Archive of Our Own ^beta

He came back to himself slowly at first- the sick, crystalline shadows of the unnatural abyss softening into the more familiar kind of darkness behind closed eyelids, although the sticky, creeping feeling of a gaze on the back of his neck was as strong as it had ever been.

He struggled with his heavy limbs, willing his arms to move, to lift himself up from the ground and open his eyes, and when he found them unresponsive his panic began to swell.

The vision of the SpiderGod was gone, but the terrible, heavy knowledge of it was fresh and awful - every survival instinct he had was bursting out of hibernation to beg him to run far away, find somewhere bright and never close his eyes again, but even as he poured every ounce of will he had into the task, he only barely managed to twitch his fingers.

There were voices around him - he knew them, but his mind was wild with terror and there was no time to connect the voices to their owners. He had to get up, there was cold sweat running down his back and the burning eyes were close, so close, so close he could imagine breath washing over his nape

“-it heatstroke do you thi-?”

“Maybe we ought - coat off?”

“Woah, back up a second, back up-”

And suddenly it was gone - the connection to the Wherever snapped like a tendon, and his eyes flew open in the same instant that he lunged upward, forward - 

He tried to scramble to his feet but his legs were still clumsy and numb and all he could do was fumble, sitting upright on the damp concrete of a New York alley, fighting to breathe through the adrenaline - frenzied pounding of his heart. The voices were all speaking together but he couldn’t understand the words through the sound of his own panting, so he let them be drowned out. Perhaps they would kill him, and perhaps he should care about that, but there was no space to. 

The smell of wet cigarette butts and urine was filtering to him slowly through the mask, and he would later find it funny that this brought with it a rolling wave of comfort. It was so utterly mundane.
He heaved one deep, shuddering breath after another, pulling the stale city air into his lungs and staring at his knees with his eyes held open as wide as he could manage, bright splotches bursting in his vision. It wasn’t the blackness he had just left, so he held it as an improvement. 

His flight response faded with every second as the world around him oozed back into his awareness like treacle - It was always like this when the Spider-Thing came to him.

The feeling of being scrutinised like an amoeba on a glass slide had left him along with the paralysis, but he could already feel the horror of it beginning to make his hands shake - it was almost like when he had nightmares in his earlier years after Ben, waking up wracked with shivers and hollowed out by guilt and helplessness.
The Spider-Thing was worse, though. Staring into eyes that glittered in the chasmic nothing and the sinking realisation that nothing mattered, and nothing ever had or would. He didn’t matter, none of the days that he worked or the nights that he fought or the blood and tears he’d wept over his city and his people mattered. Ben didn’t matter.

He was one more ant beneath a lens, and if he lived or died would be for the momentary amusement of something he couldn’t understand. He wasn’t sure if they were his own thoughts when he was suspended in that place, or the thoughts of the thing drowning out his own, but that didn’t matter either.

He was always helpless, and it liked to remind him. 

“Hey, big guy.”

Finally, the voice clicked to a face in his mind, and he looked up sharply at the other Spiderman -  The Other Peter. 

He was hovering about eight feet away from him, one arm outstretched behind him as a gentle barricade, and behind him were two other Other Spidermen. 

Spider-People, he corrected himself automatically, as he turned his wide stare onto Gwen and Miles.The four of them were here, in this alleyway in the middle of a New York that wasn’t his New York, because everything had a strange tint through his goggles.
He couldn’t remember why they were here. 

“Why are we here” he blurted out.
His voice sounded weak even in his own ears, trembling and raw. 

Other Peter hesitated, and then answered, 

“Kind of a loaded question, buddy”. 

It wasn’t that funny, really.
Hardly funny at all, but a desperate kind of wheeze escaped him anyway, and before he knew it he was looking at the ground again, overtaken by hysterical giggles. He still couldn’t catch his breath, and finally he gave in.
Frustrated and unsteady and losing his mind apparently, he reached up and tore off his goggles before groping at the neck of his sweater to snag the bottom edge of his mask - Other Peter made an alarmed yelping sort of sound and he almost flinched when he and the two youngsters closed the distance between them, until he realised they were covering him from view of anyone who might pass by the mouth of the alley. Finally finding purchase with his shaking fingers, he peeled the mask off and flung it to the ground by his boots. 

Everything was so much brighter without the protection of his goggles, and his eyes burned immediately. He kept them wide open as they watered, his involuntary laughter died in short, painful bursts through his gritted teeth and the three Spiders looked down at him in complete confusion. 

“Are you, like… good , man?” Miles asked.

Kind of a loaded question, buddy , he thought, but he kept that to himself.

“I’ll be fine.” Thankfully his voice was stronger than it had been a few seconds ago. His breathing was evening out and he focused on that. “Just needed some air.”

“Hell of a way to let us know” Gwen retorted, tense. “You just dropped.”

She struck him as the kind who got snappish when they were worried. She was either very worried, or very irritated. He thought suddenly of Felicia, and found himself desperately missing her.

“Sorry. Didn’t get much warning myself.”

He remembered now, following them through the city on a practice tour, getting acquainted with the geography of an alternate New York. Peni and the Pig had been with them too - he wondered where they were now, but he was glad that at least some of his dignity had been spared by not having every member of the team watch him forget how to breathe.

Other Peter dropped into a crouch, and the bright red of his mask suddenly so close to his face made him blink, sending the water that had been building in his eyes running down his cheeks, and he was very aware of his exposed face. The feeling of being under scrutiny again itched under his skin, and he felt himself tensing again until Peter’s hand landed on his shoulder. Warm, grounding pressure. 

“Are the glitches getting worse for you? I didn’t even see you bug-out before you dropped, my spidey-sense just went nuts a split second be-”

“It wasn’t a glitch” he interrupted. He reached up with the intention to shove Peter’s hand off his shoulder, but stopped short at the last second. After a moment of floundering, he ended up giving it an awkward squeeze that he hoped conveyed a ‘Thanks’ before moving to stand.

The other three moved back, and he kept his eyes on the floor as Gwen stooped to pick up the goggles and mask, while Miles reached over with his foot and hooked his hat, which he had almost forgotten about, with the toe of his shoe, flipping it up and snatching it out of the air in a way that made it clear he had practiced this move previously, and held it out to him. 

“What do you mean it wasn’t a glitch?” He glanced at Gwen as he accepted his hat. The lenses of her mask were angled away from him as she wiped a smudge off his goggles with her forearm, but he could tell she was looking at him. 

“Was I right? Was it heatstroke? Man, you should really consider borrowing some Spandex -”

“Wasn’t that either.” He held out a hand for his mask and goggles, uncomfortable with having his expression visible now that he had regained control of his breathing. She handed them over and crossed her arms over her chest while he slid them back into place, and Miles held up his hands in surrender. With them back in place, he felt more put-together. It was easier to shove down the last remains of his sharp edged terror.

“I’ll explain back at May’s. We better catch up with the Pig and the Kid.”

He raised his arm and made to aim, but Other Peter stepped forward again, waving his hands in objection

“Wait a second, wait a second - are you sure you’re good to swing? You need a gatorade or something?”

He didn’t know what the hell a Gatorade was, and this time he did shove Peter’s hand off his shoulder when he placed it there in concern.

“I’m fine .” he said, more firmly than was probably fair considering how polite Peter was being about the whole thing. “That all ain’t gonna happen again, trust me. It ain’t a glitch, it ain’t heatstroke, I’ll explain when we get back.” 

All three of them were looking at him with incredulity that was visible without facial expressions, and he sighed deeply. 

“Look, I didn’t go into much detail about the whole Bitten By A Spider yadda yadda because it-” doesn’t matter “-wasn’t relevant at the time, but I reckon i should explain a couple things about my whole deal, and I wanna do that at Mays, an’ not in this scummy backstreet.” 

Peter and Gwen glanced at each other, and Miles hissed a tiny “ yesss”

He huffed a flat laugh through his nose and then turned, aiming a web shot at the fire escape above.

“Let's get out of here.”