Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Hey, Miles...”

“...”

“Miiiiillllles.”

Even with his face planted flat against his bed, Miles can still hear the moan of complaint leave his mouth as he unfolds the pillow wrapped around his head. His face feels gross - greasy and sticky around the eyes - his throat is dry, and yup, he thinks, shuffling his legs beneath the blankets, he’s still wearing the pants of his spider-suit. He shoots a glare over his shoulder and finds his roommate sitting on the edge of his bed, fully dressed, and blinking at him as if this morning of suffering is normal.

He’s also got Miles’ laptop on his knee.

“What’s the password for your laptop?” Ganke asks, unmoving with his fingers frozen over the keyboard. “I need to check my email.”

Miles squints, trying to understand the question as his brain lags. He then closes them entirely to shield his eyes from the sun that is piercing through the windows of their room.

He’s barely been awake for a minute and already he has a splitting headache.

“Ganke…” he groans, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes and rolling his head back over to face the wall. “Can’t you just... use your own laptop?”

“Uh, yeah, no. I can’t.” Miles hears the flat tone in his friend’s voice and feels irritation prick the back of his neck. “Which is why I need your password- I wasn’t gonna wake you up but I tried like fifty different things and none of them worked also it’s like one, dude.” Miles feels the dip in the bed where Ganke sits shift closer to him before an elbow nudges his back. “I figured you’d wanna get up anyway.”

Miles clenches his eyes closed. His knees, still constricted in the spandex of his suit, curl upwards against his torso while he pulls the corner of his blanket over his head, and groans because he really, really doesn’t wanna get up. There’s an ache that’s flooding his body from more than the horrible sleep he got last night and has been getting in the last month. Except yesterday - or this morning? - was the worst night he’s had in probably ever. He remembers dragging his limbs up the wall of the dorms with the vague notion that it was almost three in the morning, then falling through his window and wiggling his way out of the mask and shirt of his costume all the while thinking for the first time in the two months that he'd taken up Spider-Manning as an extracurricular, that sometimes it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Sometimes, it straight up sucked.

Lying in bed now, he feels a throb in his back and stomach where he’d been kicked and then punched and then punched again, all before being thrown through a window and landing on the concrete of the apartment he’d pretty much broken into.

Not that he regrets it.

He absolutely does not, will never regret halting his web slinging the moment he heard a high pitched cry pierce his ears from the 5th floor of the apartment building he always passes by when he goes between school and home, whether on foot or via web shooters but somehow he never heard anything before last night? The fact that he never noticed something wrong in all that time and all the things he could’ve done differently are still flip flopping around in his brain like a choking fish that got dropped on the dry ground.

Either way the end result was him crashing through the window to find a lady with curly black hair, green hospital scrubs, and a swollen black and blue face. It'd made Miles tremble in his suit and tighten his fist as he peered up to the monstrous figure of a man who had an enraged look in his eyes that said he was going to kill Miles before throwing another punch at the face of the sobbing woman that looked too much like Mom.

And maybe all of that, on top of the lack of sleep, made Miles a little sloppier with his web shooters than usual.  And maybe that’s why he took a few solid hits before being thrown back through the same window where he’d come in.

He’s impressed that he was even able to drag himself into bed before he finally passed out.

Sitting up now, listening as Ganke keys in the password Miles reluctantly just gave him, he finds the world spinning more than it usually does when he’s suffered a few hits in the mask. Over his two months of being Spider-Man he’s been, kicked, hit with a crowbar, decked in the face at least ten times and each time, by the next morning, after a good night’s sleep, his bruises would fade and the pain would dull.

Except, Miles thinks, reviewing the last month in his head as he slowly places each of his costumed feet onto the floor, when was the last time I actually had a ‘good night’s sleep?’

“Man, dude,” Miles looks to his side to see Ganke giving him a sheepish smile, “I mean, no offense, but you look terrible.” Ganke nods to Miles’ legs, covered in black spandex, and adds, “Is sleeping in that thing comfortable cause I’d think-”

“It’s not,” Miles cuts in, planting both hands to his knees before trying to stand. He means to bend down to sort though the clothes littering the floor to find a shirt and maybe some pants, because yes, he actually does feel terrible with only the bottom half of his costume on, but instead of a shirt he finds himself tipping over too far and dropping to his knees.

“Whoa! Miles! You alright?” A hand settles, firm on his shoulder and it isn’t until the world stops spinning that Miles realizes that it had started spinning, or that Ganke is the only thing keeping him from hitting the floor. There’s a small intake of breath from his friend while Miles presses his knuckles to his throbbing temple hoping the world will give him a second to get himself together.  

Miles feels a hand ghost across the skin over his spine before it pulls away.

“Dude- that,” Ganke begins, and then pauses, waiting until Miles looks up to meet his eyes. ”Your back. It looks like someone ran you over... Holy crap was that what happened last night? Did someone run you over?!”

Miles shakes his head which is still pounding miserably. His back and stomach are still throbbing as if he was tossed around three minutes ago and not nine hours ago, but something more concerning has come to his attention. It's the dryness in his throat that has seemed to stick. Not vanishing like it usually does once he clears his throat after climbing out of bed in the morning. Also, the aching over his body, that’s now getting worse every time he shivers, is still there. That seems bad too.

“I think I’m sick,” he says, as much to himself as to Ganke, who helps him sit back on the bed, where he barely misses crushing the screen of his laptop. “Can Spider-Man get sick?” He wonders, looking up to Ganke, whose face melts away from concern - and is that awe? - to something more bemused as he slides the laptop out of Miles’ way.

Ganke gives him a shrug. “I don’t know, man, you’re the one with the Spider-people connections.” He reaches down to grab a black T-shirt which he tosses to Miles. “I mean- you survived whatever monster pummeled you into the ground last night, and... I am now noticing he got you pretty good in the front too.”

Miles watches as Ganke’s eyes widen, their focus now on the bruising pattern along his stomach that travels up to spot his upper chest. They probably match the bruises he has on his back too, considering they came from the same fist, and the fact that they make his muscles throb in the exact same, painful way.

There’s a bit of embarrassment tickling him at being inspected and he tries to rush when pulling on the T-shirt in his hands. This turns out to be a mistake as it makes him bend and stretch in all the wrong ways for his bruises. He can’t help the hiss that slips through his teeth.

“Jeez,” Ganke breathes, sitting back in the desk chair across the room, “Who was this guy?”

Miles smooths his shirt down the front and finds his fingers worrying the bottom seam as he feels the weight of last night drop against his shoulders again like it did as he stood next to the lady, whose face was caked in blood and tears, and whose name he never did find out, while they waited at the curb for the police to come after Miles decided it was better to stay with her than chase after the guy who’d run for the hills once Miles had finally delivered one good punch.

He’d stood next to her, spoken to her softly - in a voice he’d once heard his mother use with younger kids, when he'd helped organize files at Brooklyn General over summer break. He'd stayed by her side, pretending that his entire body wasn’t swollen from the beating he’d just had, and waited up until the moment his stomach had dropped and his eyes had gotten a little wet behind the mask when a police car drove up and out stepped his dad. He’d taken off not a second sooner - because he wasn’t sure he could say two words to “Officer Davis”  without bursting into tears along with the lady as she was helped into the car by his dad. He zipped  away, to scour the streets for the guy who had run away the moment he realized his actions would finally have consequences. But somehow he couldn’t realize what a disgusting piece of shit he was, every time he decided to whale on his girl.

“An asshole,” is what Miles settles on, spitting the word out as he slips on the pair of loose sweat pants and socks that Ganke gives him when he rolls across the room in his chair to grab Miles’ laptop from the bed and place it back onto the desk.

“Well, yeah, I could’ve guessed that,” Ganke answers, a nervous laugh at the end. “But was this guy— you know, one of the ‘OG’ Spider-Man’s big costumed bad guys, like- you know, the Rhino or something?”

Miles presses his knuckles to his right eye hoping to alleviate the pressure behind it. “No,” he says. “He was just some guy.” Miles stands, careful to hang onto the frame of the bed as he does, and makes his way to the chair next to Ganke, who holds a hand out with caution until Miles safely sits down.

“Yeah, that makes sense. I didn’t see anything about you last night on Tweeter. But man,” Ganke sighs, turning in the chair to face Miles’ laptop where its placed in front of Ganke’s laptop and two other monitors which are filled with dialog boxes that seem to be loading something. Ganke glances to Miles before he begins to type. “I mean, usually, you don’t have that big a problem with normal guys on the street— well, except for that carjacker last month but-”

“But that was different,” Miles finishes, watching as Ganke pulls up a browser tab and logs into his email. His mind wanders back to a month before and the hockey mask wearing car thief with his choice weapon of a crowbar who’d decided to teach Miles a lesson in pain after the new Spider-Man had made his life of criminal activity difficult.

After that final encounter - which had luckily left Miles with only a dislocated shoulder and left “crowbar guy” in police custody - swinging home had been difficult. Miles rubs his right shoulder at the memory.

The phantom pains are quickly forgotten when the dryness of his throat becomes an unpleasant tickle and he shoves his face into his elbow to cough it away.

Though he coughs for longer than he expects to and finds himself out of breath, with an even worse feeling in his throat when he’s done. He also finds Ganke looking at him with the same crooked brow line he usually has when he’s dissecting a sample for a new music track.

“You know…” He starts, with a tone that sounds like he’s testing the waters. “Maybe you had such a rough time with that guy last night because you were already getting sick?” Ganke leans back in his chair and gestures to all of Miles. “Hence you nearly hacking up a lung just now.”

There’s a slight whistle coming from Miles’ throat as he breathes, his stomach and back are spasming painfully after his coughing fit and he has to wipe the back of his hand along his hairline. There’s sweat collecting there when he’s barely moved in the last few minutes.

“Uh, yeah, maybe,” he answers, halfheartedly, most of his attention devoted to keeping Ganke’s face from blurring with the bright colors of the computer monitors as his eyes refuse to focus. This few seconds of struggle gives Miles time to reinterpret Ganke’s idea. He tries to separate how much like shit he’s feeling in the present, to remember if the heaviness of his limbs, the ache filling his bones, and the wet wheezing of his voice had already existed the night before.

Which, for some reason, is much harder than it should be, what with his brain stuck in his head where his headache is raging.

He can slightly recall, even before his pummeling, that he’d felt the weight of exhaustion as he’d swung through Brooklyn, watching the streets for anything out of place. At the time, he’d dismissed it as another result of his bad sleeping schedule over the last few weeks.

He’d also blamed lack of sleep on his spider-sense not buzzing fast enough to warn him before a foot and fist were sending him careening through that window.

Something tells him - possibly the way Ganke’s arms are crossed or the  voice in his muffled brain that sounds like his mother asking him how he’s feeling before ignoring his answer and sending him back to bed - that yeah, maybe it wasn’t just sleep; maybe Spider-Man can catch a cold.

Too bad there’s not a Spider-person here I can ask, he mulls, thinking of a group of different faces and masks, and feeling a twinge of loneliness. Inter-dimensional communication was limited, and while he’d gotten to talk to Gwen three times - yes he counted, who wouldn’t - since the collider was destroyed, it was only by means of a bubbly portal neither of them were brave enough to step through, that lasted at most forty minutes, and seemed to be a rarity on her side since only she could contact him and neither of them had heard from any of the others. Miles just hoped they were all doing alright.

Specifically Peter. He couldn’t help but worry about that guy.

Ganke swivels in his desk chair and breaks Miles from his thoughts when he thrusts a cell phone into Miles’ focus.

“Here’s your phone back, I charged it for you,” he adds once it's in Miles’ hand, to which Miles can only respond with, “Wait what? I thought you just needed my laptop?”

“Yeah, I needed your laptop when your phone was dead and I couldn’t use it. I figured your passwords were the same so I could just login but… well, you know.”

“Yeah, I know, considering you woke me up about it.”

Ganke chuckles a bit at that, and Miles joins in too, until he breaks into a small interrupting cough. He settles back into his chair and taps into his phone, finding a bunch of notifications that he easily swipes away. It’s mostly about homework that he’ll look at tomorrow, since he’d like to enjoy his weekend, or what’s left of it, after sleeping most of it away. Which Miles finds a little ironic since he actually tried to practice some time management this time.

He’d specifically told his parents that he wanted to stay at the dorms this weekend instead of coming home on Friday, so he could catch up on school stuff. Which was true. He just failed to mention that it also included Spider-stuff.

Patrolling, homework, and sleep was a lot harder to balance when he had his parents to worry about when sneaking back into his bedroom and falling asleep in his superhero getup.

Hence, one of the perks of staying at school for the weekend and letting Ganke in on his secret.

While Miles’ thumb does its mindless task of swiping away on his screen he leans an elbow on the desk which brings him next to his laptop where his friend is typing away. He catches a few words and finds his interest piqued.

“What are you doing anyway?” Miles questions, looking over the monitors again. The two extra screens that stand mounted above the desk still have the same loading bars filling the screen, but Ganke’s laptop has an obvious box of coding filling it that makes him curious. It slightly answers his question as to why Ganke needed his laptop in the first place. ”Is this for school?”

“Hmm?” Ganke hums, looking up from Miles’ laptop, and his face brightens when he catches onto what Miles said. “Oh! This? No, this isn’t for school, it’s uh, actually kinda for you.” Miles perks up. “I mean, it’s really for your spidersona, but you get me. It’s still a work in progress and I was waiting until I got the kinks outta the programming before I showed you.”

“Wait,” Miles interrupts, clearing his throat before he continues. “You made something for me. For when I’m Spider-man?” He can’t help the weird way his voice breaks, and it's totally because of puberty and not the warm feeling bubbling in his chest.

“Yeah, exactly! I was actually looking over some of that tech you brought back from the ‘Spider-cave.’”

Miles giggles, a bit hysterically, and wobbles when he stops leaning on the desk to look closer at Ganke’s work. “It’s not a Spider-Cave. It’s a shed.” He notices his mask laid out besides the laptop and some of the gadgets May Parker had allowed him to take the last time he’d seen her.

She’d offered him access to the entire shed, but he’d politely refused. He wanted to figure out his style of Spider-Manning on his own.

Also the Spider-Car was a little much.

Though, in the end, Miles had relented to the overwhelming power that was Aunt May and had taken some of the pieces that the Peter Parker of his universe had never gotten the chance to finish.  

“It’s a Spider-Cave, dude. Just go with it,” Ganke mocks. “Anyway, I was looking at this thing,” Ganke points at a square looking chip,” I think it was meant to be a kind of transmitter the original Spider-Man was gonna use and after messing around with it, I kinda had an idea of how to create an improved version that we could program into your mask. Which is… exactly what I’m doing? Sorry I messed around with this stuff without asking you first.”

It’s probably two in the afternoon, on a Saturday that Miles has all but slept away after getting his ass kicked, first by the biggest A-hole of the week, and now by whatever illness is evading his immune system, but somehow it feels like the best day ever.  

Ganke rattles on as Miles rolls his chair to his other side to inspect his mask which is now implanted with two incredibly small microchips. One where his mouth would be and the other by the ear.

“I figured we could implement a simple communicator in your suit first since - uh well - I don’t have to explain why you’d rather be hands free while crime fighting. But after that we could implement an interface - which I’m already working on right now - so you could check messages or crime radar, and access the internet without pulling out your phone. If you want you could try the mask on, see how it works. It’s easily removable if you don’t like it. So don’t freak or anything.”

Miles’ throat stings as he swallows before turning to his friend, his mask in his hands. “Ganke this… this is awesome. I- why’d you do all this- cause like, thank you, but-”

“I’m Spider-Man’s best friend.” Ganke smiles and Miles feels his throat close up. He remembers wandering this new school months ago, feeling like he didn’t belong and didn’t deserve what a random chance had gotten him. Now Ganke gives him shoulder a punch and Miles can barely remember a time where things weren’t like this.

“I gotta pull my own weight, as the loveable sidekick. Now gimme your phone and put on the mask and try it out! Just uh... try not to get phlegm on the chip.”

Miles and Ganke share a laugh while Miles turns the mask from inside out to slip over his head, though he pauses when just his hair is covered.

“So... why’d you need my laptop for all this? Is the program for the communicator on my stuff too?”  

“Oh, no. I just forgot my Netflix password. I needed to check my email to reset it.”

Miles squints behind his mask as it slips on. “Righhhhhht… and you just had to wake me up for that one.”

Through the lenses of his mask Miles watches as Ganke shrugs and clicks Miles’ phone into a wire the leads back to Ganke’s laptop. “You can be mad at me later, first, let's test this baby out.”

Also immediately after Ganke says that a robotic Siri like voice resounds from within the mask.

“You have one new voice message from—”

Miles nearly sends himself into a coughing fit, when he exclaims over the voice, “It works! I hear it!” He tenderly places a hand over his stomach that aches with his sudden movement. Though he doesn’t let it deter his excitement.

“Of course it works!” Ganke replies, watching his monitors as he does. “This is the easy stuff, now tell it to play the voicemail to test the microphone.”

“Got it. Uh… Spider-Siri, play that voice mess-”

He doesn’t have a chance to finish as Spider-Siri interrupts him.

“Incoming call from: Mom.”

“Oh no.”

+++

“Huh…?”

There’s a clink that barely resounds over the mindless babble of the TV as MJ’s fork slips from her fingers, nicks the side of her dinner bowl, and hits her carpet with a plop of spaghetti and sauce.

“Oh-!” She rips the blanket off her legs and scrambles to put her feet on the floor to reach the coffee table to place her bowl. With her hands free, and now sitting on the edge of the couch, she properly eyes the mess beside her toes. “Come on...” She complains, face scrunching as she inspects the red splotch of tomato chunks bleeding into her vanilla colored carpet. Though a wrinkled forehead is about all she gives it, her attention drifting upwards to the wall behind her television.

MJ inspects the unmoving, totally normal, dried paint that covers the wall of her living room. Her eyes start at the ceiling then move down until she hits the edge of her TV screen where the local news is running an exaggerated story on some new online app obsession.

She lets her eyes dart away from the screen to the left to check the window that leads out to her fire escape but finds nothing unusual. Only the glow of the city radiating from the dark of the night. She turns back to the wall.

She gives it such a critical eye that her head must be slowing tipping to the side. She quickly shoots up a hand to readjust her towel and stop it from flopping sideways off her head.

Now, if MJ were any other reasonable woman, she’d probably shrug her shoulders, tighten the belt around her bathrobe and chalk it up to the steam from her shower getting to her head, before going to the kitchen to grab some paper towels to wipe up the stain at her feet.

Instead, MJ shoots up from the couch and begins to inch towards the kitchen with her eyes never leaving the center of her living room and her hand feeling around blindly for her cell phone charging on the island counter, because the thing is she is absolutely a reasonable person.

But the definition of reasonable and logical change when you’re Spider-Man’s ex-wife.

So despite the unmoving, totally normal, dried paint on her wall, MJ reaches around her counter to grab her phone and lets her eyes fall to the screen after it unlocks so she can type in the number she had told herself not to dial until things felt more settled. Settled beyond a bouquet of flowers and only a week of coffee and conversation.

MJ’s thumb hovers over the call icon while her focus lingers on the contact name on her screen.

Pete.

She glances up to the wall. The completely normal, grey tinted, unmoving, wall.

There’s not a single hint of any bubbling, blistering, ultraviolet colors or swirling shapes which had puckered right above her TV before she had blinked and her fork had tumbled from her hand.

“Maybe this multiverse stuff is really getting to my head,” she mumbles, leaning back against her counter and pulling the towel from her head. The damp ends of her hair drop around the collar of her robe as she heaves a sigh, feeling like she could really use a glass, or maybe an entire bottle of wine.

But her bare feet remain stuck in place on her kitchen tile, making no move for the cabinet where she keeps her drinks, still only moving her eyes to peer up and watch the wall from across the room.

“I’ll call you-- or you call me-- or we can call each other-- or texting, texting is good too-”

“I’ll call you, Peter.”

“Really? I mean... okay, cool. Great. Yep. Sounds like a plan. You’ll call me.”

She stays put, thumb hanging loosely over her phone screen, mulling over her ex-husband's voice - which is a term that had first empowered her heart-break when their split up was fresh, but then it had festered and sat in her chest like something she could never fully move past until he’d shown up at her door, flowers in hand, and an endless, nearly unbelievable story to tell after months of silence. Their last conversation bounces around in her head. His tone jumping around like a nervous teenager, explaining multi-universes and spider-people and all the mistakes he wished he'd never made, which was a long and tiresome list, but it had still made her cry by the very end.

Maybe she’s tired, or maybe she needs glasses, or made a full glass of wine, and maybe her wall really is totally normal. Devoid of any superhero happenings and she’s just looking for an excuse to finally call.

MJ presses her lips together for a second, lets her thumb tap her phone to keep the screen from dimming, and decides that, whether it was a late night hallucination induced from stress or an actual space-time portal glitching into existence for a fraction of a second, in the end, she'd rather have Peter at her side.

That’s really all she’d rather have.

And that’s why she’s already hitting the call button, when it happens again.

She hits the speaker button purely by mistake, her phone slipping from her grip and spinning from her palm to the floor. The dial tone stutters at her feet, its sound splitting into several tones and resounding as if from several different phones at different corners of the room. MJ finds herself entranced and yet almost desperate to cover her ears. It's like she has two phones in her hand and she’s called one using the other, and now she’s stuck listening to the endless echo that each emit, all the while watching as the wall of her living room begins to spin.

Just above her TV, the grey paint that was still nearly a second ago is twirling with bubbling black circles that look less like spots and more like endless holes to some other side. MJ latches a hand along her kitchen counter and crouches down to clasp her phone, still ringing with its infinite dial tone. She remembers how Peter described the portal, how it had sucked him up like a vacuum and sent him careening into the other side. Another world.

There doesn’t seem to be any force pulling her away, but MJ doesn’t take a chance. She dives around the counter to brace herself against the other side. With her phone in hand and a kitchen island wall between her and the space-portal she clutches her phone and watches.

“Come on, Peter.” She mutters, tightening her grip around her phone. “Now would be a really good time to pick up.”

The hole - holes? There seems to be at least seven black blobs circling the first larger one - vibrates and almost seems to splinter. Shards of color, shapes, and symbols burst like rays of light from the thing, and then it twitches, jutting to the side, closer to her window and farther from her TV, where the local news has been showing a morphed picture of multiple different channels.

Over the alien noises whirling like an electrical wind from the moving portal, the mashup of twenty different news reports playing on her TV, and the gasp that bubbles from her own throat as the space-time spinning mess stretches over her entire front window, MJ can barely hear the voice that shouts from her phone.

“MJ?” The voice - Peter’s voice, she recognizes, despite how it stutters from the disturbance across the room- calls and MJ feels her entire body loosen with relief. “Are you there?”

“Peter! Oh thank God,” She starts, bringing the phone to her chin. “Something’s—!”

Her jaw feels like it drops to the edge of her robe, draped around her knees.

Almost like a bubble, the intergalactic, glitching computer virus black hole thing that had just been invading her living room and been turning her window into a Picasso painting, is suddenly gone.

As if it hit the end of a sharp stick and popped.

Mary Jane straightens up from where she's been hunkered between her cabinets. Her limbs feel like the limp noodles that are probably getting soggy on her carpet floor.

“What the-” she tries, spinning around to look at every corner of her room, but Peter cuts her off.

As does the metallic crash that blares from outside her window after MJ is absolutely sure she catches something solid fall in the corner of her eye.

MJ jumps and Peter keeps talking,  “—I’m not that far from your apartment! I can be there in fiv- four! I’ll be there in four minutes! Just— Whatever’s going on just wait for me to get there! Okay? MJ? MJ?!”

“Peter, I’m here, I’m alright,” she reassures him, hearing the desperation as well as the slight muffle to his voice that lets her know he’s already in the mask.

“Then- what’s going? What was all that noise in... the background?” He asks, huffing, and in the background of his call she can hear the signature noise of his webs shooting out in record time. “It sounded like- like it was bad. Are you sure you’re alright?”

MJ, with her bathrobe loosely tied around her waist, her wet bangs tickling her face, and her bare feet against the cold tile of her floor, begins to inch a little closer to the window across the room. “I promise I’m alright,” she says and hears him sigh. Unfortunately, she’s going to probably make his heart rate jump again. ”But, Peter, just now- and please try not to freak out.” She attempts to stand on her toes and peer over the windowsill to see anything besides the shadows of the late night outside. “You know that space- portal thing you told me about? The thing that brought you to the other world?”

“Of course I-” He begins, and she gives him a moment since it sounds like he’s putting it together. “Wait, w-why are you asking…?”

“Because I think it just opened up on my living room wall,” she answers, slinking closer to her window, though with enough caution for another possible space portal that she keeps a safe distance. “And I think... something may have just fallen out of it?” She ends, voice teetering on unsure and possibly frayed nerves. “How far away are you?”

“Less than two minutes away.” His voice sounds tense, she notes, like he’s straining himself to move faster than he should. “MJ, wherever the portal opened do not go near it. Wait somewhere safe until I get there, grab your taser just in case and-”

“Don’t worry, I’m being careful.” And she is. “I’m just trying to see…” She tries leaning as she moves to peek out the window.”…what fell outside.”

“Bad. Bad idea. Probably the worst and most bad idea that you-- Can you-” He grunts and it gives her enough time to steer clear of the window and anywhere near the TV as she walks across the room to her new destination, which is the second window of her living room. If she sticks her head outside, it should give her a clear view of the fire escape outside the window where she’s sure something crash landed from the inter-dimensional space hole. MJ moves with a careful pace as Peter complains, “Can we put a pause on this solo investigation until I get there? Please? Before I- I go into cardiac arrest?”

MJ steps to the window pane. Looking out the window she can clearly see the street below, outlined by the yellow glow of the street lights.

“I’ll put a pause if things seem out of hand. For now, I’m checking the fire escape to know what we may be getting ourselves into.” She focuses her hearing beyond Peter’s protests for any indication of what could have crash landed outside, then slides the window open. The knot of her bathrobe digs into her hip as she bends her upper body over the windowsill to crane her neck outside. She only has half her head out, with her wet hair twirling in the city wind when a small shuddering noise catches her attention.

“Mmsss… Parr...k?”

MJ’s head swivels to her right.

Her eyes blow open wide and she breathes out all the air in her lungs.

There, sprawled over her fire escape, and slightly propped up against the stone wall of her building beneath her window, is very clearly the basic outline of a costume she knows all too well.

“P-Peter?” MJ chokes out, not sure if she’s referring to hers or affirming if this stranger in a slightly familiar mask is actually not a stranger, but rather, in line with Peter’s story, another version of the man she knows. 

She takes in the red and black mix of the costume, and jolts when she notices the definite figure of what can only be a child underneath the costume as the mask turns, or rather rolls to face her with wide and white colored eyes. She can just barely tell in the light glowing from her apartment that his frame is trembling and she shoots a hand up to cover her mouth when she notices the sickening way his left arm is bent.

A Spider-Man is at her window.

Another Spider-Man.

MJ drops her phone.

Chapter Text

Brooklyn.  

6 hours ago.

“Miles…”

“Uh… sí?”

In the corner of his eye, Ganke snickers into the back of his hand.

“Are you getting sick? You sound a little congested...”

“What? No! I’m not-” Miles turns his face into his shoulder when his throat erupts with coughing. He tries to keep it contained and as quiet as possible until he finishes. “I’m not sick. Where’d you even-“ He coughs. “-get an idea like that.”

“Uh huh. You wanna try that answer again, mijo?” His mother asks and Miles can only imagine that she’s got a hand on her hip and an unimpressed look in her eyes. “And maybe tell me that you haven’t been sleeping less than three hours.”

The feeling of his own spit squished against his face is only slightly more jarring than the realization that he’s still taking the call with his mom inside of the mask. Also that she’s so easily figured him out.

That’s not really a surprise though.

Miles rolls up the bottom of the mask and attempts to gain Ganke’s attention - still glued to the audio frequency of the phone call on his laptop - as his mom goes on, “Now school’s important - your father would say the same thing - but you gotta take better care of yourself, honey.”

“Uh, yes, yeah, you’re totally right,” Miles answers a little louder than normal since the microphone is rolled up near his nose.

He also gives a sharp slap to Ganke’s shoulder.

“Ow! What the hell was that for!” Ganke exclaims, turning away from his screen and rubbing the assaulted area. His mom likely has the power to hear any sound that leaves his lips - even if there wasn’t a microphone on his nose - so Miles silently spells out to Ganke with his mouth and hand, what the hell that was for.  

Switch it back! He shouts in his head, pointing between the mask and his cell phone that’s sitting on Ganke’s laptop keyboard.

Ganke seems to take a hint and answers in a whisper.

“What! No!”

It’s a loud whisper and it’s not the answer Miles wants. Ganke must see that too based on whatever look is on Miles’ face - or half his face. The eyes of the mask express him well enough. “I mean, I can’t. Not yet. I’m configuring the microphone!”

“Do it later!” Miles hisses.

“There is no later!” Ganke hisses back, his glasses drooping. “I wanted to finish it before you went-- you know--- swoosh swoosh.” He makes the web shooting symbol twice for emphasizes and then fixes his glasses with the two stuck out fingers.

“That’s not even the right sound effect, dude.”

“Miles?” The sing song voice of his mother asks inside the mask. “Con quién hablas…?” Miles opens his mouth to answer feeling the the fear that can only come from his mother being ignored. “Oh! Is that Ganke?”

“Uh yeah. It’s Ganke - we’re actually…”

“Oh well you should invite him over for dinner! Tell him I'm making empanadillas again.”

“Sure, one sec, lemme ask him.”

His mom gives an “Okay!” and Miles takes that answer, rips his mask all the way off and holds it an arm’s-length away.

Ganke blinks at the mask and then at Miles.

“Uhhh… is this the part where you beat me up while your mom is still on the phone?” Ganke questions, squinting behind his glasses.

Miles ignores him and stifles a cough behind closed lips before saying, “How long is it gonna take? My mom wants me to come home for dinner - and I don’t think I can keep her waiting on the phone for an hour.”

Ganke’s eyebrows raise but he turns and gets right to work on his keyboard. “The microphone will only take a minute - I’m running a diagnostic and making it easier to switch between your phone and mask.” Ganke shoots him a look. Miles rolls his eyes. “But weren’t you staying here for the weekend? I thought you wanted to catch up on school stuff after catching up on,” Ganke puts a hand to his mouth and whispers, “Spider-Stuff, all Friday.”

“I was. But that was before I - ya know - woke up feeling like I got run-over by the Rhino, as you put it. I think I rather just... be in my own bed right now.”

“Not just feeling. You look like you got run over by the Rhino. That guy you fought must’ve been huge.” Ganke uses his hands for emphasis.

“Uh huh. Thanks, dude,” Miles says with a very thankful tone. Ganke drops Miles’ phone into his free hand.

“Okay, it’s done I switched it back so your Mom’s on the phone - now gimme the mask.”

“Gracias, Ganke." Miles sings. "Oh yeah-” He stops, palm over the speaker of the phone, but still hearing the voice of his mother now reverberating from it - “ ¡Este niño! ¡Miles!”  

“My mom wanted to know if you wanted to come over for dinner.”

Ganke looks up at him with wide eyes from where he’s likely cringing at the wad of spit Miles left all over the new microphone.

“Wait, really? I can come?”

“No.”

Ganke gives his classic bored expression that means: I am extremely close to ending this friendship .

He mutters under his breath, “The stuff I do for you, man, even after all this abuse. You’re lucky I couldn’t make it anyway cause I’m too busy working on cool stuff for you.”

“I guess it’s all good then,” Miles chuckles, bringing his phone to his ear. He nearly rips it away when his mother shouts his name into his aching head.

“Yeah! I’m here! I was just talking to Ganke.”

“¡Dios mío! How long does it take to ask a single question?!”

Hands are suddenly grabbing for Miles’ phone and Ganke is shouting into the receiver. “He’s lying Mrs. Morales! He just wants all those empanadas to himself!”

“No!” Miles yanks the phone back, sending pain to his chest and back, and sending Ganke spinning in his chair. “And you— you literally just said you couldn’t come!”

“But the principle, dude.”

Through the phone his mother laughs, “Well, I’m glad you two are having fun. But you tell Ganke next time he’s free he’s always welcome to come over. It’s probably better like this, for tonight, Miles- since you’re getting sick.”

“I’m not sick…” Miles mumbles, not really sure why he’s still putting up a fight.

“Uh huh. I’ll tell your father to pick you up on his break so you don’t have to walk home. He should be done in an hour.”

“In an hour?” Miles checks Ganke’s monitor and notes that in an hour it’ll be three in the afternoon. Usually he’d rather walk or swing home but today he has no problem curling up in the front seat of his dad’s police car and then crawling into his own bed, where he’ll probably stay until Monday. “Okay that’s--”

The back of Ganke’s hand slaps Miles’ shoulder.

“Ow?! Dude, what?” He yelps pulling his phone away, yet again. Sick or not, when he gets home his mom is gonna end him.

“You can’t leave in an hour! I need at least until five to finish implementing the basic interface. If you leave with the suit I’ll have to start all over again!”

“Then I’ll just leave it...” Miles begins, turning to the pieces of his costume around the room. His mask is in Ganke’s hands. His pants are on the bed. The shirt, gloves, and web shooters are in a pile on the floor. “...here,” he finishes.

He bites his lip.

He probably won’t be doing any Spider-Manning for the rest of the weekend. His torso is still swollen - back to front - and if the persisting ache, cough, and headache he has is anything to note, he is sick. Or getting there.

But if he leaves the mask and suit here…

Miles brings his phone back up to where his mother sighs, “You know. I’m not sure if this is worse than you hanging up on me.”

“Uh, Mom… actually…”

---

Turns out, Miles can’t bring himself to leave the mask.

He tells his mom not to call his dad, that he’ll be another three hours, and that he’ll text her when he’s on his way over.

It’s a decision he makes on his own and he follows it through with an excuse that he needs to stay at the dorms to help Ganke finish a project - though, thankfully, the only help Ganke needs is none. Miles decides to sleep until Ganke is done plugging and chugging whatever beta-program he’s adamant on adding to the mask.

(While Miles does drag himself back to bed looking like a corpse he actually is pretty excited to have some new tech inside the mask - it’s just hard to emote that when you’re feeling miserable).

The thing is, he could’ve left the mask. The suit. The gloves. The web shooters.

But he just can’t.

And even though no one’s there to ask - he has a feeling the others would do the same thing too.

There’s just too many what if’s about being Spider-Man and Miles knows he’d regret it if any one of those what if’s happened when he didn’t have the suit to do something about it.

Sick, injured, or not.

It’s his job now.

It’s this thought that sticks in his gut as he drifts off, back in bed, watching Ganke type away. The mask hanging on the corner of the laptop.

---

“Miles!”

“Wha- What? What is it? What’s on fire?”

“Dude, nothing’s on fire. I said it’s done … Also you’ve got a little... ” Ganke points to his own chin and it takes Miles a few seconds to realize there’s drool on his chin.

He drags himself up and out of bed after wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He scrubs his eyes and tries to clear his throat but neither really work.

His eyes still feel dry and his throat feels full of something thick, like Ganke had poured maple syrup down his throat while he was sleeping. Though, he isn’t full of aches and pains like earlier. Instead, his body feels a little numb. Like the heat of his bed is still stuck against his skin. It’s probably because he’s still waking up.

He tries to gauge how long its been since he crashed, but he comes up blank. Winter always throws him for a loop. While it can’t be too long since he fell asleep, outside the window, the sun is already gone. Nothing but darkness, marked with the colored glow of the city, fills the room.

“What time is it?” Miles groans, stretching his hands behind his head. His stomach and back don’t protest as much as they had before, he notes. Maybe the extra sleep was all he needed to finish healing the bruises from last night.

“It’s uh… six something. It took a little longer to finish installing everything and when I was done I tried to wake you but you were practically dead so... I just kept on working. I decided to add the positioning system in your suit while I had the chance.”

Miles shakes his head. “I told my mom we’d be done at 5,” he moans. “My phone’s probably exploding with texts.” Miles drags himself across the room to grab his phone that’s on the desk. It’s beside his mask which is on top of the other pieces of his costume - all of which have been nicely folded.

“Actually- it’s not,” Ganke corrects, popping into view. “Because your very best friend who just happens to know all your passwords sent your mom a text at five thirty that we’d been done at six. She said ‘no problema’ cause apparently your dad’s gonna be late too.”

Miles finds himself looking at his friend rather blankly.

“You’re welcome,” Ganke says, folding back into his usual spot in his desk chair and crossing his legs once they’re planted on the desk - his usual position. “Also, I put your laptop in your backpack. I finished watching that new episode of Dark Reflection on it and honestly? Nothing to write home about.”

Miles feels like he should be saying something - a thank you maybe? He’s at least been saved from a lecture once he gets home - or he should be doing something - like getting dressed? He’s still wearing the same T-shirt, sweatpants, and socks he’d fallen asleep in - but his brain has obviously been dipped into a pool that’s filled with static.

“Miles?”  

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Thanks, man.” Miles grabs for his mask and suit.  He holds up the mask in question before slipping it on. “You said it's done, right?”

He removes his shirt and pants and slips his costume on - as he does he startles a bit, noticing that the bruises on his stomach and back are almost entirely gone. Just a nap and his accelerated healing did the rest.

Ganke keeps talking.

“Yeah, it’s done. Still in the early stages but you should be able to take calls inside the mask-- which by the way, I fixed it so you can switch back to your phone by clicking a new option icon I added. Any problems in the mask won’t affect your phone so just switch it if there’s an issue. But besides that and just establishing the connection between your mask and my computer there’s also a way to track your location in-”

“That sounds awesome, Ganke,” Miles interrupts hooking on his web shooters before covering them with his gloves. “You’re the best best friend and you can text me all the details but I’m gonna go home and probably die.”

Ganke waves him off like he’s not annoyed at being interrupted. “Yeah I figured. No prob. I’ll explain it all Monday- just let me know if there’s any weird connection errors or audio issues. I’ll be monitoring the data from my laptop but you know... let me know if anything’s wonky.”

“Got it. Wonky,” Miles replies, his throat bubbling with a wet substance as he does. He looks over to his textbooks thrown about and his deflated backpack that’s standing upright on the floor because of the laptop inside. He grabs a change of clothes and sneakers to throw over his clothes when he gets home and stuffs it in the backpack. He throws it over his shoulder and then tucks his phone into the hidden pocket that lines the inside waist of his suit. He looks to Ganke. “And I can switch to my phone if it does go all wonky in my mask, right?”

“Pretty sure I did just say that, but yes. You can.” He adjusts his glasses, seemingly trying to inspect Miles through the mask. “You sure you should Spider-Man yourself home? You sound a little worse than you did before - and what about those bruises on your back?”

“It’s fine, actually,” Miles answers, moving to the window. Ganke swivels in his chair to follow. “I think my enhanced healing is doing its job again. Besides, I’ll feel a lot better once I’m home and I’ll get there a lot faster by swinging. Don’t worry dude, I’ll text you when I’m there.”

Ganke’s face scrunches a bit and Miles leans into his leg that’s bent up on the now open windowsill, ready to jump out into the cool night. The usual sharp cold wind feels rather nice as it dances past the spandex covering his skin.

“Just make sure you don’t try stopping any Rhino’s with crowbars tonight. Though… not too sure you’d do so hot against them even without a cold.”

Miles chuckles, then gives a small, final adjustment to his web shooter before shooting out a line to the building across the street.

“Yeah, I don’t plan on any rhino hunting tonight. I’m going straight home.” Miles goes to lunge out the window but pauses.

“Thanks for everything, Ganke - see ya Monday.”

He’s out the window with a little wave and the call of Ganke telling him to feel better already getting lost in the wind.

---

Miles makes it maybe three blocks before he recognizes that something's weird.

Not wrong. Just weird.

Usually when he’s web swinging he’s aware of everything around him. The people walking and talking below, the details of the rooms inside the buildings he zips by, the smells and sounds of Brooklyn lighting up around him - all for him to pick and choose what to focus on.

If there’s a muffled cry for help - he’ll hear it. A distant fire just starting - he’ll smell it. A small but rapidly approaching sense of danger - he’ll sense it and hopefully dodge it. That’s how it usually is. Even when he takes a beating, his head is always sharp.

Now, Miles throws web-line after web-line and realizes he hasn’t been keeping track. The Brooklyn of sharp, clear colors, sounds, and smells is filtering strangely through his head.

It makes things... weird.

He feels like a track of music that just keeps restarting after the first two beats. Whenever he tries to focus, things go blurry, and he has to try again. The world is muffled by a sea of cotton that Miles can’t see, but swears his head is telling him is there. It makes it hard to do anything but follow the momentum of each swing as if he’s in a trance.

Probably because web-slinging has become like second nature next to walking - he could do it in his sleep let alone in a sea of cotton. A very warm sea of cotton that may not be covering the city and may actually be an extra layer between his suit and skin.

It’s not comfortable, yet there’s something about this sensation that makes Miles want to stop and lie down right now in midair.

His hand releases his thread and he starts to descend from where he’s been sailing over the rooftops. The brisk winter air ripples along his suit as he dives downward, and like when he'd been at the open window in his dorm room, it feels refreshing like it never has in the last month he’s been out patrolling. For the first time he’s not shivering his butt off from the cold.

It’s also a good enough wake up call that has Miles blinking a couple times behind the lenses of his mask and shaking his head before he lets out a yelp.

He shoots a web out right before he goes head first into a traffic light and then the ground.

He sails upwards again and then jumps off at the end of his thread to land atop a nearby building where he doesn’t really stick the landing. He sort of falls apart like limp noodles the moment he makes impact.

It takes him a few seconds of lying on his back, staring at the pitch black sky, to even consider standing up.

He gets to his feet, his body fighting gravity like he’s got an extra ton of weight to carry. Once upright he puts a hand to his masked forehead. It feels like the warm layer cotton now has a layer of needles jamming against his head.

“Man, I feel like crap.”

Saying it, before he can really think about it, somehow makes it better understood in his pounding head. This must be the earlier headache finally waking up and remembering it has a job in torture to do.

Ganke was right, Miles thinks, rubbing his palm roughly against his lens. I shouldn’t have swung home. He wobbles over to a nearby pipe sticking out of the rooftop by the edge and leans against it, trying to ground himself, as he realizes that web-swinging - for maybe the first time - has actually made him a little queasy. This is a night full of firsts.

He starts to wonder if maybe he should have left the suit and let his dad take him home.

Which is exactly when a bit of cotton clears from his senses and a what-if Spider-Man scenario occurs.

Peering over the edge of the building Miles almost bites his tongue when he recognizes that he’s across the street from the apartment complex building from the night before. The 5th floor window that he’d been tossed out of is still in pieces, though no glass is littering the sidewalk - he thinks - it’s hard to really tell when the sidewalk is a blur. But what’s not a blur is the car that parks parallel to the sidewalk, only for a very familiar asshole to step out of the driver’s door and head to the building door. The very same asshole who tossed Miles out of that broken window.

Miles perches with his hands on his feet on the building’s ledge and watches.

“What are you doing?” Miles asks - coughs - his throat tight in the cold air.

Señor Ass, as Miles has now decided to call him, messes with the front door for a little while before stepping back and looking around the rather lonely street. There may be furniture or other stuff left inside the apartment but Miles gets the sense this guy isn’t after that. There’s a sense of dread in his chest then. He hopes that lady from the night before hadn’t come back to this place and that she had somewhere else to go.

While Miles is stuck on that thought, Señor Ass dashes back into the car which squeals and takes off down the street.

“What the-?!”

Miles jumps to his feet, throws his backpack down, webs it to the roof, and does the only thing he can think of.

He goes after the runaway car.

---

Miles thanks the architects of the city that there’s enough level rooftops that he can run across to follow the speeding car. Along with the occasionally web-zip to follow the random dangerous turns the car makes, he almost entirely avoids swinging until he makes it to Señor Ass’ destination. Miles finds a tall light post to land on as the car pulls into a familiar parking lot.

It’s an unpleasant coincidence but it just so happens that the parking lot Miles finds himself looking down upon is the same one he’d nearly been beaten into mush in a month prior by a car thief who liked to bat around his trusty crowbar.

The lot also happens to be next to the East River and Miles recalls that it has something to do with boats? He’s not sure - his brain is fuzzy - but he’s also sure it doesn’t really matter.

The guy Miles is dealing with is bad news. Boats or no boats. Best to web him up, ignore the bad memories here, and be done.

Ahead is a large warehouse - possibly for boats, if Miles’ original hunch that doesn’t matter is right - so he takes the chance to jump to its roof when Señor Ass parks his car in front of it and gets out. Miles crawls with slightly poor coordination to the edge where he sees something that nearly makes his eyes fall out of his head and plop into his mask.

Señor Ass walks out from the driver's side while out from the passenger door steps the one and only guy who dislocated Miles’ shoulder with a crowbar in this very parking lot.

Both were obviously bad guys, but never did Miles get a hint that they were bad guy buds. Or that they had any relation besides both beating him up.

His Spider-Sense isn’t buzzing but his Miles-Sense is and it’s saying this is bad. This may be the time to pack it up and call it a night.

But this also stinks of an evil plan.

The first evil plan of his Spider-Man career Miles notes - minus kingpin and the collider because that was a team effort started by the original Peter Parker. This would be his first solely stopped evil plan.

Miles also notes, as he moves as quietly as a thirteen year-old with spider-powers can to follow both bad guys inside when the warehouse doors open - that he’s shivering.

Señor Ass and Crowbar - he’s tired and not feeling as funny as before so he keeps it simple - move ahead and Miles moves onto a steel beam that runs across the building just below the ceiling.

He positions himself flat on the beam so if anyone does look up they’ll barely see the black outline of his suit. He peers down to see both men approaching a figure standing in a small amount of light. With Miles’ buffering brain it makes it hard to focus on the face but when it’s clear he nearly faints.

The yellowish hair and white ashen skin poking out of a perfectly tailored suit are all there. The only thing missing is it all standing next to the enormous wall that is the Kingpin.

Tombstone, Miles recalls. But he’s supposed to be in prison?!

Not to mention that Crowbar had been arrested only a month ago and was now out and about.

Definitely the smell of an evil plan.

Miles inches further down the beam hoping to get a better ear into their conversation. The three men speak in a low murmur.

“...we brought a friend too,” he hears, Señor Ass, say.

A friend?

Miles leans backwards wondering if he should check the car for anyone brought against their will. He thinks of the nice lady that looked like his mom and prays that she’s not the one they mean.

It’s enough of a distraction in his thoughts that he almost doesn’t catch Crowbar’s thumb tilting up twice to the ceiling.

To exactly where he is.

“Hmmm, well. That’s fine,” Tombstone hums, then snaps his fingers. “The more-“

Miles’ head blares.

“-the merrier!”

A piece of a wall comes sailing out of nowhere at his face. Miles flails and slips out of the way to avoid the weaponized concrete, though he's not too sure it's worth it with the painful way he hits the ground.

“Tombstone!?” Miles croaks, shakily getting to his feet and striking a better fighting pose. His head is spinning from the landing but also for a reason as to why he didn’t think to go invisible. “Shouldn’t you be in prison?”

Tombstone steps forward as Crowbar and Señor Ass move to the side for him to pass. The man chuckles and in the shadows of the building two more men appear - none of which Miles has seen before, one of which is very large with another piece of concrete in his hand. They’re swarming him. Miles shudders. His spider-sense buzzes as another guy appears behind him to block the warehouse door. Suddenly Tombstone seems less like one of Kingpin’s sidekicks and more like a Kingpin clone.

“Guess you’re still new to how things work around here, huh?” Tombstone rumbles, hands now in his pockets. “You see prison doesn’t really stick for us the way walls do for you, Spider-kid-- Or don’t. You losing your grip, kid? Quite a nasty spill you took just now."

“Haha,” Miles mocks, “Very funny.” He shoots a glob of web at Tombstone’s face which the man catches and then wipes on Crowbar’s shirt. Though Miles didn’t expect it to work. He tenses his legs and ready’s his other hand for a different kind of web attack.

“But it’s Spider-Man,” Miles corrects. “And I think you just didn’t stick with prison long enough to realize that it’s actually the perfect place for guys like you. Kinda like how anywhere but here is the place for me.”

With that Miles let’s his hand fly backwards and webs the guy guarding the door right in the face, clearing a path for escape. Maybe it’s a little cowardly to come all the way here and decide he’s in over his head but-

He’s in over his head.

Especially because his head is spinning.

It’s why, when he runs forward and jumps over the web-faced guardsman - dropping the guy with a tasteful venom strike - Miles lands on his knees, feeling like he was the one who got hit with an electric shock. It’s a dizzying enough feeling that he can’t move fast enough to avoid whatever his spider-sense is warning him about.

He knows the feeling as Señor Ass’s foot as it imprints on is spine but it doesn’t stop there. Miles goes down face first into the ground hard and long enough that he can feel his lip split just before a hand is grabbing his arm and sending him careening back onto the concrete of the warehouse floor. It hurts, but not as bad as it would have if his back and stomach hadn’t finished healing in the last few hours.

Miles stumbles up onto his hands and knees in time to see the approaching face of Señor Ass, looking just as pissed as he did the previous night - or actually, it was just this morning, wasn’t it?

“Y-ya know, is it just me or are you having d-déjà vu too?”

Miles wheezes in after getting his whole retort out. He tries to hold back a cough but it breaks free in little pieces and flutters through his mask. The warm cotton that had been numbing his body has been replaced with sharp pins and what must be molten lava.

In front of him the rest of Tombstone’s men begin to circle him, leaving their unconscious friend face down at the warehouse door. Not counting Tombstone - four to go.

“Not sounding so hot there, Spidey,” the voice of Crowbar snickers, just as grating and whiny as ever. “But that just makes it all the easier for us.” And low and behold he pulls a crowbar from his belt. Miles holds himself up on his knees and feels proud that he doesn’t whine at the sight.

He turns around when his head throbs and Tombstone struts a few steps forward.

“You should’ve left well enough alone and not gotten involved in my work, Spider-Man. I’m moving up in the world. I can’t have an inexperienced hero getting in my way after finally breaking from the bonds of Mr. Fisk.” His hands come out of his pockets to crack his knuckles, but then slip back in. “Things are hard enough with the police on me - but then you gotta go and put my two favorite boys on their radar too. In the same damn month- well, I just can’t have that,” Tombstone states like he’s reading Miles his final rights. Then he turns and heads towards the back of the warehouse. “I trust that you boys can take care of this while I finish things up. Don’t you two disappoint me like you did last time,” he orders, clearly talking to Señor Ass and Crowbar who inch closer to Miles and his trembling limbs.  

Miles clenches his jaw and tightens his fists.

Tombstone’s men are circling in, but he stops and turns half-way to add, “Don’t take it personally, kid. I’m sure the first Spidey didn’t when we crushed his ribs in. You’re just…”

Only five to go.

“An eyesore.”

Miles jumps in the air, shoots a web line out to Tombstone’s back, and lets himself disappear.

+++

Manhattan.

Present time.

Miles finds himself still looking across the way even when the strands of red hair blowing in the wind disappear back from window they first popped out from.

His eyes lose focus on that spot as he tries to keep breathing. His mind stuck on images of red hair and holes in his memory.

Because out of all of Miles’ memories of Peter, the one that strikes him as the clearest is still the way the man had held himself over the photo of his alternate universe self’s wife. It also seems to be the clearest of any memory in his head. Miles recalls that he hadn’t been able see that well over the man’s frame but he’d recognized the red hair and pale face in the photograph.

He remembers feeling for him at the time. A sort of, ‘poor guy’, kind of thing.

But later, after he had experienced his own loss - felt it slam against him when a familiar face emerged from beneath the Prowler’s mask and nearly shatter him when he’d crouched over the dying form of his Uncle in an alleyway he still found himself avoiding whether on foot or in web shooters - he reflected back on Peter’s pain and felt that he better understood the man’s loneliness a little better.

He also felt a little more confident about what was probably so special about Mary Jane Parker -  Parker-Watson? He doesn’t know.

But he does know, that’s the woman he just saw.

As to which one… he’s not sure.

(Either way he probably got her name wrong)

Back when he’d hidden under the thin fabric of a cheap Spider-Man mask, stood in a crowd of thousands of mourning New Yorkers, tried to make sense of the responsibility the original Spidey had left to him as a dying wish - he’d let her words wash over him and be an early call to strength and action - he couldn’t help but feel like there was something about the woman that had given him his first push to act in the mask.

If the Mary Jane in Peter’s universe was anything like the Mary Jane from Miles’ universe... well, it explained the man’s annoying reluctance to jump back in the collider and return to a possible life without her.

But then again - thinking back to the way Peter had held that picture full of red hair and the way he dragged himself around like all hope was lost - maybe that’s just how it was when you lost someone you loved.

Be it your wife, your uncle, your friend, your husband-

There’s an intense dizzying feeling in Miles’ head and it’s not the one that he had before. That had be thundering pain. This is something sharp and sad as though his brain has wandered out of his head and has gotten lost wondering how that Mary Jane - the one of his universe - is doing.

She’d seemed so strong before the crowd but maybe she was like Peter. Maybe if someone gave her the opportunity to stay behind and blow up a collider she’d forget how many people she still had left who loved her and needed her around. People like Miles and Aunt May maybe.

Miles’ head falls against the rough texture of the brick wall behind him and surrenders to the shivering of his body, remembering how the bricks had felt beneath his hands when he’d scurried up and away from Uncle Aaron’s still body - but not nearly far enough to escape his grief.

But Miles had Peter and Gwen and Peni and Noir and Ham and his Mom and Dad.

Above him - or behind him, it’s hard to tell direction when he’s not on solid ground - there’s a screeching sound like the kind his dorm window makes every time he tries to sneak inside or out.

Though maybe the sound comes from him as tries to move his arm.

He’s trying to stay awake but its hard, and getting harder. His head is thumping like he’s shaking it back and forth like a spray paint can, and his arm - Miles can’t bring himself to look at it. The feeling of a second elbow tells him well enough how bad it is and-- maybe he's dying and that's why his thoughts are a mess? Maybe this is how his Peter felt as he died? Or maybe he should visit Mary Jane?

Maybe as Spider-man or maybe as just Miles. As someone who knew what happened and could offer… well he’s not sure what he could offer.

He just knows that if he were in her shoes - if he had curly red hair twirling in the dim light in front of a backdrop of a blurring New York night - if it had been anyone he’d loved - he’d appreciate someone dropping by.

He’s not sure why he thinks all this. He's not sure why he thinks of the shaking shoulders of the woman he helped hours before. He just hates the idea of anyone lonely and sad.

He startles when a hand reaches from his imagined vision of Ms. Parker - or just Mary Jane - and brushes against his mask.

He moans when he moves away, the movement ripping through him like another aftershock of the earthquake he’s just lived through. He tips over toward the grated metal under his legs until he’s saved - wrapped up and then slowly turned so he’s lying on his back.

Which is a way better position than the slouched over pile he’d landed in.

And that’s right. He had landed somewhere.

Through somewhat blurred edges in his vision, Mary Jane kneels beside him.

“It’s alright,” she tells him. “You’re safe.”

Maybe he’s the one who was lonely and sad.

He sees her palm approach and this time when she cups his cheek he doesn’t flinch. He’s still safe behind his mask - but the no-no rule of the mask probably doesn’t apply when Spider-Man’s wife is the one who’s here - and his skin is bubbling from the heat that’s trapped inside the spandex chamber.

He lets the weight of his head fall into the cool relief of Mary Jane’s touch.  

“You’re- you’re from another universe aren’t you?” She asks, and Miles has to open his eyes again to see her peering down into his. He didn’t realize his eyes had even closed. “Do you-” she hesitates, or maybe Miles’ brain just freezes. “Do you know Peter?”

The bottom half of his body is becoming pleasantly numb again. His second elbow no longer screaming through his nervous system and the dark edges of his vision are spreading over most of his view as if someone who’s been spraying black paint over his body is now approaching his face with the can.

Mary Jane , the thought occurs to him, his head just barely putting two and two together. It feels like he’s suddenly remembering falling through the ground and landing on a fire escape when he doesn’t even remember forgetting. Though the other details of what happened are less defined.

This probably isn’t his universe. This probably isn’t the Mary Jane who stood before him and shared her loss with the entire city. This is the Mary Jane. Miles can see her smile lines and the forehead lines, through her bangs - the kind he had recently started to recognize as age on his own mother’s face - detailing her freckled skin.

He feels like he’s back in the Spider-shed, looking at Peter’s back and watching it fold over the photograph of a younger woman with red hair, who Miles has already seen.

This woman is different. She’s older, sadder, beautiful, and somehow so much like his mom.

Peter’s Mary Jane, Miles thinks then. The thought becoming a slushy possibility in his burning, liquefying head.  

He tries to raise his good hand - the one with only one elbow - to ask a question. But he hasn’t really thought of one, his mind drifting away and only coming back from the sharp stabs of pain lighting up like sparks over his skin. It sets his throat into a storm that’s trying to tear up his insides. He sputters into a coughing fit to find relief.

“Shhh, shhh, it’s okay, don’t move yet-”

“ ‘m-Milesss,” he stutters out through the coughing. “I- I’m-

Mary Jane stiffens, the arms holding him steady twitching against him. He feels her pulling him into her lap.

“Wait- you said, Miles ?”

The coughing won’t stop and the mask protecting his face - the one that just lost its one true purpose - is actively trying to suffocate him. He reaches for its seam but he can’t get far enough to reach it before he drops his wrist.

He almost starts to cry when Mary Jane catches the hint and pulls the mask up, leaving just the top of his head covered.

“H-hey,” he wheezes, now seeing the woman who’s cradling him with new clarity. He can’t reach her shoulder - which was his instinct but he’s not sure why? - so he sort of lets his fingers grip the soft fabric of her robe. It feels nice. Like the kind of pajamas his mom sometimes wears which always made it better when she captured him in a hug, no matter how much he complained that he had somewhere to go.

“Hi,” she replies, her jaw tightening with a grimace and a little grin before she adds, “Peter talked a lot about you.”

It’s one sentence that tells Miles everything he needs to know.

The relief of absolute certainty of where he is and who he’s with reminds him of rushing into the embrace of both his parents - knowing that no matter what had happened and would happen -  he’s safe. He’s not alone.

He’s in Peter’s world.

It’s the last thing he thinks before another familiar voice breaks over the little noises coming from Miles' mouth as something wet drips down his cheek from the corner of his eye.

“MARY JANE!!”

Chapter Text

The phone echoes with a gasp, his name, a whip of wind, and then a crash.

Peter stops going fast.

He accelerates himself into oblivion.  

Spider-Man probably looks more like a streak of light from the ground than ever before. Peter throws himself over the rooftop of every building between him and MJ’s apartment - their old apartment - the next line of webbing thrown out before he even detaches the previous one. He finds the movement immediately too slow. He lets himself shoot down to the rooftop of one building, jumping out of his fall to roll and then sprint and flip over the air conditioning units and pipes that block his way. He shoves his phone into his belt to use his other hand for slicing through the wind as he runs.

He’d said two minutes - now it needs to be barely one.

He reaches the edge and throws two web lines out from each wrist. Another row of buildings and he’ll be at MJ’s place - he doesn’t have the time or leisure to simply web-zip his way there.

The two threads attach to the edge of the buildings ahead and Peter pulls back before letting go and catapulting himself forward. He sails into the sky and sees the concrete top of MJ’s apartment building.

Ever since he’d come out of his divorcee stupor - after he’d come sailing out of the portal that had brought him home with a new sense of who Peter Parker and Spider-Man were supposed to be - he’d been getting out more.  

And with Spider-Man a little more active and a little less depression-eating in his shower, the supervillains and everyday crooks had been popping up a little more than usual. He had a headache and more than a few complaints about it at that time.

Now he’s not complaining.

As he spins in midair, ready to shoot out the final web-line before he can land at MJ’s window - where she’d apparently heard a very bad, very loud, very giving him a lot of anxiety right now, which is probably bad for his health and raising his probability of hair loss, kind of noise - his joints don’t ache like usual.

His back is free of cracks and he may even be moving faster through the air than usual now that he’s tightened up his abdomen. He can thank the recent fight with Electro for that.

He doesn’t know exactly what he’s flying into - not that he ever really knows. Perks of the job. But whatever it is he’s glad he’s got a little more muscle this time. He’s expecting something relating to the multi-dimensional. MJ said she saw a portal and he doesn’t doubt it.

The question is: what fell out of it?

(Even though he hasn’t heard a peep from any of his spider-pals, he’s not worried about the Kingpin or his goons coming through. He knows that Miles beat that walking tank of evil and won - destroying the collider for good.)

But maybe it appeared again from some new, unknown source and sucked MJ away into who knows where-

No. Bad thought. Get outta here.

Peter’s suit ripples through the air and his eyes squint beneath the mask as MJ’s brick apartment wall comes into view.

At worst, there’s an inter-dimensional monster or goon. Or a ‘relating to his own dimension’ monster or goon - and both of those Mary Jane Watson can handle. Her hand to hand combat would keep her safe during his one minute delay, especially if she has her taser.

Peter tightens his leg muscles and prepares to land at the wall beside MJ’s fire escape that he can now see taking shape in the bit of light from the building windows. His spider-sense stays silent - which is a good sign - as he follows the force of the web-line in his hand. The closer he gets the better he can see the definite outline of the red head he knows and loves - an even better sign.

The city’s constant light and his heightened senses still aren’t enough to tell what’s going on. When Peter’s feet hit the edge of the roof across the street from MJ’s, he can only see the shape of her back that’s crouched down on the floor of the fire escape. He leaps across the street and shouts.

“MARY JANE!!!”

Her head whips up and finds him.

He flies sideways through the air but he swears they catch each other’s eyes until he plants himself on all fours against the wall, just beside the window where’s she’s crouched.

Peter doesn’t realize he’s out of breath until he tries to talk.

“Y-you okay?!” He pants, checking her face before sucking in as much air as he can. “The phone went dead. I thought something happened?! Like something portal, goon, or monsteroon related. ” He looks over her head and finds none of those three things.

MJ’s in a white bathrobe and her hair is frizzing at the ends with her bangs not as perfect as they usually are, but she’s fine. Besides the distressed look she’s giving him, there’s not a scratch on her.

“I dropped my phone,” MJ says, eyes darting to the sidewalk below them, which okay, answers one question, but now he has another.

He crawls closer to ask why she dropped the phone and what her gasp of terror was all about but then she’s looking down to her lap again like she’d originally been, before he'd shouted for her.

“Peter…” MJ begins, looking up at him again, and he’s not sure he’s ever seen her look so unsure in his life - and there’s been a lot of unsureness in their lives. She leans back as if trying to show him something.

His hands go to reach down to grab the metal bar of the fence around the fire escape - the one him and MJ had paid to have installed years before when he’d realized it paid to have a place to collapse on when supervillains beat the ever living snot out of you and into your mask which your wife - now ex-wife - had to then clean out after more easily dragging you through the window from the fire escape, compared to if you had fallen on the road below - when he feels it.

Of all the things he expects, it is not the vibrating signal in his skull that makes his eye only twitch because after a week of it he’d grown accustomed to the alerting sense of other people just like him.

He doesn’t try to say another word as he pulls himself to perch on the fence and MJ says, “It’s alright, it’s alright it’s just—” And then doesn’t finish.

She tries to reach out to pull him down next to her but he’s already moving before she can, coming down to kneel beside her and grab some part of the figure that’s sprawled in her lap after he pushes up his mask. He goes for the arm and then notices the sickening way it’s bent - an obvious break in the forearm. An injury he’s had countless times yet has never twisted his stomach the way it does now.

Peter swallows and puts his hands on the floor - fingers slotting through and gripping the metal grate -  his eyes wander up, catching a pair of half-lidded ones widening as they find his.

“Miles…?” Peter asks, his hand moving again, unable to stay on the floor and do nothing. He feels fingers wrap around his elbow when he reaches up.

MJ, he thinks.

Her touch is a lifeline grounding him as he molds his palm around the side of the kid’s bruised face because the next thing Peter thinks is: hot.

Even through his costume gloves he can feel heat radiating from Miles’ skin as if he’s just stuck his hand in the toaster again and not rested it against Miles’ cheek.

MJ must notice a reaction of some kind from him - maybe his lip is quivering or his jaw is tensing - because her fingers squeeze around his arm. “He’s got a fever - and a nasty cough too,” she says softly, like she doesn’t really want the kid to hear.

Which Peter appreciates - though with the blown whites of Miles’ eyes concentrated on nothing else but Peter’s face, on top of the way the kid’s entire frame is trembling - he’s not sure Miles is living, much less listening, in real time. It’s like he’s still frozen in the moment Peter appeared. Actually, maybe Peter’s the one moving in slow motion. He’s still stuck in the moment - on the very fact that - he met Miles’ eyes.

A part of him - the gaping depressed, pessimistic part of him - didn’t really think he’d be seeing them again.

He takes note of MJ’s details, but doesn’t answer. Instead he looks to Miles and asks, “Miles… bud, what’re you doing here? What happened?” His voice dips into croaking urgency at the end.

Miles looks at him all wide-eyed and lost. He shifts up a bit in MJ’s lap like he’s trying to move towards Peter which is not a good idea considering the bruising, bloody lip, broken arm, and blatant symptoms of the flu - Peter would know, he’s had the exact same combination before. The only exception being that he also had a poison sting from the Scorpion’s tail at the time - he really hopes Miles had been spared from that.

He wishes the kid could have been spared from all of this.

Peter moves to push him lightly back down - discourage any sudden movement -  but doesn’t get the chance to get a hand or word out.

Miles falls backwards - limp in his and MJ’s arms.

“Whoa! Miles!” Peter calls out, slipping his hand quickly below Miles’ drooping neck. “Kiddo! Hey!” He hears MJ exclaim something beside him as well. She reaches forward and grabs Miles by a shoulder, trying to rouse him.

Miles remains still.

“Wha- what the— what happened?” Peter breathes out in little broken pieces while MJ puts a hand beneath the kid’s nose. His heightened senses tell him Miles is still breathing - though hitched and uneven - which means his heart is still beating, which also means that for the moment Miles isn’t sending him into cardiac arrest. Though he still finds his pulse settling down when MJ pulls back with a slightly less terrified expression.

(He really needs to find himself a cardiologist at the rate his life is going)

“He’s breathing so it’s probably just exhaustion, or the fever,” MJ explains and at the mention of a fever, at the back of Miles’ neck, where Peter’s gloved palm is resting, he realizes heat is building up. He reaches up his free hand and pulls the glove of his costume off with his teeth and stuffs it in his belt before pressing his hand to the kid’s forehead for a better gauge of what their dealing with.

His heart stutters at the temperature of Miles’ skin and yep, okay, he’s definitely entering areas of a heart attack now.

He’s never been sure how hot is too hot for people. He doesn’t get sick very often and the times he’s had a fever he was either too busy superheroing or too busy being unconscious to take note of it. Even when they were together, MJ wasn’t one to succumb to the common cold, and the one time she did, it was a low grade fever that Peter barely noticed when he touched her skin.

But this-

Peter yanks his hand away, shaking it back in forth in the air, while he chokes on a distressing noise that he thinks is meant to be a curse. MJ moves forward again at his reaction, touching Miles’ cheek and then forehead. She lets out a hiss.

“Okay, yeah.” Peter agrees, watching as MJ gently pulls Miles’ mask off the top of his head The kid’s really burning up. He’s practically on fire. And--”

“And he’s not sweating,” MJ finishes, the black and red mask clenched in her hands. “It’s getting worse.”

Peter feels his blood pressure rising.

“But a fever we can deal with,” MJ interjects, again, her voice bringing Peter back to attention. He looks to her and sees the same fear he feels crawling under his own skin on her face, but circling around in the dark color of her eyes is also the familiar strength that, despite his powers, only she seems to have. “At worst he’s sick with a broken arm but it’s noth-- oh-!”

She slips a bit when trying to get her hands under Miles - one still holding the crumpled mask - so Peter keeps Miles weight steady as she helps move him entirely into Peter’s arms.

“But it’s--” Peter sucks in a breath along with MJ as they carefully move the injured arm to lay over the spider emblem on Miles’ chest. The kid’s eyelids flicker but not much else.

MJ sighs and then straightens up on her knees. “It’s nothing we haven’t handled before.”

She gives a small reassuring smile and then moves down to Miles’ legs which she bends in quick, smooth motions. “Now-- you know the drill. Check if he has any bleeding or-- or any other injuries besides his arm.”

“Right,” Peter says, shifting Miles’ weight to hold the kid a little closer to his chest. “I mean...right…”

The kid in his arms is shaking. His skin searing at the touch and mouth parted, panting small white puffs into the air of this brisk winter night, sounding like there’s something thick stuck in his throat that he can’t dispel, only shudder when it steals a breath from him. Seeing Miles like this - Peter can barely bring himself to check the kid’s limbs for anything else out of skeletal-place, even when he’s dealt with more serious injuries than this himself.

Hell, MJ and him have dealt with his injuries together - probably more than he’d dealt with them alone - and most of them had been far worse than a clean break on the forearm paired with the flu - or what Peter hopes is the flu and not Scorpion poison related. He’s really, really hoping the kid isn’t suffering from that. Though, as Peter inspects Miles - taking in the swollen and bloodied bottom lip, the bruises scattered around the kid’s eye and chin - it seems likely that the kid got the typical damage of a bad Spider-Man beating while already down with the flu.

So no. It’s nothing Peter hasn’t dealt with before.

Somehow knowing all that doesn’t make things feel any less dire.

Peter swallows and holds Miles a little tighter, afraid he’ll drop him, hurt him, or make things worse. He’s probably the wrong person to even be holding this kid. He’s the kid’s friend - not his father, not his uncle. He’s none of those things. He’s not even a husband anymore.

He can save people, sure. It’s the little stuff - the important stuff - that he’ll screw up.

That’s what this could one day be. That’s what this is . This is exactly what he’s still terrified to do.

He thought he was ready but clearly he’s not.

“Peter.”

The white bathrobe has loosened at her waist, her forehead is creased behind her bangs and her hair is frizzing even more than when he first arrived, yet MJ is still radiating a sense of steady calm as she places a hand, with a mask in its grip, over his that’s clenched around the material at Miles’ collarbone.

“But, what then?” He croaks, throat tight and heart thrusting from his chest as the question slips out instead of anything else he’d possibly like to say.

I’m sorry.

Even after everything.

I’m still scared.

MJ helps him stand with Miles dangling like a giant soggy pizza in his arms like he’s a plate with wobbly legs - a very scared, very out of his element, very obviously the equivalent of a two dollar plastic Spider-Man themed plate that she probably deserves better than even after all the pep talk he’d given himself when he got home. Even after he took the first step and brought flowers to her door.

“Then we get him inside. Put him on my couch. And deal with this together. Okay?”

He stands there with a thirteen-year-old kid draped across his arms while MJ pushes open her window as wide as it can go before she turns to him and offers him a hand and he feels like it’s a year ago. There’s no kid in his arms, only a canyon sized space between them as he sits on the edge of their bed while she offers one more chance for them to be a team again.

“Okay?”

Miles isn’t heavy in his arms. With spider-strength nothing is ever really heavy. But the burning temperature of Miles’ skin, the crooked break in his arm, and the whimper that bleeds from him as Peter leans forward is.

A year ago, the mere thought of this - something like this - cost him everything. The thought that he couldn’t handle something like this alone.

Miles isn’t even his kid. How can he—

MJ stands across from him, bathrobe fluttering, window open - waiting.

Maybe a year ago he would’ve frozen, thrown in the towel, fled - terrified he’d mess everything up again.

But it’s not. He’s not.

It’s not a year ago. He’s not alone and Miles’ isn’t his kid.

But he’s pretty damn close.

And unconscious or not - if Peter doesn’t take this leap now - he’s sure Miles will have something to say about it when he wakes up.

And terrified or not, for that to happen, he’s gotta let go.

“Okay,” Peter agrees, stepping forward, directly into the warm glow of MJ’s window.  “You’re right. This is nothing the Spidey first-aid squad hasn’t handled before.”

Peter’s eyes well a bit at the relief that spreads across MJ’s face in the form of a smile.

“It helps that you’ve upgraded from patient to actual squad member, now,” she says with a breathy laugh, climbing through the window. She holds it open as he steps towards it and keeps it out of the way as he begins sliding himself and Miles through.

Peter startles though, just as he’s begun carefully maneuvering Miles’ head through the window and into MJ’s arms, when under her breath with her lips incredibly close to his face - far closer than they’ve been in an eternity - and a guiding hand over his own at Miles’ back whispers so lightly that he almost misses it.

“I’m glad you’re here, Pete.”

For the first time in his life, Peter thanks his bad luck when it’s his head that painfully clunks against the top of the window and not Miles’ as his brain short circuits.

---

Once Peter shimmies his way inside - the lump on his forehead throbbing all the while - he scoops Miles back into his arms from MJ and follows her as she dashes across the room. He waits beside the edge of her coffee table - where she tosses Miles’ mask - as she scoops up the pillows laid about the cushions of her couch and the blanket on the floor.

“Okay,” she alerts him, arms so full of navy blue pillows and a white blanket that it nearly eclipses her face. “Set him down - gently.”

“Gotcha.”

Peter’s not sure he’s ever done anything with more care than the way he lies Miles down across MJ’s couch.

Though he holds the kid’s head up a second longer while MJ slips a single pillow underneath.

His hand lingers on Miles’ shoulder even as he hears the sound of MJ’s footsteps walk away and the clatter of kitchen cabinets swinging open and slamming shut. There’s a slight crease along the kid’s brow now but still no sign of sweat - the fever working hard to fight off whatever Miles has caught.

A little too hard, Peter thinks, squeezing Miles’ shoulder, mindful not to jostle him with the broken arm still laid across the red paint splattered spider on his chest. It makes Peter queasier than he’d like to admit, but even before the fever they’re going to have to do something about that.

A broken bone - for him at least - usually healed if he slept for twenty-four hours and if that was his only injury of the day. Though that was issue. That is the issue. If Miles is anything like Peter - which, give or take a venom strike, camouflage ability, and much more well-rounded life - then his enhanced spider-healing may have its hands too full to properly deal with a broken arm. And with the bloodied lip and bruises still painting Miles’ face, that’s as good as any evidence that Miles’ body is too busy fighting off whatever illness he’s caught to heal his Spider-Man related battle damage at an accelerated rate.

Which means - once again if Miles is anything like Peter, and really that’s all he’s got to go on right now so he’s really hoping his intuition about their healing powers being the same is right because this is the sort of thing he can’t afford to mess up and yet here he is doing just that--

“We have to set that arm.”

Peter’s head whips up so fast to find MJ standing at his side again - a familiar first aid kit in hand - that his rolled up mask slips right off the top of his head.

“That’s what you were thinking, right?” She probes, with a serious expression, placing the kit on the coffee table where she then opens it to grab a long bandage and two ice packs. He didn’t think she’d kept that old kit - not after he’d moved out.  “He has the same powers as you, right?”

Peter chews his lip and gives Miles a short glance. “Pretty much. He’s actually got a few I don’t, but yeah mostly the same. I’ve seen him take a few hits and brush them off so-- ”

“So he probably has accelerated healing too,” MJ finishes for him, folding the bandage in her hand into a triangle before laying it over the armrest above Miles’ head. “Accelerated healing that’s likely inhibited right now by whatever his body is trying to fight off by setting itself on fire.”

“And if he’s anything like me-” Peter’s tongue slips as MJ places a light touch to Miles’ arm. Nothing more than fingers around the raised swollen area but the kid whines and Peter loses whatever train of thought he has as he shoots forward and puts a hand on MJ’s shoulder before he really thinks about it. “Okay you know what- whether it heals fast or slow it doesn’t matter - it’s gotta heal right and the bone needs to be aligned to do that.”

“Then it’s probably better to do it now while he’s still out. If the fever breaks and he starts healing it’ll be even worse if the arm’s out of place,” MJ adds and as much as Peter hates that she’s right, he agrees with her. He knows there’s no other way but the fact is, the solution to all of this is going to hurt . MJ knows it too. She hides it well after all these years but his ears can still catch the nervous quiver in her voice as she realizes it.

Even though they’ve done this countless times - mostly to him and one time to her when things were desperate - it’s different this time.

And as much as it’s going to hurt, as much as he knows he’s not ready for this, he knows, she’s not either.

So Peter steps up to the plate.

“MJ, I’ll do it.”

---

MJ stands by Miles’ head, a hand on his chest and another at the his cheek while Peter pulls off the glove and web shooter of Miles’ arm and then - while he’d been hesitant to, MJ promised they could fix it - he slices through the arm of the suit up with a pair of scissors and then ties it off just below the shoulder. Hopefully Miles doesn’t hate him for ruining the costume.

Or for what he’s about to do next.

Peter wraps his hands on each side of the break after feeling - as cautiously as possible with two fingers - how the bone had split.

He barely needs a battle plan for one fast movement but he can’t help but run through what he’s about to do a thousand times before bracing himself and blowing a sigh through his nose.

He steadies his hands and then gives a nod to MJ who nods right back.

Before he holds his breath and counts down from three he stills and says loud enough that he hopes Miles can somehow can hear.

“Sorry, bud.”

His hand tightens around Miles forearm than yanks and pulls until there’s a clear audible snap.

Miles doesn’t wake, and Peter thanks every multiverse in existence for that but he does squirm and whimper and thank God MJ’s there because Peter can’t do much more than hold his adrenaline pumping, trembling hands around Miles’ now slightly normal looking arm as he takes the bandage she folded and starts working on a sling. MJ holds Miles’ face in her hands and soothes him with soft shushing and reassurance until the kid is silent again.

Through the whole thing, Peter nearly bites his tongue off.

---

“So this is, Miles?” MJ says after things feel a bit more under control - which is only a little more control than Peter has over his current heart rate.

Even after setting Miles’ arm, things hadn’t settled down, not with the fever the kid was still running.

Almost as soon as Peter had tied Miles’ sling, placed an ice pack against it, and stuffed two pillows underneath his feet, MJ had ripped apart the first aid kit for a thermometer and a bottle of medicine. With the thermometer in Miles’ mouth, Peter and MJ had started working on a proper approximate dose for a kid with a spider-powered metabolism - nothing was easy with spider-powers - so Miles could swallow it the moment the thermometer beeped.

Which, when it did, had sent them into an even worse panic.

MJ had immediately run to grab a glass of water to help Miles swallow the handful of pills she was holding while Peter had grabbed the second ice pack to open and placed it against Miles skin.

Even with the spider-powers in mind, 109 degrees was getting dangerous.

It was the kind of fever that was hospital levels of dangerous for a normal person, which was probably the worse place they could go with a superpowered teenager from another universe who had no actual legal guardians in sight.

The last thing Peter had wanted to do was expose Miles in another dimension and potentially expose himself in the process by association.

But if it came to that-

It won’t.

They’d done all they could and sat at Miles’ side, blotting his face and neck with a cold compress waiting, and hoping the medicine would do its job.

And a half hour later, it did.

Miles’ fever had dropped two degrees, MJ no longer had that heart wrenching expression on her face as she held the compress to the kid’s head, and Peter hadn’t bitten off his tongue or fallen over with an anxiety attack.  

It’s the first victory of the night in a battle Peter thought he’d never win. Much less ever fight.

Kids and him , who knew?

He does however, deflate like a sad discount Spider-Man balloon once the major stress is over - like the ones that always got stuck in the trees at Central Park and looked at him as he swung by like sad red and blue pancakes - letting his back slide down against the coffee table so he can hit the rug and also keep an eye on Miles.

When he stretches his foot out towards the couch there’s also a bit of spaghetti and sauce staining the carpet next to it that catches his eye - but he doesn’t mention it.

MJ lets out a sigh, deflating a bit too from where she’s sitting on the armrest besides Miles, holding the cold compress to his head - though obviously she’s looking much better than a pitiful Spider-Man balloon. Her hair has settled from its wet frizz after she’d run her fingers through it a few times, and now, white bathrobe and all, she looks ethereal. The low apartment lights do nothing but bring out everything detail of her face that he’s missed.

He decides to keep his mouth shut about the spaghetti and makes note to clean it up later when there’s a chance. Hopefully MJ still has a bottle of that carpet cleaner they used when they were together and hopefully she still keeps it in the same place.

(Though something tells him that she does)

It’s her that breaks the silence then.

“You were right,” MJ says, looking to Miles and pulling away the compress. “He does seem like a good kid.” She smiles for a moment, before it falters. It’s an expression Peter knows and hates. He’s seen it too often. “He’s young - I mean, younger than you... when you started.”

MJ turns to him and Peter sees a cloud cast over her face. He’s told her the general overarching summary of his multiverse journey during the last catch up coffee date they’d had. Much of which he’d done a lot of crying? You know, that’s a bit fuzzy, he can’t specifically remember crying a lot .

Though he does remember gushing a bit about the Spider-gang. Miles specifically.

(And Gwen. Of course he’d told MJ about Gwen)

But even with the general overview, in such little time, it seems like she already knows everything there is to know about the spider-kid sprawled on her couch.

Miles isn’t another Peter Parker. But he is another Spider-Man.

There’s always a bit of baggage that comes with that. A lot of baggage she’s definitely familiar with.

Peter sighs and lets himself stretch his costumed foot out to touch the couch - careful not to bump their patient resting on it with too much strength.

The kid is still out like a light. Possibly asleep rather than unconscious with the little twitches that cross his face once in awhile and the bit of sweat Peter notices at his hairline. Whatever happened to him wasn’t good. Peter’s mind rewinds through all the shit he put himself through at fifteen in his own prototype Spider-Man costume and tries not to insert the thirteen-year-old sprawled on MJ’s couch who Peter’s admittedly become way too fond of.

“Seems like starting too young is a Spider-Man rite of passage,” he says with a small snort, though he doesn’t quite commit to it.

“From everyone you mentioned in your multi-universe adventure it seems like it’s a trend,” MJ replies probably thinking of their conversation over coffee a week ago. “But he was the one that was just recently bitten, right? Assuming time works the same between your universe and his - it’s only been what? Two months since he’s been Spider-Man. I can’t help but think of all the nonsense you got yourself into in just the first month when you started.”

Peter blinks. “Huh…” MJ gives him a raised eyebrow as a question and Peter corrects himself. “No, I was just-- I was just thinking the same thing actually. Kinda takes me back to the old days.”

MJ gives a skeptical, but bemused look. “You mean the ones where you got your ass kicked every other day.”

“Of course, those are some of my fondest memories.”

“Oh yeah?” MJ questions, elbow falling to her knee and her hand sitting in her palm.

“I mean those and..” he searches her face to determine if he’s about to go a step to far, “Probably all the ones I spent with you.”

The effect is instant as MJ sits up and gives a soft, if not surprised, smile.

She chuckles, behind her hand. “Really? All of them?”

“Well, maybe not the time my web shooter exploded in your hair, but yeah I’d say 98.9 percent of them.” She quirks a grin at him like it’s a normal retort from him, but he really does mean it. Even when things were bad - whether it be web in her hair, sinking in his student loans from Empire State, or nearly hanging up the suit for good after his broken back - they had been together. It’s how he’d survived all those years- it’s how he’s surviving now. Surviving even though Miles is laid across her couch, beneath a thin white blanket, wheezily breathing with a high fever that refuses to completely break and a arm that Peter had to snap into place.

Things aren’t perfect, but they’re better. He can’t help it if he attributes it all to her.

MJ snorts and reaches for the thermometer that’s beside him on the coffee table - which has become a mess, with a gutted first aid kit, a cold bowl of what was probably MJ’s pasta dinner, and two Spider-Man masks draped over a TV remote. “Pretty sure that happened more than just once,” she notes, pulling back and taking Miles’ temperature before Peter can process how close she is when she leans over. “The amount of times I found webs in my clothes… you were lucky it was always the ones that dissolved.”

“Ah, well, if it’s any consolation I figured out that mustard is actually great for removing the perma-webs so no more web-covered cardigans… though I guess that’s more a me tip then a you tip since... you don’t really have to worry about that.”

“Considering that Spider-men are now falling out of the sky I think I should be a little worried about the effects on my wardrobe.” Her ring finger makes a decisive tap against the thermometer as she holds it in Miles’ mouth, if not for that tick, he’d think her redirection to a joke from his prattle was unintentional. He can’t help but notice the indent around the skin where her wedding band had once sat. She continues, “Then maybe next time a dimensional portal opens up I’ll be able to throw on something a little more practical than a white bathrobe.” The thermometer beeps before he can respond. “106.7. Not great, but it’s better,” she says, with a hopeful glance back at him. "For a Spider-person."

“Seems like the Spidey first aid squad’s still got it,” he offers, hands wringing together after a lighthearted shrug. “And by squad, I mean you. You’re the veteran member here. I’m just the trainee,” he grins, until it droops off his face as he watches MJ’s face settle with a unreadable expression from its previous warm smile.

Her nose twitches, the muscles of her face tensing as she looks a little below his eyes and then away. She stands and under her breath lets out a, “Uh… hold on one second,” which is followed by her crossing the room towards the kitchen. He watches her move about, opening a drawer by the sink and grabbing a small towel before running it beneath the sink. He keeps quiet, while he gets to his feet and repositions himself to sit at the small space between the end of the couch and the pillows beneath Miles’ feet.

“You want me to do it?” He points to the wet, and probably cool towel in her hands when she returns and she easily agrees.

He takes the cool cloth in his hand and moves - careful not to bump Miles’ feet - to come by MJ’s side and steal her spot on the armrest so he can fold the cloth and hold it to Miles’ forehead. A little sigh sneaks from the kid’s lips but Peter doesn’t miss it.

He also doesn’t miss the sound of MJ worrying her thumbnail between her teeth as she shifts her weight between her feet behind him.

“Hey, MJ-”

“Peter, I-”

They both freeze, him barely taller than her as he slouches, still in his superhero costume, now feeling inexplicably small as her eyes slice through him. There’s something there that flashes away the moment they interrupt each other.

“You first,” she suggests with an arm wrapped around the waist of her robe which gives him a better idea than whatever half-cooked up thing he was about to say.

“Uh, I was just gonna say... I’ve got this.” Her brows raise when he points a thumb down to Miles. “I’ll man the Miles-fort if you wanted to uh- change?”

Or give yourself some space, his mind adds but doesn’t say.

“Figured you wanna lose the robe in case it starts raining cats and Spider-men again-- and also put on clothes. In, you know, addition to the losing the robe part.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“Just making it absolutely clear that I’m not suggesting-”

“Pete. I got it.”

MJ’s eyes dart around his face until they settle on his eyes, where they sit, like the air in the bottom of his lungs that waits as he holds his breath like years ago when she’d pull his mask away and pulled him down against her lips and somehow make him feel more like he was flying than his powers ever had.

“You wanted to say something?” He sort of warbles out, hoping she doesn’t notice.

“Oh, no, I just-” She steps back from him, letting him breathe again. “I’ll- I’ll go get changed but—” She looks to Miles. “Shout for me if anything changes.”

Peter clears his throat before answering, “Roger dodger.”

She leaves the room and Peter’s left as a Spider-Man puddle on the floor.

Before he thinks about it, he reaches over to wrap his hand around Miles’ wrist - pulse thudding strong and steady beneath his warm skin.

He’s not sure who it comforts more.

+++

In her bedroom - their old bedroom - MJ stares ahead with a hand over her thudding chest as she looks at her lonely queen sized bed.

He hadn’t even noticed as he’d been going along, letting his mouth run as it often did.

But she had.

He hadn’t always worn it that often - choosing to take it off and leave it at their bedside table when he was out crime fighting and web-swinging in fear of losing it - but there’s no mistaking the way he’d wrung his hands his together moments before.

Seems like the Spidey first aid squad’s still got it, he’d said, before his fingers moved to twist the ghost of his wedding ring, the way he always did, when it used to be there.

It’s not even so much that he used to do it or that he just did - it’s the clear memory of the last time he did.

During their most recent coffee date - after multiverse stories, and multi-spider-man explanations, and Peter Parker apologies, and tears, lots of tears from both her and him - he’d nervously rung his hands together - fingers twitching for the ghost of his ring - and told her he wanted to try again.

Told her that he was ready - that even though he was still terrified - that he wanted kids.

The ball has been in her court since then, when she promised she’d call him, after his change of heart and initiative had left her speechless - so much so she decided to take a week to give herself time to think .

She’d chalked the change up to inter-dimensional travel giving him a new perspective but otherwise she had been completely clueless to where his new outlook on children had come from.

But now?

She lets out a groan and slaps her hand to her forehead before she struts to her dresser.

“I need to put some pants on before I deal with this.”

She tries not to ignore the fact that if there hadn’t been a fever-ridden spider-kid on her couch, she probably would have taken Peter up on his unintentional suggestion and lost the robe so she could jump him.

Though, if it weren’t for Miles, she’s not sure she would’ve wanted to jump her ex-husband, or if she’d even get the chance to.

Somehow, as she slips on jeans and an old sweatshirt, ties her hair into a damp bun, and reaches into her drawer to grab the hidden Empire State University T-shirt and worn pair of men’s plaid pajama pants to bring with her as she heads back out into battle - she feels like she owes him one.

Chapter Text

Despite everything, he’s not freaking out.

Ganke’s a pretty chill dude. A kind of ‘go with the flow’ type of guy. He’s absolutely not a ‘jump to any drastic conclusion like something terrible happened to his best friend who just so happens to fight massive violent criminals almost every day and night’ kind of guy.

See? He’s doing fine. Totally not freaking out.

He’s handled a lot worse ever since Miles had dangled from their ceiling with his mask removed and decided to let Ganke in on the Spidey secret. He’s handled Miles pacing on the ceiling in his boxers. He’s handled web in his hair, and his socks, and his shoes, and his laptop keyboard and his bed when he’s trying to get in one hour of sleep after pulling an all nighter.

He’s handled going to sleep at two in the morning on a school night when Miles said he’d be back at twelve only to wake up and find his friend, littered with bruises, asleep on the floor.

He’s handled lying to a nurse in the emergency room after dragging Miles there because one night he’d come crashing through their room window with a dislocated shoulder and a bloody mouth after a car thief got a little too crowbar happy. Ganke had made up a short and sweet explanation about a YouTube video gone wrong and the nurse hadn’t questioned another word - they’d popped Miles’ shoulder back in like it was nothing and Miles was back to wall crawling and web slinging in the next three days. Like he’d never been moaning on their dorm room floor in excruciating pain.

(Accelerated healing, man. Insanity.)

See? He’s got Spider-Man experience - or really Spider-Man sidekick experience. He’s handled major Miles-manning-- no wait, major Miles spider-manning incidents.

So, at 8 p.m. when Ganke had been simultaneously reading a comic book while reviewing the red pen feedback on his thesis paper for quantum entanglement, and monitoring the data from the prototype interface he’d put into Miles’ suit - although he was mostly reading the comic book - he didn’t panic when he had looked up to peek at his computer screen and found that the signal from Miles’ suit had disappeared.

Ganke had taken his feet down from where they’d been crisscrossed and perched on the back of Miles’ chair and had placed the comic upside down on his thigh to save his page when they hit the floor. He’d scooted closer in his chair and adjusted his glasses at the monitor, where it was supposed to be showing a constant feedback between Miles’ suit and his computer.

Instead, Ganke had inspected the lack of waves on the screen and said something like, “Huh. Well that’s weird.”

And it was. Weird, that is. Still, nothing major to freak out about. A connection loss was normal, especially since it was the first time he was testing the system out.

The interface Ganke was planning to insert into the suit would allow Miles to do obvious and convenient stuff like take a phone call inside the suit - which could be done with a simple Bluetooth component but Ganke didn’t do simple - but it would also allow Miles to take photos and record audio and video from the lenses of the mask. Spider-Man had connections to the police (although one specific police officer wasn’t aware of the entirety of that connection) so it could only help if Miles had the ability to record evidence of the crimes he was stopping while simultaneously kicking butt.

Also, in this day and age, it was always good to have a camera on. Just as a backup, in case anything went wrong.

Of course there was even more stuff Ganke was planning to add. A map of every borough in New York City, which Miles could access and view inside the mask. An audio-feed of police radios, a connection to the internet, and even a tracking system that could locate the suit.

All of that had been pretty ambitious (and expensive) but then Ganke’s simple ideas got a jump-start to become reality when Miles had brought the skeleton backbones of all the tech he needed from the original Spider-Man’s spider-cave.

Miles had dropped it on his desk and Ganke had been working on it all week since.

He’d started with laying down the foundation first. Miles’ costume was no supercomputer, at least, not yet. For everything to work inside the suit, there needed to be a connection to a main computer system. Which was why, for purely test related purposes - and maybe also so Ganke could help Miles out during his Spider-manning action runs - Ganke had made that main computer his computer.

Once everything was implemented Ganke and Miles would be able to communicate, send each other information, and do other cool badass stuff that a superhero and their sidekick did.

It would also let Ganke have access to Miles location because… just in case.

Currently, with only the beta of the program in Miles’ suit a lot of those cooler features had yet to be added. Ganke could monitor the connection from his computer to Miles’ suit and the suit could also take phone calls and provide its approximate GPS location. But as of right now, it was just meant to send data from the suit to the computer so he could work out the kinks.

So yeah, a drop in connection was normal.

Except when Ganke had tried to restart the program and analyze the data he had realized it wasn’t just a drop in connection - which could be explained by Miles possibly doing something stupid like crawling into the sewers when he was still sick or venom striking a bad guy, which Ganke had actually prepared for with an insulator around the microchip, but maybe it hadn’t worked as well as he had planned?

But no. None of that had happened.

From the data the suit had provided, at just about 8 o’clock Miles had been above ground, not in the sewers - near 72 Bowne Street, which Ganke had vaguely recognized as being right next to the river - with a perfectly stable connection.

Ganke, alone in the room had scratched his head and said out loud something like,”What the heck is he doing all the way over there?”

Which is why, 10 minutes later, he’s still going over the pixels of data on his laptop screen trying figure out what the hell went wrong.

But still. Not freaking out.

Ganke blinks his eyes rapidly to relieve the strain of staring so intensely. No matter how he looks at it, he just can’t make sense of it.

At exactly 8 o’clock, the waves of the signal cut off into a completely straight line as if the chip had popped out of existence. Usually there’d be some kind of report of disruption before things went dead, but no. It was as if Miles had vanished from thin air.

Ganke chews his lip for a moment before rolling his chair to the edge of the desk to grab his phone.

If there’s no way for him to regain connection with Miles’ suit then he’ll have to try the more direct, old-fashioned approach.

“His cell phone should work fine,” Ganke tells himself. “I’ll just tell him to try and reconnect on his side.”

Saying that is enough to calm his nerves while he waits for Miles to-

“We’re sorry but you have reached a number that is disconnected or no longer in service...”

Ganke - still not freaking out - jumps from his chair.

“If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.”

Ganke - definitely feeling like, yes, he’d received that recording in error - dials again.

The phone doesn’t even ring.

“We’re sorry bu-u--ut youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu have reach-ch-ch-ch-ched a number that is disc-c-c-c-c-c-connected or no longer in-in-in-in-in-in-in-in-in-in-in-in--”

Then his phone - for a lack of better words - glitches in his hand.

Ganke hangs up, or hopes he does, as he flings the thing from his hands, across the room and onto the bed.

“Wh— What the hell?”

His mind is racing and his hands are covered in sweat.

He’d be living in denial if he tries to say nothing’s wrong. That’s not the kind of thing smart people do. That’s not the kind of thing scientists and engineers do.

So yes. Something is wrong.

But still he’s not. Freaking. Out.

Ganke doesn’t sit down, instead he stands over his laptop as he inspects the screen one last time.

He tries to stay focused. He tries not to think about Miles leaving in his spider-suit, still sick and banged up from the night before. He tries not to think about how weird his phone just was and all the horrific supervillain, Spider-Man killing threats that could be responsible.

He tries to find a better answer to those thoughts.

Something catches his eye then. At first it looks like a single pixel bump on the straight line reading on his screen. The single pixel is located immediately after connection with Miles had cut off and it seems to have taken place at 8:01 p.m., exactly.

He grabs his mouse and zooms in.

The closer to the pixel he gets the clearer it becomes that it’s not a pixel. It’s a ring within the line.

“No…wait,” Ganke says to himself, scrolling in closer. He observes the way the top of and bottom of the ring seem to shatter into overlapping shards. Like a broken window. He’s reminded of the way his phone had looked when it spasmed in his hand.

“It’s like it picked up some kind of... inter-dimensional… disruption,” He breathes out, nearly emptying his lungs.

Ganke lets his eyes wander to his paper on quantum entanglement that’s sticking out from underneath a comic book on his desk and can’t help it when his mind wanders to inter-dimensional portals and how Miles had a habit of getting involved with them.

Ganke knew Miles sometimes talked to one spider-person, even after the whole multiverse debacle - though Ganke had never officially met her and he’s pretty sure he never got all the details about that particular event - but Miles had mentioned that his communication with this Gwen-person was random. A possible lasting effect of inter-dimensional travel that only one of Miles’ spider-friends and him had access to. And apparently, in the three times that it had appeared, neither Miles, or his friend, had ever tried to cross through the portal-window. They’d only used it as just that. A window.

So what are the chances that one could appear without warning, Ganke thinks, staring a hole into his laptop screen. And what would happen if someone got sucked in with no way to come back on the other side.

Ganke’s not entirely sure what he should do next, but he knows it doesn’t involve hanging around here.

Miles is somewhere. Ganke might as well go to the last place he was before ending up  wherever somewhere is.

Ganke scoops his laptop up, after double checking the address of Miles’ last location, and drops it in his satchel. He grabs his shoes, his jacket, his beanie, and throws them on, muttering the address aloud so he won’t forget.

He goes to his bed to grab his phone.

Until he stops in his tracks, shoes squeaking on the floor, hand hovering over the screen as it brightens and begins to ring.

And the contact name for Mrs. Morales appears.

He doesn’t freak out.

He does the only thing he can do. He throws his satchel over his shoulder, grabs his phone, and in the calm, most collected voice he can muster - he lies.

“Oh yeah, sorry Mrs. Morales,” he says, swallowing to keep the quiver out of his voice after she tells him that Miles never came home, then asks where he is. Ganke hopes she can’t hear his heart pounding in his throat the way he can when he thinks about the fact that Miles never made it home. Miles left the dorm at six. Something in Ganke’s gut tells him that things went wrong even before an inter-dimensional glitch at 8 o’clock. “I thought Miles texted you. He crashed after we finished our project-- he’s actually still asleep. I can wake him if you want...”

Please say no. Please say no. Please say-

“Oh! No, that’s okay, Ganke. Let him sleep-- but you tell that boy to call me as soon as he wakes up. Okay?”

Ganke promises to do just that before he says goodbye and sprints out the door.

Still not freaking out.

Because Miles can’t afford him to.

+++

Rio places a hand to her hip and lets her fingers tap for a few moments while she twists the landline phone in her hand. Behind her on the kitchen counter is a large enough serving size of empanadillas that she could feed a quarter of Brooklyn. It’s her one night off in a stretch of long hours at the hospital and after crossing her fingers all day that Jeff, Miles, and herself could all sit down and enjoy a nice family meal she finds herself alone, with only the distinct smell of ground beef to keep her company.

Though, as the phone in her palm spins, the wire coiling taut in midair, and her brow crinkling as she eyes the holes where Ganke Lee’s voice just trilled out - she finds that a cooling pile of empanadillas soon fated to be wrapped away into a frigid box of leftovers is the least of her worries.

Something’s not right.

She’d had that sense early in the day when Miles had answered her call and practically hacked a lung up when trying to speak. It had been a long time since she heard him sound so miserable.

Rio clicks her tongue and mentally kicks herself.

She should’ve stuck to her guns and sent Jeff to the school dorms to bring Miles home hours ago. School project or not. Miles had been pushing himself lately - and she had an inkling there was more to that than there seemed. The boy never seemed to sleep anymore, and when he did it was more like crashing on whatever surface was closest the minute he got home for the weekend. As if he’d just finished running a marathon.

Maybe she’s reading too much into things and that “marathon” is just school work and stress and the normal woes of being a teenager, but she has a feeling it’s not. Miles hasn’t been the same in the last few months - neither has Jeff - not since Aaron passed.

And maybe he really did pass out from exhaustion and sickness after working on a school project, on top of his usual “marathon” - forgot to call, and Ganke’s actually being honest.

But she’s a mother of a teenager. She knows when she’s being lied to.

So she halts her fingers as they rotate the phone for the likely billionth time and reaches out to dial a number and let it ring.

Jeff had called only thirty minutes ago to let her know he was running late - something about checking out a disturbance at a warehouse by the East River - but when he was done he could probably spare time and drop by the school and get to the bottom of whatever was up with their son. Even if it meant interrogating his friend.

Maybe then the ringing sense of danger in her head will finally settle.

+++

He’s dreaming. Except he’s not.

His body feels like jello, except he can feel every inch of it as it takes hit after hit.

He’s dreaming, except somewhere in his head he knows this is real.

Black shadows wrap around him in the shape of an endless room and yet, he still feels like the walls are closing in.

Over his body is another tight layer of skin. Not as black as the shadows but also not as red as the wet liquid dripping from his face. It’s familiar in a way that his head knows the patterns that trace it’s length but not comforting in the way he knows a shield should be. Right now it’s a reminder that he can’t run away. A reminder that he has to fight.

And he does fight. Throws himself into the air, sends hot strands of splitting power from his hands, and lets his limbs swing and swerve through the waves of shadows that remaining unrelenting.

“Shoulda stayed at home, kid,” says a faceless shadow as it wraps around his leg and throws him across the endless void until his body hits and rolls along a surface, stopping when it smashes into a pile of something hollow and wooden.

Beneath his second skin Miles knows his limbs are made of jello that’s melting into a sloppy liquid that he can barely control. He remembers it - the heat boiling inside him, and the panicked way his hands had crawled at that blurry red symbol stuck on his chest when he tried to breathe and only inhaled dust and spit.

“First, you cost me my job,” the shadow hisses, its faceless nature taking form into a figure with a strut and tone that Miles swears he knows. Swears he’s seen before as he crawls from the rubble into a dim slit of light that’s coming from the darkness above. “Then you attack my men,” the voice accuses, low and deep but still without a form or name for its source.

Miles’ eyes squeeze close and throw themselves open over and over again as he tries to raise his hand to pull away the layer that’s wrapped around his face. His lung have melted into a bubbling stew and all that’s left is a sopping wet cough that demands he remove the seal covering his mouth so he can let it all dribble out.

“And now…” The shadow lectures with an inflection of manic glee as Miles fights to move any inch of his body. “You think you can come in here and ruin my business?”

His surroundings morph from shadows and fear and blistering heat with no escape - bouncing off the prison around his skin, roasting him to the bone - into a nightmare of teeth and striking white skin.

“T- tombstone,” he hears his voice say, but not in real time, it's like a recording playing from his own bloodied lips. The white skin spins into a face of the same name and suddenly the surrounding darkness takes form so that Miles’ legs are pushing him forward again.

It shatters from awareness a second later when his arm decides to become solid again so it can shatter.

“Yeah why don’t you tell me what you want on yours, Spidey,” Tombstone’s face jeers, dangling him by his shrieking arm after snapping in two. But Miles can’t answer, it’s a dream, and it’s a real, and he can’t change anything.

He’s just a whimpering bystander in his own body as Tombstone slowly appears in every detail - suit and tie, ashen skin, and a ferocious grin. A hand reaching toward the layer around his head. “Or better yet. Why don’t I just get your name. Then I can ask your family what they wanna remember you by.”

Something explodes from him.

And then he’s somewhere else.

Not somewhere new, because even with his eyes leaking and throat croaking as he curls around his broken limb, warbling a sob each time another tidal wave of pain nearly overtakes him, he knows he’s seeing this again.

His body is surrounded by the shine of steel. Broken pieces fold around him and all he can think is that Tombstone is gone. That he got away. Or maybe Miles is the one that got away. It doesn’t feel like he’s escaped. His body still on fire and screaming for relief.

He might be screaming too.

Begging for someone to come to the rescue even when he’s not supposed to. He’s not supposed to call for help. He’s supposed to get back up. He’s supposed to be the superhero.

The shiny round steel around his face is somehow so much crueler than the shadows from before. They do nothing but shove back an image of himself; an image caught between a sticker of letters for a logo he feels like he should know. He just can’t focus long enough to make it out.

His thoughts bleed back into wishing he was looking at anyone but himself as he twists and turns and waits for the pain to stop.

Maybe if his brain wasn’t dripping from his head, disappearing into the nightmare world around him he could think of a name to call out for. But as the swirling reflection of his own face beneath a layer of black and red peaks between the triangle of a letter A without its center line, he’s sure his own voice would be the only thing to answer.

His reality spins as he lies there, stuck in purgatory, face morphing with the blue letters of the shiny steel, confused. Stuck between dream and memory. Reality and nightmare. Face and mask and why, not matter how hard he tries, his face looks like someone else.

Not his face, his mask.

The mask still belongs to someone else, with different, brighter colors, that with his blurring vision and the shadows creeping back in, he can almost imagine being in place of his reflection instead. The black replaced by a striking red.

He sees someone behind that mirror image mask, someone who’s face comes flashing through his mind along with another desperate plea for an impossible rescue from his hero and friend who he’d said goodbye to months ago and who’s name bleeds pathetically over Miles’ lips as his head tips back and--

He’s falling.

And now he’s not.

His eyes blink and his body shudders, air shooting down his throat with a closed mouth gasp, but no, he’s not falling.

Not anymore.

He’s laying actually. Head back on something soft, feet raised on something squishy, and face tilted up to see nothing but the white of what his brain tells him is a ceiling.

I’m awake, comes the thought, and then the release of tension through his entire body.

He blinks. He blinks again. He blinks-

“MJ, ack— damn it—”

He freezes.

“Are you sure you don’t have it?! I mean... I could probably improvise with a safety pin or something but I could’ve sworn we used to have one!”  

His fingers dig into the fuzzy raised texture beneath him and his eyes prickle with something hot as his chest heaves.

“No, no! That one’s fine if you have it! It’ll work!”

This is real.

It’s suddenly so easy to feel and know it is.

From the cushions below him, the voices around him, and the weight and control he has over his mind and body, every detail around him only makes him more sure. Across his chest - which buckles as his head presses further into the fluff of pillows with a sigh - he tugs against the constraint of wrapping that goes all around his neck and pins his arm into place when he tries to move. Sounds are crisp and familiar and his vision is less muddled, but his throat closes with a thought that blurs his eyes and slams them shut as his previous nightmare flashes through his mind again.

All of it was real.

Miles sputters, cough rupturing from his mouth with an unexpected harshness that has him squirming to his side to stop from choking on his back.

The last thing he expects are hands to reach out and hold him. Cradling him. Keeping him steady through the attack.

“Hey. Hey, it’s okay. You’re alright, take it easy, bud,” the voice from earlier soothes, and Miles squeezes his face tight around his eyes - every bit afraid to look up as he is ashamed that he can’t just let himself have this . That still, even as the top of his throat burns with everything but the weightless feeling of a dream, a piece of him refuses to trust his gut. A piece of him just can’t seem to believe whose arms are wrapped around him.

“Pe-” He tries - believes - but it breaks apart into a final heavy cough that clears his throat and brings something disgusting into his mouth.  

There’s a thick towel against his face before he’s really thought about what to do next.

“Probably better if you spit that frog up.”

Miles gives a small nod and does just that, his chest feeling lighter as soon as the towel moves away from his face.

“Better?”

“Yeah,” Miles replies with a croak, still trying to catch his breath. The winded feeling in his chest leaves him dazed and willing to let himself be pulled back from where he’s practically hanging over edge of the couch. He’s set back against the pillows but somewhere in his oxygen derived body he finds the energy to stick his free elbow out behind him to stay sitting up.

There’s a dip in the cushions by his knees and as Miles wobbles with his own weight to a fully upright position, he looks up and finds Peter - sitting exactly where he knew he’d be.

And he’s looking… the same.

He’s got what looks like an old college T-shirt on - Empire State University written with red across the front - with matching flannel pajama pants. It’s not exactly an upgrade from the classic Spidey suit and yet Peter’s wearing it like it is. His face is shaven, his hair is... a mess as usual, pieces brushing over his forehead, and his face is still weighed down with worry lines, dark circles, and exhaustion. Though Miles gets the feeling those last details might be because of him - what with the way Peter is stuck staring wide eyed back at him, jaw tight with a fighting smile, and a firm hand still around Miles’ upper arm.

“Peter,” Miles says, voice clearer and stronger than before.

“Hey, Miles.”

They sit there, Peter looking straight at him with a hand just below his shoulder, and Miles back at him with an arm in a sling pinned to his chest, a blanket pooling around his waist, and a fluttering feeling in his lungs that wets his eyes and makes him nearly choke again.

He isn’t sure who grabs who first but he’s thankful for whoever does.

Peter wraps an arm around Miles’ neck while the other reaches around the back and pulls him in.

There’s no chance to even think about the slight ache below his elbow in the sling, Miles throws pain and caution to the wind and throws a hand out to gain purchase on something solid, real, and Peter . His good arm reaches around to Peter’s back, clenches the shirt the moment it’s between his fingers and squeezes. His sling presses against Peter’s chest but he hardly feels any pain it gives.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” Miles says, the biggest smile spreading across his face that Peter can’t even see. Not with how Miles’ face is squished against Peter’s head and barely peeking over his shoulder as Peter tightens his grip.

It’s the kind of hug that absorbs him, smothers him, and hides him from every detail of his nightmares that are still trapped inside his head.

Peter responds with a wet chuckle.

“Yeah, you know. I could say the same thing to you. Though--” His hand at Miles’ back gives a light pat. “Kinda, wish you’d called first, I could’ve-- put out cheese or somethin’.”

The arms around Miles start to loosen and Peter starts to shift away, a laugh sounding like it’s caught in the man’s throat, and Miles isn’t sure of anything except - the warehouses monstrous shadows spinning with Tombstone’s sickening laugh over the crunch of bones and the desperate call for help lodged in his throat - that he doesn’t want to let go.

He pulls Peter back in. Possibly even tighter than before, buries his face in that stupid college spirit t-shirt and clings. The man is warm and solid and here and there’s a thousand reasons why - his nightmare, his arm, the past few months of no sleep and no social life and no one to really talk to and how much he’s just missed his friend - and Miles just can’t let go.

“Okay. Still hugging then.”

Miles feels Peter’s chest expand with a single light inhale that teeters towards another laugh. It reminds him of his dad.

He’s shaking before he even realizes.

“Hey, Miles it’s-”

“I missed you,” he admits - or tries to - his voice sounds broken and wobbly to his own ears, like he’s talking over tears.

A hand cups the back of Miles’ head and Miles suddenly can’t really think about nightmares or the ache in his arm or the wet spot forming in the collar of Peter’s shirt. He just melts into the touch. Lets his brain sputter and focus on nothing but the present.

“Miles . I--”

And even though Peter’s voice sounds so completely, utterly broken, Miles lets himself settle into the certainty that it’s not going anywhere - nothing feels broken at all.

“I missed you too, buddy.”

---

“Aha! Ha! Ha! Ha! I told you I could fix it!”

Peter leans over so his elbow rests on his knee and waves Mary Jane’s cell phone back and forth in his hand like he’s got a wad of cash and not a phone with a splintered screen, reminiscent of a spider-web.

“Doesn’t look all that fixed to me,” Miles says, looking up with a skeptical smile from where he’s hunched over.

Peter raises an eyebrow in return and then flourishes his free hand around the phone like a magician about to reveal the correct playing card, after an elaborate trick. He presses the home button and true to form the thing blinks to life - though that life is still hidden by ugly cracked glass.

“Ye of little faith,” Peter mocks and Miles shakes his head with an added eye roll.

“You’re still gonna have to buy a replacement for the screen,” he adds while Peter scoots forward on the couch to place the resurrected device back on the coffee table. He then settles back and is once again squished between Miles’ outstretched feet and the opposite arm rest. There’s a tug around Miles’ neck from the knot of his sling the same moment Peter gives a shrug and offers, “You’d be surprised how many spare phone screens MJ and I have lying around. It’s probably the one and only thing I have in surplus. I mean besides that and maybe pizza boxes.”

Miles feels a puff of air hit his neck, and can only guess that someone behind him is trying not to laugh.

Peter’s eyes float behind Miles’ shoulder and he gets a little - almost proud looking - grin on his face.

“How’s that knot coming, Ms. Watson?” Peter asks, and Miles tries to push is eyes as far to the side as he can, though with no luck, as Mary Jane stays hidden from sight. “Need a hand?”

The tension that’s been circling Miles’ neck begins to alleviate with an added tug and pull. He finds his eyes wandering from Peter and then back to his shoulder, as Mary Jane replies, “No, I’ve got it. But could you-- pass me that--” She must make some motion towards the coffee table because Peter is moving there and grabbing something to pass to her. “Thanks.”

Miles’ eyes linger on the coffee table as what feels like the final knot before release loosens his sling. The table is looking much more like a med-cart, like the one’s his mother pushed around the hospital, than something for holding coffee or a TV remote. Those things do happen to be there though.

Miles’ eyes move along the loose bandages tangled around a thermometer and ice pack until he hits the screen splitterened phone again. It’s not the best conversation piece, sure, but seeing it makes him feel heavy with something like guilt. It’s screen poking upward with glass while it sits with a whole array of first-aid nonsense covering the coffee table of the woman who’s sitting cross legged behind him on the couch - slowly and methodically, unwinding the knot of his sling. He feels like he’s intruding.

“I’m uhh…” Miles sees Peter perk up and tries to actually turn his head this time to see the woman over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, about your phone, Ms. Watson. I feel like it’s kinda--”

Peter breaks in, hand giving a shake to Miles’ leg. “Hey. Miles. That’s not--”

There’s a small snort behind him and Peter’s attention shifts again. Miles feels the wrapping at his neck unravel but his arm stays afloat thanks to Mary Jane, holding onto to the bandage-ends.

“Would you be surprised to know that in all my time as an associate of Spider-man I’ve never lost a phone?” Mary Jane’s voice asks. “I mean, compare that to Peter over there who’s lost maybe… 20?”

“Hey! Hold on. 20 is… probably a generous under-exaggeration. It was probably more like 30, if we’re being honest-- and if we’re counting all those burner phones over the years.”

“30?!” Miles surprises himself with a laugh, “Man, how do you lose 30 phones?”

Peter gives him a funny look before patting his leg, and offering, “Give this whole Spider-Man gig a few years and you’ll find the answer to that question.”

The couch shifts and Mary Jane appears, a soft smile dimpling her face and squeezing her freckles towards her eyes. She kneels beside the couch and with must be practiced, and experienced ease, she simultaneously helps Miles lower his arm onto a pillow she places in his lap while also shooting a stern unamused look to Peter.         

“Hopefully that won’t be the case,” she says with a note of possible annoyance. “Forgetting things on rooftops is not a habit you want to get into.” Peter shrugs and counters, “It might be more of Spider-Man tradition than a habit, MJ.”

Miles can’t help but snort when that earns Peter a weak backhanded slap to the knee.

“Either way,” Peter continues with a laugh and stands up. “Don’t sweat the phone, Miles.”  

Miles shakes his head, “I wasn’t, I was just-”

“I was the one with the slippery fingers,” Mary Jane interrupts, taking Peter’s spot on the couch. “Don’t go beating yourself up over it - okay?”

She gives him a look and a soft touch to his shoulder that all definitely read as ‘a Mom waiting for the right response,’ and Miles means to respond but then his eyes dart up. He finds Peter, who’s standing, hands on his hips, looming over them, looking really too much like a dad for his own good. Miles kind of wants to burst out laughing, but also possibly hide away from the knowing look Peter’s giving.

The two of them are so deeply in-sync and they don’t seem to even know it. It’s weirdly suffocating but also comforting. It feels like he’s in his very own living room.

“Okay,” Miles relents with a hand up in surrender. “Man, you guys really have this parenting thing down already, huh?”

Oh, whoops.

Miles realizes he’s tipped over a house of cards the moment that’s out of his mouth.

Mary Jane’s eyes grow wide and her mouth draws in a  strange twisted line, that’s not exactly a smile, but not exactly a frown since she’s able to give a chuckle. Peter looks... like his head might explode.

“Uh… wait.” Miles looks between the two. “Are you guys-”

“Pocketed!” Miles jumps as Peter spreads both arms out like he’s cleared a table and sent the dishes spread across it smashing to the floor. “I have pocketed this discussion and hereby start a different one. All in favor?”

Mary Jane raises a hand with a closed eyed grin, “Aye.”

Okay then.

“Ooookay?” Miles shoots Peter a raised brow and the man mouths a very clear ‘LATER’ back at him after pulling the hand away from where it slapped his forehead. Miles stops giving him a look only when Mary Jane decides to be the one to start the new discussion topic.

One that is far away from whatever is going on with their relationship.

“So Miles, how’s the arm?”

Miles perks up and turns attention to said limb sitting on the pillow in his lap. He stretches his fingers one at a time before trying to slowly rotate his forearm - cautious of the injury - and it feels… not broken? His brain is foggy on the clear memory of what it felt like when the bone had snapped - besides just a non-stop broken record of searing hot pain.

Luckily, it’s nothing like that now.

“I don’t know, it kinda feels weird? There’s this ache when I turn it,” he decides, looking between the two adults who are staring him down with equally apprehensive faces - though Peter’s face might look worse. “But it doesn’t really hurt,” he clarifies. “I mean— not like it did before.”

Once again a hand gives a comforting pat to his leg, though this time it’s Mary Jane and not Peter. Peter is the one to let out a sigh of relief before plopping down to sit on the coffee table.

“Looks like your powers are finally doing their job again,” he says. “Your arm should be healed in… a few hours, if you’re anything like me.”

The mention of time suddenly has Miles straightening up. “Wait, what time is it, anyway?” With all the fusing Peter and Mary Jane had done over him, he’s barely asked any questions besides the typical ‘ where am I? ’ and ‘ what happened?’

“How long have I even been here?”

Peter taps Mary Jane’s phone on the coffee table before answering, “You crash landed on MJ’s fire escape around eight and it’s two in the morning now, so… six hours. Which, by the way--”

Miles feels his stomach drop in the particular way it does whenever he discovers he’s missed three phone calls from his mother. “Six?! Wait-- I thought it had only been—” He struggles against Mary Jane who tries to keep him still, while Miles plows ahead, ripping the pillow and blanket off his lap.

“Whoa, hey! Miles! Relax, bud.”

“But I’ve been here for six hours! In another dimension! I was supposed to be home! Six hours ago!”

And all of a sudden the issue of his parents issuing a manhunt for him shrinks in the size of the bigger issue.

“Wait— I’m— Am I stuck here? I’m not stuck here am I?” Miles looks frantically to Peter who gives an open mouth as an answer. “I don’t even know how I got here— how can I go back if we don’t know what even brought me here?” His voice turns shriller than he means and it catches in his throat and sends him hunkering over himself, coughing for the first time since he’s woken up. A hand rubs his back and when he does look up Mary Jane has inched closer and Peter has kneeled at his side, his hand being the one at his back.

“Deep breath, kid, okay?” Miles complies. “We’re gonna figure it out and we’re gonna get you home. You’ve got me and more importantly you’ve got the irreplaceable Mary Jane Watson here. A true veteran to the Spider-Man weirdness.” Peter tries to give a little smile, but must see that Miles can’t reciprocate. “It’ll be okay, Miles,” he finishes, serious again.

“But—” Miles sputters and looks at Peter and then his hands as he flips them over without thinking and hisses when he feels the ache in his one arm. “But what happens if we take too long? What happens if I start glitching?”

This time Mary Jane is the one to answer. Her voice strong and sure, and grounding, like Peter’s hand on his back. “You won’t. We’ll retrace your steps, figure out what happened and then figure out a way to send you home,” she promises.

“Right,” Peter agrees, glancing towards her. “We’ll deal with the inter-dimensional stuff when we get there.”

Miles swallows, nods, and inhales through his nose. “Right, okay. Sorry, I’m just-”

“Exhausted?” Peter answers.

Miles chuckles. “Yeah, that’s definitely a part of it.”

“It’s a huge part of it, bud. It’s why your powers had trouble catching up to whatever beating you took. Super powered healing only works as good as the sleep you’re getting. And you know, top that off with the flu and… what?”

Miles stares at him. “That affects it?”

Peter stares back confused. “What?”

“Me getting sick and not sleeping? That affects my super powers?” His bruised chest and back comes to mind. He’d thought it was weird when those injuries hadn’t healed by the time Ganke had woken him up.

Ganke. Miles tries to not cringe when he thinks of his best friend and how likely it is that he’s been recruited to a panicked manhunt through Brooklyn with Miles’ parents. There’s probably also the added stress since Ganke knows the one reason why Miles could possibly disappear - and he’s still wearing it. Minus the mask.

Peter brings Miles back to the present when he sinks onto the couch next to him - Miles hadn’t even notice Mary Jane slink away. Though he thinks he hears her shuffling nearby.

“Miles, your powers... You gotta start thinking of them as an extension of yourself. Not just an added on outside force,” Peter explains, tone and eyes full of experience, that Miles knows isn’t for show. “I’ve learned this the hard way but… if you don’t take care of yourself, your powers become collateral damage, just like anything else. The healing factor can only handle so much at once.”

Miles finds his fingers picking at his costume - the part of the arm that Peter and Mary Jane and sliced open and tied up to keep away from his previously broken bone. The one a super villain snapped in half, after Miles, not only bit off more than he could chew, but did so, apparently, while he was inhibited by the flu. A flu that could have killed him had his powers not been working overtime to stop him from boiling alive.

He was really knocking this superhero thing outta the park wasn’t he?

“Guess I reeeeally screwed up, didn’t I?” Miles shrugs, offering what felt like a pitiful grin.

“Hey, could’ve been a lot worse, trust me- experienced Spider-Man here, remember?” Peter replies, waving him off. “You landed on the best fire escape in all of Manhattan and probably in all the multiverse. And ended up with only a broken arm. I mean, you could’ve landed on J. Jonah Jameson’s balcony, with a broken torso. Now that? That would’ve been a lot worse.”

Miles sniffs and quickly wipes his eyes, “Isn’t that the guy who worked for the Daily Bugle?”

Peter snorts, “The very one.”

“He’s running for mayor, now, I think, in my universe.”

A haunted look passes across Peter’s face then. “Oh jeez… again?”

“Hey, Miles,” Mary Jane calls, rounding the couch. The clothes and towel draped in her arms catch his eye. “Hope I’m not…” She gives a strange look to Peter who’s curled over on his knees with a pensive look on his face and a hand over his mouth. “...interrupting.”

“No, it’s cool,” Miles adds.

“Well, I figured you might want to get out of your costume and into something more comfortable, before we try and figure any dimension stuff out.” She gestures the towel to him and he’s already feeling a hundred times lighter at just the idea of getting out of his spandex suit. No offense to the aesthetic but it’s not all its cracked up to be when it's covered in sweat and possibly, some remaining blood. And also phlegm.

And he forgot to put baby powder in it before he went out earlier, too. So that’s definitely not helping.

“I set up everything in the shower for you, and if Peter’s old clothes fit, you could get changed so I could wash your suit and maybe stitch that torn up sleeve too. Sound good?”

Miles nods and slides his legs around Peter, who’s come out of his stupor and provides a guiding hand to help Miles as he plants his feet on the floor. “That sounds really good. You have no idea, Ms. Watson.”

“MJ,” she corrects. “Just MJ is fine, Miles.”

Miles smiles. “MJ.”

“You gonna help him to the bathroom, tiger?” MJ asks, question directed to Peter. “You may be a little weak on your feet still,” then back to him.   

Miles almost startles by how quickly Peter lights up. The end of his mouth and eyebrows shooting into the lines of his face. There’s so much expectation there it’s like a new life has sparked in him. Miles is sure if the man had a tail he’d be wagging it like a golden retriever.

“Sure thing,” Peter chirps, giving a little salute. “Throw in the spider suit and I’ll even sew it up for you too,” Peter adds, bounding to his feet before moving with a slow, careful speed to help Miles up - and kindly offering an arm for him to lean on.

(The fever seems to be almost gone, but MJ’s right, he’s a little wobbly)

“Oh yeah? I thought you always hated sewing your spidey suit?” MJ quips back and with that Miles feels himself slipping out of the loop again. He starts walking with Peter at his side as MJ starts heading to what must be the bathroom.

“Well, we all gotta make sacrifices for our spiderling here, right, Miles?”

Miles shoots him the best eye roll he can. “Man, do not include me in your weird flirting, I just want to take a shower, not be your third wheel.” Though he does push towards Peter’s ear, and tries to whisper, “Is this ‘later ?’ Are you two back together, or what?”

Peter eyes him strangely, but then answers in a confident, not-whisper, “I’ll answer that. But only after you finally answer what nonsense Spider-Man got into tonight when he probably should’ve been in bed with the flu.”

Miles shrinks, reviewing the night in his head and imagining the lecture he might get from a pajama wearing Spider-Man when he retells it. “Yeah... you’re getting way too good at this whole parenting thing.”

Crime fighting with the flu. Not the finest moment in his two month career.

Though thankfully, it’s only after Peter helps him lean against the bathroom sink and MJ turns on the shower, leaving the change of clothes and towel folded nearby before they leave the room - both giving him a cautious eye when he says he’s fine - that his brain recalls a single detail that has him sending his good hand up to hit his forehead before he can begin peeling off his suit.

“Oh crap— I left my backpack on that roof!”

He pretends not to hear Peter cackle in the other room.

+++

A long, high whistle cuts through the air and echoes until it hits the far off ceiling.

"Haha... man, gotta say, he got you two good. Real good."

“Shut the hell up, man!”

“Yeah! Just get us down from here already!”

Jefferson holds his flashlight directly into the eyes of the crook in front of him and chuckles.

“Sure. I’ll let you two down, but it’ll be when I’m ready to drag you into the back of my car, which... I’m not exactly ready to do, yet.”

“Auuuuugh!!! Just do it already! Come on, man! I’m sick of being upside down!”

The man whining on the wall is one who Jeff recognizes. A car thief from about a month ago, he’d gone around smashing windows with a crowbar and pillaging the insides until Spider-Man had stepped in to stop him. He recalls the hero taking a nasty hit to the shoulder with said crowbar in the very lot where Jeff’s patrol car is currently parked outside. He also recalls most of that case being spent trying to chase Spider-Man down and encourage him to endure medical attention.

Such a headache, that vigilante.

“While we’re waiting,” Jeff begins, looking over his shoulder to the opened doors of the warehouse. Outside he sees just the back tire of his patrol car, and still no sign of the backup he’d called for. And still no sign of a figure in black and red. He turns back only this time to the second man, one he feels himself festering an unhealthy hatred towards, and who he recognizes from identification he’d be given last night. “Why don’t you tell me what you two were up to? You and your buddies.” Jeff jabs a thumb over his shoulder.

Behind him, in the center of the warehouse, where he’d first shined his flashlight when he arrived on the scene, is a pile of three men webbed and unconscious on the floor. It doesn’t take much to realize Brooklyn’s very own Spider-Man had been here. It does however, seem to be taking some figuring out as to why said hero up and disappeared.

Jeff lets his light scan the ceiling, where threads of web decorate the metal beams of the building, almost expecting two white lenses to pop into view.

He hasn’t been working with Spider-Man, on any official terms, or for that long , but a certain routine has been established between them. And with some other guys at his precinct, too, of course. He just happens to be the one Spider-Man goes to, more often than not.

But one such step in their routine has always been that Spidey sticks around for the police. Or, at least until Jeff arrives. Or he’d at least leave some silly courtesy note, or even be the one to phone in the crime before taking off.

With only web tangled criminals - most that can’t be charged with much more than a B&E without an eye witness superhero with evidence of something more incriminating -  no hand-written note, and the call of a disturbance being from a concerned citizen walking by, Jeff can’t help but feel unsettled that he’s yet to see the neighborhood’s hero dropping from the warehouse skylight.

If Jeff’s honest with himself, it’s a little worrisome.

The second man on the wall, the one who’s very face stokes at Jeff’s disgust, curses and then spits. It splats on the floor nearly inches from his shoe.

Jeff points the flash light into both men’s face until they groan and try to tuck their eyes towards the wall. Which is difficult with the gobs of webbing keeping their necks stuck in place.

“Well, you two can be sure as hell that you’ll be in a jail cell by the end of tonight.”  

It’s barely even satisfying.

No, he won’t be satisfied - settled - until another officer gets here and helps him peel these two from the warehouse’s infrastructure and throws them into his back seat.

Not after holding that poor girl in the station last night as she’d stuttered over the statement of her boyfriend’s disgusting abuse.

Jeff tries to focus on the flow of the East River outside, the shudder of the wind as it moves along the building, and the way the abusive asshole struggles fruitlessly against the blanket of webs, but his head filters with the victim’s sobbing, swollen, bloodied face and how she’d barely been able to walk to his car. Spider-man had stood with her by the curb until he’d pulled up, and wasted no time - and no comment - limping into a web sling the moment Jeff had stepped out. According to the girl, her boyfriend, the man currently webbed horizontally on the wall, had tossed the hero through their five story window.

And now, after dealing with the same guy, Spider-Man is nowhere to be found.

“You’re that asshat from last night,” Jefferson breaks the silence, after radioing in again.

“Shouldn’t you watch your mouth, officer?” The man - the abuser, really - warns. Ken, if he remembers the name. Which, of course he does.

“I should,” he offers and thinks back to rubbing the girl’s shoulder as she’d cried into her cup of coffee at the station. The bruises on her face and neck fresh, but not dark enough to conceal the green faded spots that spoke of older, recurring wounds. Jeff focuses back. “But not when it comes to men like you.”  

He eyes his surroundings warily, but keeps the flashlight steady, straight into the man’s eyes. “I guess I didn’t take you as the type of criminal who worked under someone.”

There’s a cut of silence in the air. “You don’t know shit,” is the gruff reply he gets.

“Yeah, maybe I don’t.”

Jeff walks along the wall, away from the two men - both quiet now - and shines his light further into the warehouse until its beam meets the void that hides the other end. Though not before it highlights an almost crater indent in the floor and Jeff  thinks back to last night in the station. The girl’s statement. The name that, according to her, made her boyfriend finally lose control when she accused him of working with his crew. The name of the new up and coming crime boss, who’d somehow found places to pull strings to get out of prison where Wilson Fisk couldn’t.

The leftovers of a super powered fight, make it clear that those accusations were true, and that L. Thompson Lincoln, the “Tombstone," was probably here.

Jeff raises his light a little higher until he can see can only see what looks like the remains of wooden crates that exploded in the distance. He steps back towards, Ken, and his upside down partner, and inquires, “But, I’m guessing Spider-Man did. Seems like him and Tombstone kept at it after you two were done in.” Jefferson reaches up and presses his finger and thumb back against the frame of his glasses. “So, where are they?”

“Spider-Man’s probably a corpse in the river by now,” answers the upside down man - the crowbar guy. “The Boss got him gooood.” He breaks into hysterics and Jeff let his hand fall until it grabs hold of his belt.

The other one, hisses, “Johnny, shut the hell up!”

“I’m telling you! All that fight and it didn’t even matter! Up against Tombstone, Spider-Man’s nothing!”

“Shut up, man! You wanna get fired?!”

“You shoulda heard the way the kid squealed when the boss snapped his arm in two. You could hear it from all the way over here.”

Jeff's hand stays tight around his light even as his stomach drops.

His mind whirls with late nights at the precinct and small taps at the window near his desk. His mouth feels heavy with the sighs he’d allow himself to take before trekking downstairs to find the crook of the week webbed to the usual wall outside his building.

His fingers twitch at the memory of small hands covered in costumed gloves that can’t belong to anyone older than twenty, throwing up a peace sign before swinging off, leaving Jeff with even more paperwork to finish but always with a stupid smile on his face.

He doesn’t have the chance to process the implications of the criminal’s comments or how they make his mouth go dry because the next thing he knows is the shot of a gun exploding from across the room. It whizzes past his head and when Jeff blinks, the laughing, upside down goon on the wall is wailing with an open wound in his shoulder.

A new voice, bellows, from behind him at the warehouse door, “You dumbass! You hit Johnny! ”

Jeff wastes no time switching off his light and diving for the closest pile of cargo nearby to hide, holding his breath with his back against the wood only after shouting a hushed alert of shots fired into his radio. From the other side of his cover he hears an order.

“Get the boys the hell down from there! Then deal with the cop! We gotta get the stuff before more guys show up!”

Jeff pulls his gun from its holster and readies himself. He tries not to think the worst, but he can only hope that he’ll get to see Rio and Miles by the end of this. That he’ll get out of here alive so he can follow through with his promise to Rio and drop by the dorms to give Miles a hug and then a lecture about making his mother worry.

Maybe he’ll even throw in a lecture for Spider-Man too.

He peaks around the shipping box to his left and catches the mess of the three unconscious criminals and web on the floor being pulled apart by three new men, armed and watching their surroundings carefully.

Jeff prays the hero’s alive somewhere - possibly on his way back - and not dead at the bottom of the East River.

And while he does, on the other side of the warehouse, hidden in the shadows, Ganke finally remembers how to breathe.