Chapter Text
The first time Peter can remember cutting himself, he was thirteen years old.
Ben had just died. Ben had just died, and it was Peter's fault. His funeral had been only hours before.
Peter had been lying on his bed afterwards, still in his suit, staring at the ceiling. A glint in his peripheral vision caught his eye, and he stands up to see what had caused it.
It was the box cutter he kept to open his packages and use for crafts. The light had hit the tip of the blade, reflected into his eye. It was flimsy and old, the blade dulled from use, metal bending whenever he tried to use it.
He picks it up. Seeing the blade in his hand, he remembers a post online making fun of self-harm. Self-harm.
Some people would cut themselves, or burn themselves, or use other methods to mutilate their skin.
Curious, he slides the blade out a bit, pressing it over his wrist. He drags it across, only scraping the surface of the skin. It doesn't even bleed, but the sting is… Good. Welcomed, when he feels like he deserves it. So he tries again.
He moves the blade down a bit and presses harder this time, swiping it across his wrist. Blood wells up in little dots over the cut, nothing too deep. But the sting is more, and it's enticing and wonderful and he understands why people do this, now. He gets it.
He does it again. Over and over again, until his arm is full of shallow cuts, dripping with blood that he hadn't cleaned off.
His healing factor closes them pretty quickly. They don't even scar.
He's feeling better, he notes. The sadness will come back, he knows, but for now, he's pleasantly numb.
What he doesn't know is that this would be the start of a much bigger ongoing issue. His temporary solution will become an addiction.
So it begins.
Peter is fourteen the first time he has to stitch a cut himself.
It's not the first time he's had to stitch his own injuries, but it is the first time he has to stitch one of his self-inflicted injuries. Everything else has been Spider-Man-related, but this- This had been Peter Parker-related.
This had been because Flash had humiliated Peter in front of their gym class. This had been because his classmates now knew that Peter was friends with Spider-Man, and this had been because he was now obligated to show up to Liz's party as Spider-Man to prove that he wasn't lying.
(Peter loves Ned, he does, but sometimes, he really wants to throttle him.)
But he'd cut too deep. In his locked bedroom, he had been sitting on his bed, angry at himself. So, he'd gone over his usual routine—except, he'd pressed too hard in his haze of red.
And now, he's seeing even more red, but for a different reason than anger. It's because he's pretty sure he cut into his cephalic vein, and now he's bleeding all over his comforter.
Deeper injuries take longer to heal, Peter knows. Normally, he would simply wait for it to close on its own, but— It's not closing.
So he has to stitch it up himself. He takes a wipe to the wound, wincing as the antiseptic gets into the cut and causes it to sting.
He grabs a medical needle from the cheap first-aid kit he'd bought when he first started working as Spider-Man (though he used it to care for his cuts more often than not). He grabs a driver as well, opening the needle from its plastic seal and loading it two-thirds back in the driver.
He begins to carefully stitch up the wound, using a simple interrupted suture tactic from a youtube video he'd watched months ago. At least this time, he isn't doing it with his non-dominant hand.
He tries to finish it quickly, but he still takes his time to be careful. Ned will be calling him about the party soon, and he has to get ready.
He cleans off his arm again once he ties the last knot in his stitches and cuts the thread. His healing factor would, at the very least, prevent it from getting infected. He hoped.
He takes a shower and steels himself, putting on his suit under his normal clothes. Aunt May calls his name, and he walks out of his room. He has a party to go to.
When Aunt May finds out about Peter's little habit, he is fifteen years old.
He comes home from school to May sitting on the couch with a box of tissues in her lap. Her cheeks are damp, her eyes red and puffy.
His blade sits on the table. So does his first-aid kit.
Peter stops dead in his tracks. His breath hitches in his throat, and his body tenses up.
"Peter…" May starts, but Peter can barely hear her. His ears are ringing, and he can't take his eyes off of the blade sitting on the table.
It still has dried blood on it from the morning. The morning. Not the night before, not the week before, but the morning before. Because he'd started to do it every day, every morning and evening and night and whenever he could, just to feel something.
"Peter, honey, when were you going to tell me?" May's voice carries the same kind of hurt it did when she spoke at Ben's funeral. It sounds wrong, so wrong, it should never sound like that—
She continues, her voice breaking, "I thought— I thought you trusted me. You can tell me anything, you know that? Even this. I'm not… Mad. But I'm worried. I'm worried about you, Peter…"
Peter still can't hear her, not over the sounf of his own thoughts. His breath picks up, his chest rising and falling faster. His blood rushes through his body, and he can hear his heart beating so loud it may as well be broadcasted to the world. He wouldn't know the difference.
May says something else, but her voice is drowned out. Peter thinks she says a lot, but he can only manage a weak, whispered apology in response. May hugs him. Peter barely registers it.
Despite May finding out, Peter doesn't stop. He can't stop, in fact. He just does it in less obvious spots until May stops checking at all.
He's started to do it more than just at home. He wakes up, he cuts. He gets on the bus, he might cut— Given that no one will see. He makes it to school, he hides out in the bathroom during advisory and cuts, then goes to his first period. His days are filled with work, cut, eat, cut, sleep, cut, and repeat.
His mood becomes dependent on it. With that dependency comes a much higher frequency in the amount of cuts he makes, so much so that his healing factor stops working on them. The first few will heal up pretty fast, but the rest act like regular cuts.
The boys are in the locker rooms, changing into their regular clothes after their P.E. class. Peter wears a white, long-sleeve shirt underneath his Midtown tee. Taking off the top layer, he's left with only the white shirt.
The other kids don't say anything. Flash, however, decides that today is the day he wants to pick on Peter.
"Hey, Penis!" Flash calls. Peter stiffens, suppressing his internal reaction of a groan. "Why are you always wearing long sleeves? Are you hiding something?"
The group of boys apparently find Flash's comment funny. Peter, however, does not. He ignores Flash— Giving him a reaction and possibly exposing himself is the last thing Peter wants to do.
Normally, Flash would leave it at that. It really isn't much fun to annoy someone if they don't react.
It seems that today must be his exception. Flash walks over to Peter, a grin on his face that can only be described as sinister. Or menacing, maybe, but that isn't the point.
The point is that Flash is coming towards Peter. And, without saying anything, he grabs Peter's arm rather roughly, right over some cuts Peter had made during their lunch block. Peter yelps, jumping back, holding his wrist to his chest. He felt them reopen when Flash grabbed him.
Flash's eyes widen. Peter's sleeve begins to bloom with red, spreading across the white.
The room is silent. The boys around are staring at him, and Peter can feel their eyes on him like snipers.
It doesn't take a genius to guess why Peter had reacted like that, and the blood soaking his sleeves only confirms the assumption.
Shit.
Even Flash wouldn't go as far as to physically hurt Peter. Bully him, verbally assault him, sure, but he wasn't the type for physical beatdowns.
He knows he hadn't grabbed hard. Not hard enough to injure Peter, at the very least. So that blood, that's coming from something that was already there.
Flash grabs Peter's arm again, gentler this time. He avoids the spot where he knows the cuts are. Peter flinches back, but Flash doesn't let him.
The bell rings, signaling the end of the day. No one moves except for Flash, who's slowly peeling back Peter's sleeve, staring down at the cuts that almost completely cover his forearm.
Flash turns away promptly. He grabs his bag, walking out of the room.
The other boys file out without a word. It leaves Peter standing there, looking like a deer in headlights.
He's glad that Ned isn't here today.
Even after a day passes, there's no word of what happened anywhere. Not online, not through the school. Flash has stopped saying anything to Peter. No insults in the hallways, or biting comments in their AP chemistry class, nothing.
It's odd. Peter is constantly on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It doesn't.
Peter switches over to a black undershirt after that.