Peter Parker One Shots

Ease

It was excessively cloudy tonight.

Peter stood against the metal frame of his fire escape, heart pumping furiously against his bare chest and fingers running through the tangles in his tousled hair. Fear coiled around his stomach and he couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe. He thought that getting outside - feeling the cool fresh air surround him - would help, but it only seemed to make it worse. Closing his eyes brought remnants of what he'd just seen in his dreams and keeping them open made the anxiety thrumming around him multiply by ten.

He tried to use what Tony had taught him when the dreams and attacks had first started.

Breathing wasn't working.

Senses. No. Screams. Were they real? Everything was dark, blood was everywhere he looked. He could smell it, metallic and heavy. It was in his mouth. Everywhere.

Everywhere.

He was dying. The wind was going to sweep him away again. His lips were moving, but what were they saying? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Was that in his head? Is this real?

Is he real?

Something burned against his arm. Him? No no, he was touching...the metal..wasn't he? His arm was growing heavier. No, something was pulling him.

He didn't want to go.

Not again.

He didn't want to go.

Blue. Not red. Not black.

Blue. What was blue? The Spider-Man suit, he had a blue sweater, his favorite color was blue, blue blue blue.

Eyes were blue.

Eyes. He was looking at eyes. Pretty eyes. Summer skies and blooming flowers and rain clouds and river beds. They were huge and warm and not blood. Not blood.

Breathe. It sliced through his ears like a classical piece, like the piano at that fancy sushi place he went to with Aunt May before he threw up and they had to leave. Smooth, high and sweet. Honey. Milkshakes. The old t-shirts filled with terrible jokes he always wore to school.

He was touching something. Soft, like Aunt May's hug when he came back. Focus on my hand. There's that sound again. A voice. Yes, it was a voice. And the something he was touching was a hand. It was cold, Peter chose that to focus on as he ran his fingers over the grooves, against the fingernails. He could feel the slight uneven coats of the paint on the surfaces.

Keep on looking at me. The rushing in his ears was beginning to morph into car horns and metal clangs and the sounds of the couple arguing in the apartment below him. The blue was unmoving and relentless. "Breathe. Breathe with me."

He tried to, shallow, uneven and tight, but he did. "Again." The voice commanded. Another one, he forced out.

Senses. Peter attempted to find them again. He could see the face in front of him; the serious expression of a girl, dried tear trails - did he do that? - and a pile of hair sticking up in fragments on top of her head. He could hear her gentle breathing in sync with his, tires against pavement, the bass thump from an apartment close by. The taste of sleep was on his tongue, an alleviating difference from metal, despite how nasty it was. A gust of wind brought the scent of lavender to him and instantly he could feel his eyes droop, his entire body droop.

Hands gripped him as he careened, and blue was the core of his attention again. The skin between the girl's eyebrows pinched as they furrowed. "Um," The shift from serious to nervous was so sudden Peter's brain whirled. "Are you...Where..."