Chapter Text
𑣲⋆ Prologue — New Message ˖ ࣪⊹
Peter let gravity do the dirty work, sliding down the warm metal side of the washing machine until the cold, filthy linoleum of the laundromat met him with a dull thud. The aluminum surface vibrated against his spine—a rhythmic, comforting hum that matched the purr of the drum running on full cycle. When he finally settled in—or as close to "settled" as a beaten-up body could manage that night—a sharp, involuntary hiss escaped through his teeth.
His fingers flew to his side purely out of instinct.
The pain pulsed just beneath his skin like a second heartbeat: heavy, insistent, and relentless, making sure to remind him of every brutal blow he had taken a few hours earlier. He didn't need to lift the hem of his cheap black t-shirt to know the spectacle hidden beneath was hideous. He knew all too well that an ugly galaxy of bruises was already spreading across his abdomen, blooming in furious shades of deep purple, blood-red, and pitch-black along the edges. It was his body’s own petty way of keeping score, archiving physical trauma on his skin far more efficiently than his exhausted mind could process the emotional damage.
It had been a shitty day.
Which, honestly, didn't mean much anymore.
There was a time when bad days felt like the exception. Now, they just piled on top of one another until they formed an indistinct stack of overdue bills, restless nights, aching ribs, and makeshift meals. Still, every now and then, Peter managed to muster the energy to slap on a crooked smile and convince himself that things were looking up.
Tonight, not even that.
The wall clock read three in the morning.
The building’s laundry room was completely empty, steeped in that peculiar late-night silence where every minor noise sounded louder than it actually was. The low hum of the washing machine filled the space with an almost hypnotic rhythm, while the red and blue suit spun on the other side of the glass door, washing away dust, dried blood, and crumbs of concrete.
Unfortunately, the wash cycle couldn't do the same for people.
Peter rested his head against the machine and closed his eyes for a moment. It was almost funny to think that there was an ideal time to wash the Spider-Man suit: late enough that no one would ask questions, early enough that it would be dry before the next emergency.
Dignity, on the other hand, still came with no washing instructions.
Peter let out a brief huff of air through his nose—the kind of dry sound that barely deserved to be called a laugh. It was a mechanical reaction, stripped of any real humor, a mere nervous spasm simulating an emotion he no longer had the strength to feel.
Maybe the blame lay with the chronic fatigue that seemed to have settled deep into his bone marrow. Or maybe it was the mathematical certainty that, in less than twelve hours, he would be forced to drag his feet out of bed, fake concentration in his college lectures, and then spend the rest of the day balancing thermal bags on an old bicycle, offering courteous smiles to hungry customers at the Daily Slice Pizzeria.
The universe, after all, possessed a refined and sadistic sense of irony. Just the night before, he had used every fiber of his superhuman strength to hold up a cargo truck dangling over a viaduct gap on the outskirts of the city; a few hours later, he was pedaling like a maniac through a light drizzle to deliver a cold pepperoni pizza to the far edge of the neighborhood. The paradox of his existence lay in the unyielding fact that neither of those two roles—saving lives or feeding strangers—could pay this month’s rent.
Peter pressed the palms of his hands against his face, rubbing his eyes with excessive force until a festival of tiny, geometric, colored spots danced against the darkness behind his eyelids. It had been so long since he had enjoyed the luxury of an entire night of uninterrupted sleep that his mind was beginning to forget what it felt like to wake up without every muscle and joint protesting against the very act of existing. His body had turned into a ruthless negotiator: two hours of rest here, thirty minutes there, desperate naps squeezed between classes he could barely keep up with, urban patrols that stubbornly dragged on, and extra shifts at the pizzeria accepted far more out of financial desperation than any remaining energy.
Above his head, the basement ceiling creaked under the weight of some sleepless neighbor walking down the hallway. On the wall beside him, an old pipe popped with a metallic clatter, and the washing machine abruptly shifted gears, vibrating more intensely as it entered the rinse cycle. It was curious, in a melancholic sort of way, how that decrepit building seemed to take on a bizarre, vibrant life of its own during the dead of night. The building breathed through rusted pipes, coughed steam through gaps, and groaned through wooden beams that should have held firm decades ago. In the complete solitude of the night, that symphony of decay almost passed for company. Almost.
With a heavy sigh, Peter shoved his hand into the pocket of his worn sweatpants and pulled out his phone. The screen, adorned with a web of cracks running from edge to edge, illuminated his pale features for a few seconds before delivering the usual verdict.
No messages received. No missed calls. No notifications.
Even knowing the truth, there were still moments of weakness when his thumb hovered, trembling, over the display for a second too long—as if some painfully naive, stubborn part of his brain still hoped to see a familiar name flash on the screen. MJ. Ned. Anyone. But the silence surrounding him was constant, and it had been going on for nearly three years now.
He took a deep breath, letting the cold basement air fill his lungs before locking the device and returning the room to the shadows. It was better this way. He had to keep repeating that lie to himself until it turned into a bearable truth. He needed to believe, with all his might, that erasing his very existence from the memories of the people he loved most had been a fair price to pay to ensure they stayed wrapped in a cocoon of safety and normalcy. They were safe now. They were happy, thriving in college, building lives that wouldn't be shattered by the inevitable chaos that Peter Parker attracted.
On some days, that logic felt comforting, almost heroic. On others... well, on other days it was three in the morning, and he was sitting on the damp floor of a basement laundry room, covered in aches and bruises, waiting for an old washing machine to clean his only work outfit because he didn't have the funds to buy a backup.
The line between his two identities revealed itself with an almost cruel simplicity: Spider-Man always found a way out, no matter the size of the villain or the catastrophe. Peter Parker, on the other hand, was just spending whatever strength he had left trying to survive until dawn.
Peter’s only moment of peace in the last forty-eight hours lasted exactly six minutes and twelve seconds, right up until "Dope on a Rope" began echoing off the laundry room walls. The problem wasn't the song—he had a genuine soft spot for alternative rock—it was the obvious fact that it wasn't coming from the phone resting on his thigh.
He reflexively patted his thigh before plunging his hand into the second pocket of his sweatpants, pulling out the burner he had bought just a few hours ago. The sudden, absurdly bright glare of the new screen cut through the room's bluish dimness, casting long, misshapen shadows onto the bare concrete walls and exposing, without a shred of mercy, the deep dark circles and accumulated exhaustion written across his face. In the center of the display, an unfamiliar sequence of numbers pulsed with an irritating persistence.
Peter frowned, squinting until his eyes were nearly shut, his eyebrows knotting in the center of his forehead in a genuine mix of confusion and irritation.
It simply defied all logic. Nobody was supposed to have this number. In fact, nobody was even supposed to know it existed. He had bought the device strictly for work-related calls, seeing as his phones had a terrible habit of ending up crushed, cracked, or completely destroyed after a particularly disastrous patrol. As a precaution, he now kept two phones: the old one, with his original line, and a second, cheap prepaid burner reserved solely for work.
He hadn't shared the number with a single soul, hadn't linked it to any social media yet, and sure as hell didn't have a social circle to justify a phone call at three in the morning.
The most obvious conclusion asserted itself: automated telemarketing. Or maybe some relentless collection agency trying to track down the previous, unlucky owner of that line. Perhaps even one of those chaotic digital scams targeting random numbers in the darkness of the network.
Whatever it was, Peter didn't bother moving a single muscle. He just watched, with an apathy fueled by exhaustion, as the phone cried out for attention until the very last second of the call cycle. When the ringing finally stopped, the usual basement silence reclaimed the space, broken only by the hypnotic, rhythmic hum of the washing machine.
Letting out a slow breath through his lips, he allowed his head to fall back against the washer’s metal side, closing his eyes in hopes of clawing back a tiny thread of peace.
His truce, however, proved to be painfully short-lived.
Less than sixty seconds later, the display lit up once again with that same intrusive, bluish glow.
New voicemail.
Peter straightened up just a fraction, staring at the notification icon in the top bar of the phone for a few agonizingly long seconds. That was strange, to say the least. Robocalls and automated collectors rarely went to the trouble of navigating through an electronic menu just to leave a message in a inbox. For some obscure reason, that tiny detail sparked a flicker of curiosity in his mind—a persistent whisper that not even the deep exhaustion weighing down his bones could fully smother.
Before his rational brain could build a solid case for ignoring the alert and going back to focusing on his aching ribs, his thumb took over, sliding smoothly across the shattered glass.
He pressed play and brought the device to his ear. The first thing Peter heard was a laugh, followed by a slurred, clearly drunken voice as the words tumbled into one another.
"Hey, Mooom. I know, I knooow," the girl’s voice drawled through the speaker, the vowels stretched with that elasticity unique to someone well past her third drink. "It’s ridiculously late, and you always hated it when I called after ten, but you’d always answer the fucking phone anyway, so this is kind of on you, too."
She let out another thick laugh that dissolved into a loud, absurdly clumsy hiccup.
"Look, I just wanted to let you know I’m on my usual bench in the square, drinking some champagne I confiscated"—read: blatantly pinched—"from the shop's backroom. Is Garry gonna find out tomorrow and dock it from my pathetic excuse for a paycheck? Yeah. But I don’t give a shit, because my day was a complete nuclear disaster and I deserve to drink the whole damn bottle straight from the neck."
Sitting on the cold floor, Peter blinked, caught entirely off guard. The corners of his lips curled upward into an involuntary, faint smile before he could stop the reflex.
"I hate this place, Mom. New York is an overrated dump, and I just got back from the worst date in human history. The guy spent two hours demanding I massage his ego, which is fucking rich considering the asshole’s dick was barely big enough to tickle my vagina. Seriously, it looked like a tiny bobblehead!" The crisp sound of glass clinking against her teeth echoed as she took a hurried gulp. "I was promised vibrant options, but all I've found are men who need therapy and a microscope. And I know you'd give me that classic lecture about knowing my worth and blah, blah, blah... and you'd be right. Like always. I just..."
There was an abrupt pause on the line, filled only by the sound of bubbling liquid swallowed with desperate urgency, followed by a heavy, shaky sigh. When she spoke again, her voice went up a notch, echoing over the sound of distant traffic.
"I just wanted someone decent in this shitty city where rent costs a kidney, the subway smells like piss, and people walk down the sidewalk steamrolling everyone else like they're ready to commit a crime. I just wanted... anyway." She hesitated once more, then took a deep breath. "Never mind. I love you, Mom. Just called to say... I miss you."
A sharp click echoed through the speaker as she hung up, followed by the sudden silence of the disconnected line.
Peter remained motionless for a long time, his eyes fixed on the phone screen as it slowly faded to black between his fingers. Of all the bizarre disasters, broken bones, and plot twists that had punctuated his past week, that phone call was, by far, the most fascinating and completely pointless thing that had happened to him. Which, considering the recent history of his life, was saying something.
The only logically plausible explanation for that torrent of ranting and unnecessary confessions was that the girl, whoever she was, had simply dialed the wrong number. Driven by that logic, he didn't even consider the idea of calling back or sending a corrective text. There was no need to cause unnecessary embarrassment. Surely, as soon as the stolen champagne wore off the next morning, she would check her call log, realize the one-digit mistake, and call her mother's actual number.
Peter was absolutely convinced that he would never hear that voice again.
Or, at least, that was what he believed as he closed his eyes.