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Peter had been alone. For a long, long time.
Spider-Man was never alone. Alone in hero work, sure, but he was adored by the general public and the population of New York. He swung through the streets and was given hand-drawn pictures by kids, could joke around with any old local at the end of the block, was even offered boatloads of free stuff whenever he had to run in and grab a snack from a convenience store (don't worry, he always said no.)
But Peter Parker had been alone in the world. Nobody knew who he was. Nobody cared enough to find him. Nobody could even remember him.
So when Peter wasn't Spider-Man, he was nobody.
He lived much like a ghost would. Haunting the halls of his apartment building, ignoring his neighbors whenever he could,
In fact, he began to think of himself more as Spider-Man than Peter, most of the time.
There was only one thing holding him back: the memories.
Memories of a better time. Where he'd spend his afternoons messing around with Lego sets and binging old movies with Ned, getting takeout and ranting about whatever was going on in his life with Aunt May, learning how to build stuff and become a better hero with Tony.
And you. You who negged on him during every lunch and passing period about the tiniest of things that only served to show how deeply you cared, you who made stupidly awkward jokes when you were embarrassed which only seemed to happen around him, you who—along with the rest of the world— didn't remember that he existed.
Oh how Peter missed you.
He still paid attention of course. From afar. Because that's where you had been for the past four and a half years, working hard on your degree. Ned too! You, Summa Cum Laud in aerospace engineering and he Magna Cum Laud in computer science and systems. He felt overwhelmingly proud (and pained) when he saw Ned's post on Instagram about it.
But he was here. Just here.
Eating crappy instant noodles and listening into the police scanner in the middle of his cornerstone convenience store a block away from his asbestos-filled apartment, after having the shit beat out of him on patrol today. Scrolling on his phone and just imaging—
"Do you guys have any kegs?"
Peter was instantly brought out of his thoughts, whipping his head around to a familiar voice that, for once, didn't come out of his phone screen.
Ned.
In all of his actual real life glory. Walking through Peter's local convenience store asking for a metric ton of alcohol, just beyond where Peter could reasonably see him.
Peter did his best not to abruptly stand up, but his chair scrapped against the cold tile anyway. He winced at the sound, magnified by his enhanced senses but, thankfully, it seemed as though no one else noticed.
I mean, who else was there to notice? It was just a regular ordinary sound, in a regular ordinary convenience store, on a regular ordinary day.
But this was entirely un-regular, an un-ordinary for one Peter Parker.
The cashier that manned the register pointed Ned in the right direction, right by where Peter was.
Peter did his best not to look so agape. But it was a difficult thing when you were seeing your best friend— the one who forgot about you— for the first time in years. Yes, he counted this as the first time, because as much as he deluded himself into thinking otherwise, watching every little thing that Ned posted would and should not count.
After a long conversation with the cashier that Peter paid rapt attention to, Ned left the store, calling one of what Peter presumed to be many friends— he'd always known that Ned would get to college and do great things— to talk about this or that.
Peter followed close behind, out of sight.
You always thought that graduation would amount to a little something…more.
A fancy new job, co-workers that chatted by water fountains and went out to bars after work. A beautifully grand, old apartment— or brownstone, if you were so lucky— that you owned outright in the Upper West Side or Park Slope or some other New York neighborhood where all the rich and boring people lived in the lap of luxury. A group of friends that doted on your every word, laughed at all your jokes, and hung out with all of the time like your life was seasons three to five of Friends.
You had that last one, to an extent. A good amount of the people you met at MIT, the ones that didn't find themselves overly attached to Boston yourself included, came flooding into New York in droves to pursue their own careers— typically in something like finance or law because those made the most amount of money and, unlike in your wildest fantasies that no one but you were privy to, everyone was in a shitload of debt.
And that's why you kept most of your fantasies to yourself. Everyone knew you to be a bit of a realist, a 'Debbie Downer' supposedly, and as much as you loved destroying and distorting the perceptions of the people around you, you thought it best to keep everyone's understanding of you to the impression that you worked so hard to create:
You were you.
An honors graduate from MIT in aerospace engineering, though you considered majoring or minoring in something artsy too. You'd always been good at sketching and painting and literature, though you lost touch with it for a while. You chalked it up to going to a school for math and science nerds.
You spoke shitty French, ate cold pot stickers for breakfast, considered yourself anti-establishment, and had a best friend Ned— whom you were currently avoiding for no particular reason.
And there you were. Hanging off the side counter of your new apartment, acting like a wallflower at your own housewarming party. Housewarming party that had grown entirely beyond the scope of what you could handle.
You loved Ned to bits and pieces. You two had been each other's only friends in high school, stuck with each other through thick and thin in New York City of all places—where you two were constantly subjected to the turmoils that came with living in the most targeted geographic area in the world. He took that with a rolling stride, obsessing over superheroes and connecting well with the people around him like some sort of a superhuman socializer himself. You did not.
Maybe there was a particular reason you were avoiding Ned after all.
You sighed and finally set the cup, a red solo one which was such a throwback to the freshman year ragers you were forced into, down onto the counter and forced yourself out of the kitchen.
You smiled politely at the people that called out to you, maybe threw out a joke or two as you passed but you were a woman on a mission: get to Ned's room and ask if he invited the entirety of the MIT alumni that lived in New York.
You breathed a sigh of relief as you saw Ned enter his bedroom, and you managed to squeeze your way past a few people that you didn't know that were tightly lumped together— this was a New York City apartment, after all— and your very drunken sorority sister, who you dodged conversation with. You place your hands upon the trimming of the doorway.
"Dude. Where did all of these people come from?" you groan as you slide your way into the room, you socks nearly slipping upon his poor choice of interior design, a Spider-Man children's rug. "Did you send the invites out to everyone in the city or did you just decide to implement an open door policy halfway through the night?"
You finally get a better look at the room and are shocked to see what you find. Not the room itself, you've been in here helping Ned get his decorations and crazy weird theory wall set up. But the people in them.
First was Ned, looking exactly like he had an hour ago when you last saw him: clean shaven, wearing a nicer shirt (nice for him), and his glasses.
The other was a man that you had never seen before in your life. Which wasn't super odd, considering you didn't recognize a good amount of people at this party, but the fact that he was in Ned's room talking to him was strange. He had a wet-puppy dog kind of look to him, curly brown hair and doe ful looking eyes, and looked really worse for wear. He had bruises and cuts all along his face, and he wore a heavier jacket then what would probably be expected for late spring.
His eyes locked onto you and you noticed how dilated his pupils were. You didn't know if they looked like that before, when you were giving him a once over.
Ned turned around and mock gasped, "Please! No, everyone's just…" he trailed off, "Friends of friends?" He even sounded unsure of the excuse himself.
You scoffed, getting more comfortable as you realized that Ned was in a talking mood and wasn't talking to this guy for other reasons (hey, you didn't judge, Ned could hook-up with whoever he wanted to), and slid against the wall of the room "Really? I'd like you to point me in the direction of these 'friends.'" You put it in air quotes. Because you're funny like that.
Ned rolled his eyes, "Har har," before perking up and bringing up the one topic of conversation that you desperately wished to avoid (okay, one of many, but point still stood), "How'd your interview go?"
Your graduation did not come with the fun, added bonus of a nice, cushy job—unlike vast majority of your classmates. Which was especially worrisome with the pricing of apartments nowadays. Though, the threat of an attack on the city at any given point did lead to lower rents at times, hence the reason you and Ned were able to get set up in this apartment in the first place.
You sigh, bang your head lightly against the wall as a bit of a joke, "Fine."
"Fine as in you got rejected or—?"
"Let's talk about this later," you finished off the line of questioning as simple as that. To fill in what you were sure was to become awkward silence, you turned your attentions to the other, nameless person in the room who was looking at you like you shot a puppy, "Who are you?"
You watch as the man jolted at being called to attention. He stumbled over his words, "Uh, May— Maynard, 's my name."
You glanced over to Ned, who glanced over to you, and you both give each other a strange look. Definitely a friend of a friend. A stranger, that neither of them knew.
You bite first, "And how…do we know you, Maynard?" You test the name out. It sounds weird. This kid doesn't look very much like a Maynard. He looks like a Jason or Ben or Peter, or some other short and succinct, typical white male name.
"Um, you wouldn't…" he trailed off. Weird. "You don't. I'm just a neighbor, saw you were doing a housewarming and decided to stop in, if that's alright." He jolted again, before pulling out light pink flowers that you hadn't seen in his hands prior to this. "These are for you!"
You take them into your hands as Ned laughed, "Wow, I think you're the only person to bring something that isn't just beer or tequila."
Maynard just shrugged. "It's the neighborly thing to do." He took a sip from his drink.
You peel back some of the light pink petals, getting a look at these semi-fresh flowers, "Friendly neighbor."
Maynard choked on his drink at that.
You and Ned both look at each other. There was a non-verbal communication that you two would debrief about this later.
"Oh-Kay," you switch the topic again, "I'm going to go get these in water."
You turn by your heel and wander out Ned's door, trying to get to the kitchen as fast as you could, as difficult as it was with the amount of people still crowding the living room. If anything, just to avoid any more of the questioning that you were sure was to come.
Ned had already gotten a really nice gig working in the IT department for some big tech-y company. Not Stark Industries, but adjacent. He was proud of it and you were proud of him too. It's just that now, with his own well-positioned social life and career, he focused his worries and concerns onto you.
You heard footsteps behind you and figured that Ned just wanted more details on how the interview went. When you finally reached the kitchen and turned your head to the side, you were shocked to see Maynard still following after the both of you like a lost puppy.
Hm. This guy was either desperate to make friends or more than a little strange.
You grabbed one of the crystalline vases— from a family friend, one of the few gifts for this housewarming that, like Ned said, wasn't alcohol of some kind— from the upper cabinet and begin to fill it up with water.
"So!" Ned leaned over the kitchen counter, "You're going to have to spill at some point."
You rolled your eyes, shutting off the faucet as you did, "Actually, I think
Ned winced and his face got all scrunched up, "So it went…badly?" He sounded equal parts
Which was fair. Summa Cum Laud aerospace engineering graduate from MIT, vice president of finance in her sorority, and club field hockey player— should have been a shoe-in into an entry level position at practically any entry level career.
"No. They offered me the job."
"Wha— dude! That's great!" Ned clapped you on the back, nearly tipping over the water in the vase in the process.
You glare at him. "I'm not taking it," you slip the flowers out from the plastic wrap that they were covered in before, slipping them into the vase as you spoke, "I'm no sell-out to companies that think they can buy and sell and damage the lives of thousands of innocents."
Ned sighed. Of course, he knew this tirade was coming, and you knew that he understood where it was coming from. "Why interview with them in the first place?"
You pause from fluffing up the flowers.
Why were you doing this in the first place? Why did you even major in aerospace engineering to begin with? You liked engineering, you liked planes and ships and all the necessary things that came with the subject, but what spurred you on to pursuing this path in the first place?
You started off with bio-medical engineering. And you really, really liked it. The concepts just came easy to you, like you'd studied them all before. But it was the same thing. You never really knew why the passion started it just…did.
You resume re-organizing the flowers to a point that you were satisfied with. They looked pretty. Almost professional. You did have that artistic eye, after all. With a sigh, you answer Ned, "I don't know. I'm just…waiting for something, I think. Trying to find what I'm looking for."
You turned away from the sink to place the flowers on the kitchen island, catching a glimpse at the rest of the party still happily laughing and chatting and drinking away. You caught the eye of Maynard, looking particularly stricken, and wondered why he wasn't off mingling with the rest of the party and still paying such rapt attention to the conversation of two strangers.
Sorry. Neighbors. Though you didn't really believe that for a second.
"It's normal to be super lost in your twenties, according to my Lola," Ned tried his best to comfort her, following her around to the kitchen island. "But maybe try to get un-lost soon. That rent won't pay itself."
"We're fine. You'll just have to be my cash cow for awhile," you joked. Ned hit you back with a fake gasp and another hit to the shoulder.
"What's this about a cash cow?"
You turned your head up to see your boyfriend, cutting through the crowd of drunken attendees to reach the kitchen. To reach you.
Ned rolled his eyes, "Your girlfriend is claiming to be using me for my money."
To Ned, he says with a wink, "It's fine, she can just use me for my money instead." To you, he whispered a simple, "Hey, babe."
"Hey," you smile into the greeting kiss he gives. A little long, for your tastes, but you appreciated it nonetheless. Really, you just hoped that no one else noticed. PDA was not you thing.
Never was.
The door to Peter's dingy apartment swung open. He stumbled in like a drunkard.
You were dating someone else.
He was going to throw up. Going to die. Or kill himself, whichever came first. And he knew that was an over exaggeration but it sure as hell didn't feel like it.
And it was his fault. It wasn't your fault— you couldn't remember him, physically couldn't—and he hadn't said anything. Despite promising otherwise.
You promised too. But no—it wasn't you. It was him. Always him.
Peter keeled over, gripping at his head which was causing him excruciating pain. It's like every cell in his body was revolting against him, all the sudden. His nerves were on fire and his muscles were spasming in conjunct order. It was like all of the sudden his body was defunct. Like it knew his heart couldn't go on without you and decided to go into system failure.
He wanted to cry out for help. Maybe he should have. But he knew that no one would hear him. No one was coming to save him.
He collapsed to the floor only thinking about the pain he was in. Both mental and physical. And you.
A few days after the housewarming party, you made note of a few strange occurrences that had begun happening.
For one, you felt eyes upon you almost at all times now. You were typically very smart when it came to this kind of thing and were always sure to be keeping an eye out for creepers and what have you but this felt different. It was more of an oppressive constant, than anything else.
You mentioned this to Ned and your boyfriend, who both offered to walk you around the city when you were feeling particularly uncomfortable. You said no and that you were "a big girl who could take care of her own shit." Really, you just wanted them to tell you if they noticed anything as well.
For two, crime seemed to practically follow you around now. Not just the creepy kind. You seemed to learn after the fact that the streets you walked were the exact places that muggers and thieves were apprehended moments later, that dangerous super powered villains seemed to take their battles in your near vicinity. It just seemed liked someone was out to get you.
And for three, you were getting pretty severe allergies. Ned wrote you off on that one, calling you crazy and telling you that you were just jumping to conclusions because of all the other weird stuff that was going on.
Which, rude. But you knew you weren't paranoid because you never got allergies. Even in the spring, and it currently was April, but you knew it wasn't because of that.
You looked it up online. Google said that localized skin, eyes, and nasal irritation could all be caused by overexposure to dust, pollen, or other natural particles. You figured it was poison of some kind.
You then told Ned this. He said he checked around the apartment but didn't find anything crazy except for a few cobwebs.
At that, you just decided that maybe you were actually going crazy. Poison? Really? You were just boring old you. Who would go that far to do something to you?
Peter had no idea what had happened to him.
It's like he woke up one day and just…changed.
Well, physically yes, duh. But also mentally. When he learned that his genetic makeup was switching from more inherently human to more inherently arachnid, he was freaking out.
He could apparently shoot webs from his arms now(???), his eyes and hair were both growing considerably darker than normal— even completely black, in the case of his eyes at times, and he was dealing with the fact that it was painful to just exist now.
The mental aspect of it is what really freaked him out.
He felt violent. Easily aggravated and quick to lash out in a way that he had never experienced before. It felt…violating, and so deeply unlike what he knew himself to be. And his senses began to guide him in the wrong direction. Where they once protected him from imminent threats, they seemed to serve…baser, instincts.
Peter always went to sleep in his own bed but typically woke up somewhere completely different. Usually the corner of his apartment, covered in giant spider webs, but sometimes he appeared in other places at random. An abandoned subway hanger. The top of a building under construction.
Peter avoided sleeping when he could. Which was often, thanks to patrol. But it did make him more aggressive during the day time which he didn't appreciate.
And he was so hungry. All the damn time. He felt as though he could just— walk into the meat section of a supermarket and eat the raw meat, plate and plastic and all.
But just ate his regular diet. Tried to avoid thinking about it, those baser instincts, to the best of his ability.
He felt the urge to follow. To find. To collect. Like some fucking animal.
But he didn't ignore it.
Out of all of the new developments, it was this that fell the closest home. Because of you.
Peter worried for you. Truly. It was a dangerous world out there. With all these villain attacks and muggings and stalkers—
The subway shifted back and forth, transferring from one railway to the next, announcing a coming stop in the Bronx. It was decently empty, or as empty as it could be for six pm on a Friday.
You're standing with your hand attached to the rail above, your head swaying back and forth as you don't look up from your phone to listen into the announcements. You look so pretty. You had just come back from hanging out with some of your girl friends. You didn't have many of those in high school, so Peter was proud of you.
He wished he could take a picture. Commemorate the moment. Commemorate every moment, with you. But that felt like going too far, even with how deep he was spiraling.
You got up when it was your stop, exiting the train cars. Peter followed close behind, almost wishing you would turn your head back and see him. Maybe he could stage a meet cute. He did know you exactly— what you hated, loved, likes, dislikes, all of it— and it wouldn't be hard for him to just, charm you off your feet.
But you never did.
Hm. As Peter said, dangerous world. Because you didn't even notice him following after you.
And then it happened.
The paranoia that you were experiencing finally and totally came to a head.
Peter didn't know when the switch occurred.
Didn't know what made him go from observing on the sidelines, carefully protecting you from afar, to deciding to upend your entire life from its roots.
Actually that was a lie. He did know.
The arrival of one Jean Grey, caused all of this.
She came bursting into his life— into all of their lives— with an armored tank and a taste for vicious, vicious revenge. She hopped from person to person, mind to mind, body to body, until she came across you.
Peter was sorry. Sorry that you got roped into this, because you were one of the last few people in the world that he cared and knew so deeply. Sorry that Jean was apparently dealing with something so heavy that she felt the need to take it out on hundreds of innocents.
But not sorry enough.
He wanted to you safe, above all else.
You blink and suddenly the world underneath you collapses. Where you once were focusing at your desk, applying to jobs at your computer, you were now staring at the night sky as you felt the wind rushing in between your ears.
You scream out, thinking of all of the things in your life that you didn't get to do, realizing that this is the end.
You land and the world goes dark.
Peter does what he does best after that: save the day.
You were in danger— this Jean Grey character, she had it out for you. He needed to get you someplace safe, someplace secure. But his apartment was already comprised and he had little money to his name, let alone safe houses for this kind of situation, he was no Tony Stark.
But he could call in a favor.
"Please, Frank. I really, really need your help."
"Who's she?" Frank pointed at you, held tightly to Peter's chest, with his chin. In Frank's own hands, he was holding a machine gun that was no longer pointed at the two of you. Thankfully, Frank saw the booby traps being set off and decided to think first shoot later, for once.
"Someone important."
"And why is she unconscious?"
Peter paled, "You don't think— Frank, I would never do something like this." Least of all to you.
Frank rolled his eyes, "Of course, I know that. Spidey, you're way too much of a goody fucking two shoes to do anything like that." He lowered the gun even more and it only made what he said next all the more haunting, "Plus. I'd kill your ass the moment you seemed capable of doing something like this."
Peter didn't find fear in that. Perhaps he took comfort in the fact that if he went that off the rails there would be someone to keep him in check.
Or maybe he just didn't find Frank's bullets to be scary because they wouldn't be able to fell him.
You wake up in a cell.
Okay, maybe that's a stretch, there was a bed— which you were in— some kind of work station off to your left and then what you presumed to be a kitchen off to your right? Suffice to say, more of a home-area then anything that would classify as a real cell.
But you try waking up somewhere yo
"Please! You can't— can't do this to me," you sobbed, choking over your words as the tears and snot got to be too much. "I'm a person, a real person! Not, not—" you swallowed heavily.
You'd been staying— trapped, really— in this house incredibly far away from all your friends and family for weeks now. Spider-Man, the man who allegedly saved you all of those nights ago when you fell from the sky, was actually Maynard, was actually a man named Peter, who claimed that you were in danger of being killed by a girl named Jean Grey.
When really, the danger was him.
You'd found out that he had been lying to you for weeks. And, not only had Jean Grey been down for the count for those weeks that you did not have your phone, he apparently claimed to know you.
A mysterious past version of you that dated him in high school that had lost her memories.
"It wasn't real. Whoever you were with— she's not— I'm not her anymore," you begged, as you backed yourself into the corner of this dingy cell that you had been brainwashed into calling home, gasping out your words as you felt little bolts of electricity piratically running up and down your muscles in fits of anxiety.
"No, NO." His voice got particularly forceful on that, and you flinched backwards. He instantaneously retracted too, going from right in front of her face to practically the other side of the room. It shouldn't shock you. This monster did have superpowers after all.
But he looked crushed. "No no no— I'm sorry, baby, I didn't mean it. Please—" his own eyes get teary as he trembled, his hands flitting between up and down in a clear attempt of figuring out if he wanted to hold you or not. "I don't want to hurt you or, or make you upset. Please, please, please. Stop— stop crying."
He cuts you off before you could even get the word out, "No, don't say that. Please don't say that. It's you, you're— you're just…just confused, right now."
"I am NOT confused. I don't know who you think I am but I am not— and never was your girlfriend or, or the person you think that I am."
"I was— I am, your boyfriend. I gave you the broken black dahlia necklace that you always wear. You won the winning question for the decathlon team our sophomore year of high school. Our best friend is Ned Leeds—" Peter ranted for what seemed like minutes on end, practically spilling out anything that came to mind in an attempt to convince you, before his voice faltered and he focused back in on you. "You have to believe me. Please— you asked me to tell you everything. And, and…that you'd kill me if I left you not knowing."
"That's not, not true!"
Peter seemed exasperated and exhausted in equal parts, but there was…something boiling over under, you could tell, "Yes, yes it is."
"Please. I'm real. I'm a real person, you can't do this—" you sniffled, repeating the same thing that you'd said over and over and over again.
You were really into true crime, in the past. That love had probably soured at this point. In high school you loved finding out all of the little creepy details about things that made people uncomfortable. There was something so disturbingly vulnerable about it that you relished in, and one of the biggest tips that you'd heard when dealing with a psycho killer or would-be-murderer is to endear themselves to you. Make yourself seem human.
"—I just graduated from MIT, and- and I worked so hard to finish toward the top of my class—"
Peter looked devastated, his eyes tearing up and looking more puppy-ish then you had ever seen them,"Please—"
You continued, uncaring of what he said in the moment, you were just busy trying to dissuade him from doing whatever it is that he was trying to do, "I fight with my parents a lot but I still love them, I just moved in with my roommate Ned and he makes me so mad whenever he leaves his laundry out but— but it's fine and I can ignore it, I have a boyfriend—"
You quickly figure that was the wrong thing to say when Peter slams one hand down on the metal desk. It fractured underneath his palm, and you push yourself even further into the corner that you had drawn yourself into, nearly sliding down to the floor.
Again, he looked immediately apologetic. It seemed as though that would be the whole song and dance with this. He was just constantly being overtaken by incandescent rage that made him act uncharacteristically different.
But not to you. You have only known him to be this way: a stalker, a liar, and an angry, angry man.
"Baby, I'm so, so sorry." And Peter walked over carefully, slowly, like one would to a wounded, hissing animal. You felt a lot like one right now. "We'll fix this, I— I don't know how but we'll fix…" Peter trailed off and you wondered what it was that he was trying to fix.
This relationship that you were half convinced didn't exist, if only out of spite? Fix the fact that you were missing memories because of some 'spell'? Or fix him, who was suffering from a monstrous increase in issues because of incorrect gene splicing? Issues that you feared were causing him to be like this.
He hugged you, tightly. It felt incredibly inhuman and inhumane to just be in his arms. You wanted to scream or run or just get him away, but every other attempt at that had proven to fail. You weren't dealing with a man. You were dealing with a monster.