Chapter Text
The walk home from the hospital wasn’t bad. Peter’s injuries were jostled with every step, but overall, the pain wasn’t that bad. He could feel most of his insides still healing, but most of the damage from the bullet was gone.
New York was filled with red and blue at just about every turn. Kids and adults alike were wearing Spider-Man merchandise, all looking at either their phones or news outlets, waiting for news on Spider-Man’s condition.
Peter realized the news of him being alive and awake hit a few minutes into his walk home when an older homeless man holding a sign that said ‘Pray for Spider-Man, Pray for New York’ started to scream “Spider-Man is alive, look at the news!” while pointing at the TVs. He followed the man’s pointing to where news channels were showing the clip of Frank in Peter’s mask, waving and pretending to thwip his webs. Peter laughed to himself and prayed to himself that Frank wouldn’t do anything too embarrassing with the mask on.
He’d be able to fix his suit when Frank gets it back to him, or make a new one, depending on how salvageable it is, and be back to patrolling in a few days, maybe even tomorrow, if he pushed himself.
He tried to ignore the voice of that nice-but-scary nurse, Claire, telling him that she knew exactly how us ‘hero-types’ worked and that he better not go out as Spider-Man for at least 2 weeks, healing factor or not. When she had told him that, he told her he wouldn’t go out ‘until he was fully healed’.
He was thinking then that maybe he’d get lucky and these new enhancements in his arachnid DNA would speed up the healing process even more.
Peter was quickly reminded why Parker’s never rely on luck as he entered his apartment building and saw a sign on the only elevator in the building reading ‘out of order’.
As Peter began to walk up the steps to his apartment, he realized that Claire may have had a point about taking it easy. Because with every step, he felt like his bullet wound was being reopened little by little.
Finally making it inside his apartment, and feeling slightly pathetic because of how much he was sweating and panting from simply walking up four flights of stairs, Peter gently layed himself in his bed.
Sleep, in theory, sounded really nice. But now his wound was throbbing, his brain felt like it was going to split in two, and as he looked up at his ceiling, his eyes were watering and everything was spinning.
Not to mention the sound of cars, people, and all of New York was only getting louder and louder with each passing second.
Peter squeezed his eyes shut and slammed his hands over his ears, trying to drown out the noise going all around him.
He started to fully sob whenever his upstairs neighbor’s Screamo music, coming on at full blast, decided to join the sounds of all of Manhattan pounding in his ears.
His head felt like it was going to explode, and he was starting to feel like he couldn’t breathe.
He could feel himself getting angry, the Spider inside him beginning to take over again. He wanted to punch a hole in the ceiling and slam his neighbor’s head into his music speakers over and over again until it stopped.
“Arachnid hormone levels increasing,” E.V’s voice repeats over and over only making things worse.
Peter quickly slams his fist into his leg with all the strength he can currently muster.
He screams out in pain at the action, but the sounds filter out for a second, allowing Peter to calm down. His head is still pounding, both his chest and wound are aching, and now his leg is throbbing, but everything has quieted down again.
He can still hear the Screamo music loud and clear, but no more than he had learned to be accustomed to before his DNA started to mutate, again.
Not for the first time this week, he begins to feel utterly pathetic. He had learned how to deal with his heightened senses long ago, all on his own, way before anyone else knew about them.
Granted, when Aunt May did find out about his sensory problems, and his coping mechanisms for said problems she tried to teach him that his original coping strategies weren’t healthy.
She had tried to teach him different ones other than self-harming behavior, but as he got older and more accustomed to his powers, the sensory problems weren’t as frequent or bad. When they did occasionally happen almost every time someone was there to help him through it, whether it was May, Mr. Stark, Ned, or MJ.
Now he had nobody to help him through these overloads, panic attacks, and his many other issues. Over the past four years, he had relied on his own coping strategies, and he has been getting by fine enough.
He knows he needs to suck it up and deal with it, even if his senses are now dialed up to 50 instead of 11. He’s Spider-Man. New York needs him to be there for them. He had figured out how to control the Spider inside him in the fight with the Hand; he had control over this.
Peter didn’t need to rest; he needed to get back to work.
Peter began to pry himself off his bed and over to his computer system to begin working on remaking his suit.
He hopes he doesn’t regret potentially wasting his resources on a new suit if his old one is salvageable, but decides that knowing his luck, it wouldn’t be anyways.
He can sell a few old Spider-Man shots to Jameson and try to pose them as recent. Peter knows that he’d love to be the first one to get news of Spider-Man’s return to action. And if that doesn’t work, Peter can just ration out his food more. He hasn’t been able to check with everything that’s been happening, but he’s sure JJJ is going to be pissed at Peter for being absent these past weeks with everything that’s been going on with Spider-Man. He hopes he still has a job.
His body feels like one big bruise, but he keeps working on the suit. Once he gets to a stopping, point he begins to do his workout routine. He can’t rest yet, Spider-Man needs to be back out as soon as possible. The city never sleeps, and the city is his responsibility.