Archive of Our Own

Three days after waking up, Peter had asked to leave the medical bay seven times.

He kept track because there wasn't much else to do.

The first time, Helen had told him no. The second time, Bruce had explained that being awake and being recovered were two very different things. The third time, Peter had pointed out that his healing factor was literally doing what healing factors were supposed to do and that he felt fine, which had earned him a look from Helen that made it pretty clear that his lying skills weren't as good as he thought they were.

She'd checked the monitors attached to his chest, looked over his latest bloodwork, and informed him that if fine meant “still experiencing significant pain when breathing, getting dizzy when standing, and having enough bloodwork abnormalities to be a medical marvel,” then yes, he was doing wonderfully. 

Peter had decided not to argue with a doctor who could probably remove his appendix with her eyes closed.

Unfortunately, that hadn't stopped him from asking again.

Now he was sitting on the edge of the medical bed in a pair of sweatpants and a soft gray shirt Natasha had left for him, staring down at his feet while Helen adjusted the last of the monitoring equipment.

His chest still hurt in the kind of way that made every breath feel slightly too noticeable, like his body was constantly reminding him that there had been an arrow-sized hole in it eleven days ago. The pain wasn't terrible anymore though, not compared to what it had been, but it was always there if he paid attention, pulling through his ribs when he shifted too quickly or laughed too hard.

He was tired too, in the frustrating way where his body felt heavy even though his brain kept insisting that he should be doing something. Patroling.

Sitting in a bed while people walked in and out to check his vitals was starting to feel less like recovery and more like being grounded, except there wasn't anybody here he could complain to about it because technically these people had saved his life.

"You're not going back to patrol," Helen said as she checked the monitor again.

Peter looked up. "I didn't say anything."

"You were thinking it loudly." That got a tiny smile out of him. Helen reached over and unfastened one of the leads from his chest, leaving the remaining monitors in place. "But you can spend some time outside the medical bay. Walk around a little. Eat somewhere that isn't here. Your body needs movement, and you're going to go stir-crazy if we keep you confined to this room."

Peter glanced toward the door. "So I can leave?"

"Assuming you'll take it easy." She nodded.

"Like, outside?"

Helen gave him a patient look. "Outside the medical bay."

"Oh." Peter tried not to look disappointed, but apparently he wasn't very good at it.

His eyes drifted toward the windows, toward the city beyond them, and his mind automatically started putting together everything he must have missed in eleven days.

The cats on his patrol routes that he feeds whenever he has the tiniest bit of money to spare. That old man who always leaves him out a coffee on his rooftop. New villains that could've popped out in his absence. People who need help, expecting their Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man to show up.

He could probably get away for an hour. Maybe two. His body was healing faster than normal, and if he didn't push it too hard, if he could get to Queens, keep his movements light, maybe stuck to rooftops instead of getting into fights…he'd be fine.

He'd survived worse.

Bruce looked up from the tablet in his hands, apparently having followed the entire train of thought without Peter realizing it. "You should take it slowly."

"I know." The vigilante sighed.

"And eat."

"I know."

"And don't climb anything."

Peter's brows furrowed.

Bruce sat the tablet down. "How many times have you asked if you can get onto the roof?"

Peter sighed again and carefully slid off the bed. His feet touched the floor, and immediately his body reminded him that Helen had not, in fact, been exaggerating about the dizziness.

The room tilted sideways for half a second, his vision going soft around the edges as his chest pulled painfully when he instinctively tried to straighten. He caught the edge of the bed before his knees could decide to embarrass him, waited for the floor to stop moving, and then looked around as though absolutely nothing had happened.

He realized that a hand was hovering near his elbow.

When did she get in here?

Nat hadn't actually touched him. She was just standing close enough that she could, if he needed it, her attention fixed on him in that quiet, unnervingly thorough way she'd had since the night on the roof.

Peter still wasn't entirely sure what she was looking for when she looked at him like that. Sometimes it felt like she could see things he hadn't even thought yet.

"I've got it," he said.

Natasha lowered her hand without arguing. "Okay."

Peter stood there for another second, pretending his legs weren't shaking slightly. 

He hated that everybody had seen it. He hated even more that they were all being so careful around him, like he might break if they moved too quickly. He'd been Spider-Man for two years. He'd fought people bigger than him, stronger than him, faster than him. He'd been thrown through buildings and gotten back up. He could handle standing.

"I've been lying down for a week and a half," he muttered.

Natasha nodded, "Which is why you're dizzy."

"I was trying to make a point."

"You did."

Peter looked at her. "Was it a good one?"

Something almost like amusement touched Nat’s face, and Peter found himself smiling before he could stop himself. The corners of her mouth tilted upwards in return. 

Bruce’s voice broke into the moment, "Before you go upstairs, there's one thing I want you to consider."

Peter turned towards him. "Consider what?"

"You might want to talk to someone."

Peter's smile disappeared. "I'm talking to you."

"That's not what I mean."

The silence that followed was short, but Peter felt it anyway. His shoulders tightened beneath the loose shirt, and his fingers curled slightly against the fabric of his pants.

He knew what Bruce meant.

They'd all been saying things like healing and recovery and after what you've been through without actually saying the part that Peter knew was sitting underneath all of it.

He was fifteen. His aunt was dead. His uncle was dead. He'd been homeless for five months. The Avengers had chased him through New York and nearly killed him. 

He knew what somebody with a psychology degree would probably say about that.

"No."

The answer came out so quickly that even Peter surprised himself.

Bruce nodded once, like he'd expected that. "Okay."

Peter waited for the lecture, but it didn't come.

He glanced toward Natasha instead. She was watching him, expression unreadable, and there was no judgment in it that he could see. Somehow that made it worse.

He looked away first. He didn't want to talk about May, about the last five months, or the attic, or the hunger, or the nights where he'd been so cold his fingers stopped working.

He definitely didn't want to talk about the arrow. Talking about it would make it real in a way that thinking about it never quite did. If he talked about it, somebody might ask him how he felt, and Peter wasn't entirely sure he knew.

He was Spider-Man. Spider-Man didn't need therapy.

Peter Parker maybe did.

He was supposed to be Peter Parker again, and that was exactly the problem; he wasn’t sure he remembered how. 

Helen gathered the last of the equipment and gave him a look that said she could tell he was thinking about something she would probably prefer he not be thinking about. "No patrol."

Peter opened his mouth.

"No."

"I didn't even—"

"You were about to."

Peter sighed. "Okay."

Natasha moved toward the door. "Come on, паучок. I'll show you where you're staying."

Peter's stomach dropped.

Maybe because she said staying instead of waiting. Maybe because he'd spent the last three days assuming there would be some point where somebody came in and told him they had figured out what to do with him. Maybe because staying implied something much more permanent than Peter was ready to believe.

He had learned a long time ago that things could disappear without warning. People got shot, beeping stopped, things got forgotten. Adults said we'll figure it out and then suddenly there was nobody left to figure anything out with.

The Tower was not his home.

He knew it could never be.

He followed Natasha toward the elevator anyway, one careful step at a time, his hand occasionally brushing the wall whenever his balance felt uncertain.

He could feel the Avengers somewhere nearby even though he couldn't see them. His senses picked up murmured voices behind doors, the faint movement of people several floors away, the low mechanical hum of the Tower around them. None of it felt dangerous.

That almost made it worse, at least danger made sense.

Peter stood beside Natasha as the elevator doors opened, staring at the empty space beyond them. Three days ago, he'd woken up expecting to find out he was dead. Now someone was taking him upstairs to a room he had apparently been given.

He didn't know what would happen tomorrow. But for the first time since May died, Peter was getting up and going somewhere because someone had asked him to come along instead of because he was running away.

And somehow, as Natasha stepped into the elevator beside him, it was almost more frightening than being chased.

The elevator doors closed with a quiet sound, and Peter immediately became aware of how little he knew about the Tower. 

He'd spent enough time inside the medical bay to recognize a few levels from the elevator displays, but everything beyond that had been a blur of hallways and medical equipment and people telling him to stay in bed. 

Now the numbers started climbing, one after another, and Peter found himself staring at them as if they were somehow going to explain where he was going. Natasha stood beside him with her arms loosely crossed, not saying anything, and Peter wondered whether she was deliberately giving him space or simply didn't know what to say either.

The elevator was almost unnervingly quiet. No other Avengers appeared, no one stepped in at another floor, and Peter couldn't help noticing the absence of everyone he'd spent the last eleven days hearing about from various corners of the medical staff. 

Tony was probably in his lab. Steve was probably training. Clint was... Peter wasn't sure about Clint, actually. He'd not seen him since waking up, and every time Peter asked himself why, something in the memory of the rooftop made his stomach twist. He looked down at his hands instead. 

Natasha's reflection stared back at them from the polished metal wall, and Peter caught himself noticing that she wasn't standing as close as she could have been. There was enough space between them for him to breathe.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

Peter almost laughed. It was such a ridiculous question that he wasn't sure what answer it was supposed to get. "Yeah."

Natasha glanced at him.

The vigilante sighed. "I'm fine."

"I didn't ask if you were fine."

Peter looked over.

Her expression hadn't changed, but there was something in her eyes that made him think she knew exactly how stupid the answer was.

"Okay," he muttered. "I'm... not really sure."

"That's better."

The elevator slowed and Peter's stomach tightened again.

The doors opened onto a hallway that looked nothing like the Tower he knew. 

There were no medical carts, no glass walls, no technicians hurrying past with tablets in their hands. The lighting was warmer, the floors softer beneath his bare feet, and the walls had a few photographs and pieces of art scattered along them in a way that made the whole place feel less like a skyscraper and more like somebody actually lived here. 

Peter stopped just outside the elevator, his eyes moving automatically from one end of the hallway to the other.

There were multiple doors and each one was closed.

Private.

His brain immediately started cataloging the exits without permission. Elevator behind him. Stairwell at the far end. Another stairwell near the opposite wall. Windows too high to reach without climbing, although that was hardly a problem for him. 

It was habit, nothing more. He'd mapped every place he'd ever slept the same way.

"There's a stairwell there," Natasha said, nodding toward the far end. "Another one at the other end of the floor. Elevator is here."

Peter glanced at her.

"I know."

"I know you know." Her tone was patient. 

He didn't know what to do with that, so he kept walking.

The hallway opened into a larger space halfway down the floor, with a sitting area and a few chairs arranged around a low table. 

There were large windows looking out over the city, and Peter's stomach gave another uncomfortable flip when he realized just how high they were. He hadn’t been scared of heights since the bite, but then again, he hadn’t felt alot of the things that he’s felt over the past 2 weeks since the bite. 

He could see half of New York from here. Somewhere farther down the skyline was Queens. Somewhere down there was the apartment building where May had lived, the rooftops he'd spent two years crossing, and the city that had continued without him for eleven days.

"This is your floor," Natasha said. "Mine too."

He looked away at the view to meet her eyes.

She glanced away. "And Clint's."

Oh.

She nodded toward one of the closed doors. "His is down there."

Peter glanced at it, then back at the Avenger.

"You guys all live up here?"

"Just the two of us. Everyone else has their own floors."

Peter frowned slightly.

That explained some things. The way Natasha had always seemed to care about everyone else, but still seemed so isolated. The way Clint hadn't come into the medical bay. The way Natasha had stayed beside him the entire time but disappeared the second somebody tried to ask her to take care of herself.

Maybe this was their version of not being alone, of being able to take care of each other.

He wasn't sure it was working.

Natasha started walking again and Peter's brain lagged before he remembered to follow.

His chest complained with every step, a dull pulling ache underneath his ribs that reminded him to slow down whenever he forgot. 

Natasha didn't comment on the way he walked, but she did unconsciously shorten her stride to match his. Peter noticed.

He noticed everything in a way he didn't use to.

They stopped in front of a door near the far end of the hallway. It looked exactly like the others which was probably why Peter's stomach twisted when Natasha opened it.

He had expected a bedroom. What he had not expected was that.

The room was enormous.

Peter stood in the doorway, completely still.

There was a bed larger than anything he'd slept on before, neatly made beneath a pile of blankets. A desk sat near the windows, already stocked with a computer, notebooks, pens, and enough empty space to actually work. There were shelves along one wall, some still empty, others holding books that Peter recognized immediately as biology and chemistry textbooks, the same ones he used to have at Midtown. 

A dresser sat opposite the bed, the drawers open with clothes folded neatly inside and more hanging in the massive walk-in closet beyond it. There was a chair in the corner, a small reading lamp, a rug beneath his feet, and a bathroom through another door that looked bigger than the entire attic he'd spent five months calling home.

Peter just stared at the room for a good few minutes.

There was no way.

He turned slowly toward Natasha. "This is mine?" The question came out quieter than he'd intended.

Natasha's usual neutral expression softened. "Yes."

Peter looked back into the room, there was a ridiculous amount of space. More space than he knew what to do with, even before the attic, May and Ben's apartment was just whatever they  could afford at the moment.

The bed alone looked like it belonged in one of those super fancy hotels, the kind of bed where the mattress didn't immediately remind you that concrete existed. The windows were huge, and beyond them the city stretched beneath the dark sky, lights scattered across the buildings like stars someone had dropped too low.

Then Peter saw the balcony he somehow didn’t notice before. 

The doors were closed against the winter air, but he could see the railing beyond them, dark against the glow of the city.

He took a few slow steps toward it, his attention fixed on the glass.

Natasha did not follow. She remained where she was, giving him enough distance that the room did not suddenly feel like another place he had to defend himself from.

Peter opened the door just enough to look outside, and cold air brushed his face immediately. He could see the side of the Tower disappearing above and below him, the city extending in every direction, vast and bright and impossibly far away. The balcony was not huge, but it was private, enclosed enough to keep him safe and open enough that he could climb if he needed to.

His eyes lingered on the edge.

He could leave from here.

Not like Spider-Man running from the Avengers, not because someone had found him and dragged him somewhere he had not chosen to go. He could simply leave, climb over the railing, disappear into the city, and make sure that nobody had the chance to change their mind about him.

The thought should have made him feel better.

Instead, it made his chest ache.

“They just finished the balcony yesterday,” the assassin said from behind him.

Peter glanced back.

“Thor thought you might feel trapped without one.”

Peter looked at the balcony again, his fingers tightening slightly around the edge of the door. He did not know what to say to that. Nobody had ever built an escape route for him before, and the fact that they had thought to give him one felt stranger than the room itself.

Natasha moved farther into the room but stopped a few feet away. “You can change anything you don’t like.”

Peter looked around again, taking in the bed, the windows, the balcony, and all the empty space that seemed to be waiting for him to decide what belonged there.

“Anything?”

“Of course.”

He nodded slowly, though he still did not quite understand how a place could be his simply because someone had said it was.

Every object had been chosen for him, placed there with an attention to detail that should have made him feel cared for, but none of it belonged to him. None of it carried the familiar weight of something he had found, repaired, stolen, or held onto because it had been all he could afford. The room was full of things, yet Peter felt as though he had nothing.

He should be grateful. It should have been easy to look around and understand that the Avengers had tried to give him everything he might need, that they had gone out of their way to make the room comfortable before he had even been awake long enough to ask for one. 

But, something tightened low in his stomach, a small, unpleasant knot that had nothing to do with his injuries and everything to do with the sudden realization that the few things he had owned were no longer here.

"What happened to my stuff?"

Natasha paused her survey of the room, almost as if she hadn’t come in here, like she was waiting for him. Her attention shifted over to Peter.

"What stuff?"

Peter immediately wished he had asked a different question. He lowered his eyes to the floor, watching the edge of the rug beneath his bare feet as though it required his full concentration. 

The answer was too complicated to explain, and the truth sounded embarrassing when he tried to put it into words. His blankets, his clothes, the few tools he had managed to keep, the scraps of his old life that had survived because he had carried them everywhere. 

Those things were not valuable to anyone else, but they were the only proof he had that Peter Parker was still the same person who had been surviving all this time.

"Nothing," he said quietly.

She watched him for a moment, clearly aware that the answer wasn't true, "We can get you whatever you need."

Peter nodded, though the words felt strange. Whatever he needed. He didn't know what he needed. 

That had never really been a problem before, he'd always known exactly what he needed: a place nobody knew about, a few blankets, enough food to make it through the next patrol, his suit, web fluid, a working phone, a little money, and something to stitch himself up. That was it.

This room was asking him to want things unrelated to survival, and Peter wasn't sure he knew how. He walked farther inside and stopped beside the bed. The mattress dipped slightly beneath his hand when he pressed down on it. It was really soft.

He sat carefully, his body sinking several inches into the mattress, and Peter immediately stiffened. It felt strange beneath him, too soft and too warm and too comfortable in a way his body didn't recognize anymore. 

He'd slept on concrete for five months. Even the makeshift bed he'd built from blankets and an old sweatshirt had been firm enough that he knew exactly where the floor was beneath him.

This felt like falling, and Peter stood again almost immediately, his body reacting before he could stop it as his feet found the floor and his hands tightened at his sides.

Natasha noticed. “You don’t like it?”

Peter shook his head too quickly. “No, it’s fine.”

Her eyes flicked toward the bed and then back to him, catching the lie before he could make it sound convincing. Peter could tell from the slight narrowing of her gaze that she understood exactly what he meant, even if he hadn’t said it aloud.

“I can get you a different mattress.”

“No.”

“You don’t have to use this one.”

“I said it’s fine.” His tone came out more clipped than he meant it to, and the sharpness of it lingered between them for a moment.

Natasha studied him for another second before nodding. “Okay.”

She didn’t argue or ask him to explain, and Peter appreciated that more than he wanted to admit. He wasn’t sure he could explain it anyway. 

The mattress was comfortable, technically, but comfort had never been the same thing as safety, and the softness beneath him had made his body feel unsteady in a way he couldn’t ignore.

He moved toward the bathroom instead, opening the door cautiously. It was absurdly large: a shower, a double sink, towels folded perfectly, and an actual jacuzzi in the corner. 

Peter stared at it.

For five months, he'd showered wherever he could. Midtown's gym when he stopped once a month to make web fluid. Public gyms when he could sneak inside. Sometimes he'd clean himself up in the local Shelter's bathroom sink and hope nobody asked why a fifteen-year-old was washing blood out of his hair at midnight. 

He had never found a place where he could just turn a handle and know that the water was going to be warm and clean and there because it was his bathroom.

He reached out and touched the shower handle, but didn't turn it. After a moment, he pulled his hand back.

"This is yours too," Natasha said quietly.

Peter looked over at her, still standing near the door, and nodded because he didn't know what else to say. The room didn't feel like his, not yet, and some quiet, stubborn part of him suspected it probably never would, but he kept that thought to himself.

Natasha glanced toward the bed. "You should rest."

Peter looked at the clock on the dresser. It was ten p.m., which still felt too early to sleep, especially when his body had spent so long learning that nighttime was when he needed to stay awake.

"I'm going to let you get settled."

Peter nodded again, watching as she turned toward the door.

"Nat?"

She stopped.

Peter looked around the room, taking in the unfamiliar furniture, the clean sheets, the clothes folded neatly where he could reach them, and the fact that none of it belonged to him yet. He didn't know exactly what he was asking, or whether he could make himself say the question he actually wanted answered, but he needed to hear something before she left.

"You'll still be here?"

Natasha didn't hesitate. "Yes."

The answer was simple, immediate, and certain enough that Peter believed it before he had time to question whether he should.

She left the door open a few inches behind her, and a few seconds later Peter could hear her moving around somewhere down the hall. The sound was faint, almost lost beneath the quiet hum of the Tower, but she was still there, close enough for him to know that he wasn't completely alone.

Peter looked around the room again.

For the first time in months, he was alone in a room that was actually safe, and the realization made something inside him tighten instead of relax. He wasn't sure he liked it, wasn't sure he trusted it, and wasn't even sure he deserved it, but none of those doubts were strong enough to make him leave.

—

Peter tried to sleep.

That was probably where he messed up.

He had gone through the motions because it seemed like the thing he was supposed to do. 

He brushed his teeth, changed into the first clothes he saw in his drawer, turned off the lights, and climbed onto the bed because that was what normal people did when they were tired. 

His body even seemed grateful for the mattress for the first few minutes, sinking into the softness despite the way his muscles tensed at the unfamiliar feeling, but after a while the comfort became its own kind of irritation. 

It was too soft. Too warm. There was no solid floor beneath him, no familiar draft coming through a cracked window, no traffic close enough to hear through thin walls. 

Every little sound the Tower made seemed amplified because Peter didn't know what any of them meant.

He tried lying on his back, but that made his chest ache. He tried his side, but that pulled at the healing muscles along his ribs. He tried sitting against the headboard with one of the new blankets around his shoulders, but after ten minutes he realized he'd been staring at the same spot on the wall the entire time. 

Eventually he climbed out of bed and spread one of the blankets across the floor, folding the other beneath his head before sitting down on top of it. 

The floor was solid. Familiar. It didn't move beneath him when he breathed.

He didn't pull the second blanket over himself. He wasn't cold, or at least, not cold enough to matter.

Peter stared up at the ceiling and listened.

Somewhere down the hall, an elevator moved. A few seconds later, there were footsteps, soft against the carpet, and then a door opened and closed. 

He could hear the Tower humming around him, electricity running through walls that were thicker than anything he'd lived beside in months, ventilation shifting overhead, distant voices too muffled to understand. 

He knew he should be grateful. He knew this was better than concrete, better than a broken window, better than waking up because the temperature had dropped low enough that he couldn't move properly.

His brain didn't care. It kept searching for the catch, because there was always one. People didn't simply give you a room, offer you food, or tell you to stay and mean it.

Peter rolled onto his side and immediately hissed when his chest protested. He pressed a hand against the bandages until the pain settled, then stared toward the bedroom door. 

It was still cracked open, just as Natasha had left it, and he could still hear her faintly somewhere down the hall.

He closed his eyes and tried to convince himself that was enough.

It wasn't.

His breathing slowly evened out. He remembered was thinking that the floor wasn't actually that uncomfortable, and that he was back on the rooftop.

Snow was falling.

Peter could feel the cold immediately, slipping beneath his suit and into his fingers, the same cold that had been there when he'd been running from them. 

His lungs burned. His chest hurt. He couldn't get his footing right, couldn't make his legs move quickly enough.

He knew something was coming, or maybe he only knew because the feeling had already begun, spreading through him like a warning beneath the skin. 

His spider-sense screamed somewhere far away, muffled beneath the snow and the dark.

The Black Widow stood in front of him.

Or maybe she had always been there?

Her hand was around his wrist, warm and steady, and her face kept changing whenever he tried to look at it. 

Sometimes she was watching him. Sometimes she was looking past him. Sometimes her eyes were May's.

He tried to speak, but the word came out wrong.

Fifteen.

The number drifted between them like a piece of paper caught in the wind.

Peter tried to move but his body wouldn't listen. 

The ground beneath him tilted gently, then more sharply, and snow began falling upward instead of down. Somewhere beyond the white, something moved.

He pushed her away.

The world opened.

There was pain, but it didn't feel sharp. 

It spread through him slowly, warm and heavy, until he couldn't tell where his body ended. When he looked down, the snow beneath him had turned dark. It kept spreading, though there wasn't enough of him left for there to be that much blood.

He couldn’t breathe.

Nat’s arms were around him, but they felt distant, as if she were holding him from the other side of a wall.

"Stay with me."

Peter tried.

He tried so hard.

Then the rooftop became a hospital room.

Or he had never left it. 

The monitor beside the bed blinked softly in the dark. 

Its green light moved across the walls, over the blankets, over May's closed eyes. 

Peter reached for her hand, but the distance between them stretched and stretched until his fingers could barely touch hers.

Her skin was cold.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Peter tried to hold on.

"May?"

Her hand slipped away from his.

The beeping slowed, each sound growing farther apart.

"May?!"

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Then there was only silence.

Peter jerked awake with a strangled gasp, the sound catching somewhere between his throat and his chest as though even waking required more effort than he could manage. 

For several seconds, he had no sense of where he was; his body moved before his thoughts could catch up, one hand twisting into the blanket while the other pressed against his ribs, searching instinctively for the wound that was no longer there. 

His heart beat hard beneath his palm, each pulse sending a dull ache through the healing muscles under his bandages, while his lungs pulled in shallow breaths that seemed to stop just short of being enough.

"Peter."

The voice reached him only faintly, softened by the remnants of the dream still clinging to him.

He continued staring at the ceiling, eyes wide but unfocused, the darkness of the nightmare so close that the room around him seemed uncertain and unreal. The snow was gone, yet he could still feel its cold against his skin; he could still feel the warmth of blood beneath his hands and hear the slow, measured beeping beside May's hospital bed, each sound growing farther apart until there was nothing left at all.

"Peter."

This time, the voice was nearer.

A hand settled carefully against his shoulder, and Peter recoiled before he could stop himself, the sudden movement pulling sharply at his chest. Nat withdrew at once.

"Easy."

He turned toward her, though it took him a moment to truly see her. 

She was crouched beside from on the floor, her hair slightly disordered from sleep but her attention already fixed entirely on him, her expression composed in that quiet, watchful way that made it difficult to tell what she was thinking. 

Her eyes moved over him with quick precision, taking in the hand pressed to his chest, the dampness at his temples, and the tremor that still passed through his fingers.

"You're here," she said, her voice low enough not to startle him. "You're in the Tower."

Peter swallowed, but his throat felt too tight for an answer.

Natasha didn’t ask what he had seen, and she did not offer the kind of reassurance that would have required him to explain why he needed it. Instead, she waited until his gaze began to settle on her, until the room seemed to return in pieces rather than all at once.

"You’re okay, baby.”

There was something steady in her voice, something that gave his mind a place to rest when everything else still felt unstable. 

He drew in a breath, and although it trembled on the way in, it reached deeper than the last.

"Again."

He followed her without questioning it, breathing in and out until the panic began to loosen its hold.

Gradually, the room became recognizable again: the ceiling above him, the walls around him, the blanket tangled around his legs, and the faint strip of light spilling through the open doorway. 

Natasha remained beside him, solid and present, and the realization settled over him with surprising force.

She was alive. She wasn’t May.

He looked down at his hands, expecting to find blood there, but there was only the faint tremor he could not quite control. 

His chest was still bandaged, the fabric pulled tight across his ribs; there was no arrow, no open wound, no impossible amount of blood soaking through him. 

He was here, in the Tower, and whatever had happened in the dream had stayed there.

"Better?" Natasha asked.

Peter nodded, though the movement was small.

She remained crouched beside him for another moment before sitting carefully on the floor, leaving enough space between them that he did not feel crowded. 

Peter wiped at his face with the heel of his hand and only then realized that his cheeks were wet, so he turned away almost immediately, hoping the darkness might make the evidence less obvious.

Natasha probably noticed, but she did not say anything.

Instead, she glanced toward the open door and then back at him. "Do you want me to get Bruce?"

Peter shook his head too quickly. "No."

"Okay."

The quiet that followed was not entirely comfortable, but it was easier to bear with her still there. 

Peter watched the narrow strip of hallway beyond the door, listening to the Tower's muted sounds. The movement of air through the vents, the low hum of electricity behind the walls, the occasional distant shift of something settling.

He found that none of them mattered as much as the fact that Natasha had not moved away. She was still sitting beside him.

The thought tightened something in his chest, though this time it was not entirely fear.

"Nat, can I—"

The words faded before he could finish them.

Natasha waited without prompting him.

Peter lowered his gaze to the blanket gathered in his lap, worrying at its edge between his fingers as he tried to find a way to ask without making the request sound as desperate as it felt.

"Can I sleep in your room?" His voice was barely audible.

The embarrassment arrived almost immediately afterward. 

He was fifteen, and he had been Spider-Man for two years; he had survived five months on his own and spent the last few days trying to convince everyone around him that he was capable of managing himself. 

Now he was asking Natasha, of all people, whether he could sleep near her because the word alone had become too convincing.

She didn’t laugh, nor she did not look surprised. For a moment, she simply studied him, as though she knew about the question than he had intended to reveal. 

Then she stood and held out her hand. "Come on."

Peter hesitated for only a second before taking it, his fingers closing around hers with more trust than he seemed ready to admit. 

Natasha's room was different from his in all the ways that mattered. 

It wasn't as polished, and there were fewer decorations, but there were more signs that somebody actually lived there: a jacket thrown over the back of a chair, a book left open on the nightstand, and weapons secured in a cabinet instead of hidden in a closet. 

Peter noticed all of it automatically as he stepped inside, cataloging the exits and the unfamiliar objects out of habit, but his attention kept returning to the fact that Natasha hadn't let go of his hand until they reached the other side of the room.

"You can sleep here."

Peter looked at the bed, then at the floor, and the choice seemed obvious to him even though Natasha's expression suggested she already knew what he was going to say.

"The floor's okay."

Natasha followed his gaze, and although she didn't argue, she didn't make him feel as though he had chosen wrong, either. 

She pulled a blanket from the foot of the bed and spread it across the carpet, smoothing it down with one hand before stepping aside. Peter lowered himself onto it carefully, stretching out on his side and keeping one hand near his chest while he adjusted to the hard surface beneath him. 

Natasha sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, watching him with the same quiet attention she had always given him. "Better?"

Peter nodded, though the answer came more from the way his shoulders began to loosen than from any real certainty that he would be able to sleep.

Natasha reached for the lamp.

"Leave it on?" Peter looked away, embarrassed by how quickly the request had come to his mouth and how much it revealed. "A little."

"Okay."

The light stayed on, casting a warm, steady glow across the room while Peter settled beneath the blanket, and Natasha remained close enough that he could hear her breathing without needing super senses.

Natasha climbed into bed and settled beneath the blankets, but she didn't turn away from him. Peter stared at the ceiling again, listening to her breathing.

It was quiet and steady.

Not perfectly steady. Every so often, she shifted slightly, the mattress giving a soft creak beneath her weight, but something was reassuring about the rhythm of it. 

It was proof that she was awake. Proof that she hadn't changed her mind and left him alone in the dark.

Peter kept his eyes open.

He watched the faint light from the lamp stretch across the ceiling and tried not to think about how strange it was to be in someone else's room. 

There were no locks he could see, no piles of clothes on the floor, no familiar clutter to make the space feel lived in. Everything had a place. Everything was quiet. Even Natasha seemed to belong to the room in a way Peter couldn't understand, as if she knew exactly where every shadow ended and every sound began.

He wondered if she was watching him, although he made no effort to look over and check, because the possibility of meeting her eyes felt almost as uncomfortable as the thought of being alone again. 

The room remained quiet around them, filled only by the low hum of the Tower and the faint, steady sound of Natasha breathing.

"You're allowed to sleep, паучок," The assassin said.

Peter's fingers tightened slightly in the blanket, gathering the fabric beneath his hand as though he needed something solid to hold on to.

"I'm trying."

"I know." There was no judgment in it and no impatience either, only a simple acknowledgment that made it easier for him to keep breathing. 

Peter swallowed and shifted carefully onto his side, turning away from the bed so he wouldn't have to think about whether she was still watching him. His chest continued to hurt, but the sharpness had faded into something dull and manageable, a persistent ache that he could tolerate as long as he didn't move too quickly.

He tucked one hand beneath his cheek and rested the other over his ribs, feeling the slow rise and fall beneath the bandages as his breathing gradually began to even out.

"Do you always leave a light on?" She asked.

"Only when I'm trying not to have nightmares."

The answer slipped out before he could stop it, too honest and too immediate to take back. For a moment, neither of them spoke, and Peter found himself staring at the wall while he waited for the question that should have followed, the one asking what kind of nightmares he had or why he was having them or what had happened before he came here.

Natasha didn't, though. Instead, she said, "That usually work?"

Peter kept his eyes on the wall.

"No."

"Thought so."

He almost smiled, though it was barely enough to change his expression, and the small attempt seemed to loosen something in his shoulders.

After a while, his body began to loosen, gradually surrendering to the exhaustion he had been fighting since he arrived. The room was still unfamiliar, the bed was still too soft, and the Tower was still too quiet in a way that made every distant sound seem important, but Natasha was still there.

Peter didn't know why that mattered, and he wasn't ready to ask himself whether it meant he trusted her, but the knowledge settled over him with a quiet steadiness that made sleep feel possible.

He listened to Natasha breathe.

In.

Out.

Slow and even.

His own breathing gradually began to follow hers. The floor was hard beneath him, the blanket unfamiliar, and tomorrow was still a terrifying question he didn't know how to answer.

But Natasha was still there.

Peter closed his eyes.

The word alone didn't make its way into his head again.