Work Text:
“This wasn’t happening.” Pete mumbled to himself, out of breath and regretting all his choices, as he ran harder than he had ever before to outpace the Viper. “This isn’t happening.”
His head was swimming with a bajillion different thoughts, confused as to what was real and what wasn’t anymore.
Nick was dead, Kingpin had killed him.
Nick was Goose, New York's resident superhero.
Nick had superpowers, and he had hid them from Pete the entire time. All those bruises that healed so fast he wasn’t sure if he had seen them the first time or not, all the times that he had run into Goose in public and no hint that it was secretly his best friend behind that mask.
Nick had superpowers.
So did Pete.
Oh god, he had superpowers.
He was like Nick, in so many ways, and he was running for his life and oh fuck, what was he going to do?
What was he going to tell Carole?
Pete was so distracted by his own thoughts his brain forgot, for just a moment, that he was running as he stumbled - grabbing out for the pole next to him and managing, somehow, to use it to swing around and change his direction of movement. The falling snow blasted into his face, and even through his coat the chill of winter in New York bit at his appendages.
He slid right at the next crossroads, throwing himself around corners, across zebra crossings and active roads alike. Finally, when the prickle in his head soothed, Pete threw himself into the nearest shadow-plunged alleyway.
Pete pushed himself flush against the cold bricks of the alley wall as best he could, and prayed to whoever was listening that his breathing would slow so that Viper wouldn't see his frantic chest from the main road.
Cast safely in shadow, Pete finally let himself think. Think, feel, breath, and it all slammed into him like a cargo truck.
Nick was dead. Oh god, Nick was dead. Funeral, dead. His best friend. Oh… god. Pete didn't know what to do without him.
Out of nothing, a whirlpool of light and shapes spat into existence at the end of the alleyway.
Pete had only a moment to panic that Kingpin's men had found him, before the whirlpool spat a falling blue blur out of itself and snapped shut in a fit of speed and power.
There was a man at Pete's feet in the snow. Literally. It sounded like the start of a bad joke. 'A man falls out of a portal at another man's feet.'
The man groaned, Pete panicked, but hadn't run yet. He couldn't, despite his fear. The man may need his help.
Something Nick had said came back to him, something from their classes at school. "Dimensional travel is, theoretically, possible. As long as you have the right tools."
There was no way.
The man stiffened on the floor for a second before he screamed slightly, a strangled noise escaped his throat as the colours of his body fractured, changed and moved in such a way that - if that was happening to him as well as his clothes - couldn't feel good.
Pete didn't really know what to do. He not only had minimal health training, but also had no precedent for this. How was he meant to deal with an injured someone, a someone who apparently was in the wrong dimension and his atoms weren’t taking that too well?
Scrabbling forwards in the snow, Pete wiped at his tears with his sleeve so he could see and threw himself down next to the heap of a man. “Are you okay?”
The man groaned, hands coming up to his masked face to tug at the material. “Where.. where am I? Where is this? Slider?”
Or, at least, that was what Pete assumed the man was trying to say. It came out as more of a “Whah.. where am.. this? Slier?”
Pete’s hands hovered uselessly around the man. He wanted to help, but wasn’t sure how.
The guy was dressed similarly to Nick- Goose, only his colours were bluer and more cool toned than Goose’s red and yellow theme. Before he could ask how he could help, the man had dragged his mask off of his face and turned to glance vigilantly around the alleyway.
Pete’s breath caught in his throat. The man was, for lack of a better word, stunning. White hair framed a jawline perfect enough Pete wondered almost if he was dreaming. What he noticed more, however, was the way the man's pupils seemed blown and scattered, like he couldn’t focus on anything. Pete didn’t know the man, and yet it felt extraordinarily like he did.
He recognised him from classes, glances from the corner of his eyes and passes in the hallway. That didn’t mean he knew the man's name.
The blonde’s hair was dishevelled from where it had been pinned under his mask, and Pete had half a thought that maybe the pronounced eyebags were not a normal sign on the man. His skin was pale, and though Pete didn’t know whether it was something to be concerned about or just normal for the man, it wasn’t sitting right with him.
“Slider?” The man spoke, barely louder than a whisper, and Pete tried to ignore how nice his voice sounded, even if it seemed to scratch at his throat. “Slider, d’ you dye your hair?”
Pete didn’t know how Slider was, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t him. “Hey, man, I’m not Slider. Are you alright? Did the whirlpool do this to you?”
He wasn’t sure why he asked that, or what made him think that the whirlpool of shapes and vivid lights had caused this to the man, but there was just something about it. His head prickled again, the same way it had with Goose- with Nick, right before- before- earlier. The same way it had with Nick earlier.
The man's eyes snapped towards him. “Sli’, you’re like me?”
Pete’s blood ran cold. That'd happened with Nick, barely a few hours ago, and now there was a dangerous case of deja vu going on.
He placed the back of his hand to the man's forehead, and it came away hot enough to boil a kettle on. “You’ve got a fever, we need to get you to a doctor.”
The man began to try and move at that comment, but didn’t make it far, still muttering and mumbling about ‘Slider’ and ‘the Prowler’ that was apparently after him. Pete hooked one arm under the blondes and used his other to hold the man to his side to support him, the same way Nick had done for him so many times when he was drunk or sick at school.
“What’s your name?” Pete asked, trying not to think of Nick, and the blonde man slumped into his side further as Pete pulled them both to their feet - ignoring the way his legs prickled and felt like jelly.
“Iceman.”
Pete quirked an eyebrow.
“Did your parents hate you or something?”
Before ‘Iceman’ could answer, his body seized up against Pete’s side as he went ridgid, before everything about him seemed to lag and glitch. Iceman yelled out, and Pete decided there and then he never wanted to hear that shout again. It only lasted a minute, but Pete didn’t dare move during it.
“We really need to get you to a doctor, Iceman.”
“...‘o.. no. No doctor. ‘lease.”
Okay. A man drops out of the sky, literally onto Pete’s lap, passes out, has a fever and glitches like a video game character. Maybe he had a point. No doctor.
“Okay then, Ice, my place it is.”
Iceman mumbled something, but he couldn’t quite make it out through his own jacket that Iceman had buried his face into. “ ‘m.”
“Pardon?”
“Tom. My name is Tom.”
“Alright, Tom, you can call me Pete."