better at night, with each other on all these different planes, why can’t we just ask this dying Spidey where he is and what he needs?”
Peter huffed.
“We’ve all been doing that, kid. But he doesn’t answer us.”
Tats Spidey rounded on him and whipped a finger right into his face as though it was the point of a knife.
“Exactly,” he said. “That’s exactly it. We’ve been talking to him, but that’s not how clairvoyance works. You need a medium.”
Silence.
Miles decided he was worried about this man. Bitsy Miles just sighed and held his head in his hands as though he was embarrassed.
“A medium,” Peter repeated.
“Yes, yes, that’s what I said.”
They let this sink in.
“Okay. Sure, why not?” Peter said diplomatically. “So we are all mediums now? Is that what you’re—”
“NO. No. Listen to me,” Tats Spidey said. He didn’t sound angry or frustrated, or anything like that, which Miles thought was probably a good thing. That didn’t mean he was making any sense, which in itself really suited a full grown man once again using a merry-go-round as his pulpit, but sure. The enthusiasm was a little heartening.
“A medium,” Tats Spidey emphasized, “We need a medium. Something which we in this space and people in another place can mutually use to communicate. A phone or like—a Ouji board, example. We talk to spirits and shit all the time, us people do, but they don’t talk back because they can’t. They have to use a kind of object or other kinds of language—feelings: cold, hot, sad, happy—to get through to us. We don’t have a Oija board or anything between us Spideys, though, so we’ve gotta work out how to use this connection thing as a medium. Which is why—”
He turned to Wade with his hand held out insistently.
“Phone.”
“So help me fucking God, I will maim you and every one of your brethren, Wade Wilson,” was how the Matt Murdock in this verse answered his phone.
Okay, so there were some trade-offs between these universes, Miles understood that. You can’t have all the best versions of people all in one place, that would be boring. Gwen vibrated next to him and he remembered abruptly that her Matt Murdock was a huge dick. He squeezed her shoulder and she shivered.
“Matt, how do you talk to God?” Tats Spidey asked, like that was a normal question people asked other people.
There was a long pause on the other end as Mr. Murdock apparently processed the fact that this was not Deadpool calling him.
“You go to fucking church, Peter; where’s Wade? Did you throw him off a bridge again? We’ve talked about this, kid, I know he’s annoying, but drowning’s the worst way to go.”
Peter B. had a fist pinned over his mouth and looked nothing less than deeply concerned about this Mr. Murdock. Miles thought that that worry was maybe a little bit misplaced because one of those questions had ended with the word ‘again,’ and its subject had not been Mr. Murdock.
“He’s here. He’s alive. He’s busy with avian war-mongering. And I get that, the whole church thing. I guess the better question is: how do you know God’s talking to you?” he asked.
It was not the question Miles expected him to ask; judging by the others’ faces, it wasn’t the question they’d expected him to ask either.
The Mr. Murdock on the other side of the line seemed stumped for a minute.
“What like, in general, or when I’m being a fuckhead?” He asked. Peter B. recoiled at the word. Or maybe just the voice saying it. His Mr. Murdock must not have sworn much.
“Is there a difference?” Tats Spidey asked.
“Yeah, kid. One of them’s called karma.”
Tats Spidey laughed.
“Okay, the other one,” he said.
“Who the ever-loving fuck are you talking to at this hour?” Mr. Nelson’s voice interrupted from a distance.
“Pete,” Mr. Murdock said back to him, “Go back to sleep, no one’s dead.”
“Peter, are you dying?” Mr. Nelson asked, louder now, like he’d confiscated the phone.
“Can confirm, not dying,” Tats Spidey said, “In the middle of a highly pertinent, time sensitive theological discussion with your husband, however.”
There was a pause on the other line, followed by sound of disgust, an ‘oof,’ and a ‘why are you mad? I didn’t even do anything.’ This was all followed by a loud rustle and Mr. Murdock returned to the phone.
“Time sensitive?” he asked.
“Yes. God. Talking. Explain please,” Tats Spidey said.
“Time sensitive, though?”
“Matt, focus.”
“Matthew, go proselytize in the living room,” Mr. Nelson growled.
“Alright, alright, I’m going.” Rustling and the sound of a door shutting. “Seriously, what’s going on, Pete? You need help?”
“Many things, mostly a puzzle which I am on the cusp of solving. And yes, you can help by answering the question. How does God talk back to you?”
Mr. Murdock was quiet for another long moment, thinking about it.
“I don’t know if he does?” he said, “I mean, that’s kind of the point of faith, Pete. You believe that He’s listening, so—”
“When was the last time you felt like you were talking right to God?” Tats Spidey interrupted, impatient. “Like He was absolutely hearing you?”
Mr. Murdock, surprisingly, didn’t take offense at the interruption, he just went quiet again.
“To be perfectly honest, kid,” he finally said, “The last time I really felt heard was when everything was like, coming down around me. Rock bottom. So what, two years ago? Three? When Fogs got sick and all that other shit started piling on. Lost my mind out at the docks once, bleeding out and screaming at the sky. I’m surprised no one sanctioned me. I felt pretty damn close to God then, pretty sure of His complete rejection of me, anyways. Said some pretty horrible things. It took me weeks to work off those Hail Marys.”
“Everything was coming down around you,” Tats Spidey repeated, tapping his middle finger on the space right under his lip. Wade returned to their group with a duck tucked placidly under his arm. He let Little Spidey pet it.
“Peter, are you thinking?” Mr. Murdock suddenly said firmly. “Why are you thinking? I don’t like that. Whatever it is you are thinking of doing, don’t do it.”
“Thanks Double D, you’ve been super helpful,” Tats Spidey said.
“Peter, No. No, wait. DoN’T HANG—”
He hung up.
“I’ve got it,” he said with a grin.