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He never really realized how much of an impact that night had on him. He just tried to ignore it. He liked to ignore it. He had to ignore it.
He couldn’t acknowledge it. He couldn’t think about how it felt.
The walls were collapsing all around him. His brain ran a million miles an hour, trying to figure out an escape plan, but concrete fell faster than he could move.
It wasn’t like anyone could do anything about it now-- it was over. It happened. Why dwell on the past shit when life was throwing so much shit at him in the present? Literally. An eraser just hit the back of his head.
Peter’s sense had gone blaring off at him the moment before it hit him, and he’d flinched, but didn’t try to do anything about it. The damn thing would go off whenever just about anything even slightly inconvenient would happen-- it was more annoying than helpful at this point. So many times, he felt like he just had to run. Get out of there. Do something. Do something! But whatever ‘danger’ was about to attack really turned out to be absolutely nothing. It’d been bad like that before back when he first got his powers, but ever since Homecoming, he seemed to recess back to that.
It was so stupid.
Everything about this was so goddamn stupid.
He was being so stupid.
It wasn’t even that big a deal, he just needed to grow up al-freaking-ready!
Worse things have happened to better people, after all. He needed to man the hell up and just move on with his life.
“Hey man, are you alright?” Ned had asked him, placing a hand on his shoulder as he did so.
To this, Peter nearly jumped out of his seat, but tried his best to play it off with a reassuring-- that actually just came off as awkward-- smile. “Yeah, yeah. ‘Course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, you're, uh… Dude, you’re sort of just shaking.” the other teen spoke carefully.
“Huh?” Peter didn’t think he was. He would’ve known if he was freaking shaking, wouldn’t he have? But, sure enough, when he looked down at his hands, they were. Just a little, but that was more than enough to alert a best friend. His right leg was also bouncing a lot under his desk, but that happened all the time, so neither teen thought it was a big deal. It was just something that happened with him.
"I'm fine, don't worry about me," Peter reassured his friend. "It's nothing. I'm, uh, I'm just kind of cold. I mean, the AC does blow right on me, so... yeah. Cold." It wasn't like he was completely lying-- the AC did hit him directly and it was pretty chilly. That and the fact that this room with the AC was small, cramped, and packed with more people than it should hold since the kids from the class next door were here while the janitors cleaned up someone's vomit. But nope, he could totally breathe just find. His body totally wasn't in a perpetual state of fight or flight and he definitely wasn't counting down the seconds until the bell rang so he could get out of said room.
Then again, then he'd be heading out into the crowded halls... fuck.
"Alright, I guess," Ned replied hesitantly. He wasn't an idiot, he could tell when something was wrong with his best friend, but unfortunately, he didn't know what. It'd been happening for months now-- Peter would seem to be low-key freaking out, he'd get worried and ask what was wrong, and then he'd instantly put a smile on his face and tell him everything was fine. He wasn't an idiot, he just wanted his friend to know he could talk if he needed to.
How easy that reassuring smile came was concerning though, as was how quickly Peter jumped up from his seat when the bell actually rang. Eventually, Ned thought, he'd have to get to the bottom of whatever this shit was-- if there actually was shit and he wasn't just being a worrier, of course.
When someone hates talking about their feelings, they tended to get good at hiding how they felt. Peter always hated talking about stuff that was on his mind, and after his uncle died, he shut down when it came to talking even more. He had felt that while yes, he lost his uncle and one of the parental figures in his life, May lost her husband and the love of her life. That seemed far worse, so he didn’t want to bother her with how he was feeling.
Sometimes, it was easy to put on the facade and keep it up all day. Sometimes, it was more… overwhelming. It was hard to hide. It forced its way out. But the human body wasn’t accustomed to that, and it reacted as such. Sometimes, it would have an emotional break down, and sometimes, well, it caused for some shaking.
The day felt excruciatingly long for Peter, even in the classes he did have with either Ned or MJ. All day, He was just trying to get himself to chill out and just breathe. Breathe. It shouldn't be so fucking difficult, right?
He was sandwiched between tons and tons of concrete. He was being crushed. It was too heavy, he couldn't move. It was too tight, he couldn't breathe. Gravel and debris dust got into his lungs-- he tried to cough, but his lungs couldn't expand that much. He was trapped. He couldn't get out. He couldn't breathe--
Finally, the last bell of the day rang. It was sort of bittersweet-- Peter was happy to be out of that suffocating building, but the loudness of the bell felt like someone was driving a nail into his skull. But hey, that was his luck, wasn't it? The more nervous he was, the higher alert his senses became to try and find the unknown danger, and the more sensitive they ended up being. Web-slinging for a while should help though, right? It always did.
Peter didn’t stop for sandwiches at Delmar’s today, but went straight to one of the alleys by his school to change into his suit. Afterwards, he webbed his backpack up against the wall in the corner in hopes it wouldn’t get stolen, and went off to start his patrol. It always felt so freeing-- just him and the open skies of the city. It was oddly soothing, and although Peter didn’t understand why that was, he certainly wasn’t complaining.
It was a quiet day, but where that’d usually bother him, today, Peter didn’t really mind. It gave him more time to just practice swinging and even a couple of aerial tricks. Not too many today, today he was mostly working on his speed, but some. It actually did well to help get his mind off of things, and he didn’t feel so overwhelmed anymore. If only he could have took a, like, fifteen minute ‘bathroom break’ during school where he could have gone out swinging. That would’ve made today much easier.
Peter was really starting to feel more like himself now. He’d swung across all of Queens in a matter of only fifteen minutes, and considering that would normally take around forty-five minutes in a car with zero traffic, he considered that to be a record. He was actually pretty proud of it, and decided he might go and try to break another personal record-- swinging from his apartment in Queens all the way to Stark Tower in Manhattan. He’d been over there more and more recently, he actually was starting to have weekly lab days with Tony which was awesome, so he thought it’d be cool to test this out. He grabbed his backpack from outside Midtown High and dropped it off at his apartment first, then began to race over.
He had been making pretty great time, truth be told. It wasn’t long before he reached the Queensborough Bridge-- which connects Queens and Manhattan-- but there… well, Parker luck always seemed to get him one way or another. Peter had swung under the bridge with incredible speed, latching his webs onto beams underneath the architecture as he did so. However, just as he was reaching the peak of his arc halfway across the bridge, his webs snapped. He continued to soar up for a couple of seconds, desperately trying to shoot another during this small window of time with no luck, before he started falling. The teen felt absolutely paralysed by fear as he crashed into the water below and sank down.
He was stuck.
Trapped.
He couldn’t get out, his limbs wouldn’t move.
Peter could feel how his lungs were desperate for air, how his brain screamed for him to claw his way up to the surface, but he just… couldn’t. He sank further down, the light growing dimmer and dimmer all the while-- damn momentum.
All Peter could think about in this time-- it felt like years, but was actually mere seconds, was the whole incident with the Vulture. With Toomes. He just dropped him like a piece of garbage, and he was left for dead.
How was this happening again?
Was he supposed to have died then?
Was this time catching up to him?
He didn’t want to die. Not now. Not like this.
He didn’t want to go.
He didn’t...
Peter’s vision was going black already, considering his panic, lack of oxygen, and the fact that he hadn’t taken a breath before going under. Just like roughly a year ago, something ripped him right back out of the murky water. Maybe it was his panic, but these arms didn’t feel so helpful-- they felt dangerous. Threatening.
His senses screamed at him to get out of whoever’s arms these were. His senses told him the water was safer. His senses told him it was Toomes back for revenge.
All whilst still choking on water, Peter squirmed and fought back. His hands shook violently, his heart raced, and his screams were trapped by a watery barrier. Someone was talking, but he couldn’t hear them. His panicked thoughts drowned them out. He’d cough, but end up sucking water back in as he desperately tried to get air. It didn’t help that his mask was also soaked, making breathing difficult in itself. So much input at once was terribly overwhelming, and so much so that the teen couldn’t even put a word to it.
Finally, he hit the ground, and immediately, Peter yanked off his mask and coughed violently until all the water was out of his lungs, his entire body trembling now. Tears mixed with river water under from how much it hurt to have felt like he was suffocating and how terrified he was. Once his coughing fit seemed to have ended, a hand was placed on his back, which startled the boy so that he fell on his side. Desperately, Peter scrambled to back up as that same hand and its accompiance grabbed onto his wrists.
“Let me go!” Peter screamed, voice hoarse.
“Kid, look at me!” The hands screamed back. Wait… no, not hands. Hands can’t scream that was Tony. He saved his ass again.
Peter stopped struggling and actually took a moment to look at his surroundings. He was… safe. He was on the balcony of the tower. Tony was there, outside the suit, kneeling down in front of him. Despite that he could see that there wasn’t actually any danger, his spider-sense still screamed ‘ LOOK OUT. RUN. DON’T LOOK BACK. HURRY.’ . Although he wasn’t fighting against Tony anymore, Peter still hyperventilated. How was this Tony? He thought. He could’ve sworn that whoever pulled him out of that lake was trying to kill him. “M… Mister Stark?” He finally spoke up.
“Yeah, yeah that’s me,” Tony nodded, visibly relieved to see that the kid was finally recognizing him. “Just breathe, alright? Breathe.”
Peter nodded slightly, slowly but surely matching his breathing to Tony’s. The man eventually let his wrists go, but his hands still shook. All of him did, really.
“You alright?”
Pete nodded curtly.
“What was that all about, kid?”
“N’thing. ‘M fine.”
“Pete, I just pulled you out of a god damn river again. You’re not fine.” Tony retorted. “What’s going on?”
To that, Peter just shook his head,and just looked so ashamed of himself, that Tony truthfully didn’t have the heart to make him talk right now. Sometime before he sent him home, he’d get an answer but not right now.
Tony sighed, stood up, and held his hand out to Peter. “Alright, c’mon, Underoos. Let’s get you warmed up with some cocoa.”
After a brief, questioning look, the teen took Tony’s hand and followed him inside, muttering a soft ‘thanks’ as they walked.