Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Peter figures that everybody has their coping mechanisms. 

When crippling anxiety or fear or life in general gets overwhelming, people will find their own escapes. Their own way to deal whenever thinking gets a bit too much. 

Some people drink. Other people gamble. Lots stop thinking altogether and pound the shit out of their bodies at the gym or on the field. 

As Spider-Man, Peter has seen a lot of it second-hand. People take it to the streets, turn it into games of chance, pirate it on the internet, buy it for free in an hour with each other, or sell their soul for a few ounces of it. Some risk their families for it. 

Everyone has a coping mechanism. 

Peter has Spider-Man. 

It starts with a phone call in the middle of patrol.

Well, multiple phone calls, really. Peter just misses the first few.

It’s one-hundred percent his fault. 

Earlier that night, Daredevil phoned in mid-shift with an emergency: movie theater, East 57th and 3rd, armed perps, hostage situation. In other words, get your ass down here now, Spidey, I needed you here yesterday.

And, well, his shift ended at 8, but gun heists don’t exactly wait for that last $7.50, so he bunched up his dish towel, hung up his apron on its hook, and went to tell Josie that he was headed home early. His palms sweated as she stared him down with a scrutinizing glare.

His aunt was sick. Very sorry. Nothing to be done about it. He bit the inside of his cheek, praying that she bought it.

Her scowl, lit from beneath by the green lighting of the bar, was ominous and carried promises of nights relegated to scrubbing the floors, but she eventually let him go with a wave of her hand.

Then it's off to the alley behind the bar, shedding his uniform like a second skin and switching his real-world phone out for his burner phone. During patrols, he usually leaves all his stuff sealed in his drawstring bag and webbed thickly to the alleyway dumpster. And yeah, maybe on paper it isn’t the smartest move to leave it unattended, but he has some faith that the average non-powered Joe won’t be able to rip through the webbing.

Five minutes later, he swings across Midtown, dodging errant pigeons while reading Double D's texts. The man’s texts match his personality to the T—short, blunt, and with perfect grammar, because he’s secretly a grandma in disguise. Peter finds it hilarious.

dd: What's your ETA?

sm: omw. 5 mins?

dd: Hurry. I'll meet you on the roof. Be quiet when you come.

Peter almost crashes several times. Don’t swing and text, kids.

He misses the first call by six minutes.

The second call comes at 8:02 PM. 

By then, Peter is halfway across town at the theater, shooing moviegoers through the lobby doors to the tune of Deadpool singing the Russian national anthem in the background. 

It’s a classic hostage scenario, pulled straight from a crime thriller: families, kids, and a late night showing of “The Good Dinosaur,” before eight maniacs with semis and radicalist ideals crash the party. They hold the people at gunpoint in the lobby while proselytizing about their anti-federal agenda and the vigilante scum of the city.

You called? Vigilante scum reporting for duty.

This would go a lot faster if two of the team weren’t bitching like an old married couple. 

“Who the HELL invited him?” Daredevil snarls as he slams the nearest perp headfirst through the popcorn machine. A shower of kernels spray across the floor like orange skittles. 

“ I invited me, princess,” Deadpool chirps. “And FWI, rude to not invite me! I should have you two blocked for aggravating my FOMO. Some friends you are.” 

“We are not friends,” Daredevil grinds out, sounding like a blender pulverizing rocks. “You are a sado-masochist with a bounty over his head and I want nothing to do with you.” 

“Sheesh.” With a roll of his shoulders, Deadpool unholsters his guns. “Somebody missed cotillion.” 

Daredevil snarls out loud, punching the gunman harder than he needs to. He receives a spit to the face, and the guy screeches something about capitalist pigs and the fall of commercialism and “vigilante filth.” 

How rude. 

Deadpool expresses his deep disdain for this statement by unloading a clip into the guy before Daredevil can move. More than a few people scream in terror and really? Peter can’t blame them. 

“DP! No killing!” Peter shouts. 

At the same time that Daredevil bellows, 

“THERE ARE CHILDREN HERE, YOU MANIAC!” and tackles him to the ground. 

It’s a situation. 

The phone on Peter’s hip begins to buzz as he urged the shell-shocked stream of people through the door. “Let’s go, let’s go, move people. Move it, move it.” 

A family of four passes by: the toddler wailing like a siren and the mom’s headscarf coming unpinned. As they go through, he scans them for injuries. Gashes, stabs, gunshot wounds, contusions of any sort. Fortunately, most of the scrapes and bruises that dot people’s knees and hands seem to be minor.

One kid is bleeding pretty heavily from his palm. “Hey buddy,” Peter says. “Can I take a look at that?” 

The kid looks owlishly up at him through thick, moon-like glasses and a thick mop of curls, lip quivering. 

“Did the glass get you?” 

A resolute nod. At Peter’s hip, the burner vibrates more insistently. Peter ignores it. 

Someone hands over a bandana, which he wraps around the kid’s palm to stem the flow. The kid does a pretty good job at not crying—the cut has to hurt like hell.

Inside, DP and Daredevil add the finishing touches to their handiwork—most of the aggravators are either taking a nonconsensual nap on the lobby floor, or are hole-punched through-and-through with bullets. They’re pretty effective together, once they’re able to stop butting heads long enough to use their brains. 

Unfortunately, now that head-bashing is done, harmony doesn’t last long. Peter rejoins them mid-argument. Wade is sitting criss-cross applesauce on the ground, quietly polishing a handgun while Daredevil spits venom at him from above.

“—not for you to come along and fuck up the job. We were doing just fine without you.” 

“Puh-lease,” Wade snorts, folding his barrel-like arms over his chest. “You had a gun at your head and a knee in your groin, buddy-o. You would’ve been Swiss fucking cheese on flatbread in two seconds flat.” 

“We had it handled.” Daredevil’s glare burns a hole in Deadpool’s side. Deadpool ignores this.

Instead, he turns to face Peter, scooping him into the conversation. “Hi Spidey. Mamas and the Papas and the itty bitty bears all good?” 

“Yeah, they are. Listen, Wade, thanks a lot for your help—” 

“No.” Daredevil cuts him off with a snarl. Aggravation rolls off of his hunched shoulders in waves. He reminds Peter of a pissed off feral cat. “Don’t thank him, Spidey. You killed a man, Wilson.” 

“Would you believe me if I told you it were an accident?” 

“Hell no” 

“Double D,” Peter protests. “Let him off. He helped us save a lot of people, and, yeah, people got hurt, but maybe he’s really trying to—” 

“Spidey, I appreciate you, and respect your opinion on a lot, but you are way too trusting with this maniac.” Blood trickles from Daredevil’s lip where someone clocked him, and he swipes at it impatiently. 

Deadpool sighs and looked at the ceiling, like Why do I even bother? 

Stowing his gun, he stands. DP is stacked like a brick shithouse, guns layering his hips and twin swords strapped to his back in an “X.” He looms over Daredevil with that blank, expressionless gaze, and Peter can imagine why most people run screaming at a mere glimpse of the merc.

Daredevil is not deterred. 

“You killed him,” he repeats. “In front of families and children, and you took his life away from him.” 

“Yeah, I did,” Wade says frankly, getting real close up in Daredevil’s face. “You know why? I was in the neighborhood, because that’s where my assignment was. And I took care of him. And now I can go home and eat birthday cake ice cream and watch Barbie Nutcracker on my couch, because that fucker’s off the streets.” 

“That’s not for you to decide.”
Whew. Anybody else feeling a little tense? 

Peter’s phone lets out an angry buzz. Relieved to have an excuse, Peter quietly slips out to where the civilians were gathered. He does a quick head count of his charges before flicking open the burner and turning away. “Hi, can I call you back? This isn’t the best time.” 

“Peter, honey. Why haven’t you been picking up? You need to answer your phone.” 

May. 

“Hi.” He takes a few steps further from the group. “Sorry. My phone’s back with my bag.” 

“Aren’t you done with work? I thought Josie let you out at 8?” “Yeah. No, no, I am done with work. She did let me out.” Mind him, Josie wasn’t too happy about it. 

“That woman has been very good to you,” May notes, and Peter can’t argue with that. 

College is the single most expensive thing that has ever happened to Peter, and Josie’s bar is the boon that’s kept him afloat for the past year or so. Off-campus housing this year forced him to up the ante, and Josie has been kind enough to hire him for a double shift to help him pay for his apartment, even though she doesn't really need the help.

“Listen, I’ve kind of got a situation.” He peers through the glass. 

DD has wrangled Wade into an angry chokehold, and looks T-10 from punching him out. Wade bucks Double D like a bronco, having the time of his life. 

Why. Is Peter the most mature of the group. 

“Can I swing by tomorrow? I have study groups at one, but I could come after that.” 

“Pete, baby. I think we need to talk now.” Her voice sounds faint and tired around the edges, and Peter’s anxiety begins to sharpen. 

It’s not so much her words as the timbre of defeat in her voice that sends anxiety ricocheting down his spine. May sounds beaten down. Dragged out and ragged, the way she is on those bad nights when one more kid gets snared by the school system, one more kid gets bullied into hospitalized submission. 

“You know how I haven’t been feeling that well recently?” 

Yes, he does. May has been complaining of back pain, stomach aches, mounting cramps in her abdomen. Getting worse and worse every day. She’s been playing it down as nothing more than “menopausal hell.” 

“I went to a doctor.”

Oh, God. Yes? And? Was it that? Is it bad? 

“They said—They said it might—” She gives up. “Will you come over for a minute? I think...I think I—I just need to see you, baby.” 

Icey hot panic stabs his chest, threatening to swamp him. May is steely. May is tough. If she thinks it’s worth worrying about, it’s probably way worse. But he takes a deep breath and shoves it into a tiny box at the back of his head. Compartmentalize. This situation has to be unassed before anything else can happen. 

“Can I call you back in a minute? I’ve got about—” He does a quick head count. “ Twentyfourtwentyfivetwentysixtwentyseven. Twenty-eight civilians who need medical attention and a cup of hot chocolate.” 

“Okay.” Over the phone, May’s voice crackles tinnily. Bless her, she doesn’t even question it anymore. 

Peter stays with the civilians just long enough to hear the beginnings of police sirens on the block, before skedaddling to the roof where Daredevil is watching from above. It's just the two of them up there—Deadpool has long since made himself scarce: a side effect of being wanted for murder by twelve different state police departments—and Peter’s palms start to get sweaty as the silence stretches on.

Even after eight months of working occasionally with the man, Peter is still baffled sometimes that he’s actually jumping buildings with the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Actually fighting crime with him. Actually texting him on an actual phone. 

There's a tiny piece of him that still looks up to the Devil of Hell's Kitchen with the eyes of the twelve year old that Peter once was. Iron Man was his number one hero, no question, but Daredevil does the dirty work, the ground level work, the work the Avengers never dare to do. Putting the people first and himself in real danger.

“Thanks for coming,” Daredevil says finally.

"Happy to help,"� Peter says, and he means it. 

"Call me if you need anything.” And then he’s gone, off into the nighttime

Peter splits off in the other direction, swinging through the dark to Queens. The wind is sharp for an October night, and it knifes through his mask, cutting away at the lingering scent of smoke and sweeping his mind free of debris.

As a kid, Peter hadn’t been afraid of the dark. He liked to imagine that once night fell, shadows were unshackled from their hosts, free to roam as they pleased: to bound through the air, slither up brick walls, sneak across tunnels without anybody the wiser.

It might be nice to be a shadow, he thought. To see the whole city alive and burning like a wick in the dark, moving quicker than any bicycle or car, freer than any solid being could ever be.

When Peter was fourteen, he swung from his first building.

Learning was terrifying. It sucked so hard the first hundred times, all of the bones reset and aches limped off over the days following a bad fall. But the moment when the web first caught, and he dropped into that beautiful, perfect pendulum swing—made every last tumble worth it in the end.

During the drop, during that the whooping surge in his stomach before the webbing emerged from his wrists, Peter realized that he was as close as anyone would ever get to being a weightless, massless shadow.

Unbound by the shackles of physics. Free.

When Peter drops from a skyscraper into the night, he can finally fly.

With the soft click of the apartment, quiet settles to mask the burbling, bustling city outside, and Peter drops his duffel to breathe in the scent of moth balls and dusty wood, potting soil and lavender dish soap, so different from his college apartment, which reeks of sweat and running shoes and orange Febreze.

Even after a year away at college, nothing quite screams "home" as much as the houseplants dotting the windows and the polka dot, supermarket shower-curtains for blinds.

Setting the spare key down on the mudroom bench, he quietly shucks his shoes off (No shoes in the house—very strict rule. Dirt unacceptable. Offenders punished appropriately). Everything is exactly the same as when he last visited, save for the broken shards of blue checkered vase scattered on the floor.

"What happened to you ?" he wonders aloud.

"Peter." He turns and May meets him with a tight hug. They crash together like orbiting planets, pulled in by the sheer force of gravity.

She is thinner than when he last visited two weeks ago, all sharp hip bones and soft sweaters and lemongrass tea. Almost brittle, an ice fractal against his chest. But pressed to his still pumping heart, she's steely and solid, and he melts a little into her touch, clinging to her like driftwood in a storm.

Still the same May. Even if her chin barely crests his shoulder now.

She notices that too.

"You have to stop growing," she murmurs, and he chuckles through the knot in his throat.

"Not really a choice there."

The hug prolongs as each waits for the other to pull away first. 

Then, slowly, like an ice floe cracking and crumbling into the sea, May's shoulders begin to shake, and Peter's hopes are dashed on the floor with the vase.

It's a mass, she tells him over tea on the couch. 

It's settled deep in her abdomen, and explains a lot of what she's been feeling recently: the cramping, the nausea, the lack of appetite. Her doctor scheduled her for a biopsy.

Nothing to panic about immediately, she reassured May. It could be harmless, in which case all they need to do is remove the cyst.

If the biopsy results come back positive, though, that means cancer has come knocking, and lots of preparations will need to be made. Chemo in the books means May will need to use a lot of her sick days. Besides the obvious hair loss and nausea, there'll be the emotional aspect of having, well, cancer. Support groups, the doctor said, are a good option for some people. She might have to have some help around the house, living alone and all.

Peter volunteers himself for that immediately.

After the initial breakdown, May puts on her brave face and adopts a brusque manner he associates with her grieving Ben, or worrying about the kids at CPS. She begins to bustle around the kitchen cleaning absolutely nothing, as if to distract herself from the topic at hand.

Peter goes along with it, cradling the cup of herbal tea she made him in his palms, letting it scorch his palms. Inside, he's numb, barely holding it together.

"They aren't sure whether it's malignant or not," she says, wiping down the sparklingly clear counter. Peter watches the steam rise from his cup. "I go to the clinic in the morning."

"I'm coming with you."

"Peter—"

"When's the test?"

"Friday, but—"

"Gwen's in my lab section. Study group's covered too." That's also a lie. He's supposed to be leading study group that afternoon. He'll text Nabi, see if she'll be willing to take over for him for the day.

"You have work."

"Josie'll get it. I'm coming with y—"

"You are not ditching work, or—no, listen. You are not ditching work or class to do this. I can go on my own." Her voice rises a little, but he knows from her clenched shoulders that it's all panic and no anger.

He tries again, softer this time. "May, please." 

She stops scrubbing the counter, chest heaving a little as she trembles. His heart screeches abrasively in his chest as she fights back tears, wanting to grab her, hold her the way she did to him for a year, every night he woke screaming for Ben.

"Let me come with you. I want to come with you."

She blinks hard, looking at him for a moment, before she silently nods. He can't tell if it's in resignation or relief.

"Okay. Okay." She scrubs a little at that same spot before pausing again. "Okay. All right."

And then the tears come for real this time, but Peter is expecting them. He catches her, feeling numb and clumsy and unsure of how the hell to deal with any of this. Oh, there's probably some pamphlet out there about it, that Peter certainly hasn't read. He feels like a bull in a china shop crashing through this whole thing, ungainly and brutally naïve

At 10:56, Peter flips off Troll 2 and pulls a blanket over May's sleeping form. Creeping out, he shuts the door behind him as quietly as he can before moving out onto the wide-eyed streets.

He heads home. Brushes his teeth. Stares at his pale hollow reflection in the mirror before shutting off the light and going to bed.

Sleep evades him like a shadow to the light. Peter lies awake, tangled in sheets, churning his mind into a stupor, until he can't bear it anymore.

Insomnia runs in the family. 

As a little kid, he would lie awake for hours, studying the shadows thrown up into the air by his nightlight: elongated and elegant, or squashed into jerky splotches. They all danced that amorphous, beautiful dance, across the floor, wavering along the walls in tongues like flames, before finally melting up into the dark ceiling corners in velvety black.

Ben would sneak into his room long after lights out, somehow always knowing when Peter couldn't sleep. Hours were burned away playing shadow puppets on the wall or counting the number of cabs that drove by the window. Ben could cast shadows into all kinds of shapes: birds, butterflies, fish. 

There would always be a story to go along with them, too. The fish would eat the bird, or the butterfly would learn to swim. And when Peter finally fell asleep, it would be with a stomach sore from giggling and eyes heavy with sleep.

There is no story now.

 At 1:27 AM, Peter climbs out the window and swings aimlessly around the city to clear his head. 

Web-slinging is a lot like ice skating, he thinks absentmindedly, letting his arms and core burn in that synchronized rhythm. You dance with momentum on gravity's edge, each time pulling back right before the crash leads to a fall.

After circling Manhattan twice, he settles atop the Bank of America Tower—a little less conspicuous than the Chrysler Building or the Empire State Building, but high enough to be out of view.

Hoisted hundreds of meters high, he perches precariously on the canted lip of the roof and breathes in polluted city air like Albuterol. Up here, the city stretches out all around him in a blazing circuit board of light and sound. A tiny burning ember on the firestone of New York.

He is alone, up here, treacherously alone, with ground far, far below and the stars just out of reach. Calm blankets his aching shoulders, cool as a northbound breeze.

When Ben passed, shadows lost their magic. They swarmed the streets that night, creeping over his uncle's dying face and wrapping up his body in shrouds of ashy grey. They began to lurk in corners, down alleyways, through sewers. Where there had been wonder and delight, now only lay piercing memories of hard cement and the sick metallic scent of pain. Peter learned to fear the dark.

May was never supposed to get sick.

Now that he can stop crime, May's supposed to be safe. In Peter's disoriented brain, a world without May just isn't . It ceases to exist. Any threat to her, any danger she might be in, he's planned for, schemed against. He's ripped through so many sleepless nights working to counter anything bad that might happen, cooked up all the worst case scenarios to make sure that no harm ever came to her.

Spider-Man is born out of Peter's little fantasy that he can stop anything with a fist, with a web, and a snarky comment to save the day.

But this is no outside force, no bogey-monster to beat back to the shadows. In the end, May's own body, her very DNA, created the weapon to lance her with, and he could do nothing against it. This was a faulty gene, a broken rung of the helical ladder, and it's working against her in a sick imitation of healing. He can't stop something that May created herself.

Even still.

He buries his face in his hands, ignoring the tears streaking down his face, and prays that May leaves the light on when she goes to bed.

Chapter Text

KkkkkKKkkKkkk.

Peter wakes the next morning with a heart-wrenching jolt, a swallowed scream pressed against his lips.

His eyes are open and he can physically see sun shining through the paper thin blinds, but nightmares still grab at him with gnarled hands as if to drag him back down into their depths.

May as a rotting corpse.

Gwen, strangled by faceless, eye-filled tentacles.

Even Daredevil, chest mangled and face sliced up T-bone style.

He clutches at the sheets and forces air through his gritted teeth.They're not there. Get a grip, it's all in your head. Angry pangs shoot through his chest in dubstep pulses, and his breath hitches and jags in his throat.

A few months ago, Daredevil tried to coach Peter through the ancient ways of meditation.

Countless nights were spent sitting criss-cross applesauce on some godforsaken brownstone or another, visualizing calm lakes and warm sunshine as he froze his ass off in the cold.

"Take a deep breath," Daredevil's voice echoes in his ears. Peter wraps his consciousness around that voice and lets it smooth out his breath from staccato peaks into soft tipped waves. "Focus on one point and let it expand to fill the space. That's it. Now, push everything else away—it's all just background noise. Let it wash over you like water."

Deep breath in. Hold it. Deep breath out.

SSSssshhhh.

Repeat.

Deep breath in. Hold it. Deep breath out.

He is not drowning. He is awake. Everything is fine.

In. Hold it. Out.

Slowly, after a few minutes or a couple eons, his heart rate returns to its baseline drumbeat, and he deflates back into the covers, sweaty and shaking.

For a few more moments, he stares at the ceiling, trying to recover a few braincells, before rolling over to check the time on his phone.

7:06 AM.

Shit. That's bad even by his piss-poor standards. Three hours of nightmares somehow feels worse than no sleep at all.

KKkKkkKKKkkKKk.

"Mister Blue Sky please tell us why you had to hide away for sooo looong. Sooo looong. Beedum doo doo doo."

He blinks, and the last echoes of night visions puff away in a burst of weak October sunshine. In the kitchen, the Roommate warbles his tone-deaf heart out over the roar of the ancient coffee grinder.

"Hey you with the pretty face!" The Roommate chants, like it isn't ass o'clock in the morning with a roommate sleeping next door. Like Peter isn't about to murder him with his own shoe laces if he doesn't shut up."Welcome to the human race!"

Peter stifles a groan and fights the urge to burrow back into the blankets.

Peter doesn't have the heart to tell his doctor that he doesn't have a sleep disorder—just a living, breathing sleep deterrent living next door.

He must've used up all his luck on Gwen last year, because holy shit. Tate Kairy is the perfect nightmare to split the rent with. Every morning, The Roommate gets up to greet the dawn like a long-lost lover, pounding around the city with his pecs on full display so he can show the world what a God-given gift he is to society.

Peter wants to know if God has a return policy.

Every time he's about to call it quits and move into a sewer somewhere far away from here, he reminds himself that quitting is not the answer. He can scale skyscrapers in a matter of minutes. He can lift cars—hell, he can punt cars across the Hudson, damnit. He's got a job, and a good education to finish, and no musclebound sun-kissed turd will ruin that for him.

"A celebration, Mr. Blue Sky's up there waitin'. And today. IS THE DAY WE'VE WAITED FOR! OOOOOR!"

Peter surprises himself by completely losing patience. "Man will you SHUT. UP?"

He half expects the door to be knocked down in a wave of alpha male fury, but all that greets him is the sound of someone dropping keys onto the counter and quietly shuffling off to the bathroom, most likely to use up all the hot shower water.

Well. That went a lot better than anticipated. Must be a fluke, or a good mood at most. Peter isn't about to risk his chances, though, so he scurries to grab clothes and speed out the door before Tate decides to get offended.

By the end of morning lecture, he's nodded off not once, but three separate times. The moment they're dismissed, Gwen grabs him by the arm and hauls him out the door of the lecture hall and onto the sidewalk.

"Lunch," is all she says and gives him a look. And, well, what can he do? Once Gwen Stacey has an idea in her head, nothing short of a military grade tank can get in her way. People on the street part like the Red Sea as they frogmarch by, Gwen's hand firmly on the collar of Peter's jacket.

People in New York don't make way for shit. It's fairly impressive.

Al Desko, a greasy little café about two blocks from the lecture hall, is about as janky as they come, but their coffee is excellent. After standing outside in a thin shirt and jeans, this place feels the way he might imagine a Hot Pocket would—warm, greasy, more than a little messy.

Peter heroically spills his first cup all over himself and is promptly removed to one of the corner booths in the back. After shoving him bodily into the seat, Gwen narrows her eyes and aims one well-manicured finger in his direction.

"You. Stay here," she tells him, before storming off to clean up the mess he made. She'd make a terrifying kindergarten teacher, he thinks.

Resting his head on the table, he zones out for a second, fiddling with a palm-tree shaker. The booth is rocking some pretty serious stains, but it adds to the charm. When Gwen returns, she's carrying a plastic number card and two cups with pineapple drink stirrers sticking out of their lids. She foists one of the cups labeled Med Latté into his hands.

"Your daily dose of heart attack: three sugars, two creams, no syrup. Drink," she orders as she slides into the booth beside him. Not that he needs any coaxing in the first place. It tastes like bitter anxiety as he tosses it back. Sweet caffeine. I missed you.

They sit in comfortable silence while the caffeine claws its way through his veins, Gwen scribbling and erasing at her crossword puzzle, Peter staring blankly out the window, through the leftover Christmas tinsel out onto the street beyond.

The paper cup scalds his hands, and for a second, Peter thinks about telling Gwen about May, about the biopsy to come.

It would be the smart thing to do. The mature thing to do.

He keeps his lips seals and burns the roof of his mouth with more coffee, because he is a dumbass idiot in a skin-tight onesie with zero healthy coping mechanisms.

Food arrives on floral-printed paper plates like warm, buttery love-letters from heaven, but despite the groaning protests of hunger that pipe from his abdomen (damn you super-metabolism), his throat clenches and diaphragm seizes, and yeah, no, he won't be able to keep that down.

Gwen watches him dump his grilled cheese into the garbage, but when he picks up his bag to leave, she makes no move to stop him.

Which he's extremely grateful for. He wouldn't even know what to say if she'd asked.

Nothing against Gwen or anybody—Peter just prefers to try and solve problems on his own before bothering anyone else to do it for him.

Ben and May were the same way. Are the same way.

May, a social worker by day, spends the rest of her free time with a stained apron around her waist, ladling for the soup kitchen down the street. And Ben—Ben, who worked with his hands, who sawed wood and laid bricks to keep the water running—never passed a donation tin he didn't want to add a five dollar bill to.

Always involved in the world around them, helping others, reaching out. But the moment it got to deep personal stuff, all shields go up, and whatever poor, well-meaning bastard is trying to connect is shut down with a polite redirect.

Compartmentalization, as Peter learned a few years into middle school during Pre-Psych, and he likes to think he's become pretty good at it. He's had to, living a dual life the way he does.

In his brain, there are two very distinct sections for Spider-Man and Peter Parker. Two different lives, two different faces, separated by an iron wall. During the day, the shattering glass and bloody fists are shoved them deep, deep into a dark dusty corner in his brain.

Same thing at night. The mask goes on, and Peter Parker disappears.

Once in a while, though, it'll come back to bite him in the ass in the form of those two worlds colliding.

Coming back from Josie's, the spidey-sense started screaming the moment he hit the bridge, building in volume as he neared the apartment.

Could've been HYDRA, could've been Assborn. All he could imagine was Tate dropping by to pick up books or a change of clothes, and finding some nutso with a sawed off shotgun standing at their kitchen table.

But now. Now his brain does backflips, because there is no way in hell the scene in front of him should be possible.

Jessica Jones shouldn’t even know who he is, much less where he lives and how hell to break into his apartment.

He likes Jessica a lot. She helped him out once or twice when he was but a wee idiot in a suit, completely new to the vigilante networking thing, before fucking off into oblivion.

Contrary to popular belief (or at least whatever the newspapers are spouting), there is some rhyme and reason to the way New York's crime-fighters operate. There are Rules. The Rules of Vigilante-ing from the Handbook for Suited Shitheads, as Jessica puts it.

One: Everyone looks after their assigned areas. Daredevil and Jessica in Hell's Kitchen. Luke Cage covers Harlem; Danny Rand, Lower Manhattan and Chinatown. And Frank Castle gets anywhere with gangs and guns—what?

You want Queens? Sure, have at it. No one else cares.

Rule Two: Whatever happens in your neighborhood is your problem. We'll help, but try to keep your shit at home. Don't let it leak into the rest of this godforsaken place.

Usually, unless Peter seeks them out, he can go for days without seeing the other vigilantes speckled throughout the city.

And yet here’s Jessica. Lounging cool as can be on his couch in the middle of his living room, drinking from one of his glasses in the same outfit she always wears: a leather zip-up jacket over a t-shirt and skinny jeans. Maybe she's like Bill Gates, and owns ten leather jackets and ten skinny jeans so she never has to pick what to wear.

"Wha—! How d—?"

Jessica Jones picks at her nails and leans against the armrest—his armrest!— and waits patiently as he splutters and tries to recover his soul from jackhammering out of his chest.

"How," he pants, "the ever-loving fuck are you here?!"

"Well, the Internet for starters," she snarks. "Universities keep pretty thorough records of their students, you know. Besides, with the whole Discovery Challenge-thingy grant to Tipsy Beach—"

"Topsail," Peter corrects automatically, not even processing her words.

"Whatever. So that, and all the decathalon stuff from a few years ago. You kinda suck at keeping a low profile—”

He grabs her by the arm and drags her out of her chair and into his room.

And yeah, he knows that’s a no go with Jess, but he can't hear his own inhibition over the sound of him losing his shit.
They're talking in plain view of the across-the-street neighbors, who probably know that weird powered chick from the news and could put two and two together.

Her water glass misses the wood floor and hits the rug, and fuck, now there's bourbon everywhere, because of course Jessica is drinking.

The bedroom door shuts behind them, and he turns the lock for good measure before she forcefully smacks his hand off her arm. Wow, that actually hurts. He isn't used to other people having super-strength. "What the fuck, Webs. Let go."

His last hope that this might be a huge mistake is dashed with her words. She knows.

The last rule for Suited Shitheads is Rule Three: Do not fuck with identities.

"You are breaking Rule Three," Peter tells her smirking face. "You are breaking your own rules, you utter and complete ass—Oh my God. Did you tell anybody? Give me that much or you are leaving this apartment, I swear to God. You shouldn't even be here. You are a liability and my landlord will kill me if you break so much as a door knob, so just—"

She has to raise her voice over his tirade. "Webs, calm the fuck down. I literally figured it out on day dot, okay? I tracked you home to make sure you didn't, I dunno, die before you got home. You looked clueless. Sue me."

Which was sort of heartwarming. She did pull him out of the Hudson a couple times over the years.

"I know the alters of all of you idiots, even M—even that horned asshole."

"Who?" he pokes innocently, more than a little curious despite himself. What can he say, he's a hypocrite.

She mugs him hard. "I'm not telling. Stop looking like a kicked puppy. I don't rat you out, I don't rat him out."

It reverberates around in his head until another, more pertinent question starts to form.

"Who else knows?" he demands, miles past joking.

She raises placating hands. "Nobody else knows, at least from me. Wilson might know, but that can't be helped. He's more paranoid than a caffeinated Castle, Wilson's gonna find out what Wilson wants to know."

That's a whole different can of worms that Peter doesn't really want to open right now. "Wade's fine. He's just a little—" Crazy. Immature. Misunderstood. None of them sound great when you put them into words. "Crass."

Jessica snorts again and tips her head back, as if to say, Can you believe this idiot? "Your choice kid. Be careful. But really—I'm an asshole, but I don't sell my friend's identities on the dark web for cocaine or some shit. I may have blackmailed Red a couple of times, but he deserved it."

Peter's heart rate slows a little as his body works out the last of its adrenaline. Legs shaky as he stands, he goes for the basket of clean (thank sweet Jesus) laundry to keep his hands busy. "I've got to do this, but you still haven't answered me. What are you doing here?"

"What do you know about the Polish?" she asks without preamble. He stops for a moment, thinking.

"Um, well, there are about 60 million Poles currently alive in the world. around 38 million of them live in Poland, which is a unitary parliamentary republic—"

"Not that, dumbass" Peter keeps folding, unperturbed. Jessica glaring at him is really no different than usual. "The Polish mafia."

The Poles. Great. Just what they need.

Following the most recent imprisonment of Wilson Fisk (that guy collects prison tenures like NFL jerseys), all the crime families of New York upped the ante: larceny, trafficking, violent crime are all through the roof.

Within the past week, in Queens alone, Peter's walked twelve people to the hospital, and called the ambulance on eighteen more.

Five of the people received rape kits. Two were shivved in public.

"Yeah, I know a little bit." He tucks another polo onto the stack. "Someone's been commandeering a bunch of business in my area, and I'm pretty sure it's them."

Jessica pulls out a notepad and gestures for him to keep talking.

"Um, well, two different nail salon chains I know for a fact were owned by the Chinese, suddenly have all sorts of different people working there. And I'm pretty sure the Chinese only force labor on Chinese migrants. A couple of independent bodegas might be part of it. And, um, I've found a couple of sweatshops, but those were in June. Why?"

She sighs. "They're rampant in the Kitchen. One of my clients got tangled up in the wrong shit. Some corporate goon. Ebony Insurance Agency or some crap." She rolls her eyes, and he gets the feeling she isn't very impressed with this choice of desk-jockeying career.

"What's his deal?"

"What was his deal. He's dead now. Husband and fifteen-year-old contacted me after he went missing on a business outing. Took me about a week to find him. They weren't trying to be subtle about it either: he was stewing in the middle of Central fucking Park. Could've been pulled off as a violent mugging—all his stuff was gone. But I called bullshit. Guy had a background in MMA. Big, too. The killing was too clean to be random."

She has a terrible, terrible job. Scribbling down a few more notes, she reaches out as if to grab something, before pulling her hand away with a disgusted look. Like reaching for a cup that wasn't there. "So if you know anything..."

Sadly, he does. "I know a bit, but Double D would know more," he told her at last. "They're on his turf more than mine."

Jessica groaned. "Not that asshole."

Those two are a riot together.

Sleep begins to happen less and less.

Which is okay. Everything's okay. He's got it handled. He's Spider-Man for God's sake—he has at least some experience in crisis management.

At this point, there should be a multi-step program or something, like in those cheesy coming-of-age books, where emo playlists backtrack each angst-filled chapter. The Ten Steps to Get Laid Before I Die at Eighteen From A Rare Disease kind of book. Only Peter's might be something more like Ten Steps to Vigilante Stress Management.

At work, he bangs his melon enough times on the underside of the counter that Alaini tries to send him home.

"I'm fine," he protests, dodging her attempts to confiscate his rag and spray bottle. She's a good five inches shorter than him, but he's long since learned that doesn't really matter in the end—he's watched her kick men three times his size out the back door onto their asses.

Peter lances his other shift buddy, Omar, with a silent plea for help. The bastard just grins and watches on in amusement, not even trying to step in. Traitor.

Ducking out of the bar area, Peter takes refuge behind the pool table at the back. "Really, Laini, I promise. I can work."

His senior supervisor's face spells skepticism and disbelief. "You look wasted."

"I'm not wasted."

After a few more failed grabs, Alaini resorts to trapping him into his corner, one hand on the wall and the other on the edge of the table. They face off—her out front, him pinned with his back to the wall.

"You're going to give someone alcohol poisoning before the night is over, and then we'll have to fire your dumb ass. Give me the bottle and go home, Pete. Get some rest. Maybe you'll come back with more braincells tomorrow."

There's no bite to her words, but he's already stressed out and panicked—the last half hour has been spent roiling over an unhealthy amount of cancer statistics—so he freaks out anyways, because God. The last thing May needs is for him to lose working hours to ineptitude.

"Dude." Omar's baritone breaks through their almost comical staring contest. "Chill out for a second. It's not like you're quitting. There's no shame in taking a day off for once."

He earns himself a scowl from Peter for that because seriously: whose side are you on? With shift partners like these...

While he's distracted, Alaini uses her Secret Marine Superpowers to dart around the side and steal the rags before he can react.

"Hey—HEY! Laini, I can work. C'mon, please? Give me the stuff back." It falls on deaf ears as she tucks the supplies out of reach beneath the bartop. Peter finds himself being unceremoniously escorted from the building, and shoved for the second time that day into the time-out chair—this time in the shape of an Uber hauling his sorry ass home.

"It's okay to ask for help, Peter," Alaini tells him, not unkindly, before she shuts the door in his face. And damn, that hurts. He seethes all the way home without really knowing why.

Peter goes home and naps. It isn't intentional, but his body kinda force quits on him for a couple hours.

When he comes to, burritoed in quilts, it's dark outside and the world feels a lot sharper and closer than before.

His suit is on and he's sliding open the window before he catches himself enough to think, Maybe it would be a good idea to rest some more. I should probably rest more.

Then he's out and onto the fire escape, clambering into the night.

Deadpool finds him as he's pulling a runaway cat off a fire escape in Bed-Stuy, when heavy boots clang onto the landing a few levels above him. "Spidey! Love of my life! I've been looking for your fine patootie all night."

"Hi Wade," Peter says without looking up. The spidey-sense didn't go off, so Peter keeps his glued firmly to his target, watching for any sign of bolting. Kitty's owners—a group of kids sans parents—are leaning out the window in rapture to watch the actual Spider-Man rescue their cat.

Kitty herself is a beautiful orange tabby, with floofy hair and a stellar Resting Bitchface, who wants zilch to do with either Peter or his tuna treats of bribery

"Hey, kitty. Sweet kitty. Nice kitty. Wanna go home?" The cat meets Peter's outstretched hand with a hiss and a swipe of claws. "Ouch! Shit, child. I'm trying to help you."

Paranoid little bastard. Peter can totally relate though. Oh, the things Spider-Man does for the city. Iron Man wouldn't be caught dead out here on his hands and knees for a stranger's pet. Steve Rogers-Captain America probably would, though. Sam, too, probably.

A chuckle from above. "Need a little hand?" The merc waves his left arm, which appears to be missing it's corresponding hand. Peter hears a few gasps from below.

Quickly, Peter flaps his own hand at DP. "Dude, put that thing away. You're scaring the kids."

"Eh." DP doesn't sound too concerned. "Never seen an amputee before?"

DP waves cheerfully, a couple of the younger ones shriek. Fan-fucking-tastic. For the first act of Spider-Man & Deadpool, our heroes will scar some local children with R-Rated violence.

"Wade."

"Fine Mom." If DP could roll his eyes, Peter is sure he'd be doing it right now. The merc pouts a little. "They're all wusses. Toughen up, lads!"

His words echo loudly down the brick walls. The looks on the kids' faces are less than reassuring.

"Besides the point. Anyways, it looks like you have a cat to catch. Wanna tag team it?"

"Nah." At this point, Peter's best bet is to web the cat and sling her to him. That would probably be animal abuse, though."Unless you can tell me how to make box mac 'n' cheese without a functioning microwave."

The stovetop's broken too, but Peter doesn't feel the need to mention that.

Deadpool snorts a little and shifts his weight so he's lounging back on the railing watching the two of them. "What are you, a broke college student? Wikihow's your best bet for that, not me."

That's a little on the nose, but if the merc notices Peter's sudden silence, he doesn't comment.

"Also, I hate to break it to you, Webs, but mac 'n' cheese is out. Nobody eats that shit anymore. You ever had vegan meat-loaf? Totally microwaveable, just as fatty and delicious as the real stuff. Put a little Vegenaise on top, and it's the bomb. No, literally. I had about twenty-three boxes the other night and when I tell you my guts exploded, I mean. Small intestines everywhere, baby boy. I think my spleen—"

"All right, all right!" Peter breaks him off before he can give the neighbors nightmares. "I'm good. Don't need to hear that. Just need — hey guys?" he calls down to the cat's owners.

The two youngest lean out their window with wide eyes, and Peter prays to whatever higher power that they didn't hear Wade's meatloaf montage.

A pause. Kitty begins to groom herself. Deadpool unfolds himself from his lounging position and deftly drops down the last couple steps, coming to rest squarely between the cat and the staircase up. Trapping her between the two of them. Smart.

"Estrella. Great. Hey Estrella, sweetie? Let's get you down from here."

Estrella-the-Cat is having none of it. She finally catches wind of DP's presence and recoils like she's hit a live wire. Uncoiling herself from her fluffy rage-ball, she moves to leap up the fire escape. 

Deadpool pounces. The kids shriek. It's unnerving, watching a six foot two muscle machine drop onto your cat. But DP's deceptively graceful for his size, and three minutes later, Estrella is delivered unharmed and unwilling back into her grateful owners' arms.

The kids squeal and crowd Peter, because ¡Güey!, Lucas, mira. It's Spider-Man, dude. And for a moment, he reaches over to DP to get him the heck out of here because he can't deal with small children tonight and DP's great with kids. But Deadpool's made himself scarce.

Peter finds him two minutes later, standing one building over. Peter plops down onto the roof beside him, and Wade glances his way for a moment before fishing into one of his many pouches. He presents Peter with something small and bright yellow. A lollipop wrapped in paper. "Want a dumdum?"

Peter reaches out to take it, because he isn't stupid. "It's not pineapple, right?"

"Pshh!" The look of offense is palpable through the mask. "Baby boy, do you take me to be an amateur? It's mango peach, you heathen."

Satisfied, Peter yanks up the bottom half of his mask to pop in the candy. Wade does likewise, baring his knotted skin as he unwraps a grape-purple stick.

It's a huge victory for Peter every moment that Wade forgets to be self conscious about his skin.

From the little that Peter's seen, Wade's face looks like someone fucked it up. As in, took a knife and slashed repeatedly until all that was left was scar tissue. It would make sense why the man never takes his mask off—people hate to see anything that reminds them of violence or pain, but Peter wishes it doesn't have to be that way.

Bad enough being reminded of your trauma every time you look in the mirror. Having other people flinch away from your very face would make it ten times worse. Peter always makes it a point to never react, and slowly, the merc has begun to pull up his mask more and more.

Now, when it's just the two of them, Wade hardly thinks twice about it. And that's awesome.

"Thanks for your help the other night, by the way." Peters thinks that DD probably didn't say nearly as much, so he says it for the both of them. "Really—we couldn't have done it without you."

Wade winks. "Pleasure's all mine, Spidey. Any time you need a booty call, just hit me up, and I'll be there pronto."

Pretty much solidifying Peter's wary suspicion that Wade has no clue who he is.

The merc is notorious throughout the vigilante world for not giving a flying fuck when it comes to safety/dismemberment/killing. But he always saves a special little something for any pedophile he catches prowling the streets. Night, day, doesn't matter. Peter's seen Wade strangle a perv in broad daylight, and walk away without a second glance back.

If DP had any idea that Peter was a minor, all flirting would be off the books.

"Yeah, no. I'll pass, thanks," he tells Deadpool. "What the hell happened anyway?"

"Your lovely Little Red Riding Horns himself."

And Peter balks. Because Double D is a violent asshole, no doubt about it, but that's far even for him. "Daredevil did this?" It comes out more incredulous than it meant to be.

"Yep." Wade pops the 'p' almost lazily. "And I blame you, Webs."

"What? How is this now my fault?"

"Weeeelll..." Leather squeaks as DP scooches a little closer to Peter. "I was looking for you, because you've been MIA and I get separation anxiety. Went up to Red and asked him if he'd seen someone about yay-high, who looked almost as good in spandex as me, but if I talked anymore, he said he would beat my ass. I think he meant that in the blood-guts-gore kind of way, not in the kinky way. But I wanted to make sure."

"It's literally been two days since we last talked," Peter reminds him.

"Yeah, well, Red 'n' I might have to cancel the honeymoon. I'm pretty ripped up about it, Spidey, truly. I may never recover." Wade grabs at his hand in dramatic despair, and Peter can't help the smile spreading across his face.

He tries to remind himself that this is a serial killer murder machine with stability issues. But he can't reconcile it with what's in front of him. DP can sniff out a bad mood like freaking detection dog, and has a knack for using sheer stupidity to reverse it.

"It's killing me inside, Webs. What're you going to do?"

"Tough shit. You'll regenerate."

Wade fake bawls. "Who's gonna take the kids? He took my hand in marriage and everything, and I want it back."

And sweet Jesus, that was the Dad pun to kill all fathers, Though limb loss is kind of a relative thing with Wade. Guy's a freaking starfish.

DP joins him for the rest of patrol, tossing out every marriage related pun under the sun. Even if it means sticking to the rooftops so DP can keep up, the night is brighter and Peter doesn't mind one bit.

Even when DP scares the shit out of him by grabbing him and shaking him, wailing hysterically.

"Webs, I think I lost my wedding ring."

If he ends up webbed to the wall for the next ten minutes, well. Peter won't take the blame for that.