Work Text:
his heart is pounding.
the tarmac feels wet underneath his bare feet, rumbling with vibrations from oncoming traffic. he can’t tell whether the lights blazing towards him are blurring because of the rain or his own hot, pouring tears.
he doesn’t know why his phone keeps vibrating or why he’s crying until he can’t breathe or why his heart is pounding so hard he feels like it’ll burst from his chest. it’s just a bit of fun. he’s not going to get hurt.
he’s fucking invincible.
there’s not a doubt in his mind that he won’t get hurt. his medication had flattened his abilities, pumped false anxiety into his body to force him to stay away from the only situations that gave him a thrill. he feels like he’s flying, like he’s floating above everyone else, his weightless body dangling above mortal beings.
a truck blazes past him, its horn blaring in his right ear, and peter giggles.
he can hear harley’s ringtone faintly. it’s constant, because he just doesn’t stop calling, calling, calling, begging peter to pick up.
the rain picks up, and it comes down in his eyes, harder, faster, and it rattles against the pavement and into his brain, the droplets bouncing off the words of his inner thoughts.
it’s quite difficult to breathe with so much adrenaline running through his limbs, so he screams out all the breath inside his lungs and projects it like daggers at the oncoming cars.
“hit me!” he screams, hands in fists at his side. “i’m not scared! hit me!”
he can hear a car pull up on the other side of the road, and then harley’s shouting him, his words lost somewhere in the rain, never to find peter’s ears. the cars continue to hurtle towards him, blaring their horns and glaring at him, but he doesn’t care.
“i’m not scared!” he screams again, this time tasting blood in his mouth. he’s bitten clean into his lip, and the blood is pooling into his mouth and he’s still screaming, screaming, screaming.
the promise of pain is so close that every time a car brushes past him he screams, angrier every time it doesn’t plough straight into him.
“peter! get the fuck out of the road!”
“i’m not scared!” he yells back, and the smile has dropped from his face. there’s a truck coming down the road, advancing towards him at sixty miles an hour, it’s headlights blinding as it barrels down the road.
“hit me! hit me!”
“peter, get out of the road!” harley’s screaming at him now, close enough that his toes touch the edge of the road, but far enough away that he can’t reach peter’s trembling body.
the adrenaline coursing through his body is wracking itself in shakes and fits, and he screams through the blurriness of the horizon, too tight to decipher whether it’s from his tears this time or the uncontrollable shaking of his body.
the truck is closer now, close enough that he can read the number plate, and it’s hi horn starts blaring. it’s going so fast that it wouldn’t be able to stop if it wanted to.
“peter!” harley screams, and he can hear tony, too, his voice deeper and more angry. “get out of the fucking road, please!”
”i’m not scared, i’m not scared, i’m not scared!” he cries, voice thick and tired and happy all at once. he hasn’t felt so real in three years.
the truck is coming so fast at him and it’s so close that the lights are truly blinding him, rendering him helpless to do anything but wait for it to barrel into him and make him feel something.
the rain is so loud on the tarmac, muffling any noises but the deafening white noise in his ears. he can almost taste the richness of feeling real again like it’s already there, so sweet and full and good that it makes his head spin. the truck’s horn gets louder and his screams get louder and the rain gets louder and it’s all so much that he doesn’t even notice the force knocking him to the ground is harley and not the truck.
“what the fuck was that?” harley screams in his ear, crying so hard it startles the tears away from peter’s own eyes. his heart is pounding so hard he can barely hear, but he watches the truck that was about to hit him angrily drive by and suddenly he’s feeling real again but it’s so angry and so painful and nothing like how he’d imagined this medication withdrawal to go.
peter pulls harley down on top of him, his lips moving feverishly against the taller boy’s. he’s so hot, too hot, all sticky and scared and excited and worried all at once. harley feels like a breath of the numbness he’s used to in the medication before he pulls back and slaps peter straight across the face.
peter lies on the ground for a second, blinking at harley, who’s still crying, still kneeling above him, still shielding him from the blinding lights of passing cars. he looks tired, the kind of tired he gets suddenly, that hits him like a brick and knocks the wind out of his lungs and stops him from ever breathing the same again.
“hit me again.”
“what?” harley pulls back, shock and exhausting numbness painted over his face like a mural. “no. i’m not gonna hit you.”
“hit me.” peter repeats. “hit me, hit me. hit me.”
harley just stares back at him, the air silent even through the deafening rush of traffic and rain and screams and the white noise screeching through his ears. tony pulls harley back, and peter doesn’t look at him again.
the car ride is quiet, besides peter’s occasional mumbling. harley doesn’t speak, and neither does tony, but he sometimes hears a muffled sob and it doesn’t make his heart ache the same way it did before.
instead, the mania has silenced, and his thoughts aren’t so psychotic that they hurt his inner brain any longer. he stares at harley the whole time and tries to convince himself that the dizziness isn’t the result of dropping six different medications all at once.
when they get home, harley runs a bath and leaves without a second glance. he leaves it running while peter sits on the closed toilet seat and then it’s quiet.
he can hear muffled whispers above the deafening sound of the running water, words he can’t understand trying to make their way through the partially closed door and into his hollowed mind. the air is warming around him but he shivers, mania slowly draining from his mind like slow water from a tap.
“fuck, peter!” harley says through clenched teeth, still soaking wet with tears running freely from his eyes. he swears again, rushing to turn the tap off, and peter moves his head to notice the water’s almost overflowed the bathtub.
“i didn’t realise.”
“you never do.” harley mumbles back. he doesn’t let the water drain out of the tub before he leaves without looking back. “get in. i’ll get you a towel.”
peter doesn’t reply, but he forces his legs to move, still stiff in place from trapped adrenaline. he pulls off his boxers and sweatpants, dropping them to the floor alongside his shirt. one minute he’s clothed and stiff and the next minute he’s naked and shivering. he doesn’t really know how.
the water is clear and cold when he finally lets himself sit in it. the door to the hotel bathroom is still propped open slightly, and he can hear harley and tony speaking to each other in the hallway.
they sound angry, or, at least, tony sounds angry. harley sounds like he’s crying, but peter can’t really tell from him. he focuses on the coldness of the water, of the shivering of his arms, of the redness of his fingernails.
he hasn’t had an episode as violent as this in three years. he can’t really understand why his muscles are seizing and why he can’t move no matter how much his brain screams at him. there’s this littler voice in the back of his head begging him to move, to get out of the cold water, to scream and cry and laugh, but all he comes up with is empty.
“it happened once, it won’t happen again.”
his own voice shocks his brain into shivering again, and now his teeth are chattering violently, jaw painful as he tries to bite down on his inner cheeks.
“it happened once, it won’t happen again.” he tries to comfort himself, eyes spacing out on the slightly dripping tap ahead of him. “it happened once, it won’t happen again.”
“peter? you okay?”
it’s painful to speak, but he continues anyway.
“it happened once, it won’t happen again.”
“peter?” harley says again, and it’s softer this time, closer. he can feel a presence hanging at the side of the bathtub, all heavy and painful and dripping in so much emotion that peter’s own numbness feels tiny in comparison.
“hey,” harley says softly. “you okay?”
“it happened once, it won’t happen again.” peter mumbles, biting the words through clenched teeth. “it happened once, it won’t happen again.”
“peter. what happened?”
“it happened once, it won’t happen again.”
he wants to scream it. he wants to scream it until the words hurt and his throat is raw and bleeding. he wants to scream it until his stomach stops churning and he convinces himself that it’s better to live numb on meds than violent off them.
“it happened once, it won’t happen again.” he says again, and it tastes like bile in his throat.
he can vaguely hear his phone buzzing on the floor, no doubt another call from may. he can hear harley pick it up, then put it down, and feel his eyes burning into the back of his head.
“it’s okay.” harley whispers, and he can feel tentative hands hovering near his naked shoulders.
“it happened once, it won’t happen again.” peter digs his fingernails into his biceps until he can’t feel his fingers anymore.
“it happened once, it won’t happen again, it won’t happen again, it won’t happen again.”
the words burn his lips as they tumble out, his throat loose and unable to stop the constant stream of empty promise.
he can feel harley stand with a sigh and his breath catches in his throat.
he won’t have the option to stop it happening next time.