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Panic burns in Peter’s chest, and fiery shame, just as hot, licks at his face.
People don’t like him much, these days. He’s a bit snappish; short-fused. It’s a natural side effect of chronic sleep deprivation and overworking himself. He’s new to this whole “secret life” thing, though—so, when someone threw a punch at him in school, however fake it was, Peter couldn’t help but dodge with unmistakable expertise. Students stared, and suddenly, Peter wondered if the black eye from last night had faded completely or not, and then he ran, now hiding out in a bathroom stall and praying that his next period teacher would let the absence slide. He’s been feeling out of place, lately. Adrift. Nothing like his fellow students, lives so normal he can barely comprehend them; a lone wild goose, flying in the wrong direction.
He memorized a poem, years and years ago; recited it when phantom hands ghosted over his skin, repeating the lines until he didn’t feel like he was going to drown on dry land. It’s served him well, Wild Geese.
Now, Peter repeats the lines of the poem in his head, over and over. The closest thing to sacred there is, in a high school bathroom stall. He thinks of how a girl at school brought her rosary, once, explained how she used it; he's not Catholic, but maybe the poem is like a rosary, each line a bead, and he goes over them, over and over.
Over and over announcing your place/in the family of things.
“How was the ol’ schoolhouse today?” Tony asks. Peter offers a grin, hoping that it reaches his eyes.
“Good as it can ever be,” he says, letting his backpack fall with a heavy thud, forcing a giggle when Tony makes the same comment about keeping bricks in there for the thirteenth time.
Peter does his homework, mentioning offhandedly that he hadn’t slept much, having been busy with a little project into the early dawn that day. He’s drooling on the countertops before he knows it, face tucked into the soft, comfortable crook of his elbow, padded with thick fabric from his hoodie.
A hand shakes him awake.
“You tired?” Tony asks. Peter nods, exhaling softly. His eyes don’t open. Sometimes he likes being able to hear real good. He can hear the way the inside of Tony’s lips slide over his teeth when he makes a closed-mouth smile.
Paper rustles, and there’s an intrigued hum. A page is flipped. Another page.
“You really did not get much sleep last night, did you?” Tony asks, sounding amused. Peter mages a vague sound, hoping the exhaustion speaks for itself. “This looks like something to send over to R&D if I’m being honest. Maybe try that sleepless method a little more often, kid.”
Pat on the back, bleary-eyed drive home.
He’s not hit with the appropriate panic for Tony having very nearly seen Spider-Man tech sketches until late in the evening, feeling his heart fall to the floor, before relief puts it back in its place.
Being Tony Stark’s intern is hard enough. Being his intern and pretending to be a completely separate person as a hero-coworker is another can of worms altogether.
Try that sleepless method a little more often, kid.
Patrol goes later and later. The work Peter’s producing doesn’t match up with the bags under his eyes; he nearly fails a chemistry exam, but he can’t stop patrolling, he can’t, not when blood is spilled thrice as often when he’s not on the streets.
The red pen marks glare at him venemously. He’s never seen so many on a test with his name at the corner, and he finds himself in the bathroom stall again. He’s staring at an ongoing “tits / ass” tally list on the inside of the stall door, amongst other things. It just so happens that there’s one tally for each poem line, and he repeats it, and repeats it. Months later, when the graffiti is finally painted over, Peter nearly makes tally marks of his own before catching himself— he refuses to taint the sanctity of the poem like that.
Tally marks are punishment for failing to save someone, failing to get there in time, failing to prevent harm.
He traces the spot where the scars would be, if he were fully human.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting/
He stares death in the face, and comes to school with a new bravery in his heart.
The following week, he stares at the dead, someone he couldn’t catch; younger than him, she’s— she was. She was in middle school. Peter’s afraid that if he turns his back on her body, she’ll come to life and tear him apart for failing to save her. Or maybe she'd do it just because. There’s no protocol for this yet, no precedent, at least not for Spider-Man, so he backs away, away, away, before turning his back and sprinting down the street, begging for forgiveness. She’s a burning star in his memory, bright and then extinguished. In the safety of his bedroom, he drags a blade from belly button to sternum, wondering if he’s worth anything at all. Come morning, May tells Peter that she’s asked him to do the dishes three times already, and Peter apologizes with his head low, I’m sorry, I know you’re working really hard, May. I’ll take care of it. Scrubbing and scrubbing away while blood soaks a wadded up shirt under his hoodie. He turns back to his room to tend to those wounds before he’s due for school.
Always secrets, with Peter.
Scabs rub painfully at his stomach, and someone asks mockingly if he did the homework from last night (he used to be known for doing it weeks ahead of time, and everyone pounces when that’s no longer the case).
Did he do the homework last night?
Did he do the homework last night.
Peter watched someone die last night, and he almost wants to take that student by the shoulders, shake 'em real hard, shout about how Peter watched someone die, watched life bleed out in front of his very eyes, and that he knows it won't be the last time, but he kind of feels like he's not even remotely in the same universe as the one where homework matters.
But Peter's smarter than that. And it's not in his nature to yell at innocents.
He shuts his bedroom door behind him when he gets back to the apartment, shuttering the blinds and closing the curtains. A real nap is out of the question, as he traces the nearly-healed cut from the late hours of the previous night; belly button to sternum, up and down, over and over. Stares at the few glow-in-the-dark stars that haven’t fallen from his bedroom ceiling yet. He counts five, one for each word:
Meanwhile the world goes on/
Graduation comes, and Peter is laden with every award you can think of, ribbons and sashes and ropes stacking up on his shoulders until they nearly reach his jaw. May takes photos with her thumb in the corners, and Tony makes a grand entrance because this is his last chance to embarrass Peter in front of a bunch of high schoolers.
“And now, a word from our valedictorian,” the speakers announce, crackling and fizzing. “Peter B. Parker!”
Peter’s not around to hear it, already three blocks away in a limo. Friends and family line its seats, and they’re shouting to be heard over the music, and Peter’s so happy when a real grin settles on his face. A real one.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain/are moving across the landscapes/
Tony had found out about Spider-Man, earlier that year. He never ended up putting the pieces together on his own, though; it took a maskless Spider-Man crashing through the glass at the top of Avenger’s Tower to see what had been staring him in the face the whole time. The whole day is sparse flashes of memory for Peter, that moment of realization immortalized in his mind by the way the golden evening light sparkled on the glass shards, bringing amber into Tony’s otherwise unreadably dark eyes.
The expanse of the floor between them seemed endless as Tony moved to cross it, and Peter’s eyes rolled back into his head, swallowed up by grey and dark, wondering if it was okay for seventeen year-old boys to cry.
Tony told May, because of course he did. It’s a miracle Peter graduated at all with the strict, choking rules he was now governed by; he couldn’t do school normally anymore. He needed the thrill of a fight to get the jitters out, but now fights were off the table until he got his grades up.
The evening before that joyous graduation day was spent in the tower, staring out at the seemingly endless sprawl of city around them. Skyscrapers jutted into blue-gray, swarms of cars running through them, and Tony said it’s daunting, sometimes. Peter didn’t think so.
The mountains and the rivers/
The bathrooms at his university are nicer. There’s still graffiti, but it’s painted over frequently. It’s not the same here. Peter tucks the poem back into his throat, past his collarbones, keeps it wrapped around his heart and lungs.
He keeps one line under his tongue, though, tasting it every time he speaks.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely/
His first degree comes to pass, and then his second. Lives pass. May nearly dies. Relationships crumble under the weight of Peter Parker and all he entails; God knows how much faster they’d fall if his alter ego were thrown into the mix.
It’s not long before he finds himself in dive bars and shady alleyways, staring at familiar signs of wear and marks of people on the walls; recites the poem in his mind, always picking one line to circle over like a vulture for the rest of the day.
Then, there’s someone.
Peter should loathe him, he should loathe the constant stream of annoying commentary, the nicknames, the physical affection; if nothing else, Peter loathes the killing. That much is non-negotiable.
“I brought extra for my sour Spidey,” Wade says, and Peter wolfs down greasy food like there’s no tomorrow, and stares out at the blinding night lights, and almost hates himself for wanting this. For wanting him.
You do not have to be good/
Wade is really trying to turn a new leaf, and Peter respects it. He thinks back to his high school self, the stiff morals and black-and-white thinking and the fear. Their first kiss is a thrill unlike any other, and Peter wonders if it has to do with feeling like he’s wrong for it; like if what he’d experienced was really that bad, he shouldn’t ever derive pleasure from physical intimacy.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves/
But where the bad hands were smooth, Wade’s are rough and scarred, callous. Where the bad hands took, Wade’s give. He offers to chop his own dick off to prove his devotion to Spider-Man’s pleasure only.
Maybe they’re doing things a bit backwards, sharing spit before sharing names; but a month later, when Peter takes the mask off all the way, he feels like there’s no better moment. No better moment than when he’s heaving sobs, barely able to breathe, uncaring of the fact that he’s clutching Wade tightly enough to break bone— no better moment to rip off that mask and beg for Wade to go through with the hit on Peter’s head.
Wade and Peter could not be any more different.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine/
And suddenly, with a burden halved and joy doubled, Peter begins to feel whole. There’s a Peter-shaped divot in Wade’s bed, and wear marks on the ledge of the building just outside the window.
Over and over announcing your place/in the family of things.