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“Peter, a little help?” Sam calls from the kitchen.
“Sure Sam gimme a second.” Peter scrambles to pull his binder over his head and throw on a random shirt and pair of pants before running downstairs to the kitchen.
“So, it’s almost Bucky and I’s first anniversary and I wanted to learn how to make something special for him. And like since you can cook better than Bucky and I combined I thought maybe you could help me?” Sam asks.
“I mean of course, you and Bucky have been so nice letting me stay here and all. What were you planning?”
“Nothing crazy, like a pesto pasta or something.”
“Sure,” Peter starts. “Just gimme a second to come up with something.”
The first thing he thinks of is Aunt May. Shit, Aunt May. She used to make this stupid pasta recipe every single Wednesday. Fuck. The tears start falling.
“You okay man? You don’t have to make this dish if you don’t want to. No worries.”
“Just- I need a second alone.” Peter runs up the stairs and collapses onto his bed.
It’s fine. Why am I so upset. I mean, of course I’m upset- Aunt May is fucking dead. No one fucking remembers me. It’s a miracle Bucky remembered me. Probably some weird HYDRA shit.
Godammit. Why is it so hard for me to get off this bed? I just wanna go back and help Sam with some dumb recipe. It’ll be fine. Just ignore it. I’ll deal with Aunt May later. I’ll figure out how to make people remember me later.
Shit. I’m thinking about it. MJ. Ned. Everyone. I’m gone. Really. I’m not dead, I’m gone. I’m fucking gone. No one’s gonna think about me in a hundred years. MJ’s gonna die married to someone else. Ned’s fine alone. I’m no one’s kid. Bucky, Sam. They’re all gonna forget about me sooner or later. And then I’ll have to live on the street.
No one’s gonna remember Spider-Man either. I ruined it. The other Peters never lost this hard. They lost, sure, but they always knew how to get back up. And here I am laying down, unable to even move my arms to pull another punch.
Peter starts breathing heavily as he stares at the white wall in front of him. His chest constricts and he feels the room around him close in on him. He’s alone. Genuinely alone. He feels himself slip out of reality’s grasp. Tears start falling and he can’t stop them. He wants to stop. Why can’t he stop? He tries to hold on to something, anything. He grabs the bedding until his knuckles turn white. Peter doesn’t even know who he is, all he knows is that he could never, not in a billion fucking years, fix the mess he threw himself into.
“Peter. What day is today?”
Peter tries to calm his breathing to answer, but it won’t work. He can’t even decipher who he’s talking to.
“Peter, tell me what you see around you.”
The sound of this person’s voice is too overwhelming. It sounds like he’s in some sort of battle and has his augmented senses, but there’s no fight.
He just needs to stop. But as the voice continues talking, Peter keeps sinking deeper and deeper. He wants this feeling to end. But nothing stops it.
“Peter, what is your name?”
“Peter… Parker.” He gasps for air.
“Where are you?”
“At… Bucky and Sam’s house.” At this point, Peter recognises Bucky’s voice. He’s safe.
“What do you see around you?”
Peter doesn’t even realize he’d closed his eyes until he opens them.
“My blue bed sheets, umm, a broken clock, the window, an old wooden dresser…”
“Good, good. Do you need anything?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“I’ll get you a glass of water. Is that okay?”
“Sure.” Peter stares up at Bucky. He sort of wishes Bucky hadn’t been so caring. He knows it’s dumb, but Aunt May would never understand what was going on. She would never have helped him through this. She would’ve shook her head and told him that he should meditate and stop being negative or something. He knows that Bucky is just trying to help, but he can’t help feeling as though Bucky is… one upping her?
Urgh, he’s being so unbelievable. Someone’s trying to help him and all he can do is complain. Of course this is how he’d react, he’s a child. He spends his entire hiding behind that title and then being shocked when he has to stand up. His mistakes are bound to follow him, he’s just too dumb to fix them and now that it’s all blown up he’s sitting down in somebody else’s house forcing them to waste their time helping him. Good fucking job, Peter. Good fucking job.
“Shit. What are you doing Peter?” Bucky puts the glass of water down on Peter’s wardrobe.
“Sorry.” Peter opens the window and starts sliding himself out the house.
“What the hell Peter,” Bucky runs towards the window and pulls Peter back in.
“Why won’t you let me fix this! You know I fucked up, I won’t be in your hair anymore. Just let me. Please. I’m sorry for everything. I’m so sorry. I’m-” Peter chokes on his own tears.
Bucky pulls Peter into a hug.
“Stop doing this.” Peter shakes his head.
“What?”
“Stop… being so nice. I just- no one in my life- Aunt May- nobody has ever understood me. Even the other Peters… I never told them I was trans. I was too embarrassed… I didn’t want to feel different with the only people in the whole multiverse who could possibly understand me. And now, you, some random ass guy from the fucking fourties is treating me better than my Aunt ever did. And-”
“Shit. Sorry.”
“No, don’t apologize. It isn’t your fault. It was never your fault. You’ve been so nice to me and I just- I wish she was still here.”
“I know… the hardest thing about being a superhero is the feeling that if you’d done something different you could’ve saved everyone. That one more little precaution would’ve given you more time. But you have to realize that the only thing you have control over is the present and maybe it’s a really shitty present, but it’s the only one we’ve got. I can’t tell you how many times I sat awake at night imagining thousands of things I could’ve done to save Vision, Tony, Nat… all of the people we’ve lost… it’s easy to feel like everything is so big, but at the end of the day, we’re all just people.”
“Yeah… I just feel like- shit this is hard to say-”
“You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to.”
“No, I want to. I just feel like it’s so easy to kill villains, but what if we’re wrong, what if we’re the bad guys. I mean- what- if…” Peter’s breath starts to pick up. His heart is pumping harder and harder. Shit. Not again.
“It’s okay buddy. Look at me. Tell me your name. You got this.”
Peter starts crying again, the ground cracking under him, every fragment another mistake. Aunt May. MJ. Tony. So many fucking mistakes. He can’t take it. He only wants to be a normal kid. He only wants his life back, not this unstable shit where only two people in the entire fucking multiverse know he exists. Two fucking people. This shit where he can’t even make pasta without having a panic attack. This shit where he can’t even accept help from the nicest of people in fear that they’ll double cross him. He just wants everything to magically fix itself. He doesn’t want to have to work on himself. He doesn’t want therapy. He just wants to turn back time to three years ago. Three years ago when he was just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
“Please, Peter, respond. I need to hear your voice. Please, Peter.”
Peter doesn’t want to acknowledge the voice. He wants to fall asleep and be okay for the first time in a while. He wants to keep his eyes shut and succumb to the comfort of nothing.
“Please Peter, I need you.”
Peter slowly opens his eyes to the harsh room light, shocking him. His breath becomes more and more stable as he starts to take in the room. Blue bed sheets, old wardrobe, clock, window. Blue bed sheets, old wardrobe, clock, window.
“Peter, can you hear me?”
“Yeah.”
“Who am I?”
“… Sam… Sam Wilson?”
“Yeah. You okay?”
“… yeah.” Peter feels sick. He doesn’t know what he needs, but he knows he wants to feel better.
Bucky hands Peter the glass of water and puts his hand on his shoulder.
“What do you want to do Peter?” Sam asks.
Peter takes a big breath, “I guess I want to fix everything and somehow get everyone to remember me again. Maybe save some people. Go back to being your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.”
“I think we can manage that,” Bucky laughs.