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Bang bang bang.
Peter’s eyes open. Dust bunnies whirl around his tiny, dingy apartment, disturbed by the kinetic against the other side of his door.
He scrubs his face, a hiss escaping his airways as the banging on his door returns. “Alright, I’m comin’… jeez…”
He heaves himself out of bed, bare feet padding along the semi-sticky surface – just another reminder that he really needs to mop the place.
Peter swings the door open.
“Shit, man, you look terrible!”
He blinks owlishly at Miles, as the teen sneaks past him and into the apartment – the top of his schoolbag scraps past Peter’s arm. And Peter is barely registering Miles had moved, too busy standing in the doorway with fog dousing his neurons.
“Okay…” Peter manages to mutter, slowly turning. Miles has taken up shop at the one-person table pushed up against the window, emptying the contents of his bag.
“So I thought more about what you said,” Miles says, “about how the venom sting was wearing down the web-shooters?”
Right. Spider-Man stuff. Spider-Man stuff at – Peter glances at the clock sitting on the microwave. Oh. It’s mid-afternoon.
That tracks, he thinks warily. He’d only fallen into bed at about 8 AM, following his escapade to another universe. He sighs again, nudging his door closed with his foot before opening his fridge. He snags the orange juice while Miles continues, unphased Peter hasn’t yet said anything substantial about his new plan with the web shooters.
“I figured there might’ve been a way to… I dunno, earth them somehow?” Miles asks.
Peter blinks again, brow furrowing a little. “The issue isn’t the web-shooters, it’s the webbing. Using your… what’d you call it?”
“Venom blast!”
“Your venom blast,” he shoves the bottle back into the fridge, swinging the door closed and rubbing his eyes again. “The webs make their shapes using electrostatic conduction – if you use your venom blast while trying to shoot webs, you’re risking webbing yourself. In theory.”
“In theory?” Miles repeats. Peter drops onto the bed once more, throwing an elbow over his eyes.
“I don’t know how your body conducts your blasts. Not without tests.”
Miles frowns deeply. “No thanks.”
“Yeah, fair enough,” Peter nods. He thinks about it, spit-balling through the fog. “There might be a way to use web-tasers to counteract any issues.”
“Well… I guess I can’t really imagine a time I’d ever have to blast someone while swinging…”
Under his arm, Peter’s brow twinged upwards. Never say never and all that. “The point is, I’ll have to work on it.”
“Yeah, speaking of which,” Miles dropped the shooters onto Peter’s chest. “Why you back in bed, man?”
“I had a long night.”
“Yeah? What, you ran into that woman again?”
The hair on Peter’s arm prickles, the flash of white webbing over all-skin-and-curves distracting him for the single moment he allowed it. He’s lost track of time so badly that he’s not sure how long it’s been since he opened a bunker and unleashed yet another Spiderling.
Why was it they were crawling out of the woodwork now, of all times? First Miles, then Cindy (who hasn’t reared her head again yet), and then Peter 2…
Wait, Peter Two? Who was Peter One? Was Peter Peter One? He remembered being Peter Three, not Peter One.
A weird feeling sunk around his shoulders, infecting his neck. Something felt… off.
“Peter?”
Right. Miles. Miles was talking about Cindy.
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you about her,” Peter finally groans, removing his arm from his face. He picks up Miles’ web shooters from their place on his chest, raising them into view to use as something to focus on.
The shooters were still in pristine condition, despite Miles having barely spent a couple of months running around in the suit. Either Peter was a better engineer than he’d expected, or Miles was just more careful with his stuff.
At least Peter didn’t have to replace them every week… like he had when he was seventeen…
“C’mon, Peter, you’ve barely told me what she looks like!”
He’s not gonna let this go, he laments to himself. Was Peter like this when he was fifteen? Sure, he had the occasional window-ledge-rendezvous with Gwen, but…
“You saw about as much as I did, and no. I haven’t run into her since.”
“Damn.”
Peter scoffed. “No offence, Miles, but you’re gonna be the last person I call if she turns up.”
“Why?” Miles drawls sarcastically, feigning the offence Peter tried to avoid. The teen rests his arms on the back of his chair, dropping his chin down with a smirk. “Hoping to get some alone time with her?”
With a roll of his eyes, Peter drops his arm back over his eyes. “Was there anything else you needed?”
“Nah, man,” Miles leans back. “I just wanted to check in on you again.”
“M’fine. Thanks.”
There’s a pause as Miles surveys the apartment, taking in what Peter freely admits is organised chaos. “You’re laying in a pigsty with curtains drawn and a busted-up window. Ma calls this the opposite of fine.”
“She’s a smart woman. You should listen to her more often.”
“Oh, like you listen to your aunt?”
“Aunt May accepts that I’m a walking disaster. Has done since I was seventeen.”
Besides – so long as Peter keeps checking in with her each week, she allows Peter to live in this tiny hole-in-the-wall alone, constantly low on cash, losing jobs from tardiness, and needing new phones almost once a month. He tries never to give her a reason to worry, but since Gwen…
It didn’t matter that Gwen was eight years ago, now. May still likes to comment on the perpetual dark cloud hanging over his head – one apparently so dense that she’d dragged him to several doctors to discuss depression.
Could be worse. At least he had enough of an income from the Bugle from what was effectively the 90s definition of selfies to maintain his rent. At least he wasn’t living on the streets?
“Still. You should come out today! I know this great place we can have a late lunch. Interested?”
While his stomach did feel a little tight at the moment… getting back off this bed really wasn’t in his best interests right now.
“Sorry, Miles. I’ve kinda had an… interdimensional crisis over the last day.”
“…say what?”
“I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you.”