six and stones
Six didn’t seem like a very large number to Miles, but apparently six was a very important number among science-y people like Doc Ock and Peter and Tats Spidey.
“Once is an accident, twice is a proofreading error, three times is a pattern, but six is fucking malpractice,” Tats Spidey told him and Bitsy sagely while the many lawyers in the room put their heads together to figure out how to write threatening letters to journal editors without including any threatening content. “Six is willful reproduction of results, regardless of their validity and she’s just assumed that these figures are correct and cited herself in every paper. This is academic snobbery at its finest. The least she could do was stick someone else’s study in there next to hers.”
Right, but was forgetting or choosing not to cite one person really enough to get someone in hot water in the field?
Tats Spidey didn’t have a good answer for him, but Peter did. He stopped chewing on the back of a pen and pointed out that maybe it wasn’t a big deal if Ock had published before the other guys in the field, and maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal if the only other person working in the same corner of the field, on the same type of research didn’t have a whole lab under his supervision at Oscorp. But given that she had evidently taken neither of those factors into account, it could be seen as fairly egregious.
“You gotta at least pay lip service,” he said. “That’s just politics.”
“I have a novel idea,” the angry Murdock—Murderdock as Gwen called him or ‘Mads Murdock’ as Peter B. hilariously dubbed him—snapped at his doubles over around the laptop.
“I hate it,” Matt said automatically.
“Go on,” Mr. Murdock said over him.
“Would it not make more sense if this letter went to, I dunno, the offended party?” Murderdock asked. “Would that not put an important, useful, and potentially life-saving degree of separation between us unfortunate souls submitting this letter and the homicidal party in question? Why are we putting our necks on the chopping block here? Why not just feed this shit to Whatshisname Oscorp and let him rain down terror?”
“The result will be the same,” Matt said, wrinkling his nose at Murderdock.
“I am aware of that, peaches, but think of the impact.”
“Oh, do tell, honey.”
Murderdock had taken it upon himself in the last few hours to make a resolute enemy out of Matt. Not Mr. Murdock. Not Wade, or Gwen, or Mr. Nelson, or even any of the Peters.
Matt. And Matt only.
Anytime Matt had thought he’d found something in the paperwork, Murderdock jabbed at him, calling him dumb and somehow spinning a line of reasoning which made his hypothesis seem absolutely outlandish. Even with math. Matt had added up some numbers which didn’t work out, but Murderdock’s derisive huffing had incited him to do it three times over before he decided that no, he was in the right here.
And even then, when he was through and proven right, Murderdock just smirked at him. His teeth were way too white. Like, bleached white.
Miles didn’t like them and Matt couldn’t even see them but knew to dislike them. He edged a little closer to Mr. Murdock who told Murderdock, without lifting his head, that if he wanted to keep all them pearly whites, he better start working and praying.
Murderdock asked him what would happen if he didn’t.
Mr. Murdock asked him to try it and find out.
Gwen said that this was kind of the guy’s MO. He pulled shit, plants, and people, up by the roots, then rattled them until they almost gave way. Not until they did give way, no, that was too easy for him. He wanted to draw the torture out. He liked to take everyone to the very edge and then watch them scramble.
Mr. Murdock seemed immune to this behavior, as did Wade. Little Spidey told them in a whisper that that was because Mr. Murdock was secretly a sexual sadist. Mr. Nelson overheard this and just about died cackling. Mr. Murdock threatened to hang him out the window, too, but the threat was kind of lost in Mr. Nelson cooing at him about what a bad boy he was, with all his puppies and failed flirting with their third firm partner.
“It is not failure until it’s over,” Mr. Murdock finally snipped at him, “And it isn’t over.”
Karen snorted.
“Matt,” she said sympathetically. She didn’t follow it up with anything.
“It’s not.”
“Pal, if she’s in love with anyone, it’s definitely me,” Mr. Nelson told him with a grin. “She learned how to knit for me, Murdock. What’ve you got to top that?”
A pause.
“Hold on, I got a list,” he said, digging out his phone.
Mr. Murdock’s list of proof that his and Mr. Nelson’s third firm partner was in love with him went like:
- She loves my dogs
- She changed her hand lotion for me
- Everyone loves my ass
- I made her tea once and forgot the teabag and she lied and said it was great
- She throws shit at my head
- She calls me an idiot at least twice a day
- She hasn’t tried to kill me even once
“Those, Franklin Phillip, are the same symptoms my fucking husband displays in my extremely attractive and charming presence. Therefore, she is in madly love with me and step two is simply getting her to admit it on record. The defense rests. But also, Shithead B here is right; we should blow this shit out of the water. Maximum impact. Get her name in public view. Send a letter to the editors, then send a letter to Whatshisname Oscorp and get him raging on social media. Little Red, apologies, but we’re using your good name for both of these. Who wants to write which?”
Matt was scandalized.
“Why am I ‘Little Red’?” he demanded.
Scandalized for all the wrong reasons.
Miles had never seen lawyers draft anything before, but he had worked on many group presentations and was validated to see that it went down basically the same way, even at the professional level.
“We are not hinting at bodily harm,” Mr. Nelson groused at Murderdock for the third time.
Murderdock had decided that he wanted to write the editor of the journal. He was overwhelmingly, emphatically not allowed to write to anyone. Even if he did have some slightly terrifying tips and tricks about coded language.
Matt reminded him that this shit was going to be in his name and he was not getting arrested because of Murderdock’s lack of humanity. Murderdock told him that if he had a brain in his skull, he already knew plenty of ways to break out of jail.
He didn’t get that this wasn’t the point. Like, truly didn’t get it. Even after both Peter and Gwen took the time to try to break it down for him. The lights were on, but no one was home in that particular part of his brain.
Wade told him that the fastest way out of this argument was to just fake empathy and move on.
Peter B. suddenly wouldn’t let Miles or Gwen within three feet of Wade.
The letter, once drafted, didn’t sound to Miles to be very threatening.
To whom it may concern, the first one read.
It has been brought to my attention by multiple parties that there is a significant set of errors in one of the articles you have published in Volume 543, No. 7 of your journal. According to these parties, such errors have shown up repeatedly in this author’s work and are chiefly located in Table 9 of her article in the given volume. Please see the attached record for specification. In addition to these errors, it has also been brought to my attention that the author in question has failed to provide adequate citations for other relevant research, specifically that completed by Dr. Herman Andrews, Director Oscorp’s Institute of Infectious Disease, which corresponds to her own.
As an attorney, I am not in a place to critique these articles for their content, however the reaction that I have perceived from those persons who have contacted me regarding this matter leads me to be concerned that this work is impacting the credibility of your journal. Furthermore, it would appear to me that this type of error violates the terms and conditions of your publication agreement and so action on the part of the editing board is meant to follow.
Certainly, it is up to the board of editors to decide what action is taken in regards to this issue and the parties who I represent are not yet considering any type of suit against the author or the journal over intellectual property. They have instead reached out to me in order to facilitate a conversation. And as such, I hope that this letter serves to do that.
Please do let me know if you have any questions or require any greater information which I may be able to provide you.
-Matthew Murdock
“What’s threatening about this?” Miles asked Gwen when the old people broke off to go edit the hell out of the other letter.
“No, I got this,” Bitsy ducked under his Spidey’s arm to come join them when he turned around to answer. Tats Spidey rolled his eyes and let him go before moving back to the others.
“Louis is teaching me how adults talk in ‘professional settings,’” Bitsy told them, “‘Facilitate a conversation’ means ‘deal with your shit internally or you’re gonna face a law suit.’”
How. How did Louis know that?
“He’s an accountant.”
A what now?
“Miles, we’ve talked about this; I’m not an accountant,” Louis said, coming over to remove his little buddy from the situation. “I’m a project manager, that’s all I do.”
“He’s an accountant.”
“I’m not. I work in Public Admin.”
“He helps build affordable housing.”
“I—” Louis stopped. And then sighed. “I mean, yes. Mostly. We try to help build affordable housing. But that’s not the same thing as being an accountant. Money is not my strong suit.”
Bitsy looked up at him scathingly. Louis faltered a little bit.
“Project managing requires some knowledge of finances, but that’s not the same thing as—”
“Anyways, ‘let me know if you have any further questions or concerns,’ means ‘try me, bitch,’” Bitsy told them cheerfully. Murderdock laughed over in the other group. That was as good as proof here.
The other letter was drafted with far less formality because all it really needed to say was ‘Dude, someone in your field is publishing weird data and failing to cite you. What’s up with that, huh?’ which was allegedly both easier and harder to say in a professional way.
The letters were finalized (with no thanks to Murderdock who wanted to end all of them now with ‘try me, bitch.’ Bitsy had created a monster. Or rather, awakened a monster.) and submitted and then, somehow, that was it.
They just had to wait. It was all very anti-climactic.
How long did they have to wait?
No one could say. Except, of course Murderdock, who had decided without anyone else’s opinion that lack of response within three days was somehow permission to either bring the suit or start waging holy terror on all parties involved. Miles wasn’t sure he was so much still angry at Doc Ock for trying to break him in half so much as he was just looking to cause some chaos.
Gwen said it was the latter. She swore that he’d just gotten bored with the whole thing by then. She was trying to figure out a way to get him home which did not involve her stabbing him and running. This was a problem because he remained decidedly and doggedly latched onto Matt as his new object of entertainment.
Miles did not want a Murderdock in his verse. Peter did not want a Murderdock in their verse. Matt sure as hell wanted to get as far away from this madman and his many, many teeth as soon as possible.
Mr. Murdock had the perfect solution.
Her name was Hazel. Karen brought her by when she came over to bring Mr. Murdock home.
Murderdock hated Hazel.
“But she loves you,” Mr. Murdock cooed at him upon releasing his wayward daughter into the world by unclicking her leash.
As soon as it came off, Hazel decided that anyone standing within two feet of her owner was her best friend, despite having tried to attack them all the day before. Murderdock hissed. Hazel didn’t seem to hear him. She came up to Gwen to do a happy puppy dance and get pets and, in doing so, got a good smell of Murderdock. She went dead still. He went dead still, too.
Hazel’s plume started wagging.
“I will kill this dog,” Murderdock declared.
“With what?” Mr. Murdock asked. Murderdock sneered at him and went for his side, where he’d kept an honest to god sword for most of the time he’d been there.
But it was gone.
The look on his face when he realized this was priceless.
Wade made a loud pondering noise behind Mr. Murdock.
“Yours is nicer than mine,” he pouted. He had the sword delicately between two hands and appraised it thoughtfully. “Real Japanese steel, man. How’d you swing that one?”
Murderdock’s eye twitched. Gwen took that as her cue.
“Give it here,” Murderdock said, low and dangerous. Wade clicked the blade open with his thumb and made another thinking sound.
“Why don’t we trade? I’ll give you two shitty ones for this nice one and you can double fist ‘em all the way home,” Wade offered.
“You’re not understanding what I’m saying here,” Murderdock said. Mr. Murdock crossed his arms and cocked out a hip. Wade wriggled in delight.
Gwen opened a window while they were locked in this battle of wills and then gave Miles and Peter B. a quick squeeze goodbye. She’d be in touch, she promised. As an afterthought, she gave Tats Spidey a little side squeeze too which he hadn’t been expecting.
When that was all done, she finally made eye contact with Wade over the increasing threats Murderdock was directing at Mr. Murdock’s lax posture.
She put her hand up and curled her fingers a little.
Not even a second after she caught the blade, she was out the window and Murderdock was on her heels like white on rice. They were already gone by the time the window started closing of its own accord. No shouting, no threats, just a crazy race through the city.
“Well, ain’t he just a treat?” Wade said.
They decided to go home again.
Well. Wade told everyone that they were going home again and Mr. Murdock celebrated with him which amounted to the same thing. Their seniority apparently gave them the right to make such decisions for the team. And anyways, they all needed to wait until they heard back from the editor or the director at Oscorp before they knew if everything had worked out. In the meantime, Peter B. said, it wasn’t really safe for Peter go back to his, Matt’s, and Miles’s verse.
He didn’t really seem to safe in this verse either though. While the others had been fussing over word choice, he’d slumped down a bit in the corner of one of Tats Spidey’s sofas and gotten quieter and quieter.
Paler and paler.
He was asleep by the time it was time to go home. Glitching frequently. Miles himself had been more glitchy than usual since waking up from the In Between, but nothing like this. He and Matt had tried keeping a hand touching Peter, hoping that maybe a connection to their verse would ground him, but it was no use. The glitching continued. Peter didn’t wake up.
Miles’s heart spasmed with every flicker.
His mind irrationally decided that if Peter slept for too long, he’d slip back into the In Between. He really liked it there. He liked it there more than he liked anywhere, actually. Had been absurdly cheerful and more awake, although drugged, in the few hours they’d spent there together than he had been in the whole time he’d spent awake with the rest of them in Miles’s verse and in Tats Spidey’s.
Peter B. put a hand on Miles’s shoulder and jolted him out of his own head.
“Tats is going to look after him,” he said. Miles looked at Tats. He was dismissing his team mates, chasing them out the door with the threat that everyone was going to school and work and he’d hear nothing else of it.
Peter B. squeezed Miles’s shoulder.
“He’s been holding it together pretty well so far, but he’s really sick, Miles.”
Yeah, he knew. Somehow, he just knew.
“Do you think he’s gonna die?” he asked softly, even though Peter was well and truly asleep. Holding Matt’s hand back loosely.
Peter B. sighed.
“I don’t know, kid. Me and Tats are gonna take him back to Banner for some monitoring. And. Miles, look at me, buddy.” He did. Peter B.’s eyes looked tired and sad. “At some point we’re gonna have to ask him if he wants to keep doing this or if he wants to go back to how he was.”
Did they really have to do that?
“Yeah, buddy. That’s how this works. It’s his choice.”
No.
It wasn’t though. It just.
It wasn’t.
See, Miles had a feeling about this. When Peter was with him in his verse, it felt complete. That heaviness that came with being in another Spidey’s verse, that glitchy, jittery feeling, yeah. It went way away when he was at home doing normal things, but it had been gone—gone, gone—when Peter came home.
Miles didn’t know how to explain it.
It just.
It felt right.
It wasn’t selfish, he swore it wasn’t. Or maybe it was, but not all the way. Not as much as the words would convey.
Their verse wanted two Spidermen. Just like Tats Spidey’s verse wanted two Spidermen, for example. It wanted two, but it had four. And Miles would bet anything that if he took either this verse’s Peter or its Miles out of it, then it would pull and mourn the loss just like his did for Peter.
He just.
He didn’t know how to explain it.
“Miles, buddy, hey. Don’t be upset.”
He wasn’t upset, he was frustrated. They were different. The words never came as quickly as colors, pictures, shapes.
He wanted to say that Peter was cyan and Miles was magenta. And their home was yellow. Could they get by without one of the colors in their ink cartridge set? Yes. Of course, they could. But they wouldn’t get the whole rainbow.
Even blacks and whites wouldn’t be the same without cyan.
“C’mere, kiddo.”
Peter B. was warm and he was better with emotions. He understood Miles better than Peter, even though he and Peter shared a verse. Distantly, Miles thought that maybe their verses were mixed up. Maybe Peter B. was supposed to be cyan.
“What’s going on, tell me what’s going on the best you can, alright?”
He couldn’t. He only had colors.
“What do you mean, colors?”
He tried to explain with the colors. He didn’t know how to else to do it and Peter was an artist like him. He didn’t call it that, but he was a photographer. He spoke in pictures, too. Miles thought that maybe, maybe he would understand. But the look on Peter B.’s face was unreadable when he was done.
He dropped his gaze to the space around his knees and sighed out all the air in his lungs.
“Miles, you’re the Spiderman in your verse,” he said, “You should be proud of that. Look, you’re such a good Spiderman that you went out and saved Spiderman. Yeah, maybe he ain’t in great shape, but you know what? He’s here. And you’ve given him the chance to make a decision, buddy. You went and gave him the choice someone else took away from him. So yeah, maybe it feels better to have him with you in your verse, maybe that feels right, and maybe you and him were originally supposed to be like Tats and Bitsy at some point, but sometimes shit just doesn’t work out, kiddo. That’s what your verse decided needed to happen. It’s already accepted its new Spiderman, and honestly, what it probably wants is his body back, Miles. It doesn’t care what that looks like.”
What a horrible thing to say.
What a horrible, horrible thing to fucking say.
Miles thought Peter B. would understand. His heart felt empty.
He sniffed hard and couldn’t stop the tears. The frustration. He’d always thought frustration filled all the space in his lungs and spilled over, but he didn’t know shit anymore because he had all this space in his chest and all this frustration running down his face of its own accord.
“Oh, Miles.”
He didn’t want a hug.
He didn’t—
“Hey, what’s going on?” a soft voice said over his head. Tats. His apartment was so much quieter, lonely almost, with the others gone.
Peter B. tried to explain. His voice and closeness felt suffocating. Miles had trusted him to say the right thing and he hadn’t.
“Oh, buddy. Oh, Itsy. Come here, honey, this guy’s a mess. Come here.”
Tats Spidey wet a paper towel and made him wipe his face and breathe with him. His eyes were a different kind of brown than Peter B.’s. His hair wasn’t as stiff. He didn’t touch Miles, just waited until he was cried out.
“Miles we’re gonna do everything that we can to help him,” he said—no. Promised. “But we gotta be really, really careful here, do you understand? If Blondie just goes back and says, hey y’all, I’m Peter Parker, never died, ‘sup? Then all that’s going to do is cause chaos for him and for you and for everyone he loves and who loves him, does that make sense? He’d never be able to find a job; his MJ would probably be pissed with him. The whole world would know who he is and what he’s done and that’s all fine and good if you’re dead forever, but that makes things super complicated if you happen to be un-unalived, yeah?”
Miles sniffed.
That. Well. That made more sense. He nodded. Tats Spidey nodded with him.
“So what we’re gonna do is give him the chance to decide if he wants to take that risk, not just for himself, but for all those he loves. We don’t know these folks like he does; he can decide if the benefits outweigh the costs in that area. But in the meantime, buddy. We gotta get him some help. There’s definitely something really wrong with his cells and his consciousness, we’ve all seen him fading in and out. He can’t live a normal life like that, even if he wanted to. So let’s just take this one step at a time. You go home and get some sleep and just—I dunno. Continue on with your life. You’ve done your part. Just like the others. This guy—he’s a Peter. You leave him up to me and B, yeah? That’s our burden to bear. You go home and you take your Matt and you guys will let us know the second we get a response and we’ll let you guys know the second anything happens with your friend, okay?”
Okay.
Yeah, no. That was okay. That was a fair trade.
“And no more crying, fuck. You’re gonna have me crying and Wade just left. Fuck. We should have kept Wade, he’s like, exactly the thing to fix crying.”
“You rang?”
No, the exact thing to fix crying was getting to see Tats scream and slip and nearly take the back of his head out on the sink. Wade evidently hadn’t gone too far. He crunched himself in through the sink window to watch Tats swear on the kitchen floor. He then looked up at Miles’s face and then very, very carefully pulled his arms in through the window.
He had a duck. The same duck. From a week ago.
He put the duck in Miles’s arms and instructed him via gestures to pet the duck. Miles didn’t know what else to do. He petted the duck.
Wade’s suit eyes squinted in joy.
“I’m calling him Bernard,” he said.