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All things considered, Spider-Man was doing okay.
Spider-Man had taken a hiatus once Peter was back on earth, he was not an entity or an afterthought, not in a soul stone, his atoms weren’t drifting around on some Titans planet he accidentally clambered to with Dr. Strange and Iron Man. The Iron Spider suit collected dust in his closet, the sight of the floating dust makes a warm lump grow in the back of his throat.
On the other hand, Peter Parker wants someone to look at him. To see him, to not feel frustrated and alone anymore.
He had watched himself drift apart, watched death creep in through every edge of his vision, his entire body mutilated in a way he could never have imagined, left to drift away in space.
He remembers his death, and it’s a fucking Wednesday afternoon, it’s raining in New York and he can’t breathe, he halts his steps in the middle of the colleges campus. The trees surrounding the courtyard park flutter, leaves deposit water droplets into the air. He searches for any reverie for his lungs, to relieve the deep thrumming of his heart, a wild beat.
His hands grow numb, and he slouches down onto the nearest bench. If any of his classmates or friends see him, for once, he thinks he’d be okay if they just kept walking. He can bear to look into anyone’s eyes today, he comes up short to find cloudy optics instead.
Today’s very bad for Peter, the entirety of the intermediate mechanics lecture forgotten. Physics couldn’t save them then, every law disproved in the snap of a finger. Every soulless body yearns for productivity, to soothe the loss they’re all feeling. He doesn’t think he trusts the law of gravitation anymore, the mass of the earth betrayed him and everyone else, gravitation was betraying them and letting them go.
Intermediate mechanics lab after sitting in the rain, the cold chipping away at each layer of comfort he made for himself, was harder than it needed to be. He thinks he can tell which of the other kids at his lab bench had also disappeared, snapped away, betrayed by the world itself. They all glanced back at him, like they didn't notice his onset gaze on them. He was used to it, he guesses, being a senior in high school taking some college courses.
Guilt ebbed away at him, and he couldn’t stop looking, sparing glances at his classmates. He guesses his lab professor was here when it happened, years of mourning wearing and tearing at him, and he didn’t understand how they could continue like this.
Fear immediately sloshed around in his abdomen, churning his insides like it was an entity forcing his lungs out, to cut each node out one by one. He thinks of the homeless habitants littered across campus, he thinks he’ll bring them all food. He doesn’t know how, he and May are barely clinging on as it is.
He thinks he can ask the street riddled with shops with thousands of stores opened across the U.S. to donate extra food they throw away during their closing shifts, he knows, he was in an alleyway perched up on the roof when he realized the entire street did it, how dare they?
May’s back from her day shift at the hospital a few hours after he gets home, finding him curled up on the couch, unmoving and staring straight ahead. It’s dark outside now in mid-October, the cold sneaking into every crevice of the apartment that he doesn’t recognize.
He doesn’t smell Ben here anymore, the flooring and walls are all wrong. He stares at the most familiar throw blanket, remembering Ben and May wrapping him up in it the first night he stayed here after his parents died. It seems like a world away, and he doesn’t remember if he’s been happy since then.
She was probably wondering if he’d stay that way forever.
They had slipped into this routine in the last couple of months after his trip to Europe, the start of senior year, and the cleanup effort in New York that he had tasked himself with. He worked himself sick in summer, the valorous efforts cleaved at his skin, his vision swirled more often than not in the streets under the hot sun, watching the lifeless-alive bodies of normal people cleaning up their neighborhoods. He hadn’t felt so useless in so long.
She’d find him in their apartment, wounds gushing under his dirty, cotton t-shirts that he hadn’t noticed.
She’d asked if his senses were bothering him, he didn’t answer. She’d asked if this hurt, and he turned from gazing outside into the dim blue sky to find her pressing her calloused hands hard onto the open cut on his ribcage. He shook his head, and the look in her eyes when they widened and her mouth dropped, his stomach sank.
Not from the pain. Not from her bloody hands.
She knows. She knows he won’t save the city, he can’t. The day he picked up the mask, the day she found out, she recognized the responsibility of changing the world falling on him. But, she knew he couldn’t. And he wouldn’t. He was broken.
He feels old, unmoving while she stares at him, her stethoscope and keys forgotten in her hands. He thinks she’s shaking, he can sense it from here, he’d know if he’d tried hard enough/ If he tried at all. Lately, he can’t do anything at all.
He needs the mask just to be, to focus his unfocused eyes.
At night, he found himself drifting all over New York.
He always found himself at street-level on Friday nights, when his friends were begging him to join them in the Friday Night Football games, he donned the city. He took over Manhattan, Queens, every borough surrounding him. He sat by the docks tonight, overviewing the city and whatever suspicious activities were taking place, because it never stopped.
He felt the exasperation, the hyperactivity and the need to fix the world now, the weight of this responsibility weighing down on his shoulders like a piece of the sky fell down and he had to catch it.
He beared the responsibility of on-site clean up, because the last crew that was sent in various locations around the boroughs were bombed, a sick sadistic piece of shit militia that made him act on anger as a catalyst, and he would have taken down all of them if the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen himself hadn’t dragged him out of a ditch near a harbor, half-dead and needing resuscitation.
Peter thought back to needing resuscitation, trying to remember what it felt like to be dead. Or, at least he thinks he was, because the masked man refused to tell him and if he could see his eyes, he’s sure they’d have the same apathetic, emptiness
Speaking of the Devil, he is technically in his territory tonight. He’s seen him multiple times since the city’s bombing in the late summer. He had found him perched up on a building, accompanying him tonight. He scavenged the apartment building, the complaints of the tenants were probably familiar for Matt. Their landlords sent a construction crew, who had further damaged the building and apartments and abandoned the projects.
They searched for any abandoned people, both tuning into the environments. Trembling train tracks, leaking water, fuse boxes sparking, and a screeching tremor at the base of the building. It sounds like the building’s settling, so they walk further into the heart of the building.
Matt walked ahead of him, moving fast and searching through whatever he found on each floor. He found broken glass, apartments that weren’t quite empty but had no signs of collectibles, family photos, or anything. The floors were wooden, dingy, and rotting. Water pooled at the bottom floor, hot and slimy and smells like hot garbage.
He had been here alone, following intel he heard last week while out at the harbor. He’d heard them talk about an abandoned building on 10th, venom filling his veins each taunting laugh. He walked a dangerous line, his old convictions betrayed by each life he gets close to taking, if he just left them there, he knew they’d eventually fade away. He argued with himself over this, after the bombing, the head of the militia nearly bled out, and he left. He walked away.
He did go back to cauterize the militia head’s gunshot wound, but it’s the closest he’s danced and fluttered around death, listening to his heartbeat slow down. He imagined it just like the battlefield next to the Avengers Compound, dead bodies surrounding him and he could swear they’d come back to haunt him.
“Kid, why are you brooding over there?” it’s Matt who asks, “I can feel the teen angst radiating off you over here.”
“Ha-ha.”
“Seriously, I try to tell you about Fog’s accident with the baseball bat to his face, and I get nothing from my audience,” Daredevil chastises, turning back to face him from across the room.
“Why did you bring me here, double D?” Peter asks, they’ve gone through half the building and have come up short of any heartbeats or signs of abandoned life. “I was already following my own intel, I mean I’m happy to help. But if you’re going to complain about how I’m acting—“
Daredevil hummed. “I’m going to be upfront with you, Spidey. I think you need someone on your side. I mean, we are friends, right? I don't want anything from you, I’m just here, is all. Though you might want some—”
Daredevil's words immediately hushed and trailed off. He froze, cocking his head to the side, they weren’t much for conversation tonight anyways after Peter repeatedly ignored him or answered the older man’s questions with his own questions. A startled expression caught his face, like a deer in headlights and focused somewhere else.
His senses tingled, was this Daredevil being overly paranoid?
Before he caught up with his own senses, Matt lunged at him and yanked him towards him, dragging them both to the ground while he covered him. “Matt!”
He screams, hitting the ground and the full weight of Daredevil is above him, if he could see under the mask it’d confirm him bracing himself, and he went limp as the building rattled around them and warm dust clouded the room. Even the mask couldn’t filter everything out, and he felt Matt lose consciousness with the falling debris and rock, likely from hitting his head once he rolled them over. His weight was slumped on him, but the dust was everywhere.
The building was collapsing all around them, tendrils of dust burned his throat and vision.
Oh, God. He was slipping away again. God. Fuck.
Don’t panic.
This was all wrong. His throat closed, he could taste the dust in his mouth, Daredevil’s body on him is not grounding him at all, it’s crushing him to death and he wants to vomit all of this dust out, and he thinks he’s whimpering past the dust, it’s all over the air. He knows it is, it’s not fake, it’s there—
He’s gripping onto Daredevil’s suit, “Please!”
He shouts into oblivion, his voice raw and a mile away from him. He’s dizzy, the world swirls all around him. The foundation’s loose, and he vomits in his mask, he thinks.
Turning to look at his surroundings made him dizzier, like a vortex pulling him in space. His vision was spray painted stars, a concoction of sickening patterns and darkness. The headache thrummed, hard, and the back of his head was warm with blood.
Darkness. Not good. Dust. Too much of it, he’s lost in the world and he might be lost in space, it looks like it, like gravity gave up on him again. He trusted gravity, his own forces obeyed gravity, and gravity was there for them. He tried to focus.
He wills himself to push Daredevil off, carefully, to hide him but instead he gasped for a ir. “Matt1 We’re- please!” he’s choking, and he thinks his masks clings to his face in lieu of his tears soaking his face. Wet? Blood. No, tears?
Matt gasped awake, panting with no air around him to breathe. He was probably stealing all the air, from wherever far off in space they are. He’s lost, forever, this time he won’t be found. And Matt is with him, and he doesn’t deserve to be here.
Parker Luck? No, it’s just his own fault. He tried to sit up, but the devil pushed his chest down immediately.
“Kid, are you with me?” the devil pants, his voice gravelly and undertone in fear and adrenaline. He could smell the adrenaline pouring out of him. Was he scared? Maybe not, maybe he was ready to die. They’re buried alive, probably in a crater in space--
“We are not going to die,” the devil grunts, “Peter, look at me. It’s me, Matt. It’s me.”
He obeyed, searching for the devil tonight. Too dark. The floor underneath them is the open sea, a sea monster lurking around in tremulous waves, waiting to strike, waiting to overthrow them, far off into space where the gravity betrays them, once again. “It’s— I can’t— breathe. Too dark,” he cried, and oh, fuck, why does he sound so whiny.
He thinks he’s listening to an old voice recording of his voice, and he’s somewhere in New York, sitting under a desk in a child’s bedroom and a radio crackles to life. It’s him talking, he can’t understand himself. He was going to die, again, far off in space.
“ ‘m so sorry, Red,” he murmurs, watching themselves from the corner of the room. The building fell, and Matt is bleeding out, too. “I’m so sorry— it’s the— you shouldn’t be stuck here with me.”
“Peter, hey,” Matt says, shifting around him slowly and breathing hard. “Don’t be sorry.”
His senses are betraying him now, and he wants to rip his mask off and throw the vomit out that’s sticking to his chin. It’d have no gravity to hold it down here in space, it’s dusty, they were trapped on the second floor of the building, he remembers. His fear tried to wedge it’s way out of his chest, trying to steal his esophagus right from him.
He feels like a broken piano, unfixable. Broken forever. Chipped pieces clanging around him.
He listens out, Matt’s weight slowly shifting away and hears the rubble grinding under his strength, chalking in the dark. It feels like it’s pouring rain in here, or pouring stars, he can hear every single star in the room. Each constellation, littered with old gases and old light from millions of lightyears away, right in front of him. He gasps, reaching out for the stars. Stars will betray him in the end, too, just like gravity. At least stars pretend to be there for you, projecting, they’re tangible.
The stars twinkle, like church bells. An organ hymm. A funeral from the stars.
The dust swirls in turbulence, and he grabs onto Matt’s arm, he feels grotesque.
They hear crashing in the distance, and Matt is moving rocks around in the little pocket he created in the dust storm. It’s like a closed up mattress, closing on him, he doesn’t want to see anymore. His skin is dust now.
He panics, his eyes shooting open to come up short, except for some soft orange lights far away from him he can see through his closed lids. Too far. He holds onto Matt like a vice grip, ready to launch himself, he didn’t know where they were but he felt his skin loosening, like the dust was trapped inside of him. He’s screaming, whimpering, his mouth betraying him and doing whatever it wants. He was a bag of ashes now, shaking like a leaf in the older man’s arms. But he’s upright.
He doesn’t dare open his eyes.
“You with me now?” Daredevil asks, and his yells taper off. His voice is honey, tranquil, and vibrates in his chest where his head is being held against. He smells his vomit, smells sweat, smells air. His hand is placed on his back, holding him tightly like the star Peter would’ve held close to him in space if he hadn’t passed out. “I’m right here.”
He exhales a sob. He isn’t thinking, and his vision is a different aura now.
“Stop, stop.”
He stills, remembering. His world is in black and white, gravity is holding him down. “Matt?”
His mouth is dry, the dried up vomit too overwhelming. He’s back to hearing his voice on the radio somewhere, the static stirring back to life.
He loosens himself from his starfish grip on Matt, but immediately collapses onto the ground. Fucking gravity, shit, he’s going to float away--
His back hits the ground, the bile rising in the back of his throat and he hears Matt cuss, probably for letting him fall in the first place. This can’t be real.
“No, no, I don’ wanna go again, please,” he murmurs against the solid ground, and feels a hand on his pulse point on his throat. The mask shifts, and he feels fingers dig into the mask and he freezes. “Dont!”
“Calm down, kid.” Matt lifts the mask away from his throat, slowly, and he's ready for a strike. But it doesn’t happen. It’s carefully rolled up, and he gasps for air like a fish out of water. A reverie for his lungs, temporary, but he sucks in air. Oh. He can breathe.
He feels a sleeve wiping his chin.
The touch is gentle, tender, and not like the rubble collapses onto them. The walls moved around them. Space and time, surges around him and moves on without him again. He was an anchor, his gravity, piecing him together and he could smell his apartment on him, probably nutmeg, blood, their sweat.
Matt spoke to himself, or maybe someone else was around them. “Sometimes, I do think Father was right, when he told me the story about Gahiji, the devil dancing among us. Taking different forms. Like today. This.”
Peter thinks he groaned in response, coming out as a hum. His head was lifted slowly off of the ground, a hand holding the back of his neck. He furrowed his brows, but allowed it.
Pillowed. Now he thinks his head is in Matt’s lap. He continues speaking solemnly, and he thinks he hears church bells above them. He hears humming of electricity, possibly a neon sign outside.
“I just wanted to save the city, a city full of animals, I realized, “Peter spoke, his voice scratchy and in pain. “I failed. I failed us, I failed Queens.. My friends, too. I haven’t even heard from them in a month. Remember I asked for your help avoiding them?’
His voice is unsteady, and his mouth is full of gross saliva and moisture and bubbles.
“Our cities are going to hate us. Betray us. I see the way yours is doing to you, and what mine did to you tonight,” Matt says, and Peter can comfortably close his eyes when he speaks. “I think it’s just what the world does sometimes.”
He wills himself to listen, letting Matt pull the mask off. He keeps his eyes closed.
He smells the used pews, he can feel the gaze of Christ on a Cross, staring down at him. He feels his body on a wooden pew, not drifting. Not dust.
Orange fire from burning candles. No occupants, it’s after hours.
Matt brought them a few blocks away from the abandoned apartment complex, to a church with high ceilings. He has an emergency first-aid kit beside him, and he doesn’t know how the older man is up, moving, sitting.
He looks up at Matt, knowing his vision is blurry with warm, burning tears. He wants May, he nearly died, and he isn’t in space, he wants May to hold him like the night he came back and didn’t let go, he kept choking on dust. Matt’s hands cupped his cheek. “I’m your friend, right? That was scary. These last few months were scary. You-- You died.”
His eyes are now focused on him through the darkness of the church, and he thinks he shouldn’t be in a Catholic church right now. Matt shrugs, knowingly. All of his attention is zeroed in on Peter, in a way he can’t understand if the man is blind. It’s the hand on his face, searching. Stilled.
It’s Matt listening, and not asking, but tuning into Peter’s body. He isn’t dusting away, swirling around in a dirt pile in space. He’s here, not lonely. The room is heavy, still, like the chaotic atoms are paused and anticipating what he’s going to say next. He sits in anticipation, how to live, what to do.
A hand stills in his sweaty hair. “Your aunt May told me about your death, after the night I.. took you back home. I wasn’t-- you know, I was.. Here. With everybody else. I can’t imagine how it.. Felt.”
He hears the truth ringing in Matt’s voice. The all knowing truth, all seeing, all hearing truth. Judaism and Catholicism aside, no matter how holy, nothing could save him from himself. From gravity. His own senses, shredding him apart, he felt each pull, each apoptosis cell death, each organ accepting its fate.
“It isn’t a matter of stopping the Devil,” he murmurs, low, dangerous. Like he’d battled himself over this before. He doesn’t have the strength to breathe past the cinder block in his chest. “Peter, you need to have more faith in yourself. We can’t help you, if you won’t let us in. I.. I have been neglecting your needs, your emotions, and I am so sorry. When I..” He trials off, hesitating. “You felt it all, didn’t you?”
His voice, too small to be from him, it was like he hadn’t spoken at all and the puzzle piece of what he said aligned. Too fragile, breaks. Matt’s voice breaks.
“That’s why-- You wouldn’t respond to me back there.. Did you think.. Oh,” Matt’s inner turmoil is painted all over his face, the brush stroking slow at first, then each stroke slices across his face, striking, each line violent. “You thought you were dying again, didn’t you?”
His voice is steady, quiet, and sorry. He isn’t crying, but Peter is. Matt lifts his own mask, unable to see him, but he looks at him. He couldn’t stop the shuddering through his chest, after lashing out at Matt, and he finally sees him, like when he would see Foggy tossing a baseball in their air because it sounded like a boulder tumbling, or like when he saw Karen when her face broke out into a smile, quiet laughter shaking her frame while she gasped for breaths from laughter. That’s who saw him, for the first time, and he’s seen.
Peter’s darkest hour was the collapsed building on 10th, and Matt had brought him back from it. He had his own gravitational force, his mass wouldn’t betray him again. And May would hold him again that night, Matt unable to leave his side.
May hadn’t dared to ever let him in before, the Devil himself, but made an exception when her nephew looked back at him, the vacancy replenished with Peter’s own bright galaxies that had dimmed, darkened by the world.
May held him in the dark, hoping he’d rue this day for nearly dying on him. After she’d gotten him back. She held him, as they both were traipsing above dangerous territory, standing on the moon above the earth. Above the abyss. The darkness. He squirmed into her side, his feet planted across Matt’s lap on the other side of the couch.
He was safe. This was almost home. They made it what they could, and he was eternally grateful for May. She rocked them back and forth, letting him sag into her side and cling onto her. He couldn’t talk anymore for the night, and he was sure if he did, then she’d interrogate Matt, and he’d never be allowed in Hell’s Kitchen again.
Her fingers dragged through his scalp, around the bandage Matt placed. He could hear the gravel plundering all around him, and compressed his face, hiding it.
He knew she didn’t hate Daredevil. He knew, deep down, he really was trying to help him tonight. Get him to open up, no matter how many little indications Peter gave to the world. He had to compartmentalize, to be responsible.
She had even given him leftovers before. She checked up on him on her own, after saving him time after time. He had unmasked himself at the door, immediately avoiding the wrath of May and seeking her approval. His hair was between red and brown, his eyes ocean blue, and he had a warmth to him that hopefully May would trust while they sat in silence.
She had turned to Daredevil, unmasked. “Why did you save him?”
“That’s what family does.”