Chapter Text
Peter knew that he could sleep for ten thousand years, that was, if he didn't have another shift in 8 hours. But. he did have that shift, which meant he needed to sleep, not deal with whatever chattering, or party, or plotting it was that Barry was dealing with downstairs. He just wanted to sleep.
He just wanted to lie on his very poor, and moldy smelling mattress and sleep. Not deal with the strengthening thumb of danger his spider sense was telling him about.
All he wished for was to collapse on his creaky bed frame. Not deal with the recognizable heartbeat of the suited rich friend of Barry's, that lay just beyond his own door.
He didn't want to deal with the interaction that would come should the man knock. So of course he tried to ignore the man's presence as he walked closer and closer to his door and Barry's entire being seemingly hummed with nervous energy, Peter would be too if he wasn't so damn exhausted.
He ends up opening the door before either of them knock. He is tired when he makes direct eye contact with the suited man, he could have sworn that on one of the many occasions that he overheard their conversations that the man was named Bruce, he just keeps eye contact before blinking and opening the door further for them. The last time he tried to deal with this combo, they just came back. So, with much hesitance, he resigns himself to dealing with the unfortunate mess he's about to be involved in.
He only hopes that by opening the door, he'll be left alone sooner to sleep.
His space is a disaster zone. He knows that. It's just not any worse than it ever was permitted to get when he lived under May's roof, and he's had decent few months now to gather and collect, mostly papers and saved technology from dumpsters. Despite that, Peter knows where everything he needs is, for the most part, so he considers the space a functional one. It just happens to be filled with the technology strewn about various flat surfaces, alongside lots and lots of notebooks and loose-leaf paper, and more than a couple of large brown squares he got from a local butcher to draw on.
Apparently there's too much paper on the available surfaces for his two supposed guests to sit comfortably, that's not his fault, that's a them problem. So they just kind of stand there, or one of them does while the other leans down to grab one particular design based upon the technical marvels of Stark Tech, what the man sees from the paper is a mystery to tired-Peter.
He is pretty sure his expression says how he feels as he offers them a drink, May would skin him if she could for the state of the room, let alone any further disapproval linked to his manners, so he tries to be polite to the guests he didn't ask for or invite.
"Do you want a drink? Like water or tea?"
"Uh, water?" It's question, even though it should be a statement. But Peter's neighbour has social anxiety just as bad as he did back when he was like 12, it makes him wonder how the man has got any confidence as a hero, even though he himself went through it and got over it. Inside and outside of the mask used to be very distinct for Peter, maybe it's the same for his neighbour.
However, he can't get lost in thoughts because his neighbour said yes. So he focuses on trying to find a clean mug in his cupboard, which is still practically empty of everything, and focuses on the task at hand, and the current and the positives. At least it let's him no longer have to just stare at 'Bruce' as he tries to decipher whatever page of Peter's he's picked up, he long ago got fed up with Mr Stark being able to read his things over his shoulder, so everything is encoded in a personal shorthand. He hopes Bruce really just puts it back where it belongs, everything has its place after all.
---
"What do you want?" Peter managed to clear up some of the papers littering his couch, it's a second hand one he managed to haul up the stairs and got from a person who was moving out halfway down the road. He piles the stack of papers and notes, and hey that's where that blue pen went, and the stack is set down atop another pile for Peter to sort through later.
The pen gets put away into the utensil drawer, and Peter returns standing, as he addresses the two men. One of whom was very clearly dragged along, and is now sat cradling his glass of water and Peter tried to stare down his friend, Peter hopes they're just friends. But Peter knows his luck. And he knows his senses. And most importantly he can feel the heart beat of the man in front of him and how the cadence matches most definitely with a darkly dressed vigilante who onced followed him through a city. The identity of the manbecomes instantly apparent, and he hopes that none of it shows on his face, only perhaps a mourning of his peace.
"Who are you?" It's basically the worst way to start the conversation properly with context, but here the man is, doing just that.
"I-" Peter starts, not too sure before changing tones and very much taking a step forward to maybe impose the full importance of that question, "What do you mean by that?"
"You don't exist before August of last year. Even then, everything about you has been built since and after your run in with the police after that incident."
He, of course, takes his step backwards and tries to regather his thoughts, and make sense of the context just provided. But more importantly, it gives the required information that Peter now has to fill, and to do so whilst only revealing what he wants to. But the way the answers seem to be vital to the man, and the way that the tone of the questions and words hit Peter, really seem to hit a spot that only Tony Stark had managed to when he was ridiculously self entitled, makes Peter more than happy to rise back up to take the apparent challenge that this 'celebrity' sees him as.
"Well. My name is Peter Benjamin Parker, and as far as anyone is concerned, I did not parade myself about as publicly as some, so perhaps that's why your searches result in particularly little." Peter glares at the man as he emphasizes it, there were certain aspects of the man who had his face and name plastered yo every surface in Gotham that reminded him far too much of the careless man who tried to once 'help him'.
"But if that's all, can you please leave."
---
"No." He hasn't even turned the corner for the street. He still knows the heartbeat that stands nearby the main entrance of the apartment building, it's off or on standby but still humming.
He really has started to dread these interactions he's being forced into.
---
He had let Barry in, just him as he was alone for once, and that made Peter much less on edge, there was no rich billionaire that seemed like he was trying to pry Peter's secrets from his entire being. So yeah, Barry alone was much nicer. Also much, much more awkward.
But their stilted conversation was nice, if overly formal and kind of odd with the way they changed topics quickly until they landed on a topic of interest, Barry's job.
"You work in forensics? Like lab work or data analysis or something more specific? I have- had a friend who had mentioned it a bit but I don't know what the actual profession involves. I was always more interested in the chemical and biological aspects of forensics."
"I do lab work, as well as analysis. Um, I mostly receive evidence as try to extrapolate data"
---
It was a nice conversation. Barry had gotten less nervous around Peter as time went on, the guilt of what he was going to do certainly made him nervous again as he sat with Bruce, and talked of Peter.
---
He was there to see, in Barry's words of Bruce's commands, what Peter Parker's true intelligence was.
He just had to look through of the laptop set up on the desk, or look through the drawers or under the bed or anywhere suspicious, or on the list Bruce had given of possible locations after he had asked.
He, however had to do it at night, meaning that his nice neighbour was at home and sleeping.
So he tried to be quick, fast in and out, hopefully scattering very few letters or pages of paper that covered the floor of Peter's apartment constantly. And to not disturb his neighbours needed rest.
He gathers a few pages that are in what is very clearly encoded notes in the light that shines through crappy blinds, and the small amount created from the sparks of power that follow him in his momentum, and goes to leave with a small piece of technology that looked the least broken or nonfunctional from the bottom of the dresser. He turns to leave through the door and in the process, his gaze passes over his neighbours sleeping form in bed. Or it should've. Instead he comes eye to eye with a person who maintains the eye contact as Barry freaks out, maybe screeches before dropping items (quick and easy to catch with his speed) before realising he was still coated in slight sparks of energy and motion.
Barry suddenly recalls the very real memory of when he first met Superman Clark, dread and apprehension following him like eyes of someone who could be fast enough to see his movements.
---
Peter can guess that the conversation was one that he'd been avoiding just as much as Barry had, unfortunately Mr Bruce wants to have this conversation.
He wants answers. Answers Peter really doesn't want to share or confront for the knowledge of what will come afterwards. He hopes it goes as well as it can, considering Parker luck, and that getting involved with other heroes has never ended well for him.
He still clears space on the couch, and possibly the most he's rearranged of the papers littering the cold wooden floor, so the space he lives in is the cleanest it has been since he first bought that ream of printer paper.
There's a pile of used pages on top of his microwave and more stacks scattered around and over his kitchen bench, he still tries to relocate the last stack in his arms when the heartbeats that had been outside the building, are finally outside his door.
He lets them wait, not opening the door when his nervousness had led him to in the past, instead his thoughts are trained on the ink on a page as he writes down idle thoughts and tries not to let his thoughts spiral further than they already have.
Then they knock. And Peter is forced, by social norms, to answer the damn door. He really wishes that it had never been fixed from when he first moved in.
---
The gathering that followed was somewhat normal. If one can call what is essentially a confrontation by a group of what Peter now knows are the superheroes of this world, then yes, it's a normal gathering of two suited men, and two considerably more anxious young adults. All of whom have at some point, been dressed in suits and have defended the public, not that they know that particular detail.
He recognised Clark the moment the man had stepped within hearing range half an hour ago, but he hadn't expected him to greet Bruce in an icy tone that definitely confirmed that there was history between the two.
But, Peter supposes that it would be good to check if there had been any reaction to the thread he'd used to patch Clark's wound.
---
The simple outcome of the conversation was that Peter was fine, and would be left alone, and could reach out at any point should he need. Whether through Barry, Clark or Mr Wayne himself. Had he insisted on referring to Mr Wayne as such out of pettiness for his breach of privacy, yes. A point, which Peter knows had been an issue for Barry, but had smoothed over by saying that he had taken the one thing that wouldn't give in to Mr Wayne's methods, and everything that could be saved from the device, already had been.
But that was perhaps all Peter got out of the meeting, other than guaranteed peace once he mumbled and pieced together a summary of what brought him here, to their world. It was a simple summary, one that glanced over the issues of the Avengers, of Stark, of Thanos, but highlighted that something pulled him here, through the fabric of reality, from his world to this one.
And seemed to point at this world's very long list of cosmic weak-points, weak-points that Peter had cataloged through his trip around the United States of this world, and gladly handed over, but still did not clarify on what specific phenomena had brought him here. Although, the brief look of panic over Barry's face was something that they talked about after the others left.
And, well. Time travel was on the list of possibilities but it was at the bottom of the ones that Peter had thought were plausible for the world he was currently residing in, but it did answer a lot of questions, especially regarding the energy signature, or humming, that Peter had sensed from the anomaly that he had suspected was his point of entry.
Peter, however, did suspect that there was a lot more to the story Barry told, but all he could do was listen and think about how different everything could have been, and of course, recommend Barry to speak about it either to Mr Wayne, or Clark, or even someone else. Talking about those things, always made things easier, not necessarily to accept or mourn, but it helped with changing how one thought about those events.
---
Does he end up making contact again with Mr Wayne? Yes. Why? Because he needs money, and some food, but mostly because Peter starts to realise that while he does nothing in this world except to be another overworked employee at some pizza shop, Queens needs him. He might have sworn off vigilantism, but May's final words do haunt him on his quiet nights of deliveries.
So he gets help. The financial kind, with promises to destroy the machine he builds and all data corresponding to it, and makes himself a way home, if he can have one of those anymore.
---
"You become the kind of hero that you once needed." He lets it sink in before turning his head to look back at the heroes, the defenders of justice and the planet - even if it was just two of them, before doing what he hadn't in a very long time, and does a two finger salute as he took a step off the ledge backwards.
It was freeing. It always was. But once his swings evened out and he adjusted to the colder-than-New-York air and the way the temporary mask hugged his face, he found himself a perch up high. He was far enough to be out of sight from the big bad Bat, but he knew they would follow if they wanted, but he listened as the world starting speaking into his ears.
People's heart beats ringing and echoing loud enough to be heard across the miles long stretch of city.
He just took it all in and acknowledged it all, the people, the world and the vigilantes, no. They were heroes.
And he was grateful for them all, as he listened and said his final farewells.
---
Peter Benjamin Parker might have a different reputation now than he once did, but at his core, he would like to think he is still the same person. The starry-eyed kid willing to follow along to a fight, now just a confused adult trying to find that same fight. The good fight. The one for what he believed and knew he belonged to just like Wayne belonged to Gotham, or Barry to Central. Or even Clark to Metropolis. They all had their places, their homes that they would die defending over and over again.
But, it made things exceptionally clear for Peter.
He had to get home. Or at least try. Queens awaited him and he needed to check on his city.
Besides, he needed at least one more final goodbye back home.