under fire

They went home.

Matt told Miles before they parted ways for different trains, that if he ever needed anything, anything at all, to give him a call. Miles told him he would and made sure that he remembered that he was supposed to tell Miles if and when he heard back from the emails. Matt huffed at him and said he was dumb, not fucking stupid and Miles got a block away from the train station before he was overtaken from behind.

Crushed into a hug.

And then it was gone, just as fast as it had come.

He looked, stunned, over his shoulder, and saw the silhouette of a body disappearing over the edge of a roof.

Huh.

Ganke demanded to know where Spiderman was when Miles came back and was disappointed to hear that he was not guaranteed a safe return. But rather than falling into a sulk like Miles expected him to, he shrugged and went back to doing homework. He’d put a little sticker with Miles’s messy spider drawn on it in marker over top of the chest of the Spiderman on his pen mug since Miles had last been home.

Miles saw it and wanted to cry all over again.

“That’s a bummer,” Ganke said, “’Specially after you put all that work into it.”

Yeah.

Yeah it was, man.

“Also, I’ve covered for you for so long I think security thinks I killed you and hid the body.”

Miles laughed. It felt good.

“I’ll show up tomorrow as proof of your innocence,” he said.

“Yeah, you better.”

“Morales.”

“Uh.”

“Where on earth have you been?”

“Honestly, sir? Depressed.”

Silence.

The security guard went from angry to contrite. He awkwardly took a little step back.

“No further questions,” he said.

“Miles.”

UGH. You spend a few days bopping around different universes, come home and all anyone wants to do is give you the third degree.

“Yeah?”

His dad stood over him with crossed arms. Squinting. Thinking.

“Car,” he said.

UGH.

“Honey, when this happens, you need to tell someone. An adult, preferably,” his mom lectured. Weekends were family times. Enforced family time, if his dad had anything to say about it. Miles wished he had siblings. Then he could kick their chair out from under them or something and get all this attention off him.

“It was just a few days,” he grumbled instead, stabbing at salad and pickled vegetables on his plate.

“Just a few days this time, mijo; this kind of thing can turn into a much longer, much worse kind of thing if you’re not careful. Why don’t you stay home for the week? Would that help?”

No, because then he’d have to get up a whole hour earlier to deal with transit just to get to school. Hard pass.

“I’m fine, mom,” he drawled.

“Miles, if you feel uncomfortable or someone’s bullying you, you can tell us, son. That’s okay,” his dad said in what he thought was an open and comforting tone.

Miles pursed his lips.

Yeah, okay, Dad, he thought. Let me just tell you about the fact that I’ve spent the last week trying to help a revived, traumatized Peter Parker find his way out of multiple shitshows, one of which nearly killed our friend and his double. And by the way Dad, I’m terrified that Peter’s just going to ask to be killed all over again, even after one of his best friends has put his professional reputation on the line for him and oh yeah, Dad, the same crazy lady who’s made herself the bane of Peter Parker’s existence and who nearly tanked two of my new friends also has a vendetta against me, myself.

So yeah, I’m a little stressed out right now, Dad. Maybe a little depressed. Just an eensy, weensy bit, though.

“I’m fine,” he said.

He even was, too, until that night at 11 o’clock. He’d curled up on the couch to watch a recorded soap with his mom; his phone went off.

He’d never gotten a text from this number before. It read: !!!

He texted back, ‘Who’s this?’ And just got a torrent of exclamation points.

Whoever it was wasn’t great at texting. He was halfway through a text stating that this person had the wrong number when a different kind of message came through.

A voice message.

He’d never gotten one through text before.

He clicked on it and held the phone to his ear.

“WE GOT HER,” Matt screamed in his ear.

“Oh dear,” his mom said on the other side of the couch, “Someone’s excited.”

Yeah.

It was Miles.

Matt talked at a rate of precisely two thousand words per minute when Miles snuck out to meet him. He was mostly inarticulate and definitely had come straight from home to do it. Miles knew this because while he was trying to wring actual words and events out of the guy in the semblance of an order, Mr. Nelson showed up, white as a sheet in the alley and then deflated in relief.

“Are you crazy?” he scolded Matt, valiantly ignoring Miles. “You just—right out a window, Matty. Someone could have seen you.”

Matt rattled at him and batted him away with half-apologies and promises that he’d be right back over.

“No.” Mr. Nelson grabbed his hands and shoved them back. “No, no. No. No more secrets, remember? None. What’s going—Miles?”

“WOW. Fogs, it’s hella late, you should go back in; I’ll literally be there in five minutes. GO,” Matt half-shouted, pushing at his friend’s shoulder without success.

“What on earth is going—hey, what the hell are you two doing?” Mr. Nelson said. He caught ahold of Matt’s left wrist and held it firmly. “Matthew. What is going on?”

Matt made a high-pitched frustrated sound and pulled his hand out of the grip without much trouble at all, but then he launched himself at Mr. Nelson and whispered frantically to him right by his ear. Miles could just barely keep himself from vibrating with anticipation.

“You—he—what?” Mr. Nelson said. He stared at Miles wide-eyed.

“Oh dear, Jesus, no. I’m—no, I’m not dealing with two of you,” he declared.

“Three,” Matt told him with a stunning grin. He turned back to Miles.

“Editor said action has been taken and the other guy said he’s taking it to her institute. She’ll know exactly what’s up come morning.”

Holy shit.

That was excellent. But also not excellent.

“She’s gonna murder us,” he said.

“Oh, absolutely,” Matt agreed. “Lay low for a couple days, huh?”

Yeah, fucking roger that.

He’d pass on the message, too.

Miles woke up on Sunday and spent a bleary five minutes trying to find his other sock. Normally he didn’t care, but he liked this pair. They had bananas on them. Gwen had called them ‘cool.’

He heard talking downstairs and suddenly had a vivid memory of being one sock short on the couch, before he went to sleep. He went down on the hunt and stopped in the middle of the stairs in the living room. His dad stood by the couch with coffee in hand and eyebrows raised as far as they could go. His mom sat on the couch with her own cup of coffee in still shock.

“Uh? We good?” he asked.

The other two turned his way at the same time. Then back to the tv.

“—believed to have been killed in action. The coroner called his death traumatic and said that Mr. Parker had almost certainly died immediately following extreme blunt force trauma—”

Oh, sweet Jesus.

“—however the hero’s body, which was publicly entombed at a funeral attended by thousands of dedicated New Yorkers, was found today once again outside Mr. Parker’s former place of work, where it had been placed previously.”

Peter, you fucking drama queen.

“—found to be alive. Finger prints and dental records have verified this, although EMTs have reported his condition to be critical. The Parker family has not yet released a statement.”

Miles sniffed at the screen. Then spotted a hint of yellow and white under the pillow closest to his mom.

Aha!

His parents stared at him holding the sock.

“Miles, buddy, have some respect,” his dad said.

“Dad, if Spiderman’s back from the dead, do you have to arrest him for vigilantism?” Miles asked over his bowl of cereal. His dad had been on his phone all morning. His mom was absolutely beaming.

“I—hmm.”

Well done, Peter. You massive idiot. You went and broke the police department.

“Hey, I thought you said he didn’t have much of a chance of coming home,” Ganke accused him with an irritable pencil pointed in his direction the next day.

“He didn’t,” Miles said.

“Well obviously that didn’t pan out,” Ganke snapped, waving the pencil at the desk as a whole. “So either you lied or there’s something else going on here.”

Miles smirked and hid behind his book.

“Miles.”

He turned himself and his book the opposite direction.

“Miles.”

He clung to the stairs until his dad got back from work that Friday. Didn’t need to be picked up from school, had practically run home himself. His mom kept telling him to tone it down a bit, but he couldn’t.

Peter had had his first interview with police that day. And Miles needed to know how it had gone.

His dad watched his rattling with amusement and accepted the leech-hug affectionately.

“You’re really into Spiderman these days, huh, Miles?” he noted.

“He’s cool,” Miles lied. Lied like he’d been shot in the chest. Peter knew all the words to the Baby Shark song, whatever cool was, he went screaming in the opposite direction.

“He’s loopy,” his dad corrected. His mom made an interested sound. “Kid’s maybe 25, 26-ish. Just talks crazy, Rio. Kept forgetting where he started and stopped and who was in the room with him. Got some kind of—hmm.”

Miles vibrated. His mom leaned against the counter.

“Some kind of--?” she encouraged. His dad frowned deeply into his palm.

“Glitch?” he eventually said. “He glitches? Like a computer. Except you can see it. Colors and static—that kind of thing.”

“That’s…not normal,” Miles’s mom said diplomatically. Miles could barely contain himself.

“What’d he say?” he asked, “Is it really him?”

“Yeah, that’s what doctors are saying,” his dad said over his head to his mom. “They’ve moved him up to a SHIELD lab to take a better look at what’s going on.”

“Sounds painful.”

“I don’t know if it’s painful. His wife certainly thinks its painful for him; his aunt not so much. Bless that woman, though. She’s damn near the only thing keepin’ him on track. Leave him alone for two seconds and he picks up radio waves or something and starts singing and talking to people who aren’t there. He sure ain’t the same as he left.”

Woah. Had Peter somehow tapped into Spotify or something with his weird In Between cells? Maybe he could listen to podcasts remotely now.

“He competent to stand trial?” Miles’s mom asked. His dad grimaced.

“I don’t know if any case against him would go to trial,” he said. “It’s hard to charge someone, uh. Posthumously.”

“Did he really die, though?”

“They performed an autopsy on the kid, Rio. He was good and dead. He’s even still got some of the scars. Whoever it was that nabbed him pulled him right out of his grave.”

“Dad,” Miles whined, “What. Did. He. Say?”

His dad laughed and waved him over. Miles went. Just about fell over himself doing so. Tucked himself good and close in the following hug.

“That’s classified,” his dad suddenly said.

UGH.

Matt was bummed and grumpy because he couldn’t see Peter either. He told Miles this while laying into a punching bag at the same gym that Mr. Murdock had tortured Tats in. It turned out it existed in their verse, too.

“It’s ‘cause MJ hates me,” he finally told Miles.

“She hates you?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d you do?”

“Flirted with her boo.”

“I thought you guys fooled around when they weren’t together.”

“We did.”

Miles looked up in sudden realization. He set down his textbook and glared.

“Don’t you have Mr. Nelson to flirt with?” he asked. Matt groaned and kicked the bag.

“He’s no fun. He doesn’t flirt back.”

Yeah, that’s about what Miles thought.

Peter stabilized enough in their verse to stop floating around and to finally point the finger at Doc Ock. It turned out that he was royally fucked up; his cells did not like to be in one verse for too long. He needed to hop around a bit and spend a couple hours in the In Between every few days to not become a space cadet.

SHIELD was extremely confused and concerned the first time he did it. He reported this because instead of jumping back into his fun, exciting cell back at their facilities, he hopped out of the In Between right into Fogwell’s gym and gave Matt a heart attack while he was trying to teach Miles how not to break his thumbs on a punch.

Matt threatened him with grievous bodily harm and then took a lap around the old boxing ring to collect himself.

Miles gave Peter the tightest hug he could manage and Peter hugged him back and rocked back and forth like he always did.

“You came home,” Miles said.

“Mmm, something like that,” Peter rumbled.

“Is your aunt mad?”

“Oho. Pissed.”

“At you?”

“What? No. She told me she’s going to go all Silence of the Lambs on dear, old Liv.”

Ahaha, funny joke. Except Peter’s aunt would totally do it.

“Are you still float-y?” Miles asked. Peter pulled back from him. He didn’t seem too floaty. Not too glitchy either, since he’d just charged his cell battery or whatever it was he had to do now.

“Not so much,” he said. “But it comes and goes. Hey, did you know the internet’s connected throughout all the verses? Check it out.”

He showed Miles a phone that one of his people must have gotten for him and opened a Whats App message chat which was essentially a three-way panic attack between himself and the other Peters. Tats Spidey texted almost entirely in emojis and exclamation points. Peter B. was incapable of writing a sentence which had no misspellings.

“That’s way cool,” Miles told him. Somehow he just knew that the same wouldn’t work for him. Peter let him try to send a message and sure enough, it didn’t go through. He didn’t seem surprised.

“Doc Ock stuck me In Between,” he said. “And for better or worse, I think I’ve got two verses now. Here and the In Between. But when I’m in the In Between, I think I can—I haven’t tried yet—but I just got this feeling that I can go anywhere.” He smiled. “Anywhere they need a Spidey.”

Anywhere they need a Spidey?

“You’re not staying here?” Miles asked.

“I’m not not-staying,” Peter told him. “Talked it over with Tats and B.; you know, we got a Spidey for so many verses, but some of them could use a little help. They’re not all as good as you are, Miles. One kid straight up crashed a plane into Coney Island—can you imagine? Anyways there are those and then there are other verses where there’s no Spideys at all, and well, sometimes they could use a little help, too. So I guess you can think of me as your friendly, inter-dimensional, neighborhood Spiderman. And the this-verse part-timer if you need me, of course. Within reason. I might have sworn I wouldn’t do it anymore to a judge.”

That was crazy. Insane. Unbelievable.

And it made Miles laugh with joy because it was perfect.

“You’re gonna get arrested,” he said.

“You’re gonna get arrested,” Peter said. “I’m just going to get in trouble. Oh, hey Matt? Can you take my case against Ock?”

Matt glared his way between the ropes of the ring.

“I’m busy,” he said.

“Please?”

“Your wife hates me.”

“Psh, no she doesn’t. She just thinks you’re a flirt with no boundaries.”

“I am a flirt with no boundaries.”

“Well maybe you two can make nice over the shared trauma of my untimely demise? And also my case against Ock?”

“UGH. I hate you. Go back to your middle Earth whatever.”

Peter had a winning smile in him.

“I love you.”

“Leave. I’m mentoring. Otherwise known as doing your fuckin’ job for you, you slacker.”

Miles opened his newsfeed a week later to huge headlines.

SPIDERMAN V. SCIENTIST: A CASE OF NECROMANCY?

Spiderman accuses Doctor of Malpractice—he is the evidence.

Former Superhero Permanently Disabled by Posthumous Abuse of Body

SPIDERMAN: Zombie or What?

He opened a text to Matt.

MM: I thought you were a flirt with no boundaries

MM: [voice message] Hey, did you know we have the same initials? Do you know how annoying that is?

MM: is this a distraction tactic? Because it’s not working. Here, I’ll change you to DD in mine.

DD: I AM SAVED. I’m putting you in as SM.

MM: Do you actually have a case here?

DD:[voice message] Digging up and experimenting on corpses is illegal in all fifty states, Miles. Do I have a case? Nonsense.

MM: you know if he’s talked to the others?

DD: negative.

He opened up a message to Peter.

MM: congrats on your upcoming trial

PP: thanks it’s the worst. People know my name on the street, is this what being famous is like? It sucks.

MM: did you tell the others?

PP: not officially, been busy trying to get my damn job back. And my stipend. And my degree? Lots to do.

MM: I thought you were a part-timer?

PP: Yeah. Part-time photographer. Part-time Grad Student. Part-time Spiderman. Hold on I just told the others, their chat is insane.

MM: they have a chat?

PP: yeah and it should be televised.

MM: make us an interdimensional chat

PP: oh sure, I’ll just put it on my list, yeah don’t you even worry

PP: NO

PP: I’m busy. You make one.

Miles laughed.

It was so nice to have him back.

Peter wasn’t home much. Miles was Spiderman almost all of the time. When he was home, Peter was a grad student who was hounded by the media and by a crew of relentless scientists begging him for blood samples.

He told them to talk to his wife.

His wife was a force of nature.

He officially introduced his MJ to Miles and she was very kind to Miles before whipping around and tearing Peter a new one for failing in his duties of mentorship. His defense was that he didn’t need to, Miles was doing just fine on his own, and anyways, he already had a mentor.

“WHO?” MJ demanded.

“Ma—no one.”

Oh, Peter. You’re so, so bad at this.

“MATT? Did you just fucking say MATT? HAVE YOU MET MATT? He. Is. Blind. Peter.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean anything. He’s still a ninj—nine-to-five kind of guy?"

Miles was gonna peace out. He had things to do. Villains to stop. Days to save.

“Matt’s a what? MATT’S A NINJA? HE’S DAREDEVIL ISN’T HE? You motherfucker. You said you two were just friends.”

“Babe, we are.”

“You said.”

“We are, MJ. And anyways, he only flirts ‘cause he’s too repressed to tell Fogs how he feels.”

Silence.

“Oh my god. Foggy, no. Go save him.”

“What? Like, now?”

“GO.”

“Yes ma’am. Whatever you want, ma’am.”

God, that was something. They both needed to chill out. Miles told this to Peter B. and he laughed until he clutched at his face in horror and mumbled something about not being ready for the responsibility of being the most mature and stable Peter.

It could only be him, though, because Miles got a tap on the shoulder from Bitsy after a minute there with a polite request to help him hold down Tats while his nurse friend gave him a rabies shot. Apparently, Wade had tried and been unsuccessful and Bitsy could only keep one side of him down. He had two sides. Of course, Miles agreed to help.

Tats fought like the devil and hyperventilated at the sight of the needle and then it turned out that they didn’t need to have done any of that because he passed right the fuck out not two seconds before getting stuck. He woke up devastated but rabies-free.

Miles asked how he’d gotten bit to begin with and no one wanted to explain.

Eventually it came out.

Tats had gone out with friends, gotten absolutely smashed, then called everyone on the chat to tell them he loved them and, while doing that, had made friends with the cat outside his apartment.

Except that it wasn’t a cat. And it wasn’t a mutual friendship.

Raccoons, it turned out, were the only creature in the world which did not adore Tats on sight. He was displeased. He hissed out the raccoon outside his kitchen window and fit himself in the sink to maintain eye contact with them.

Peter B. cried upon receiving this news and fell into the arms of his far-too-intrigued wife. She decided she needed to know if he could fit in their sink.

He could not.

Miles then received word from Gwen, who was delighted with how things were going in his verse, but needed everyone to shut up so she could gloat to Miles about her latest escapade with a certain redhead who was avoiding the fuck out of her.

It was beautiful, she claimed. She just threatened to murder the DA when he overstepped.

And what was even more beautiful than stopping him in his tracks was the fact that he was very obviously confused as to why he was stopping in his tracks.

This last time, he’d thrown a hand over his shoulder and said, ‘fine, kill him, see if I care.’ And Gwen had waited a beat and then taken off running and sure enough, guess who suddenly had second thoughts.

She called Miles after the standoff the two of them had had in front of DA Nelson’s office. She said that DA Nelson had come out to see what all the fuss was about and Gwen had told him straight up that Murderdock was madly in love with him and it had gone down.

Strangely.

DA Nelson laughed and said that that was very cute and that she was very sweet and that Murderdock was way out of his league in more ways than one. And then he’d locked his door and left the two of them in the hallway, telling them not to break anything please.

And Murderdock had kind of gone comatose for a few seconds there.

Gwen had taken advantage of his distraction to leave him there. She was so happy. So proud of herself. She told Miles that she wanted to talk to Tats Spidey’s Mr. Murdock and Mr. Nelson more to exact more pointed retribution in the future.

Miles was. He was gonna let her do that. Whatever she wanted, actually. That was fine. Cool.

He decided, after about a month of these shenanigans—the rush of people, Spideys and others, in and out of his life. From Peni calling because Noir had disappeared in his verse, to Tats Spidey and his raccoon, to Gwen and Peter coming together to eventually force Peter B. to tell Miles exactly why he’d been incommunicado over the last few months, to Wade and Bitsy inviting Miles to just have dinner with them up high on one of their favorite perches--that it was a lot.

A lot of people.

A web of people.

And yeah, he was Spiderman. The one, the almost only.

But he’d never been less afraid and he’d never been less alone.