Chapter Text
Life finds a way of moving forward. Days passed, moments blurred, and Peter got up every day and he put himself through the motions. He always found himself in a sort of numbness–a place between feeling too much and nothing at all–limiting himself to the bare minimum of the rage of emotions. He’d done it when Ben had died, and then with Tony, and with May. Each time his life had changed drastically, and the world continued to turn, he found himself in that pocket of space between breathing and nothing. He got up in the morning, he brushed his teeth and combed his hair, and he pretended like he was a living, human person.
May told him that it would take a lot of time for everything to feel normal, and that they would support him unconditionally while he adjusted. Tony slept on the couch in the living room and called his daughter and wife every night, and he always sat right next to Peter when they ate at the table. Ned moved between his home and theirs, bringing over puzzles and legos and trinkets to keep him occupied. He squeezed his hand tight every afternoon and made him promise to call if he needed to talk, then he took the bus back to his Lola’s. Peter never called; he wasn’t even sure he’d charged his phone since he’d been thrown into this dimension.
Talking helped. Or, Peter was pretty sure talking was supposed to help, he was pretty foreign with the concept of feeling good and resolved and well-rested. Tony helped him look for therapists, and then they realized it would probably be a challenge to find anyone equipped to listen and soothe Peter’s problems. The whole ‘from-another-dimension-where-he-didn’t-die-but-the-entire-world-forgot-his-existence’ thing combined with the magic spells were a damning sentence that he was pretty sure ‘how does that make you feel’ wouldn’t fix. He knew that survivors' guilt was a well-known and heavy subject that a lot of people could sympathize with, but it all felt too underrated in the daunting, all-encompassing reality that his entire universe was now just an empty, gaping hole.
He talked with Tony, and he talked with May, and he spoke with a therapist and Sam Wilson, who apparently handled a lot of bizarre hero-adjacent patients. It was supposed to help. Peter sort of felt like he was getting better at working around the numbness than feeling better, but he didn’t know how to say that to anyone. His family loved him so much, and they looked at him with so much indiscriminate kindness that it made all of his words clog up in the back of his throat, building and breaking before the syllables tasted his tongue. He felt awful most days. He got better at feeling awful and acting like he didn’t.
Sometimes it felt like there was no solution, and he would curl up under the covers and pretend to sleep until the late afternoon. He would get angry and sad and he would shut down and stare blankly into space, oblivious to the way May would rub his back or how Ned would talk him through it. Sometimes it was hard to breathe, and he would find himself on a distant roof, trying to remember what it felt like when he knew everything was real. Tony would find him, and they would listen to the cars on the street, and to the mechanical, familiar heartbeat in the man's chest, and then they would walk home.
The world kept turning and the neighbors would play the tv too loud, and he would hear car alarms blocks away, and everyone made space for him. It was nice, even when it was also sort of awful.
Ned was over one night, and they were watching a movie on his laptop, smushed together on his bottom bunk. His friend seemed to have something on his mind, but didn’t know how to word it, which Peter had gotten used to over the past couple of weeks. He waited patiently for him to find his courage, eating popcorn and picking the crumbs up from his blanket, even though he knew he was only getting more oil and salt onto it from his fingers.
“Decathlon,” He blurted, and Peter froze, picking at a kernel stuck in his teeth.
“Gesundheit,” He responded, and then felt a little bad for teasing him.
Ned didn’t seem to notice, reaching over to hit the spacebar and pause the film. Peter looked at the frozen captions, always a little delayed from the actual speech, and the actor who was speaking seemed to be mid-blink. He turned his attention back to Ned, realizing he had been talking. The numbness was a little bigger today, he realized, and tried to force himself back into his body.
“I don’t know,” Ned wrung his hands together, and Peter watched him, feeling like he was missing an important piece of the puzzle that had become every relationship he’d ever had. “I think that…they’d like to know. Y’know. Before everyone knows,”
“Oh,” Peter said, very intelligently, and he remembered the heavy weight in his pocket, suddenly. A conversation he’d had with Betty; a number exchanged that he’d never intended to use. “I mean I can…” He reached for his phone, letting the tips of his fingers brush the screen, slippery and cracked just around the edge of his case. “I can tell them.”
Ned blinked at him. “Really?” He looked a little embarrassed when Peter’s mouth twisted, and he continued to move his hands in his lap, a nervous fidget that seemed uncomfortable and mundane. “I don’t want to force you to do anything and I know everything has been really hard because of…well, and I don’t want you to do something just because you think I want you to and—”
“Ned,” Peter interrupted, laughing a little and putting a hand over his, stopping the methodical pull of his fingers over one another. “I think it’s a good idea. I forgot that I should probably start being a person. This is a good start,”
Ned looked at him, his expression pinched with a fond type of pleasantness, and Peter tried to smile at him. He fumbled with his phone for a moment, and then clumsily punched in his password. He scrolled for a second, trying to find the messenger app he hadn’t touched in about a year, trying to ignore that his home screen was a picture of him with Michelle and Ned that he’d taken in the middle of senior year. It was hard to do once he realized right next to him he had an active observer of his screen. His friend was captivated from beside him, drinking in the details of his own face from a different perspective, and he tried not to click away too fast from the image. He hadn’t shown any pictures he’d kept from his own world, it felt too private. He hadn’t even looked at them himself, feeling like it would be accepting something that he knew he’d lost but didn’t want to consider missing. It was just too much.
“You can change your username,” Ned commented, breathy over his shoulder, and Peter stared at his tiny profile, shortened and professional from a time way before they had been close enough at school to type out their own nicknames or inside jokes. He must’ve been looking for a long time because he continued, “Or maybe later. I think it could make sense if it was just. Well if you didn’t change your name right away. So that they know who you are.”
He inhaled through his nose, and nodded jerkily, and then clicked ‘accept’. Nothing happened, for a moment, an eerie silence that could only be seen through text. Then, he opened the keyboard.
P. Parker Today at 9:26 PM
You guys all have different profile pictures, this is wild
Bet on me Today at 9:26 PM
More wild than you coming back from the dead????
P. Parker Today at 9:27 PM
In my opinion? Yes.
Mr. President Today at 9:31 PM
HOLY SHIT ???!!?!???
cindy lou who Today at 9:32 PM
WHST THE FUCK IS HAPPENINF RN?!???
P. Parker Today at 9:32 PM
I lived, bitches
Wait, is that meme still relevant?
I haven’t been active on socials since like 2018, am I being cringe?
cindy lou who Today at 9:36 PM
Betty, why is deceased peter parker asking us if hes being cringe at 9:30 at night????
Bet on me Today at 9:36 PM
Because he hasn’t been active on socials since 2018, obviously
“Oh my god I have to get in on this,” Ned snickered, and he pulled out his own phone, typing away rapidly. Peter laid back, putting the screen against his stomach and letting the notifications buzz against him. It felt strange; comfortable in a way he remembers but also anxiety-inducing. He hadn’t spoken to most of these people since before December, and there had been distance between them ever since his identity had been revealed.
It was a futile hope he’d kept, that not everyone would change the way he saw him once Mysterio had outed him and he’d become a public menace. For the most part, his small circle of classmates were polite, curious, but their words were always stilted and their expectations more obvious. It wasn’t like everyone would outright ask him to do a backflip or climb a wall (at least not after the first couple of weeks), but it always felt like they were waiting for it to happen. It didn’t matter that he still missed homework assignments and studied in the library during his free period and always had an extra pen to offer in class. He was always Spider-Man, at that point, and the kids he’d known since elementary school treated him as such.
Would it really be so different, he couldn’t help but think, if they knew me now?
We missed you a lot, Betty’s voice whispered from somewhere quiet in his mind, let me give you my number…in case.
His phone buzzed once, louder than before, and Peter turned his chin, squinting as he picked it up. It seemed like someone had texted him directly, not through the app, and it left a different vibration. He wondered if Flash had finally gotten online and was demanding a selfie to prove Betty wasn’t punking them. He wondered if maybe Ned was messaging him from right beside him, sending one of the pictures he’d taken earlier that day when Peter was in a very uncomfortable position on the ground, wallowing.
He didn’t have to spend a long time wondering, it seemed, when he saw the contact name and sat bolt upright in bed, knocking into Ned and forcing the computer to slide to the floor.
Ned made a noise of surprise, readjusting and looking around wildly for whatever could’ve gotten Peter so startled. “What? What is it? What are you sensing?”
He didn’t really understand why he was shaking, or why the guilt clawed and tore at his insides so viciously at the mere mention of a name, but he clutched his phone, and felt dizzy. “Nothing’s wrong,” He said, sounding choked and weak. “I’m going to go throw up, I think,”
He stood, walking briskly to the hall and to the bathroom, flicking on the light and bending over the toilet, losing every single popcorn kernel as he heaved.
“Oh, shit,” Ned shouted from far away, and then he quickly scrambled to get May. Peter didn’t really notice, he just balanced his head against his forearms and tried not to cry. There was a simple message, probably typed with little thought and sent with no frantic intention.
Michelle Jones, his phone had read at 9:47. Are you free tomorrow? she’d asked. He looked at his phone through blurry vision and shaking fingers, and tried to block out Ned and May’s hurried conversation from a few rooms away. He used his thumb, exhaling sharply, and replied ‘yes'.
Ned walked with him the next day, following directions to a coffee shop on a glitchy navigation app, chattering aimlessly to fill a silence that clung to Peter like his own skin. He didn’t have much of an explanation as to why he had reacted so violently to a message from MJ, and he wasn’t sure he needed one. Loyalty worked in strange ways, he had learned, and Ned for some reason had some stubborn part of him that placed devotion into their friendship. So when he’d found Peter on the bathroom tiles, wiping his mouth and babbling about seeing Michelle the next morning, he’d suggested the time and place. Peter kept finding reasons why he loved him so much, and it pulled at his insides and stuck to his lungs when he realized they were all reasons to miss him, too.
MJ was standing by herself at the crosswalk just before the cafe, her hair tied back from her face and a jacket hanging over her arm. Her hair was shorter than it had been the last time he’d seen her. She wasn’t wearing a broken dahlia necklace. She didn’t have a scar just above her brow. Peter wanted the ground to swallow him whole.
“Hey,” He greeted, when she caught sight of them, her face so painfully blank.
“Shit,” She returned, and looked between him and Ned for a while, drinking in his features and keeping a cool, analytical detachment to her observation. “You’re actually here.”
Ned let out a loud, strained laugh, and ushered them across the road. He headed inside to put their name in, mentioning something about a line and finding a table outside. Peter just kept staring at Michelle, and she kept staring at him, and it seemed like neither of them knew exactly what to say to the other. He wondered if she had much of anything to say, missing the moments that had triggered a deeper relationship between the two of them. Their reunion after the Blip. Their trip to Europe. Senior year. The Statue of Liberty.
“You’re taller,” She commented as the door shut behind Ned. “And, uh, not dead,”
“I never was,” He said, his voice light. “Dead, that is. Not in my world.”
Her face cracked, a sliver of emotion that sunk in the carefully manufactured facade that she’d been calm. “Tell me everything.” And he did.
“I can’t go home. So I’m staying here, I guess,” He finished, trying to feel like his rambling had been productive; that he was talking because it was supposed to help, not make him feel worse. They’d taken seats in the furthest corner of the sectioned off area outside. Ned had appeared a few times, but had eventually excused himself to get their drinks, though Peter was pretty sure he just wanted to give them as much alone time as possible. He sort of wished he was there as a buffer, though the gesture was sweet. “That’s it,” He added, when it seemed like one of them should’ve said something by then.
“Peter…” She began, and he realized her voice was a little shaky. “I…sorry, I don’t know what to say. Do I say sorry? Because— fuck, I’m so sorry that…that everything…”
“It’s okay,” He told her, and she frowned impressively at him. “I mean, it sucks. But it’s okay. I think I’m, like, supposed to accept it and learn to live with it. I don’t know,” He hated that his throat was sore, and his eyes felt hot, and the air was suffocating. “I just wish none of it had ever happened. I wish Strange had left me there with everyone else and I was just… gone, too. I wish that…” He looked up at her, and her face was crumpled, and he wanted to reach for her, but she held herself so differently. She was different. He looked away, feeling bitter and tight and lost. “I’m sorry for dumping all of this on you. You can’t do anything about it and I…we’re kind of strangers, aren’t we?”
“Don’t say that,” She muttered, and she pulled her coat tighter in her lap, her knuckles white. “Don’t fucking say that. Don’t sit here and act like–like I don’t care about you just because I didn’t sit through a few extra classes with you or whatever. I can admit that it’s different and that I’m not equipped to give you any advice about this but I…I missed you. I grieved you.” Her lips wobbled, and she turned her chin away to quickly wipe at her eyes. “I cared that you weren’t here. I care that you’re here, now,”
He swallowed thickly. “I’m sorry,” He reached out with his foot under the table and pressed their shoes together, and she locked her ankle with his. “It’s easy to get caught up in my head. Sometimes I forget that I’m also a ghost,” He tried to find something else to say, some sort of comfort or reassurance that would ease the tension. “I’m sorry that you had to miss me.”
“Give me some credit, Parker,” She didn’t smile, but there was something in her expression that softened the edges of her mouth, something small and genuine. “We’re friends. Or…we were. I’m not quite sure how these things translate through space and time—” She made a vague gesture with her fingers, wiggling them around. “—but I’m inclined to believe that it was the same for you.”
It was, in a way, he knew. He wouldn’t trivialize the time they’d spent together platonically before anything else had happened. He wouldn’t say that he couldn’t miss her just as fiercely under the circumstances that they might have just been friends; that if he was in her shoes, he wouldn’t mourn her more than anything without a romantic connection. It was the same. But it was so entirely different, and he couldn’t even begin to explain how.
How was he supposed to tell her that he loved her so infinitely, so deeply and unobtrusively even when she was known to him? How would he tell her that he loved her when he wasn’t absolutely certain that the twist of fate hadn’t changed her; when he knew there was nothing left between the two of them in the absence and influx of time besides the very beginning. How could he do that to her when he knew their history had changed? When he knew he would always be ten steps ahead, following his reckless heart and trying to look for someone that might never have existed in the bubble between known and imagined.
The answer was simple: he couldn’t. So he didn’t.
“Yeah,” He agreed, and he felt the tears well up in his eyes. “We’re friends, MJ.”
“Friends who need to do a little catch-up,” She added, looking a touch uncomfortable, but so impossibly sympathetic in the face of his confusing mess of loneliness. “I promise I won’t draw you in distress. For now.”
He wiped at his face and laughed, loudly and cracking. She offered him the edge of her coat to dab at his tears, and then they hugged, and he only felt a little bad for crying on her.
Ned sat down with them eventually, and he brought them drinks and a hefty stack of napkins. He played a little with his straw, pulling it out from the lid and then pushing it back in. It made a noise against the cup, scraping and plastic against plastic. “Favorite color?”
He and Ned had started to play a type of game, where he would start a conversation by asking Peter if something was the same between universes. It was kind of like a confirmation before he dove into a story, or before he made a joke, and it seemed like a way of coping for the other boy. Peter didn’t mind it, he appreciated that his friend was always checking in, always trying to match up moments and memories that could connect them, but it was also kind of sad. It made Peter kind of sad. He kept wondering if they would always be playing catch-up; if they would always be looking for roles to fill.
“Blue,” He answered, easily, and then paused. “Or red. Or yellow,” He frowned. “Do I need to have a favorite?”
“Primary colors,” Michelle supplied, and he nodded to her. “I think we can limit you to three favorites,” She teased, and he just nodded again.
Ned seemed somehow satisfied with his answer, and he wondered if he had just taken another step in proving how similar he was to the other him. He didn’t feel like asking. He was tired of asking. “I guess it makes sense, you were the one to design your suit,”
“Should I have gone with yellow?” Peter asked, jokingly, and pretending to think about it. “Highlighter yellow, maybe a bit of orange to tie the whole thing together?”
“Orange is the worst of the colors,” MJ groaned, and he laughed a little.
“Don’t say that in front of Ned, his favorite colors are blue and orange,” He looked towards the other, catching the way his expression lit up, surprised and delighted. Peter added that as another commonality.
“They’re complimentary!” He defended, his voice tinged with a sense of betrayal. “You don’t see me waltzing around in a bright orange and blue suit!”
Michelle looked him up and down, contemplative. “Maybe you should start.”
“I’ll take your measurements,” Peter said, joining her in critiquing Ned’s form. “I know how to sew, we’ll get it done in no time.”
MJ turned to him, her eyes bright, and he figured she probably hadn’t known that about him. Maybe Ned didn’t, either. He couldn’t remember when exactly he had learned. “Where were you when we needed you for prom?” She asked, mock-serious.
“Dropping out of highschool,” He responded, matching her tone.
Ned choked a little on his drink, but MJ just looked at him, appraisingly. “You never used to do that,” He cocked his head, and she elaborated, “You were always too scared to tease me back. Got flustered easier. You’re easier to talk to, now.”
“Yeah?” He found himself saying, lightly, and she nodded, oblivious to his inner turmoil. “I’ll choose not to be offended on behalf of the younger, more polite me,”
“Were you polite or did you just have an anxiety disorder?” Ned asked, trying to keep his expression smoothed.
He turned to him, slowly and stunned. “I know I did not just hear the founder of Lexapro try to talk to me about anxiety.”
MJ laughed, and covered her mouth with a napkin, and Ned kicked him under the table, and he felt like everything would be okay. He loved her, and he loved Ned, and he loved the parts of them that stayed consistent. He was also entirely convinced that he would like the parts that had changed. He needed time to feel normal, and to realize that everything had shifted so he had a bit of space to exist in.
It was tough, and cramped, and he hated that he always felt like he had to be someone else; that everyone was waiting for him to be someone else. It was also warm, and fragile, and he found himself wanting to be in the lives that had kept going when another version of him had left; he found himself wanting to stay.