Work Text:
This is such a mess. He’s holding a pack of noodles in his hand. Five dollars. When did everything get so expensive? Before, he wasn’t exactly rich but he never had to go to bed hungry. Not like right now.
Peter tries to shove away the thought. It doesn’t help him to constantly think about the past. It’s not healthy. It doesn’t get food into his stomach or money into his wallet. It just reminds him of a time with fewer problems, where everything was easier. And that doesn’t raise his spirits.
And he needs his optimistic attitude to get through the day. Every day drags on, regardless if he’s in a bad mood – he knows it’s called depression but if he doesn’t think about it, he doesn’t have a problem – and his boss doesn’t care. If he calls in sick because of something like this, he’ll get reduced pay or will be fired. He can’t afford that.
He doesn’t have money or a security net that will catch him if he makes mistakes. Not anymore. He needs his job to pay the bills of the tiny one-room apartment he managed to get for himself after a month on the streets. He was really lucky in that regard.
He needs the money to pay for food and bandages, because for all he’s lost, he couldn’t give up Spider-Man. It’s the only time in his day that he feels truly alive. The job and sleep and grocery shopping is to keep him existing. Spider-Man is where he truly lives.
The thrill of swinging through the city, of punching criminals and saving people wakes him up from the slumber his life has become.
It gives him a distraction from his day-to-day existence. He wouldn’t trade it for the world, even though it’s essentially killing him. He barely earns enough money to feed a normal teenager, let alone someone with his accelerated metabolism. The constant bruises and stab wounds and gunshot wounds aren’t exactly helping.
He does his best but sometimes he’s overcome with this inner tiredness that doesn’t let him get up in the morning, that slows his limbs in a fight and quiets his otherwise constant quips. It’s easier to get hurt when you don’t dodge and he knows it only partially has something to do with his reduced muscle mass and constant headache.
He wishes he had someone, anyone, to help him, even just to make dinner, just to hold his hand while he stitches himself up. Painkillers have no effect on him and everything hurts all the time. He’s constantly walking around with a gnawing hole in his stomach and a pounding headache.
He wishes he could make more money, but the job in the dingy diner was the only one he could get without anyone questioning his age. He’s underpaid and overworked and generally miserable there, but at least he earns some money.
But apparently not enough to buy noodles. Freaking noodles. He sighs. Looks like it will be a long night. He can already feel the cramps wreaking his body. With a trembling hands, he puts the noodles back on the shelf.
Only a week left and then he’ll get his next pay-check. He only has to hold out for a week. That’s manageable. Maybe he can get a hot dog from that one friendly vendor on fifth street. He likes Spider-Man and if he does a flip or some other stunts, he sometimes offers him one for free.
Peter doesn’t like taking charity from strangers, but it’s not like he’s got a choice in the matter. If he wants to keep being Spider-Man, he has to keep living. And for that he needs food.
His stomach growls loudly and he has to breathe for a second to let the nausea die down and the burning in his eyes stop. For a second, he thinks about burnt lasagna, trips to the Thai place around the corner and pizza in the lab. He forces those thoughts away. They have no place in his life right now.
He’s doing fine on his own. He’s surviving. He’s still helping people. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t have help himself, that he’s barely keeping his head above the surface in a hurricane of bills and hunger and grief. He’s Spider-Man. That has to be enough.
And he’s still careful about not letting anyone know his identity. He learned his lesson the hard way. He knows what’s at stake and he won’t let anything like that happen again.
Not that it would matter much if everyone knew his secret identity. He doesn’t really have a life outside the suit. He has a job that pays for his room and sometimes for food, but the employees keep changing and he isn’t too close with any of them. He doesn’t have anyone that could be used against him, not anymore.
If a super villain revealed his identity right now, he would lose almost nothing. Everyone would probably ask “Who’s Peter Parker” and then shrug and go their way. He doesn’t have anything outside the suit. Sure, he’d probably be fired from his job considering his boss hates Spider-Man with a passion, but no-one he loves could get hurt. No-one’s left after all.
His family is dead. His friends don’t remember him. There’s no-one that he could endanger anymore.
But the mask is familiar and it gives him safety. It almost feels like he could just come back, take the mask off and be home with his aunt May. He knows it doesn’t work that way, but he can imagine. He can pretend that the room he returns to will be his old bedroom and Ned will sit on his bed, excitedly talking about building the new Lego set of the Millenium Falcon.
When he’s in the mask, it seems as if at any time Mr. Stark could ring and tell him to swing by the Tower after patrol.
But he knows that none of that will happen. He will return to the dingy one-room apartment that smells like rotten cheese no matter how long the window stays open. He’ll eat a stale cracker – the only food he’s likely to have in the small cupboard – and then he’ll lie on the thin mattress on the ground that masquerades as a bed.
There will be no burnt banana bread, no discussions of Star Wars vs. Star Trek, no lab days, no post-patrol check-up. Not anymore.
Peter eyes the noodles again and turns around to leave the store. Just one week. Then he can get something substantial again. He can hold on until then. He’s lived through worse. He had to endure pain ten times worse than an empty stomach.
If he was able to deal with literally dying, with having a whole building crush him, he could deal with a little hunger. He’s lived through so much more.
He can at least try to pretend that the thing that hurts most is the hunger and not the empty life he always comes back to these days.