Chapter Text
Things were going well for Peter, which is something he had never expected to ever say in this lifetime.
Eddie’s final payment had tided him over until he found his new job. His landlord wasn’t exactly forgiving of missed rent and he was grateful that he still had shelter over his head.
He and Gwen met for lunch, had awkward conversation, then he walked her to the closest subway station. It wasn’t exactly what you would consider a date, just a nice meal between friends. J. Jonah barely allowed her to take the hour break, so it was a rushed endeavour. Yet it still loosened up the one remaining piece of Peter’s heart that believed in connection with others.
Then it happened again. Again and again. Until they were meeting up every day on their lunch breaks. As J. Jonah calmed down again after the loss of Peter’s photographs, he could tell she was carrying far less of a burden.
They began to meet up every other Saturday for coffee, and in a few months that became a weekly ritual.
They weren’t dating, but that was fine by Peter. He didn’t have the best track record with romance anyway.
He hadn’t heard anything from Eddie and Venom, but he knew that would be the case. Cross dimensional communication wasn’t exactly easy. He would take the lack of news as positive, it at least meant they’re still alive. Well, he hoped it did. The new Sorcerer Supreme didn’t seem to be the most professional of men.
Those two had everything he wanted in life. Someone who was able to understand and love them on every level, knowing all of what they are.
It seems like that’ll never be the case for Peter.
That’s fine.
Spider-Man helps people.
And Peter Parker pays the bills.
Speaking of paying the bills, that’s what brought him to his current situation with his boss making yet another insane demand in service of yet another misleading story. All for the engagement. Those ads don’t show themselves.
“All you’ll need to do is have a wander around the sewer for a couple hours, take photos of some of the grime, and claim it’s proof of something living down there.” She told him, as if it was just another regular request.
“You want me to make up a story about lizard people living in the sewers of New York?”
Peter had known the ‘Fact Channel’ didn’t exactly live up to its name, but it was the only job he could get. Gwen knew some semi-important reporter here that he still hadn’t met, and that’s how he ended up working in the most sensational and disreputable form of media.
“You’re investigating reports of lizard people in the sewers. You can’t exactly prove that there isn’t, can you?” She ended with a rhetorical question. Peter was used to being at the bottom of the pecking order, and the work environment here was far better than those he experienced at the Bugle. The pay was too.
Mary Ramos was not a woman to be disrespected, and Peter could tell he was nearing that line.
“Yeah, I guess we’ve had stranger things be true.” Change the things you can, accept the things you can’t, and have the wisdom to know the difference. This was an acceptance sort of situation.
“So hop to it. I don’t pay you to stand around.” She waved her hand at him in dismissal. That was an improvement from Jonah’s shouting.
“Are you sure it’s okay for me to be fuelling all these ‘lizard-people’ conspiracies?” They were only popular with the same people who claimed mutants were secretly mind-controlling the government. Peter wasn’t so willing to feed into that insanity.
“Well, it’s not you, it’s Mr. Alan Rockstein. It’ll be fun, Pete. Although I’m not giving you hazard pay.” Mary stated, as if having a pseudonym somehow absolved him of all guilt.
The only hazard to Peter’s health down there would be the sewage, and thankfully he had bounced back from his bout with sepsis. Extra pay for this humiliating story would have been nice though. A boy can dream after all.
His current wage was regular. Coming in every two weeks. It might not have been as much per hour as he got for his Spider-Man photos, but that well has dried up. They’ve got enough photos of him, and besides, people have gotten sick of hearing about the menace of New York.
He was still mentioned in both pro and anti-mutant articles, but as more of a side note to people like Dr. Reed Richards and Johnny Storm. Peter didn’t exactly know how to feel about that, given that he wasn’t truly a mutant. He lacked the X-gene, it was a science experiment that gave him his powers.
The X-Men hadn’t contacted him, and Peter wasn’t going to be the first to reach out. If they didn’t want someone who wasn’t actually a mutant, then that’s their choice.
He could have continued to think about that for hours, but luckily, a voice called out to him from across the room.
“Hey, Peter! Could you be a sweetheart and help me with some technological problems?” Debra, a kind old lady who got screwed over because of The Blip and now had to still work despite being almost 80 years old.
She was Peter’s favourite co-worker, bringing him various home-baked goods and encouraging him to be more confident. She always told him to be more forward with Gwen and to ‘get the girl’ despite Peter’s insistence that they were just friends.
“No problem Deb! What’s going on?”
“Well, I’m trying to make an account for this InstantChat business, but it keeps going red and telling me I’ve got it wrong.”
She had the Instagram sign up page on her computer, and Peter quickly realised what the issue was.
Debra had entered her full home address into the email address section.
So, being the resourceful young man he was, he put in her work email and entered her name followed by her year of birth as her username.
“What do you want your password to be?”
“Oh I can never remember those. Just leave it blank.” She said in that tone all old people have when telling a young person what to do. Not condescending, but something close to it.
“I can’t do that, you need one. Doesn’t have to be hard and I can write it down for you somewhere.” He explained, hoping that she would understand and wouldn’t continue to insist on having no password.
“Okay then, MrSnuffles2023.” She decided.
She was obsessed with that dog, but Peter hadn’t blamed her. Debra had lost everyone she knew during ‘The Blip’. After she had returned, she spent Christmas that year alone wandering the streets of New York, and happened upon a scruffy dog with a limp in its rear right leg and covered in fleas.
Of course, you couldn’t tell that Mr. Snuffles had a rough start to life. The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel was meticulously groomed and spoiled by his owner. Peter had sat through enough of Deb’s old lady chats where she would spent half the time fidgeting with her phone trying to find the most recent professional photos of her prized pet to know that he was the most precious thing in her life.
Peter sometimes considered getting a pet, but his apartment had banned animals and he couldn’t risk being caught and thrown out. Besides, he didn’t have the time to properly care for himself, much less another living being that solely relied on him for survival. Not to mention the cost of dog food.
He was willing to eat cheap goods (that would most likely give a regular person cancer) everyday, but he wouldn’t do that to another living being.
Well, time to go work and feed himself. Hopefully he’ll have enough in his budget for a good bodega sandwich. Otherwise Spider-Man will just have to hang around more old ladies and hope they want to treat him to ‘something nice’.
Peter liked that feeling- being cared for.
It seems like the universe was conspiring against him every step of the way, since that exact same connection is what ultimately ends in tragedy.
Strangers were okay. But he had to be cautious about his relationships.
He wouldn’t allow himself to hurt anyone else.
He had to be careful about Gwen. Strictly friends. And at the first sign of danger, he must ghost her. He could live with her hating him, he couldn’t live with her dying because of him.