ONE YEAR SINCE THE END OF PART II
There was that feeling again, tugging at the hairs on Peter's neck. It trailed down his arms, his back, spreading across his chest. He had always tried to describe it to you, coming to the conclusion that it was the equivalent of goosebumps, except warmer and more urgent.
You were nestled in the crook of his neck, feeling his chest rise and fall against your jaw. The stray strands of hair curling around your profile were being played delicately with Peter's fingers, them slipping in and out of the callouses, the fingertips that had traced every inch of you.
Not now, c'mon, not now.
He groaned softly, throwing his head back against the seat of the couch. Peter was always ready to fight, always ready to answer to the call of the urgency peppering his skin, always, always ready. But now, with you melted against him, the blanket encasing you both, that was the last thing he wanted to do.
"What's wrong, Parker?" you smiled, oblivious to his internal monologue, the steady strand of curse words thrashing through his mind. Your lips met softly with his jaw, your arms wrapping tighter around his neck. The hood of his sweatshirt bunched in your palms as you sighed into his collarbones, breathing him in. He smelled sweet and nostalgic, like apples and oak.
"I gotta, uh, I gotta go," he stammered, peeling an arm off of him. You let out a long whine, breaking into a light laugh.
"Why, Peter?"
"Duty calls, sorry, love."
You groaned, slumping into the blanket, it feeling empty with his absence. The couch rose, as did your chest, as he stood.
"Are you sure?" you murmured, cocking your head slightly for emphasis. "Are you sure it's not a different feeling?" You reached out and trailed a finger down his arm, earning a messy grin from him.
"No, Y/N, I'm serious," he chuckled, holding his forearm out in front of you for emphasis. The small hairs were standing on end.
"Hi, 'serious', I'm Y/N," you muttered under your breath, disappointed in his leaving. His shoulders shook with a light laugh as he worked the sweatshirt off his torso, curls tangling in the fabric.
"You're a dork, you know that?" he laughed through the fabric, yanking it over his head.
And with a clumsy grin, he made his way to the couch, planting a gentle kiss on your forehead before wandering into his room, sweatshirt bunched under his arm.
Not now.
He had never taken you for granted, never wanted anything than to melt on that couch with you, never really wanted to leave you, even at his worst. You were his priority, forever his priority. But Spider-Man's priorities were different, and so he didn't have the time to melt on the couch with you; Spider-Man didn't know that every time he left you were afraid that he wasn't going to come back. Because Spider-Man, Peter, was unbearably focused on your happiness. And so you put on that smiling face he liked so much every time he left. Every time.
He trod into his bedroom, tossing his sweatshirt on his haphazardly-fixed bedspread, pulling his gray shirt over his curls. And then off came his belt, his jeans, his socks, and on came the suit. On came Spider-Man, on came the person, the man. He was the man that Peter was convinced that he most definitely wasn't. Peter Parker and Spider-Man coincided, shared a home, but their rooms were separate.
He often told you that you held him together, kept him whole, but you never truly understood what he meant. He didn't like Peter Parker. Peter Parker was the boy from Queens, the boy who's voice wasn't nearly deep enough, the boy who had lost his parents. Spider-Man, however, was admirable. Spider-Man was brave and strong and selfless. And was most definitely not Peter.
You were the only thing motivating him to keep the room that Peter was held in unlocked. You were his motivation to be Peter, to be that kid from Queens, because you loved Peter.
The soft hum of the suit starting buzzed on his skin, ridding the goosebumps and replacing them with gadgets, the small voice of Karen welcoming him, the web shooters. The suit.
He made his way down the hallway, clicking a last web cartridge into place on his wrist, mask slung over his shoulder.
"Hey, Spidey," you winked, looking over the back of the couch, before rising and making your way over to him. He grabbed the mask, bunching it in between his hands, moving to put it on.
"Not so fast."
You pressed against him in a light kiss, hand perched on his jaw, before pulling away and flashing a smile. That smile that you flashed every time he left. You were hiding how much him leaving was twisting you, wringing you out. What if he were not to come back?
Not now.
The words rang in his head as he felt you against him, your warm lips and warm hands and warm chest. You.
"Bring me back something good, alright?"
"I will," Peter smiled, eyes gently flashing over yours.
"Kick some ass, Parker."
And with a light laugh, the boy ducked out the apartment window, you watching him as he flew towards the hub of the city through your minimal view. The hiss of his web shooters echoed along the streets as Peter carried himself, as Spider-Man carried himself, giving small waves to children passing by on the street. His arms worked with the wind, winding around turns and soaring across rooftops.
He scanned the streets, watching for the source of those urgent goosebumps.
Not now.
His mind was flooded with the familiar anxiety of not knowing, the anxiety of knowing that he might not know, the anxiety of knowing that he can't save everyone.
That was what really hurt. That hurt both Peter and Spider-Man, it hurt the conjoined conscious of the alter-egos, and it hurt so, so bad. And there flashed the bodies, behind his eyelids, the eyelids couldn't that protect him from things he didn't want to see. The eyelids only shielded his vision. His mind was the problem, and there was nothing to shield him from that.
He gritted his teeth as the bruised faces of victims trailed behind those eyelids that couldn't block out his mind, those racing thoughts, those haunting, haunting faces. The faces he couldn't save. Those eyelids that couldn't block out the past.
Peter's mind automatically went to you in times of trouble, your smile, your warmth, your eyes, you. And so there it went again, speeding from the things he shouldn't have been thinking about, to the thing, the being, the feeling, that he should have been thinking about. You.
"Bring me back something good, alright?"
His mouth flicked with a small smile, slightly suppressed against the mask, remembering how the words sounded coming from between your lips.
He had heard them many times; before he left to "save the world", as you had affectionately put it, you would always speak the words. It was your deal with Peter. Every time before he left, you would ask him to bring you something good.
And every night, after he would return, bruised, scratched, broken, and he would tell you. He'd tell you about how he saw a little boy running through the park with a kite. He'd tell you about how he saw a cute dog with a blue collar. He'd tell you about how a little girl blew him a kiss.
He'd tell you that something good that he saw on the way to the fight. Something to distract his mind from the ghosts of faces. Something to make him smile in the midst of the chaos.
It was his promise to return, his promise to stop stressing, his promise to keep going.
His promise to come back.
And there it was. The something good for tonight. A small boy ran, wearing Spider-Man sneakers, down the sidewalk outside a bistro. He held a smile on his lips and an action figure in his palm. And Peter felt his heart soar, the broken faces flitting away from behind his eyelids, replaced with ideas of how you would laugh when he told you. How your eyes would light up, how your lips would stretch into a smile, and how your cheeks would glow with admiration.
Oh, how you would laugh.
All Peter wanted to do was go and shake the little boy's chubby hand. All he wanted to do was pull him into a hug against his chest. He wanted to make him happy.
But the suit's voice quickly alerted him he was going off course as he began to swing in the direction of the boy, and Peter was lost in Spider-Man once again. And Spider-Man needed to "save the world". So Spider-Man merely waved at the kid, watching his face light up and jaw drop in shock from across the street. Peter still wanted to hug the boy. But there was no time for Peter right now.
Peter was for you, Spider-Man was for now.
He heard it before he saw it.
He heard the screams echo, the heat surge, the rubble shatter.
His ears tasted the flavor of chaos, crushing and debilitating. The taste was awful. It was like taking medicine. Except the medicine resulted in more death, more guilt, more pain, more grief.
More, more, more.
And Peter knew that'd he'd have more ghostly faces to play back before the night was over. So many more.
Paranoia-drenched adrenaline shrieked through his limbs, through his mind, the familiar feeling he dreaded. His heart beat, his throat caught, and his adrenaline shrieked.
Pounding, pounding surges of heat.
Burning.
With a quick flip of his wrist, Spider-Man swung himself around, landing on a building top. The gravel at the top was coarse and rough against the feet of suit, jabbing at him from through the thin layer. Small, displaced rocks, breaking him.
And then he was facing the heat, he was looking at it head on, he was seeing it. Chemical bubbles of fire rose from the top of a high rise, burning, burning, burning. The flames licked the windows, sent billows of smoke up into the dusk-ridden sky, and stained the air with the smell of ash.
Another blast sounded from inside that high rise, the explosion blistering the structure and the clouds. It resembled a burning torch, with the base of the building intact; the top was aglow with chaos.
Not now.
Peter sucked in a shaky breath, watching bits of rubble stream down from the flame-ridden rooftop. It was almost beautiful, in a twisted way. The burning rubble cascaded, like falling stars, spilling onto the dull streets. Onto the honking cars, onto the sidewalks riddled with people, onto the billboards.
Peter's eyes immediately flashed to the something good, the boy. The small boy wearing the Spider-Man shoes and clasping his action figure. The small boy, the one good thing in all of the burning.
The one good thing.
Peter frantically stumbled towards the edge of the building, watching as a burning, car-sized chunk crashed from the sky. And then the boy's mother was racing out to grab him, pushing through all of the running bodies, all of the panicked bodies, the mob of people screaming, crying, sprinting away from the torch. She ran to her son, who's mouth was parted in disbelief, observing the burning. Just watching, jostled slightly by all of the shrieking bodies around him.
Run.
Peter willed the boy to move his feet, pleaded with him from the rooftop, as he moved to jump. His arms were numb, his head pounding, breath hitching.
"Run!" Peter screamed, trembling.
He knew it was useless to try to stop it. He knew it was too late, that both the woman and the boy, the little boy, would become new faces to climb behind his eyelids. And still, he shot a web at the rubble, the searing chunk of building, attempting to yank it to the side. Because now the boy's eyes were filling with tears, the mother was covering him in her arms, crouched over the small body, shaking with tears.
"I love you, I love you, I love you," whispered the woman, Peter picking up on her soul crushing words with the enhanced hearing provided by his suit that he now despised.
The web sizzled as it met the flames of the wreckage.
Not now.
And then came the impact, the resounding crushing of the sidewalk, the cars, the people. Not just the boy, not just the casing of his mother wrapped tightly around him. Other members of the running crowd were broken, slammed against the ground, crushed, burning, at the menacing debris's touch.
And now the sunset's glow was fighting against the harsh glow of the fire. Of the burning, burning fire. Of the fire that radiated ache and remorse and pain and grief and everything Peter wanted none of, everything even Spider-Man wanted none of.
Not
now.
Peter's chest heaved as he brought a gloved hand over his mouth, convulsing as he continued to look into the mess of conflagration, conflagration and metal, bodies, ache, remorse, pain, grief. The wreckages were monumental. The wreckage to the street was awful. All of the small shops and businesses Peter recalled visiting with May, with Ben, were merely a memory dusted in ash. The sidewalks were smeared with burns and scorches and people and pain.
But the wreckage in Peter, inside Peter, was even more devastating. He was dying, he was feeling the death of all those around him press on his shoulders, his back, his chest, he was dying. He was burning from the inside out, shaking and breaking on the rooftop.
The only good thing was now gone.
The only good thing.
His only root to positivity, hope, adoration, in that moment.
Gone.
Spider-Man, however, could still fight. Spider-Man didn't need the boy to ground him to reality, didn't need to grip the side of the building to regain grip on himself, didn't need to feel you against him to calm himself.
Spider-Man didn't need those things.
Because Spider-Man was not Peter.
No, Peter was dying. Peter was broken, Peter was captured, Peter was burning.
Spider-Man would have to prevail.
And as the hero looked up at the smoking building ablaze with dastardly licks of fire, as the hero hurled himself towards the soul of the pain, the hero breathed. Because Spider-Man was okay.
Because Spider-Man could breathe in the broken breaths that stung Peter.
