under fire

He woke up to someone stabbing him in the ribs. He blinked himself awake and there was Ganke again, holding out his phone. It was buzzing nonstop from a number without a contact name.

Damnit.

Matt. He’d forgotten to call Matt.

He took the phone and told Ganke he wasn’t going to class. Whatever was going on with his face must have been enough to convince Ganke that this was a wise decision and he said he’d tell their first period teacher he was sick.

He left, and sneakily and kindly left an unopened can of coke on Miles’s desk.

Matt didn’t answer his phone when Miles tried to call him back, so he snuck out to grab some breakfast and go check in with him. He had to google Nelson & Murdock to find the office again, but when he got there, no one was in. The door was locked and everything.

Dread sunk deep in his stomach.

Matt had been kind of manic, laughing, when he’d left him, but there had been gunshots. He could have gotten hurt.

Oh god, he could have gotten arrested.

He needed to find him.

It wasn’t hard to. Turned out that people in Hell’s Kitchen were A. gossips and B. very familiar with their local blind guy.

A series of bodega owners and construction workers informed him that they’d seen Matt earlier that day, headed to the park.

“Guy finally broke down and got a guide dog,” one of the bodega owners told Miles fondly. “She’s beautiful. He really should have gotten one sooner; I know he’s got his pride and things, but really, she seems to be helping him so much.”

Tuesday. How could he have forgotten about Tuesday?

Matt wasn’t at the park, but Mr. Nelson was, surprisingly, with what Miles could only assume to be a friend. She was tall and blonde and she was arguing with him about something when Miles came up and tried to think of a non-awkward way of asking Mr. Nelson were his partner in non-crime was.

“Oh, Miles, how are you?” Mr. Nelson asked upon recognizing him. “Your dad doing okay?”

“He’s great and I uh, just wanted to thank you and Mr. Murdock for all the work you did to help him,” he said.

The blonde lady slowly twisted her head to the side.

“Isn’t it a school day?” she asked.

Fuck fuck fuck

“I’ve got a furlough day,” he lied. “Is Mr. Murdock around? I kind of wanted to thank him personally.”

Mr. Nelson’s eyes screwed up into an irritated squint.

“No, actually, he had a doctor’s appointment today. And I think he was going to go get this dog—guy just showed up with a dog last night, Kare, I swear to god. This isn’t even the first time, last time it was a kitten. He’s allergic, Kare—sorry, Miles. He was taking a dog to the vet to check for a chip.”

Dog. Vet. Okay, Miles could work with that.

He thanked Mr. Nelson and jetted off.

He crashed into Matt in the middle of the street and became the worst human being on the face of the planet by accidently squishing one of Tuesday’s toes. He could not apologize enough, even though Tues forgave him after only a few kisses and hugs.

Matt gave him a strange expression and then had Miles stick out his elbow so he could hold onto it and guide them both to a little open space by a street fountain a few blocks over. He gave Miles a twenty and told him to go buy him a coffee and to get himself breakfast at the little store across the way. Miles was taken aback to have been so abruptly trusted with the bill and numbly followed the instructions. He got himself a breakfast sandwich and the lady at the counter, upon learning that it was Matt who the coffee was for, doctored it according to his usual requests.

Matt accepted the coffee and wouldn’t hear anything Miles said until he’d gotten a fourth of the way though it, which Miles realized later was a sneaky trick to make him eat something before they got down to business.

Matt was a food ninja too, so it would seem.

“Is he alright?” Matt finally asked. Tuesday laid good and quiet next to his left foot.

“We don’t know yet,” Miles said. “Tats Spidey got his Doctor Banner and Thor to look at him, and they think he’s got some kind of space sickness. They’re keeping him in a sensory deprivation thing to try to make his cells more stable—that’s what they said at least.”

Matt said nothing. He took a few more sips of coffee.

“Well, at least he’s not screaming,” he said.

“What if he dies again, though,” Miles blurted out. His throat suddenly hurt. Ached like it was half its normal size. He wasn’t hungry anymore. His eyes burned. “All that and he’ll just die again and it’ll be all my fault, like, I should have just listened to him and ignored him and let it happen on its own and—”

“Woah, woah, woah. Hey, kid, take it easy. Here, come here.”

Matt moved to kneel in front of him so he could hug him. The hug only made his throat feel worse, and even worse, it made tears start leaking. Matt smelled like coffee and laundry soap and it was just so normal.

“Miles, c’mon buddy, here. Deep breaths. Here, look at me. Breathe with me.”

He tried to clear out his eyes and sniffed hard. Matt took off his glasses and rubbed a thumb into Miles’s shoulder. When Miles could finally see through the tears, he saw the pink scars around Matt’s eyes. Some smooth, some gnarled. They looked like healed burns under Matt’s milky bluish irises. They were kind eyes still overall, somehow. And Miles actually felt a little better for seeing them. He could understand why Matt hid them from people; besides them being a little jarring, he looked younger and much, much friendlier without his glasses or a mask to cover them up.

He sniffed again and felt guilty for having made Matt pull out the big guns to try to comfort him.

“That’s it, kid, that’s it. It’s going to be okay,” Matt told him. “Trust me on this one. Either option for Peter right now is a better option than sitting around in Doc Ock’s lab; getting him out of there was the most respectful thing you could do for him. If he lives, great. Amazing. Beautiful. The world will be a better place for it. But if he dies, kiddo, that’s not your fault. And it’s not my fault. It’s only Fisk’s fault. And if he dies again then we can make sure he gets reburied somewhere where this can’t happen to him again, okay? There isn’t a bad way for this to go, Miles. There are so many people trying to help him and we’re all doing our best. There is nothing else anyone can ask of us and I promise you that Peter understands and appreciates this, every bit of it.”

His eyes burned again and he swallowed hard. Matt’s eyebrows bent at his lack of response and he sighed and pulled back. He stood back up and sat down next to Miles on the fountain's concrete. He fitted the glasses back on his face.

“Miles, you aren’t going to be the same kind of Spiderman Peter was. Hell, even Peter couldn’t be the kind of Spiderman he thought he needed to be. Give yourself a break. You’re one person. There’s only so much you can physically do.”

He was right, on all counts, but still. That compulsion to be more. To be better. It was still there and it was so heavy; it sat right over Miles’s stomach. He didn’t have anything to say. Saying more would just make him seem ungrateful when Matt was trying so hard to make him feel less like shit.

“Honey, you’re not even fifteen.”

See, when he said it like that, it made Miles want to cry for years.

Matt sighed again. Then bumped his coffee up against Miles’s knuckles. He was confused. He thought he wanted him to hold it and so took it with one hand while mopping his face up with his other.

“Drink some.”

What? Why?

“Just do it.”

He was skeptical. He tried a sip.

It was foul. He gagged.

Matt laughed and the sound made something in Miles’s chest loosen a bit.

“Why do you even drink that stuff?” he asked, warbling a little.

“You’re not off the hook yet, try again,” Matt said.

He pouted. But he tried it again.

Still foul.

“Third time’s a charm.”

“Are you torturing me in broad daylight?” Miles croaked.

“Absolutely. One more time.”

Ugh. Fine.

The last time wasn’t so bad. Matt gave him a stunning grin.

“Better get used to it, kiddo. Coffee’s gonna be your best friend in the next couple years here.”

It was almost as if he was saying something else here. Something Miles couldn’t decipher quite clearly yet, but there was something there and he thought that maybe it was fondness?

“Hey, by the way, how the fuck do I ditch this dog?”

He couldn’t help it, that one made him laugh.

“Tuesday, you’re HOME,” was how Tats Spidey greeted them all that night. Or greeted Tuesday anyways. Tues was stoked to see him and started wagging her whole body and dancing. Tats Spidey threw up his arms and riled her up even more. Miles bit his tongue, but couldn’t quite get rid of the memory of her shaky old legs.

Tats Spidey was in his work clothes this time and he actually looked like a scientist. His lab coat had the Stark Industries emblem stamped on his pocket and the same pocket had three highlighters and, as far as Miles could tell, no pens. None.

He had a bucket in one hand, which he carefully did not swing even a little as he led them through the white maze of Stark Industries to a voice-activated elevator.

Gwen asked him what the bucket was for and he blinked like he’d forgotten he’d been holding it then screeched up at the elevator to let him off at floor 40. Tuesday chased after him down the hallway where they heard him shouting “AH, AH, AH. Huh-uh. Nice try. No one in here has authorization, and so help me god, y’all will not disgrace us in front of visitors again. We already played this game once. Bucket, Lovett.”

“It’s for science!”

“Lies. Bucket.”

“Peter, science!”

“I am science, gimme. Consider it a sacrifice. Thank you. Martinez? Johnston?”

The distinct rattle of heavy objects being dropped in the bucket emitted from the room Tats Spidey was holding up and he re-emerged followed by calls for his impeachment, but these were immediately abandoned when the folks in there caught sight of Tues, which caused a whole new sensation Tats Spidey had to put down.

He rejoined them in the elevator with a happy Tues again like nothing had happened and then he cleared them to go up to Lab 51, only to change his mind at the last second and ask to be taken to Basement Lab 23 instead.

The bucket was full of propane lighters and several flasks with stoppers in their mouths. Peter B. made Gwen stand next to it and plastered himself against the wall for the entire ride up, which did nothing but freak everyone else in the space out even more.

Tats Spidey burst out of the elevator before anyone else, calling for Dr. Banner. Dr. Banner poked his head out from behind a wall and jabbed a finger his way, which made him freeze in place.

“No dogs,” he said. Tats Spidey looked down at Tues.

“But she’s a service dog,” he argued.

“Ser--? No. No dogs.”

Tuesday wagged her plume and Tats Spidey dropped down to break the news to her. Dr. Banner waved the rest of them over around him.

Dr. Banner’s lab was darker, much, much, darker than the rest of the building. He had LED lights flickering all over the walls and also appeared to have multiple different types of liquids chilling out in rows across his lab tables. Tats Spidey grimaced at them and disappeared while Banner introduced the rest of them to The Tank, Peter’s temporary home. The Tank laid horizontally, to Miles’s surprise and Peter lay in it, in warm water, peacefully. Maybe it was Miles’s wishful thinking, but his face seemed to have relaxed a little bit.

Tats Spidey came back into the room with some kind of base-board like devices with a little flat foot fitted to them which he affixed to the sides of the table to make it into a huge tray with walls. It made a huge racket.

“Spill hazard,” he growled at Banner when he stopped in his explanation that Peter’s vitals were looking promising to tell Tats Spidey to stop that.

“I am a professional, Peter,” he sighed.

Tats Spidey picked up and rattled his bucket at him.

“This place is full of professionals,” he snipped. Then turned on his heel to go tape down the mass of cables crawling across Banner’s floor. It dawned on Miles that this was literally his job. Protecting scientists from themselves. That was what he did. That’s why he was the way he was.

“Is he the bad guy here?” he asked Peter B. in a whisper. Peter B. snorted and choked trying to hide it.

Dr. Banner clawed his hands at the guy’s back, then shook his head and returned to Peter in the tank.

“Likes I was saying, your buddy’s—”

“Almost back at 100% hp,” Tats Spidey said over the sound of duct tape between unrolled.

“Well, no. Thank you, Peter, this is not your area of expertise, you’re dismissed. No, he’s not back to 100%, but he’s much more stable now. We monitored him last night and his cells stopped doing the uh, glitching thing around 2am and since then they’ve become more and more—I don’t know how else to explain this—solid? Thor says he smells less like ozone, which is the less scientific way of saying the same thing, I guess. Anyways, we’re thinking that he might be stable enough to try to wake up soon. Didn’t know if you guys wanted that to be here or somewhere else.”

Peter could wake up? They could wake him up?

“Maybe,” Dr. Banner said, “Not quite sure how at the moment. Pete’s got some ideas which we all hate, if you want them.”

Miles looked away from Peter’s pale, sleeping face, dyed a light blue by the water around him, in order to examine Tats Spidey. He’d started dumping the flasks by Dr. Banner’s sink into the chemical waste barrel. He looked back at them quizzically. Dr. Banner cleared his throat.

“Oh, right. I made a playlist for him,” Tats Spidey said. He flicked a glass and squinted at the bubbles in it before declaring it safe to go down the sink.

Ominous.

“And failing that,” he continued, “Wade lent me a gun.”

What.

“Which I am not allowed to shoot; I’m supposed to give it to the party with at least 10% more sense and aim than me. Then they can shoot it. No one could sleep through that, but just on the off chance Zombie Man can, I also went and borrowed my lawyer’s alarm clock—now that thing can wake the dead—he doesn’t know I stole it though, so let’s, uh. Not mention that for now.”

Tats Spidey was literally just wandering around through life, begging for an ass beating. Peter B. cleared his throat and gave Dr. Banner his attention again.

“In your professional opinion, which of those is the best option?” he asked.

Banner sighed.

“Well, in my professional opinion, we should let him wake up on his own. But Pete’s explained to me what’s going on with your whole, uh, situation here. So why don’t we start gently and move up?”

That sounded fair.

“Peter Benjamin, you will play that shit in my presence at your own peril,” Dr. Banner threatened from behind a clipboard as Tats Spidey produced an SI laptop with Spotify on its screen. Miles thought it was weird that Spotify was green. Peter B. told him Spotify was supposed to be green.

Gwen said no, it was cyan and Miles had to chew really, really hard on his tongue because, no, guys; it was purple.

“It’s for science, Doc.”

“If this is some Fall Out Boy nonsense—”

“God, Bruce, way to be outta touch. Nah, man. This is some light listening. Just some little ditties me and MJ put together, that’s all.”

It was not.

The name of the playlist was ‘raise the roof’ and it turned out to be less of an artistic choice and more of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Tony Stark himself came into the lab to scream over the metal that he’d received fourteen noise complaints in the last ten minutes. He turned the music off and menaced Tats Spidey in one of the corners of the lab while they all glitched and verified that they still had ear drums and while Dr. Banner took another reading of Peter’s vitals.

“You scared the dog, Peter,” Stark scolded over in the corner. “Go apologize.” Tats Spidey went, but only apparently for the dog.

Dr. Banner said that there had been a slight jump in Peter’s vitals, which was, unfortunately for them, a good sign. Tats Spidey was onto something.

Miles had never heard a blind person’s alarm clock before and it was the worst thing ever. It shrieked the date and time, over and over and over. Relentless. Like someone pounding a hammer with single-minded devotion right in Miles’s ear. Tats Spidey had evidently anticipated this and disappeared to return with protective headgear for everyone. He had also apparently called Tuesday’s dad to come pick her up.

Mr. Murdock arrived around Minute 30 of the horrible alarm going off and Peter’s heartbeat jumping with it and then nearly strangled Tats Spidey in the hallway outside. Mr. Stark had to come back up from his own lab and get involved to separate them. Afterwards, Mr. Murdock stomped into the room, hip-checked the table-turned-tray, swore, and then whacked the alarm off.

“Larceny is a crime,” he informed Tats Spidey, all up in his space again.

“You’re a crime,” Tats Spidey grumbled back. He cringed a bit under the intense scrutiny.

“No, but I’m about to be.”

“Mr. Murdock, I didn’t realize you were still in the city,” Dr. Banner greeted.

“’Bout to get stationed for life at fucking Riker’s,” Mr. Murdock threatened at Tats Spidey. He covered his head to escape the guy’s unyielding, although unseeing, gaze.

“Well, that’s fine, but can you please remove the dog from my lab?”

Now Dr. Banner had Mr. Murdock’s furious attention.

“She’s a guide dog,” he snarled. Dr. Banner looked up from the monitor tracking Peter’s vitals with surprise on his face. He studied Mr. Murdock for a long moment.

“Mr. Murdock, you wouldn’t happen to know a guy named Dare—”

“I’m leaving, you are all menaces to society; disgraces to law and order, all of you,” Mr. Murdock snapped. He whistled and Tuesday came to his left side immediately. They left without looking back.

Dr. Banner watched him go and then eyed Tats Spidey suspiciously. Tats Spidey ducked away from his gaze and loudly declared that since the music and alarm clock hadn’t worked, they had to move onto the gun.

Dr. Banner wasn’t letting any firearms go off in his lab. No firearms, no explosions, no Hulk. None of it, he said. If they wanted to run tests with explosives, then they’d do that in Tats Spidey’s lab or they’d do it in Stark’s, but they weren’t doing it in his. Peter B. shrugged and said that was cool and leaned over to hoist Peter out of his warm, salt water bath.

Miles and Gwen were tasked with toweling him off a bit while Tats Spidey got permission from Stark to use Lab 16A, which Miles hoped would be something similar to Dr. Banner’s lab. He couldn’t think of anything worse for Peter than waking up in the same sterile environment Doc Ock had subjected him to.

It wasn’t quite Banner’s lab, but it wasn’t white either, so that was something. It seemed like a type of underground greenhouse actually. Tats Spidey told them to touch nothing.

Again. Ominous.

There was a room at the back of Lab 16A which had carpet on all the walls. It had a couch in it and a little kitchenette and appeared to be a breakroom.

“So, I need brains,” Tats Spidey said once Peter had been laid out on the couch. Dr. Banner had had him dressed in a kind of waterproof wetsuit thing while he’d been in the tank, but Tats Spidey wasn’t having him taken down to Lab 16A in that. He’d located some SI clothes from the gift shop and so Peter now looked almost comfy.

“Anyone know how to make a gun shot sound without the gun shot?” Tats Spidey asked.

Gwen had an idea.

Gwen and Tats Spidey were no longer Miles’s friends. He was leaving them. They were horrible people. They threw textbooks on the ground with super-strength, popped balloons, and shattered a mirror with a baseball bat.

Tats Spidey threw together an insulated box and Gwen lit a screaming firework in it and Miles and Peter B. could not get any further into their safe corner.

Peter slept on, bless his soul.

It got to the point that Tats Spidey and Gwen were leaning right up in his face, threatening him with various forms of bodily harm, at which point Peter B. announced that they were probably done for the day. He pulled the other two off Peter’s body and made them both do deep breathing exercises on the other side of the room to regain their composure. Miles squeaked over to Peter’s side and watched him for a moment. At least his eyelashes weren’t so still anymore. He seemed to have a little more color in his face, too.

That was pretty good, Miles decided. He gave the guy’s wrist an encouraging squeeze.

Good job, Peter, he wanted to say. You’re doing great. Take it slow, we’ll take it slow with you.

Then his own wrist cracked.

A lot happened all in succession.

Miles’s wrist broke. Everyone stopped talking. And Peter tried to sink a fist into the side of Miles’s head.

It was not ideal. Thankfully, a room full of Spideys meant that there was someone on hand who could move just as fast as Miles’s new assailant and prevent further damage. Unfortunately, that person was Peter B. and unfortunately, Peter’s hindbrain decided that he was a threat, too.

They took out a wall.

They took out a wall and Peter B. kept shouting behind it, “I don’t want to hurt you, man. I don’t want to hurt you.” Peter must not have been able to process that, or understand it, or appreciate it or what the fuck ever, Miles’s wrist was broken and Tats Spidey was on him, telling him that it would be okay, to just hold it very still, while he bound it with a layer of web he’d sprayed out from his wrist.

Miles knew it would be okay, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t fucking hurt goddamnit.

Gwen had vanished to go join the war through the wall. Miles thought he heard her voice somewhere over the crunching of concrete and impact sounds.

Tats Spidey looked at him in his face and then his own went tight. He pressed his lips together and stood up out of his kneeling. He blasted an ear-piercing whistle that made everyone cringe and groan.

At least people stopped fighting.

“Everyone is going to calm the fuck down, right now,” Tats Spidey ordered at the lower end of his voice range, “There is no goddamn need for this shit and we got a fourteen-year-old kid right now with an injury. Settle. Now. So I can call a medic.”

Miles was genuinely surprised to find himself completely calm with Tats Spidey. When he came back to him, Miles let him continue binding his hand and followed his instructions for breathing through the pain. He was a little preoccupied, and so was taken completely off guard when Tats Spidey found himself caught in the side and hurled clear to the other side of the room. By the time Miles looked up properly, all he could see was Peter’s back; his shoulders rolling in front of him.

“Get the fuck off,” Peter’s once-pleasant baritone snarled.

Well, at least he was up now?

“You back the fuck off,” Tats Spidey spat, pushing himself out of the cracked wall.

“Touch the kid again, and I’ll do something I’ll regret,” Peter threatened.

“You already fucking did, pal,” Tats Spidey hurled back at him. “You did that—you hurt him.”

“Lay off.”

“Man, what’s your fuckin’ problem?” Peter B. demanded, having freed himself from the remains of the wall. Peter moved when Miles tried to lean out to see him, so that he couldn’t.

“Wait, are you? Are you protecting him?” Peter B. asked. Peter said nothing, but his face must have confirmed that.

“Hey, okay, that’s cool,” Peter B.’s voice continued. He was already dropping into de-escalation tones. Miles’s wrist throbbed. He had to clench his teeth to keep from making any noise. “It’s alright, man. Miles is one of ours, we’re just—we’re not trying to hurt him. We’re not trying to keep him from you. Take it easy, this must be really confusing for you. Why don’t we—”

“Where is this?” Peter demanded.

“—settle down and talk this out?”

“I said, where is this?”

“You’re a rude motherfucker, you know that?” Tats Spidey growled.

“You, shush,” Peter B. said, then back in Peter’s direction, he said, “We’re at Stark Industries. This isn’t your universe, or ours. It’s this guy’s. Me, I’m Peter. My name’s Peter Benjamin Parker, and I’m you, but from another dimension. This is Peter, uh—are you Peter Benjamin too or--?”

Tats Spidey sniffed derisively but allowed this.

“He’s a Peter, too. And this is Gwen, and that’s Miles. Your Miles. Our buddy. We’re all Spidermen—people—things. Spiderfolks. And we’ve been trying to find you, man. You’ve been screaming all our heads something crazy. But you’re here now and you’re with us and—”

Peter’s hand fanned out in front of Miles and he felt kind of sick. He wanted to fast forward through this whole standoff please.

“I think I’m gonna puke,” he announced, which got everyone’s attention. Including Peter’s. His wide shoulders went tense and he spun around. Miles didn’t feel the relief he thought he would upon seeing those blue eyes. But he stared into them anyways. “I think I’m going to be sick,” he said again.

Peter’s shoulders twitched and then started to rise and fall, quickly, visibly. His eyes flicked from one part of Miles to the next, from his face to the wrist he was holding, to the red spider painted on his chest. He must have recognized his own tech. Maybe Miles’s face. Whatever it was that set him off, must have been traumatizing as hell because he reeled back with wide eyes and bared teeth.

“Mi—Miles? Miles? What—did I—Oh my god. Oh my god, Miles. You went—you’re. Oh my god, did I hurt you?”

Now there was the Peter Miles knew and loved.

“Yes,” he said, making himself sound as hurt as possible.

“Oh my god, honey, I’m so sorry. Here, let me—can I touch it? Oh my god.”

“Dude, what the fuck?” Tats Spidey hissed at one of the others behind Peter’s panicking back.

Peter didn’t seem to hear him, he dropped to his knees in front of Miles and gingerly took his broken wrist into his hands. Miles gasped a bit when he turned it over and Peter’s face crumpled when he looked back up at him.

“I’m so sorry, kiddo, I’m so sorry. Is there a hospital or a medic or something we can get you seen by?”

“Yeah,” Miles told him, “Tats Spidey was going to call someone just now.”

Peter blinked at him and then turned to stare over his shoulder at the other Spideys, finally, finally actually seeing them. Tats Spidey waved sarcastically.

Peter stood up and pulled Miles in close to him with a hand on his neck. He seemed really tall so close up and you know, vertical again. Was Peter B. this tall? Peter B. had to be this tall.

“You’re not--? You can help?” he asked.

“Yeah, man,” Tats Spidey said. “Provided you ain’t go apeshit and start wrecking shit again.”

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Peter said.

“Yeah, okay. We get that, so can I like, get y’all upstairs into the med bay?” Tats Spidey asked.

Peter grimaced and glanced at Miles. He was so protective. He had no reason to be that protective, Miles had only known him for like, ten minutes tops before this. Still though, Miles gave him a nod and that seemed to be all that he needed. He nodded a little back and then turned back to the others and dipped his head in affirmation.