Chapter Text
Miles is minding his own business.
Really. He is. He swears it. Up, left, right, and center.
“So why,” Ganke hisses, a hysterical expression on his face, “is there a multiverse portal opening up in the dorm room?”
Miles narrows his eyes at the aforementioned portal currently taking up the dorm’s ceiling, slowly pushing himself off his bunk. The mass of colors and shapes throws embers of multiverse into the room and screws up the gravity enough for some of their loose papers to fly up. The portal absorbs half of his lit notes before Miles snaps out of it and webs the rest of them to his desk.
It’s a good question. Really, it is.
Just one he… can’t exactly answer.
“You can see it?” Miles asks dumbly, still staring at the portal.
“What do you— of course I can see it, man!”
“Oh,” he says, nodding faintly. “Well, sometimes you can’t see it. So I was just wondering.”
Ganke whirls back to Miles, the spitting portal backlighting him. “Sometimes? This has happened before? Enough for it to be sometimes?”
Miles stills. Err. “No?”
Something inside cracks, loud enough for the hair to rise on the back of Miles’s neck, and his hand drifts towards the mask hanging over the foot of his bunk. It cracks again and Miles flinches back at the wave of particles that roll out, like sparks from a firecracker.
“Do you like, close it? Or does that happen on its own?” Ganke asks. Miles shoots a glance over to see his body twitching where he stood.
“Yeah, it usually just shrinks down until it—” Miles mimes an explosion, accompanied by a silent pop.
“Oh.”
Miles nods.
“Okay. So, uh, we just wait?”
“We wait.”
Ganke steps back hesitantly, brushing his hand against one of their chairs and plopping down in it. Miles glances back to see his friend’s hands shaking from the excitement, and he fights back a snort.
“This is like, the least crazy thing that’s happened this semester, man. I promise you something way more exciting’ll happen in a few days.”
Another wave pops out, silent this time, and the abrupt quiet draws Miles in. His spider sense ramps up at the unfamiliar target in front of him, and Miles peers into the portal. A headache threatens to make an appearance as he scans the portal, fractals of color beating into his head like a baseball bat.
And inexplicably, unexplainably, there is a face emptily staring back at him.
Miles chokes on a shout as all the blood in his body rushes away from his feet, leaving him lightheaded and sweaty. The floor almost comes out from under him— or, shake that, there has to be an earthquake or something because his reality is ending. Ending.
He takes it back, that whole thing about more exciting things. Miles very much takes it back.
“Peter?”
Ganke’s chair clatters as he sends it flying, its journey ending with a ceremonial smack against the wall.
“There’s a person in there.” Ganke’s talking more to himself than anyone else, because that’s what it is now. Not just Miles, but else.
“Peter Parker,” Miles says, his jaw taking up a comfy little spot on the floor.
With a wholly anticlimactic schwoop, Peter Parker’s (DEAD?) body falls out of the portal like the largest, scariest rag doll he’s ever seen. And with an utterly horrifying secondary schwoop, the portal closes.
Ganke pales entirely. Miles is, uh, yeah. About the same.
“I…”
Yeah, man. Yeah.
Ganke whips around and looks at him like they just committed a murder and they have to hide the body. Except with this hypothetical body from the hypothetical murder, they’re in the middle of, like, the Sahara. With nowhere to hide.
And you know what? It basically is a murder, because this guy is supposed to be dead. Miles already had the cops called on him once for robbing Peter Parker’s grave — he doesn’t need it to happen again. With proof this time. Real life, incriminating, breathing (or not???) proof.
“Is he alive?”
Miles never thought he’d hear that sentence spoken with so much horror.
“Uh.” He takes three steps forward and nudges Peter Parker’s hypothetical corpse with a toe. The dead body groans once, eyes fluttering open for a brief moment, before falling completely limp yet again. “Yes.”
When he was in kindergarten, Miles had a friend who’s prized possession was her brother’s paintball game. He was over one day when she had it out, the pair of them running around outside.
In her excitement, she handed the gun to him and told him to shoot it. In his excitement, he aimed it straight at her chest and pulled the trigger.
She cried for two whole hours from the shock, and Miles cried along with her. This? This is that same feeling.
His ears catch a heavy rythmic thumping coming down the hallway, and unfortunately, it’s a sound Miles has become very familiar with.
He goes statue still.
“Mr. Salas,” Miles says at the same time Ganke says, “Footsteps. ”
Pure unadulterated horror seeps through his whole body at the prospect of being caught with what’s supposed to be a very dead man on his bedroom floor. One glance at Ganke shows he feels the exact same way.
“Under the bed,” Miles hisses.
Together, they shove Peter limb by limb into the space under the bunk. Miles takes a hand to the face and a foot to the shin and damn, even unconscious and dead (????) this guy’s strong. And weirdly chiseled.
“Dead bodies are supposed to atrophy, right?” Ganke grunts. “How is this guy so muscle-y if he’s been dead for months?”
“I know, right? But zip it,” Miles pants as he stands straight, hauling Ganke up with him by the collar, “And act normal.”
Miles dives onto his bed, scooping a comic book into his hands and flipping to a random page in the middle. Ganke turns in two complete circles before throwing his hands up in the air and making the Scream face.
Three booming knocks echo out into the room. Ganke swipes his notebook off the desk and holds it in his hands like a baby, and turns his Scream face towards Miles helplessly.
“One sec!” Miles yells and rolls off the bed. As he passes Ganke, he mouths What the fuck are you doing, man?
And cracks open the door to find Mr. Salas ready and waiting.
“Morales. Lee,” Mr. Salas says gruffly. “Y’all good in here?”
“Yes sir,” Miles chirps. “All good here. A-okay. Just getting some studying done.”
He swings the door open wide enough to flash Ganke holding his notes and smiled brightly.
Thankfully Mr. Salas’s walkie crackles to life, some near-indecipherable voice calling him away. With a frown, he just slices a hand across his throat and holds a finger to his lips.
Keep it down, he’s saying.
Miles nods once, pasting a sage expression on his face and holding up an okay symbol. He slams the door shut the second Mr. Salas leaves the stoop.
Miles breathes a giant sigh of relief, sagging against the door.
“This is one of those times where I hate that Spider-Man is my roommate,” Ganke says. “I just feared for my life. My entire academic career flashed before my eyes. There were almost two dead bodies on our carpet.”
“I’m not dead,” comes from under the bed. “Can we please stop calling my body dead?”
Miles’s heart skips, like, five beats.
Peter Parker crawls out from under their bed, limbs smacking against the floor, and his face of utter discomfort would be funny if Miles wasn’t currently having a heart attack.
“Hey kid,” he says.
“Miles,” Miles introduces stiffly. As if he isn’t currently speaking to a presumed dead, very beloved city hero.
“Miles. Nice to see you again.”
Peter stays on the ground, stretching his arms and legs one at a time with that same uncomfortable, confused expression on his face.
“Wow,” he continues, “it feels good to be back in the real world. It sucked in there. Very cramped. No leg room.”
“You were dead,” Miles says. “I basically watched you die. How are you here right now?”
Peter stills at that, his face twisting into something hurting and sad. “I don’t…”
He sighs. It’s heavy, old beyond Peter’s years, and Miles wonders if he’ll ever hit that point.
“I guess my DNA or something got interlaced with Fisk’s collider. And when you shut it down—or, I’m assuming you did because reality hasn’t collapsed—it kind of served as an incubator?”
Miles’s eyebrows rise into his hairline, and he pushes off the door closer to Peter. “That seems like a pretty good guess, man. Sure you haven’t been thinking about this more than you’ve led on?”
He toes one of the wheely chairs over to Ganke, who’s still clutching his notebook with a blank expression. Ganke flops down gratefully, notebook clattering to the side.
Miles bends down so he’s leaning over Peter and offers a hand. Peter takes the hint and grabs on, his hands surprisingly clammy for an alive-dead guy. Peter stands up with the help, bracing himself against the bunk bed’s frame.
“But are you…” Miles struggles for the right words, but almost immediately gives up. “…the real you?”
Peter blinks. “I remember everything. I have emotions. I feel like me. But this is getting weirdly introspective for someone who just basically got brought back to life, so…”
“What now?” Ganke asks, cutting off Peter’s trailing voice.
Miles puffs his cheeks and crosses his arms, fingers tapping away on the inside of his forearms. Surprisingly enough, Peter’s also looking towards him, the same question in his “lost puppy dog” eyes.
An idea strikes, and Miles points to Peter.
“We,” Miles says, “are going to May’s.”
Peter blanches completely and lurches off the bed frame. “Oh no,” he says, holding his hands out desperately, “no no no, we are not going to May’s.”
“Oh yes we are. We so are.” Miles tilts his head to the side, eyes flicking between the Dead Man Walking and his roommate. “Ganke, thoughts on going to the badass lady’s house who gave me infinite access to help and resources?”
“Ganke,” Peter mimics, “thoughts on bringing a previously dead nephew back to the house of his surrogate mother with a possible heart condition?”
“Oh come on, man,” Miles hisses. “You’re supposed to be mature.”
“And you’re supposed to be… wrong!” Peter shouts.
“We’re going to May’s,” Miles says firmly. “End of discussion. Put a hat on or something so no one else sees your—”
“—If you say dead face, I swear to God Miles—”
“—Put a damn hat on before I put it on you myself, you self—”
“—We are not going to May’s!” Peter screeches and reels forward.
And before his body even knows what he’s doing, Miles catches Peter's hand at the wrist, inches away from his face. Incredulous, he looks from the hand to Peter's face to the hand and back to the face.
Peter just looks at his hand like it betrayed him.
“ Dude.”
“I’msosorry,” Peter breathes. “I don’t know where that came from.”
“Dude!”
“Dude,” Ganke echoes.
Miles throws Peter’s hand down, frustrating crackling up and down his spine.
“Okay,” he starts, dangerously quiet, “enough is enough. You are coming with me, whether you want to or not. Because, and I believe I got this from you , the time space continuum kind of depends on it.”
“Are you being serious right—”
Miles pops his invisibility and swings silently around Peter, swiping a hefty textbook off the desk. Peter whirls around, searching frantically, but it’s too late. Miles knocks Peter solidly on the back of the head with the textbook and sends him sprawling to the ground.
Ganke gapes at Peter’s once again unconscious body. “Oh,” he says quietly. “Okay.”
“One way to do it, right?” Miles asks sourly as he turns visible. He’s so thoroughly annoyed right now it’s not even funny. “Do me a huge favor, Ganke, and toss me a baseball cap.”
Ganke grabs one randomly from the dresser and Miles catches it effortlessly. Turning the hat in his hands, a small, vindictive smile crosses his mouth. For once, Ganke’s terrible taste in sports teams is coming in handy. Miles crouches down and wedges the hat — Yankees logo front and center — down low over Peter’s face.
His dead face. Ha. Suck it bitch.
“Yeah,” Ganke says. “Bitch.”
Miles sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, blinking slowly. “Okay. How am I gonna drag an unconscious man halfway across the city?”
“You?” Ganke laughs. “No. It doesn’t matter who your dad is, you’d get pulled over a block in. Spider-Man, though…”
He raises his eyebrows, giving Miles a pointed look.
Miles huffs a breath and rolls his eyes, yanking his spider suit out from its hiding spot under the bed. He makes no effort to hide his frustration as he suits up, squirming into the tight spandex as he insults every iteration of Peter Parker under his breath. Ganke just openly laughs at him, ignoring the dirty looks Miles shoots at him the whole time.
“Text me later,” Ganke says. “I’ll try to cover for you with Salas, but only if you keep me updated, okay?”
“Yeah,” Miles grumbles, scowling, “got it. I’ll make sure to message you as soon as I dump his ass on May’s front door.”
Miles hoists Peter across his shoulders, grunting as the weight settles, and nods towards the window. Ganke doesn’t hesitate to fling it open, making sure it’s wide enough for two people.
“You’re making my life a lot harder than it needs to be, you know that?” Miles mutters, mostly to himself. He webs Peter’s knees to his chest so he doesn’t fall and clutches his wrists together, imagining this is what it feels like to hog-tie someone. “It sucks. You suck. Stupid dead people are ruining my week.”
As expected, Peter stays quiet. Miles just scowls deeper.
“People?” Ganke asks timidly.
“Whatever,” he says, aggravated. “You know what I mean.”
“Text me!” Ganke shouts as Miles leaps out the window.