Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/874717.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, Rape/Non-Con,
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M, M/M, F/F
  Fandom:
      Spider-Man_(Ultimateverse), Marvel_Ultimates, X-Men_(Ultimateverse),
      Fantastic_Four_(Ultimateverse), Marvel_(Comics)
  Relationship:
      Peter_Parker/Mary_Jane_Watson, Peter_Parker/Johnny_Storm, Peter_Parker/
      Tony_Stark, Logan_(X-Men)/Peter_Parker, Peter_Parker/Other(s), Mild
      Femmeslash, Minor_or_Background_Relationship(s), Surprise_Pairings_-
      Relationship, Eddie_Brock/Peter_Parker
  Character:
      Peter_Parker, Mary_Jane_Watson, May_Parker_(Spider-Man), Logan_(X-Men),
      Johnny_Storm, Nick_Fury, Tony_Stark, Kitty_Pryde, and_many_more...
  Additional Tags:
      Dubious_Consent, Pheromones, Alternate_Universe_-_Canon_Divergence,
      Awkward_Sexual_Situations, Threesome_-_M/M/M, Kink_Meme
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-07-08 Updated: 2014-05-20 Chapters: 17/? Words: 133223
****** Infractions ******
by orphan_account
Summary
     -- Hiatused --
     “This Stark man,” Aunt May said slowly, “Did he do something to you?”
      
     Made him strip bare while he watched. Made him jerk off in his lap,
     kissed him, touched him, fucked him. And the joke of it all was that
     it was Peter’s fault. “No,” he said wearily.
      
     Peter Parker develops a new super power. He quickly decides it's the
     worst thing that has ever happened to him. Everyone else more or less
     agrees.
     Pre-Ultimatum, post Clone Saga. Based off of a kink meme prompt.
Notes
     This was supposed to be a quick and easy fill for this_prompt on the
     Spider-Man kink meme. Then it digivolved, grew a plot, shot me in the
     face and ran off to wreak chaos and pain all over the word document
     it was scrawled upon.
     And for fair warning: the further the story goes, the more awful it
     gets. There's already a lot of dub con/non con themes in the
     beginning, but things get progressively more violent and unhappy as
     it goes, and not just in terms of the sex. I'll stick warnings on
     future chapters so that skipping out on squicky themes is an option.
     I also promise it's not all doom and gloom. If that helps. At all.
***** The Visitor *****
When he looked back on it, Peter could see that things were going south long
before the first incident. Little glances at school, Jameson growing more on
edge (than usual), the way his history teacher had barked at the people in
desks adjacent to his, stares that lasted too long on the street. Once he had
even been groped walking Mary Jane home from school, but his hellcat of a
girlfriend stole the show. She had sent the spooked hoodlum scampering around
the block with only a slap and a choice selection of filthy curses. Peter just
laughed because he really did live in New York if he was the one in danger. MJ
laughed it off later as well and kissed him on the nose, concluding that he was
simply irresistible and she would have to protect his virtue for the rest of
her days.
The first sign of real trouble came soon after. Johnny Storm made good on his
promise to take Peter to a ball game.
“Ooooh, that seventh inning? Holy freaking crap!” Johnny clutched at his hair
and whooped, leaping all over the sidewalk like a baboon. He nearly lost his
very clever disguise in the gutter (Oakley’s and a designer ball cap, the
affluent man’s first choice in anti-paparazzi apparel.) “It’s still blowing my
mind, man!!”
“And your cover,” Peter noted dryly. There was a gaggle of girls across the
street dressed for a night on the town, whispering and pointing. “I think
they’re onto you.”
“Whoa whoa!” He spun to get a good look at their spectators. A grin of pure
pearl streaked his face as he tilted his sunglasses up, debonair to the bone.
“Hey there ladies.”
The air was stuffed with titters and shrieks upon the reveal. One girl even
started clapping so hard it echoed. “JOHNNY I LOVE YOU!”
Peter snatched the back of his jacket before all was lost. “Nope.” He dragged
them off to a more private route. There was an alley nearby he knew he could
change in for the long swing home.
“No, come on Pete!” Johnny made a big show of stumbling along, stretching out
an arm in desperation as if the girls could reach over the pavement and pull
him to safety. “HELP! HE’S KIDNAPPING ME! I’M IN DISTRESS!”
Playful boos and offers of equal love for them both followed on their way out,
but Peter was not to be deterred. There was a massive WWII paper due soon and
he had only battled out a total of five sentences, and Johnny had a curfew that
night. When Peter dropped by to pick him up Sue had snatched her brother by the
arm and ordered him not to party, patrol or procrastinate in any way on their
trip home. She got a mighty stink eye for her trouble.
Johnny whisked off the hat and the glasses once they were safe in the alley,
stripping down to his inflammable suit as Peter played his mirror with his own
(very flammable) costume. “What if one of them was my future wife? You’ve
ruined my one chance at happiness. The Bugle was right about you.”
“Jerk.” The retaliation was fumbling, but only because it was dark and Peter’s
boots were particularly trying to slip in the current weather. It was a hot
spring and everything was sweat and sun and AC dials cranked to ‘Arctic’. “Like
you could handle a wife.”
“Dude, just because I don’t have a training ball and chain on already doesn’t
mean it can’t happen. How is MJ, by the way?”
Peter snorted and shook his head. “Fine. Which you won’t be if she ever finds
out you said that.”
“Then get me a girlfriend so I can stop being jealous of yours.”
“You say that like I have a stash in my locker.”
Their clothes switched, no longer bunched in with the bland old public but
bonafide super heroes, the two shared a last grin together and agreed to do it
all again sometime. “It’s just nice, you know?” Peter confided, shaking his
mask right side out.
“Doing something where we don’t have to beat down some nutjob or put out fires.
Almost like we’re normal.”
“But more awesome than normal.” A pause sunk between them. Johnny Storm deigned
to hug Peter proper. “You’re a cool guy Pete. Thanks for this.”
“Pretty sure I should thank you, you bought the tickets.” Peter tried to pull
out but only managed to get a couple inches between them. Johnny’s hands were
soldered to his shoulders.
“Well, whatever man, whatever. No big.” Peter waited to be released. He was
not. Johnny had become perfectly still, staring at him.
There was something strange about his eyes. What exactly was imperceptible; a
sudden but very slight squint, or a sleepy sag, something that dulled the glint
in them. The dim navy light took on odd shadows across his face until Peter
realized that it was his cheeks blooming red, the flush climbing to the nose
and ears. Then Johnny was much closer. There was a pause, a count of two, hot
breath dusting Peter’s lips before they connected completely. Johnny kissed
him. Johnny was kissing him, it wasn’t stopping, he kept pressing in and
pulling Peter’s lips apart with the force of his own while his hands cradled
his head and waist. They were sealed together from the hips up. Johnny’s tongue
slid into his mouth, curling softly. He tasted so much different from MJ.
Her name ripped through Peter like a bullet, sending him stumbling back as if
there had been a real sniper against the skyline. Seismic wheezes for air
wracked his body and he crumpled against the alley wall. Johnny blinked dumbly,
mouth still open. Heat flooded Peter from top to bottom and pushed up
gooseflesh, his pulse to banging against the cool metal of the webshooters.
Dully, Peter realized he had been kissing Johnny Storm for close to a minute
and had done absolutely nothing to stop it. Johnny seemed to clue in to this
that same moment. He turned from red to ash grey in a heartbeat.
“Wha–“ It was a dry, rasping note and it seemed that was all Johnny could
manage. The alley burst full of flame and then Johnny was nothing but a streak
of light in the sky. Going, going, gone. Peter shouted after him, but stopped
when windows above him began to light up. With a sharp gasp he leaped for his
mask and the bag with his clothes and sprung out of the alley, firing web after
web and not stopping to slip on the mask until he was on the edge of Queens
itself.
He debated for a while. MJ was the thought that stopped him. Only when he
thought of her did he stop kissing what was likely by now his former friend,
and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why. He did not like Johnny
Storm. He did not. Not in that way, never did, never will. He liked girls and
that was that. But did Johnny like him? Why did he kiss him in the first place,
and good god he could not spit out the taste of him enough. Why didn’t he have
any tic tacs?
“Crap crap crap crap crap...” He paced torrentially. Pressed his palms hard
against his head and searched the rooftop beneath him for an answer, then the
stars above. Shook all over, stomped, muttered aloud to the point of neurosis
and finally decided that no one would ever hear of it. Period. Especially not
MJ. He wasn’t gay, it wasn’t him. But maybe Johnny was, or he was bi and maybe
that was all okay, but Peter wasn’t and it didn’t matter that he let the kiss
happen because he had just been stunned. Maybe they could talk about it when
they had both cooled down and were thinking rationally again. No crazy hormones
or misread signals involved.
That was that. Peter nodded and swung home with every confidence on his side,
but suffered his worst sleep in ages that night. Worry kept him up for hours.
His skin writhed under gales of hot and cold alike, and at one point he nearly
tore his sheets trying to stop himself from burning to death.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
He emailed Johnny. Too afraid to try by phone and still tiptoeing around the
idea of prodding any of the other Fantastic Four, Peter left it at that and
tried not to be badly discouraged when he had no answer the next day. The more
he thought about it all the more awful he felt. Every minor exchange at the
ball game had blown up into major signals that could be folded, mashed, and
rehashed into something entirely different, so now Peter was half convinced
that maybe this was his own fault. He could have been leading Johnny on from
the start and never known. If he didn’t hear back before the weekend, he would
track him down. For sure.
The only bright side was MJ’s being utterly oblivious. For now at least,
because Peter figured that once the mess with Johnny had been worked out he
could come clean and explain everything about how Johnny was confused, how he
had been messing with his head unwittingly and it was all a just a classic
Oscar Wilde fiasco. They would laugh and get pizza after, and everything would
be okay.
“Will you move, Flash?” Peter scowled as he detoured around Midtown’s King of
Tools, who was standing statue still in the middle of the hallway and looking
mighty stunned to see Peter coming. “I’m not in the mood for a slam dunk in the
toilet today.”
Flash only turned to watch him leave with a mouth agape, but Peter paid him no
attention. He was on a mission to get home early today and nothing was stopping
him. He would eat, finish his homework and study like MIT was knocking at his
door, and then he would be free to swing around for the rest of the evening and
do what he did best. Right wrongs and triumph over evil, that sort of thing.
The first part of the plan was going swimmingly. Aunt May was staying late to
work tonight, and then she had a date (a date which Peter had yet to meet, to
his great ire and suspicion). In all likelihood he would be home from crime
fighting before she even pulled into the driveway. Peter devoured a bowl of
instant mac and cheese and whizzed through calculus, French, and even a little
bit of literature before he had a hankering for seconds. That was when he heard
the rustling in the basement.
Peter froze. He narrowed his eyes and fished out a broom from the hall closet.
His spider sense wasn’t buzzing, but that didn’t mean he liked having mystery
guests in the house. Unless it was MJ. In fact there was a strong possibility
that it was her after all, so Peter lowered his makeshift weapon as he sneaked
out of the hall. Yet the inelegant thud of feet on stairs told him that this
was not his girlfriend sneaking in for a quick make out before supper. Peter
scowled and raised the broom again, poised just around the corner. That heavy
foot hit the landing and he swooped out with a hefty swing to the gut.
Snikt!
“OOF – Shit, kid, are you going to hit me with a broom every time you see me?”
Logan, the world’s hairiest mutant that wasn’t already half animal, kicked at
the severed broom bits at his feet and popped his claws back in. Peter burned
red around the ears, dutifully stooping to pick up the pieces. “Knew this was a
mistake.”
“How was I supposed to know it was you?!” Peter seethed from below. “Why are
you always breaking into my house?”
“Twice isn’t always, smartass.”
“It’s two more times than I’ve ever wanted, mister! And now you owe me another
broom. Why are you even here?”
Logan peered around the place with an indiscernible squint as Peter deposited
the broom in the garbage, penciling a trip to Home Depot on his to do list.
Hopefully it would be on Logan’s dime, not his. “So your Aunt knows about you
and your little tights now?”
“Suit, and yes.”
Logan snorted. “Suit. All right. She up for giving a room to a boarder?”
Peter’s jaw dropped in absolute mortification. “What?! Why?”
“’Cause I’m tracking someone and they’re parking their ass in New York. And now
that my damn face got plastered on magazines suddenly the motels here ain’t so
willing to let me take a room.” He finally looked Peter in the eye. “I’ll get
you a new broom.”
“No.”
“I’m willing to pay for it.”
“A million thousand times no, end of discussion!” Peter threw his arms in the
air and signaled so wildly he might have fit in on a landing strip. “You are
not staying here! Something bad always happens when you’re here, and I’m always
the one who has to clean it up! I’m lucky my neighbors haven’t taken to torches
and pitchforks by now. Besides, what am I going to say to people when they see
the world famous Wolverine smoking cigars on my front porch?” He paused to
glower. “And don’t say we’ll be cousins. I swear, if you pretend you’re my
cousin again…”
All jokes were gone. Logan’s smirk evened out into a rigid line. “Kid. It’s
important.”
He knew it would be. Peter grimaced, crossed his arms and privately admitted
that in all honesty Logan would only be darkening his doorway if it was his
last resort. They were not big time pals. He might not be half-hamburger this
time, but a lack of exposed guts and bones didn’t mean there wasn’t an
emergency. “Did Xavier put you up to this?”
“None of your business.” That was a yes.
“And you can’t stay at Kitty’s because…”
Logan’s expression dipped into something more akin to regret, but only for the
barest moment. “She can’t get involved. You know she’d tag along.”
“And I won’t?”
“If you know what’s good for you. Your Aunt’s not here?” And they were back to
normal. Logan had turned around to fling his jacket on the couch and slip off
his boots. Peter’s hands locked into fists as he sunk into a deep, meditative
breath.
“No. She’s out.”
“Then I’ll wait and talk to her.” Without so much as a nod or warning Logan
quit the conversation, making a beeline for the kitchen. Peter squawked and
ducked after him to squabble over the matter of food.
It was decided that Peter would at least have the decency to feed his guest, no
matter how unwanted that guest may be. Peter took his revenge by playing dumb
and reaching straight for the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese again, as if he didn’t
know how to warm up leftovers or even chop up some stir fry. He got the milk
and butter ready and poured the noodles into the pot, standing guard over the
stove while Logan leaned against the counter and pretended to be too cool for
conversation. It was all very tense.
“So if I guess it right, will you tell me what you’re in town for?”
“No.”
Peter snapped his fingers. “Sideburn waxing.”
“Don’t give me none of this—“
“That Beyonce concert tomorrow?”
Logan glowered.
“No! Magneto’s going to the Beyonce concert and you’ve got to tail him.”
“Where do you come up with this bullshit?”
Peter shrugged. “But it is Magneto right?”
“You think they’d be stupid enough to send in one guy with metal on his bones
to go after Magneto?”
The man had a point. Peter waggled his head back and forth in consideration.
“Well, with the number of harebrained schemes I’ve seen executed in my time,
it’s not entirely implausible.”
A snort of agreement told him he was not yet too high on Logan’s To-Slice-and-
Dice list for tonight. “We ain’t the Ultimates, kid.”
The conversation could have gone on forever (he was half hoping he could
irritate Wolverine out the door) and would have had Peter not suddenly lost his
train of thought. He paused, staring down at the noodles as if they had had
transfigured into tadpoles. And though the air conditioning was earning its
keep handsomely, Peter found himself dizzied by the sun, scorching him through
the windows. A glass of water was all he needed, really. He nodded to himself
as he drained out the water and clicked off the burner.
“You all right?” Logan said.
Peter continued staring at the pot. Logan had to reach over and shake him to
get an answer. “Yeah, yeah, I’m good. I just think, um.” He snapped his fingers
in manic repetition as he fished for the right words and pointed at the fridge.
“Think I need some water.”
He was acutely aware of Logan in all senses when he shuffled past him to the
fridge -- bodily distance, scent, sight, the worn cotton of his shirt as he
clipped the sleeve passing by. The way he could feel Logan’s eyes on him, even
with his back turned, and was suddenly self conscious about how his t-shirt was
sloppily tucked in at the back.
Now that he had the door open and was gawking at the water pitcher, he found
that he was not thirsty at all.
“You know, I ain’t that hungry,” Logan said.
Logan’s eyes were just flicking back up to eye level when Peter made to face
him again. That pressed upon some level of suspicion, but Peter was struggling
to think. The sun seemed all the more insistent on burning him to a crisp.
“Yeah?” he replied thickly.
Logan cocked his head and smiled. “You going to stand in the fridge all night?”
Peter abruptly shut the door.
“Nope. No.” He patted the now closed fridge for punctuation.
“Then why don’t you—“ And here Logan snagged him by the brim of his pants,
igniting several dynamite explosions when Peter felt his bare fingers curl
against the skin just above his boxers, and yanked him directly into his chest,
“—come over here?”
Peter could have protested. Definitely should have, but they were tightly
compressed, and a strange quivering heat shook off Logan into his skin. Logan’s
eyes held little light, heavy hooded as he took in air as if it was theft and
nothing natural at all. The very sound of it put shivers in Peter from top to
bottom. The real robbery began when Logan wove his fingers into Peter’s hair
and pulled it back, leaving his jaw to drop and his mouth free to claim.
And Logan did so. He swiped the breadth of Peter’s mouth, teeth to tongue, and
bit his lip on the way out. Then he dipped in again, feeding off the keens of
shock that rattled weakly inside Peter, the sound swallowed up before reaching
anywhere useful. After the second break Logan gave him a hard shove. Peter fell
back into the fridge as Logan pounced again. He pinned him with his hips, the
buckle stamping a pattern on Peter’s stomach through the shirt, and with one
hand on a strained wrist while the other held his head back by the hair. Peter
could not remember getting hard any faster in his life.
They couldn’t seem to stand the notion of separation. Logan was devouring him,
and Peter had his free hand twisted so tightly in the back of his shirt he that
he heard a few stitches rip around the collar. When they did pause Peter was
left gasping in the reprieve. The attack turned to his neck. His face prickled
as the blood rushed forth and the scratch of Logan’s stubble on his chin and
cheeks was remembered, vivid red, and that not even paralleling his lips in
color. Peter squirmed and moaned at the wet kisses fed to his neck. Not once
did escape cross his mind. He was clinging to his captor instead, the splayed
fingers of his only free hand clawing up at Logan’s shoulder blade. His legs
spread just an inch for ease, knees curved around the older man’s to let him in
closer, press as close as their clothes would allow and there was a bite at his
collar as a reward. Peter yelped, laughed, breathless, and somehow victorious.
He could feel the stiff bulge between Logan’s legs and it gave him a little
jump in his belly: that was his. Logan was hard for him. He groped at Logan’s
backside, pushing him in so that it strained against him through the jeans, and
squeezed. Too muddled to discern how to get further.
Logan wasn’t half so naïve. A deep throated hum rumbled through him (it was
faint, but Peter could feel the vibration of that too and it made his own
trembling worse, highlighting the sweat that was beginning to bud down his
chest and the back of his neck) and he clapped his hands on Peter’s hips before
kissing him again. They were loud; it was sloppy but less in the literal sense
of messiness than the lack of control. If there was any to be had it all
belonged to Logan, he was the one who rolled their tongues together and had
Peter’s neck craned back a full forty five degrees to do so. But it was rushed,
loose cannons. No patience to be spared. A sentiment confirmed when Logan
whipped the belt off and popped the button free on Peter’s jeans, yanking down
his boxers and the pants in the back to grip his freshly bare ass. Peter seized
up wholly in shock, then Logan’s kisses were gone and thick fingers were
thrusting into his mouth, the hand at his rear seeming to knead in time with
them. Peter didn’t so much as question it. He suckled at the fingers like he
was teasing out the last bit of ice cream from a popsicle stick.
Nothing seemed lewd about it.
They peeled away from the fridge and Logan’s grip at the back began to delve
further. Peter squirmed. It was all unfamiliar, private territory, and suddenly
there was a pair of fingers circling what had been privy to no one. The hand at
his mouth pulled away, the fingers extricated with a wet pop, and they invaded
him from behind as well. The first finger probed the rim, dipped down, pushed
in. Peter sucked in air with audible panic.
“Logan, I can’t –” The finger drove in further and Peter gave a salacious moan.
It hurt but he craved it, higher, deeper, red hot waves pulsating over his body
from the humiliation and the heat and just how much more Logan was than him.
Burly, bulky man, hair from knuckle to toes and a smirk that could put Han Solo
to shame.
“Shh, shh, I got you,” the man rumbled from somewhere beside his ear. He
nuzzled Peter’s hair and took a nip at his earlobe, then latched his lips to
his throat and sucked. Peter keened. The finger drove deeper and started to
piston, in and out. It hurt so much more, but the motion started to soothe, the
slow assiduating friction turning to a salve on its own, giving satisfaction
impossible to describe.
The pair fumbled like this, Logan ravishing Peter’s neck and face while his
hands made good use of his rear, towards the island counter in the center of
the kitchen. Peter reached it first with a groping hand, desperate for a
purchase. Logan came in second to swipe all its contents to the side as the
second finger drove inwards. He kissed Peter ferociously twice then withdrew
everything, turning him, taking the back of his head and pushing his forehead
down to the cold marble. His ass stuck out in the air like an invitation, and
the fingers returned at double speed.
The neighbors had to hear them. It was impossible not to. It would have taken a
full marching band to drown out Peter’s hollering as he lay face down, Logan
pushing up his shirt to lay primitive kisses down his spine. But he heard no
protests, saw no shapes rise in the window curtains. His erection came loose of
the hem of his pants as the whole affair finally fell to his ankles. Peter
groaned thankfully and reached down to grasp it, discarding his pants entirely
with a little shake of each foot. In the wake of the invasion behind him he had
been too preoccupied to touch himself, and it had lost some steam over the
rough start. Now it stood tall once more and wicked hot. There was no incline;
he went straight to pumping it at speeds high enough to match his pulse.
Anything slower would have driven him mad.
Logan had been using this time to make an exploration of Peter’s body. He found
his hips, his sacrum, planted a kiss there and squeezed at the soft unguarded
break of his waist, traced an old scar up to the ribs, rubbing his hand up and
down there like his skin was velvet, and tucking under the already crumpled
fabric of his shirt to probe the shoulders, smooth out the plane between them
and kiss there too, lifting the shirt further to do so. He reveled in Peter’s
skin, youthful except where it was broken by old burns and scrapes and even a
bullet wound, were he to reach higher and hit the opposite shoulder. But
somehow Logan still treated each mark as something sumptuous. Peter tried to
shift his head back far enough to see his expression. Did Logan pity him? Did
the scars excite him, as a man who could get none and might live forever
because of it?
None of it seemed to matter a moment later. Logan pulled back, all fingers gone
but his wandering hand now firmly planted on the small of Peter ‘s back. As if
he could go anywhere. Peter pumped himself harder. Something unzipped. Peter’s
leg twitched and he could swear his cock jumped in anticipation. He heard Logan
spit behind him, felt the hand at his back rubbing him up and down, and sensed
the shift of weight. Logan spat again and this time it hit him at his rim,
sending Peter wriggling at the perversity of it all.
“Still, now,” came the soothing growl, the petting hand settling on his hip now
with a firm command to stay put. Peter obeyed. Then, bigger than a finger and
newly wet, Logan began to guide himself in.
“Oooh,” Peter moaned as he buried his face in the counter and gripped the ledge
for dear life, even releasing his hard on to do so. He needed that extra
bracing. He had only felt a bit of it through the very limiting stretch of blue
jeans, but Logan’s cock was thick. Thicker than he was expecting, or perhaps
that was because he had yet to lay eyes on it and had to estimate from how it
felt as the head pressed inside of him. A small part of him was ringing an
alarm. Peter jolted slightly, lifted from the counter a fraction and blinked up
at the kitchen as the heat faltered, pain spiked, and he was struck very
suddenly by how insane this all was.
Then Logan jutted forward just a hair forward and he was goo dripping off the
counter again, gnattering and heavy breathing. “Slow slow slow, please, oh my
god.”
“I gotcha, I gotcha.”
Logan hovered over him now, their bodies radiating the slim slice of air
between his chest and Peter’s back, the cock sliding in just a bit more, little
bit, further. Peter’s hair was sweat slicked and stuck to his brow and nape as
he panted like a dog. Logan gave his sympathies with low whispers in his ear
(“You’re good, kid, you’re so good, gonna be okay,”) and with a gentle massage
to his side. His hands were massive. And at last Logan saw fit to call that
enough, and he stopped to catch his own breath. He had been panting too.
Stuffed. Stuffed full, to the brim, to bursting, whatever phrasing suited your
fancy, that was what Peter was. It was hot and stiff and he was afraid to move
lest he break something. He clenched hard at the thought, quite against his
will but his body was demanding that the thing get out. It only served to
highlight the immense pressure of Logan’s cock inside him, and above him there
was a heady moan. “Jesus, kid…”
And then the rest began. What came as a push and pull on the inside was a roll
of the hips on the outside, the motion seamless and jagged all in one. Peter
squeaked, it could not be helped, but after the first three or four his mouth
stayed wide open with all sound on a halt. That same friction, that same rhythm
that had started to feel more calm than alarming when the fingers were inside
him was at it again, only this time more so; more of everything, bigger, slick
and stiff, longer. And it was driving a little deeper each time. The outside
was matching the inside now, all jamming and thrust. Greedy. Logan was getting
greedy and Peter was melting underneath him.
There was a little patch that every time Logan hit it, it got a little more
tingly. Pulsing. On the next thrust it increased, and on the next, then the one
after that, a steady rise that chugged to life but once it was going, it was
going. Strange at first but soon drifting toward divine. Peter was writhing
like a serpent. He needed to touch himself again, Logan’s cock igniting every
edge and nerve in his body but most of all in his rear and his groin. The sweat
on his palm squealed against the marble as he slid it downward. But Logan beat
him to it. With a hefty grunt and a shocking tug backwards, Peter was several
inches further down the counter and his stomach half exposed to the air. Plenty
of room for Logan to reach down and stroke his erection with hands much bigger,
rougher than his own.
Lightning struck. Electricity shot out from his legs to his toes, shoulders to
fingertips, spine to the top of his head. Everything in its wake turned to
mush, blinking, heavenly mush. Peter was aware that he had screamed but he
couldn’t remember prompting the sound; it just leaped out of him, chased out by
the wash of pure lascivious bliss. He had come against the side of the kitchen
counter, the big cupboard where Aunt May kept the soup pots and cutting boards.
Big wheezing breaths were all he could manage, but there was a laugh in there
somewhere. There was something very funny and very terrifying about all of
this.
Logan did not let him go. He might have slowed down to let Peter ride it all
out, but he was back to business soon enough and Peter had to rush to catch up.
He pushed back against him even in his exhaustion, and moaned as Logan took
ginger strokes to his spent cock. He was trying to coax it back into standing
all over again. Peter swatted at the hand, thick-throated as he gave protest,
“Wait, wait!” He needed a moment where he wasn’t in danger of burning straight
to ashes. At the rate they were going and how delicious Logan felt from behind
it might not take long at all.
Logan’s response was to change positions. He pulled out (Peter actually groaned
in disappointment) and pulled Peter upright, flush against him. He tried to fit
his cock inside again, giving a grunt of frustration before hefting one of
Peter’s legs to sit on the counter and trying again. It was much easier this
time, slipping back in with a simple swoosh and the thrusting resumed, shorter
but faster from this angle. Peter immediately reached behind, batting Logan’s
ear by accident before cupping his jaw like he wanted to. They stretched their
necks to meet in a kiss, Peter leaning back as Logan reigned on top once again.
It was too hard to keep up but they tried, wet smacks marking the breaks and
finally settling on Logan kissing from his jaw to his shoulder, biting the
cords of his neck when he thrusted deep. One hand was always on a hip to keep
him well aligned, and the other roamed upwards to find his belly, his nipples,
his ribs, collarbone. Smothering him and trapping him in close, even as Peter
pushed back against Logan with the same eagerness that he was being thrusted
into with.
He was hard again before long.
When Logan began to slow down everything got a bit rougher. Peter had stooped
once more, hands stuck to the counter in support and Logan was slamming into
him from the back. There was no tender touching now, both hands needed to keep
a handle on Peter’s hips. Peter was howling again, and though Logan might seem
to have a grip on himself Peter could hear his breath hitching every time he
pushed in and heard the smack of their skin colliding. Three times, two times,
once more, and then Logan was crouching over Peter and clutching onto him like
he might fall to pieces if he let go, moaning into his ear and spilling inside
him. It was shockingly hot, strange to feel it from the inside, but Peter knew
what it was. It should have been disgusting. It should have been degrading,
mortifying, but he found a wide toothy grin on his face instead. He was even
stroking Logan’s arm where it wrapped around his middle.
The older man wasn’t so shaken as Peter was. Whether it was age or experience,
Logan just being Logan or the strange powers he’d been born with, Logan
smoothly drew back to his full height and pulled out, rubbing himself to ease
the cock down. Peter took care of himself then, facing Logan with heavy eyes
and a parted mouth. They held each other and kissed again, and when Peter came
the second time it was on Logan’s stomach and the older man had to keep him
from falling back down. Shaking, exhilarated, they simply held each other.
Peter fit his head in the crook of Logan’s neck and let all sensation drain
clean out.
But in its wake, he started to think again. By margins, but enough that he was
washed with an ominous sense of dread.
Did he just have sex with Wolverine?
The concept bounced around his skull but never stuck to any cohesive thought.
He felt horrified but lost the reason why the next second, turning to Logan for
help. He only received the same dumbstruck stare back.
Peter tried to push off and stand on his own. He managed to keep his feet under
him, but the first step alerted him to the fresh ache and tender skin inside.
He nearly toppled with the shock and would have smacked his head on the kitchen
tile if Logan didn’t catch him.
“Bed…” Peter groaned. He needed to lie down for a thousand years and it was the
only thought he could grasp. Everything else was aches and fuzz and spinning
rooms.
“Here I’ll help…up.” Logan’s speech was slurring. Neither noticed. Peter let
the older man sling an arm around his shoulder and guide him up the stairs,
both still half naked and utterly unaware of it.
When they hit the top flight they were kissing all over again, and by the time
Logan threw Peter onto his bed and descended upon him with a roar they were
both stiff as rocks. They rolled, rutted, laughed and hollered, Peter’s foot
knocking against the wall as Logan pulled his legs wide for better angles.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It wasn’t the message itself, but the piercing beep at the end of it that
snapped Peter awake. “Aunt May?” he called out, shocked to feel the dry rasp in
his throat. No one answered him. He was freezing cold. Naked in his bed and all
the covers kicked to the ground. Peter sat up and stared into the dark.
Eerie silence all around. Pain in every inch of his body. His sheets felt damp,
as if he had sweated out another night terror. The clock read eleven. He
threaded his fingers through his hair and tried to suss out what had happened.
Memory crashed back into him with a near audible bang. Logan had been there.
Logan had been kissing him. Logan had been inside him.
Peter crumpled on the bed, his grip on the edge of the mattress threatening to
hole punch the fabric. He nearly got sick. From nerves, or shock, from the jolt
of agony that came when he moved, he wasn’t sure. Thankfully he didn’t succumb,
the sensation passed and he let himself sink from the mattress to the floor. He
coiled there like a bug. A few times tears threatened to rise, but he batted
them away.
Aunt May could not know about this. If that was her on the phone just now, she
was either on her way back or staying even later. Peter couldn’t take any
chances.
He extricated himself from the floor with great effort, hissing at the stab
deep inside him. His hips had turned decrepit too, unbelievably sore and
threatening to eject his legs at any second. In spite of all this, he dressed,
he made it down the stairs and saw that Logan’s boots and jacket were gone, no
note left behind.
“Hello…?” Taking survey of the entrance and the living room yielded no new
clues. Not here. Peter supposed if it were him, he’d bail too. He shivered and
pursed his lips.
He just needed to make sure everything would be okay. A spritz of Febreeze here
and there, gather up his pants from the kitchen floor, wipe things off. Nothing
of Logan’s remained there either. Briefly the cold pot of noodles held his
consideration, but the clench in his middle promised a night spent over the
toilet if he took a single bite. He stored everything into the fridge and stood
very quietly in his kitchen. The neighborhood offered very little in the way of
a soundtrack that night, as if it were just as spooked as he was.
Logan might have ghosted off, but he didn’t hallucinate it. The kissing and the
hand job and the cold marble against his chest had all happened. But for the
life of him, Peter couldn’t figure out why.
***** A Trip to the Doctor *****
Chapter Summary
     Peter attempts to find out what's wrong with him, and like everything
     else he's ever done it blows up spectacularly in his face.
Chapter Notes
     The only real warning for this chapter is that it's the main reason
     awkward sexual situations is a tag. Enjoy. :)
“You feeling all right?” Mary Jane pressed a hand to his forehead and
immediately snapped it back. “Oh my god, Peter, do you not feel the inferno
that is your head right now?
Peter grimaced and shrugged away, taking a ginger bite of his egg salad
sandwich. “It’s nothing.”
“You’re sick, sweetie, you should go home.” He tried to look anywhere but at
her. Catching her by the eyes would guarantee doom. But of course, having dated
him for over a year MJ was having none of it and took his cheeks in her hands.
“You’ve been looking like death all day and you’re walking slower than my
nana.”
“MJ, it’s nothing. It’ll blow over in like a day.”
“Parker’s talking about blowing, what a big surprise.”
“And yet you’re the one swallowing, even bigger surprise!” Flash glowered down
at MJ and pulled the half eaten banana away from his mouth, but didn’t follow
up. The cafeteria was too dangerous to pick a fight in. He slouched over to his
own pack at a table far away. She scoffed and popped a fry in her mouth. “And
of course the gay jokes start, what a classy guy.”
“He’s been calling me gay since the fourth grade, MJ, he’s just been polite
around you because we weren’t together before and he thought had a chance.”
“Ew! Never!” She shuddered deeply. “But really, Peter, you need to be bundled
up in blankies with a bowl of chicken soup. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
She kept looking at him. “Pete.”
“Nothing, it’s nothing.”
“Not even about— ”
“No.” The shush hands came up and he gave a perilous once over of the
cafeteria, scanning for eavesdroppers. None were to be found, though he did
spot Liz Allen and Kong at another table a short distance away. She was deeply
engrossed in what had to be Math homework, though, etching in figures while
Kong watched and double checked his own paper.
MJ put her hands on his. It made him go hot, but not in the same sense. Not
nearly to the same degree as he had spiked around Logan, or Johnny. It was
starting to worry him, and if it had been anyone but Logan last night he would
have been trawling the internet checking if he had an STI. The man’s healing
powers knocked that out of the park, so he was back to just feeling weirdly ill
for no reason. He must have gone tense at that thought because she gave his
fingers a squeeze and scooted closer, green eyes wide and inquisitive.
“But you’d tell me? If something bizarre is going on? Or if it’s something
you’re scared of. You know you can tell me.” She smiled, snorting back a
giggle. “I’m not Catwoman or anything, but I can toss a mean right hook if you
need me to.”
His mouth went dry and he had a flash of Logan in her place, looming over him,
dwarfing his hands in his grip, stubble dark and tempting to touch. He forced
himself to let go and brush her bangs into place instead. Beautiful bright red
hair, and not like Logan’s in the slightest. “And a left hook. I’ve seen it. Of
course I’d tell you.” He wanted to. “I’m just burnt out, MJ, that’s all. It’s
nothing. Probably just the flu or something.” He really wanted to, desperately
wanted to, even if he knew it was impossible. Not now. If he had a shred of
decency in him he’d spare her the torture and break up with her right that
instant. But he was bone-deep, knack kneed, hackles raised petrified. Something
wasn’t right.
She would know when he knew, and knew for sure.
The lunch bell sent every student groaning and scattering, the place suddenly a
flurry of bags swinging over shoulders and trays dipping over trash cans. MJ
frowned, but kissed his head as she stood to leave. “Just promise me you’ll
call in sick to the Bugle, okay?”
Peter started a half-hearted protest, but she was gone.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
He didn’t call in sick.
Call him deceitful, or maybe call him stupid, but he did in fact need to make
some kind of money and no one was paying him for anything else. And he did not
want to be in his house. Breakfast had been a difficult enough time as it was,
his nerves spiking again as he touched the handle to the fridge and started
sweating at the brow, equal parts turned on and terrified. Just the memory of
it was wreaking havoc on him. Not to mention the guilt, especially when Aunt
May had been the room and he was double checking every surface to make sure
there were no signs that he had gotten the living daylights screwed out of him
in her kitchen. He was lucky she was already eating and engrossed in the paper,
utterly oblivious. She’d be fussing over him too if he went home now. Better to
avoid both hurdles and get a little cash in return for it, right? MJ would
understand.
Though fatigue dogged him the whole time and his hips had somehow aged seventy
years past the rest of his body, he was a fairly competent employee that day.
Peter took orders with little more than a standard greeting and a “Yah huh, for
sure,” to spare, but he never mistepped. He plugged away at his computer like
the drone he was. Not too shabby. The only off thing about it was still being
boggled as to why Jameson had him move cubicles; now he was right next to the
big kahuna’s office and could feel the needle-eyed glare coming at him through
those blinds. He hadn’t dared so much as peek at Facebook once the whole week.
Jameson was a right cranky old fart these days, particularly to Peter and not a
soul in the office could figure out why.
Around an hour before Peter’s shift ended, Ben Urich meandered around with a
steaming cup of brew and chatted up a storm, gathering links and sources. A
familiar, if not always consistent, routine. He struck a smile as he came to
Peter, which was unusual: Peter was a web designer and not doing any pertinent
investigation Ben could glean nuggets from. He took a seat at the edge of his
desk, only slightly brushing his inbox tray. “New headquarters, huh? How’s it
treating you Parker?”
“Just fine.” Peter smiled back warmly and swiveled a bit in his new chair.
Being approximately two hundred years old, it squealed like a piglet. “You’d
never guess it’s the exact same brand I was sitting in before. And this
sharpener, gadzooks!” He demonstrated a thorough mangling of his pencil while
the machine wheezed and sputtered to do its job. “Works like a charm.”
Urich chuckled and toasted him with his coffee. “Good to hear. Just wanted to
say though, if Orwell’s been giving you a hard time over this desk swap
business…”
“Oh, he hasn’t.” He had, but Peter could not be bothered to give a crap about a
middle aged man’s cubicle envy. Orwell’s wrath was only ever a glare or two on
the way to the copier anyway. “I’m probably madder than he is. All my work
clothes smell of cigars now thanks to you know who.”
“Well, just let us know if he starts. It’s not anything to do with you, he just
thinks this is Jameson’s cute way of telling him he’s one step closer to the
door. Which is baloney. I’ve seen Jameson chuck people out with his own hands
when he fires them.” Ben gave him a wink. “Practice falling gracefully when the
time comes.”
“Will do.” Peter smiled again and turned back to his screen, deleting a few
strings of code before realizing Urich hadn’t left yet. He turned back. Urich
was still planted on the edge of his desk, his smile turned lazy and the coffee
lowered. With perturbing ease he clapped Peter on the shoulder, still smiling.
Not a word.
Peter could feel himself flushing already.
Then there was an earth-shattering bang and Peter nearly toppled in his chair
with fright. Somehow he had come just a hair away from Urich’s nose, the older
man leaning in from atop the desk.
“URICH! My office, now!”
J. Jonah Jameson had emerged, and he was not happy. Aghast, Peter shot a look
to the blinds and noticed the gaps had grown by a thin quarter of an inch. Had
Jameson really been watching him?
Poor Ben Urich, meanwhile, had spilled half his coffee down his pants and for a
moment seemed to have no idea where he was. “OW, Jesus – who—Hey! What, Jonah?
Is there something wrong with the copy?”
“Just get in there and don’t ask questions!”
Ordinarily there would be sarcasm and witty rebuttal, but Urich was well and
truly stunned. He shook his head and blinked heavily, gave Peter a wild-eyed
stare, then finally obeyed. Peter fought to not crouch low when Jameson turned
his sneer on him. He raked his eyes over him, as if searching for some feasible
flaw to nag at. Several gawkers stood up to see better over the partitions and
Peter found himself wishing for Kitty Pryde’s powers. It would have been
incredibly usefully to sink through to the floor below right then.
“And you – you’re going home early!” Peter gasped, but Jameson jumped on his
protests before they could spill out. “You’re sicker than a dog, Parker! Don’t
tell me you’re not. Go home and stay there, before you infect the rest of us
and all we have to print next week is the damn crossword. And where's Brant?
Brant – where the hell is the piece on Sorkin? I want it five minutes ago!”
A meager squeak made it out before Jameson returned to his lair, but no words.
Peter could have died on the spot. Everyone was still watching. Somebody in the
back gave a low whistle.
Hot cheeked and determined to avoid an even bigger scene, Peter gathered up his
things and shut the computer down, hustling towards the elevator. Betty Brant
tried to catch him on the way out but he dodged to his left and hit the
elevator button at Olympic speeds. It was rude, he admitted it, but he needed
out. Betty only wanted details for the water cooler anyway, he thought
bitterly.
Peter was sweating in the elevator down. He clutched his bag close to his
chest, breathing deep and choppy. A pair of men in slick suits and two hundred
dollar haircuts entered from another floor. Marketing? They jabbered back and
forth with empty congeniality, a regular pair of Patrick Batemans. Peter tried
to eavesdrop in hopes of some kind of mental reprieve, but nothing was harder
to do. Ben Urich kept flashing back in, leaning towards his face, eyes heavy
lidded.
He shuddered. If Jameson hadn’t shouted at him he might be on his way home for
very different reasons. Sent packing, more like. Or worse, to some kind of
Human Resources clown who’d sit there and get him to fill out forms on juvenile
promiscuity in the office. It probably existed. Jameson had materialized in
half a second to slam Ben down, like this was something that happened all the
time. And for that matter, what was Jameson’s deal? If he wasn’t barking at
Peter, he was scowling at anyone with the gall to exist near him. Plus the desk
switch was completely unnecessary. Peter would pass it off on his gross man-
summoning juju if Jameson didn’t seem so morally opposed to treating him like a
human being. He was just stuck in a heightened state of douchebag. If the puce
color swarming his face had foreshadowed anything he was probably reaming out
Ben Urich right now. Peter’s stomach churned.
It really wasn’t Urich’s fault. It was his. He had a problem, and he needed to
take it to somebody. It couldn’t be a one-off thing. No more playing at
coincidences: there was something deeply wrong with him. Getting molested this
often was unnatural, let alone having marathon sex with Wolverine.
Peter sighed and tilted his head, baring his neck for the thumb gently stroking
the skin under his jaw. A groan answered him and he earned a kiss there, a
slight nip from the teeth following before kisses trailed down, down, to his
collarbone, jet black hair tickling him along the way.
His eyes blew wide. He was tingling and hot all over, the sensation having
invaded in total secrecy. “Wait—“ he said petulantly.
No waiting allowed. A second pair of hands (the first were on his waist,
somehow he’d missed that) grasped him by the cheeks and yanked his head to the
left for a furious kiss. The man had charged in tongue first and bullied him
with force and height, and it was all Peter could do but tilt further back and
let the man engulf him. His thoughts began to drown in honey. Everything
burned. Thick, sweet fog rolled in and a drop of sweat painted a trail from his
hair to the rim of his brow.
Fearful and unblinking, Peter spun his sights around the elevator. A singeing
red glow on the button panel and a lack of machinated humming told him that one
of them had hit the emergency stop.
He had dropped his pack. The two men from marketing continued to double team
him. He was spun around to face one, who would kiss him deeply and yank on his
hair while the other meddled with the buttons of his shirt or the buckle of his
belt. The men's clothes were shedding too, and Peter was never sure if it was
his hands doing the work or theirs. A brush against his dick made him jump. He
lost the lips he was attached to so he could be snatched up by the second pair
from behind. The angle was awkward, even for him, until he’d been manipulated
into facing the first man proper.
Of course, only then did trying to escape cross his addled mind. Peter
wriggled, twisted, pushed at the immediate set of hands holding him in place
and stretched a finger towards the button panel.
“I’m taking you home,” one hissed in his ear. Peter whimpered when one of them
swatted his ass, grabbing it viciously, “I’m going to take you home and fuck
you silly every goddamn day, you little peach. Little sweetie pie. What’s your
name, sweetie? Give me your number. Come on, come on.”
His head pounded. He lost his vision to a grey blur and for a moment he went
limp entirely, burning to the touch and red all over. But when one of them
began to lift him up, hitching him with a hand under his rear and the other
pulling his leg around his waist, Peter was struck with an urgency that negated
all of it. The fog didn’t clear easily but he could put his mind to one
singular thought: get to the buttons. He pushed clumsily at the man’s face,
stopping his shower of kisses just long enough to flop over to the side and
nearly out of his grip. The second man caught him before he fell and cracked
his head on the metal door, but he wasn’t quite quick enough to drag him back.
Peter was in reach now, and slammed at the buttons hard enough that the panel
shuddered under the force. Something worked, because the elevator hummed to
life . The pair wrestled with him as he struggled to get his clothing together,
cooing and trying to kiss him back in for more, but Peter was thinking much
more clearly now. The doors split open, dues ex machina, and he kicked one of
them in the gut and bolted as the man went down.
Peter took the stairs from the twenty second floor and furiously finished
buttoning on the run what he couldn’t in the elevator.
He waited fifteen minutes in the bottom stairwell with an eagle eye out the
slender window; he tracked the two rumple-suited figures stumbling into the
foyer, dazed and clutching their heads in bewilderment as they shambled out of
the building.
Peter opted to swing around town instead of chancing the subway.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
When he got home, Mary Jane was sitting at the dinner table with her chemistry
book open and Aunt May was stirring a pot of fettuccine. His girlfriend turned
around to give him a suspicious glare.
“So a little birdie told me that someone didn’t take my advice and went to work
sick,” she drawled, tapping her pencil on the note paper. His Aunt chuckled and
shook her head over the stove.
Peter hung his head in shame. “Yeah.”
“And?”
“I got sent home sick.”
“What did I tell you?” She sighed heavily and strode over to hug him. “You’re
such a stubborn bugger sometimes.”
“And you don’t even have to live with it,” Aunt May joked, turning to wink at
her nephew and crooking her finger at him. “Come over here and let me check
your temperature.”
“Aunt May!” Peter groaned, but MJ chortled and steered him over. He relented
with a scowl to all investigation. “I’m not that sick.”
“You are feeling fairly hot, dear. Come on, sit down, I’ll grab you some
medicine. MJ, mind the pot?”
“Don’t-“ But she was already up the stairs, his girlfriend swooping in to take
over the spoon. She nibbled a fresh strand before returning her attention to
Peter.
“Peter, you didn’t go out swinging after did you?”
He shook his head. “No, I came straight home.” She raised her brows at him and
he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Oh fine, okay, I admit it, I’m not feeling
so hot. It’s not a big deal, MJ. It’s all right, I’ll just go to bed early
tonight, you don’t need to mom me.”
“I actually came over because I wanted to tell you something. I know Aunt May
has you covered on the mom front.”
That was strange, if she didn’t just call him or leave him an email. “What is
it then?”
“I saw Logan after school today.” That caught his attention. Peter’s eyes went
wide before he could catch himself and MJ instantly switched to concerned
conspirator mode. “What is going on? I saw him in the parking lot, trying to be
all incognito with that cowboy hat so I ran up and asked him what was up and he
wouldn’t say anything. I told him you’d left already and he just like, got a
little weird and left without saying anything.”
“Weird how?” Peter prayed she couldn’t hear the trepidation in his voice.
“Weird in that he actually looked weirded out. I don’t know. He was kind of
twitchy and it looked really odd on him. Did something happen with you two?”
She cocked her head to the side in suspicion. “There’s no bodies in the
basement, are there?”
“No, why?! Why would you even think that?”
“Because he was so antsy! And he didn’t even like, bat an eyelash when he was
bleeding his guts out behind your washer last time, so I thought it had to be
something big. Peter, what is happening to you?”
He shook his head vigorously, “It’s nothing. Look, I just – he was over last
night asking for a place to stay because he couldn’t be in a hotel or whatever,
and I told him no and he left. That’s it.” It wasn’t right. Not the right
moment at all, he could even hear his Aunt coming down the stairs.
“What? Why did he want to, why would he even come here? Was it serious?”
Aunt May had rejoined them. She thrust a pill into Peter’s hand and froze him
with a penetrating stare. “What’s serious? And who is ‘he’?”
Peter stammered so MJ filled in the blanks. Or tried to. “Well you see— there’s
a guy…at school…“
“This already sounds like baloney. What are you two talking about?”
He was already doomed. In spite of the searching look MJ gave him (they had yet
to define their new boundaries: things it was okay to tell Aunt May now that
she knew, and things it would never ever be okay to tell Aunt May) he let at
least a portion of the truth go. “Wolverine was here last night. You know, the
hairy guy from the X-Men?”
Aunt May looked aghast, putting a hand on her chest. “What? How does he know
where we live?”
“Oh for the love of god.” Peter was thusly dragged into a lengthy explanation
of how he knew Logan, and that yes, Logan had followed him home once long
before he had even told Aunt May he was Spider-Man, and that blotchy stain on
the basement floor of their old house that never came out was from his blood,
which was everywhere and no matter how hard Peter scrubbed it was there to
stay. Needless to say he was in deep trouble by the end of it and MJ patted his
back as he sat with his head in his arms at the kitchen table. His Aunt seethed
as she finished off the pasta and dished it up with a fury that promised a
grounding.
“I cannot believe the gall of it. Especially from you – that is exactly the
point you should have told me, good lord, there was another man in my house and
I never knew! And him, putting all that on you, making you take care of him
when you’re barely taking care of yourself.”
“He had no choice Aunt May.” Peter protested, his arms muffling but not
debilitating the message. “He was going to die.”
“You just finished saying he can’t die! MJ, how much do you want?”
“Oh no, I’m going home now Mrs. Parker, it’s fine. I just wanted to talk to
Pete.” She rubbed his back soothingly. “Sorry Tiger, you’re going to have to
field this one on your own. But to be fair, I did say I knew too, it’s not all
his fault.”
His Aunt sighed. “I know, but one of you should have come to me. All these
things I could have helped you with, for heaven’s sakes, if I wasn’t grey
already I’d swear you two were making me grey. From now own you tell me when
you’re stashing mutants in my house, bleeding or not. No exceptions.”
Peter crumpled in his seat. And the sex thing made yet another problem he was
keeping from the both of them. But this one, he felt, was utterly justified. If
terrifying. And disgusting. With paralyzing horror, he realized that Aunt May
would have touched the cupboard he came on last night to get out the pasta pot.
He honestly wished he could die.
“Bye,” MJ kissed the crown of his head, and started for the door. Peter stayed
at the table, immobile and tongue tied. Images of Logan came up again, and
phantom breath heated his neck, whiskers brushing the sensitive skin there as
he was dusted with kisses. He leaped up and ran after MJ. She was at the door
when he caught her, spinning her around and squeezing her tight.
“Peter?” she whispered, slightly stunned but wrapping her arms around him just
the same.
Peter rubbed his face into her neck. Breathed in the scent of her lilac
shampoo, clenched his eyes shut and dedicated himself to memorizing how she fit
against him, every soft, cozy inch of her and the way her finger tips were
chilly but the rest of her better than sitting by the fire place.“I love you. I
love you so much.”
“Peter?” she asked again. He pulled back to kiss her and she squirmed, leaning
back out of reach. “Sweetie I love you but you’re sick, I’m not kissing you
right now.”
“It’s not that kind of sick.” Maybe he let a little too much slip in those six
words, for now she was searching his eyes with a great deal of worry. “I just
want you to know that. I love you and I always will. No one else.”
“Babe, I know. I feel the same way.” She put a hand to his cheek and looked for
a moment like she might cry. “God, you’re too much sometimes. How did a girl
like me ever get so lucky?”
It wasn’t meant to, but lord did that sting. Peter grimaced. “No, I’m lucky.”
He swooped in and kissed her before she could back away. The guilt soured it
utterly, but he held steadfast, making sure to do it the way she liked it best.
MJ allowed it, leaning into him slightly but soon cutting it short with a
gentle push. “You just want me to get sick so I’ll have to stay home with you.”
Peter grinned weakly. “You got me.”
She grinned and gave him a peck on the cheek. “I’m taking my vitamins tonight,
jerk.” Then she was out the door and waving goodbye, her bag slung over one
shoulder. Peter didn’t close the door until she was long out of sight. When he
returned to the dinner table Aunt May was already eating, but eying him with a
certain smugness.
“When did you grow up to be such a Casanova?”
And for the first time that night Peter smiled with real honesty. He ate his
pasta in silence, and his Aunt did the same.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The advantage of his Aunt believing he was sick was that she let him traipse
upstairs early and would not bother him for the rest of the night. The
deception did sting, he liked being honest with her much more than he liked
lying, but this time it was necessary. Completely. And he needed a fix for this
ASAP, or life as he knew it would be over.
The only thing was that it was such a weird and deeply disturbing issue that he
had no clue where to start. He swung near the Baxter building and the
Triskelion once or twice, pondering his options. Johnny would be at the Baxter
building, and even if he wasn’t he might have told the others what had
happened. Then, passing the Triskelion’s silhouette again, Peter imagined
confessing his woes to Nick Fury.
He immediately turned around and sought out the polar opposite of the best
minds in science.
Peter scratched the back of his head. “It’s not so much a, um, guy problem as
it is…uh…”
Dr. Strange raised a pointed brow and waved his hand along. “Keep going, keep
going, I’m getting a little concerned here.”
“It’s not a – you swear to me, right now, that this never leaves this room.”
Strange sat up in surprise and looked around as if there might be paparazzi
behind a potted plant. “No, seriously, this is beyond the regular masked
vigilante stuff. This is weird and I don’t want anyone ever ever knowing
anything, like not even the slightest—”
“Dear god, just spit it out.”
“—guys keep coming onto me and it’s freaking me out.” That earned him the most
concise ‘what the fuck’ squint he had ever seen and Peter stopped the retort
with an frantic wave of his hands. “No, I mean they are going all hypnotized
and trying to molest me and I have no idea what’s causing it, but it’s an
everyday thing now and I am sincerely scared to leave the house in the morning
and I’m pretty sure I’ve already ruined two people’s lives as well as my own,
and I’m really freaking out here and you have to help me, seriously, it is so
bad you have no idea—”
“Whooooa!” It was Strange’s turn to motion him to shut up. He got out of his
seat and carded a hand through his hair. “Whoa, okay, run that by me again and
tone down the panic for a bit: people are, what, getting hypnotized into
molesting you?”
It took a fair amount of discussion to get the record set straight. He managed
to do so without invoking Johnny’s or Logan’s names, thankfully, and he kept
his lips zipped about having very real sex two (possibly three, his memory was
not so trustworthy there) times in a row. Even so, by the end Strange’s
bewildered gape was something to behold. To his credit he was already on his
feet and scanning a select few musty books he had pulled from his shelves. He
shook his head and gave him no guarantees.
“I’m going to say straight off the bat that this is really unusual. Also, I’m
really sorry. I didn’t say I was sorry, did I? I’m sorry this is happening to
you, because if it were me…” Strange’s eyes bulged and he had to jerk his head
to come back to reality. “I mean if it were girls it would be one thing, but
you know.”
Peter wrinkled his nose. “No, no, that would be so much worse. I’d be defiling
them, I don’t want to ever hurt a girl like that.”
“I thought these guys were defiling you? Or is it the other way around?”
“Well maybe I—“ Peter grimaced and clutched his temples. “Okay, yeah, no matter
who it is there is definitely defiling involved, but it’s like everyone’s
getting defiled because I definitely do not want it and neither do they. It’s
like, I don’t know. Some cosmic joke. But still, if it were girls I’d feel like
a horrible pervert.”
Strange clucked his tongue. “Well, let’s just make sure nothing happens right
now. I like women by the way, but just in case.” Peter glowered and was
thankful Strange couldn’t see it under the mask. Was that supposed to mean he
didn’t?
The sorcerer slapped down a spell book and elegantly turned up his sleeves. “I
just learned this one a little while ago, you’re in luck. You’re going to be
stuck in one spot for a bit, but it’s the best shield you’ll ever have. I won’t
be able to touch you, you can’t touch me, and it will only go poof if you say
the magic word.”
“What’s the magic word?”
“Your pick. When I get there, just yell out something. Anything will do.” He
cracked his knuckles with a wide grin, obviously quite pleased with himself.
“If it’s any kind of magic it just might be able to stop the thing from
happening at all. Much easier to narrow down from there, too, knowing what
spells can counter it. You want to grab a seat?”
“No thanks, too antsy,” Peter said honestly, “And my butt’s been parked in
chairs all day anyway.”
“Whatever.” With a great flourish and waggling fingers, the sorcerer began his
incantation. Peter was pleasantly surprised by how much English was actually
involved. The air around him fizzled, even sparked once. He flinched and
ducked, not sure if the tiny flash of flames was corporeal and unwilling to
find out. “-and thy undoing shall be…”
The spell casting paused. Peter stared for a moment before he realized his turn
had come. “Poptarts!” he blurted, then instantly regretted it. Strange popped
one eye open in judgment. Peter stared at the ground. “…and by the power of
Poptarts, it shall be done.” He clapped his hands and for a split second Peter
was enveloped entirely with blinding white light, then everything went back to
normal. Strange gave him a bemused smile as he sauntered over, rapping on the
air in front of Peter. It shimmered where he struck it and sent out feathery
ripples, tiny striations in the color like spun sugar, which then dissipated
within seconds.
“You hungry, Spider-Man?”
“A little. Yeah.”
“Should have asked for something before I cast the spell. I think I have some
strawberry ones in the kitchen.”
Peter’s stomach rumbled and he groaned. “Don’t tease me now.”
The sorcerer chuckled and resumed his search. “Hang tight. If I find anything
I’m going to need to cast on you, otherwise I would have sent you home ages
ago.”
It did take time. Dr. Strange was kind enough to put the TV on so Peter didn’t
get bored out of his skull, even if the only decent thing on was reruns of
Friends. He had stopped paying attention to the man some time ago, sick of
watching his face for any clues as to what he was reading, whether any answers
were hidden in those ancient pages. As the books began to build a tower on the
table his confidence withered.
Somewhere during Ross bursting in on Chandler in London (the third episode so
far tonight, and Peter was eying up the telltale lumps in the bed sheets where
Monica would be), he noticed the absence of noise outside the television. Peter
turned to find Strange watching him, hunched over a book but not touching the
pages.
“Hey. Say it.”
“You found something?” Peter said hopefully. He elevated to tip toes and tried
to suss out the writing in the book.
“Just say the word.” Strange smiled slowly. “Come on.”
Peter squinted harder. “That guy in the picture has his skin inside out. No
way.”
“Don’t worry about it, just say the word baby. I won’t bite.”
That erased all ambiguity. Peter’s eyes snapped to the sorcerer’s and saw the
way the lids had fallen, just enough that the stare turned dark and secretive.
Color had risen to his cheeks too, and the smile was altogether unholy. He was
gripping the table with white knuckles. And there, so subtly but not beyond
perception now, was the trickle of heat bathing Peter’s skin.
“No,” he shot out quickly. He turned his head both ways. There were windows,
plus the door to the rest of the house. Technically he could make a break for
it. But this wasn’t a pair of mundane twerps from work. This was a guy who
fought demons for a living. Icky magical things that Peter didn’t understand
and he knew for a fact that he stood no chance against. If he wanted to,
Strange could probably zap him on the spot the moment he broke the spell, and
then where would he be?
“Don’t do that.” Strange prowled around the table, eyes locked on Peter. Any
part of Peter. He blushed when it belatedly occurred to him that spandex was a
terrible idea considering his ‘condition’. “Say it. We can have a lot of fun,
you know. I’ll guarantee it.”
Peter was torn, mute and motionless but flushed all over, and twitching with
the need for touch. He could say it so easily and they could just kiss, or
something, and then he could leave. Just one little kiss, that wouldn’t hurt?
That would feel so good.
He knew he was already too close to gone when he caught himself leering at the
man’s lips and leaning forward, outstretched fingers brushing the glassy
barrier. He had forgotten it was there for a moment, but the sudden stop gave
him enough reminder to focus on thinking rationally. It was essential that he
leave before anything happened. Even though he could spot a bulge in the man’s
pants he managed to choke out a simple but firm, “No. I can’t.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, kid!” Dr. Strange slammed his fist on the table and
snatched his groin with a salacious moan. “Just say the fucking word already,
fuck fuck fuck you’re so fucking cute, I just wanna—“ And just like that his
pants were down to his knees. Peter was hypnotized by the sight of his dick,
angry puce from the strain of his erection and jutting out from a thick patch
of black hair, perpendicular as a knife in the wall. He stroked it as he
stumbled closer to lean against the barrier, one arm pillowing his forehead as
it garnered a new sheen of sweat. Peter swallowed and looked down to where he
worked with the pace of a jackhammer at his dick, which was pointed squarely at
him. “—come all over your face, come on, baby, please, just suck me off, okay?
Fucking say the word and suck my dick, baby, I wanna feel you. I wanna hold
you.”
He moaned and slapped the barrier. Nothing but a mild ringing and white ripples
in the air came of it, and Strange’s eyes grew even more manic. “Fuuuuck…” He
leaned against it again and kept at it. He heaved like an animal, dark eyes
fixed on the whites of Peter’s mask when they weren’t fluttering closed in
ecstasy. Peter was stuck in his shadow. The man was effectively draped over him
in midair. The heat was making him twitch, putting his own dick in dire straits
as it pushed up against the spandex of his suit. The rest of him trembled,
perspired, and the need to shirk every ounce of clothing was unbearable. He
wanted to touch Strange. He wanted to obey.
But enough of him didn’t. The barrier might not be stopping things up
completely, but Peter was still a thinking, moral human being and not a
brainless sex zombie. Just that tiny little protest, that infinitesimal ounce
of hesitance kept him from saying the magic word and latching onto Strange’s
cock mouth first. He was salivating thinking about it: and precisely because he
was salivating he made himself skitter back a step. The rear of the barrier met
his shoulders with a clunk. Strange whimpered, pawed at the invisible shield
and kept masturbating like he might die if he stopped.
Cringing inside, Peter reached down to grab himself too. It was too hard to be
in there, to keep from nixing the spell when he was so stiff he might cry. His
hand dipped into his spandex and he yanked at himself too.
“Oh yeah, baby, lemme see,” Strange cooed, rubbing his forehead against the
block so that shimmering white ripples sprouted and died around it. “God,
you’re pretty. Pull it out baby and let me see.”
Peter covered his eyes and kept to himself. He was loud about it, gasping and
groaning and muttering utter nonsense to himself as he worked a familiar (if
fervent) rhythm. Strange whispered encouragement between pleas, the words
seeming to miss his ears and slide and skip along his skin instead, like the
fingers Peter imagined would be there. His knees wobbled once and he had to
reposition himself, step a hair wider and push his body against the pretend
wall like a truss. He bit his lip as he switched to thrusting, holding his hand
mostly still as he strained to picture MJ. Only MJ, having sex with her like he
always fantasized before now and not Strange shoving in from behind, getting
filled up to the brim and pushed at, slick skin and muscle rubbing his back as
he was bent over and clutched tight, kisses on his neck so good and nibbles on
his ear.
Peter panted ravenously. He was losing it, Mary Jane fluttering out of his mind
and he pressed a hand against the barrier where the tip of Strange’s cock
threatened to pierce it. “…Poptarts..”
And just like that he was snatched up and carted backwards, his mask wrenched
up around his nose so that Strange’s mouth could find his, no matter how much
of a struggle it was to keep attached as they found their way to the chaise
lounge. Peter tripped onto it and Strange nearly crushed him tumbling after.
Peter came. Hard.
He couldn’t be sure what had sparked it – the wait, the power of the fantasy
itself, or even having the man collapse on top of him – but he rode it out,
clutching at Strange’s shoulders and hollering as his legs jittered. The whole
place went deadly quiet soon after.
Strange hovered above him. He was conscious, but blinking as if coming out from
a deep sleep. His cock was still sheltered in the gap between Peter’s thighs,
nestled snug against the left. He furrowed his brow and shook his head like a
dog drying off. He even grunted like one.
“I…oh.” He squeezed his eyes shut and popped them open, and all lethargy was
gone. With a shuddering heartbeat Peter swore he could hear, Strange examined
the boy beneath him from sweat ridden mask and freshly bitten lips to the
disheveled suit, pants slung low around his hips and stained where Peter had
come inside them. He paled at the sight of his own erection further down. “Oh.”
Peter was lucid now too, and shaking for reasons that had nothing to do with
lust. “You didn’t!” He pushed him up but tried to keep it gentle, because
shoving him across the room like he wanted to was not going to help matters one
iota. “You didn’t touch me, the spell held! I swear, it just – I just – we
didn’t do anything. It held until now, Dr. Strange, you didn’t do anything! I
didn’t do anything!”
The man scrambled off of him and nearly keeled straight over. He’d forgotten
his pants were hanging around his knees and had to catch himself on a
bookshelf. His cheeks went pallid white as he averted his eyes and tried to
resuscitate his dignity, tugging up the jeans and fumbling to tuck himself in.
He was still painfully hard and Peter did his best to pretend he couldn’t see
that. When he looked up again his expression had wrinkled with a thinly
concealed agony. “Well,” he choked out. He took a pause that could have spanned
an hour. “I see.”
Peter rolled off the couch and turned his back. As he readjusted his mask and
costume he grappled for what to do next. He wanted a cure, for certain. Yet
there were some boundaries that should not be crossed. It hadn’t taken long for
him and Logan to have a second go, Peter thought with a cold shiver.
“Do you need me here for—“
“I don’t know.” Strange swallowed thickly and rustled about. The soft slide of
books on shelves meant he had turned around too, no more willing to look at
Peter than Peter was to him. “I don’t…think I can help you.”
The silence quivered all around them. “Okay,” Peter said flatly.
“It’s not that – honestly, I just – I’ve never heard of anything like this.
It’s not how magic works. Sex spells, or spirits. I’ve read – and there’s no
real motive, I can’t think of how this would benefit anyone to do this to you –
sorry, I can look, but. No.”
Peter covered his eyes. He had to count to three. One, two… “I’m gonna go.”
“Yes. Please.”
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
William Golding was a hack. If one of the so called greatest writers in history
couldn’t hold his attention for more than two seconds in his hour of need, then
he was not worth the time it took to read about a bunch of dumb kids getting
duped by a psychopathic choirboy and his penchant for pig killing. Peter tossed
Lord of the Flies to the floor in disgust and decided that just this once, he
was going to wiki it. He pulled his bedding around him closer and sat like a
frog on a log, just a useless lump of boy and sheets.
It was two days later. He had sentenced himself to solitary confinement, but
the weekend was drawing to a close and school tomorrow meant that he would have
to deal with living, breathing people. Dr. Strange had become a nightmare that
required no sleep. Peter winced as he pictured his dick again, furious purple
with the strain of his erection and how fast he had been pumping it, the way
the skin folded over the tip when he pushed up. With a groan he threw himself
onto the pillows and beat them soundly.
“Gay gay go away!” He chanted petulantly. That did nothing to stop the
haunting, but Peter kept muttering angrily and pounding the pillows regardless.
He was throwing a fit and he did not care how childish it was.
The phone rang downstairs. Soon he heard his Aunt’s footsteps trotting up, and
a knock on the door. “Peter? It’s for you. It’s a woman from the Bugle.”
Oh boy.
With no more enthusiasm than he gave to the book on the ground, Peter stomped
over and took the phone from a crack in the door. He prayed this was not a
friendly request to clear out his desk. He hadn’t heard word about the
aftermath of the other day yet.
“Hello?”
“Peter? It’s Betty.” His enthusiasm dropped even further. “Hey, sorry to hear
you’re still sick, but I need to ask you something.”
“Yeah?” He was being rude. He felt he was entitled to it, crappy week that he
was having and all.
Life, week, same difference.
“Listen, I talked to Ben the other day. He’s still here, but Jameson threatened
to fire him.”
Peter’s heart sank. The rest of him followed, drifting the floor with his back
soundly against the door. “Oh my god, you’re joking.”
“No, I’m not. We all think he’ll cool down in a couple days, but really, I just
wanted to warn you for when you do come back in. Ben’s going to steer clear of
you until it all blows over. What happened there, anyway?”
“Nothing. Nothing happened, Jameson just saw us talking and blew it totally out
of proportion.”
“But why would he be so pissed about you talking? Oh – pardon my French –“
“I am fluent in French, Betty, it’s fine,” Peter rolled his eyes and clutched
his forehead. “Are you going to spread it around or can I actually—“
“Spread what around? Peter, for god’s sake, I’ve been working with Ben for
years, I would not jeopardize his career for five minutes of office fame. Or
yours. What do you take me for? I’m concerned about a friend.”
Peter winced. She had a point. He needed to back off. They might not be best
buddies, but Betty Brant of all people had never done him wrong. “Sorry. I’m
just a little stressed.”
“That’s fine. Tell me what happened.”
“I think Jameson might have thought that Ben was…uh, hitting on me. If you can
buy that.”
“What? In what universe?!”
“I know, right?” He licked his lips and tried for some damage control. “Listen,
I’m not positive that’s what it is but that’s the only thing I could come up
with that would explain him blowing up like that. Please, Betty, do not repeat
this to anyone.”
“Never. No one would believe me, even if I wanted to. Ben, hitting on you? Man,
Jameson’s going loopy.” She clucked her tongue. “Anyway, I just wanted to make
sure that neither of you were going to be under fire in the future, because he
wasn’t telling me a thing. Probably embarrassed, poor guy. Get better soon.”
She hung up and Peter breathed a sigh of relief.
He slinked down the stairs with stones in his gut, placing the phone back on
the receiver with the graveness of a death row putting down the fork on his
last meal. Then he skulked into the living room and flopped over the arm of the
couch, face down, beside his Aunt, who was flipping through channels for
something decent to watch. She smiled at his ungainly form, draped beside her
like old laundry.
“Hey there, little soldier.” She rubbed his back. “Still feeling yucky?”
“I don’t want to do homework,” he confessed to the seat cushion.
She laughed and tugged on his arm. He scrambled his way onto the couch proper,
his head in his Aunt’s lap as she traced patterns through his hair. “Wanna
watch a movie, then?”
“Sure.”
She flipped through the options and settled on some half-finished action flick
(for his sake, he knew, because she thought even the best action films were
schlock), continuing to stroke his hair until Peter felt he might actually fall
asleep. Then, as if it had laid in wait, Dr. Strange’s dick flashed in his mind
again and he was gritting his teeth.
“Aunt May?”
“Hmm?”
“If things get bad...”
“Peter, what on earth are you talking about?” She leaned forward to try to
catch his eye.
“I mean if things get bad, really bad, then, will you...if it ever comes to a
point where it’s bad to be around me –”
“Peter.” She brushed more of his hair away and exposed his brow. “You’re stuck
with me. We’re family, you don’t get to leave me behind.”
“Even if I – even if I do something really awful?”
“Baby, you’re the best person I know. You don’t have an awful bone in your
body.”
He didn’t mean to let it happen, but he felt a tear squeeze out. He tried to
roll over to hide it but his Aunt caught him before he could. “Oh, sweetheart,
come here.”
She wrestled him into a hug and he cried on her shoulder, curled up around her
like a child. She rubbed his back and told him that she loved him, even if he
had to be Spider-Man, even if the Bugle blamed him for everything and everyone
else did too. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that wasn’t even close to
the problem.
***** Ten Minutes of House Arrest *****
Chapter Summary
     Help is finally on the way, but a strange new development puts a snag
     in the plan and lands Peter in a tighter spot than before.
The next day he was still afraid, but desperation gnawed at him around the
edges and overpowered the cowardly urge to hide in his basement. He went to
school again in spite of his misgivings. Though he still had some luck left in
him, successfully dodging every man and boy with a minimum three foot radius,
he could not shake the terrible feeling that he was a ticking time bomb.
Eventually, someone would catch him off guard, or he would lose himself before
he could stop, and if it was in the middle of gym class when everyone was in
their soggy shorts and jerseys Peter might hurl himself into the nearest open
flame he could find. When the bell rang he wasted not a moment. He bid goodbye
to a thoroughly confused MJ (he either needed an air tight alibi or the most
sympathetic way of explaining this possible, and soon) and swung off to look
for the most capable woman he knew for the job.
Except the Baxter Building was looking mighty devoid of life as he swung by and
when he tried Sue on his cell phone, he went to voicemail. Likewise for Johnny,
but then he expected no less.
So Peter, hating himself, his life, and dreading how tomorrow might ruin him if
he didn’t get a fix today, trudged his sorry carcass to the last place he
wanted to go. The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents regarded him impassively as he soared
down onto the dock of the Triskelion, spread his arms wide, and declared, “I
demand to speak with the Wasp!”
Naturally he found himself navel gazing in front of Tony Stark and Nick Fury
instead.
“She’s on a date?”
Tony, being rudely interrupted in the middle of a drink for this, took a stony-
eyed sip of his scotch and said, “Occupational hazard of being an attractive
woman. How can we help you?”
Peter shot him a peevish look, but the effort was negated by his mask. “Is
there literally anyone else here who is not a man?”
“Well there is—“
Nick intercepted Tony without a beat. “What the hell kind of a question is
that?”
“Okay, okay, let me lay it out for you,” Peter said hastily, putting his hands
up in surrender. “You see—“
“And why are you standing thirty feet away?”
It was a very large room. Some sort of techno-spy-computer lair, that spanned
out like a limousine beyond its own credibility. It was curiously absent of
peons to press the blinking buttons, but Nick and Tony had been hovering over
the largest screen at the apex when he entered and quickly terminated the
program before he could see it. Peter, on the other hand, hadn’t moved more
than a foot away from the door he had been shown through, cleanly opposite the
two men.
He shuffled his feet on the spot. “Uh…”
“Why do you need to see a woman?” Tony mused. “This isn’t some girl trouble, is
it?”
“No! God!” Peter spluttered. “Why would I come to a super prison for that?!”
Nick Fury took a step forward and Peter struggled against the urge to plaster
himself to the wall. “You are at a super prison, making stupid requests and
getting cagey about it. Forgive us for making a stupid guess as to why.”
It was a lost cause. He was calling it. Maybe if Logan was still in New York he
could convince Aunt May to road trip him out to Westchester. With the X-Men he
might find at least a sliver of sympathy. “Screw this, I’m going home. This was
a terrible mistake.”
“Parker, if you are going to waste my time—“
“I’m going!” he shot back irritably, jabbing at the panel beside the door. Just
as it hissed to life and slid a crack open, a beep from behind forced it closed
the next instant. Remotes for the doors, how quaint. Livid stomping followed
and Peter panicked. “Don’t!”
The pair were caught in headlights as Peter flipped sky high, landing with a
metallic twang on the roof and scuttling into the corner. He pressed a hand to
his cheek to test for heat and failed to come down from hyperventilation.
Locked in. They were locking him inside here. Talk about the epitome of worst
case scenario.
Tony had set down the tumbler, unfinished, in his disbelief. Nick regarded him
with genuine confusion, craning his neck to watch him huddle against the roof
and prod his face. “Parker?”
“I need to go!” he insisted. He didn’t feel anything yet, but that gave no
guarantees. Peter would rather move to Latveria than get molested by either
man. “Please, just let me out of here. I’ll grab Janet another time. Okay?”
“This is…something dangerous,” Tony concluded, drawing up to Nick’s side. “Am I
right?”
Peter didn’t answer. Seconds ticked by without a word and Nick’s patience
crumbled all over again.
“Chrissakes, Parker, what is going on with you?”
“It’s just…” He lost the words. Was he really expected to explain himself like
this? “There’s…I think I’m getting a new power and it’s not a good one.”
The room was quiet. Tony brushed at the fine hairs of his goatee while Nick
remained as still as stone. Peter fidgeted.
“And you’re worried for our safety?” Tony gestured with a loopy wave to Peter’s
perch. “Is that what the panic’s about?”
“Kind of,” came his shriveled reply.
“Is it life threatening?” was Nick’s question, and Peter shook his head no.
“Then can we talk this out on the floor like civilized people?”
He retreated further. “I’d rather not.” When he saw the scowl flood back into
Nick’s expression he amended his statement. “I would much rather stay out of
arm’s reach, okay? And that is all I am telling you until we get some kind of
competent lady in here to take a look at things. Does Sue Storm answer your
calls? Because she’s not taking mine.”
“Then it only affects men?” Tony pressed on.
Peter hesitated, weighing his options to the foreboding tick of an imaginary
Jeopardy clock. It was a methodical crawl down to the floor, particularly when
his back was to the wall and he had to keep a sharp eye on both of the men.
Nick looked fine, and Tony looked as unflappable as ever. Peter’s gaze lingered
on him, shielded by the mask, and he wet his newly parched lips. “Well, yeah.
So far. Can we please just respect the privacy I so very desire to have and let
me tootle on out the door?”
“Let me put it this way,” Nick said, crossing his arms, “If you were in my
shoes, would you let a kid who was cowering in the rafters over what he might
do to two people go back to a city with over eight million in it?”
“It sounds so menacing when you say it like that.” Peter was cringing, though
he privately agreed.
A peal of laughter curbed the tension. Tony didn’t so much as cover his mouth
or turn away, which had Nick giving him a cock-eyed look and Peter growing a
smile of his own in secret. “Menacing. Sorry. If I had to pick someone to fit
that bill you’d be at the bottom of the list.” He sauntered forward and
wriggled Peter playfully by the shoulder. “I know you pack a wallop, kid, but I
think we can handle whatever you dish out.”
“Uh huh?” Peter said, craning his neck to look Tony square in the eyes. They
were such a striking shade of blue. Tony smiled, as if sensing that Peter was
mirroring him beneath the spandex, then fished around the neck for the edge to
check. His other hand went to Peter’s hip, thumbing the curve of the bone.
“Stark!”
And quite suddenly Nick Fury was there, gripping Peter by the bicep and tucking
him into his chest as Tony toppled to the ground with a yelp. He pressed his
palm to left cheek, which throbbed bright right from the memory of blunt
knuckles on bone. Nick practically growling at the downed man. Peter gasped and
shook his head, clearing it by force.
“See? See this is what I’m – let go of me! It’ll get you next!” Peter wrestled
away and pinned himself to the wall, scuttling upwards all over again. Nick let
him go, still looming over Tony as he collected his wits and dignity on the
floor.
Tony blinked and coughed, chugging upright like an ancient diesel machine and
rubbing his cheek with a puzzled grimace. Offended too, but mostly puzzled.
“The face? The face, Nick? ” He cast a bleary glance at Peter and his eyes
blazed wide. Peter skittered ever closer to the roof.
Fury, on the other hand, was spitting mad. “You walked over and started
fondling him, you degenerate! What were you thinking?!”
The words hit Tony at half speed. “I did.” It was part question still, but Tony
was coming to. “Oh dear god, I did, didn’t I? That’s what this is? Parker?”
He hadn’t ripped his gaze off Peter yet. Nick joined him, still livid but
somehow guarding something deeper. There was a way that his expression
tightened that twisted Peter’s gut with something much crueler than
embarrassment. Unwilling to divulge the details (and likely unable, considering
how his throat had suddenly been entrapped in a steel vice) Peter simply
nodded. A little confirmation, followed by a double check of the heat in his
cheeks. He could feel the blood pounding in and around his palm, but it was
dying. Why was this stupid thing always so erratic?
It took a moment for the men to process it all. Tony rubbed at his cheek some
more, but otherwise seemed too ashamed to try getting on his feet. Peter
couldn’t remember seeing him look this unsettled before. Nick was
uncharacteristically at a loss too. They looked at one another again.
“You ever hear of anything like this?” Nick rumbled finally. Tony shook his
head in the negative.
“Not against anyone’s will, I don’t think. There’s a mutant in Estonia who
emits an aphrodisiac, but she can pick and choose how she uses it. There’s that
girl in the Brotherhood too, but I think she’s just got straight hypnosis.
Nothing of this sort. I had no idea what I was doing until you shouted at me.
Or rather I knew I was doing it, but I didn’t think twice, Nick. Nothing
strange about it registered with me at all.”
Peter nodded meekly. “Yeah, that’s what happens to me too.”
Tony struggled to his feet, brushing the slacks free of crinkles and pulling
his shirt back into proper alignment. Dapper once more. “I’m so sorry, Peter. I
would never. I would never touch you.”
Now Peter felt like he was the one who got slammed to the floor. He gulped down
the lump in his throat. “Yeah I know.”
Nick pierced him with his stare. “And it’s not the same for everyone, is it?”
“No.”
“I touched you and nothing happened. You couldn’t feel anything from me, could
you?”
“Not like…no.” Peter struggled to maintain eye contact. Nick Fury was literally
the last person on Earth he wanted to be discussing this with. (Well maybe not
the last. That coveted spot would always be saved for Wilson Fisk.) “You and
Jameson and some of my teachers. It’s like some guys are just going into guard
dog mode. Jameson literally threatened to fire someone for talking to me the
other day.”
The extra thread of tension withered from Nick’s face. The anger had abated
too, now that Tony was being civil and making a point of standing as opposite
Peter as possible. “Then you can trust me with this. No offense, Tony.”
“None taken.”
“And my apologies for knocking you down. That crossed the line.”
“No, thank you Nick. I’m glad you did it.”
Stoic, Nick Fury clapped his hand on his chin and considered their options.
“But I do agree this should keep quiet. If I ask you to handle samples?”
A curt nod followed the request. “Done. I think I can control myself around a
petri dish, if that’s what you’re asking.” Peter blushed beet red. Tony noticed
and immediately set his gaze on the door. “Though I should leave you two to it.
Don’t think it’s a good idea for me to stick around right now. We’ll fix this,
kiddo. I promise.” With that, Tony made an impossibly dignified exit. Peter
stared sadly after him. As nice as he was being about it, Peter suspected that
he had just lost a zillion points of respect in Tony Stark’s eyes.
Nick remained with a surly, stubborn frown. He backed up to take a pensive seat
on the edge of a counter. Peter crossed his arms and waited. He was fairly sure
the distance was to make him feel safer, but he still wanted to bolt. Or crawl
into a hole and die. Janet just had to pick today to have a hot date.
“Peter, who else tried to touch you?”
“Oh my god.” Peter buried his face in his hands.
“I am being serious.”
“You’re making this sound like an after school special!” Nick stood his ground,
immobile save for crossing his arms. Peter wondered if this was part of the
weird pheromone thing or just Nick Fury, director of SHEILD, covering all bases
and closing all investigations. Neither one was particularly appealing. “Are
you going to go after them?”
He narrowed his eye. “Their names?”
“It wasn’t their fault,” Peter pleaded. “Come on, let’s just pretend this is
square one, okay?”
“Don’t dodge. Were any of them non-human?”
“Nick, it does not matter! End of story!”
“Kid, if they did it once they’ll probably be twice as susceptible the next
time they see you. I don’t want to see this ruin you.” Sensing defiance he
sighed, raising a hand to halt all protests. “I know you’ve got this idea in
your head already about how this is going to hurt people, how you’re a danger
to everyone, all that crap. But kid, this is a danger to you first. Don’t
argue.” Peter shut his mouth with a bitter click and gave him a glare. “Did it
ever occur to you that this means anyone could take advantage of you?”
He almost retorted that no, none of the victims so far would ever dream of it.
Not in a million years. But his stomach did another somersault as he remembered
the men from the elevator. Cold eyed and yanking him around like a rag doll.
They might have been under his influence, but there was a seedy thread to every
word, every touch. Logan had been rough as well, but he had still been Logan.
There was some kind of heart in it, some consideration for Peter. He never made
him feel cheap. Like a whore, came the ugly thought, and Peter went bitterly
quiet.
Nick took his silence as a yes. “And it’s not just blackmail. It could be one
of the jackasses you fight regularly, they’d take this as an easy way to get
back at you. Even kill you, if they’ve got you in a vulnerable position. It
could be someone who realizes you can’t say no, and they’ll come looking for
you whenever they feel like it. Not everyone is going to be a victim. Don’t
believe it for a second. You think your Aunt would put up with you running
around like this?”
“Oh, that’s so unfair! You can’t tell her!”
“I won’t. But you will.” Nick said firmly. “You tell her what’s happening to
you and who it happened with because you’re clearly not telling me, and you are
hanging up the mask for a week. Play hooky from school, we’ll get you a
doctor’s note.”
Peter groused from atop the wall, but he had to admit that Nick was right. Time
off hiding in a hole was about the only way he was going to make it through
this without any further scrapes. Good code word, that. From now on it was
getting into scrapes, not getting banged by older men. He wouldn’t want to
scare off future buyers when he finally penned his bestselling autobiography.
With another wordless promise in his pocket, Nick deigned to remove himself
from the desk and motion Peter towards the door. “A week. Probably less if
Stark’s handling it. But I’m not budging on this. Keep your nose out of
everything for just one week. Get a book or watch the X-Files again, whatever
the hell it is you do when you’re not making my job harder than it already is.”
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Nick Fury had taken a blood sample without delay and sent him by web, warning
him not to stray or follow up any heists he might see on the way home, because
the agents tailing him had license to knock him out with tranquilizers. That
was about the most frightening thing he had heard all week, but Peter
understood the precautions. He couldn’t contain his new power, so they would
have to contain him. He also had Nick’s solemn word that every last one of the
agents on his case was a woman. There would be surveillance at his home for the
entirety of the testing period and agents were settling into place as they
spoke.
And for that very reason, Peter was so grateful that Nick had given up on the
idea of him becoming the next super villain. He was pretty sure he would be
rotting in a cell before he could draw up the first blueprint of his spider-
doomsday machine.
Though, he thought with further unease, Nick Fury probably had his house bugged
by the time he chugged his way into Queens. He couldn’t spot anything amiss as
he peeled off the costume and switched back to normalcy, but that didn’t rule
out the possibility one bit.
Aunt May wasn’t home yet. Bitterly he hobbled into the kitchen, snagged a
yogurt from the fridge and chugged it straight from the cup. How was he going
to explain any of this to his Aunt? Best case scenario, she’d buy a shotgun and
hunt down everyone who had ever so much as shook his hand. At worst, Peter
would get shipped off to a convent and spend the rest of his life singing hymns
with nuns. Maybe both. “I’m so boned.”
“Speaking of being boned…”
Peter shrieked in the least manly way possible and chucked the empty yogurt cup
at the figure darkening his doorway. It screeched back in a twin frequency,
slapping it into the wall with a resounding crack. Only then did he realize who
it was.
“Jessica?” He stared wordlessly at his clone. She was peeking around the corner
like a child stalking Santa Claus, still in her costume with her mask hanging
loose around her neck. She had cookie crumbs on her face, which meant that she
had been there long enough to dip into his snack stash.
This was the second time in this week alone that someone had sneaked into his
house. So much for the Nick Fury guarantee on security.
“Hey you.” She grinned weakly as she wiped her face and gestured at the
kitchen. “You guys really switched up the decorating scheme when you moved,
didn’t you?”
“What are you doing in my house?”
“Um.” She grinned again, broad and toothy even as her eyes darted around the
place with Olympic speed. She couldn’t stop wringing her hands. “It’s kind of a
big thing. I know I said I wouldn’t bother you again—”
“And then you broke into my house.”
“—right, and I will leave in a second, I promise, but I’ve been having
technical difficulties lately, and I was wondering if it was, um, a me thing,
or like a me-being-you thing, or what, I don’t know, so I just wanted to talk
for a second if you can spare me the time, and it’s not like you have a special
spider signal I could shine on the sky, so here I am.”
Peter did not respond immediately. At least three light bulbs popped on at
once, the irritation in his expression smoothing out to worry. “Oh my god. You
too?”
“Is the ‘you too’ you’re referring to the ‘you too’ I am thinking of?” Jessica
pushed her way further into the room, treading the floor as if there were
landmines under the tiles.
“It totally is the ‘you too’ you’re thinking of if it’s got anything to do with
–“
“—Being totally ambushed by all these—“
“—it’s completely ridiculous, but you literally cannot stop it—“
“—and they’re just as funked up as you are and you just cannot get away—“
“—and the next thing you know you’re just like, awake and horribly aware—“
“—of the fact that you’ve pretty much just ruined their lives?”
“And ours.”
“Yes.”
By this time they had drawn so close together they were whispering with all the
fervor and secrecy of evil viziers plotting to overthrow the sultan. (Aladdin
had been on the family channel a lot lately.) Or they would have been, had
their faces not been drawn with such comical expressions of terror,
gratefulness and urgency and their gestures not flown wild through the thin air
between them.
“Who?” Peter asked, setting his hands on her shoulders. “Is it anyone
dangerous?”
“Uh. No. Nope, no danger. I’ve been hiding away ever since I figured out what
was happening. I’ve been ordering so much takeout pizza and Chinese, it’s
insane. But one – oh man, don’t be mad.” She crumpled into herself and shot a
shifty look at the window before hissing, “Daredevil.”
“What?!” Peter’s jaw dropped in horror. She waved her hands wildly and shushed
him.
“No! No it’s cool, man, turns out he’s blind, he’ll never find me! He doesn’t
even know there’s a Spider-Woman!”
“Yeah, but every other one of his senses is like, eagle tier crazy! He found me
at my school once just by standing in a crowd of hundreds of kids and listening
really hard!”
That took all the wind out of her sails. She buried her face in her hands and
groaned deeply. “Oh no…”
The way her face fell at the news sparked a thought. A terrible one. Peter
gripped her by the shoulders, panic drained from him for graver tones. “Jess,
if you’re sleeping with guys…”
“Oh my god, no. You think that didn’t occur to me? I blew all my bank on like
ten different things trying to make sure nothing happened. Dude, you don’t want
to know the kinds of stuff girls have to do to stop babies from getting made.”
“Can’t you just get the pill?”
She gave a hollow laugh. “You have to have an identity to get prescriptions,
smarty-pants.”
“Right,” he said, the word a sour taste in his mouth. This was dangerous. More
dangerous than what happened to him. She groaned again and let her forehead
collided with an ungainly thump on his shoulder. Unsure and casting his eyes
about for signs of cameras, Peter patted her hair. “Well. If it makes you feel
any better, mine was Logan.”
She rose again, brutally shocked. “No!”
“Yes.” Peter hung his head and scratched his nose. “And Dr. Strange, but that
didn’t go all the way. We just did a two man circle jerk because he had put up
this barrier thing? It was really sad when you think about it.”
Her hands were covering her mouth and she shook her head, eyes perfectly round
and unmoving from his. “Dude, I am so, so sorry. Logan must have smelled so
bad.”
“Well, I didn’t notice at the time.”
“Still though, it’s Logan!”
“Yes. It was Logan.” Peter gnawed his lip and squeezed her shoulders. “Listen,
Jess, I just got back from the Triskelion, and Nick Fury and Tony Stark were
both there—“
Oddly enough, she stopped fidgeting entirely. Her gaze turned from deer in
headlights to deer eying up the road before leaping. “Did you tell them
anything?”
“I had to. I didn’t even really mean to, I was looking for the Wasp but they
were the only ones there. They’re going to work on a cure, Jess.”
“For you,” she said coldly. “They’re going to work on a cure for you.”
“No, we’ll explain, we just need to get an extra batch when they get it right.
I’m under surveillance right now too, they’ll make sure that we’re completely
safe—“
“Excuse you?!” she barked. The next instant there was air where smooth spandex
and skin had been, and Jessica was covertly peering out the windows. Having
spotted something that Peter craned over her shoulder to see, she whipped
around like a hurricane. “Oh my god, you – you dick! You let me come in here
and run my mouth while you were under surveillance?!”
“Jess, they are here to help, okay?” Peter tried to grasp her again but she
slapped his hand away and darted away from the windows, crouching near the
cupboards.
“There you go again! You you you, they’re all about helping you! You’re the
real person! You have your name on a birth certificate and you have a freaking
family and a school! Dude, I go missing, who’s going to know? I’m the big
freakazoid here, Peter, I was made in a lab! Last time I checked, they were
pretty keen on unmaking me.”
“No they wouldn’t!”
“Or just locking me up so they can study me, or something! Anything, come on,
did you not even once think about what was going to happen to me?! I’d be their
number one chance to dissect you with zero consequences! You idiot!”
She was suddenly gunning up the stairs. Peter wasted no time in giving chase,
tugging her arm at the top landing with a fierce grunt. “Don’t go!”
“I have to! You’ve just Lando’d me, man!”
Peter squawked. The lowest of low blows had been dealt. “I did no such thing!”
In the ruckus, he nearly missed it. The creak of the door and the faintest
buzz, drawing his attention down below. Jessica felt it too, turning in time
with him as they both spotted the two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents poised at the bottom
stair. Both had their guns trained, one on each of their chests.
“Jessica Drew?” one called out, honey soft. “Come down. We don’t want to harm
you.”
Jessica gawked, looked at Peter, then jabbed a finger at his nose and shouted,
“LANDO’D.”
He swatted it away. “Screw you, I did not Lando you! If anything I’m Han in
carbonite, it’s not my fault you came here looking for me!”
“Both of you, come down here. Jessica, there’s no need to be afraid.” The honey
voiced one lowered her gun, but as it was the one trained on Peter that did
little to ease his clone’s nerves. “He’s not lying. We’ll help you. If you
leave, you’re putting yourself in—“
Thwip.
Organic webbing. He had forgotten she could do that with her little icky glands
under her fingernails. But the agents, surprisingly more competent than most
people who worked at S.H.E.I.L.D., deftly dodged it and sent back fire with a
small, tinny puff. A dart embedded itself in the wall where Jessica’s arm had
been. She was running again.
“No no no!” Peter gave chase, tackling her down on the hallway carpet. She
shreiked and punched him in the gut.
“Traitor!”
“You’re going to get hurt out there!” Peter snapped, trying to catch her arms
to stop the onslaught. Jessica smartly flipped them over and pinned his hands
down, straddling his waist.
“No, you’re going to get hurt! Didn’t the last time teach you anything? They’ll
use this against you, man! You just wait and see! They’ll wait for an excuse
and then we’ll freaking see!”
More soft puffs of air hailed the pursuit. Jessica rolled to the side and Peter
nearly took one in the neck for it, had his spider senses failed him. Both were
clinging to walls, one on each side of the hall. Jessica broke first but the
silent agent – a sturdily built woman with an uncommonly delicate face –
snatched her by the arm and pulled some martial arts magic that had Jessica
flat on her back. His clone wheezed.
“Don’t hurt her!” Peter protested. The honey voiced agent cocked a gun behind
him.
“We won’t.”
But the silent one was staring oddly down at Jessica as she sputtered under her
foot, wild eyed at the gun being brandished nearby. Yet Jessica’s eyes rolled
back to the agent, magnetized. The woman stepped off of her chest and Jessica
made no move to fight.
“So you’ll behave now?” queried the calm woman.
Jessica paid her no mind. She was sitting upright, and the silent agent was
crouching down over her. With no preamble, the taller woman cupped Jessica by
the chin and pressed their lips together. Jessica’s eyes fluttered closed.
Peter and the other agent gaped. Jessica’s arms wrapped around the woman’s neck
as she was tipped further back, into the carpet with the woman descending over
top.
At least until Peter snatched her by the back of the shirt and threw her down
the hall. “GET OFF OF HER!” he shouted viciously, the force of his rage
shocking even him.
Jessica, to her credit, recovered quickly. She bolted before anyone could do a
thing, zipping into Peter’s room. He gave chase and so did the other agent, but
she had already pried open the window and had made the leap. Peter watched her
form shrink to an inch in the first leap, the first webline fired away.
He did not wait, fishing the webshooters from his pocket where he had stashed
them upon coming home. The agent cursed foully behind him.
“No, Parker! Stay put!”
“She’s in trouble!” he refuted, already at the window. His spider sense warned
him of the incoming zip and he ducked just in time.
“We’ll handle it!” More cursing. Fumbling. She had used up the magazine and had
to replace it.
“Was that handling it?” Peter spat, pointing at the door. The woman outside
moaned in pain. He waited no more, even as the darts were whizzing past him
again and one even caught on the leg of his pants. He tried not to think about
the fact that he had just webswung out of his own window in civillian clothes.
Or that he was being pelted with the beginnings of a solid rain storm.
Fantastic.
The entirety of Queens was his search ground. He covered the basics, such as
familiar haunts and abandoned warehouses, the school, likely rooftops.
Eventually he had to swing down to Manhattan, calling in desperation as the
rain came down harder, and harder, and harder still until his clothes were
several pounds heavier and glued to his skin. Hell’s Kitchen was where his
momentum began to dwindle, worn down by the weather and the soreness and the
vampiric fatigue this was taking on his sanity. The adrenaline at the thought
of Jessica in danger, Jessica being swarmed by men or women or both, against
her will, started to fail. Not because he didn’t care. He did. It was because
she just plain was not anywhere to be found.
Peter collided with a rooftop on all fours and panted as rivers poured off his
body, joining the lake that spanned from ledge to ledge. He was soaked and
miserable and afraid, and well beyond any reasonable tipping point.
“JESSICA!” he called out helplessly. No one answered. All will evaporated from
him there and then, leaning back on his heels and scanning the cityscape for
clues he knew he wouldn’t find.
Where did she go? And why was she attracting both women and men? Could it be
that she was further along than he was, and soon Peter was going to be getting
ambushed by everyone? What if someone was hurting her right now?
The duo from the elevator sprung back to him, their cold demands and rough tugs
to his hair and clothes. Little peach. Little sweetie pie.
Peter sat there, impotent, and watched the sky twist and darken, thicken with
clouds until the whole affair went from iron grey to pitch black.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
To further prove that luck hated him and always would, after Peter had given up
on his clone and raised a hand to fire off a webline all that came out was a
sputter and a hiss. Mortified, he checked the other hand, managing to produce
one anemic web before it was officially out of ammo. He had no spare
cartridges. He also had no money. He could have shriveled up and died in that
moment.
A sudden vitriolic hate for Nick Fury rose then, because clearly having an army
of agents to stake him out had been total bullshit or he would have gotten
picked up by now. Aunt May would be ready to kill him. Settled in an armchair
and sharpening a knife to a fine piercing point. He preferred that to thinking
about the reality, which would be her glued to the latest news reports and
constantly dialing whoever she could get at SHIELD. If the agents were still
there, did they explain what happened? Did they bolt?
Didn’t matter. He had messed up royally and he couldn’t even say it was worth
it, because his stupid clone had stupidly run off when she said she wanted his
help. And now he was fearing for not only his safety, but hers as well.
Peter clambered down the side of the building without any acrobatics and took
to the streets, taking care to watch his step. Being in Hell’s Kitchen period
was bad news. Recalling what Jessica had said, he prayed to five different gods
that Daredevil wasn’t afoot tonight. That would be hideous. He tried not to
think about it.
An hour passed. Another followed. A bedraggled old man with a frizzy beard
hollered at him while he painted his piss on a wall, but other than that no one
bothered Peter. Mugging would be too much effort in this weather.
Or so he thought. There were muffled shots in the distance. Too far to do
anything about without webshooters, even if he had started running on instinct
before giving up on helping. Five minutes sprinting was already too late, the
shooter would be gone. He passed a bus bench with a longing look. The soggy
wooden slats looked awfully comfortable by now. It was imperative to keep
moving, but he was hopelessly lost and it was looking more likely by the minute
that he would have to sleep on a rooftop tonight and try not to die of
pneumonia.
Then something in the distance caught his eye. A flash of bone white against
the black alley ahead. He squinted, jogged forward a few paces then halted
completely when he saw it was advancing toward him. A figure stepped into the
staccato glow of the street light, gone jittery with the pellets of rain. The
white skull insignia on his chest shone through the night even so, and Peter
swore out loud. Frank Castle was on the prowl.
The man strode forward, guns trained on Peter. Patience long since made a
stranger and uncaring that he wasn’t in his costume (like any real New Yorker
wouldn’t know who the Punisher was), he shouted out to him. “Hey!” He thrust
his hands in the air, showing he was unarmed. “Hey, are you –“
“Shut up or I’ll make you.” Castle was still far away, but he’d made progress
and Peter could tell he was frowning at him before he holstered his guns. “You
see anything?”
“Huh?” Peter blinked at him, then shook his head so hard he could have gotten
paid work as a lawn sprinkler. “Nothing! I saw nothing! I’m lost!” Hands still
in the air, Peter edged closer. And closer. Castle reached for the gun again
but Peter would not be deterred. A lunatic the Punisher may be, but a child
killer he was not. “Do you have a phone?”
“What?” Castle leaned closer, baffled.
“I need to call my Aunt! I am lost! I’m from Queens!” Castle swore, muttering
to himself, but sheathed his gun and grasped Peter by the arm. He yanked him
along the street without a word.
Normally he would mind being carted around by a murderous ex-cop with more
bullets than the Pentagon, especially in the middle of the shadiest
neighborhood in the city, but Peter couldn’t give two craps about any of that.
All he wanted was Aunt May.
And maybe a grilled cheese. He had only eaten a yogurt after all.
***** Maria and Mary *****
Chapter Summary
     Peter spends a night at the casa de Castle. Mary Jane gets paranoid
     and takes matters into her own hands.
Chapter Notes
     Meant to update on the weekend but that didn't happen, so have a
     slightly longer chapter?
     Also putting a warning here: Punisher sex. Since some might call that
     fan disservice I figure I'd give a fair notice. Sorry....
     (not really....)
They tried a phone booth, spending what looked like the last of Castle’s pocket
change. The lines were down. Then Castle tried to drag him to some nearby
hostel before they both realized neither of them had cash or card on hand for
the measly eighteen dollar rent. There was some choice cursing to be had. Peter
tried to slink away at that point, having given up on his so-called savior
until Castle seized him again and told him to not make a sound. He covered his
eyes and dragged him for a long, long time, and Peter did his best not to
stumble or whine but some serious limits were being breached and he was either
going to pass out or beat the tar out of the man for treating him like cargo.
They were wetter than the whole of the Pacific by the time they halted and
Castle shifted, soft clicks like the patter of a keyboard coming from his left.
There was a shrill buzz that fizzled out into a dying squeal, then they were
indoors. Elevator, hall, and then a room.
Finally, Castle loosened his grip and Peter stumbled blinking into the wall.
Some poor landlord had the short-sightedness to rent Frank Castle an apartment.
Miracles did happen. It was a terrible place, but far more than Peter was
expecting after how often the man was in and out of jail. It was sparsely
furnished, a mattress and the barest minimum of sheets on the floor and a radio
in the corner. A vendor’s worth of guns and ammo tilted against a wall. Castle
ordered him to stay put with a wordless glare, and Peter didn’t stray any
farther than the doormat. He was already drowning it as it was.
Castle stomped around, disappearing behind a corner of the pint sized kitchen
and returning with a black phone. “Don’t have a cell and don’t have quarters.
You fuck this up for me, you’re dead. You never speak of this to anyone, you
understand?”
“Yeah,” Peter agreed wispily. He was blinking twice as fast as normal and
swaying on his feet. Castle seemed to deem it acceptable, albeit in a
begrudging way.
“I would have dumped your ass if it weren’t for who’s on the street tonight.”
He snorted.
Peter couldn’t help himself. “Who?”
Castle gritted his teeth. “Gavin Sorkin. And if you been reading the papers
you’ll know why I’m being so damn generous.”
Peter knew. Sorkin was a nasty piece of work, a recent prison escapee. He had a
penchant for skulking around schools and scooping up kids from five to
eighteen. All the bodies they had found had been slashed to ribbons. While
privately he knew that Sorkin would not have been an issue for Spider-Man,
Peter nodded to Castle and said his thanks. He could work with the helpless
lost duckling act.
He pushed clumsily at the buttons with frigid fingers and propped himself on
the door for support. His eyes drifted closed as he waited for it to ring, but
a steady blare was all that met his ears. Frowning, Peter tried again, and then
a third time after that, Castle watching with dark eyes all the while.
Impatience got the best of him and he snatched the phone to try it on his own.
“Lines are still down,” he mumbled, scowling at the receiver.
“Yeah.”
“Fuck’s sakes.”
Peter swayed, his weight on the door rocking. “I’ll…can I stay in the laundry
room?”
“Fuck you, you trying to get me evicted?”
“I can’t stay here. You’re the Punisher. You’re really going to let me sleep
here with all your guns and just…” Peter clawed at his hair. Exhaustion nipped
at his heels and Peter had no means left to outpace it.“I just want to go
home.”
“Join the fucking club.”
Peter didn’t bother responding. The largest of his worries now was not getting
home (although that was still a considerable contender), but being alone with
Castle. He wasn’t feeling any sort of heat, but he couldn’t tell for sure. He
cast a glance to the door and in spite of every dead-drained cell in his body
screaming no at him, he debated booking it out of there the moment Castle
turned his back.
A towel fell on his head. Sometime during his moping Castle had gone and
fetched it from closets unknown. “Dry off in the can. To your right.” Peter
blinked twice, wondering if the next thing he was going to hear was the click
of a gun being cocked. It was a jostle of a kitchen drawer instead. “Get your
ass in there and hurry up. You’re leaking all over my goddamn floor.”
He didn’t need to be told twice.
There was a set of clothes waiting for him, settled atop the toilet. Wispy soap
stains by the sink and a toothbrush were all that indicated the bathroom saw
any degree of use. Maybe he couldn’t stay in one place too long, Peter thought
to himself. He pressed an ear to the door and listened. What little scuffles
and bumps he could hear sounded distant. A microwave beeped and hummed to life.
Castle was focusing on dinner, and not waiting for the precise moment to burst
in while Peter had his pants down.
The sullen combination of cold and soggy was intolerable, yet even hearing
Castle moseying about the kitchen couldn’t convince him to whip everything off
at once and bundle up in the warm, dry replacements. He peeled off his clothes
with the same wide-eyed caution animals used on roads, but kept his underwear
on. Just as a small precaution.
All of this seemed too domestic for a man like Frank Castle. Peter scrubbed
every drop of moisture off his body once he had taken a cautionary sniff and
discovered the towel was recently laundered. Which had prompted the image of
Castle thumbing through a trashy magazine at a laundromat while his linens spun
around behind him. Peter supposed he couldn’t solve everything with a well
aimed bullet. Shooting open a can of Campbell’s for dinner, shooting your
clothes dry, shooting the garbage bin when it got too full. Amusing, but
impractical.
Peter pinched his brow, gripping the sink with sickly fingers that tingled as
the cold slowly trickled out of them. How tired was he if he was already one
foot in cuckooland?
Castle had taken his shirt off by the time Peter emerged, but stayed in the
sodden pants of his costume. Peter averted his eyes instantly and surrendered
the towel, which Castle took without a word. “I left my clothes on the edge of
the tub.”
A grunt was his sole acknowledgment. Castle rubbed himself dry and headed for a
different door. Peter fidgeted with the shirt on loan, which sagged dejectedly
to his left where the collar crept closer to his shoulder than his neck. He
probably could have squeezed a whole second Peter Parker in there. If he had
found Jessica in time they could have given it a whirl.
There were two plastic bowls on the counter, hot beans steaming in each. The
bowls were different sizes and clearly salvaged from a thrift shop. One much
larger than the other, but it didn’t look as if Castle had been trying to skimp
on portions. The bean blobs were about equal by all estimation. When he emerged
from the bedroom in a wife beater and ratty old jeans, Castle grabbed the
larger and a spoon he’d put out adjacent. He leaned on the counter and ignored
Peter entirely as he ate. Peter played zoologist rather than touching the
remaining bowl, boggling openly.
The Punisher ate reheated beans for supper and only owned one real spoon.
Peter’s was still in take out plastic. He used cucumber scented dish detergent
which currently laid toppled over behind the faucet, and had a french press
drying off next to the sink. An honest to god french press, like coffee was a
delicate business and not a wake up drug.
Castle didn’t so much catch him staring as shoot him a slow, unappreciative
glare that promised pain if he didn’t stop gaping at everything that instant.
Peter emancipated the take out spoon and crouched over his beans. He held onto
the counter as he ate. Each bite woke him a little more, hierarchy of needs and
all, but he still couldn’t shake the woozy quiver in his legs. He only got
halfway through the beans when he set the plate down and surrendered his head
to the counter. The clock on the microwave read 3:17 am.
“Bed’s in the other room.” Castle said coolly. “You’re in your own clothes and
gone by seven. And that’s being generous, so don’t fucking push it.”
Peter doubted his clothes would be any drier in four hours, but he lacked the
strength to argue. It wasn’t as if he wanted to walk home in the Punisher’s
hand-me-downs. “What about you?” he asked faintly.
He snorted. “I don’t sleep at night.”
Peter ought to have guessed that himself.
All that waited for him beyond the door was a queen size mattress dressed with
mismatched pillows and sheets. A rumpled pile of clothes lurked in the corner.
There was no other furniture to be found. It looked a hell of a lot like heaven
to him. He was asleep before he hit the mattress.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It was one hour and sixteen minutes later that Peter was broken out of his
sleep.
Though he was worn to a fine nub and his body ached from far more webswinging
than he ought to have attempted in one night, some treacherous part of him
switched his brain back on, and Peter was tossing and turning with complete
consciousness. He kicked the sheets off and flopped on his belly. The impending
threat of summer had kicked in with its sickly hot nights, though the rain
drummed away at the window even now. Peter groaned and rolled onto his back. A
wrinkle furrowed his brow.
There must have been children living here some time before Castle had taken up
residence, because there was a smattering of those glow in the dark stars and
planets on the ceiling. Their numbers were few and distant, and they had dimmed
and jaundiced with age, but they clung to the ceiling still. Which Peter
thought odd because it was a one bedroom apartment, so had the kids slept in
the same room as their parents? It could have easily been hipsters getting
ironic and cutesy with their décor, he mused a moment later. Not that it
mattered to anyone anywhere why the stickers were there.
A bead of sweat fell back into his hair. Ripples of the hot muggy air licked at
his skin. He wiped at his face with furious irritation and kicked his legs. He
still couldn’t sleep. Now that he was awake again it was too easy to keep the
magnetic pull of sleep on his eyelids at bay. He couldn’t hear anything outside
of the rain clattering gracelessly on the window, and the room was as stuffy as
an oven. How anyone could live in it was beyond him. If there really were
children around at any point they must have suffered greatly.
The inward rambling came to a merciful stop when, much less mercifully, he
heard the doorknob click and the brush of sturdy wood over carpet.
Castle stood in the doorway. His form was swathed in darkness, the light a halo
fanning out from every hair and fold of his clothes. Peter propped himself on
his elbows. His own legs were lit by the checkers and slabs that escaped from
around Castle. It painted him like stained glass.
They watched one another. Castle moved something to his lips and Peter heard
the slosh of liquid. A can of beer. The tinny sound of it splashing against its
container stifled the pelting rain as Castle drank.
There was some left when he stepped out of the door. Castle crouched at his
feet, one hand planted for support outside of his calf, and handed him the can.
Peter took it timidly, the dew on the can a cold shock and the liquid a bitter
godsend. He wasn’t certain he liked beer in the first place but he drank it
anyway.
“Better?” Castle rumbled. Peter nodded. “AC’s a piece of shit.”
“Uh huh.” Peter pressed his lips to the can again, seeing no sign that Castle
wanted it back, and drank until it emptied. The can was still cold so he
pressed it to his burning cheek. The icy metal felt as good to the touch as
mink. Condensation and the dew already gathered on it sent a drop down his
chin, plummeting to the borrowed shirt. “Did you want…” He held out the can,
thoughts scattering. When Castle’s fingers closed around it, brushed Peter’s
even as he was letting go, a riotous shiver rattled through him and curled his
toes.
“There’s more in the fridge,” Castle rumbled, making to rise. Peter snapped his
wrist in a tight grip and the man twitched. It was difficult to tell what was
in his gaze in the muddy darkness.
“Don’t go.”
As Peter shook again and moved closer, Castle refused to budge. An unexpected
fascination took over all else as Peter reached upwards to feel his face.
Castle was burning at the cheeks too, the bristles of his stubble trapping a
bead near the edge of his jaw. Castle grunted at the touch, pulled his head
back just a little but Peter only closed in further. Entranced. His hair was
only faintly damp still from the rain and felt thick and wiry under Peter’s
palm as he cupped the back of Castle’s head. He leaned forward and pressed
their lips together.
Something raw and wounded was in the keening sound that Castle made as he
turned his face away. Peter’s gut jolted with remorse but he wanted to make it
better, so he surged forward again and kissed him openly, one hand on his
shoulder and the other at the nape of his neck. Castle tensed under him. He
could feel the muscle go taut in his shoulder and rubbed at it desperately,
curled over to grip his bicep instead and stroke up and down.
He had to go in for seconds before Castle began to kiss him back, dropping the
can and reaching forward to grab Peter in kind. When they parted with hot puffs
of air, noses still touching and eyes shut, Castle mumbled, “Maria…”
Peter didn’t comprehend anything but the need to kiss him again and did so.
Castle said no more.
With dumbfounded clarity, Peter became positive in that moment that he was the
stupidest person on the planet. There was no sudden heat wave. It was just
Frank Castle being drawn in, from the other room to the bed, and now to the hem
of his shirt as he lifted it up and rested his forehead there, putting a tender
kiss to his belly as he held him by the waist. Peter shivered, dimly aware of
the true cold of the room clawing at the fringes of his awareness. He was
burning up all on his own, and Castle was going down with him.
Peter carded his fingers through the closely cropped hair. Castle kissed his
body luxuriously, lifting his middle off the mattress as he licked at the skin,
hot tongue worsening the fever. Peter arched backwards to compensate, breath
shaking. His cock was already stiffening. He had let the heat stew too long –
it had to have manifested while he was sleeping, just laying there sleeping -
- and now it had ravaged his mind before he could form a single protest.
He drifted back to the mattress. Castle tugged the shirt off and set to the
work, calloused, sturdy hands sliding up Peter’s chest. He rubbed into the thin
muscles over his ribs. Stiffness, tensions Peter hadn’t realized he had held
there melted away with every slow stroke. He felt a little like crying as
Castle put a kiss on his collarbone and had no idea why. Castle held Peter’s
head in both hands as if it were made of glass while he strayed upwards,
nipping at his throat. His weight had settled over Peter. Castle was a thick
set man. He might not have had the addition of adamantium on his bones to
double the weight, but the pressure of his body and its girth still incited
small pangs of claustrophobia. Peter was never quite so aware of how small he
was as when he was being pinned down; be it fights or, as of late, sex.
Castle reached his jaw, showed it the same attentions he had shown the rest of
him, but he didn’t kiss him on the lips.
Panting, Peter watched the dark void that night had made of the ceiling as
Castle disappeared from view. The pants were loose enough on him to simply
slide down, but Castle took the time to pry open the button and the zipper and
fold the fabric open to the side. Peter’s underwear was damp from the rain, but
bearable. Less so now that he felt it peel free of the skin on his cock. That
sealed the deal. Peter was hard as he could be even before Castle reached down
to kneed his balls and kiss the junction of his hip. Though he could see it
coming by now, when Castle took his tongue from the base of his cock to the
very tip Peter lost all semblance of calm.
“Oh god,” he mewled. His legs seized completely as Castle took it into his
mouth, his knees up and feet pointing cruelly, toes jamming into the mattress.
Castle pushed them down without pause, rubbing his still clothed thigh while he
bore down on Peter’s cock as if it were something sacred. Castle’s mouth was a
stifling place to be, volcanic and sloppy with spit. His lips were chapped but
they were slick by now, and sinfully enticing as they squeezed and dragged over
his cock. Castle couldn’t take him all the way in but made up for the
difference with a hand stroking simpatico. Peter was sweating against the
mattress. The fabric picked at his back as he wriggled over top of it, each
move a failure to cope with the shocks streaking out of his member and into his
every nerve. Peter cradled Castle’s head but could not guide him, too lost and
all too willing to let the much older man take control. One of them knew what
he was doing, at least.
And he was close, so extremely close, but Castle drew away just as his body
threatened to let chaos loose and Peter genuinely howled in grief at the loss.
“Wait!” He reached down himself with a craze he didn’t know he possessed but
found his arms shackled back on the mattress, Castle not exerting his strength
but hovering over him as a warning. He did kiss Peter then. Soft and sumptuous,
the stubble an afterthought and the sour traces of beer in both of their mouths
turning sweet. He could feel his blood throbbing furiously in his legs, still
smarting from being so close to orgasm and denied at the very cusp. Peter
wrapped his legs around Castle’s waist and rolled his hips, his cock streaking
over the wiry hair of Castle’s stomach. It was such a comparatively
disappointing sensation that even with his desperation, he still didn’t come.
With a charitable push Castle prised himself free. He pulled the pants off
entirely and then tugged Peter’s body towards him, sitting back on his knees
and heels in between Peter’s legs, using them to twist Peter over to the side.
Once he got the gist, Peter complied and rolled over for him.
Now that he knew what to expect he was not at all surprised when freshly wet
fingers probed at his rear. Peter closed his eyes, lying on his side and
gripping the edge of the mattress as Castle worked him into suitable shape. It
felt much nicer than the first time. Sharp pain lingered, naturally, but it
seemed to him much more malleable.
When it came time to stop, Castle laid down alongside Peter and huddled around
him from the back. There was some fumbling. A zipper coming undone and the
shuffle of fabric indicated that Castle wasn’t bothering to remove his clothes
entirely. Just enough to get the deed done. Peter heard him spit copiously into
his palm and squirmed with anticipation both fearful and needy. He hoisted
Peter’s top leg high to better fit against him, his own cock was standing tall
and bumping insistently against Peter’s rear. It incited a fleeting flash of
guilt: Castle had spent so much time on making him feel good and Peter hadn’t
done a thing to return the favor, and it was too late now. He supposed this
would be where he paid his dues, but he still bit his lip and turned his head,
trying to reach his cheek with an apology kiss. Castle met him by the mouth
instead, and slid himself in.
Logan was slightly bigger, from the first feel of it. That did not, however,
mean that it was any less difficult to take. Peter shuddered at the laborious
push. It was a little harder without the extra bracing of lying face down. He
had to hold himself on his side with an arm soundly planted on the mattress,
and Castle did his part by cupping the inside of Peter’s top leg, keeping it in
line. Stove top hot and thick, Castle’s cock threatened to incinerate Peter
from the inside out with every fraction it pushed in. He was moaning piteously.
Castle gave his sympathies with saccharine kisses to his neck, devouring him
with such precious consideration that Peter wanted nothing more than to curl up
and clutch his head.
Mary was on his mind again. Mary kissed him like this, slow and tender and
cupping his face in awe, as if he were so much more than a scrawny punk from
Queens. This time her image didn’t stop him from pushing back on Castle, or
even turning his head to catch his lips again and swipe their tongues together.
It only hurt. His chest was threatening to collapse and his throat was tight
around the lump that had formed there. He needed more of this and he was
getting it from the wrong person entirely.
When Castle began to pump into him just as methodical and deep as the kisses on
his neck, Peter knew what was wrong. Castle was fucking him like they were in
love.
He gagged himself on his knuckles then, biting down on one with his eyes
clenched tight. He shivered with the need to sob but refused it, pushing back
as Castle pushed in, exerting all his focus on the good bits. He was still
blisteringly hot and needy. Nothing had changed, just a little stab to his
chest and prickles at his eyes. Peter touched himself and thought of Mary Jane.
It took longer than he expected. Not only because of how suddenly things had
soured but because of how languid Castle was taking things. Not that Peter was
complaining. He was being thrust into deeply from behind as Castle reached over
and stroked his belly and sucked on his earlobe. It felt like worship. He felt
less and less human with every move. Fire everywhere, just like how he imagined
Johnny Storm might feel when he engulfed himself in flames and shot off in the
sky. Peter buried his face in the mattress and hollered, tugging at his cock
and torn between flashes of Mary Jane kissing him, under him, and the reality
bearing down from behind. He liked it. He loved it, more like, complying
without a hitch when Castle rolled them over and thrust into him from on top,
blanketing Peter so that only his legs and his arms peeked out from underneath
his body. Peter abandoned stroking himself then, letting his cock simply rub
against the mattress. Castle’s weight made it harder to breath, but everything
else intensified too. As terrifying as being trapped was, or being bullied down
by someone who was easily twice your size, Peter found there was a secretive
thrill to it now. Pinned down, nowhere to go, let it all go.
He did. They both did. Peter went first, his cries muffled by the mattress as
he came into it. Castle rolled his hips in closer, flush against Peter’s rear
so that all he had to do was rut slow against it and the both of them were
melting messes. The hair of his chest was sticking to Peter’s back. He kissed
the top of Peter’s head and entwined their fingers together, pumping closer and
closer until at last he was spilling inside of him. Castle groaned into Peter’s
ear before patching it with more kisses. He suckled at a tender spot on his
neck as they rode the last shocks out.
It was a luxurious stretch of time that they spent simply nestled together.
Castle was still inside him, but winded. Neither moved, simply content to stay
put. Peter had no choice in the matter anyway, face down and stifled as he was.
The pangs in his chest may have softened with climax, but they had not fled
entirely. Castle’s bulk worked the same as a cocoon of blankets, a quaint faux
haven from the ills that dogged Peter at night. There may be wetness where his
lashes brushed the mattress, thoughts of MJ getting the best of him before they
finished, but he was safe now. Safe and cozy.
Until Castle inevitably pried himself away. Peter stayed motionless below him.
The grimace and the mounting disappointment was palpable, no sight required to
know what was happening up above. “Oh…hell…”
Castle pulled out, rolled off, and the mattress dipped from the opposite side.
He was silent. He did not leave. Peter took this as a sign to follow suit,
pushing himself into a sit with some struggle. His muscles had turned to jelly,
and his rear smarted. Not half so bad as it had with Logan, but enough to make
him wince sitting up.
Peter didn’t so much as peek at the man. His focus was honed in on the little
fibers of the carpet. Most were beige, but each little lump had a few strands
of chestnut woven in. He scratched at them, pulling his lips into a prim line.
“I’m sorry.”
He expected gunfire. Even now he expected his spider sense to blare and to find
Castle sneering with a pistol poised behind him. Or even a flurry of curses, a
fist rocketing into his face, a growled order to get the hell out. What he got
instead was a very simple and very firm, “No.”
Peter did look then, baffled, to find the man was hunched over much the same as
he was. A pregnant pause put answers on hold.
"No?” Peter pressed eventually.
“It was me.” Castle shifted just enough to look him in the eye, the thin bar of
light from the still open door striking him into view. Peter was surprised to
see the face which naturally took to grimaces and scowls was doing neither. The
lines had slackened. He looked much older now, he wasn’t tensing in his brow,
the corners of his mouth, his shoulders. Everything sloped downwards with
dejection and sorrow. Unsure if he had meant it as a question, Peter nodded.
“You know who I am. And you know what happened to me.”
The silence crept back in as Peter calculated out how to respond to that.
Nothing would be appropriate. The man’s family had been slaughtered by his old
police partners. On a picnic, in broad daylight. You would be hard pressed to
find someone who had a rougher past than that. “Yes.”
“That was the first time. Since she’s been gone.” He wiped from his brow down
to his chin and jutted his head in the opposite direction. Peter’s heart was
crawling up to his throat as the implications settled in. “I couldn’t stand the
idea. Not with anyone else. It hurt, and it still does. A big damn hurt.”
There was a strangled noise inside the bear of a man. As Peter watched him work
through the stormy silence, pity began to eclipse his sizable shame. “But it
didn’t hurt. For the first time I couldn’t feel it sitting in me like some
kinda...some kinda disease. Fuck.” He grumbled into his hand and it was unclear
whether a word of it was meant to be understood. “But you…you’re just a fucking
kid. I’m sorry. I’m the one who…”
Peter didn’t have the courage to tell him it was because of power gone
tremendously wrong. Pheromones or a curse. And it was him who had pulled Castle
in, pressured him into kisses and tugged him down. Castle had tried to turn
away.
True fear swallowed Peter whole, and he knew then he couldn’t leave. Running
away was going to ruin them both. He scooted closer in earnest. “No, no, you’re
not. It was me. I did it, I made you do it. I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have
done…And I get it about your—” he halted, instantly regretting his
presumptuousness. “Not like…I get what you’re saying. I understand. You didn’t
do anything that...”
Castle turned. “I don’t even know your name.”
That quieted Peter all over again. Should he go there? Should he lie? The
Punisher was the kind of person he could run into again as Spider-Man, and the
less information he had the better things would be. It couldn’t stop his mask
from coming off and the guy putting two and two together that way, but he had
already mentioned Queens and his Aunt, and that was far more than he should
have let go in the first place.
The fraction of hesitation made all the difference. Castle held up a hand to
halt him before he could open his mouth. “No. Don’t. I don’t want to know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“The fuck are you sorry for? You’re what, sixteen?” He buried his face in his
hands again. “Jesus Christ. You’re just a kid.”
The implications were seizing Castle by the throat. His jaw was clenched hard;
Peter could see it plainly in the sparse column of light from the open door.
The heat had seemingly seeped out of him entirely, so it might have been pure
Peter Parker that reached out and took Castle’s shoulder with a ginger grip.
The words were smooth and soft but cut hard when Peter said, “I kissed you
first.”
He was not keen for a repeat and the door was a much friendlier option than
staying on the mattress was, yet he stayed put. Logan had vanished but knew
enough about strange powers and circumstances that Peter knew he could explain
if he had the chance. Strange had known what was happening from the get go.
Castle another case altogether. Nick Fury had been wrong. Peter was still
intact, but the people who came to him were crumbling apart.
Castle shook, but didn’t brush him away. Peter fretted for a moment. He settled
on wrapping his arms around the man – even though he was afraid of a repeat,
even though he was afraid of the man himself – and guarded him close. It seemed
that he had made the right move when Castle only nestled into him, dropping his
forehead onto Peter’s shoulder with a solemn heaviness that nobody should have
to bear.
Considering how often he had swooped down in the nick of time and punched out
muggers, villains, murderers and even a rapist or two, Peter was used to
embraces from complete strangers. Most often grateful mothers, or young girls
and even younger little boys. He remembered saving a kid from a fire once and
the little guy would not let go of him until they found the ambulance with his
father in it, and even then he wailed for “Piderman” to come with him and
tugged at his suit. Doing this with a fully grown man, however, was a first.
Castle snaked his arms around him with equal need. Peter rubbed his back, let
himself be nothing more than a five foot five teddy bear. Frank Castle, crazy
gunman vigilante though he was, deserved that. At the very barest minimum.
So Peter didn’t make so much as a peep for the rest of the night, finding his
eyes blinking slower, the lids lifting less and less, but even as the man
holding him brought him down and began to drift off to sleep Peter waited,
making absolutely certain he was at peace before he let himself follow.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
She, unlike her boyfriend, had no spider senses. No preternatural instincts to
warn her when something was up. She did have, however, a working brain and a
finely attuned gut for this sort of thing by now, so Mary Jane didn’t need
super powers. She cast a roving glare over the flood of teenagers swilling
around her. She slammed her locker shut.
When she shuffled into class, she didn’t open up her books. She pressed them
close to her belly, the sensation of the sharp corner on her binder pressing
into her side helping to ease the turning of her stomach. She stared down the
empty chair ahead of her. Occasionally, she would check the clock. Her
classmates filed in, loud and obnoxious as ever. Liz Allen gave her a quizzical
look from the side, and Kitty Pryde continued to pretend she didn’t exist.
“Hello? MJ?” Liz poked her with the friendly end of a pencil. “Emmy-Emmy-MJ.
You need to come down from space.” When she was finally rewarded with a sour
look she scoffed. “Oh my god, what is up with him this time?”
“I don’t know,” Mary answered honestly, and flicked the back of his empty seat.
“He won’t tell me.”
At that, Kitty did turn her head ever so slightly. She sat up near the front in
this class, so all Mary had to look at was a wave of thick brown hair and the
petite shoulders peaking out on either side, but she knew eavesdropping when
she saw it. She pursed her lips and turned back to Liz. “You saw him yesterday
though. He’s so sick. Burning up.”
“Yeah, but why are you mad then?”
She was loathe to lose her grip on the books, the pressure steadying her
nerves, so she shook her head ferociously instead and let her hair whip about
her face. “He’s just a tool sometimes. Big strong man things, you know the
drill. Oh baby baby, you wouldn’t understand.”
Liz rolled her eyes. “Oh do I hear ya.” She giggled. “Maybe he’s on the rag.”
It was a little running joke that Mary never appreciated, because Liz could not
and would not understand exactly why her boyfriend had a right to be so moody
all the time. She gritted her teeth as usual and gave a pleading, “Oh, come off
it. He’s having a rough time.”
“Again? With what?”
“I’m just saying…” The teacher, a balding man named Mr. Foggerty, strolled in
at that moment. And Peter still wasn’t there. Liz was upright in her seat in a
flash and Mary followed suit. She let her gaze drift to the door once more.
Five minutes. She was giving him the requisite five minutes to stumble in and
look like an ass for being late when he was hobbling because he’d gotten shot
in the leg, or he had been out all night trying to evade some mutated
megalomaniac, or worse.
Five. Ten. She gave him twenty in the end. And normally she might respect his
privacy, or just wait out the day so she didn’t arouse any suspicion, but this
time was different. This time, he wasn’t well. There was something big going on
and he was clearly under the weather. With what? Who knows. It was anyone’s
guess, but considering his history (and hers) she could make some pretty wild
ones.
So by the end of those twenty minutes and at the precipice of their quadratic
equations review, she worked up the nerve to pull something she hadn’t dared
since the second grade. She jerked her head forward and covered her mouth,
wincing hard.
Liz immediately came to her rescue. “MJ?” she murmured, quite concerned.
She swallowed nothing and gave her friend a shaky smile, lowering her hand.
“It’s nothing, it’s fine. I think I’m just—“ And she gave another jolt, harder
this time and slapped her hand back on her mouth so quickly that half the room
was now enraptured by her show. Mr. Foggerty turned from the board, looking at
her with intense perplexity. “Miss Watson? Mary Jane, is everything all right?”
And she went for the gold. Another lurch and she leaped to her feet and
sprinted for the door, whispers and low whistles following her exit. She heard
Liz shouting in her defense and Flash saying something stupid about needing to
barf if he had to kiss Peter Parker too, but she was zipping fast down the hall
and soon lost track of them. Other classroom rackets followed her as she dashed
for the exits, all pretenses of impending vomit gone, and she flew out of the
school like a bat from a cave. Her momentum carried her down the steps and some
ways into the parking lot, where she stopped to gather her wits and her breath
behind a navy blue Sedan.
“Okay, hooookay.” She wheezed and sniffled, the effort seeming to have made her
nose run. She hadn’t really gotten sick from Peter, had she? Mary tucked her
hair behind her ears and cast her eyes around the parking lot. Empty as cookie
jar at a day care. “What do I do now?”
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It was only a miracle that let him wake before Frank Castle the next day. They
were still huddled together when Peter blinked his way back into the world,
Castle’s arm tucking him close against his chest and Peter hugging him around
the middle.
With exceedingly delicate caution, Peter managed to slip out of bed without
alerting the other man. He crouched near the end of the bed, gathering his
underwear and studied him. This would be the part where he would note how
peaceful the man looked when he slept and act as if it were a complete
revelation that sleep was peaceful, but that wasn’t the case here. Castle
seemed to have drifted back to surliness, mouth tight at the corners and his
brows determined to meet.
It was a brief reprieve then, what had happened last night. Peter’s heart sank
and he wished he had brought money with him. He ought to get him a croissant
for when he woke up. A Sorry-I-Messed-You-Up-Worse-Than-Before croissant. Or a
Please-Stop-Being-So-Sad-Inside-It’s-Not-Your-Fault croissant. Castle groused
suddenly, flipping over and Peter shot up to his feet in such a panic that he
bolted out of the room and gingerly shut the door behind him.
He was still naked, too. Peter grimaced and toddled into the bathroom to find
that while his jeans were still, predictably, damp, his shirt and socks had
dried nicely.
“Small miracles,” he muttered to himself, and fiddled with the shower faucet.
He treated himself to as compact a shower he could manage before bothering with
the clothes.
If he couldn’t buy him food or even bring himself to leave a proper note, Peter
decided that doing up the dishes was the next best thing. It was two bowls and
spoons though, which did not quite feel like enough, so he rifled through the
cupboards until he found the coffee and pre-scooped it into the French press.
He set out the only mug in the cupboard as well, and an apple he found in the
fridge. Gifting Castle with his own food, what a classy move.
Which reminded Peter that he was starving and needed to get a move on. He
didn’t let himself look into the fridge again. He refused to take any more from
the man than he already had. Obviously he was living on food stamps he nicked
from people next door, because no one was going to pay the Punisher a dime.
Peter took one last look at the barren apartment, squashed down his lingering
flickers of guilt, and left. Maybe if he saw him as Spider-Man again sometime,
he could do him a favor. Of some sort.
If it was ever safe to try being Spider-Man again.
The day was bright, sunlight glinting off of the ponds made by the torrents of
rain the previous night. Peter had to dodge getting splashed twice by passing
cars as he meandered out of the block. He did not look back to check the
building number. He did not take note of the street signs or the landmarks,
save for the thorny silhouette of Manhattan in the distance. He headed
staunchly in that direction, determined to reach it within the hour. He could
navigate his path back home easily enough from there.
“Hey! Hey! Hold up boy, where you going?”
Incredibly, there was a man trotting up behind him with a mile wide grin on his
face. He was unshaven and smelled vaguely of booze, even if it was only two in
the afternoon. “Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Yes?”
“I saw you walking by and I wanted to talk, you know? What’s your background?”
Any and all courtesy flew out the window. Peter rolled his eyes dramatically.
MJ got this a lot. So had Gwen, who had always told them something blatantly
ridiculous such as, “Spartan,” or “I hail of the Wootanoogieboogie tribe.”
Peter opted for leveling the man with a flat look and a droll, “Currently?
Super sketchy convenience store, with a dash of homeless drifters.” He jerked a
thumb over to where there was a trio of ragged old men in parkas, seated on
blankets in front of a mini mart that boasted withering fruit inside its thin
barred windows. The squatters waved back to him and showed off their
checkerboard smiles, more teeth lost than retained in their days.
“No no no, I mean what are you?” He stepped closer, tilting one shoulder in as
if to herd Peter to the left. If he thought he could succeed he was mistaken,
because it was a really wide sidewalk and all Peter had to do was scoot out and
around him. “You look Jewish. Am I right? Hey, where are you going?”
A dismissive wave was the most courteous goodbye Peter had to give, several
steps into his retreat already. “Do not need this right now, dude.”
“I’m just trying to be fucking nice!” the man spat at his back.
Peter gritted his teeth. “You’re sucking at it.”
Around the corner was a seedy looking bar and grill, already peopled by scruffy
types who banded together from a seeming love of denim and plaid. Not wanting
to attract attention Peter bowed his head as he passed, but heard kissy noises
being made in his direction. Someone even called out to him with a “Hey
Sweetie! Slow down, what’s the hurry?” Dogged but not deterred, Peter only
quickened the pace and sourly thrust his hands into his pockets. Was that the
pheromones again, or was he just happening to pass by the monthly gay asshole
convention? Aside from getting slapped on the butt a couple weeks ago he had
never heard of guys getting harassed like that. Not in public, not in broad
daylight. That was strictly reserved for douchebags hounding girls.
His chest went increasingly taut. The whole street was a long stretch of
wastrels and drunks and leathery faced cynics, whose eyes locked onto him as he
passed. As if they could tell just by looking that he did not belong, no matter
how bedraggled his clothes or how low he slouched.
Peter tried to keep walking, but then a sharp buzz halted him in his tracks.
His spider sense had resurfaced, low but persistent. He whirled to see what
kind of threat was coming at him and found himself toe to toe with a behemoth
of a man, all ragged blond hair and feral lines cutting his face. Red eyes that
seemed to cut into him like lasers. A tinge of familiarity struck Peter, but
the memory was slippery as a silverfish and he lost the thought before anything
could be done.
Too bad, because a little foreknowledge would have helped him as he was
snatched by the shoulder and tugged inwards, praying mantis style, and suddenly
subjected to a thorough hair sniffing. Appalled, Peter gave it no second
thought when he punched him square in the temple. He didn’t care if he wasn’t
in costume and people saw him fighting. He needed to get out of there. The man
grunted in surprise and the grip loosened just enough for Peter to wriggle free
and bolt. He hadn’t gotten more than a three second head start before he was
caught in a cruel grip, prisoner again to even more invasive sniffing, and that
was when he remembered.
The first time he had met Logan, he had been fighting this man. Making a
massive ruckus. This was the same one, he was sure, big and growly and perhaps
looking more like he was raised amongst mountain lions than even Wolverine did.
A mutant? One of Magneto’s?
Hot air hit his scalp with a heavy whuff, and a satisfied rumble deep in the
man’s throat. Like the purr of a jungle cat. “What do we have here?” he
rumbled, the sound hitting his ears like the heavy bass vibrations that rattled
speakers.
Peter could feel himself getting flustered, warmth prickling at his skin even
as his eyes were wild with dread. He scrambled against the grip like a bug on a
web, all limbs and bodily spasms, trying to slam his elbow into a tender spot
before the heat rose any more. “Get off of me, asshole!”
Some of the locals, having ambled along after the action or watched coolly from
their huddles and designated patches of wall, were jeering uncouth things.
There were equal calls for beating the tar out of him and making sure that he
was shared, which only fueled his struggles. Somehow, it was still futile:
either the man was anticipating his surprising burst of strength, or he was too
far gone to register that it should be unusual for a teenager to hit that hard,
but Peter was making no headway. His feet had been torn from the ground and he
was wrapped up at the shoulders and hips by arms as strong as cables.
He was faintly aware of a car honking at them. Peter didn’t look, occupied
completely by his attempts to incapacitate the Sasquatch holding him hostage.
It honked twice more, piercingly loud from close proximity, and the small crowd
was finally alerted in to their audience. Everyone looked over at the same
time.
It was a gorgeous foreign model and brand new from the look of it. Pearly white
and sparkling. Seeing it against the pallid, ransacked backdrop of Hell’s
Kitchen seemed almost as if someone had dropped a diamond in a litter box. A
wave of awe dampened the hot tempers and agitation, and even Peter’s foreboding
rise in temperature came to a plateau. Out stepped a smartly dressed (and
rather burly looking) chaperone, but one easily guessed that he doubled as a
body guard by the coiled wire in his ear and the gun readily holstered at his
hip. Most importantly, there was the title tagged to his lapel; no name, just
the logo.
Luck, for once, was on his side.
“There a problem here?”
He was looking pointedly at Peter. Everyone seemed to follow his gaze,
including the giant holding him still. Peter’s face contorted and he finally
kicked where it counted: the kneecap. He snarled in pain and Peter made to
flee, but he noticed the chaperone waving him over and hitting a button in his
open door.
The backseat unlocked with a click.
He leaped into the car as the chaperone did the same, sliding coolly into the
driver’s seat and hitting the gas before Peter even had his door shut proper.
He turned to watch the small mob mill about on the spot, uncertain of what had
happened or why, and noted with a heavy stone in his gut that the burly man was
staring him down through the rear window. Even though it was tinted, even
though they were already turning a new corner at breakneck speeds, Peter could
feel him look square into his eyes the whole time. If ever he had to define the
word ominous, it would be that.
A soft, “Ahem,” reminded him that he had company. Just as he suspected, Peter
swiveled to find a familiar face. Albeit a much more welcome and impeccably
dressed one.
“You’ve got terrible taste in men, kiddo,” Tony Stark raised a cool brow and
smiled as Peter let out the world’s most grateful sigh of relief, slumping in
his seat. The logo on the driver’s badge had been enough merit to hop in, but
having the real deal in the car was a godsend. “You’re lucky I took that
shortcut today.”
“Just keep on that side of the car and it will stay that way.” Tony grinned
wider at that.
“Will do.”
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Mary took to the newsstands first. Local cable on display televisions for
electronic stores, gossip, the latest headlines on her phone. Not a one of them
included Spider-Man. Not even the Daily Bugle on mobile, though she had
refreshed it a grand total of five times. There was some nervous cursing and
serious consideration that she may have made a huge mistake.
Then again, the lack of news could very well be the big headline she was
looking for. If Peter had disappeared, if Peter had been kidnapped or worse,
then it might well be all hush hush. Reporters couldn’t be omnipotent. She
dialed Mrs. Parker twice, but both times she was sent straight to voicemail.
She even went the extra mile and called Mrs. Parker at work, only to hear that
she had taken the day off ill.
Something was undeniably up.
She had run around their usual meeting spots. She had even stopped at his
favorite street vendor: the deep fried pretzel guy. But only because she was
passing by anyway and hungry herself and if it was just official Spidey
business he was skipping class for and not a brutal kidnapping, maybe he would
have stopped for a snack. According to the vendor he hadn’t. She gobbled her
pretzel bitterly and moved on.
Were the Fantastic Four still out of town? She peered up at the Baxter
Building’s apex, poking out of the cityscape like a sore thumb, and tried to
recollect a news story she had seen three days ago about a big science meeting
they were at. Her phone battery was threatening to expire and she didn’t want
to waste it scrolling through archives, so she went ahead and dialed Johnny
anyway. Mary crossed the street as the rings went: two times, three times,
four.
“Come on, pick up, pick…up…” and just like that she was not paying much
attention to her phone at all, because a stocky man in a cowboy hat had just
crossed the other way. Mary watched him. Then, uncaring that the walk sign
counted only three seconds left, darted back the way she came.
Her sudden pursuit prompted nothing from her target, though a huddling trio of
prepubescent boys snapped to attention with hopeful looks. She bypassed them
entirely, still running after the distant man and hoping she was right.
He had turned down an alley. A really disgusting one, that Mary knew for a fact
hosted local crack heads most nights of the week and wasn’t that much sunnier
during the day. Tandy Bowen had nearly gotten shivved trying to cut through it
drunk one night, or so the rumors went. Her lip curled in distaste. But, she
decided, some boys were worth following strangers down dark alleys for.
Except that sounded super sketchy. Following them for information purposes,
thank you very much. She peered around the corner, pausing to ascertain that it
was only a garbage bag by the dumpster and not a cleverly camouflaged mugger,
then stepped into the entrance with a power pose and pointed at the man. It was
very Sailor Moon of her. “Logan!”
He stopped in his tracks and Mary was elated to find she hadn’t been seeing
things. The mutant pivoted in surprise and gave her a look that read more of
being told to shovel out the horse stables than anything else. Which only made
her all the more suspicious. “Aw, hell,” he grunted. “Thought I smelled
something familiar.”
“That had better not be a crack at my hygiene,” Mary growled, stalking forward.
“We need to talk.”
“Now, look –“
“Where is he?”
“Kid, you’re gonna need to cool your jets.”
“No. I will not. No jets will be cooled.” She came clean into his personal
space and poked him menacingly in the shoulder. In spite of this, she was a
shade shocked when he drew back and gave her a baleful look. “I need to know
what’s going on. Where is he? You know something, don’t tell me you don’t.”
“I don’t fucking know what happened,” he snapped suddenly. “That’s it! I would
have never – not him. Fucking hell, I don’t know why, but I would have never
touched him. You got that?”
And it was Mary’s turn to fumble. “What? You did what?” And then, horrified,
“Did you – did you hurt him? Is that why he’s gone missing?”
“Wait, what the hell are you…” Logan squinted at her. “Shit, he’s missing?”
“Logan. What. Happened. To Peter?!” She had the audacity to try and shake him
by his jacket, but he was having none of it. Her wrists were immobilized by
hands that dwarfed her own and Logan’s face gained a wash of angry maroon.
“I’m telling you, I would never have fucked him if I was in my right mind! Got
it?! I ain’t seen him since and we’re keeping it that way!”
The pause was terse. Mary was looking up at him with her jaw gone slack. Then
she tittered, anxious and a little queasy, wriggling her arms until he was
forced to let go.
“Oh my god Logan! Was that a joke? Why would you say that? That’s not even
remotely funny.”
Logan, who had been anything but cool moments before, dipped down from his
temperamental high and regarded her with a strange distance. “Kid.”
She covered her mouth to stifle the giggles, waving the subject away. That was
one mental image she would have to file under Never to See the Light of Day.
“No really, uncalled for. To the highest degree. Can we be serious now? Can you
please just, like, tell me what happened with you and Peter that he’s gone AWOL
now? Do you know anything? At all?”
“Kid,” he pressed, putting his hands on her shoulders and swallowing. Nervous.
It wasn’t a look that suited him. “Christ, he didn’t tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“I thought that’s why you followed me.” Mary paused. Her smile twitched at the
seams. Logan grunted and gave her a little shake. “Kid. I fucked –“
Mary frowned. “No.” She shook her head and tried for a laugh, but it hit all
the wrong notes and withered into silence soon after.
“Yes. I did. We did.”
“No. No you didn’t.” Disgust, confusion, and a spark of vitriol vied for
control. Together they contorted her wary smile into something ghastly, as if
she had just walked in on a gruesome murder. He hunched over further to better
meet her eye.
“Listen to me.”
The notion hadn’t even hit her brain when she heard the slap connect. Almost
like reflex. Logan only blinked, his head now tilted to the side, and turned
calmly back to face her. Her mouth was dry as she protested again. “You did
not.”
Solemnity was all she could see in his eyes now. It was hard to look at him.
“I’m sorry.”
Her mind was stuck wading in molasses, lagging behind her body. She felt
herself heaving, felt tears curve under her jaw to roll down her neck and
wondered how she had missed them sprouting to life. Still, she was shaking her
head no. “You’re lying. You’re lying. He wouldn’t.”
Logan said nothing. He hung his head low. Mary trembled in his grip, sucking in
air with a rattles and wheezes and letting rivers spill over her cheeks. Then
the tension, taut as wire cable between them and just as strong, snapped. With
a tempestuous scream she began to beat on whatever parts of him she could. His
hat fell off in the onslaught, but he made little effort to defend himself. She
had never hit anyone so hard in her life.
“YOU BASTARD. YOU SICK BASTARD!” Her fists were flying at his face, and when he
deflected them with a half-heartedly raised forearm she tried to wind him with
blows to the gut instead. “You asshole! Fuck you! Go fuck yourself, don’t you
ever come near him again! I’ll kill you, I swear, I…oh my god…”
She grasped at her hair and yanked, hard, wishing furiously it would rip out
and take her skull with it, teetering away from the man. Everything inside her
was squeezed tight, boa constrictor grip and the air slowly crushed out of her
lungs. The pity in Logan’s eyes, the mournful frown he wore sickened her. Mary
whimpered and turned her back to the man, buried her face in her hands and
sobbed there. The sounds were muffled outside of that sanctuary, but they
echoed in her own ears. Her voice had become small and needling, yet nothing
could lessen the venom when she said, “I hate you. I hate you so much.”
To Logan. To Peter. To both. Logan just happened to be the only one around to
hear it.
***** Good Intent *****
Chapter Summary
     Logan is unhelpful and Tony is too much so.
Chapter Notes
     Warnings for light spanking and very mild humiliation.
Mary couldn’t be counted on to keep track of time in such a state. All she knew
was that there was a point where her body stopped spasming and she could only
feel her pulse, jerking the veins wherever the blood pumped strongest, like she
had run a marathon and had only now come to a complete stop. The tears didn’t
cease but they were no longer erupting out of her unbidden. She was hiccupping.
And she still felt sick to her stomach, and she hurt madly like she ought to
rip off her skin all at once, but these things all slowed down just a touch.
Enough that Logan, who hadn’t been wise enough to leave despite having had
every chance to do so, felt it safe to put a hand on her back.
“It wasn’t right,” he started, and gave a dissatisfied grunt when she ducked
away from his touch. “Listen, I mean it. There was something not right about
it. Neither one of us wanted it, there was something not right.”
“Oh, that’s rich.” She gave a malevolent chuckle and hiccupped halfway through.
“You actually – you need to get away from me.”
He rounded to face her properly, which earned him the privilege of a slight
lift in her head and deadly glare. “Kid, I’m not shitting around. There was
something not right. I’ve been around a long time, and I’ve seen some things,
and I know when my head’s being messed with and when it isn’t.”
Mary continued to glower. “Are you saying,” she began, her voice gone husky
with hatred and strain, “that you want me to believe that Peter, my Peter,
tricked you into this? With him?”
“No. He wasn’t right either. Jesus Christ, shut up and let me fucking finish.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, asshole.”
The mutant’s patience had worn thin. The next thing Mary knew her hands had
been ripped away from her face and he shook her by the shoulders, turning her
into a captive audience. “Stop that. What I’m telling you is important. I know
it hurts, but you gotta listen. There was something fucking with both of our
heads that night. I didn’t know what I was doing or saying, and I can’t even
remember all of it. Like I was drugged.”
“Oh my god, so what are you saying then?” Mary wrestled loose and threw her
hands in the air, thoroughly disgusted. “Roofies? Somebody roofied both of you
just to let you go at it? Please, I’m not an idiot!”
“No. I’m saying it’s the kind of thing that ain’t natural. Like how I can heal
back from the worst things, or your boy can crawl up on walls with his sticky
little fingers. Ordinary drugs wouldn’t work on me.” He patted his chest. “They
run right through. You would have to make them special order. And maybe that’s
exactly what happened, or maybe it wasn’t. I can’t even get a good drunk going
for more than five seconds, you know that? But this thing, this wasn’t natural.
And you need to trust me on that.” At the face she made to that proposition, he
added, “Or at least trust him. Fuck, you think he’d want to take a go at me?
Look at me. Hell, look at you! He’d have to be a damn fool to let a dame like
you go, or raging gay. And we both know that ain’t it.”
Seething still, Mary pursed her lips and quelled the urge to start hitting him
all over again. Whether it had been in the stereotypical Will and Grace sense
or simply staring too long at shirtless men at the beach, Peter had never once
shown signs of being gay. Her memory banks had stacks upon stacks of evidence
to the contrary, late nights with his hands brushing the gap between her shirt
and jeans and how his eyes glazed over at spring break programming.
He had still slept with Logan.
Her gut coiled with indecision. There was plenty else in the mix too. Hate,
despair, loneliness, doubt, self-loathing, Peter-loathing. A whole gamut of
ugly things. She thought about the last few days. How ill he looked, how pale,
and how he seemed extra jumpy. Secretive, furtive, even from her. He didn’t
like going down the halls. He dawdled on purpose until they had cleared out by
half, and thought Mary hadn’t caught on. She had. He hadn’t been going to work.
If the news reports were anything to go by, he hadn’t been going out as Spider-
Man either.
It took some careful consideration before she spoke again. “So. Something
wasn’t ‘right.’” Her tone was still speculative but Logan appeared relieved to
hear it all the same.
“That’s it.” Logan sighed deeply and wiped at his face. “I don’t know nothing
about him taking off. But if he’s spooked as bad as I think he’d be, he might
have gone for help.”
“And what if he hasn’t?” Mary countered flatly. “What if someone bad’s got
him?”
The look he shot her was stone hard. “I can’t do much for you. I’m here on my
time. But you can bet your ass Fury and his boys will be on it.”
“Are you kidding me? You’re just going to go? Just like that?” Mary tread after
him appalled as the mutant made to leave. “We need to find him! It’s the very
least you could do! Fury tried to arrest him last time!“
“Exactly,” Logan growled back. “When did that kid ever make a mess that didn’t
put Fury’s panties in a twist?”
Had it been the black of night, he could have coolly disappeared and left her
stammering alone in the dark. But it wasn’t, so Mary had to watch him walk out
and kick herself for not following. Jump up and throttle him, punch him in the
eye. Yet she did none of these things. She was hurt and exhausted and angry at
everything, and she wasn’t sure how much more of Logan she wanted to deal with
in the first place.
Plus, it occurred to her suddenly, perhaps Logan had a good reason to steer
clear. If Nick Fury found out what he did to Peter he would kick his ass
straight into orbit.
She narrowed her eyes at the empty alley and sniffled, wiping a leak from under
her nose. Mary might just shine his shoes special for the occasion.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Fury hadn’t lied. There had been agents watching him, and they had trailed both
him and Jessica until, naturally, they had lost them both. And since then
neither one could be found, Peter having run out of webs and thus disappearing
from the skyline and Jessica having retreated into wherever her latest hidey
hole was. The whole of SHIELD had been told to keep an eye out, Tony explained
ever so casually, but Hell’s Kitchen had been on the lowest list of priorities
simply because it wasn’t a hot spot for Spider-Man. Why would he wander in
there while he was so vulnerable, after all? The agents had been focusing on
Manhattan and Queens mostly, with lighter surveillance in the rest of the
Burroughs. The first and foremost reason he had not been found earlier, though,
was far more disheartening: he wasn’t too high on the priority list.
“That guy holding you back there,” Tony said with a pensive squint, widening
the door for Peter to a sumptuous lounge room in the heart of Stark Towers (and
graciously letting him shimmy up the wall to put extra distance between them)
that he had assured him lacked surveillance and boasted stealth-grade windows,
“I might need to gloss over the dossiers again, but I’m fairly sure he’s in
with Magneto. In case you haven’t been in the loop, there’s been some activity
on that front. You know what the Brotherhood of Mutants is?”
So, there was one answer. If the X-Men had sent Logan to snoop around town and
Peter had run into some old foe of his, there was very little chance the two
weren’t connected. He wondered if Logan had bailed after leaving him or stuck
to it. Either way, he clearly hadn’t found that blond man yet. “Yeah, of
course. Everyone does. I was even dating Kitty.”
“Kitty?” Tony looked at him blankly.
“Walks through walls? Cute brunette, about yea high,” he held his hand just shy
of the top of his head. Even though he was currently five feet above Tony the
message remained the same.
“Oh right, yes, I remember. You two on the news, the new ‘it’ couple.” Tony
winked at him conspiratorially. “Though that sounded like a past tense there.”
“Yeah.”
“The redhead?”
“How did – yes, Mary Jane, how did you know?”
Tony sputtered with laughter. “Her name is Mary Jane?” To his credit he tried
to mask the laughter as a cough when he saw Peter’s dead lack of enthusiasm,
but no one was fooled. “Well, she’s a looker, I’ll give you that. Feisty little
thing too. I saw her when she chewed out Fury in those old Fantastic Four hand
me downs. She a mutant?”
“No. She…no, there was a thing.” Peter titled his head back and forth, muddling
through the details and deciding it was not at all worth it to reveal them.
“There was a whole thing, but it’s over now. She got shot up with Osborn’s
gobliny formula once, but Reed fixed her. She’s normal.”
Disapproval came in the form of a heavy eye roll. “Osborn,” he muttered, as if
the word were a thing you had to scrape off the bottom of a garbage pail.
“Right. Anyway, this mutant shake-up. It’s mostly underground right now and I
would not be leaking a word of it to you if it wasn’t for your little problem.”
He shrugged apologetically. “But since you did happen upon one of these
schmucks today, I strongly suggest you try to stick to your house arrest for a
while. Until we’ve sussed out what’s going on with you. With the increase in
mutant activity around town, Nick’s expressed some concern.”
“I didn’t leave to go be Spider-Man,” Peter protested hotly, “I left to make
sure that—“
“Yes, your clone? Am I right? If there’s any way you could get in contact with
her, she deserves a fair warning.”
“Whoa, okay one? If I had that I wouldn’t have gotten lost in Hell’s Kitchen
looking for her, and two, what exactly is your stance on her right now? I mean
SHIELD as a whole? Because after yesterday I cannot blame her one little bit
for pulling a Houdini, to be quite frank.”
All that righteous indignation earned him was a second shrug and complete non-
chalance. “You would have to ask Fury about that. I’m not involved there. Good
luck getting a straight answer. You hungry?”
He was. So much so that he was sure he could get a PSA made about him and
collect donations from generous callers, yet he only winced and said, “Thanks,
but honestly I just want to go home. My Aunt is literally going to strangle
me.”
Tony stopped beneath him, smiling and doing so genuinely. “She hasn’t stopped
harassing us since last night. I’ve already put in a call.”
“But I’ve been with you the whole time!”
“Correction, I’ve had a call made on my behalf.” He waggled his wristwatch.
“Instant communiqué with the rest of SHIELD, completely inconspicuous. Terrible
to bring on dates. You bump the wrong button and suddenly you have to file
reports about what you did to Jessica Alba on a plane to Jamaica.”
Peter blinked. “Is that a real anecdote, or…”
“Also, don’t get too excited. I’ve made some headway on your samples.”
Too late. Peter actually leaped down from the wall and Tony took a few
precautionary steps back. Peter respected the distance but couldn’t help
leaning forward in his eagerness. “Really? Are you at something testable? Like
even slightly?”
He was rewarded with a curt nod. “Very. But like I said, it’s a trial run. A
neat little cocktail, if I do say so myself. If nothing else it should give us
an idea of what it isn’t. You’ve got a heck of a mess going on in there, let me
tell you.”
“What?” That was news. At least, it was news if Tony wasn’t simply unsure about
what gave him his spider-powers. All sorts of horrible notions erupted in his
head – diseases, serums, poisons, wonky magic spells, that time he had been
bitten by a vampire – it all paled him just enough that Tony looked actively
concerned.
“Don’t worry about it now, kid, I’m just saying. Once we work out this thing, I
think you ought to take some time off and let us get a closer look at what’s
happening in the old matrix. You’re healthy, but you’re not normal and we’re
not so sure what’s Osborn’s doing and what isn’t. You’ve been exposed to some
things since becoming Spider-Man that might have changed you. And this new
‘power’ of yours, it may be a side effect of that. Or, and this is one of the
things we’re testing for, it might be a latent aspect of the Osborn formula.
Maybe he was hoping to encourage his little batches of super humans to breed.”
“EW!”
“It’s a possibility, not a fact. Calm down. We’re not going to bother
questioning him about it either, all right? Not unless the results start
swinging that way.” He took a solemn moment to brush his suit straight, as if
there was a smattering of crumbs on it from lunch (there wasn’t, and Peter
enviously doubted that there ever had been in his life) and held up a hand.
“I’ll be back in five. With bagels and the serum, capisce? You’ll stay put, and
you don’t let anyone in but me.”
“Yeah, but,” Peter wrinkled his nose, “Tony, we shouldn’t be in the same room.
I’m surprised we were even able to have this conversation. Is the Wasp around
this time? Janet?”
“Do you really want to take the serum on a leap of faith alone, or would you
rather know it’s working off the bat? And better me, who understands what’s
going on and is no match for your strength, than some idiot that Nick’s going
to push in and potentially fire if he tries something. I’m not expendable, if
you catch my drift.”
Peter went aghast. “He’d actually do that?”
“He’s not happy, to put it politely.” And something strange crossed Tony’s face
then, not in the same lascivious sense he had been getting used to the past
week, but that strained and faintly sad look people gave when they witnessed
the bearing of bad news. It passed without comment, but Peter watched him
closely now as he spoke. “He’s not here by the way. If that makes you feel
better.”
“And he won’t come?”
“No. Official business.”
“And my Aunt?”
He shook out his watch from his sleeve and clicked buttons perfunctorily.
“Apparently stuck in traffic, but coming.”
There was nothing for it. Peter crossed his arms and cast a glance out at the
brilliant sky. It seemed as much a part of the room as the sofas and the mini
bar, with windows that cascaded from roof to floor with scarcely a hint that
there was something more than air between them. He nodded, not turning his gaze
away, and he heard Tony shut the door behind him.
He strode over and crouched next to the window at the center to watch the
clouds brush the tips of buildings. He could tell you which ones were for what
business, what hotel, what purpose. He could envision the rooftops of most and
even map out several different routes from here to there to almost anywhere he
wanted to get in Manhattan. He knew what their gutters smelled like, which
alleys had gang tags and where the town’s fat cats did dirty business while
their drivers waited around the corner. He’d gotten scrapes from nicking
chimneys and hard landings on cement rooftops, he’d perched on the gargoyles of
old stone and mortar relics and shimmied up the sleek windows of the monotone
monoliths that housed corporations and firms.
And for not the first time, he wondered what it would be like to simply let
that all go. Never taste New York air from fifty stories up again. If Tony
couldn’t cure him, it might come to that.
What was he going to tell Aunt May? MJ? He curled up around his knees and
wondered again if he absolutely had to. He didn’t want to think about it
anymore. Neither one could possibly know, neither would understand. They’d hate
him. Or his Aunt would try to lock him away, but MJ would hate him. No question
about it.
All Peter had to do was picture her face, the way her eyes crinkled and
glistened when she cried, and his stomach was already off to rolling in dread.
The pallid reflection in the window alerted him to the door swinging open once
again. It was only Tony, bearing a paper baggy that promised bagel goodness and
a minute metal case which promised salvation. Peter was happy to see both and
virtually bounded over.
“Here, take these,” Tony pawned the bagels off on him and he immediately tore
into one. There was a wry grin on the man’s face as he took a station at the
nearby table and worked to open the case. “You’re going to get sick if you
inhale it like that.”
“Then I’ll get sick,” Peter said between bites. The first bagel was gone, and
unlike Tony Stark he did have to wipe his clothes for crumbs. He fished for the
second without hesitation. There were five in total with different fillings;
either Tony was hungry too or he was just unsure of what Peter might like.
“That was the best bagel I’ve had in my life.”
“I’ll send my compliments to the Starbucks downstairs.” The case opened with a
hitch and revealed a what could only be called a needle gun, little glass vials
loaded into the chamber like poison bullets. Peter was suddenly feeling less
confident about this whole thing. “This won’t hurt. It looks like it does but
it’s more of a tickler.”
“Okay, cool.” Peter shuddered. Then he frowned, because shuddering as of late
had been a terribly bad sign. He put down the bagels on the table. “Uh, can I
do it?”
That gave Tony a solid pause. Though he was frowning, clearly uncertain of
something but keeping mum on what, he held the gun out, prone on its side.
There were several buttons at the base of the handle, like the dial pad of a
phone, and they too glowed with green lights. “There’s a ten digit code for it.
To prevent accidental injection, or theft. I’ve patented this, the seal can’t
be broken without contamination. They’re incompatible with any other injector.
You need to put it against your arm before you activate it.”
Peter affirmed with a nod and took it, pressing it high on his left shoulder.
The cool metal was a shock to his skin, but after a second it turned to a
mercy. It was hotter than you would guess, the sun beaming at them from the
obnoxiously high reaching windows. “And what’s the code?”
“Five seven seven…”
“Five…seven…seven…” Each tap suffered from a silence that struck Peter as
bizarre. Strange that the buttons wouldn’t make dial pad noises to ensure they
had been hit. “Yeah okay.”
“Two, one.”
“Two. One.” Peter’s breath had gone thick. Deep. The air was humid in here, he
was certain it hadn’t been so before. There was something niggling and familiar
about the numbers too, but he couldn’t place what.
“Five, six six.” A lower cadence than usual had wormed its way into Tony’s
voice. He spoke as if humming: a soothing sort of murmur that had Peter’s left
foot twisting anxiously on the spot, like he was a small child being punished
by a teacher.
He wet his lips a second time and said, “Five,” but stopped. Inexorably, he
found himself shyly peeking up at the billionaire, who was now much closer than
before and laying a hand over the gun. Peter let him lower it. A heavy lump in
his throat make him swallow, an ugly sound that made him just a touch ashamed
to have made in such close quarters with Tony Stark. “Hey.”
Tony took the gun from him. And as he reached behind to set it back in the case
on the table, he smoothly occupied Peter’s now vacant hand by drawing it to his
lips. He gave the knuckles a kiss. Peter’s heart leaped into his throat and he
was forced to swallow again. “Hello,” he said, then kissed it a second time.
Peter only stared.
He must have done this a million times. Peter scarcely noticed when the gentle
grip on his hand had turned to a tug, sliding him into Tony’s body with a
ghostly glide. He was secured there at the small of his back, and with nothing
more than a finger tapping under his chin Peter was made to crane his neck and
survey the older man close up. The blue of his eyes hooked him all over again.
Maybe it was how dark his brows and hair were. Jet black and glacier blue, not
a combination you could find by tossing a nickel into any old crowd. As a
result Tony seemed exceedingly handsome, maybe even deceptively so. It was
something Peter had noticed before. That one guy could have so much going for
him when everyone else had so little was maddening.
Tony gifted him with a hint of a smile, and dipped in to pair it with a kiss.
Logan and Castle had stubble and Strange had a goatee too, but Tony’s was
softer than all of theirs. Not even because it was longest (Strange won that
contest) and therefore less prickly. He was willing to bet Tony had some kind
of ivory dusted shampoos and ointments that he used daily on the thing. The
perks of the super rich.
He was also, Peter realized, an incredibly good kisser. Practice makes perfect.
It was all very tender, methodical. He didn’t try to rush in all tongue and
teeth and greed, he let things escalate. A ginger peck to start, then one that
lasted a touch longer, then open mouthed, putting his hand on Peter’s cheek for
better effect, lingering at the lips, then a little deeper. If Logan had been
the hot and heavy kind then here was the suave seducer. The sort you put in
movies that made girls giggle and swoon and the guys shift uncomfortably in
their seats, masking envy with mockery. When he drew away Peter tried to
follow, eyes still closed and straining on his tip toes.
Tony chuckled and kissed his cheek, then whispered in his ear. “Take off your
shirt.” Then he was gone, and Peter opened his eyes to see him several paces
away, settling on a plush white couch and shedding his suit jacket. He raised
his eyes at Peter in wordless expectation.
He trotted forward, just a shade over eager and was halted instantly by a cool
hand motioning stop. “What did I tell you?”
Thought was a difficult thing. He understood but it took a second for the order
to sink in, rather than just wobbling over hypnotized by the man in front of
him. Which he was in danger of doing, but Peter could manage this. Absolutely.
With no small amount of torture Peter lifted the hem of his shirt up and
valiantly refrained from whining at Tony to do it for him, to just grab him and
go at it right now now now. He kept his eyes on the billionaire as it swept
over his head, fluffing his hair and giving it the static needed to stick to
his face. A thread of embarrassment trickled into being and he nervously
brushed it away. Tony was scarcely moving save for his fingers, which worked at
unclipping his cufflinks and the radio watch, and his eyes, which had traveled
south of Peter’s face and roamed with meticulous precision. The familiar heat
seemed to burn a little brighter, no mirror was needed to tell Peter he had
gone so much redder for it.
“Shoes.” With minimal fussing (but still enough to highlight his discomfort)
Peter slipped them off, taking his socks with them. “Pants.” Those were
discarded with timid fingers, desperate fingers, making him fumble at the
button before he had succeeded in shucking them as well. His knees appeared
misshapen suddenly, they were much more knobbly than he remembered. Was that
burn scar on his calf too gross? He could heal up so much better than a regular
person could, but there were still marks. You could not get out of this kind of
life unscathed. But Tony only smiled, touching his lips as he cocked his head.
Peter pursed his own, and removed the boxers last of all.
Naked, he stood before one of the richest men in the world, his fallen clothes
rumpled on a carpet he would have to mortgage his house to afford. But Tony was
drinking him in. Peter hadn’t had anything fancier than a can or two of Pabst
Blue Ribbon and whatever Castle had given him, or a sample of wine at dinner.
He had seen people sip at fancier things, juices and spirits mixed into sweet
poison, and there was a specific relish everyone took in it that he could see
in the older man’s face now. Peter wasn’t certain if he should run away. It
screamed danger, being on display like this. Then Tony licked his lips, a
little pink dart that brushed the edge of that dark moustache, and Peter’s cock
jumped at the sight.
Finally, mercy. “Get over here.”
There was at least a quarter pint of dignity left in him, so that he didn’t
just leap over and rip Tony’s pants open. He walked. He was herded onto Tony’s
lap, the silky trousers feeling all too sinful on his bare thighs. The feeling
doubled when Tony started smoothing the skin there from knee to hip with open
palms.
“I don’t think you know how cute you are,” he said softly. That set Peter’s
heart to record paces in half a second, from stuttering in fear to racing with
anticipation.
He lifted a thumb to Peter’s lips, stroking the bottom half with deliberate
sluggishness before entering wholly. Peter enveloped it, his lips around the
base and his tongue swirling over the knuckle. “Mmph.” Tony was pushing it in
and out. He didn’t stop Peter when he took his wrist in hand and began bobbing
his head over the thumb. In fact, he was laughing at him.
“Oh Lord, you’re an eager beaver.” The thumb was zipped out to Peter’s great
disappointment, but he gave a small gasp as Tony traced it down the centre of
his chest and belly. The slick trail halted just before the little patch of
hair at his groin. He reached around and squeezed his ass, a mischievous glint
in his eye. “You should touch yourself for me. I’d really like that.”
Peter’s brows drew together and he took on a frown. He reached for the buttons
of Tony’s shirt like a petulant child. “But you’re still…”
Tony stopped him immediately. “Shht,” he said, a hand on each wrist and guiding
his right downwards, curling the fingers around his rising shaft. “You might be
cute, but you won’t get away with being a brat.” He peppered him with tiny
kisses, much more like demands, pulling back after sets of two or three to
check if Peter was obeying yet.
It wasn’t fair, that he should be stark naked (what a time for puns) and Tony
got to stay looking business ready and impeccable from head to toe. But Peter
hoped that maybe he would keep kissing him, for longer durations and with a bit
more tongue, if he played along. So he touched himself, he rubbed his cock up
and down with a well practiced form and rhythm. Contrary to his hopes Tony
stopped kissing him entirely, preferring to lean into the back of the couch and
watch the action at his groin with lazy focus. His hands wandered. He petted
Peter’s hair. He drew his hands down his chest and rubbed his thumbs across his
nipples, which made Peter squirm and pause for a second because while they
weren’t particularly sensitive the idea was perverse. Somehow moreso than
jacking off in an older man’s lap. The attention made him want to die and
orgasm at the same time, equal combinations of mortified and incredibly turned
on.
Tony, of course, took this as a hint to give his nipples extra attention. He
did lean forward then, giving one a lick as he tweaked the other. Writhing
under the ministrations, Peter was forced to re-examine his assessment. They
were much more sensitive than he had thought. Maybe he hadn’t noticed much
before because no one had ever gone and worshipped them like this. And that was
what it was, because by now Tony was suckling on them as if determined to
change the colour from pink to bruise purple, rubbing into muscle below with
the intuitive know how of a massuesse. He pumped himself harder. He couldn’t
help wriggling, nearly falling off Tony if it hadn’t been for a sudden reach
around and squeeze to his butt. Peter steadied himself on the older man’s
shoulder, gripping there for a moment before twisting his hand in the back of
his shirt instead.
He was shuddering. Panting like an animal. Tony scooted him closer and Peter’s
knees were crunched into the crevice between the back of the sofa and the seat,
and the buttons of the man’s shirt grazed his bare chest as Tony swirled his
tongue around the shell of his ear. Peter laughed, reflexive to the tickle, but
managed to deliver a sharp warning. “No! No, stop, I’ve gotta stop, I don’t
wanna…”
He tore his hand away from his member and braced himself, counting from one to
whatever it took to get that pulsating threat of orgasm away.
“I don’t care,” Tony remarked huskily. Hungrily. He reached down to grab
Peter’s cock himself and ignored the squawk of indignity. “Come all over me. I
don’t need this shirt.”
Peter’s teeth clenched and he retaliated: not by batting Tony’s hand away, but
by tearing through the button and zipper of the finely tailored pants and
slipping his hand under the waistband of silky boxers. Tony guffawed as Peter
grasped him. Bigger than his, no question, both in girth and in length, but the
only pertinent difference was the angle he had to work at to stroke it
properly. “Oh, you frisky little shit.”
Quite suddenly he was on his back. Tony had pushed him over and pinned him
down. He was positively ravaging him now. Where there had only been shallow
teasing pecks before came deep, invasive probes of tongue and lips that pushed
Peter to near asphyxiation. Peter groped the older man with heavy greed,
pulling the shirt loose of the belt and sticking his hands up inside to stroke
his abs and the smooth but muscled curve of his back. Tony’s hands were set
loose too and they covered their ground, tracing his ribs and the ridge of his
hip and the delicate underside of his knees with equal curiousity for each and
every part. At one point he even pushed at the back of his thigh and pulled
himself slightly upright to watch it go. Up, up, over, descending to Peter’s
chest and then the knee nestled flat on his shoulder. The shock put a smugness
in Peter’s breathless grin, and he stretched it out flat. His whole left leg
now pointed like a minute hand at the noon mark, ruler straight and without the
tremors of tension. Tony gaped at him with no small degree of awe.
“Well look at you,” he said, giving a low whistle.
Only then, seated back upright and still transfixed by the unnatural
demonstration of flexibility, did Tony start into the buttons of his shirt. He
flung the thing off without a care and Peter gave a sharp snicker. Victory.
Logan would forever and for always win the body hair contest. Tony had some,
but it was like a faint dusting in comparison to the mutant. It looked natural
but too neatly kept to be untouched by scissors, in a triangle that tapered off
into the little trail that traversed through the navel and down into the waist
of his pants. He was well built, too, for a man who spent his time behind desks
and in laboratories. Peter supposed a certain fitness level was required to
operate inside the Iron Man armor. Jealousy sparked in him all over again, even
if it was only a minor twinge under the thick slathering of lust. Tony was an
impossibly, horribly lucky man.
He started on his pants, pulling them below his hips and letting his cock
spring free before descending on Peter again. He thrusted against Peter’s
groin, inciting a moan that probably belonged in a professional porno flick.
Peter let his raised legs swing around. With some squirming he managed to
attach his feet to Tony’s pants, using his spider powers to adhere to the
fabric and clumsily push them down all the way. Tony complied, lifting each
foot as Peter kicked the clothing up and over his ankles, but he never stopped
thrusting against Peter. His cock was leaking a little, painting a sticky line
on his lower half that dipped into his navel. Tony reached between them and
smeared it all around Peter’s belly. As Peter shivered and bucked against him,
rolling his dick against the older man’s stomach, he leaned over the edge,
fetching his discarded suit jacket. With stoic haste he fished something from a
concealed pocket on the inside, unscrewed a lid and swiped his fingers inside.
It occurred to Peter that it was probably lube, and while it was disturbing to
think that Tony carried it around at all times he was a little more concerned
with the idea that he had now had anal sex with two different people and never
had anything but spit to save him.
When Tony returned to hovering over him properly his fingers were glistening
with a viscous, oily liquid. With a filthy smirk, he leaned over Peter again
and held one leg wide by the ankle. A soft kiss, no matter how nice, did not
mask the finger slipping in and around his hole, coating it meticulously with
the warm goop. Peter wriggled and made small sounds of protest that were
trapped by Tony’s mouth, turning them even smaller and weaker still. Either he
was starting to get looser or the liquid made it too easy, but Tony had slipped
two fingers in with scarcely a hiccup.
This did not negate the discomfort entirely. Though there was the added
sensation of squishiness, and Peter wasn’t sure what he thought of that yet.
Tony was lapping at the hollow of his neck when he thrust the third finger in.
And now it was less stretching, less plying and gentility and more like the
fingers were acting as a surrogate for what was about to happen. He was
thrusting them in with force, plundering, making Peter squeak in shock to start
before it started to feel oddly nice. Really nice, smooth in and out and short
pushes to focus on power. Peter coiled his free leg around the older man’s and
settled for squeezing his rear. He pushed Tony into him from there and revelled
in how stiff the thing felt sliding up against his belly. It had to hurt by now
to not be using it. Tony was hard, Peter was sensationally hard, and the
fingers pushing into him only made him needy and over eager. He groped at the
body above him with a nearly real blindness.
The fingers were simply gone one moment. Peter actually looked down in
confusion before the hand on his arm begged him upwards. He obeyed, panting,
and watched with insatiable hunger as Tony laid himself down, wiping his sticky
fingers on the seat cushion without a care and shifting a pillow beneath his
head. Peter crawled over top of him, a trace of Spider-Man in the movements
when it turned predatory. Tony was underneath him now and he laid down kisses
on the man just like the ones he had received. He also got a bit daring. His
rear was lined up near perfectly, the tip of Tony’s stiff cock poking the base
of one cheek, so it was purely intuitive to rub it down a few times. Let it
slide up in the shallow crevice as he lowered himself and slip free when he
rose.
Tony moaned low and monstrous. “Oof. You’re not half as clueless as you
pretend, honey pot.” Yet when he let his hand come down on Peter’s rear with a
resounding smack, Peter still yelped.
“Did you just spank me?” He looked over his shoulder and was swatted again for
the transgression. “Ow!”
“That’s what happens to bad little boys.” Tony squeezed his rear with both
hands then, one on each cheek, and gave one last light whack for good measure.
Peter’s dick was throbbing and his face burned livid red. The sting wasn’t
altogether unwelcome. “If you want to be good…”
The message was clear. He held him by the hips now, raising and realigning him.
Peter drew away and braced himself with one hand soldered to the back of the
sofa. His nerves had returned, not by droves but just enough to give him a
sliver of hesitation. Logan and Castle had taken him from behind. He would have
to look at Tony’s face if they did it this way.
Tony had let go of one hip, gripping himself and prodding Peter’s rear with it
for entrance. Peter took a much needed deep breath and spread one cheek just
enough to the side, simply letting himself drop, margin by margin, onto the
cock below. Moaning at the intrusion Peter turned his attention to himself
again, grabbing his own member in hand as he sank to stroke away the pain of
entry.
Tony helped him. When it was no longer necessary to hold himself in place he
began to invade Peter’s private ministrations, resting his hand over top before
pushing Peter’s fingers off, one by one, until he had usurped him entirely and
was stroking him with a slow, lavish touch. And here Peter was under the
impression that he could not get any redder in the face.
Now he was required to put his focus on his rear, and how far in Tony had
gotten before they stopped to take care of his own erection. About halfway from
his estimates, and Peter was in some pain but he was already feeling that
greedy little niggling that demanded more, keep moving, split himself in two if
he had to. Thighs gone tight and his toes curled to straining, Peter had to
repeat soothing mantras to himself to loosen everything and push down past his
comfort. Put his focus on the seductive pull on his member. Tony was nothing
but extra attentive, tender even. Very considerate of him considering how Peter
was now hovering just above the base of his cock. Just shy of touching down and
feeling the balls against his rear, but that was the limit. Peter couldn’t take
in any more.
The pressure was so much different from this angle. It pushed more insistently
at the front even though it was firmly tucked inside him, which meant Peter
could already feel it brushing against that tiny sweet spot that it had taken
the other two some time to hit.
“You all right?” Tony asked in hushed tones, letting his hand stray from its
station at his hip to rub his arm. Somehow that embarrassed him more, making
such a big deal about it and moving at a snail’s pace. Was that normal or was
that just him being a wuss? He nodded hastily to make up for it.
“Yeah, yeah, just one sec,” he assured as he adjusted his legs, just a small
scoot to make staying upright and mobile that much easier. Then, afraid it was
too early but so eager to please, he started to move. Very small, tight lifts
and falls, and though it hurt he saw Tony biting his lip as his eyes closed in
ecstacy, so Peter drove faster. It was easier than he thought, and the
insistent push against that spot inside him was addictive. Soon he was
positively bouncing in the older man’s lap. Up and down, up and down, full as
can be and even hitting the base of his groin when he thought before it would
not be possible at all. Tony groaned and tugged at Peter’s cock, having
momentarily forgotten to as his own was being swallowed whole.
“That’s it, baby. Look at you go.”
And Tony was looking now, dark eyed and sin in his grin. In spite of his
misgivings Peter was finding that it struck less on his nerves and more on his
need to impress. Obviously he was doing something right. He threw him a smile
right back and bounced higher with a quicker return, daring overtaking the pain
of a premature stretch and revelling in that succulent swell of cock inside
him.
Tony let him have the lead for a while, stroking him and touching his belly
with reverence and his waist with lusty need. It didn’t last. He stopped Peter
mid-air with an abrupt grip on his rear, raised his own knees, and then held
Peter still as he thrusted upwards into him. The first slam had Peter yelping
in shock. He had to let his upper body tumble forward and hold his weight with
both hands, one still on the back of the couch and the other making a deep
indent in the cushion next to Tony’s ribs. He couldn’t shut up. Wordless moans,
gasps and yelps were drilled out of him as Tony took no mercy on his behind.
Tony’s tight grip on his hips did nothing to stop his body from jerking upward
with every thrust, his hair flopping in and sticking to the thin sweat on his
brow, threatening to poke out his eyes. Peter just closed them shut and let
himself ride. His entire body was pulsating, his toes wriggled and he stabbed
the cushions with how tightly his fingers dug in.
What he delayed before was now unstoppable. Peter tensed, just a half of a
second of stillness before he came messily over Tony’s belly. Electricity shot
through him and he nearly collapsed. He dropped his head onto Tony’s collarbone
and just barely kept the rest of himself aloft, elbows bent deep as the ripples
of euphoria swept through his every inch and nerve. Tony slowed, but never
stopped moving. He petted his hair and whispered to him kindly. “That’s it. Let
it go kiddo.”
Peter looked up, drained and hair obscuring his eyes, and kissed him then. He
had to push forward a little and lift off of Tony’s cock for a moment (though
Tony immediately followed and thrust higher to regain his ground) but it was
worth it. Soft and sweet and letting Tony dip his tongue inside.
He was aware of Tony reaching between them, the back of his hand brushing his
chest before he brought it out for Peter to see. He had his come on his
fingers, pearly sheen and sticky even as it rolled down the index in a thick
bead. Peter was fixated on them as Tony lapped them clean, never once breaking
eye contact. Showing off, though Peter was mystified as to why.
Maybe Tony was just an all around smug bastard.
“You taste good.”
Peter bit his lip and flushed all over again. “Oh?”
“You want a taste?” He didn’t bother waiting for a yes or a no, already swiping
a new batch from his stomach and presenting it to Peter, an inch or two from
his lips.
He might have said no had he been given the chance but now that he was being
offered it he found he couldn’t refuse. Tentative, his eyes locked with Tony’s,
he edged forward and gave the fingers a lick. Salty. Weirdly salty, but not so
bad. Tony pushed his fingers in his mouth and Peter complied by sucking at them
with the same enthusiasm he gave for popsicles. “Mm.”
Tony was laughing at him all over again. If it hadn’t been followed with a kiss
to his brow he might have been offended. “You’re so damn cute, it’s almost
sickening. How do you like it?”
Peter popped free of the fingers and gave an instant, “Good.” Tony chuckled
some more and kissed him on the mouth.
“That’s what I want to hear. Now you mind if I finish?” He gave a buck and
Peter hissed, but Tony didn’t continue further. Rather he was rolling them
over, pulling Peter’s legs in and forcing him back into the couch, wriggling
him down until he was flat on his back and his legs were up by his ears. Pinned
in place. Tony laid neatly over top of him. They reattached, his cock buried
deep into Peter. All he had to do was roll his hips a little, rock them back
and forth. It was the same kind of gentility that he had gotten from Frank
Castle. Peter groaned deeply and reached around to squeeze at Tony’s ass. He
pushed him in deeper from there and almost sobbed at how good it felt. He had
already come but he still wanted it so badly.
“Why are you so stupidly – nngh – stupidly perfect?” Peter gasped as he kept
rolling in, drowning him with his weight and the thickness of his cock, how
smooth real lube made the push and pull of sex.
“What’s that?” Tony said from above.
“Why are you—“ He was cut off with a particularly deep shove.
Shit eating grin might have been a terrible cliché, but it was a picture
perfect case for the billionaire hovering over top of him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t
hear you.”
“Tony, come on!”
“Tell me how you feel.”
Peter squirmed, his head dropping to the side as his body throbbed in pleasure.
“You feel so good…”
“Really?” He got kissed on his neck then and Peter squeezed him harder at the
rear.
“You’re so good, you’re the best, just keep going –“
“The best?”
“Yes…” He hissed. His eyes rolled back as Tony dragged out torturously only to
push back in even slower.
“So you like this?” The next instant he pounded soundly into him, holding
himself all the way in. Truly the devil in disguise.
“YES!” Peter wailed.
“Do you want more?”
“Yes!” Peter let his hands scrape at Tony’s shoulder’s now, desperate as the
pace switched back into marathon speeds. “Oh my god Tony, please!”
“How do you want it?”
Tony had lifted off of him and yanked his legs up high and to each side,
pumping into the centre of a wide V. Peter thanked God for his flexibility then
or that might have been painful. “Harder!”
“Say it!”
“Harder, harder, more! Don’t stop! Don’t stop!” Peter was writhing underneath
him, his back arching and his hands scrambling for purchase on the sofa. “Oh my
fucking god…”
That seemed to do it. Tony slammed into him a few more times, ruthless, then
suddenly pushed himself down and pulled at Peter’s hair. He attacked his lips
insatiably as he spilled out deep inside him. Tony thrusted lightly as he
continued to come. His breath was hot and desperate between kisses, a long moan
finishing off the affair. He let himself pump in and out for a short while more
before withdrawing. Peter was half hard again, and they kept kissing one
another with a terrible longing.
Then, like clockwork, Peter’s sanity trickled back in. Tony was oblivious as he
went stiff underneath him, as he kissed back with less and less enthusiasm and
his hands went from loving gropes to pushing at his shoulders. The sense of
something horribly wrong came long before cohesive thought. All Peter knew was
that he had to get out from under him, it was suddenly much too hot, much too
heavy, much too real and uncomfortable and he did not want the man to keep
touching him so lasciviously. He managed to scoot out, half hanging out off the
couch, when Tony was finally taking the hint.
“Oh, come on,” he said plaintively, but Peter was not to be deterred. He used
his strength to push Tony back into the couch cushions and roll out entirely,
hitting the floor with a smack. Tony was reaching for his arm. “Christ, you
okay?”
Peter didn’t respond. He saw the table, some distance away, and with sudden
clarity remembered the needle gun left on top of it. And the numbers, he knew
them. He could remember them, surely he could.
It was the elevator at the Bugle all over again. The moment Peter was on his
feet and trying to limp away Tony was right there with him, wrapping his arms
around his waist and nibbling at his ear. Another spike of heat washed through
his skin but Peter doubled his efforts, squirming to duck out from the grip.
Tony stopped putting up resistance for a brief moment and he took his chance,
darting over. But when he grabbed the gun he felt a hand at his back pushing
him down, bending him over the table just like Logan had done on the first
night, and Peter knew he had to act fast.
He pushed back upright, which seemed fine by Tony as he simply circled his arms
around his waist and kept kissing his neck, his jaw, pressing close against his
back. Peter whimpered, even that small sound posed a struggle as he warred
between remembering the code and turning around to let Tony fuck him into
oblivion a second time. With shaking hands he put the gun on his arm and tried
to wrest his face away from Tony’s prying kisses, which had strayed up to his
cheek.
The numbers, the numbers. He punched them in as they came to him. Five seven
seven, two one five.
“Oh,” he said suddenly, with a lucidity that shocked even him. Euler’s
constant: 0.5772156649, ten places after the decimal. That was why they were
familiar.
He tapped them out rapid fire, and keened when the needle punched through and
drained itself into him. The sound caught Tony’s attention. He tried to turn
Peter around to check on him but Peter refused, curling around his arm and the
gun held to it as if protecting a small child.
“Hey, what’s…” Tony’s question drifted off as Peter closed his eyes. A new
ripple over took the heat, cool like the gel Tony had used on him and just as
repulsive.
He felt sick. And debased. The former was the result of the drug, he was sure,
as he was bent over and sweating with slight nausea now, but the latter was all
on him. Tony was drawing away. He felt no heat now. No need for touch. It had
been zapped clean out of him, and Peter found that he didn’t want to get up
anymore. He didn’t want to see Tony’s face.
He heard the light padding of feet as the man took a few steps back. They were
both mute. Peter less so perhaps, because the shivers had taken him over and
his breath hissed through his gritted teeth as he squashed down the sobbing.
Of course he had to go and get fucked by Tony Stark. One of a very few people
he could openly admit that he looked up to without having that image marred by
getting told he was stupid to his face, by watching him compromise the same
morals Peter thought he upheld. He had lost respect for plenty of personal
heroes as he had gotten to know them as people first and icons second, but Tony
seemed immune to everything.
Now he would always remember Peter naked and squealing like a bitch on his
couch.
With delicate care Peter slipped the needle free. He slapped the gun on the
table and tore away, beelining for his clothes and furiously replacing them. A
tear did squeak out as he felt Tony’s cum leaking down his leg. His stomach
clenched and rolled. Humiliation like he had never known had his hands
trembling, turning his guts into leaden weights and his extremities numb. He
furiously wiped off the trail with his hand and rubbed all traces of it into
obscurity on his boxers, which he yanked on thereafter. His pants came next.
Tony was silent, but Peter could see him standing perfectly petrified out of
the corner of his eye. With great trepidation, he began to mirror him, treading
wordlessly to his own clothes and gingerly slipping them on.
Tony had only managed to get his pants on and shrug into his still open shirt
when Peter made to leave.
“Wait, Peter!”
He denied him any chances. Peter slammed the door on his way out and slinked
into the elevator. It was empty. Mercifully empty.
He hit the main floor button and crouched low, adopting a corner to sit in and
hugging at his knees. He sat in silence the whole way down, and to his good
fortune was never once made to stop and pick up another passenger. It must have
been a slow day at Stark Industries.
***** An Uneasy Fix *****
Chapter Summary
     Keeping secrets has become too difficult, ever for a seasoned veteran
     like Peter Parker.
Chapter Notes
     No warnings for this chapter!
When he reached the bottom floor, there was a suavely dressed woman waiting for
him who informed him that his Aunt had been shown to another room on the second
floor. Peter considered that it might be a ploy by Tony to keep him in the
building, but when he followed her and found himself in another much smaller
lounge, his Aunt was pacing back and forth, spinning on her heel with the
maniacal twist of a race car tire, swerving to nail the curve. She squared him
off a sharp look when he came in.
“You –“ She turned that pointed glare to the woman, who gracefully bowed out
and shut the door behind her. Peter accepted the chokehold hug he was subjected
to thereafter, and did not protest when she grasped him by the shoulders, gave
him a shake and launched into the tirade he had been dreading all day. “Where
on Earth have you been? What happened to you? Do you have any idea how worried
I was?”
She patted his head, checking for fever, and then bodily spun him around for
sign of injury. There was nothing for it but to bear the brunt of motherly
fury. “I’m fine, Aunt May. I got lost in Hell’s Kitchen.”
Her eyes flared wide. “Excuse me?”
He was forced to explain, in the most delicate of terms, that he had been
chasing after a friend in danger (he still hadn’t told her everything about the
clones and so editing out Jessica was a bit of a snag) and lost her, and that
he had run out of web fluid and was without pocket change. From there it took a
great deal of fibbing, pretending that he had found a rooftop to snuggle up on
and that Tony Stark had found him walking innocuously down the street the next
morning. None of it appeased her.
“You could have been dead and I wouldn’t have known.”
“I wasn’t. I tried to get some change for a phone call but no one would give me
any.”
Livid, she kneaded the air next to her temples as she spoke. If she ever had
been tempted to give him a swat, it was now.“Peter, you do not understand. I
was losing my mind. Losing my goddamn mind, and there wasn’t anything on the
news about Spider-Man, no one I called would tell me a thing! I was going
insane worrying about you, and you expect this to be okay just because this
time, you didn’t get hurt?”
His eyes were trained on the carpet. “Aunt May, I’m really sorry.”
“What is this?” She picked at his collar. Peter’s pulse sped. He shrugged away
and mumbled that it was nothing. Naturally she did not believe him. “Peter,
what is that mark on your neck?”
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” he waved his hands in protest. “It’s from MJ.”
She glared darkly. “If it was from MJ, you would have said so in the first
place.”
There was no escaping her. Peter fidgeted with the bottom of his shirt. “I
can’t…”
“Can’t what? You spit it out right now Mister.”
The doorknob clicked. Peter nearly jumped out of his skin, and went pale when
he saw Tony Stark in the doorway. His suit was immaculate again, his hair
combed. No fuss, no muss, no sign of anything amiss unless you squinted closely
to see the pale rosy tint to his cheeks. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Mrs. Parker.”
She pursed her lips, affronted, but waved away the retort she was clearly
planning in her head. “No, it’s all right. I have to thank you for bringing my
nephew here, safe and sound. We owe you so much already.”
“Please, think nothing of it.” He entered fully and Peter felt his heart sink
as the door clicked shut behind him. His Aunt turned to frown at him again, but
a new furrow took over her brow as she looked him over.
“Peter?” she prodded, putting her hand on his back. His mouth was dry as paper
and his head was pounding, and he lost the words to defend himself. “Are you
all right?”
“He’s sick, Mrs. Parker.”
“Yes,” Peter said hastily, even if he hated himself for it. Aunt May cast a
quizzical glance to their host.
“I know that, he’s been running a fever for the past few days, but – oh, what’s
this?” Tony was handing her a metallic case. A larger model than the one he had
brought upstairs for Peter. Terror overtook him again and he sent a searching
look at Tony, praying he wouldn’t spill any depraved details about what it was
for. He ought to have brought it down himself, Peter thought miserably. Tony
gave the slightest nod to him, and continued.
“It’s an antidote. This illness has something to do with his being Spider-Man.
Whether it’s his altered DNA causing it or some external force remains to be
seen, but it’s not a case of the sniffles. You need to take this—“ he addressed
Peter now, betraying not a whit of what had happened between them mere minutes
before, “—twice a day, morning and night, for at least a month. I’ve given you
two week’s supply here. You’ll need to come back for testing once a week and
refills when you run out.”
Peter shook his head vehemently. “No, I can’t.”
“You have to. We haven’t figured out for certain what it is yet, Peter.”
“It’s working, isn’t it?”
“It might stop working. It could be a placebo effect, it could need a stronger
dosage. There might be negative side effects. There’s a lot of factors we have
to consider here, and we’ll need to run more tests to make sure we’ve nixed it
for good.”
Aunt May looked back and forth between them, eyeing the unspoken line of
tension with mounting suspicion. Peter caught her eye but was unsure of how to
shake her off without having to agree. “No, I can’t, it’s too suspicious.
People are going to notice me coming in and out of here all the time. Can’t you
FedEx it?”
“Peter, what exactly is going on here?”
He had no answer for that. Peter stared at her helplessly. Tony winced, giving
a small grunt of dissatisfaction, and proposed the unthinkable. “Might I have a
word alone with Peter?”
“No,” he instantly countered, but his Aunt was interjecting.
“What for?”
“I just need to assure him of something. I promise you, it won’t take more than
a moment,” Tony said hurriedly, a hand on Peter’s back (was he insane?) as he
herded him through another door and left his baffled Aunt behind.
Tony guided him into a kitchenette of all things, though a finely fashioned
one. He shut the door for privacy and let Peter go, looking him gravely in the
eye. Peter’s heart thudded and he cast his gaze anywhere else he could find.
The microwave would do.
“What?” he asked peevishly.
“Listen,” Tony said hurriedly. “Peter, I cannot stress enough how sorry – truly
and honestly sorry –“
Peter was cringing, loathing pushing up gooseflesh all over him. He couldn’t
even look at Tony without remembering his naked body, or feeling the phantom
tongue in his mouth or kisses on his belly, the cock sliding against his navel.
“Stop it. Just stop it.”
“Peter, I just want you to know—“
“I know,” Peter seethed, “But it happened and there’s nothing we can do about
it so just drop it and let me leave. Let me out of here. I don’t want to be
here.”
Tony was silent, calculating. There were lines in his face that had never been
there before, worry creases that aged him, took a little of that shine off his
James Bond cool. “I won’t tell a soul.”
Though the chief tone spoke of regret, there was an undercurrent to Tony’s
reassurance. Something prying about the statement, a question even. He dared to
look Tony in the eye then and was infuriated to see the shame written there in
bold letters. “You think I’m going to?”
“No. I don’t think you want to, but the issue is—“
“Oh, is this a question of reputation?” Peter’s grimace turned to a hard edged
grin, bitter and disbelieving. “You think I’m going to go cry about this to
somebody and you’re going to get creamed by Fury, right?”
He was cool in his recovery. Whether it was from speaking sincerely or years as
a very shrewd business man remained to be seen. “That is not what I mean,
Parker. Believe it or not your safety is my biggest concern here. The point I’m
making is that I’m the one working on the cure. I am going to need to be in the
same room as you again sometime to do that.”
“You just fricking gave me a cure.”
“And I’m not certain it’s going to work.”
“Well, Lordy, if only there was a way to find out!” Peter flung his arms wide
and gawked around the kitchenette, playing baffled. “I mean golly gee, it’s not
like it just stopped you in your tracks up there. Heaven’s no.”
“Peter, I just don’t think you should assume anything until we’re absolutely –“
Finished with Tony’s smooth talking and conditions, his apologies, Peter shot
forward. Tony tried, but couldn’t dodge being backed against the wall, Peter’s
hands on his cheeks as he narrowed the distance between them to a thin half
inch. Tony’s eyes were wide and his face frosted white under Peter’s fingers in
terror.
“You feel like kissing me yet?” Peter dared. Silence answered him. For the
first time ever, Tony Stark had not one silver coated word at hand to smooth
the situation. He let go and backed off with a scowl. “Then we’re done here.”
He made for the door, though he took one last stop to hold a threatening finger
in the air. “And if – if this thing doesn’t work after all, then get a woman to
hold my hand through testing. I don’t care who. I am not doing this again, with
you or anyone else. Period.”
Aunt May watched him sharply as he slinked out into the lounge again, grabbing
her by the sleeve and telling her plainly, “We’re leaving now.” She turned that
stare to Tony Stark then, standing defeated in the doorway of the kitchenette,
before Peter tugged her out and permitted not so much as a wave goodbye from
either party.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
As Manhattan flashed by their windows and they bid it farewell, hitting the
bridge in the dregs of afternoon traffic, neither Peter nor Aunt May had said a
word to each other. Taut lines riddled his Aunt’s face with the effort to hold
in her every remark, and Peter clutched the metal briefcase tight to his middle
and watched the cityscape with lifeless eyes. The radio was on, an old
rockabilly song strumming and failing to liven up the terse atmosphere in the
car.
“You passed me by one sunny day
Flashed those big brown eyes my way
And oooh I wanted you forever more…”
When they hit the limits of Queens, the spell broke.
“This Stark man,” Aunt May said slowly, “Did he do something to you?”
Made him strip bare while he watched. Made him jerk off in his lap, kissed him,
touched him, fucked him. And the joke of it all was that it was Peter’s fault.
“No,” he said wearily.
“I said "Hello Mary Lou
Goodbye heart
Sweet Mary Lou
I'm so in love with you…”
The radio reigned again, but it was a short revival. Aunt May shut off the
music and subjected the street to her grim stare. “And this illness he’s
talking about, what is that?”
“It’s…” he stared at the case, his heart thudding in his ears. No excuses came
to him. He could have passed it off as fevers, chills, even a loss of one of
his powers, but none of those seemed like such bright ideas. Peter drifted off
entirely, enraptured by the metal case and the serums he knew lay within.
“Peter.”
He covered his eyes, and answered with the only words he could find. “I don’t
want to talk about it.”
His Aunt inhaled thinly. She was treading the border between a ferocious rage
and motherly worry, he could hear it in that sliver of a breath and it made his
stomach turn. “Peter, I understand there are some things you don’t want to
share with me about being Spider-Man. I’ve tried to respect that, you know I
have. But I know that there has been something wrong this last week. Something
very wrong, and I can see it in your eyes every time I look at you.” He coiled
up tighter and kept his gaze lowered. “And it’s not like the rest. I remember
how you were when Ben went, and Gwen. I know you a lot better than you think I
do.”
“I never said –“ Peter started.
“No, but you think it. And now that I know you’re Spider-Man a lot of things
have made so much more sense about you, but this is scaring me Peter.” He could
see her turning her head from the corner of his eye, short glances over that
she could afford while navigating their way home. “Peter, you won’t even look
at me.”
“I really don’t want to talk about it,” Peter confessed, meek as a mouse. “Can
we please just leave it, Aunt May? I really don’t want to.”
She was taking none of it. “You disappeared on me. For nearly twenty four hours
you were nowhere to be found, and when I come to get you at this man’s
business, you’re shuffling around, pale as a ghost and you have a hickey on
your neck. Yes, I know what it is, Peter, don’t give me no lies. And then
you’re suddenly back-talking Tony Stark? The Tony Stark, a man who you’ve been
collecting news clippings on for years. And you were crying the other day,
saying that you’ve done something bad, and now we’re saddled with whatever this
is—“ She flung a hand in the direction of the case, “—and I’m supposed to
believe that nothing is wrong besides a case of the super flu? Peter, I might
not be waltzing around New York in a cat suit like you and your friends, but I
was not born yesterday.”
The case was jamming into his stomach, promising a red imprint of its edges and
the folds of fabric trapped underneath it. Peter pushed it in further. It might
not do much to numb his dread but it was something to cling to. His Aunt shot
him another livid, prying glare that hit him like a bullet between the eyes.
“Peter.”
His head drooped and his hair turned to curtains, shielding his eyes from the
woman beside him. “It’s a new thing. I don’t know why, but lately I just…I
think it’s some latent power that kicked in now. Or something. Maybe I am sick.
But it’s this kind of hypnosis, it makes guys…”
Aunt May was deadly quiet. Attentive even as she had to weave into a new lane
and flip on the wipers when punitive raindrops began to dot the window shield.
“Makes them what?”
“They wanna—“ He lifted a hand, grasping at air as if his thoughts had escaped
and he had to catch them before they fluttered away entirely. “I don’t know how
to stop it. It’s like a weird dream and I can’t think when it’s happening, and
they don’t know what they’re doing, I swear, it’s not their fault.”
“Oh.” His Aunt was pressing a hand to her mouth, her complexion ashen. The rise
of her chest as she breathed looked torturous.
“You have to believe me, it’s not their –“
“I knew. When you looked at him like that, I just knew, I knew it.” She bit her
knuckle and shuddered. Peter watched, no longer hidden beneath his hair or
turning away, as she began to cry. “I shouldn’t have let him take you into that
room alone.”
“He didn’t do anything,” Peter insisted, his voice cracking under the weight of
the lie. “Please, no, don’t say that. Don’t say sorry. He didn’t. He made me
this, he is trying to help me.” He pushed the case upright for a moment as if
his Aunt had forgotten it was there.
“Is this what happened last night? You were gone? With some…some man?”
He couldn’t lie now. Peter’s lip trembled. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry Aunt May.”
“Oh, no.” Aunt May was sobbing. She still held the wheel fast with white
knuckles, but the rest of her was threatening to fall to pieces. Peter felt
numb. He suddenly yearned for a shower, remembering the hands that had been on
him and spit from kisses, spilled semen. He was revolting. He joined her
silently, a pair of tears dripping down cheeks that had been bone dry mere
seconds ago. He reached for her hand where it was set on the wheel, rubbing his
thumb over its side. She clutched it back, driving one handed as she squeezed
him tight and unceasingly with the other, as if she feared letting go would
make Peter fly out of the car entirely.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Grounded. Not out of spite or punishment, but necessity. Peter preemptively
suggested it himself. Aunt May called the school to inform them that he was too
ill to attend. His grades likely would plummet from the absences. Ordinarily
Peter might worry that he would get held back a year no matter how hard he
studied, but none of that mattered now. He showered the moment they got home
and was struggling against recursive waves of nausea. Likely the medicine at
work, he reasoned, and so only took one slice when they ordered pizza and ate
together, huddled against one another on the couch. She talked to him about
testing for infections, about how he didn’t have to do anything, she could stay
at home with him the next day if he wanted. He nodded vacantly to it all. She
tried to press him for names and he would give her none, arguing that not one
of them wanted to or likely even could see him again.
It took a long two and half hours to convince her fully that he was the
problem, not anyone else. The whole thing sounded ludicrous and so he didn’t
blame her for being skeptical, but he refused to back down until she understood
that there wasn’t some devious plot by every man he knew to assault him. Just a
strange and inexplicable new development on his part. In spite of the extra
effort, they were both quietly seething as they separated for the night.
He didn’t turn on the light when he entered his room, dejected and sickly and
wanting nothing more than to shut his eyes for the next ten years. A bright
blinking on his desk drew his attention from . There was a voicemail icon on
his cell phone. Peter whipped it up and was stunned to see Johnny Storm’s
number on his missed call list. He dialed in and listened, his room still dark
as he sunk inevitably into his bed.
“Hey, man,” it started, already sounding queasier than a kid on a
rollercoaster. “Look, I’m really sorry about, uh, disappearing and not replying
to your email. Should have wrote back I guess, that would have made more sense.
But I’m already talking so listen, okay? I got a call from MJ. I didn’t pick up
and she didn’t leave a message, but I’m kind of freaking out man. Did you tell
her? About the thing? I’m sorry, I really don’t know what happened or why I did
that, like at all–“
Peter cut off the play back and immediately dialed his girlfriend instead. Why
had she been calling Johnny? Did she know? Unfortunately for him there was only
a dial tone waiting for him. With a grumble of displeasure he went back to
calling Johnny. The phone took him to voicemail, nary a ring to be had.
“Yo yo yo, it’s your flame bro!” Peter cringed. Johnny was the worst sometimes.
“You know what to do.”
The beep pinged in his ear. “Johnny. We’re not gay. Stop freaking out. I’ve
apparently developed the world’s worst superpower and it does that. Dudes have
been coming onto me left right and centre, so stop beating yourself up and
freaking call me. They’ve been working on a cure for it and I’m on some kind of
antidote now so it won’t happen again. I haven’t told MJ anything, but I’ll ask
her why she called. Seriously though, just talk to me when you get a chance.
Capisce? Capisce.” He almost hung up, then had one last thought. “Also your
voicemail message is terrible. Goodbye.”
He dropped the phone on the mattress and buried his face in his pillow. Then
abruptly flipped to his back, because while he couldn’t remember everything
that had happened with Logan he knew he had been face down and biting his
pillow at one point to keep from screaming. There was no sanctuary to be had.
He debated washing the sheets a second time, having immediately done so after
cleaning the kitchen that first night.
It was fruitless, he knew, but he needed to do something.
A muffled buzz came from beside him: a new call from Mary Jane Watson. Peter
zipped it to his ear and spoke hurriedly. “Mary—“
“Let me go to voicemail.”
He listened for further explanation. It wasn’t forthcoming. “What? Why? I’m
right here. I need to talk to you.”
“Hang up.”
She did so. Flabbergasted, Peter was forced to do the same. He set the phone on
his pillow and watched it with thinned lips and a tight grip on his shirt
sleeve, arms akimbo to keep from answering prematurely. Why he was letting her
do this was beyond him.
He didn’t blink when it buzzed, biting his lip and biding out the wait. When it
had finished and a new light blinked at him in the dark he descended upon it
with manic need. MJ’s voice was tight on the line.
“Yeah, this is stupid, but I need to get this out. I found Logan today, Peter.”
The ache was instant, his gut dropping into a bottomless pit. Peter switched
ears on the phone to lay down on his side. His eyes were glassy and round as
marbles.
“Don’t tell me it was a mistake. Don’t tell me you realized something about
yourself, that you wanted to do it. If it’s anything like that, then you don’t
get to say anything to me. That’s the end of it.” There was a crinkling. Fabric
swiped over the speaker, or something to cause a similar crackle. She might be
calling him from bed too, swaddled in sheets. “He said you were on drugs or
something, like a weird mind trick. I don’t understand that. I really don’t get
what kind of psycho mumbo jumbo would make you both flip your nuts and do that.
He didn’t sound like he was lying, but if he was I don’t know what to think.
Did he make you sleep with him? I swear, he’s a dead man if he did.
“I just…need to know if you’re alive. Which you are, so good. I don’t know what
happened to you today. And you know what? I’m a little sick of not knowing what
happens, because then I have to find out it’s stuff like this. You can’t keep
secrets like this from me, it’s not fair and you know it. And yeah I’m being a
coward, leaving you a message so you can’t talk back, but wouldn’t you be mad
if you were me?”
All went quiet. Peter’s heart thumped with all the docility of a wrecking ball
as MJ turned mute. “Hello?” he said tentatively, and felt stupid for it.
“If he did hurt you or it’s…I don’t know. If there’s an explanation that
doesn’t involve you lying to me and being gay the whole time you’ve been with
me, then you need to spill. Now. Otherwise I just do not want to hear it.
There’s only so much I can take.” Now there was more rustling, the precursor to
another short pause. The message concluded with a ill-fitted, “Bye.”
Peter spent five minutes looking at his phone, in the dark, unmoving and
thinking at speeds unimaginable. In the end he set his phone down and slinked
into the nearest pair of shoes he had.
Out the window, down the street. Sneaking out was so much easier when they
lived next door, but they hadn’t moved so far that it was impossible. He
arrived at her house, creeping up to her bedroom window, tapping at the pane.
She was coiled at the foot of her bed, head bowed and back turned from him. The
tap didn’t jolt her into action, like he had hoped. She rose quite slowly,
tossing him a baleful gaze over her shoulder before deigning to open the
window.
In the light of the moon, he could see that her nose and cheeks were red, her
eyes glistening. Wet patches underneath shone with a duller light. She hadn’t
wiped the tears away properly. She sniffled and held a hand under her nose.
“So he did hurt you?” She spoke so quietly that Peter might have missed it had
he not been inches away. She reached for his shoulders limply, brushing them
before abandoning the gesture in her hesitation.
He slid his way in and took her by the hands. “No. It’s not what you think.
I’ll explain everything, okay?” She regarded him warily then. “Can you shut the
window?”
She obeyed, and Peter made good on his word.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Of course some of the less than stellar folks at school were making gagging
noises at her when she returned the next day. Her one woman show had spread
around and although Mary rarely found herself as fodder for the bully brigade,
today she was going to pay her dues.
So perhaps it was a blessing that she couldn’t keep her mind off other things
as the imbeciles and tittering cheerleader wannabes mimicked Exorcism style
vomiting everywhere she went. It provided a unpleasant soundtrack to her day,
but one that she could tune out. She adorned a lifeless mantle quite
seamlessly, slumping deep in her desk.
“You think she’s going to be patient zero?” Flash whispered from behind her.
Probably to his new basketball buddy that served as a shoddy replacement for
Kong. He clicked his pen on the back of her neck and leaned forward. “Mary-
Brain Watson, you jonesing for the flesh of the living?”
She turned back to him with a no nonsense stare. “Aren’t you failing this
class?”
Blunt blows worked best, as usual. A twinge of embarrassment crossed his eyes
before he sneered and shrugged at his buddy: the universal signal for “Bitches,
man.” Mary couldn’t care less. She faced the front again and was lost in the
conversation with Peter all over again.
He hadn’t lied. He told her everything. Things she should have waited thirty
years to hear, but instead was saddled with at fifteen years old. A kiss with
Johnny, almost with a guy at the Bugle, two schmucks in an elevator who almost
got his clothes off. Dr. Strange, the same one from TV, who jerked off on him.
Logan, the Punisher (the mother-freaking Punisher of all people), and Tony
Stark. His Aunt didn’t know the whole story. No one knew except her and now she
was starting to lose her mind. It was sparking in every direction and
threatening full combustion at any moment.
What was she supposed to do? How was she supposed to help?
Mary wilted further still. It wasn’t as if she had been much help before
either, when it was just Spider-Man issues and there were psychopaths popping
out of every gutter to swear vengeance on her boyfriend. Now he was getting
molested. And raped. She didn’t give a hoot about how Peter wanted to call it,
it was definitely rape. Even if both parties weren’t interested. No, especially
if both weren’t into it: that just added a new, undiscovered creep factor that
made her want to shriek out loud because she couldn’t even be properly furious
at the assholes touching him.
She needed a solid direction. It wasn’t his fault or theirs, but that did
nothing to stem the pulsing outrage inside her chest. Was it awful of her that
she kept wondering how each encounter went? Her imagination was spinning wild
and terrible scenarios at her for every instance, some depraved new detail
penciled in every time she revisited the thought, and it scared her in the
sneakiest of ways. It was like Norman Osborn and the bridge all over again. She
would think she was fine and beginning to return to the world, watching
calculus equations spill over the board, then it would hit her like a freight
train: Tony Stark’s tongue on his stomach. Or faceless men, pushing him down,
stripping him bare. Someone’s hands, holding his legs wide or throttling him.
Sometimes Peter was crying and sometimes he looked like he was in a pure state
of bliss.
She had no idea how accurate any of it was, but it was all she could think
about. His confession had consumed her utterly.
The bell rang. It was lunch, mercifully, where she could slink off and hide in
the girl’s room even though Liz was pulling on her arm and babbling at her,
asking if she was all right, did she need this or that. “I just need some alone
time,” Mary muttered listlessly.
Her friend made a sour face. “Look, I know you love him and you think he’s your
Prince Eric or something, but I gotta say: I really don’t like how Peter makes
you depressed all the time.”
She flounced away after that. Mary was suddenly compelled to follow, to wrap
her arms around her friend and never let go. Spill out everything to Liz like
she sorely wanted to. Even if that ruined her just the same as Mary, they would
have each other and it wouldn’t just be Peter and her holding him up when she
was quivering under his weight. Some days, he hung around her neck like Jacob
Marley’s chains.
Most times she decided he was worth it. One hundred and ten percent. Others, it
was much, much harder to say.
The throng of students in the hall made it difficult to pry her way through to
the women’s room, as usual. Mary skulked into the washroom and leaned towards
the mirror, pulling at the dark circles under her eyes.
“Blleaargh, brains…” she said, her tongue lolling out. “God, I really do look
like a zombie.”
The door creaked open. She saw the reflection behind her. A petite brunette,
wavy hair and brown eyes, a star of David necklace dangling from her neck. “Am
I interrupting?”
Mary stared at Kitty Pryde through the mirror, and Kitty stared back. It was an
impasse. Eventually Kitty cleared her throat and crept her way in, shutting the
door behind her. “Anyone else in here?”
“There wasn’t,” Mary said plainly. She deigned to face her properly then,
crossing her arms and giving her blank look. Kitty sent one straight back.
“Yeah, okay, I get it, this is not exactly ideal. But come on. He’s been out of
school for days, there’s nothing on the news about Spider-Man. You totally
faked sick yesterday and ran off, and now you’re being miserable. I’m worried,
so sue me.”
Mary worried the inside of her cheek between her teeth. She had been biting it
hard last night while Peter recounted the past week to her, so it stood swollen
now and even bumped noticeably against her teeth when she talked. “It’s
nothing.”
“Baloney!” Kitty spewed.
“I mean it’s nothing like, life threatening, he’s just sick and he’s been
through some awful stuff that’s messing with his head. We’re talking it out,”
Mary provided honestly, fingers tangling in her hair as if the tugging could
free her gut from the tight clench holding it prisoner.
Kitty scoffed and poked a finger in her direction. “And that’s all it takes for
you to start moping around like it’s Catcher in the Rye?”
“Are you here to check if we’re on the rocks?”
That got a gasp. “No!” Kitty stared at her with saucer wide eyes, covering her
mouth. Then after a beat came a weak but damning, “You were just really upset,
I just wanted to see if you were okay.”
“Kitty, I am dating your ex-boyfriend. We both know that’s baloney.”
“Okay, look, I am not that psycho. I’m worried about him, all right? He’s still
not in school and here you are, all like ‘blah’ in class.” Kitty gripped at her
arms in a tight cross and planted herself against the wall, her stubbornness
plain in her posture. “Whatever’s going on is really bad, isn’t it?”
Mary tugged harder on her hair, her scalp prickling at the savagery. She gave a
false start, mouth dropping open and sealing shut, before she worked out her
phrasing proper. “If he wants you to know, he’ll tell you himself.”
“Well you’re certainly handling it splendidly.”
“Oh, that does it!” Mary tossed her hands in the air. For the first time that
day she was positively alive, crackling with fire to her very tips. “Yeah,
fine, you’re an awesome mutant hero and you got to throw down with some big
time baddies and fight Magneto and whatever, good for you! But am I supposed to
feel like chopped liver because you do that and I can’t? You think I’m not
‘equipped’ to handle Peter?”
Affronted, Kitty shook her head. “I never once said that!”
“But you totally think it, don’t you?” It was Mary’s turn to jab her finger at
the other girl. Kitty’s mouth fell open to object, but the retort dissipated.
She shut it again as Mary continued. “Yeah, see? I’m right. But you don’t know
me, Kitty. And I get Peter a lot better than you think. I have known him my
whole life. I was the first person he told about Spider-Man, and I have been
there. This whole time, I’ve been there, and it might not be the same as
running out and beating up super powered weirdoes myself, but come on. I am
involved. I’ve almost died a couple times and yeah, I’ve been tempted to
leave.” And there Mary’s anger started to falter, tears zipping out in spite of
her careful watch but she was proud to note that her voice didn’t waver one
bit. “I could totally go off and date some average Joe and never worry about
mobsters or gobliny jerks or watching the guy I love get smacked around again,
but I don’t want to. Not even a little bit. I am not, I repeat, am not giving
up on him just because things are hard. And if you ask me that makes me just as
qualified to be with him as any kind of superhero cred would. So cut me some
slack!”
Kitty had garnered a sense of grayness, a sullen dullness around her entire
body. She was studying her shoelaces with solemn severity, and her shoulders
slumped forward as if determined to meet in front of her chest. “Well then.”
Mary took a deep breath and ripped tissues out of the dispenser to dab her face
dry. Then, after an uncomfortable pause, fetched some for Kitty as well. The
girl took them and shook a little as she blanketed her eyes, refusing to remove
the paper as she spoke on in a quivering voice. “I freaking hate this.”
“Ditto,” Mary said plainly. “Why hasn’t anyone written a manual for the whole
super hero turdfest?”
Kitty struggled through her laughter. “They’d make a mint.”
Mary pursed her lips. “Are you doing all right? I’m not…woof, I know it’s
awkward and it sucks, but if you need someone to…”
“No, MJ. I’ll be cool. I’ve faced down Magneto, remember? High school will be a
snap.” She let the tissues drop then, her eyes reddened but cool and dry. Kitty
deposited them in the waste bin as Mary watched her warily.
“They’re really different beasts, you know.” When Kitty said nothing else, Mary
pressed forward. “Look, for the record? I wasn’t scheming to get back together
with him when he was with you. Like I was pissed when he started dating you,
don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t plan anything. At all. It just happened. And
immediately after I was hounding him to call you because I am not that kind of
a girl.”
Kitty turned away from Mary, her jaw rigid and her eyes narrowed through a
queenly profile. It made her strangely beautiful and dangerous all at once, and
for the first time Mary believed that she could fight a master mutant and live.
She carried herself with an unshakeable meekness ever since she had started
coming to school, even through the defiance. No one had made much of an effort
to make her feel welcome. A mutant amongst men. “Kitty?”
“So he’s the asshole?”
Mary could do nothing but shrug. “He can be. Not on purpose. Honestly I think
he’s a lot more afraid of you and me than he is of Norman Osborn.”
She rolled her eyes. “Typical.”
“But I am being serious. If you need anything—“
“MJ, as you so succinctly said before, you’re dating my ex-boyfriend. Don’t try
to earn your sainthood here for my sake.” Kitty waved her off. “And now I
actually need to use the toilet.”
The girl rounded Mary without further pleasantries and shut herself into a
stall. Mary hesitated. She would eat with Liz, she decided then. There was
still ample time left. She trod to the door, but paused at the handle and
called out one last time.
“Don’t be alone if you don’t have to be. That’s all I’m saying.”
She heard Kitty’s sneakers shuffle on the tile. “Let me pee in peace, Mary
Jane.”
Mary sighed and reentered the hallway, not once looking back.
***** Welcome Back, Parker *****
Chapter Summary
     A sense of normalcy finally returns, bridges are mended, and Peter
     resumes his civilian life.
Chapter Notes
     Mild warning for hate speech.
     Chapters might be coming out a bit slower than usual now, real life
     picked up in the last week or so.
A barrel of monkeys recovery was not.
Peter had spent most of the morning donating his breakfast to the toilet
immediately after taking the injection. He expected as much, considering how
sick and faint getting spider powers had made him. Aunt May had made good on
her promise to keep him company and take the day off work, but he wasn’t in
much shape to be keeping company at all. Mostly he felt miserable and slept a
lot. Almost hardly in his bed, however, as his Aunt lamented when she came into
the kitchen and found him dozing off next to his tomato soup, forehead on the
table and arms dripping to the floor.
“Peter, sit up,” she patted his back. “You’re going to get a mark on your
head.”
“Mrrgh.”
This continued into the afternoon, but began to taper by three or four. Peter
was still nauseous but could wander around without teetering and largely stayed
awake and upright. He watched drivel and cop shows on TV while his Aunt sorted
through laundry, and absently rolled the socks together in pairs at her behest.
Neither expected the doorbell to ring at quarter to five. Aunt May left to
check who it was, muttering about the salesman who had been making rounds in
their neighborhood as of late, and came back looking slightly happier with Mary
Jane in tow. She sent him a secretive smile and offered the plastic bag in her
hands to him.
“Thought you could use some cheering up,” MJ said slyly.
Peter grinned wide as she plopped down next to him and immediately dug in to
help with the laundry. “You didn’t have to do that.” He opened it, and found
himself gaping at a box set of Star Trek: The Next Generation that had been
eluding him in stores for ages. “Okay, you really did not have to do that.”
“No, I really did. You deserve it.” She kissed him on the cheek and he
temporarily forgot about the unhappy turns in his stomach. “You gotta look
outside of the Virgin Megastore to get the good stuff. It’s always picked
over.”
“That’s very sweet of you, MJ,” his Aunt added, and MJ beamed at her.
Peter raised a brow at her. “You didn’t hit up a pawn shop for it, did you?”
“No, I just gave one of my kidneys to a guy in a trench coat.” She punched him
lightly on the shoulder. “It was at Barnes and Noble. Nobody ever buys DVDs at
Barnes and Noble so they have this secret treasure trove of stuff. Strategy.”
MJ put on a sagely look and pointed to her head as if it were the eighth wonder
of the world. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”
Peter deferred to his Aunt, grounded as he was, and she gave a hesitant nod and
waved at the stairs. “Make sure he’s all right getting up the stairs MJ, he’s
been ill all day because of that antidote. And leave the door open.”
He wrinkled his nose and grumbled that he was fine, but he did not mind one bit
as MJ took him by the arm and guided him to his own room.
“So,” she said, suddenly turning away and wringing her hands. “I just wanted to
come up here and apologize for everything.”
He furrowed his brows. “Uh—“
“No really Peter, I am here to apologize. I just had this kind of epiphany
today.” She whirled, hair flying about like a crimson whip and she stole a seat
on his bed. He joined her there and tried to squash down phantom memories of
Logan’s hands at his back. He must not have been terribly successful because
she took his hand in hers with such ginger affection, as if he were finely spun
glass and flesh and bone. “Kitty Pryde tried to ask me about you today, and I
just flipped at her. Really badly.”
“Oh no.” Peter wrinkled his nose. “You fought with her?”
“No, not really, I just kind of laid it out for her that I was tougher than she
thought and then it was just really awkward. I think she’s pretty miserable
right now,” MJ played with her ring as she spoke, twisting the stone around and
around her finger. “But the thing is, I’ve been taking a lot of this incredibly
badly, and it’s not fair to you. And the weird thing is it took her coming at
me and assuming I was crumbling apart because I couldn’t handle it to make me
realize that hey, I totally can. And I want to.”
Peter was slightly mortified. “MJ, no. No no no, you’re not being unreasonable
at all.”
“I am.”
“No! Come on, I mean, I’ve been – this is not at all something normal people
have to do with their relationships. Even before this it’s been supremely
weird. Not to mention dangerous. And I’m making you put up with so much crap
and I feel like a grade A herb, because you didn’t ask for this kind of crazy
nonsense.” Peter took her by the shoulders and pressed their foreheads
together, hers a cool reprieve for the inferno that was his own. “If we’re
being honest here, there was a point, like right after what happened with
Logan, where I thought I should maybe break up with you again.”
MJ squawked indignantly and shoved him off. “You ass!”
“Well, it really isn’t fair for me—“
“You already did this once, you jerk! And we got back together anyway, didn’t
we? What does that prove?”
“I am not breaking up with you now!”
“Good, because I would end you.” She glared heavily and crossed her arms. “My
whole point is that as scary and as messed up as this is, and as crazy as it’s
going to make me sometimes, I am not quitting because it’s too hard. I spent
money on Star Trek for you. That alone shows how committed I am to your stupid
butt face.”
“I have a butt face?” Peter queried.
“A big stupid one.” Mary Jane put her hands on his cheeks and pushed them
together. “Look, it’s totally a butt.”
“Well yours is too.” He returned the favor even if she snickered and tried to
pull away, eventually tipping over as he descended on her and squished her
cheeks. “See, it’s much bigger than mine.”
She blew a messy raspberry and he broke down laughing.
“I love you.”
“Love you too.”
They grinned breathlessly at one another.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The nausea had, thankfully, subsided in following days. The medicine was being
much kinder to him, and to their great surprise the Parkers found a package
waiting for them the next day containing several needles and shipment ready
vials of three varieties. Daily fluid samples were required for proper testing,
and Peter found his arms suffered more than his stomach, either donating shots
or taking them morning and night. They couriered blood and urine daily, and
irksome as it could be Peter was all the happier for doing so in the comfort of
his home.
His Aunt was obligated to return to work but Peter didn’t mind, and found that
it wasn’t half so hard to stay at home and do nothing as he feared. There were
no major shake-ups on the news, villainy, burglaries or otherwise. MJ brought
over stacks of homework to keep him busy. He even called into the Bugle and
asked if he could tackle website coding from home, and they happily obliged.
(Though Jameson imposed some strict guidelines on how he would be charged for
said work, seeing as Peter was completely without Bugle supervision and could
spend the whole day on Reddit and Youtube while earning a neat sum.) Even so,
the couch became his new best friend and he reveled in the first chance he had
to be lazy in a long, long while.
“I won’t lie,” his Aunt remarked once, “I am happy to see you around the house
more, but you are leaving a permanent mark on my sofa.”
“I am marking my territory,” he had replied.
“Well there’s other territory that needs marking.” When he had only raised a
brow she handed him a bottle of oven cleaner and dish gloves, and he groaned
piteously as he trudged into the kitchen. When his task was complete and he
returned his Aunt had taken over his spot and was engrossed in a home and
garden magazine, demanding he bring her lemonade.
So it wasn’t until five days later that the shroud of domesticity that had
fallen over the Parker household was lifted with a phone call, begging that
Peter come into Stark Industries for a checkup. Though Aunt May protested the
need to go out in public and pinched her brows together while Peter watched
with a speeding pulse, she reassured him after it wasn’t Tony himself on the
line. It was a woman named Janet, and Peter pumped his fist in the air because
for what might have been the first time in recorded history, S.H.I.E.L.D. was
listening to him.
When she heard the news MJ insisted on tagging along and would not take no for
an answer. As she told a still flustered Peter, it wasn’t just for moral
support. “I’m going to be your muscle,” she claimed, posing with her hands on
her hips, “I’ve been working on my menacing glares and flexing my guns.”
All three of them piled into the car and headed for Manhattan. The comely blond
at the front desk gave them a key fob and slip of paper with a floor and room
number, and waved them towards the elevator without a single question or fleck
of interest. MJ and Aunt May flanked him on either side, which he pretended
embarrassed him but neither one was fooled. Peter’s eyes darted all over the
lobby for signs of an incoming threat. So far, the serum seemed to be working
miracles. Comparatively. Not a single man (or woman) was giving him so much as
a sideways glance.
Which reminded him: he had to press the need to pass this onto Jessica. If they
had not found her yet she could only be getting worse.
The room that had been designated was much more like a doctor’s office than
Peter expected, though larger and lacking the paper covered seat and awkward
anatomical charts. Perched in a chair and leafing through Stephen King’s Carrie
was Janet van Dyne, who cast a peppy smile upon them the moment they entered.
“Peter, right? We’ve met.”
She extended a dainty hand to shake and he did so, returning her grin. “Peter
Parker, yep. This is my Aunt May and my girlfriend, Mary Jane.”
“Oh! Alliterative. That will be much easier to remember. Hello Mrs. Parker,
Mary Jane. You can call me Janet. Let’s make this quick, shall we?”
She took some more blood and sealed it in a flask, then performed a mostly
routine check up for other signs of ailments. “You say the nausea’s subsided,
but I’m not sure if you should be having any at all,” she muttered
conspiratorially and she depressed his tongue and checked his throat.
“Hopefully this new batch won’t be a big issue.”
“So did anyone tell you what I’m actually getting treated for?” Peter asked
queasily. Janet shot him a look of deep sympathy and nodded.
“It’s okay, hun.” She patted him on the arm. “There’s lots worse. Some poor kid
a while back woke up emitting a poison gas that melted everyone around him. Or
something like that? Didn’t even realize why the streets were empty until he
got to his school.”
“You’re kidding,” MJ remarked breathlessly, but his Aunt was covering her mouth
in distant shock.
“I remember that. That was on the news.”
“Case in point,” Janet said with a cluck of her tongue. “But I’m not going to
lie, we’re going to need some time with this little bugger,” she waggled the
flask of his freshly donated blood, “before we can pinpoint the real deal. The
serum’s taking care of the symptoms, it seems, but we’d rather not have to
treat this like it’s diabetes. You can’t be taking shots for the rest of your
life.”
“I can’t be Spider-Man and taking shots,” Peter agreed.
“Exactly. No offense, but you have a real knack for getting kidnapped by
nutjobs.”
He shrugged. “One of my many charms.”
“And I doubt they’d let you have a breather to take your meds. Plus eventually
we’d have to bill you, and that’s not going to be pretty.”
“And what happens if you can’t fix him?” Aunt May materialized at Janet’s
sleeve, pleading to the woman with pointed precision. “What happens if it’s
incurable and we can’t afford that medicine anymore?”
Janet took a hard look at all three of them, twisting her lips. “It’s too early
to say. I wish I could give you more to work with, but we’ve only been working
on it for a week or so, right? These things take time. We’ll discuss
alternatives if it comes to that.” It was Peter’s arm she patted in comfort,
but her eyes remained on his Aunt. “We’re doing everything we can. I promise.”
Janet’s phone rang and she removed herself momentarily, shifting to the other
corner of the room to talk. MJ took Aunt May’s hand and smiled at her in
solidarity. Peter bent down to hug and kiss his Aunt while Janet was occupied,
and whispered, “They know what they’re doing. If anyone can help, they can.”
“I know, I know,” she said anxiously, “But it’s the last thing we needed to
happen to us. To you.”
“I’ll stay at home for as long as it takes.”
She exchanged a look with MJ that threaded his smile with taut apprehension.
“What?”
MJ tugged at her hair. “Well, what if someone comes looking for Spider-Man?”
“Surprise,” Janet announced suddenly, spooking Peter upright and stealing the
spotlight. They would have to continue their conversation later. “You’ve got
company waiting in the lobby. Just in time for me to go, too.”
“Company?” Aunt May repeated.
“Who?” Peter asked, but Janet wouldn’t say. She shook her head and shrugged on
a blazer and tucked her book in a purse.
“Mum’s the word, chum. Their request.” She said no more, but pressed a new case
into his Aunt’s arms and walked them through the specifics. He would have to up
his dosage, one shot every four hours, and he was on strict orders to report
every last twitch and dizzy wave. When the lecture wrapped Janet opened the
door and waved them through like a valet, giving a polite nod to MJ and Aunt
May. “It was nice to meet you two. And chin up, all right?”
Peter let the other two exit before him and leaned into Janet before he
followed, speaking a cautious hush. “Are you still looking for her?”
She was stunned but returned the conspiratorial tone without question. “Her?
Oh! Yes, of course we are! We’ve just had no luck, I’m afraid. If she contacts
you let us know, A.S.A.P.”
“I’m giving her the antidote the minute I do.”
“We’ll make extras.”
She waved him off for good and he trotted back to his expectant troupe.
The trio left, a little less maudlin than before but no less wary. MJ and Aunt
May still positioned around him like soldiers in arms while they rode the
elevator down, no matter how emphatically Peter rolled his eyes.
When they entered the lobby once more, Peter and MJ knew at once who their
guests were. Aunt May had to lean down and pull Peter’s sleeve. “Is that who I
think—“
“It is,” Peter replied uneasily.
Sue and Johnny Storm were dressed cool but casually, and Johnny was holding a
box in front of him with resentful delicacy. It was white and suspiciously cake
sized. Sue waved them over and hugged Peter when he came near. A few people
shot them glances, the sight of real celebrities pushing a ripple in the
staunch, money-minded sensibility about the place.
“Heard you were going through stuff. Again.” She said. “And Johnny has
something to say to you.”
“My cake has something to say to you,” he corrected. Peter was red in the face
already, but he popped the lid and dipped it down to show the three of them a
loopy, “I’m sorry” scrawled across the top in red and blue icing. “It was
supposed to say ‘I am sorry I gay chickened out on you and then didn’t talk to
you for two weeks’ but I didn’t want to tip off the catering company.”
MJ was laughing but Peter was cringing behind her. “Yeah, but you’re tipping
off everyone in the lobby that I know the Fantastic Four.”
“Do any of them go to your school?” Johnny looked around. “I don’t think they
do, bro.”
“You should say thank you Peter,” Aunt May chided, but seemed equally antsy
with the traffic of men and women in suits peering at their pow wow. “Oh, but
maybe we shouldn’t do this now.”
“Let’s go somewhere, then,” Sue said brightly. “We just got out of Dallas
yesterday, thank god, feels like forever. You’re Mrs. Parker, correct? I’m Sue
Storm, really nice to meet you. Sorry about this but I told Johnny—”
He grimaced at his sister. “Will you let me do my own talking? Or am I banned
from that too?” He passed the cake off to her and thrust his hands in his
pockets as he shuffled closer to Peter. He instinctively drew back but if
Johnny noticed he was being uncharacteristically subtle about it. MJ, perhaps a
little unnecessarily, drew closer as well and clutched Peter’s arm. Johnny
spoke much more quietly now. “I really am sorry though. That was dumb.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Peter said, but wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Did you
tell everyone or what?”
“No, just Sue. You think I’d spread this around? Come on man, you aren’t that
pretty.”
“Shut up.” Peter almost punched his arm but refrained at the last second,
leaving them both to squirm uncomfortably on the spot. Sue had struck up
conversation with his Aunt, and it looked altogether too amicable to believe.
“Seriously, what did you tell her?”
“Just that we kissed and I didn’t know what happened. And I played your
voicemail for her – look, I didn’t know what to do!” he backpedaled at Peter’s
dark glare. “I was confused, man! I had this horrible night where I convinced
myself that I was totally into dudes so I looked up stuff on the internet and
it was awful. If anything you owe me five minutes of my life back.”
“You actually looked at gay porn for five whole minutes?” MJ queried, raising a
brow.
“Hey, I had to be sure! I was having a crisis!”
Peter did find himself snickering then. “Well rest assured, it was all my
crappy stupid luck. You’re straight as an arrow.”
“Damn right,” Johnny affirmed, and put an arm around Mary Jane. She burst out
in a fury of giggles and wriggled away as Peter scoffed indignantly, tugging
her into his chest and wrapping his arms around her protectively.
“Storm, this is your last warning.”
“Hey, I’m just saying if we want to clear the air and all we should complete
the circle. I’ll french MJ and then we’ll have all made out with each other! No
hard feelings for anyone.” Johnny waggled his eyebrows at her. “And we all know
that’s the real reason you’re jealous. Pete got to make out with the Human
Torch and you didn’t.”
“Oh my god,” MJ groaned.
“You’re the worst,” Peter declared.
Johnny shrugged, toothy grinned as he had ever been. “It’s my specialty.”
“Hey, you three!” Sue and Aunt May were infiltrating their group once again.
“Mrs. Parker says we can come over for casserole. Let’s go.”
“Wait, are you cool now?” Johnny interjected, taking a step away from Peter as
if he had only just remembered what had happened between them. Peter pointed to
the new case of the serum in his Aunt’s grip.
“I’ve been good. Better, I guess. They’ve hooked me up with super-Buckley’s. Or
whatever the medicinal equivalent of this is.”
Sue gave her brother an evil eye and balanced the cake on one hand so that she
could make a fist in his direction. “And I’ll beat the snot out of you if I
notice things getting unseemly.”
“Whose side are you on?!” The group finally made their exit, pushing into the
golden light of the outdoors. “So who else did you have to mack on to figure
out it was a wonky power thing and not your secret desire for my hot bod?”
“Johnny, you will literally never know.”
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“Mr. Stark? Sir?”
Tony didn’t move immediately. He was frowning at a computer screen, a mess of
diagrams and blueprints scattered all over it. Something made him squint harder
and he enlarged one. The aide peered over, curious, and noticed several
matching printouts on the desk as well.
“Is that the Triskelion?”
“Yes. It is.” Tony closed the window the next minute and pinched his brow.
“We’re looking at upgrading some security features. What is it?”
“Sounds like you’ve got a lot on your plate,” the aide noted sympathetically.
She dropped a sealed envelope on his desk, which he slid closer and tore into
without pretense. “Hope this isn’t too much trouble then, but research asked me
to send this over in person. Top Secret.”
“Hmm…” he scanned over the first page, holding it flat against the envelope so
that she couldn’t read it. “Oh. Yes. This. Thank you, Barbara.”
“It’s Antigone.”
“Oh, damn, my apologies.” He flashed her a grin, brilliant and charming. “Let
me make it up to you. Dinner Thursday? Catch you at eight?”
She blushed high around the ears and tittered, eyes darting around the room.
“Lord, Mr. Stark, I’m flattered but I—“
“So someone beat me to the punch.” He held up a hand in defeat and gave her a
wink. “I’ll find another way to make it up to you, ‘Gone. Scout’s honor. Mind
closing the door on your way out?”
Still flushing furiously, she nodded. “Yes, I will. Have a good evening, Mr.
Stark.”
The smile, sweet and just the right degree of smarmy, stayed on until she had
made good on her word. Then it fell into greedy curiosity, yanking out the
pages of the file and gobbling up the contents. There were no indicative names
or dates. Shallow dimples marred his cheeks when he found even less to his
liking on the next page, a small frown betraying a very big vexation. “What am
I even looking at?”
The screens recaptured his focus. He minimized the blueprints momentarily,
poking around in other folders. When he had found what he was looking for his
brows shot upwards and his eyes went wide.
Without wasting a moment, he fed the papers into a compact copier, just below
the monitor and beside his knees. As fresh copies were spat out he queued the
open files to print straight after, and drew a phone from his pocket. He dialed
a number and turned his gaze to the security monitors. Suited men and women
buzzed around on the screens, passing by his office and nursing coffees like
they were water from the Fountain of Youth. At last, the ringing ceased. “It’s
me,” he said quickly.
“What are you doing? Call when you’re out of the office.”
“There’s been a new development.”
“So?”
Tony licked his lips and thumbed through the papers again. “Listen, I’m not
certain what exactly it is. But this could be a lead.”
“So tell me later.”
“Two words: Spider-Man.”
There was a pause on the other end. “…What?”
“I’ve got lab reports on the guy. I can’t decipher them. I think it’s a DNA
issue, but I’m not a geneticist.” He leaned forward on the desk, rummaging
through the open files on the desktop. Hard lights shifted on his face as
images sprung up and were banished. “I can’t email anything from here. Too
risky. But I’m making copies and printing anything that looks relevant.”
“And what about the goddamn plan? Am I supposed to give a shit about Spider-
Man?”
“Maybe you should. Looks like he’s on their radar in a big way. Do a little
research in the meantime, will you?” Abruptly, Tony went stiff. Some movement
on the security monitors caught his attention. “Shit.”
“What? What is it?” The voice gave an exasperated sigh. “I told you not to do
this now.”
“We’ll finish this later. Just look into the basics, and get someone on board
who can decode this DNA crap. Gotta go.”
Every last file was closed, and the computer logged out. He scooped up the
original papers and pulled apart the drawers, searching restlessly until he
found a stack of envelopes. The papers were thrust inside the first one he
snatched off the top, the seal hastily licked and shut. The copies were then
stuffed in the torn envelope, and were shortly joined by the Triskelion
diagrams that littered the rest of the desk.
Then, so calmly it was almost perfunctory, Tony began to shrink, his hair
sprouting long and loose and honey brown, his chest swelling as his whole frame
shrunk by a sharp six inches. The suit flipped into a smart blouse and skirt
with modest brown pumps and stockings. With a toss of her hair the newly minted
woman tucked the pack of copies into her blouse, masked it under the belt of
her skirt, shifting until it sat just right against her belly and made no
telling lumps or protrusions. She moved out from behind the desk and reclaimed
the freshly sealed envelope, a perfect twin to the original, just as the door
swung open.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Stark.”
A much more harried version of Tony Stark regarded her curiously. Thin violet
sacs had underlined his eyes for the better half of the week. “Antigone, how
did you get in here? I thought I—“
“You forgot to lock it? I’m sorry. I thought you were in here, but then I saw
you coming on the cameras so I stayed put.” She strode forward and passed him
the documents. “From research. Top Secret, as per your request.”
“Ah, thank you.”
She smiled and dipped her head in reverence. “My pleasure.”
She left the office in Antigone’s skin, cool and confident and throwing a wink
to the security guard when he did a double take at her, passing his station for
the second time that day.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“Well look who’s back,” drawled Liz Allan when Peter meandered into the
classroom one Wednesday afternoon, looking every bit mousy and humbled with his
shoulders drooped and his head hung low. Peter shrugged and gave her a wave,
but did not miss the cool undertones lurking beneath her greeting. “Heard you
had the plague.”
“I was pretty much the human embodiment of medieval Europe, yes. But the
doctors gave me a nice note saying the Dark Ages are over, so here I am.”
It wasn’t a note, but rather another surprise phone call from Janet saying that
his most recent samples showed an excellent response to the antidotes. All
progress made had been solely on the treatment end and the actual cure was left
in a lurch, but both the samples and Peter’s own strangely mundane supper with
the Storms promised that he was fit for the public once more. (The worst Johnny
had done was soundly thrash him and everyone else at cards, and Aunt May told
Sue they were welcome to come back any time.) He was strictly forbidden from
playing Spider-Man, which rankled, but he was happy to get out and get back to
living pronto. Besides, how long could both Peter Parker and Spider-Man stay
missing in action before someone put two and two together? One of them had to
get back on the streets eventually.
He slung his backpack over his chair and gave MJ a kiss on the cheek before
sitting down. He noticed Liz grousing a bit at that and wondered what
conclusions she had drawn. MJ couldn’t have come into school all sunshine and
giggles while he was away. Especially right after the night he told her, he
recalled with a queasy turn. He supposed he would have to be extra sweet to
them both to make up for it. Peter smiled warmly at her, his very best effort.
“What did I miss?”
“Not much.”
“We have a paper due,” MJ urged.
“Not much at all.” Liz waved a hand in the air.
Kong had barged into the fold too, dropping his books on the other side of
Liz’s desk and launching into another topic entirely. “Yo, Pete.” He nodded
with a stilted solemness, unusual for a guy who packed as much gusto as he.
“Dude, did you hear about Spider-Man?”
Peter hoped the way that he stiffened wasn’t as transparent as it felt. He and
MJ nearly shot each other suspicious looks – he could see her head twitch ever
so slightly in his direction and he just knew he’d done the same – but
ultimately refrained. “Nice to see you too, Kong.”
“They’re saying its been two weeks since anyone’s seen him.” He was looking at
Peter, who in turn wrinkled his nose. Was that as pointed a query as it
sounded, or was he being unduly paranoid again?
Liz was having none of this. “Can we not with freaking Spider-Man? For once?”
“I agree,” said MJ soundly.
“I’m just saying, dude’s been gone for like…” Kong trailed off, staring over
Peter’s shoulder.
Peter turned, and found a stiff and cross armed Kitty Pryde standing behind
him. Her backpack was still draped over her shoulder. “Hey.”
“Hi?” What he meant was ‘Uh oh,’ but MJ was right next to him and giving him
big, urgent eyes to beam some telepathic plea at him. Too bad he wasn’t Jean
Grey or he might have caught it proper.
“So you’re not sick anymore?” There was the barest emphasis on the word ‘sick’,
but at least Kitty had a reason to act cagey in public. Unlike Kong.
“Um,” Liz interjected, leaning forward. “You know Peter? How did that happen,
exactly?”
Kitty glowered down at her. “Well. I noticed there was an empty desk in class,
you see.” She rapped Peter’s desk with her knuckles. “And because it stayed
empty for so long, I wondered if the guy that used to sit in it was going to be
okay.”
“Yeah, but you don’t even like, know him.” Liz’s frown deepened. “How long have
you even been here? Like a month?”
“Lord.” Kitty rolled her eyes and Kong shot Liz a dirty look and hissed, “Come
off it.” MJ was shooting power daggers at Liz too, and that made Peter just the
eensiest bit more proud of her.
“I’m fine. I’m better. Are you all right? Kitty?”
Peter was trapped in a triad of silence, both MJ and Kong pressingly silent on
either end of him. Liz made for a baffled tail end on the otherwise perfect
triangle, almost an afterthought. Before him, Kitty was perfectly composed.
“Never better.”
She strode coolly to her own desk, and that was that. Liz flipped her hair
again and coaxed Kong into deep analysis of the recent travesties late night
MTV had to offer. This time Peter allowed the furtive glance to his girlfriend,
and she scribbled him a note on the edge of her paper. You NEED to talk to her
sometime.
Peter regarded her skeptically. Most girlfriends wouldn’t push you to go
running after an ex to make sure she was okay. But then, most girlfriends were
nothing like Mary Jane.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
His return to the Bugle came with even less fanfare. Ben Urich, understandably,
only nodded to him from across the room, and Betty Brant raised her eyebrows
and tossed him a, “Feeling better?” on her way to the cooler, neither waiting
nor wanting his response. Robbie did give him a passing, “Heya!” but said no
more.
Call him strange but that was almost as comforting as it was galling. If
nothing else, at the Daily Bugle he was only that tiny kid Jameson hired to
untangle the web coding. School was getting to be a hassle, with Kong pushing
him about Spider-Man this morning and Kitty hovering on the edge of his comfort
zone.
And good lord almighty, did it ever feel good to be more worried about those
mundane, regularly scheduled Peter Parker Problems over how he was going to
avoid getting into ‘pickles’ with embarrassingly old men.
Jonah Jameson made a point of calling him in for a perfunctory debriefing (“If
I had known you were going to take a year off I might have been able to get you
sick pay!”) and dropped a stack of work into his arms. He was performing double
duty now, catching up on the bits and pieces he couldn’t do from home, and he
waddled out of Jameson’s office with the work that belonged to an unpaid intern
and told himself to be grateful that no one had thought to point out that Peter
was the most expendable member on staff. Yet.
In fact, he was kept so busy that when eight o’clock rolled around and he was
told to ship out, Peter was stunned that more than fifteen minutes had passed
at all. He slipped out of the office with a wide grin, humming to himself. No
one had hit on him. All day, not one human being had tried anything untoward,
not even with the slightest of glances. He was able to slip away for bathroom
breaks and take his shots, he walked down the street, he took his classes and
did his work and no one pestered him at all. It was a miracle.
The elevator was taking its sweet time today. The little huddle around it of
harried reporters and editors was an exasperated one, and Orwell was pushing
the down button every two seconds like it was a symptom of disorder. Peter
couldn’t care. He tapped his feet and let himself smile wide in silence,
content with the day’s work.
His happy reverie took a brutal shaking when someone clapped a hand on his
shoulder from behind. Peter turned and gawked. It was one of the men from
finances, or marketing – whichever floor it was that Peter could never be
bothered to remember – that had ambushed him in the elevator.
“Hey,” he said. There was nothing on his face. Impassivity, a complete
blankness of opinion or impression. “You got a minute?”
“Uh,” Peter said, suddenly sweating at the brow and drained of any happy
thought. Robbie Roberston cast them a curious look, but said nothing. The man
switched his grip, patting him out of the crowd by the flat of his back and
herding him towards the stairwell.
He could absolutely handle this, he thought to himself. This guy was only a
man. His spider senses were not tingling. And if anything, he felt a little
chilly. No heat, no worries. His gut still sank when the man shut the door
behind him and the sound echoed through the cement maze.
The man said nothing for a moment. He looked around them, up at the ceiling and
halted on the round black dome above their heads, clearly sheltering a security
camera. He turned back to Peter, who had taken to looking as unimposing as
possible. It should have worked since he was barely five and a half feet tall
and looked like Bambi turned human (an unflattering comparison Liz had made
once, as relayed by MJ), except that the man’s expression was no longer
serenely inhuman, but drawn with the forboding tension of a noose. “You
remember me?” he said. His voice was a deep timbre.
“Yeah,” Peter answered honestly. This wasn’t the one who had called him Peach
and Sweetie Pie. It was the quieter of the two, and therefore had been
considered the less frightening up until now.
“Do you know my name?”
“No.”
He clicked his tongue and his teeth peeked through, a prim show dog baring
fangs. “Do you know his?”
Peter thinned his lips and shook his head, pressing forward. “Look, it was a
mistake and I’m not going to—“
The man snatched him by the lapel and pushed him into the wall. “Shut up,
faggot.”
Peter’s eyes blew wide. The man’s face turned to a sculpture of razors, lethal
edges to the bones and deadly lines where his brows drew together that promised
blood should Peter try to reach out and touch them. “We’ve got you pegged. You
hear me? I know your name. I know you live with your Auntie and you’re in the
tenth grade in Midtown fucking High. And you know what else?”
Peter’s heart raced and his blood boiled, but he dared not interrupt. The man
tapped him on the shoulder, a prod to keep him in line, and his eyes lit with a
hateful spark. “I know that you can barely afford the house you live in. I know
that if you say so much as a word to anyone about what happened, if you try to
file a complaint or bitch to your boss about this? We will bury you. You take
this to court and you’ll be paying out the ass for it until you’re eighty
five.”
It wasn’t as if he were in real danger here. There was no spider-sense
tingling, even with the livid disgust oozing out of the man at every inch. The
threat wasn’t to his life. Yet Peter found himself thrown all the same. He
spoke slowly. “I wasn’t going to tell anyone.”
“That so?” The man’s brow arched, and it struck Peter that it was immaculately
kept when he saw how precise its form was, how not a single stray hair grew on
any side. The Patrick Bateman impression worsened for it. He released Peter,
stepping back and tugging his sleeve cuffs back to proper order. “Good boy.”
Peter scowled, still flat against the wall as the man straightened himself.
Their eyes never unlocked. Peter made to leave but the man interjected one last
time. “And there’s no tapes. Don’t even bother trying for security.”
“I’m not –“
“It’s one thing to say so, sweetheart, but you and I both know you’d love to a
free ride to college out of our pockets.” He clucked his tongue again, the
sound assaulting Peter like nails on a chalkboard. He only just refrained from
smacking him over the railing and down every flight of stairs. “You won’t have
anything. Your word versus ours.”
Peter let him make a victorious exit, cool and wordless and gliding on air. He
stayed still against the wall, simmering, fists tight, staring down at the
border between stairwell and a long drop.
He pulled his backpack free and unzipped it, peering inside. Deep down inside,
stuffed underneath his books there was the dim shade of red in crumpled folds.
He had made a promise.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
But there was absolutely nothing better for a wretched mood than a good swing
around New York City and someone dumb and mid-crime to hit. The wind felt
glorious, the night air was sweet (and slightly smoggy, as always), and Peter
couldn’t stop revelling in how good the city looked from the air all over
again, all sparkles and lights fifteen, fifty, a hundred stories up. After two
weeks of being cooped up and spooking at the slightest sounds, sailing through
the sky felt positively godly.
And yet he was still smarting from the man’s frigid threats. The condescension,
calling him ‘faggot’. Peter clenched his teeth and let himself give an angry
roar as he swung, far enough up that no one would hear his insane rumbles and
rants. “What kind of a dingbat, presumptuous old asshole comes to a kid like –
ugh! Somebody, rob something! Now!”
He swung high. He swung low. Peter whipped himself around Manhattan with
olympic speed and caught sight of nothing amiss. Everyone was peachy keen and
milling about, catching movies and out for fine dining.
“Heeey, hooo, where did all the bad guys gooo…” Peter swung a neat circle
around a spire and saw nothing in the streets below. “Seriously, this is my
welcome back week and nobody wants to say hello to my mighty fists? My noble
high kicks? Not even a little head butt?” Yet a lot more nothing waited for him
on the next twenty blocks. “New York, since when are you this boring?”
His prayers were answered shortly.
He had almost forgotten how bad for his head his spider senses could be. What
had interjected another seemingly innocuous swing as a low hum burgeoned,
slowly defeaning real sound the closer he got to Central Park. Peter was going
to get whiplash the way he was jerking his head around. He couldn’t find what
it was he was getting warned about, nary a missile in the sky or a murderous
man in a rhino suit below.
“I am going to regret this, aren’t I?” he muttered, firing off his last web and
flipping squarely onto a park bench, hidden amongst the leafiest foliage in the
place. A woman jogging around the bend shrieked and ran back the way she came
upon seeing him. “Wow! At least I didn’t blow eighty dollars on yoga pants to
get in shape!”
Perhaps it was for the best that she ran. The buzzing took an abrupt spike the
moment she disappeared again and he was still unsure why. Peter clutched at his
head and hissed, knees buckling a little as the pressure and pain doubled in
tandem.
A twig snapped in the bushes behind. With it came a voice, low and eerily
familiar. “Parker?”
He turned, squinting, and saw Eddie Brock standing ragged in the bushes. He
looked gaunt. Tattered clothes, a hollowness to his cheeks, his hair thin and a
waning purple stripe under each eye. He regarded Peter with a stare like a
knife, eyes glittering and greedy. A wide, blissful smile birthed across his
cheeks at the sight of him. As if Peter were the second coming of Christ.
“Eddie?” Peter said, still clutching his temples. The adrenaline thrummed to
life in his body and stood his hairs on end.
“Missed you lots,” Eddie said. The slasher smile was expected. The sincerity
was not.
It wasn’t so much a transformation as it was an explosion. One instant there
was just a man, and the next there was a burgeoning, lumpy behemoth, inky black
tendrils shooting off of every inch of skin and the head splitting in half as
shark teeth sprouted, ivory white in a curve from ear to ear. A foot long
tongue swung out as it screeched. The peal of sound sent birds to the sky and
Peter could hear startled shouts of picnickers from beyond the trees.
He nearly fainted from the resulting boom in his head. “I miss boring New York
already.”
***** Wreck *****
Chapter Summary
     Peter learns a hard lesson about tempting fate.
Chapter Notes
     Warnings for very graphic rape and violence. And for Venom in
     general.
     If you're not familiar with the Ultimate Universe's take on Venom,
     the general gist is:
     - Unlike the regular Venom, this one pings Peter's spider senses so
     badly that sometimes the pain stops him in his tracks
     - The suit needs to constantly feed on human DNA, and so Eddie has
     generally spent his time casually devouring people whole by sucking
     them into the suit.
     - Because it was created in a lab and is not an alien like regular
     canon, it's arguable whether the suit is alive and cognizant or not.
     For all purposes it seems to operate more on base animal instinct
     than any higher thought. It appears that speaking intelligently while
     using it is a struggle, and it can force your body to act on its
     will, even though you're conscious inside. Eddie seems to have come
     to a peace with it though and can morph in and out of the suit at
     will (mostly).
     That's the most I pertinent details I can think of. There are others
     but they're mostly irrelevant.
     Also sorry for the wait on this, but that might be the typical time
     now for chapters to come out. :(
Nick Fury loathed paperwork. But even when you were arguably the world’s top
spy (and that was an argument you didn’t want to pick with him) you had to do
paperwork. In fact, probably more of it. Being the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.
meant being responsible for yutzes that you didn’t even know you were
responsible for, and that was just the tip of the iceberg.
So normally when his communicator beeped he welcomed the excuse to jet off and
deal with bigger matters. Physical action. Mental engagement. A birthday with
crappy grocery store cake in the break room, any goddamn thing would do.
Except today. He frowned, and spun in his chair to pull up the local news on a
gargantuan screen that spanned wall to wall in front of him.
A perfectly coiffed blond in a teal suit was reporting, one eyebrow cocked and
a tacky illustration of the last problem Nick Fury wanted to be dealing with
right now hovering above her in the top corner of the screen. “Local superhero
Spider-Man spotted for the first time in weeks today, swinging around
Manhattan’s financial district and on the outskirts of Central Park.
Speculation as to his death and subsequent disappearance, however, is not yet
entirely disproved, as some claim this may be an imposter sent to keep the
public in the dark—”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Nick grunted, already punching in the number of his best
surveillance squads. “Kid couldn’t take one day off.”
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
No time wasted, not a moment’s warning, not even a breath to spare: Peter was
knocked backwards through the trees into another clearing, finding himself
smacking into the center of the Strawberry Fields memorial. Shrieks abounded
from the park folk as Venom followed, erupting from the trees as a black mass
of claw and teeth and bright white ink blots for eyes, as strange a monster as
one could concoct. Luckily everyone was smart enough to clear out on sight (one
man was yelling something like “New York is death!”, which was fair enough:
there were times when Peter wondered why anyone bothered trying to live here)
but he was not about to stage a fight in the middle of Central Park. One, too
many people, and two, not enough tall things to swing off of. Plus grass stains
were a total pain.
So instead of trying to counter Venom off the bat Peter barreled upright,
smartly dodged a swipe and ran. He jumped to the trees and prayed that the
flimsy limbs could hold him for the barest amount of time. It was all he needed
to zip to the next one, and over and over again until he hit the edge of the
park. Venom followed and took no care for the majesty of the nature. His path
was a line of dust and flying leaves and cracking branches. The chaos could
probably be traced by satellite.
They broke onto Central Park West and 72nd in seconds. Peter cleared the road
with a web, breathing easier now that he could take this to higher ground but
panicking over the lack of immediate rumble turf. The water wasn’t far from
there; it was a thin margin edged over from the bulk of the park that he would
have to face Venom in, and one that was densely populated. He could try to lead
Venom elsewhere, further along the island to some abandoned place.
Except that Venom was so much faster than his average pursuer, and even as
Peter was swinging from his third building the beast over took him and crashed
into a glass window, one foot in while the rest dragged out and bellowed at
Peter as he swung closer, too late to change his course. Apparently he didn’t
have to fuss over picking his arena after all.
Peter delivered the first hit, a kick to the head that detached Venom from the
building, and a second that sent him sailing to the pavement below. Peter
followed, fully intending to hit him with the best he had before things got out
of hand. When he landed he was already forced to duck a hit to his middle,
bending backwards as if Venom’s claws were no more than a limbo pole. Peter
threw a wallop of his own on the upswing but missed.
Venom’s fist careened into his face, and Peter could have sworn it was made of
pure steel. He was knocked into the air and battered further when he hit the
ground spinning, clobbering his head with an atrocious crack and scraping
through his costume on his knees and forearm. Blood welled where the skin had
been raked through, his vision swarming with black. Usually those kinds of
down-for-the-count hits came later, when Peter was getting sloppy from fatigue
and couldn’t dodge so well. Chalk it up to a buggy spider sense, he thought
hazily.
Dimly, he was aware of being lifted by the back of his costume, dangling in the
air like a newborn kitten. Peter coughed, wetness splattering at his lips. His
teeth had slashed the flat edge of his tongue during the fall. The blood
flooded his mouth and it was sputtering into his mask when he coughed, putting
a wet, acrid patch there that soaked out to his cheeks and drizzled down his
neck.
Venom cradled him against his chest. Peter could feel the chilly offshoots of
the suit latching onto him, and swore he heard them sizzle. His feet were limp
and far from the ground, and his arms hung useless at his sides. Fever heat
pushed shivers through him. Peter couldn’t stop coughing. There was a rumble,
like a purr, that he could feel vibrating against his chest. Peter blinked his
way back to half vision, the world still shrouded in cotton but not enough to
disguise the pink, snakelike thing spilling out from between Venom’s teeth. It
was thick and wet, and it coiled slowly around his neck, enveloping it in full
before the tip was swiping over the bloody mess at the front of his mask.
It slid off and left behind a thick layer of saliva, every inch passing over
the blood spot until it had feathered out into his cheek and lost its iron
tang. Peter saw a flash of white teeth before they scraped over his cheek,
cutting the cloth and just barely nicking his skin. The newly torn pieces
curled away and left his cheek bare. Venom snagged and ripped at them with his
teeth, cracking a lens as he savaged the mask and yanked it off like an angry
pit bull, shaking his head and hissing to toss the thing to the ground. Peter
spat more blood and felt warmth return to him, swirling into his cheeks and
pulsing down his chest.
That long pink tongue swept the new blood off his chin and then pushed at his
lips, pushed past his teeth, humongous and slimy and tasting like hot iron.
Spotty and dim, coherency flickered its way through the haze and brought with
it the ominous notion that he wasn’t about to be eaten. Peter’s spider senses
were screaming but his body was boiling. Life returned to his limbs as he began
to choke on the intrusion. Venom kept pushing more in. More tendrils split away
from the suit and snagged onto Peter’s legs and arms, his waist, and they
stretched like rubber as he began to kick and claw for air. A few broke, but
more sprung up, their icy touch burning on Peter’s skin as it sweltered.
The tongue peeled back and the black sunk away from Venom’s face. His eyes,
though rounded and covered with lids again were still paper white, his teeth
sharp, and there was an oily frame from the tendrils clinging around the
borders of his jaw and forehead and curling under his cheekbones, but it was
less monster and more Eddie. Venom dipped down and kissed Peter on the mouth as
much a human as he could manage, voracious and deep. The points of his fangs
gave shallow cuts to his lips. Peter screamed into his mouth.
The antidote had stopped working.
Adrenaline hit him like a bolt of lightning. With jagged fits and starts, he
wrestled an arm free and clocked Venom in the eye, then the throat, and worked
enough of his left leg loose to take a crack at his kneecaps. Venom howled and
dropped him, the suit reforming over his face and bubbling around him to fix
the damage, tentacles swarming and swinging over every inch of him. Peter
waited not one moment. He spat out the last dregs of the blood and made a break
for it. He whipped off a web and sailed into the air, bruises screaming at the
abuse and tongue swelling into a thick and spongy deadweight.
Except he saw a black line, an exact copy of his own webbing, splatter against
the same building he had hoisted himself to. “PARKEEERRR!”
Venom careened into the building before Peter had even finished his swing,
crouching like a cricket and waiting. Peter fired off a web at another building
and nearly broke his neck with the jolt of the last second change, but even
then his spider senses roared to maddening levels. He looked back just in time
to see Venom jumping – not webswinging, jumping – and the next thing he knew he
was battered out of the air and down towards the pavement.
The fall was murder on his back, his limbs still trailing comically in the air
like party streamers. Venom landed directly over top of him, denting the
pavement. A car screeched on the breaks as Venom hissed at it and held out his
hand to halt it. The metal crunched around it like cardboard, the sound ringing
thunderously in Peter’s ears. Peter kicked upwards, hitting Venom in the
middle. The black mass of monster was jolted just high enough in the air that
Peter could roll out, attempt to scramble onto his feet from all fours. Venom
snagged him by the legs and jerked him backwards, Peter’s rear colliding with
his pelvis. An eruption of heat blossomed from his chest out, but it had the
banshee spider senses to contest with. Peter yelped and elbowed, then punched
his way out when he had emerged enough from under Venom to do so.
Shrieks and blazing car horns and the collision of car bumpers and hoods had
them at the eye of a hurricane. Everything was chaos to Peter, the spider sense
beating all sound dull and tinny as it throbbed in his eardrums.
Yet even so, dimly, he was aware that one woman was running towards them. She
was beautiful – even that much stuck through the haze – maybe Latino. Older.
Her arms were spread wide as she raced forward. Behind her was a small black
boy who was screaming at her to come back, a foreboding sense of abandonment
about the scene, but she still gunned for Peter and Venom.
The upset brought Venom’s attention to a pinpoint focus. The beast behind him
was drawing upright and clicking its teeth together in displeasure. Peter was
frozen where he crouched as he saw the whites of her eyes, her hands splayed
and stretched in his direction, as if to scoop him up from the pavement and
whisk him away. She cried out to him, voice cracking, “NO! STOP!”
“MOM!” The kid hollered, skittering closer. He was trembling behind a car that
had wrapped its hood around a streetlamp, the driver long since fled. He nearly
fell to his knees trying to come around closer, begging. “GET AWAY!”
Venom bore down like a wildcat. She was ripped off the ground in no more than a
blink and swarmed with inky offshoots, Venom drawing his jaws open and swilling
his tongue around her neck. The boy was shrieking louder still and Peter’s head
was throbbing with the palpitation of machine gun fire but he still launched
upwards, spinning a kick at the side of Venom’s head. He dropped the woman,
stringy bits of the suit still clinging to her skirt and tearing her nylons.
Peter caught her as they both fell and he rolled on the ground. If she had
broken or bruised on the landing he didn’t know, he was already swinging
another hit to the monster’s gut. She clawed at his legs and coughed through
her begging.
“Baby, no! Get out of here!”
“You first!” Peter barked back. He bit his tongue all over again and spat
bright red blood on the pavement. He dashed a few paces to the left and hefted
an abandoned Buick, and flung it solidly at Venom. He went flying and the glass
of the café opposite disintegrated as several tons of man and automobile blew
through it.
The woman was on Peter suddenly, coiling her arms around him and sobbing into
his hair. “No no no, not my boy!”
“Lady! What is your damage?!” He weaseled away but she reached for him again.
Her eyes were still wide and rolling down to him like a spooked horse. She
snagged him by a scrape on his costume which ripped further as Peter struggled
to fend her off.
Her real son barreled into her from behind and yanked at her waist. “Mom! Stop!
Please stop, we have to go! We’re going to die!”
She screamed again and nearly took Peter’s eye out trying to grab him. “Not
without my boy!”
“I’m not your—“ Peter ducked another swipe and she wailed, a veritable
waterfall running down each cheek, and Peter knew then something had to be
wrong. She was ignoring her kid completely and calling him baby, her boy, and
her eyes were like something out of the Exorcist.
Only one solution came to mind. He hated himself the very second his open palm
battered her at the cheek. She nearly keeled over but the boy at her waist had
gone rigid and held her fast. He gaped helplessly at Peter.
It dawned on him what a mess he must look. The mask was gone and there were
odd, angry stripes around his mouth from where Venom had cut him with his
teeth. The webs on his neck and chest were stained a darker red than the rest,
and more blood dribbled in thin lines out of his mouth from his twice cut
tongue. Add that to how he had just slapped his mom and Peter must have looked
absolutely psychotic. “Spider-Man?” the boy asked in a quavering tone, even
more diminutive up close than he had been crouching behind the car.
The woman rose, wavering, her hand at her cheek but she was blinking, seeing
the disaster around them and moving with purpose. Her body quaked and her hands
patted the arms around her until she could discern who was clutching her so
fast. She tugged her son into her body tighter, gasping, and drew away from
Peter. “Miles? Oh god, baby, are you hurt?” She inspected him, holding him at
arm’s length and trembling from shoulder to fingertips, but when she found
nothing amiss and he murmured that he was fine, her gaze locked back on Peter.
She was hypnotized by the sight of him, but she wasn’t reaching for him
anymore. It was the cautious kind of shock and awe he was used to. “Oh, Lord,
you’re really…really small.” Her voice was faint but steady.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, you were just…You need to go,” Peter spluttered. He
pushed at both of their shoulders and fought fainting from the continued
assault in his head. “Now now now.”
“You’re Spider-Man?” she said thinly. Peter could swear it was her heartbeat
drumming at his ears. She touched her mouth, agape. Her eyes weren’t on his,
but at the carnage of his face, his suit. “How old are…oh honey, you are coming
with us. You need to be in a hospital.”
“Mom!” urged the boy.
“Get out.” Peter said.
She shook her head and held out a trembling hand. “We should go. You too.
Spider-Man, you come with us. You’re hurt.”
“Mom, it tried to eat you! Are you okay?”
Peter waved his arms. “GUYS, SERIOUSLY! EXUENT STAGE LEFT!”
Then the boy’s attention snapped to something over Peter’s shoulder. He
shrieked wordlessly, with animal fear, pointing as broad fingers tipped in
talons curled around Peter’s sides, the jagged points piercing his belly like
wasps.
Venom hefted Peter from the ground with the double grip. Just as he was getting
the impression that this was what the last moments of a Big Mac felt like,
Venom carved a crescent moon slash on each side of his shoulder as he bit down,
a keening, supernatural growl rattling Peter’s bones.
The boy kept screaming and his mother lost all reason. She nearly toppled in
fright, knees failing as her neck craned to compensate for the eight foot
terror with its teeth buried in Peter’s skin. She seized her son to her chest,
wild and speechless. Peter was screaming himself, new blood painting the blue
of his sleeve a sinister purple.
Venom dropped him from jaw and grip alike and Peter bounced on the unforgiving
concrete. Venom crouched over him like a lion over a kill and slapped the
pavement, cracking it under his hand and roared at the pair, that alien screech
that pierced the ears so sharply Peter swore they might all go deaf.
Peter pushed himself over, rolling so that he could see them and squeezing at
the gashes left behind by Venom’s teeth, as if he might keep the blood in with
nothing more than one hand and a prayer. “RUN!”
They obeyed at last. The boy was beside himself, crying out for him as his
mother lifted him to her chest and sprinted away, his legs twining around her
middle like a child much smaller and younger than he truly was.
Peter used the distraction. It was short lived, Venom watching the pair solely
to make certain they were gone for good, but it was enough time to jut his foot
into Venom’s gut, then the other. He was on his back and kicking rapid fire
into him like a rabbit on its last resort of defense. The thing made a hideous
sound, a squelching in its throat, and was battered back a few paces against
its will. Peter launched upright and spun away, dodging another clawed swipe
that might have sliced off an arm, or left him bleeding out from four slick
cuts to his side. Peter bolted on foot, web at the ready. He fired again and
shot upwards into the sky. Unsurprisingly, Venom was a thin two yards behind in
no time at all.
Peter shot web after web in constant streams, quickly convinced he was circling
Manhattan in its entirety with how fast and how far he had gone. His muscles
were groaning under the strain and the bite was a vicious handicap to contend
with, but Venom kept such a close tail that there was not a moment of reprieve
to be had. The Baxter Building was close. He knew that Reed, in all his (well
founded) paranoia, had installed the kinds of precautions that high fliers and
wall crawlers loathed to find: the outer walls were rigged with electrical
fields. The suit did not fare so well with electricity. It was his best chance
at ditching Venom in the lingering daylight without having to get close again.
Peter sprang over the roof of a flat topped sky scraper, casting another line
for the next building over and thanking the heavens that he could see the
Baxter Building’s tip just shy of five blocks away.
He had been at this sort of gig for long enough by now that the startling snag
at his back and the sudden jerk in the opposite direction should not have come
as a surprise, but he still gasped, still watched with horror as the Baxter
Building shrunk cruelly out of view. The black webline lurched Peter backwards
into Venom’s chest, his gorilla-esque arm locking around his middle and Venom
dove down for the long stretch of alley below.
They landed with an ugly thud and Peter was smashed against the ground. His
back would be one united bruise, the blow smarting from neck to sacrum and
spanning both ribs. He kicked out regardless and caught Venom in the neck. With
deft panic he rolled out to the side and was on the verge of pushing upright
when his ankle was seized and the ground slipped out from under him. Venom
swung him into the wall like an old rag, bricks crumbling under the blow and
his suit ripping, blood from scrapes mixing with brick dust and grime, then
whirled him high in the air and hammered him into the ground. The pavement was
unforgiving and fissured underneath him. Something cracked inside Peter too,
his forearm taking the brunt of the blow and springing wild with sharp,
stabbing pain on impact. He sobbed out loud at the abrupt wash of agony. The
bone might have been broken.
Venom took this as an opportunity to crouch low and lick Peter from navel to
neck. The fresh cuts and scrapes from the brick were flooding his suit, but
Venom lapped up the blood with perverse appetite. With his good hand Peter
slapped the tongue away and was rewarded with a smack of his own across his
ear. For the second time that day his vision sparked over with white and
threatened to cut out completely, but now his ears rattled and clanged for
equal attention and damage. He felt claws scraping under the waist of his
pants. Venom pinned his chest down and ripped the pants up and apart, leaving
the legs to dangle uselessly off his knees and his pelvis exposed.
“NO!” Peter screamed, writhing and battering away at the hand cementing his
chest to the ground, his legs flailing. Venom slammed his palm over Peter’s
mouth, giving his skull an awful jolt. The spider sense was unbearable, like
electrocution, like fire. It was killing him.
“Be…stiiiill…”
Speech was a strain on Venom, it was obvious. But when he managed to squeeze
out a word or two, it was in a chilling, doubled tone. Two voices in one,
rumbling, deep and devilish and shaking Peter to the bone. It belonged in
films, with millions of dollars poured into mixing and manipulating sounds to
produce unearthly strains, not poured out into his ears in a starkly real
alley.
Peter whimpered and shuddered under the hand, and continued to do so once it
lifted. He wasn’t entirely sure what his body was doing any longer. His eyes
were rolling upward and his skin flashed wicked hot. The blaring spider senses
were maniacally painful, consuming every other instinct and thought. He didn’t
notice that his rear was lifted high in the air until his leg stuttered into an
uncontrollable twitch and his heel was skidding in solitude on the pavement.
Venom was groping him, sliding a thick finger in his cleft, the claw seemingly
retracted after giving him a spiteful scratch at the tailbone. He licked
Peter’s thigh and rubbed the base of his cock with his thumb. His tongue
swilled around it next, and Peter was left gasping. The swell of heat came upon
him in a bubble burst, for a moment overpowering the pain of his bruises and
bites and bones and even the belligerent rattling in his skull, and all he
could comprehend was the intoxicating slide of that tongue. Slick and wet and
all encompassing, coiled around his member like a snake and slipping free in
slow succession.
An inelegant burble escaped him. Peter wriggled and stuck his good hand to the
pavement underneath him. Venom had abandoned his cock but pulled him in closer,
letting his rear nestle on his thighs as he tore through the top, ripped off
the sleeves and the gloves, running his claws along Peter’s belly and ribs and
lapping up the half-dried drips from the bite.
The proximity and the sudden sting of new attention to a fresh wound broke his
reverie. The shriek of his spider senses made him seize. A body wide spasm
overtook him, then he was screaming and beating on Venom as best as he could
with only one arm and his legs sprawled wide around his captor’s hips. Venom
hissed bitterly and croaked a low warning, “Parkeerrrr!”
But Peter didn’t stop. He struck at the mouth and his knuckles smarted as they
cracked a tooth there. Venom snarled and slammed him to the ground again, but
this time there was a massive hand encompassing his neck, squeezing and
immovable as stone. Air trickled out of Peter and he gasped, ran his feet up
and down the pavement, batted at the hand and at whatever of Venom he could
reach, but he could not stop the alarm, the way his whole face puckered and his
body went tight, how his spider senses were wailing louder than ever.
He had to stop. Death crouched on the peripherals, dark and numb, and Peter
couldn’t summon the strength to fight anymore. When the threat was real, when
it was creeping up slowly and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see anything but
the massive monster crouching over him or feel anything but the crushing force
around his throat, Peter found that he did not want to die. Not to stop the
pain that rattled through his every nerve. Not even to stop the humiliation.
Wriggling wormlike, the heat and sparks came to him again. Peter twitched. His
only option was to not fight. Let it come, let the quivering need sweep down
his spine and invade him. Stop resisting. He let his body go limp and wheezed
as the hand at his throat retracted. It pulled at his legs instead, pushing
them high and wide as Peter was sprawled on his back. He felt Venom’s member
press against his rear, as if he had been waiting for permission this whole
time.
Peter’s legs were being draped around Venom’s shoulders. For a mad moment he
imagined the real man underneath the suit in its place, Eddie Brock: scruffy, a
little gaunt, but still the struggling collegiate he’d been when Peter sought
him out last year. Espousing lazy clichés and carting him and Gwen around in
his car. That man was gone. Humanity was the last thing that came to mind
looking at the bubbling black mass, the bear-like size and brutality, the
listless white eye spots with no discernible edge or pupil.
Peter dragged his good arm over his eyes to cut out that alien stare, his nose
sheltered in the crook of his elbow. Oxygen was coming back into him through
fits, the new bruises pounding with every inhale and violent cough. Venom
waited, poised perfectly still over top of him until Peter could calm down
enough to simply breathe. Then he peeled the arm away from his face, paying no
mind to the way Peter squirmed or latched his eyes shut, and bent further. The
tongue dropped loose from his mouth and circled Peter’s head from under the jaw
to around the ears, over his eyelids and then his lips. Only after thoroughly
slathering Peter’s face with his spit did Venom push in.
Peter had to bite his lip to keep the sharp scream inside. Venom was massive.
Even if it was slow going, even if the suit made it all strangely slick, there
was no forgiveness to be had in the sheer size of the thing. Peter wanted to
wriggle out but could not, bent clear in half underneath the beast. Had anyone
been looking at them they might not realize there was a person under Venom at
all.
It was a small measure of mercy that the ecstasy hit soon after. It smoothed
him over like finger tips ghosting through his hair, effervescent and tingling
as it dripped from his scalp down. It mitigated the agony, if not wholly then
hypnotically. His spider senses throbbed mercilessly at Venom’s closeness, he
could hear it make the blood drum in his ears but the sickly need was numbing
it. His nerves were shot through and only the pressure remained. It was a
Novocain state. Every ounce of skin felt loose and rubbery as the sensations
combated in him. He was aware of nothing, eyes glazed as they lay open and
unseeing.
Venom descended. Peter’s toes brushed the ground above his shoulders. With the
length of it Peter could not take Venom in whole, but he clearly thought that
was no reason not to try. With little warning, he yanked back and rammed into
Peter. Peter didn’t make a sound. If possible his eyes widened just a little
more, owlish, and his mouth parted. Venom slammed in again and he gaped even
more. The force of the thrusts were raking him across the pavement, gravel and
irregularities scraping him red.
After the first few pushes Venom pressed down on him, closing Peter’s thighs to
his chest and trapping his toes on the pavement above his head, and rocked into
him. There was no less gusto in the act, the change seemed more a measure of
control. Peter wasn’t skidding on the ground anymore, but simply bobbing with
each thrust in time with Venom. The air was tight between them and Peter had to
focus to breathe, sucking in with sickly rattles and choking on whimpers and
moans. Venom was entirely mute and spoke more in power and weight and the
gargantuan hand pressing into Peter’s wrist, drawing and pinning it to the side
where it could not interfere with a well aimed punch.
Peter had no plans for anything of the sort. His wounded arm was useless, both
from the bite on his shoulder and the abusive stabbing pains from the break;
and that was his only free limb still trailing out from under Venom. With
plodding reluctance slivers of thought returned to him, still numb and blissful
everywhere save for the tiny whispers of relax, relax, it’ll feel good soon, it
always does.
And of course it did. Late, almost uncharacteristically so, but it was a
difference of day and night once the change hit, giving him red blooms in his
cheeks and a euphoria that birthed in his belly and shot to his groin, then
burst into tingles from his middle to his fingers and toes.
He was groaning salaciously. Venom had released his arm and he clung to him in
mindless desperation, sticking his palm to the shoulder blade. Peter’s head was
tossed to the side while he panted deeply. Slick offshoots of the suit latched
onto him even now, when Venom made no move to consume him. He engulfed him by
other means. He nuzzled his smooth, nose-less face against Peter’s hair and
cheek, the teeth scraping only slightly where the folds of his ear were caught
errant.
After some time, rutting hard into the ground seemed to lose its appeal and
Venom dragged them both back, hefting Peter upright as he drew into a sit and
letting his legs fall free to the side. The tips of his claws put dotted lines
into his rear, five points that arched up and over his hips to where the thumbs
pricked at him in the front. They drew blood when he lifted Peter and shoved
him back down, as near to the base of his cock as he could get. Peter hollered
and squirmed, and whimpered when his useless arm knocked too hard against
Venom’s leg and pulled it in, clutching it protectively. The shock didn’t stop
the addictive spasms of ecstasy, but he cradled it close and hung his head low,
his forehead rubbing Venom’s collar bone as he was manhandled into moving up
and down with a irate vigor. His rear had already gone sore. Venom used him
with no pretence or precaution: his grip was too tight, he pushed Peter too
fast and too hard, as if forgetting there was a human attached to those hips at
all, plunging into him with animal brutality. Bits of the suit hooked into
Peter’s face and his legs where they lay over Venom’s thighs, cold to his
sweltering hot skin, and he faintly thought that he might end up being sucked
inside of the suit, nothing more than a meal after all.
A warped bang shook them both, and Peter jolted to attention as Venom shrieked
under the brunt of the shot. Another followed, and Peter was abruptly dropped
back on the cold pavement, free at last.
He could hear Venom’s growl, his inhuman screech of fury, and he could hear
human voices. Peter didn’t rise. He coiled around his wounded arm and covered
his head, curling himself into the tightest possible ball. His spider senses
recovered and assailed him anew. The heat was gone. All traces of satisfaction
evaporated, and though his cock was still stiff it was fading fast. He huddled
on the ground and prayed that whoever was shooting at Venom wasn’t going to
shoot him too.
There was a bang and a crash and the brick wall to the right had been
shattered, plaster and severed rubble spraying over Peter and stinging in his
open cuts and scrapes, the bite at his shoulder. He found his wits. They rushed
back into him then and swelled him with the urge to run. He was naked, he was
injured, but he had to go.
Venom was roaring again and there were more shots, but another bang sounded and
the fight seemed to transfer back out to the street, car horns blaring and the
ruckus of mass property damage just a little more distant than before. Peter
struggled upright, furiously rubbing his eyes when speckles of plaster invaded
them. A voice from behind, unfamiliar, shouted. “There’s a kid!”
“That’s not just a kid.” came a woman’s voice. Peter freed his eyes from the
debris and looked over his shoulder to see a pair of black clad soldiers. Not
S.H.I.E.L.D. The one furthest from him was a woman with stunning silver hair.
He remembered her. Silver Sable. And she clearly remembered him, raising a
pointed brow and looking over the bloodied, naked mess that was Peter Parker.
The only clothes he had left were the boots and his webshooters, the rest lay
in tatters over the ground. His mask was probably lying in a gutter near
Central Park. If he were in any less fear for his life, he might have been
mortified.
The second, a man whose gun was trained on Peter and whose face was obscured by
his mask, cocked his head and his weapon. “Christ! You’re kidding me. We taking
him in?”
“We’re here for Brock.” The sounds of chaos continued behind them, and Peter
even saw Venom leap past the gap leading into the alley, nothing more than a
roaring black streak, and heard a human scream and gunfire.
“But the payday’s gotta be insane on this guy. Didn’t the Kingpin-”
Peter’s heart leaped into his throat. He didn’t think twice. He swung around
his good arm and shot the gun impotent with a well placed web. Silver Sable
fired at him then, hollering, “Simmer down, Junior!”
It was murder to move, but he did. Peter dodged, flinging himself haphazardly
into the air and probably flashing the pair in the process, judging from the
sudden jerk back from the masked man. Silver Sable only aimed her gun again.
Peter fired another web just as he landed in a crouch, hitting her gun, then
slammed them both in the face with a glob of webbing apiece. Behind him there
was only a dead end and a high rise, and Peter’s arm was killing him. His legs
were killing him, his neck was killing him, and he was starting to shake now
that the heat spell had drained out, his mind strangely blank. So without
thinking, he rocketed out into the street on foot while the pair struggled with
his webbing, snagging the largest tatter of his shirt to hold to his groin on
his way.
Venom had already made a proper ruckus of things, and Silver Sable’s crew was
not helping. Police cars were pulling up, and there was a terrified ring of
onlookers past the furthest stretch of cars both parked and totaled, traffic on
hold for the spectacle. No one noticed Peter, and he darted sharply to the
left, leaping into a thin restaurant patio and ducking behind a downed table
umbrella. It was already torn in a large strip. Peter considered it for a
moment, then ripped it off and ditched the scrap from his suit. He kicked off
his boots, but couldn’t bring himself to part with the webshooters. Less people
would recognize them, he reasoned, than they would the red webbing on the suit
scrap or the boots. A stray shot punctured a window above him and Peter bolted
again, out in the open.
His spider senses were swelling again, Venom close but too focused on taking
down the mercenaries blasting him with all they had. The cumulative pressure
and pain and panic sent him careening into a stucco wall, pressing his head
into it and letting his bad arm flop at his side while the other clutched the
umbrella rag for dignity. He was close to the crowd, but no one even noticed he
was there. Shots came again and Peter ducked, a tight yelp escaping him as he
forced himself to crawl and escape the stray gunfire again.
His head knocked against the front end of a sleek black Volkswagen before he
realized he was on the fringes of the scene. Peter peeled away from the wall,
slapping his good hand on the hood of the car and hoisting himself upright, his
legs losing their solidity and his energy zapped clean. The pounding headache
wasn’t leaving. He looked up, and found Betty Brant at the opposite end of the
car.
She was tucked into the open door with a camcorder directed at the fight,
propping herself up higher by standing on the floor of her car and steadying
herself with a grip on the roof. The camcorder was glued to her eye and her
teeth were gritted, her face pale with fright but she remained utterly still.
“Betty?” Peter rasped.
It was a slow turn, as if she didn’t quite believe anyone had called her name
in the first place, but she spotted him clinging to the hood of her car. Her
eyes went wide.
Then they rolled back, her mouth gaping open, and Peter thought she might
faint. The camcorder dropped from her hands. But she didn’t follow it – instead
her eyes snapped back on him and she was suddenly tearing up, clutching a hand
to her heart. In a flash she was on him, having rounded the car and scooping
him up into her arms.
Exactly how the Latino woman had panicked over him.
“Oh god come here, come here, I’ve got you babe, it’s okay.” She was babbling,
shaking in time with him, pressing her cheek into his hair as she tried to heft
him up with a bear hug around his ribs. Peter, though stunned, did his best to
help, dragging his feet until they came properly underneath him. She reached
behind herself for the passenger door and coerced him inside. Betty clutched at
his face and wiped at the blood stains with trembling fingers, her lip
wobbling. “Don’t worry, okay? I’ve got you.”
“Betty?” Peter pressed, grabbing her by the wrist. The cloth was only barely
draped over his lap. “Betty, are you – Betty, are you listening to me?”
“I’ve got you,” she insisted, patting his cheeks with a sniffle and reaching
under the seat. She pulled out a blanket, fleecy plaid in green and navy, and
tucked it over and around him in like a child in bed.
“Betty!” Peter hissed, but she pressed a kiss to his forehead and then shut the
door. She reappeared in the driver’s seat and furiously started the engine.
Peter stared at her, hazy in his thoughts but still sharply aware that Betty
Brant would never in her life cry and kiss him and call him babe, no matter how
badly beaten he was.
From outside the car Venom was shrieking, and had latched onto an unsuspecting
police officer, sucking him in. Peter’s heart thudded madly, his spider senses
shrieked in sympathy. He ought to be out there. He ought to do something,
battered and bare as he was. Venom was his fault, his responsibility.
But Betty was already pulling the car away, pushing the pedal to the floor and
jetting out of the scene as if someone was giving chase.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The further they got from the chaos, the more Betty seemed to come to herself.
She started breathing in deep, no longer pounding out air to the beat of a
jackhammer, her lips pressed hard together and her eyes regained a razor sharp
focus. She cast glances at him, and though concern was there it was less of the
motherly variety and more of the general perplexity at finding a naked and
beaten boy in the passenger seat of her car. He was grateful. He didn’t have it
in him to smack another woman today, and he didn’t want to think about why he
had to do so in the first place.
Two of them. Two women who had gone to pieces over him and who shouldn’t in
their right minds be giving him the time of day. Had the antidote made him
worse? Made whatever it was mutate? Was this the start of getting molested by
women, just the same as Jessica?
Peter’s head was free of panging, Venom long out of proximity now, but that
only left room for the rest of the damage to clamor for his attention. For most
of the ride he kept his eyes shut, not daring to disturb the form of his
blanket cocoon. Everything was pain and so he stayed as still as possible and
winced when turns and stops jostled him.
“So how did…” Betty started, then halted. She hit the brakes at a stoplight.
“Shit. My camera.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Two hundred freaking dollars down the drain.” He could feel her eyes on him.
Peter opened his own by a sliver and caught her staring, raking her gaze
uneasily up and down his body. “I hope you have health insurance.”
“I can’t go to a hospital.”
“What?” she barked. “Have you looked in a mirror? Oh god, you don’t have a
concussion do you?”
“Betty, I’m not going to a hospital. Just…” Peter grimaced. “Take me home.”
“Don’t you live in Queens? I am not driving all the way out to Queens. You’re
going to bleed out before we get there.”
He seethed quietly. This was going to be a problem. “I won’t bleed out. Betty,
I am begging you. Do not take me to a hospital.”
Betty slapped the wheel, livid. Her voice stayed unnaturally even, no matter
how fervent her ranting got. “What the hell is wrong with you? Is this some
kind of – you’re effing naked, you’re bleeding out of everywhere – what were
you doing down there, dumbass? Was this a Spider-Man thing? Were you trying to
take pictures for Jameson or something?”
“Take me to your place then, and call my Aunt.” Peter turned his head as best
as he could, the phantom of Venom’s chokehold gone purple and black already in
a wide collar around his neck, and shot her his best pleading eyes. He doubted
their effectiveness, when he was still red and bruised and crusty with blood
old and new. “A parking lot. Anything. Please. They won’t get it.”
“This is New York. I bet the hospitals are dealing with mutant crap every other
day.” She squinted and leaned forward. They were on a block Peter knew all too
well. By his estimation she was about five minutes from getting her way and
hauling him forcibly into New York Downtown Hospital.
Peter’s eyes went wide and he snapped his good arm out, grabbing her wrist at
the wheel. “Betty, I am not kidding you—“
“What are you doing?!” She snatched his wrist right back.
Thwip!
With that unexpected mechanical hiss, the driver side window was splattered
with webbing. Peter went awash with ice. His webshooters were still on. She had
hit the trigger.
And Betty, who was as sharp as a tack on the best of days, went horrifically
quiet. She had stopped the car, even though there were honking motorists behind
her. Her eyes followed the line from the window to where it was birthed at his
wrist, to the metal encircling the skin there. Too big, too bulky and too odd
to be a bracelet or a cuff. She met his eyes last of all.
“…Betty…”
She said nothing. The cars outside swerved around them and one man screamed at
them and flipped the bird. Her nose wrinkled at the gesture and suddenly she
was looking anywhere but Peter. Throat working but her mouth sewn shut, she
found the end of the harrowing pause and hit the gas once more. She took a
sharp turn and they were on another street. No longer headed to the hospital.
Peter retreated. He released the web and it fell limply into her lap. Betty
twitched and hurriedly brushed it off. Both of them set their eyes to the road.
Peter clenched his eyes shut and thudded his head on the back of his seat. He
wished desperately that he could disappear. Sneak off to Maui and never be
heard from ever again.
They pulled into an apartment complex parkade not long after. Betty killed the
engine. “You know,” she said thickly, “This explains…so, so much.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not…” She pressed her palms into her eyes. “God, and my fucking camera
gone forever.”
“You’re not going to tell this to anyone.” Peter rasped. Then, as a measure of
truce, he added another, “Please?”
Betty clicked her tongue. She seemed to consider the notion, taking a sweet
pause before shaking her head. “Eff me. Fifteen years old and skulking around,
peddling pictures of yourself to a paper that rips you a new one every week.
Kid, no one would believe me. And you’re dying in my passenger seat, that’s
kind of a bigger concern right now.”
She helped him out of the car, one arm around his should while he clung to her
for dear life and prayed the blanket wouldn’t drop. They made for the elevator
and Betty hit a button for the twenty second floor, and let him lean bonelessly
against her for the whole ride up.
He was utterly silent as Betty hobbled him out of the elevator. His legs were
as sturdy as wet noodles and his skin was paper white. He stared at his feet
and hugged her blanket around him tighter as she held onto his shoulders in a
one armed lasso and fumbled for her keys with the other. She swore, suffering a
narrow miss of dropping them on the carpet, and took a furtive look around the
hallway as she pushed them inside.
“Down on the couch,” she ordered, already dragging him over. Peter let himself
topple over on his good side there, clutching at his bad shoulder, already
coiling up like a pill bug as he focused all his attention to the dulled terra
cotta wood of her floor. “Oh, shitcakes. Okay, first aid, where did I put you
my oft neglected companion…”
Peter flicked his gaze to her figure in a mirror, hanging on a wall space and
reflecting her trek down a short hall. His vision swam. His head pulsated with
something sickly, the swill of his own blood raucously loud and visceral. When
Betty came out he was half off the couch, pressing his forehead into the floor
and encircling it with his only working arm.
“Peter?!”
The clopping sound of her shoes was intolerable. He was hoisted upright again
and felt he might vomit, the turn making him nauseous. Dizzy. He felt her peel
the blanket open as much as modesty would allow and heard her strangled whimper
at the bite, at the bruises and the five point slashes drawn by Eddie’s claws.
“Oh, fuck me. Peter, please. Peter, are you awake?” His eyes had drifted closed
and his mouth lay open, but he nodded with the least amount of effort possible.
Betty took heart in it, pressing a cool hand to his forehead. “Can I at least
call up a doctor pal? I know a guy.”
“No,” he groaned.
“Yes! Kid, you’re a mess, I can’t fix you by myself.” Though she was trying. He
could hear the click of the first aid box opening and the rustling of several
objects. He hissed bitterly as she dribbled alcohol along the bite wound on his
shoulder, Betty mimicking the sound in distaste and murmuring a hasty apology.
“Just because I was one of two people in the office who performed decently with
that first aid course does not mean I’m capable of this. Don't you have some
little helper by now? Someone to patch up Spidey?”
At the moment, Peter wanted nothing more than to cease all sound. Cease being
awake, just drift off and not think or feel or have to listen to that burble in
his belly that threatened to push up everything he had eaten since yesterday.
But even in this state, he knew what a luxury that would be. “Just do whatever
you can. Call my Aunt.”
Aunt May could at least get a hold of S.H.I.E.L.D. If he had his own stuff with
him he could have done it himself, but he had unwisely left it behind. With the
advent of cell phones no one in his generation bothered to memorize phone
numbers anymore either, so Peter was unsure of how to contact anyone other than
his Aunt or MJ or 911. The latter was, as discussed before, not an option.
“Peter? So that mutant thing was…You were fighting it right?” She stopped, as
if something had just occurred to her or caught her eye. With gentle discretion
she patted the blanket, at the edge of his hip. Peter winced and opened his
eyes again when she strayed into the wounds and Betty pulled back instantly.
She checked her fingers and rubbed them together. The blood had begun to clot
and stuck to the fabric where Eddie’s claws had pricked and gouged him, holding
his hips in place. “Peter,” she said slowly, her gaze hard on the bloodied
spots on his hips before it raked upwards, taking census of each telltale
scrape over his lips. “did that mutant—”
“Don’t,” he warned her. “Don’t say a word.”
He could hear her breathing now, deliberately slow, yoga born and ineffective.
“Good god, kid.” She hurried with the rest of the bandages, spritzing the
alcohol and rubbing out the grime with a wet cloth. Her voice drew tight,
cinched like the cords in her throat were set in a vice. “It wasn’t just a
fight, was it?”
He grimaced. “Stop it.”
Thankfully, she did. She worked with the same vivacity she took to her typing
whenever she had an article that got her fired up, tackling the shallow cuts
from Venom’s teeth next. Peter wriggled under her ministrations. While he was
used to getting patched up, alcohol never stopped being bee-sting sharp and
irritating.
It was some time before she bothered to speak again, when his shoulder was well
padded with antibiotic creams and fresh cotton. “I fell asleep at my friend’s
place one time in college. We’d had a party. I used to drink like the Irish,
every chance I got. It was a pretty bad night for it so he let me sleep in his
room, before I keeled over in a gutter trying to walk home. When I woke up
later his roommate was on top of me.” Betty halted her work, her hand resting
on Peter’s. She gave him a little squeeze, and he could hear a block in her
voice, thinning the sound even as she dragged it out with steadfast force. “And
college boys are human shit stains, so of course everyone called me a drunk
slut the moment I opened my mouth and no one believed me. So I know how it is.
No one needs to know anything. Any of this. Not from me.”
Peter let his eyes drift open then. She was looking back at him, face drawn not
in sorrow or pity, but grim solidarity. It was hard to imagine a young Betty
Brant. She fit too squarely into the peg of a self assured adult, a viper of a
woman with a latte in hand and a million opinions, and not one care to give
whether you agreed or not. Even now her eyes shone with steely hardness rather
than any trace of softness. Perfectly armored.
With a cold shiver Peter returned the squeeze of her hand, and said plainly,
“I’m sorry too, Betty.”
She thinned her lips and let go. The rest of his torso was tended to, and she
set his arm as best as she could with the limited supplies. A bookend served as
a makeshift splint. “Do you need me to do the rest of you? Would you be okay
with that?” She gestured at the lower half of him. Peter meekly shook his head
no and muttered that he could try himself. He blinked up at her wearily as she
rose, sliding the first aid kit onto the edge of the coffee table for him and
trotted out of view.
He could only use one hand now, so it would be difficult. But Peter managed,
whimpering to sit upright and tackling the bloody spots as best as he could.
Betty did not have an awe-inspiring medical arsenal, so some of the smaller
scrapes went uncovered as the bandage stock grew thin, but he made sure to put
extra medication on everything and wipe himself as clean as he could get.
After some time Betty called out to ask if he was decent and resurfaced when
she got a yes. There was a folded set of clothes in her arms. “They’re going to
be too big for you, but my boyfriend left some of his stuff here. Take it.”
He shrugged into the clothes after Betty trotted into the kitchen, emerging
when he was dressed with a cup of coffee which she insisted he would drink (she
asserted it was because she hated tea and didn’t have any, not even for
entertaining guests) and left him sugar and cream. She fetched him more
blankets and asked for his Aunt’s phone number. She was a whirlwind, here and
there, grabbing this and that at tugging her hair and pressing her knuckles
hard against her lips so that they stayed white, just for a second, when she
whipped her hand away and pushed another pillow under Peter’s head.
All of it was so exhausting that Peter finished maybe a third of the coffee and
sleepily answered her questions before succumbing, dropping off to darkness
while bundled in four fleecy blankets, the old bloodied one excommunicated to
the floor in a heap.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
When he woke again the apartment was shrouded with inky black shadows. It was
late, that much was clear. Bleary as he was and sluggish to think, Peter found
that he was not altogether surprised to see the imposing silhouette of Nick
Fury standing over him.
“Where’s Betty?” he mumbled.
“Sleeping.” Nick said quietly. “I had to put her out.”
Peter rubbed his face. He stretched his legs and hissed at the stings and
throbs. The bruises had swollen, and the cuts still felt fresh. But he made
himself sit up, taking concessions where his sore spots were concerned and
clutching the blankets around his shoulders.“Why didn’t you just pick me up and
go?”
Nick took a pause. Though he was largely stoic the air around him was fraught
with something unspoken. “You were already waking up.”
“And Venom?”
“M.I.A. But we have secured the mercenary team trying to capture him.” Nick
paused again, setting up an even graver continuation. “We had trouble tracking
you until we got word of the scuffle with Sable. Brant’s camera was still at
the scene and witnesses saw you leave.” He broke his stare for the moment,
seemingly more interested in the Spartan décor. “We thought you were just
swinging around for kicks.”
Peter had to swallow down a lump in his throat. “I kind of was. In a sense.” It
was his own fault. If he hadn’t let his temper get the best of him, he could
have gone home. Done his homework, eaten supper, and celebrated his mostly
normal day.
“And the antidote?” Nick let the question trail off, but neither of them
pursued it. The answer was already hanging stiffly between them. Peter only
shrugged at him, except it wasn’t so apparent with only one shoulder to work
with. Maybe the shock of adrenaline kicked the antidote out, overwhelmed it.
Stress could be a factor.
Or maybe it was going to fade out after all. Strain versus vaccine. Bacteria
and viruses constantly evolved, and science scrambled to pump out new shots to
cover the next generations of disease. Maybe his body adapted, just like that.
Peter stood. Gravity was a terrible threat in his state and Nick had to steady
him before he stumbled over his own feet.
“It’s the last time,” he assured him stonily. “It will not happen again.”
Peter couldn’t raise his eyes from the floor. “Are you going to put me away?”
“We don’t know.” Nick didn’t let go of his shoulder. There was no warmth, no
suspicious jump in his core. In fact, he was being washed over by ice. It was
cold without the blankets, Betty having followed the same suit as the rest of
New York that spring and set her thermostat to ungodly levels of chilled. Peter
shook his head in tiny fractions, the hangman marks on his neck still dogging
him too strongly for more emphatic gestures.
“I would put me away.”
Nick didn’t contest him then. Peter ceased to care about convention and the
prickly airs Nick usually exuded. He simply wrapped one arm around his middle.
Nick reciprocated. Peter’s head tucked perfectly under his chin and his
slipshod splinted arm stuck awkwardly out at Nick’s waist, avoiding the
embrace. The sounds of a riotous nightlife were blooming outside, muffled
through the walls and buzzing in both of their ears.
“I’m so sorry, kid.”
***** Civilians and Suits *****
Chapter Summary
     Damage control is the name of the game in the wake of Venom's attack
     on Peter and the antidote's failure. Aunt May and Mary Jane are faced
     with uneasy propositions.
Chapter Notes
     No warnings for this chapter.
     I ought to have called it The Women of Ultimate Spider-Man take over
     the POV for Pretty Much the Entire Chapter, but I swear I didn't plan
     it like that. I thought I could fit other bits in but then it was
     getting too long and I couldn't cut any of it or rearrange anything
     without breaking the plot, so. Enjoy the ladies. :)
Tony Stark was technically supposed to be in the lab, tinkering out a more
reliable module of military comm. links as commissioned by the Secretary of
Defense. He’d slipped out at the behest of Carol Danvers, who had called him
over to S.H.I.E.L.D. for a consultation on the new security measures Fury was
planning on installing with regards to the big terrorist on campus: Mr. Magneto
himself. He was a bugger to keep a handle on, to say the least, with metal
being so pervasively employed throughout the whole building. So far it had been
a fairly successful venture, but even Nick Fury wasn’t blinded by that. His
current incarceration was a temporary solution at best.
But more importantly, who was he to deny the company of a beautiful woman?
Carol was at least a nine point eight, and that was sans make up and in a power
suit. Tony had a thing for women in suits. And women in dresses. And for women
wearing nothing at all. Besides which, communications? That was fast food for
the tech junkie. He could pump that out on a coffee break, any time. There
would be a later.
Except that shortly after arriving and getting no further than pleasantries and
a little flirting on the bridge, he had cause to doubt his decision to skip
out. There was suddenly a great hubbub below. Superiors and grunts alike
scrambled under an order and were made to line in formation against the walls.
Carol frowned. Then checked her communicator, her expression settling into a
pointed grimace at the message.
“Looks like Fury got to the bottom of that rumble downtown.”
“Rumble?” Tony queried. “You know the only people who call it that live in S.E.
Hinton novels?”
Carol rolled her eyes, but that devious lift in the corner of her mouth spoke
of something more fond than irritation. “There was a situation downtown. Big
black goop monster, eats people? It was in the middle of a mercenary take down
and apparently gobbled up two cops and a gunman before we stepped in. We bagged
the mercs, but the thing got away.”
“Until now, I’m presuming,” Tony closed in to the edge of the rail, peering
over and alight with curiosity, heart thumping. Something lit inside him, like
a triple shot of espresso. How was he only hearing about this after the action
was over?
“No. They found what set him off.” Carol nodded to below, where the doors were
open and a small team of agents – all women, peculiarly – wheeled in a
stretcher while Nick pulled up the rear. Something jumped in Tony’s chest. “The
Spider kid.”
“You serious?” He blanched and shot her a look, which was more than he should
have done because Carol was now giving him a nosy squint.
“You all right?”
“Fine, fine.” He watched. When the troop came closer Tony was able to see over
the heads of the agents onto the prone figure on the stretcher. Bandages, a
lumpy makeshift cast with some bulky thing and beige first aid bandages wrapped
around. Whoever had done the medic detail on the kid had been pretty shit at
their job, but Tony supposed he didn’t have a myriad of resources at his
disposal.
His heart rattled out its rhythms with more panache than the situation needed:
he was hardly under attack here and yet he could feel his pulse thumping like
it was pounding out a salsa beat. Little flashes came to him. Long eyelashes
batting up at him, red cheeks, a phantom weight in his lap where the kid had
sat bare from head to toe, slender legs that spread out straighter than a
ruler. How bashful he’d been shucking his clothes, standing naked before him
all sinew and lean lines of muscle. Hot, wispy sweat prickled his brow and he
clung to the railing with white knuckles, staring down below with a turbulent
disquiet at the distant figure of Peter Parker. The kid was prone and in pain.
Probably assaulted.
The antidote had been working just fine. The test results had been…
“Did they say what happened to him?” he pushed to ask, chasing his scattering
thoughts before they could flee completely.
Carol’s lips were thin, matronly. She assessed him with a once over that could
have nicked the skin. “Fury told me you’re working on the cure, Stark. Do you
really have to ask?”
Tony tapped the railing. The antidote wasn’t working. Another prickle, another
unsolicited wash of sultry heat, even as his chest seized tight and threatened
to cut the air supply permanently. “The goop monster?”
She nodded in affirmation. “Apparently one of his own shit storms. Used to be a
family friend of the Parkers, got on the bad side of some old experiment they
were working on before they corked it. Went insane. Your usual modus operandi.
Spider-Man’s Aunt got a call from a woman saying she had the kid stashed at her
place, all banged up. She’s in a holding room right now.”
Down below, one of the women on stretcher duty had fumbled. Tony and Carol
watched closely, the room silent enough for the old pin drop analogy as
everyone watched her turn slowly, and then smother the kid on the stretcher
with a motherly embrace. Nick shouted and the other agents tried to yank her
off. She was sobbing riotously.
“What in the world…” Carol muttered, pulling herself into the railing for a
closer look.
In trying to remove her death clutch the woman was pulled to the ground and she
took Parker with her. The room rattled with a piercing yelp. He’d landed on his
cast. Things got ugly then, force used to beat the woman off as Nick shot
forward and returned Parker to the stretcher himself. Someone broke formation
below along the rows pressed to the walls, making to assist. “Back off!” Nick
bellowed, and pointed a gun. “Essential personnel only, no one approaches
without clearance. And someone, get her out of here.”
The woman was dragged away, kicking and screaming, and the two left on
stretcher duty pushed him on through with a pick up in speed. Nick did not
address the room further, following behind without or a break in poise. The
door shut behind them with a merciful bang, and the peons below drizzled back
into their daily grind.
Tony didn’t realize he had been holding his breath until it rushed back to him,
dizzying. The temperature of the room dropped by several degrees. He wiped the
residual sweat from his brow and did his best to disguise his need to gasp for
air as even and ordinary breathing.
Carol was a tricky read, however, so his degree of success was difficult to
discern. “Let’s get you going, then. I expect you’ll need to be debriefed.”
“The control room,” Tony said staunchly.
“There’ll be an observation room outside of wherever they’re putting him. I
think Nick will be waiting for you there.”
“The control room,” Tony insisted again. Carol’s expression did not change, but
the three second pause spoke volumes.
“I’ll let him know,” she concluded.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
After being kept captive in a waiting room for two hours past reasonable
delays, and spending the first twenty minutes of her audience with
S.H.I.E.L.D.’s top dogs screaming herself hoarse, May Parker eventually found
herself at a loss for words. Her hands were folded, fingers interlaced and
pressed over her mouth, and her elbows could have dug holes in the table. She
would not take her eyes from the window. The room she found herself in was
somewhat of a cross between the interrogation rooms you saw on cop shows and a
hospital observation: blank, steel, and a pair of black chairs settled in front
of a nondescript square table. Nick Fury was there (she had known him by face
and reputation before, if not by acquaintance) and accompanied by a blonde
woman comprised of hard angles and a sarcastic quirk to her brow, who had been
introduced as Danvers. To her great relief, Tony Stark was not with them. But
neither was Janet Van Dyne.
The window to the right was a two way mirror. In the other room was a hospital
bed. Peter was in it, unconscious, being re-bandaged by doctors of
indiscernible gender, rendered cold and alien in yellow hazmat suits.
The scrapes on his face formed ugly criss-crosses over his mouth, like steel
wool to paint. He had gone pale enough to turn that sickly, mint green around
the edges. There was the arm in a cast, the bloodied mess at his shoulder that
was being swabbed at with cotton, the way his legs lay limp and open. A cast
around his neck. He must have been choked, or jolted hard enough to snap or
sprain.
Her boy had been mauled to pieces.
“Not even one day,” May muttered after a long, curdling pause. “One single day,
and this is what happens.”
“We thought the antidote was working,” Nick Fury provided for the hundredth
time, unmoving. It must be a requirement of the job to be utterly unflappable,
because nothing May had spewed or accused him of seemed to shake that man’s
composure. “Please understand me when I say there was absolutely no chance, not
a single one, that we would have let him go into public without reason to
believe—“
She cut him off, jutting her hand in the air as if a sound smack would shortly
follow. She still did not look him in the eye. “Where is that Stark man? He
needs to answer for this.”
“Tony Stark is keeping his distance out of respect, Mrs. Parker. He’s doing
everything he can to work on a solution. We all are.”
May laughed bitterly. “Oh, I am certain he is.”
Perhaps it was for the best he wasn’t there. She would have beat him senseless,
the way her palms tingled and her chest was lit ablaze with rage. Peter had
denied that Tony Stark had done anything to him, but May knew. She wasn’t
blind. The way Peter had pulled away from him, shuffled his feet and stiffened
at the sight of him, those images had been dogging her ever since that day,
nonstop. You would have to be a fool not to see it.
How many more? How many of these people had touched her boy? Fury hadn’t, at
least she could say that for the man. Peter would have been beyond devastated.
But there were others, she knew. And the conversation with Peter and MJ earlier
this month, about that man, Logan. She had done a little research. The most
controversial member of the X-Men save for Charles Xavier himself. Dingy and
volatile, with a mean scowl you could sense through the lifeless snapshots and
news clippings. That had been in her home, just before Peter had started
looking ill. Maybe that was exactly when it had started. He had cried in her
lap the next night, she remembered that so sharply. The memory chilled and
rattled her bones, because now she knew it wasn’t just stress or paranoia that
drove him down to fits.
Two for the list then. Three actually, if you lumped in Eddie Brock. He had
been a little boy once, some six years Peter’s senior and leading him around
the playground when the Parkers and the Brocks had picnics. That one stung,
that one hurt because May had known the Brocks. She had heard about Peter
reconnecting with Eddie, and then there was some falling out – and only now was
she privy to the facts. They’d stopped talking because Eddie had turned into a
real life monster, just like Norman Osborn. How was she supposed to protect
Peter from these things? Nothing made a lick of sense anymore, and no one could
be trusted.
The Danvers woman interjected next. “Mrs. Parker, we understand. We’re sorry.
Truly, and deeply sorry. But now we have to decide what we’re going to do
next.”
“I would like very much to know that, too,” May cursed through her teeth. She
shifted in the chair for the first time, besieging them both with glacial
stares. “More medicine? More tests? Or are we going to all grab a rosary and
say prayers, because frankly—“
“Yes, more tests,” Fury uncrossed his arms, and moved forward, extending a hand
to reason with. “But we believe it’s best that Peter stay here, Mrs. Parker.
For obvious reasons.”
May was quiet again. The unyielding geometry of the room demanded it,
suffocating by design, and her mind interwove the ticking of a clock when the
taut silence became too exhausting. She looked again to her nephew, the doctors
attaching tubes to machines. The last thing she had ever wanted to see. Her
boy’s heartbeat as a green line, tracking the progress, teasing that inevitable
straight line and damning, keening beep.
“How long?” she said at last. She cradled her hand to her chest.
“That’s just it, Mrs. Parker. We cannot put a time estimate on fixing this. The
antidote we had took care of the symptoms only, not the source of the problem.
We thought that would be enough to let him live his life while we worked on a
cure,” Fury provided.
“The problem now becomes, how do we manage keeping your nephew here?” Danvers
tilted her head at Peter.
“I don’t have money…” May lost the words. She bowed her head. She could not
afford it. Not even if she worked for every waking hour, for the rest of her
life.
“It’s not the money,” assured Fury. “It’s about keeping Spider-Man and Peter
separate. It’s about keeping you safe.”
May sunk into a chair, letting her forehead rest in her hands. Tears were a
valid threat, but one she combated with all her might. Not now, now with these
two in the room. Not when Peter’s life was at stake. Fury joined her at the
table while Danvers reclined on the wall with her arms akimbo.
“You see, it’s not going to take long for people to put two and two together.
The longer both Peter Parker and Spider-Man are out of sight, the more obvious
it’s going to be that they’re the same person. He’s already got way too many
people in on the secret, and not all of them have his best interests at heart.
Or yours. The public even knows what school he goes to, or strongly suspects.
Either way, we’re going to have to find a believable excuse for him to stay
here indefinitely. Otherwise you’re both going to have to move in here or say
sayonara to the country. You won’t be safe if anyone else connects the dots.”
“This is insane.” May shook her head and watched her nephew, watched the pair
in front of her. Everything was too still for the riot pushing at her skin,
turning her gut, squeezing at her heart and lungs. “Can’t we just…take it away?
Take it all away? The spider powers, the new crap, whatever it is. Isn’t there
some kind of negating – some kind of thing that will wipe it out for good? Get
rid of everything so you won’t have to keep him locked up here? You people
spend so much of your time trying to soup yourselves up and you never thought
to make some kind of safety measure?”
Fury regarded her intensely, but shook his head. “Speaking frankly, Mrs.
Parker, we haven’t got a cure for the Oz formula,” Fury confessed. “We’re still
working on fixing Harry Osborn. Nothing’s worked.”
“Harry’s been with you for ages,” May gasped. “And you haven’t…”
“We do all that we can, Mrs. Parker. But at the end of the day, we are only
human.”
She could have screamed at the injustice of it. Instead she began to cry,
streams forming with no sound to herald their arrival. She shook and looked at
her lap, wiping them away with shame. “Good Lord…”
A buzz alarmed her, shaking within her pocket. Her cell phone. She pulled it
out and was sorry to see the name in lights across the screen. “It’s his
girlfriend,” she said, husky now that that the tears had come. “What do I say?”
“Up to you,” Fury concluded. “She knows what’s happening, right?” He drummed
his fingers on the table. “She probably shouldn’t visit. Not just yet.”
He nodded to Danvers, who extricated herself from the wall as he stood, the
pair of them making for the exit. “Come out to join us when you’re done, we’ll
discuss the details some more. Accommodations have been arranged for you. Take
as much time as you need.” Fury paused by her shoulder, looking down. Up close
she could believe him to be human. There was cracks in the veneer, telling
crinkles at the corner of his eye, the knot between his brows. He nearly
outstayed his welcome, waiting for the most gracious moment to mutter one last
platitude to her, as private as he could manage. “Peter is a special boy, Mrs.
Parker. No one is more aware of that than you or I.”
May, stunned and feeling as if she might crush the phone trapped in her steel
grip, nodded blankly at the man. She looked out at her nephew. She expected to
hear the door shut behind her, but she did not.
“Danvers.” called Fury.
May found the woman paused, behind the table and crossing her arms, studying
Peter’s form just as intently as she had been. Her flawless mask of control had
faltered, too: like Fury, there was worry lines now encroaching the borders of
her mouth and eyes, her lips slightly parted as she watched Peter limply
acquiescing to the doctor’s treatments. It was a count of five before she shook
her head and regained composure.
“Sorry.”
The pair strode out the door together, and May was alone in her perch, seeing
all and capable of nothing.
The phone kept buzzing. May steadied herself, casting curious looks at the door
they had disappeared through, but finally answered the call.
“Mary Jane? Yes…I’m at that S.H.I.E.L.D.’s place. The Triskelion, I think?
Listen, sweetheart…I am so sorry…”
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The next morning found Betty Brant creeping into the outskirts of Jameson’s
office, clutching her forehead and squinting over her morning latte. “Hey.”
“Bee in your bonnet, Brant?” Jameson called out, not once looking up from his
monitor. He dashed off another six lines, the rattle of the keyboard striking
her head like needles.
“Heads up. I think Parker’s sick again. Probably.” She stared into her coffee
cup. “I wouldn’t expect him in today.”
“Again?” Jameson looked up with a furrow in his brow. “Christ’s sake, don’t
they give shots in public schools? What the devil has he come down with?”
Betty kept her mouth solid and stoic. Untelling. Her eyes stayed perpetually
narrowed. When she spoke again it was smooth and innocuous. “Who knows? I just
ran into him last night at a pharmacy. He looked pretty deathly. I told him to
keep in touch if things went south.”
“I thought you hated kids,” said Ben Urich, strolling on in uninvited. Betty
rolled her eyes.
“When they’re kneecap high and mashing soggy crackers into my carpet, yeah.”
“Urich! Just the man I was looking for.” Jameson pulled away from his computer
entirely and Betty couldn’t help being a bit irked by the sudden shift in
attitude. “You’re covering the mutant attack from last night.”
“What?!” squawked Betty. “But I was there! I was actually there, I’ve got the
inside scoop! I’ve already got it half done!”
“You were?” Jameson slapped the table. “You have any footage? Pictures?”
“I…” she gritted her teeth through the humiliation. “I dropped my camera. It’s
gone.”
“Dropped?” In a true illustration of dickery, Jameson raised his hands as if
recording a scene and then spread his fingers wide, leaving his imaginary
camcorder to plummet to terrible fates below. “Just like that. You dropped the
camera?”
Betty glared. “I was getting shot at.”
Jameson clucked his tongue and wagged his head. “And you wonder why we stick
you with the fluff pieces.”
“I just told you I was in the line of fire and the first thing you tell me is
how you think I suck at my job?!” Betty spat indignantly.
“Fine, fine. Collaborate. Urich, give it a little finesse after Brant’s
squeezed out something usable.” Jameson pondered again as Betty seethed and Ben
was trying to telepathically send her sympathy, as usual. “Say. Was this about
the time you ran into Parker?”
She froze. “What?”
“Was Parker there with you? At the time?” Jameson fished for a cigar. “I give
the kid a lot of hell but he does make a decent shutterbug. Any chance he
snapped a few photos while he was out for cough syrup?”
Betty was stone still, studying Jameson intently. “No. He wasn’t.”
She exited. Urich followed, perplexed. “Betty, what on Earth—“
“I’ll have something for you by ten, all right?” She shooed him off. “I’m just
a little shook up. That’s all.”
“You? Shook up?”
“I’m allowed to be. It was a pretty freaky monster thing. I got shot at. Leave
me alone.” She slid into her desk and waited until she was sure Ben had her
pegged as a lost cause. Then she slipped her phone out of her skirt, quietly
dialed a number she had written on post it pad, and waited.
She went to voice mail for the umpteenth time. Betty scowled and dipped her
head lower. “Parker, I hope you disappeared this morning out of your own
volition. Your Aunt’s not picking up the phone either, so if you went and died
in a gutter somewhere, I swear to god I’m having a heart attack and coming for
you in the afterlife. You hear me? How hard is it to leave a note?” She leaned
back and peered around the edges of her cubicle, subtly inspecting if anyone
was giving her conversation a curious ear, then pushed forward again. “You
don’t have to act all cagey. I meant what I said. All I want to know is if
you’re still kicking. I refuse to be the woman responsible for the death
of...just call me. Don’t be a dick.”
She ended the message and thrust her head into her hands, pondering the
glorious mess that had been the past twenty four hours.
Then, miraculously, her work phone began to ring. The screen read the number as
unknown. Betty bolted upright, stared at it for a moment, and then snatched the
corded relic to her ear. “Hello?
“Is this Betty Brant?”
An unfamiliar voice. A woman. “Yes? Who is this?”
“Come down to the parking lot. C-14. Tell your boss you’re on a coffee run. We
want to speak to you privately about the incident last night.”
Betty stopped breathing. The caller hung up.
Within seven minutes Betty had secured a tape recorder between her bra and
blouse, told Jameson she was running an errand and rode the elevator down an
ungodly distance to the lower parkade. C level. Waiting for her was a pair of
smartly dressed agents in suits. One had a wire to his ear, a nondescript sort
that intimidated through bulk but left no certain impressions. The other, a
good looking blonde woman, held herself with the air of someone in charge. That
one was the big gun. Betty frowned and stomped towards them. She had her
suspicions, but the closer she got the more the tiny emblems on their coats
turned to a coldly familiar bird insignia.
This was exactly what she had been looking for. Betty tried for droll and came
out biting instead. “You rang?”
“Miss Brant? I’m an operative of S.H.I.E.L.D. Carol Danvers. You are aware of
who we—“
“Oh no, I haven’t been working at a newspaper for the past five years. I’m just
the broad that gets the coffee,” she snapped. “What do you want?”
“No need for the suspicion. I understand it was you who picked up Peter Parker
last night from the scene downtown. Am I correct?”
“…Yes,” she muttered. It was tempting to cast around for lurking eavesdroppers,
but she did not move her gaze one iota. If S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted a conversation
private, it would be private. “He wasn’t there when I woke up. I don’t know
where he is.”
“We retrieved him from your apartment, Miss Brant. We apologize for the
intrusion.”
She wasn’t half so relieved as she thought she would be. Every muscle in her
was still clenching like she was stuck in her Thursday night hot yoga class. At
least the kid was in good hands. “How very covert of you. I suspect this is a
warning to keep my mouth shut?”
“Yes and no. Miss Brant, we have to ask that you keep Mr. Parker’s identity a
secret. You see, we’re giving a press release on the incident first thing
tomorrow morning. Due to his injuries, Mr. Parker has been rendered
incapacitated.”
If there had been some relief, it was all washed out of her now. An ill notion
encroached the borders of her mind, standing her hairs on end. “What do you
mean? Did he – was there internal bleeding?”
“He’s alive, don’t worry. But there’s been some lasting damage. As such, he’s
ending his career as Spider-Man. Indefinitely.” Carol Danvers flipped a palm
up, as if offering the new information on a platter. Betty’s nose wrinkled.
“And in order to do so, we’re naming him as a casualty of the attack.”
“…So you’re declaring him dead,” Betty provided, the bark in her dissipating.
“We’re declaring Spider-Man dead,” Danvers illuminated, “So that when Peter
Parker gets better, he can live a normal life. He won’t have to worry twenty-
four seven about getting his school bombed by old enemies, or being stalked by
the press. Your usual PR nightmare as an outed superhero. But as such, we are
going to need your cooperation.”
Betty did not respond. She ran her head through the scenarios, the possible
outcomes. Who all had Spider-Man pissed off in his lifetime? Truth be told she
passed over a lot of the schlock that ran through the Bugle about Spider-Man,
because in her mind it was a tired propaganda parade over one of the most
incompetent vigilantes New York had ever seen. The anti-Spidey brigade was one
of their biggest flaws, a favorite of detractors and competitors who liked to
brow beat them with it at every interval. But now that it was personal, she had
to start thinking seriously about every story the paper spun about Spider-Man.
Immediately her mind went to Kraven, to Norman Osborn (and Parker had come in
complaining about his house getting wrecked by the nut once, how dumb were they
all not to see it?), to Wilson Fisk. That weird Octopus uggo. Jameson, of
course. The list was a long one and she was sure she was missing half of it.
Carol Danvers seemed to take her non-answer as a hint to keep fishing. “We’ll
be willing to compensate you for your silence. Plus we’ll give you and the
Daily Bugle first run at the story. I understand that kind of inside scoop
would look pretty good on the old resume, am I right?”
Money. Okay, money was good, Betty could always use a little more because
downtown Manhattan living was a pain in the ass, but now her mouth was going
sour and it wasn’t from the coffee. She twisted her lips into a sneer. “You
know what? No.”
Both of them were stunned. Danvers raised her brows and the silent bodyguard
raised his head for the first time. Betty fished inside her blouse and pulled
the recorder loose, then tossed it at their feet. “Screw it. I told the kid I
wouldn’t tell anyone, and I am keeping my word. So you can have that.”
“You were recording this,” Danvers remarked impassively.
“You’re surprised?”
“Not one bit. I’m just pissed I didn’t get to do my cool, ‘And hand over that
tape recorder in your blouse’ bit at the end of this. Ruining my fun.” She
scooped up the device and tucked it into her pocket.
“Well boo for you. I’m not up for this. Money’s fine, but I don’t – I want you
to understand that this is seriously killing me to say this, but I will not
take your money. Or your offer. This newspaper has spent enough time dragging
Spider-Man’s name through the mud. I wouldn’t have given two craps before, but
now? When it’s just a kid, just a little kid out there taking bullets under
some deluded idea that it’s his responsibility, his public duty? Fuck’s sakes,
you realize not every reporter is soul-sucking scum, right?”
“Well, you do work for the Bugle,” Danvers shrugged. “Forgive our assumption.”
“Jameson doesn’t deserve to get this story. If you took the kid in, you know
what really happened to him. And I am not about to use that, in any way, shape
or form, to spiffy up my resume.” Betty crossed her arms. “I’m not saying
squat. Run your press release. I don’t want to be part of it.”
Danvers smiled. She even clapped. “Good woman. You know, if things ever get old
at the Bugle, drop your resume off with us. We could always use better PR.”
Betty snorted. “Is that more hush money?”
“It’s a genuine offer. From me to you.” Danvers shot the man a look and he went
to the sleek black car behind them, pulling the door open. “We’re off now.
We’ll be keeping tabs on you, so don’t do anything stupid.”
“And the kid?” Betty called. “Will the kid be okay?”
She did not answer. Danvers slid into the car and the man shut the door on her,
and staunchly ignored Betty’s queries as he rounded for the the driver’s side.
Betty gritted her teeth and watched them pull out of the parkade with bitter,
glittering eyes.
“Way to go, Bets. You just heroed your way out of the kind of acclaim you’ve
always dreamed of.” She raised a middle finger to the heavens. “Thanks for
nothing, Lady Luck, you conniving old asshole.”
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“What’s going on?”
“He’s just…sick again.” Mary Jane pursed her lips and looked at the floor,
answering the same question that had nipped at her heels through every class,
every encounter with a stunned classmate. “The doctors don’t know what’s
wrong.”
The English teacher, Mrs. Koertig, nodded hesitantly. “Will you pass on his
assignments, then, Miss Watson? And tell him we all wish him better?”
Flash snorted. Mary could have flown across the room to punch him in the face.
She might just do so if she caught him in the hall after. Liz reached over and
squeezed her hand and Kong shot her a puppy dog look. Mary ventured to
accommodate them both, make to appreciate their gestures of solidarity, but
they just did not get it.
If she could, she would have given them a huge rundown, cried at them, gone and
gotten herself a therapist like she desperately needed, because she knew what
PTSD was and it wasn’t just about Norman and the bridge anymore. She would have
shouted at the teachers and dragged S.H.I.E.L.D.’s name through the dirt all
over the internet, whatever newspapers and stations would listen to her. They
had failed him. She would get the world just as furious on Peter’s behalf as
she was.
Yet she couldn’t. She still couldn’t even tell her own Mother, who had sat her
down the other day and wept at her while begging for an explanation, why Mary
was drawing away and what was going on with the Parkers that always made her so
upset. She had looked Mary in the eye and asked if Peter had been hurting her.
And Mary, sworn to secrecy and brilliantly wounded by the mere notion of Peter
as a bruiser, just played innocent and assured her with every power she had
that nothing was wrong, that Peter was a saint to her and nothing was happening
at school, that she wasn’t still worried about Norman Osborn, that she wasn’t
just missing her deadbeat Dad. Life was all hunky dory and she would always be
one hundred percent honest with her Mom.
Ha ha. What a comedian she was.
When the bell rang and school was finally, mercifully done for the day, Mary
left in a storm. Her head low, stomping, rushing away before Liz could find her
and ply her with offers of movies and ice cream. She made it out to the yard
before someone grabbed her shoulder.
“Hey!”
Kitty Pryde, again. Mary whirled around and snapped, “What?!”
A few passerby gave them curious looks, but Kitty was not to be deterred. She
grabbed Mary by the shoulders and steered her forward. “March. No sass. We’re
talking, now.”
“Excuse me?”
“Miss Watson, you have no idea exactly how crazy you’ve been looking all day.”
Mary wriggled out of her grip. “I can walk fine on my own, thank you very
much!”
That tone did them no favors in the secrecy department. Startled by her volume
and razor sharp tone, people were turning around to watch, giggling or slack
jawed. Mary should have cared more. But she didn’t.
Sadly, neither did Kitty, who did take a quick stock of their onlookers before
crowding Mary again, speaking quieter but with rapid fire delivery. “Then do so
over to someplace quiet-like, where we can actually discuss—“
“There’s nothing to dis—“ Mary’s gaze was caught over Kitty’s shoulder, where a
car had opened up to one of the last things she wanted to see: Johnny Storm
hopping out of the driver’s seat, grinning brightly and waving at her. Kitty
turned and her jaw dropped. “Oh my god,” Mary groaned.
“What’s he doing here?”
“You think I know?” Mary was flabbergasted as Johnny hailed them over.
Mortified and feeling the harmless stares directed at them shift to ominous,
calculating prickles, she ducked her head and made to obey. Kitty scrambled
after her.
“Yo! X-girl! I forgot you went here!” Johnny called. His arms were spread wide
for hugs. “Where’s – hey, what’s with the frown?” The showboat was siphoned out
of him as his attention ping ponged between the two girls. “Where’s Pete?”
“What are you doing here?” Kitty said quietly, twisting her hair between her
fingers with a bunny stunned stare. “MJ, did you call him?”
“No one called me. I came to hang out, now that Pete’s on the mend. I got
kicked out so my sister could mack on Reed earlier and I’ve been out all day
and everything is so boring when you’re doing it alone. Hang out with me,
please.” He squinted and surveyed the crowd behind them, searching for their
missing member. “Does Pete have detention or something?”
“Johnny.” Mary said sharply. Both of them went quiet as she punctured him with
her pointed gaze. Johnny began as dumbfounded, but his eyes cracked open wide,
his smile dropped completely. Baleful was a hard expression on the guy, zapping
out that crack of light that made him so irresistible.
“Oh no,” he said, crestfallen. “MJ, come here.” Johnny widened his arms again
and crooked his fingers, beckoning. Mary couldn’t help herself any longer. She
thrust herself at him and his shirt was damp within seconds as she trembled in
his embrace, from stoic to crying out pints in no time at all. The weight of
the day, nearly twenty hours sans sleep and on barely any food, being barred
from seeing Peter after he nearly died, the morbid speculation her mind kept
spinning in lieu of facts – it was all hammered out of her in one swoop. Mary
simply did not have the energy to keep poise, not a moment longer. Johnny was a
perfect gentleman and rubbed her back while whispering encouraging things to
her. “We’re gonna figure this out. Okay?”
“Figure what out?” Kitty interrupted. She wasn’t petulant anymore, but
panicked. “Guys, what is happening to Peter Parker?”
Mary did not lift her head, preferring to stay swaddled in Johnny’s arms and
shudder it out. “You should tell her,” Johnny urged. “She’s cool. She’s an X-
Man, MJ.”
“Was,” Kitty corrected.
“Still legit, though. Right? You’re not all wacko terrorist now?”
“Why would I be going to a human high school if I was going to be an effective
terrorist of any kind?”
“Uh, infiltration? Duh?”
“I…” With extraordinary difficulty Mary took a peek out from Johnny’s chest,
revealing a sliver of green eyes and a reddened nose to study Kitty. The girl
was begging from every inch of her. It killed Mary to see it, that same
devotion to Peter lining the tension in someone else’s skin, their gestures.
Her eyes bore into Mary with the crushing inevitability of an oil drill.
“…Kitty, you have to promise…”
“I do,” she insisted immediately.
“Get in.” Johnny only pulled one arm away, keeping Mary tucked tight under the
other as he opened up the backseat to his car. “We shouldn’t do this here. Kind
of awkward with all my fans around.” He gave their onlookers a wave. Some of
them had their smart phones out.
“God,” Mary grunted, and begrudgingly dismissed the idea of flipping them off.
Now there were going to be rumors about her and Johnny, or something equally
ridiculous. She decided then that her school was a dump and she loathed it
utterly.
Her phone beeped and Mary snatched it out of her pocket with a lizard-like
dexterity, stunning both of her companions with her sudden deftness. It wasn’t
a text from Mrs. Parker, which sucked, but an email. Address unknown. She
scowled and opened it. She read it in silence, but there was an aching knot
growing where her brows folded together. She mouthed the words to herself.
Johnny tried to take a peek. “What’s up? Is it him?”
Mary shook her head and showed them the email address, a Yahoo based moniker
comprised of an indecipherable jumble of letters and numbers. “Either of you
know this guy?” Both shook their heads. Her mouth went dry. “Someone wants to
meet me tonight. About Peter.”
“Someone anonymous?” Johnny asked with a narrow squint. “Is it S.H.I.E.L.D.?”
“Wouldn’t they call? Or just break into my house and wait for me? Secret spy
style?” The two nodded and Mary read the email again. The weren’t even any
cryptic hints as to who the sender was. She might have been able to hazard a
guess. Peter spun enough tales for her that Mary felt she could Nancy Drew her
way around most of the vigilantes in New York. Had there been something
telling, like a line about looking for a nutter in a white cape, she could have
at least started digging up research on Moon Knight. “There’s no name. This
address, though, where they want to meet. It’s close to our neighborhood.”
“Um, can I cast my vote in this?” Kitty raised her hand. “Don’t go. It sounds
tres sketch.”
“I know, but…”
“Let’s go. Road trip.” Johnny said, guiding Mary to the car. “Kitty, we’re
going to fill you in. And then we can discuss how we’re going to beat down this
uber creep trying to mack on MJ.”
“I doubt it’s me they’re trying to mack on,” Mary grumbled under her breath,
but she clambered into the car anyway. The trio drove off, Mary in the front
seat and Kitty guarding their bags in the back as Johnny took them for a scenic
drive around Queens.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
May Parker massaged her feet, seated on the bed of the hotel-like room that she
had been set up in, free of charge, for her stay with S.H.I.E.L.D. It would
save her on transit and gas, they reasoned, and this way she was on hand should
Peter need her at a moment’s notice. And she was out of harm’s way. It was
strange to think that a prison for super powered maniacs even had
accommodations like this. Apparently she was in the same building as Magneto.
The real living Magneto.
Norman Osborn, too. She’d been assured that every last one of them was detained
under the highest security. Which was why they had Peter here, and not in a
separate hospital or base of operations. He needed the security to stay safe,
not to keep people safe from him. (Although one could contend that was an equal
concern, but May was far more worried about her nephew than the creeps who had
been molesting him.) No where else in New York were there the kinds of safety
measures they needed, and so she and her boy were locked up with America’s most
dangerous mutants and genetic anomalies.
Which made it all the more harder to have confidence that their plan would
work. Peter would stay here, under the guise of being treated for an illness
that had yet to be ascertained. Depending on the projected length of his stay
Nick Fury was proposing that a cancer or a tumor would be their best shot at
keeping him out of school and work for the long haul. And S.H.I.E.L.D. would
leak to the world that Spider-Man had died last night, fighting against Eddie
Brock. They would claim that his face had been mauled beyond recognition, his
prints unrecorded in any database. They would lay the search for Spider-Man to
rest, and once Peter was free he and May and even Mary Jane could carry on with
their lives.
Except that Norman Osborn was in this building, still alive. A man like that,
who knew who Peter was and knew always where to find him, was still alive.
Still hating her nephew with the bitterest bile.
She would be shocked if she slept tonight at all. So she had set the coffee
maker on to brew and stared forlornly at the book she had fished out of her
purse, hoping for a minor distraction.
In reality, distraction came in the form of a knock on the door. May grumbled,
but made to let whoever it was in.
“Sorry, I know it’s late,” Carol Danvers said, shrugging. She was still in the
same suit she had been wearing last night. “Oh good, is that the coffee you’ve
got on? I could use a drink, I’ve been running around town nonstop.”
“Please, come in,” May said courteously. It wasn’t as if she had a choice. The
woman sauntered in and May shut the door behind her. Danvers ripped open a pack
of sugar and dried creamer and poured it into a styrofoam cup. She grabbed a
second pack and held it over another cup, raising a brow at May in silent
inquiry. “I drink it black, thank you.”
“Never could, myself. I’m still stuck in my sweet tooth phase, I guess.”
She served them both up a drink and they settled on the edge of the bed.
Danvers checked her watch. “Okay, full disclosure. I’ve set the security
cameras in here to a loop. No one knows I’m here.”
“They’re watching me?” May asked, affronted but not entirely surprised.
“There’s nothing in the bathroom. I promise. I need to talk to you.”
“About what?” May put down the coffee on the nightstand, suddenly without the
stomach for it. She revised her statement a little sheepishly. There was really
only one reason for S.H.I.E.L.D. to talk to her. “Well, I mean, what about
Peter? What is it now?”
“Yeah, him. I’ve been doing nothing but damage control for your nephew today.
Real nightmare he’s made for himself. I had to alert the X-Men, the Fantastic
Four, that Brant lady, anyone that’s ever seen his face that we can think of.
Which is a lot of people, by the way. They all have to keep it quiet now. For
good. Tried to get a hold of his girlfriend but Fury’s said that she could
probably swing by on her own sometime, when the kid’s feeling up for it. But—“
She took a dramatic pause, squaring May in the eye. “—I don’t think that’s
going to happen. I’m looking into our options.”
May didn’t know what to say to that. This morning, she had been assured that
the fake death was their only option. Anything else might be suicide. Danvers
took another sip of her coffee and May wished that she would get on with it.
“Do you remember when your house was attacked? You had a heart attack, and
there was that whole fiasco with the clones?”
“Don’t remind me,” May said sourly.
“Yes, well. Remember that the Watson girl went missing?” Danvers smiled grimly.
“That was the nutter clone’s work, apparently. Well, the nuttiest one, most of
them were not right in the head, but anyway. That one went and grabbed her, and
carted her all the way to an old Oscorp lab in New Jersey. And when he got
there he injected her with Oz.”
“What?!” May snapped. “Excuse me? When did – isn’t that the same thing that
made Norman Osborn go crazy? That turned Harry into a –“
Danvers nodded hurriedly. “Big butt ugly monster? You got it. It’s also what
made your nephew get his neat little spider powers, but he’s about the only one
that didn’t lose his mind and hulk out on the stuff. So to speak. Anyway, I
think the clone’s rationale was that she would be able to defend herself or
some bullshit like that, so he shot her up with it against her will. And it
worked. Miss Mary Jane was turned into a big, butt ugly monster.”
“But she’s been fine this whole time,” May insisted. “Not once has she – is she
able to control it? Why hasn’t Peter told me? Is she all right?”
“She’s more than all right, Mrs. Parker. She’s cured.”
May was dumbfounded. Her jaw dropped. “But…just last night. Last night Nick
Fury told me there was no cure.”
“Oh there is. It’s not ours, and that’s why he’s hesitant to go for it. We
can’t vouch for it, and we can’t say for certain it will fix this new problem.
But you know who can?” Danvers reached into her pocket and pulled out little
glass vials, like the ones that loaded into the needle gun that Peter had to
use on himself for the past two weeks. “Reed Richards.”
May searched her eyes. Carol Danvers was smiling. “Like I said, we need to
discuss our options.”
***** The Trouble with Doppelgangers *****
Chapter Summary
     Mary meets her mysterious contact, and Aunt May and Carol Danvers
     execute their plans. Nothing goes quite as imagined.
Chapter Notes
     No warnings for this chapter except that it is probably the longest
     yet. Whoops?
This was a dumb idea.
After riding around town, informing an increasingly owl-eyed Kitty of the
situation at hand and nearly dying in a car wreck because Johnny hit the breaks
at an intersection when he realized exactly what kind of assault Mary was
talking about (he’d assumed, apparently, that things had only ever gone as far
as kissing with Peter’s powers, and was now more horrified on his behalf than
either girl was), the best plan the three of them could concoct was to send in
Mary Jane, seemingly alone, while Johnny and Kitty stealthily hid themselves
just within earshot of the entrance. She was not to move too far from the door,
lest the conversation get lost and the pair miss a potential cue to jump in and
save her tucchas from mortal peril.
So one could imagine the amount of confidence Mary had in their execution was
hovering just above the “total bust” line.
While they did eventually agree that the possibility of getting information
about Peter’s case, or perhaps some intel on his assailant (Mary knew of Eddie
Brock but couldn’t pick him out of a line up if she tried), was worth the risk
for their friend, Mary couldn’t shake the notion that the whole set up reeked
of an instant kidnapping. Her rendezvous was an empty warehouse, because where
else could things possibly look shadier? She studied the shabby building with
trepidation, having done nothing else since arriving and refusing to move more
than two paces past the door. Her cell phone was in her coat pocket and she
could not stop thumbing the buttons with worry. Even with Johnny and Kitty as
backup, poised outside to strike at the slightest wrinkle in the works, she
couldn’t stop the twisting in her gut. It had been ten minutes, and she was
still standing alone in the dark.
Maybe the person had seen Johnny and Kitty and bailed. They were hiding, but
come on. Not a one of them was exactly Navy Seal league. The X-Men and the
Fantastic Four did not add half so much credit to their resumes as they would
like to think, as those were generally barge in and try to hit the bad guy sort
of outfits. And even then, of the two of them Johnny was the only one poised to
dish out certifiable super hero damage, and that was an accident waiting to
happen in a building full of dry old wood. Yet here they were, a trio of plucky
teenagers trying to pull off a covert operation.
This wasn’t Hogwarts. This shouldn’t be her Thursday night. If anything she was
the Charlie portion of the Charlie’s Angels outfit. Mary liked to research,
report. The scene of the crime was exciting, true, and she did her best to
never hesitate where it counted, but she could only pump out ten push ups in
one go and she clocked out at an achingly average sprint rate on her most
recent gym exam. This was not where she belonged.
Mary gritted her teeth. Or maybe the butthole trying to corner her was
somewhere else, lurking in the dark of night. Waiting. Perched high with a
sniper rifle. She knew first hand what happened to girls that dated
superheroes. Peter would be furious with her. Perhaps even more so than she had
been at him when she’d caught up with Logan. Mary sniffed at the cold air and
decided that ten minutes was more than long enough to wait for potential
mobsters to jump out and stab her in the neck. Whoever had contacted her was
late on purpose, and in her mind that was strike three thousand and forty four.
She spun on her heel and heard a plaintive, “Wait!” from behind. A girl’s
voice.
Mary instantly whipped around and peeked back inside, astonished. It wasn’t
anyone she knew, that was for certain, but it sounded like someone young. Her
age, maybe.
“Hello?” she called into the darkness.
“I’m sorry, I’m just not – I shouldn’t have done this. I’m sorry.” There was a
soft thud on the floor. Far off, in the dark shadowed parts where the geriatric
street lamps outside did not reach. “This was a terrible idea and I’m sorry for
making you come out here.”
Mary couldn’t make out the figure beyond a hazy silhouette. She squinted, edged
closer by a margin and let the door swing shut behind her. Perhaps it was just
her imagination, but there was a strain in the girl’s voice. A particular
sadness, and it made her doubt that this would end with a knife wounds and
police sirens. “Who are you?”
There was a polite cough. “That’s classified.”
Mary frowned. “Classified enough that you’re emailing me with a Yahoo account?
Please.”
“It’s free email!” There was some choice muttering that distance prevented her
from being privy to, but the girl in the dark continued soon after. “Look, I
know this is crazy, but you have to tell me. What is happening to him right
now?”
In spite of knowing perfectly well that was why she was here, Mary couldn’t
keep her hackles from raising if she tried. No matter how young or old this
girl was she was not about to spill beans of any kind. “Who are you and what do
you want from me?”
“MJ, please,” the figure pleaded.
Her nickname. Also not unexpected, this girl had emailed her directly after
all, but equally as terrifying now that they were speaking out in the open.
“Look, you either tell me right now how you know Peter, how you know me and got
my own personal email, or I am splitting right now and you have nothing.”
“I can’t! I just – I saw he was on the news again. They spotted him in
Manhattan and the footage looked real, and I thought that – he’s getting
better?”
That did it. Mary, growing bolder and braver now that the girl was stumbling
and cowering in the shadows, strode forward. “Come out here.”
“No, don’t! Don’t don’t don’t!”
Mary was ablaze. She couldn’t take her eyes from the silhouette. Closer now she
could see her hair was dark. She might have been naked, or in spandex. Tingles
hit her palms and she outstretched her hand. “Come here.”
The girl was quiet. Unmoving. Mary came closer, stepped into the patch of
muddied shadows. The girl stood her ground, even as Mary cornered her. The
light was all but useless here, but Mary could see vague shapes. Her lithe
frame, shoulders held stiff and fearful, how her hair was thick and long and
just a little bushy.
Insatiably curious, Mary reached up and touched her cheek. It was covered in
cloth. The girl cringed a little, but didn’t balk. Didn’t bail. With a
tenderness that was unexpected even to her, Mary sought out the divide between
mask and skin. It lay along the hairline, hooking over the girl’s ears. She
peeled it away, and saw nothing of the girl’s face except the edge her lashes
and her left cheek, which caught slivers of light from the yellowed bulbs
beyond the entrance. Everything else was a mottled navy blur. Mary leaned in
and pressed their lips together.
She could feel the shape of her lips better like this, estimate the length of
her nose by the way it pressed against her cheek. The kiss was comfortable.
Easy. Shocking, because she had never kissed a girl and thought there would be
a lot more fuss if she tried. (Though she had been adamant in the past that
exceptions were to be made for Natalie Portman and Kerry Washington, who had
been unduly blessed by the hotness fairy if you asked her.) Maybe it was
because kissing other girls was so intrinsically linked with raunchy pornos for
boys in her mind, but for whatever reason the pulse from the first tiny contact
on their lips shot down to her loins with disproportionate fanfare. It was
probably the most taboo thing she had ever done.
Suffice to say it didn’t feel so bad. Not at all.
And perhaps that was because there was something so lovely and familiar about
this, but it yanked out of reach when Mary tried to catch it, the notion
slippery and vague. So she was left to simply keep kissing the girl. Open their
mouths now, touch tongues. And she thought maybe she ought to get a little
closer, so she shuffled her feet in by an inch or two, and maybe there was also
a case to be made for exploration.
There was one major difference already, as the two of them were nearly even in
height. Neither one of them were boasting a sizeable pair, but their breasts
brushed together once or twice and Mary’s attention went there, laser focused.
She had let Peter touch her boobs once. Over the bra. They always squeezed
pretty closely when they hugged and that gave her a bit of a thrill, and once
or twice she’d found herself taking a pause while hugging Liz, who had an
enviable 34-C cup, contemplating the pressure of boob on boob (god, what a
junior high way to put it) and whether she liked it. One of her hands drifted
downward and she could feel the girl’s frame tense with anticipation as she
cupped her breast. Mary’s blood pounded down low. Hungry, elated. It was really
quite soft, and nice. Comforting to hold, like her own. She gently squeezed the
girl’s breast and pressed closer, her knee working between her lean legs. The
girl was suddenly all hands, grabbing her by the small of her back and her rear
and pushing Mary’s head back with a sudden eagerness to return the kiss. Mary
broke away and giggled quietly. That sort of dorky, I-Can’t-Believe-This-Is-
Happening enthusiasm had belonged to the first few weeks of dating Peter, and
reliving it now – albeit with a stranger – struck the funny bone a lot harder
than it should have. The girl joined her, the whites of her teeth a dim stripe
in the barren light as she grinned with wicked glee, just before she dipped in
and kissed her again.
Clearly she was feeling adventurous too, because the girl went from gently
squeezing her rear, sighing appreciatively, to rounding one hand to the front.
She dipped it down between Mary’s thighs, rubbing, searching. Mary hissed and
helped her find it, guiding her by the wrist and twisting her body, and right
there. Oh lord, it was right there. Through her jeans and it still felt like a
godsend.
“HEY! HANDS OFF THE LADY!”
Then there was light. Johnny swooped in with all the glory of a comet. Mary
broke away shielding her eyes, already burning from the sudden and cutting
switch from darkness to interrogative light, and her partner stumbled away
shrieking. She was dizzy and she couldn’t suss out why, but thin fingers
wrapped around her biceps from behind and dragged her out of the way as Johnny
dived down after the girl, who was on the ground and screaming, covering her
face as she cowered on the ground. There was smoke, and they were all assailed
by the horrid stench of burnt hair.
“OH MY GOD, YOU TURN THAT OFF, JONATHAN STORM!” hollered the girl, “OR I WILL
STUFF YOUR FACE SO FULL OF FIST YOU’LL NEVER BE ON TV AGAIN!”
“Dude, you burned her hair!” Kitty bemoaned from behind Mary’s head, “Oh man, I
could puke!”
“It’s not like I aimed for it!”
He flew around the downed assailant a few times, building a corral around her
with fire and smoke. He nearly succeeded, until there was an unexpected, thin
jet of white from the ground, and suddenly Johnny was stumbling on the ground
and the burning smell switched from hair to plastic as he wrestled with the
glob on his face. Kitty gasped, Mary gaped, and Johnny swore as the girl
pointed her fingers skyward and shot off another round, a line up to the roof
that sprang her to safety.
Everyone clued in then, but Mary had been warned and was therefore the only one
who was not so completely gobsmacked as to do nothing about it.
“Jessica!” She called out.
The girl, crouching in the rafters and eerily lit by the remnants of Johnny’s
flames dancing over his shoulders and head, paused. She peered over them. There
was a small chunk of her hair that had gone crusted and black in the front,
near the ends where they trailed off at her waist. Her costume was scarlet,
with a large white spider that encompassed her torso. And her face, pale and
aghast, was Peter Parker’s.
“Holy moly,” Kitty hissed in her ear. Mary drew away from her and gawked
upwards.
“You are Jessica, right?” she ventured, covering her mouth with a hand in
shock. “Peter said…Oh my gosh, you really are exactly like him.”
“I didn’t know there was a Spider-Girl,” Johnny said, scratching his head. The
flames were off and so was the webbing. He turned to Mary. “Is she evil? Should
I nuke her?”
“Spider-Woman,” Jessica corrected peevishly, jolted out of her timid bunny
stare. “And you already did, you turd.”
“You were smothering MJ! Or something. I couldn’t see exactly, but stuff was
happening!”
“Not that kind of stuff,” Mary intervened, flushing bright and cringing. Kitty
and Johnny both fixed her with perplexed looks. Above them Jessica crouched
further behind the rafter and moaned piteously.
“I’m so sorry,” she said in a tinny, miniscule voice. “I really am. I’ll just
go mourn my hair in a gutter somewhere. I won’t bother you guys, I’ll leave
quietly.”
“No don’t!” Mary flung her hands out in the air. “Come down!”
“You know I can’t.”
“You come down here right now, or I’ll—“ Mary had to halt to fetch something
suitable from Peter’s history. Sadly for his sake, it wasn’t hard. “I’ll tell
them about the sixth grade sock hop!”
Jessica gasped loudly enough to echo. “You would not. You swore!”
“I’ll unswear here and now if you don’t!”
“You went to a sock hop with Spider-Woman?” Johnny muttered to her, and Kitty
gave an exasperated groan.
“Are you not getting this? Like at all?”
But Jessica did come down. She dropped like a flour sack and sheepishly
scuttled over to a pile of crates, keeping a fair distance between herself and
the wannabe Musketeers. The cringing, the awkward shuffle – it was all Peter’s
motions. His expressions. Just mimicked perfectly on a girl, with modest hips
and breasts and around two feet more hair than Peter ever had. Mary cursed her
own stupidity.
She even kissed like Peter did. He was going to break into pieces if he ever
found out.
Mary bit her lip and wrung her hands. “Jessica, uh, so you know…uh. You know
who we are. Heh.”
“You could say that.” The clone’s eyes darted skittishly between the three of
them.
“So um. I guess you two,” Mary spun awkwardly to point at her companions,
“should get um, get introduced. Johnny, Kitty, this is Jessica. She’s one of
Peter’s clones.”
Johnny stared Mary square in the eye. Then he set Jessica under his scrutiny.
“But…wait, that’s…no, she’s way too hot…”
“Oh my god!” both Kitty and Jessica yelped. Jessica hid her face behind her
hands and was muttering “No,” on rapid repeat to herself.
“Peter’s plenty hot!” Mary retorted, but Johnny was already throwing up
surrender hands.
“Well I mean for like – look, I get the spider thing but normally when a guy
dresses up like a girl it doesn’t work that well—“
“I’m not dressing up! I am a girl!” Jessica wailed. “Everyone shut up!”
“Okay, everyone, that is beside the point here!” Mary shouted, flustered beyond
reprieve but yearning for it anyway. “I think the issue is, that you’re having
the same issue as Peter is, yes?”
Jessica, though increasingly mortified, was ceasing the hissy fit she had been
throwing and hesitantly nodding to Mary. This time Johnny was the first to
catch the drift, his jaw dropping and pointing a condemning finger at Mary,
saying nothing but still perfectly conveying his horrendous revelation. You
were having a lesbian make-out with your boyfriend’s clone and she touched your
fun button.
Mary withered and waved him off apopletically. She let it slowly dawn on Kitty
without giving her a second glance, and did nothing to acknowledge her crime.
“Stop that – no. Look, Jess, to answer your earlier question? We thought Peter
was getting better, Tony Stark made him a thing. It was working, for like two
whole weeks.”
“But just yesterday…” Jessica protested.
“It stopped working yesterday,” Mary said grimly. “Do you remember Eddie
Brock?”
Watching the implications sink in was excruciating. The bleak, queasy
hollowness that swallowed Jessica’s face only worsened her concern for Peter.
Mary was going to break into the Triskelion herself at this point, if Eddie
Brock really was all that atrocious. “Is he okay?”
“No. Not at all. I can’t even go see him. They’re keeping Aunt May there with
him.”
Jessica considered this morosely. She kicked at a loose pebble and wrung out
her fingers. “I guess I just thought…I came here because I thought he’d figured
out how to handle it. And I know he’s under surveillance so I thought if I
asked you, I could…but then…” She shielded her eyes. Her voice betrayed nothing
but knowing what she did about Peter, Mary was certain it was because she was
crying. “I really am sorry. This was a mistake. I never meant to…to hurt you,
Mary.”
“You didn’t,” she insisted.
“But it’s gross. It’s so hard just looking at you. I knew this could happen and
maybe a little part of me…a little bit wanted…” Her lip was trembling and
Mary’s heart broke with it. Jessica drew her hand away and smiled at them,
though her eyes were a damning red. “Good thing you brought back-up. I guess.”
She began to scale the wall.
“Wait, Jessica?” Johnny was stepping forward, seemingly recovered from the
enormity of his earlier gaffs. “Spider-Woman? Look, maybe you should stick with
us. We can take you to the Triskelion. If it’s not safe for Pete, it’s not safe
for you.”
“Yeah, seriously,” Kitty said quietly. “You could run into some nasties out
there. Same as he did.”
“We’ll call them for you. We’ll wait with you here,” Mary joined in. She took a
daring two steps forward, entirely unlike her advances before, and held out an
open hand. “Please? I know you’re alone. You don’t have to be, you know.”
“That’s the thing, MJ.” She reclaimed the mask from where it hung around her
neck, stretching it up over her face and disappearing into impassivity. The
large white eyes and featureless red were just as maddening as Peter’s blank
lenses and webs. “I do kind of have to be.”
“You could die,” Mary said sharply.
Of all things, Jessica chose that to laugh at. “Well, that would be about on
par for the course wouldn’t it? Last Peter Parker standing shouldn’t be me.”
The bitter silence following left a sour taste in everyone’s mouth. Kitty
growled, “Don’t you joke about that.”
Jessica bowed her head. “Look. I’ll be in touch. You have my email now. Just
shoot me a message when they figure Peter’s stuff out, and I’ll bum off some of
whatever they’re giving him.”
Then she crept to an open window, and was gone. None of the three teenagers
left in her wake knew quite what to do.
“Should I follow her?” Johnny asked. Mary nodded and he blazed off, leaving her
and Kitty in the dark together. Neither one spoke for some time.
“So…when we came in you two were…”
“Yeah.” Mary hugged her arms tight and scuffed her shoe on the cement. The
rubber squealed petulantly.
Kitty let the mental image sink in. Then gave a dramatic sigh. “Well you could
have done worse. Johnny wasn’t wrong. About her being cute.”
“We’re still the cutest ones though, right?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
Mary twitched her nose. “Okay. Cool.”
Johnny came back ten minutes later, bemoaning another face full of webbing and
how quickly he had lost the girl after setting out to track her. The three of
them were at a loss for how to continue, and disbanded for the night in very
low spirits.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It was the next night, but for Wolverine it was simply another day on a hunt
that had lasted three weeks too long. Until it ceased to be just that.
Logan was, as per his usual, slouching over a half rate beer at a two star bar.
Normally at this point he would have been hustling for answers around the pool
table, or getting told that his kind weren’t served here, or even chatting up
some young thing that caught his eye. But tonight, not as per his usual, his
eyes were glued on the television set hoisted in the corner of the roof, set on
mute for the news and the sake of the country spewing jukebox. Closed
captioning was on, and the headlines streamed across the bottom.
He took another swallow of his beer as he traced the image splashed on the
screen and found it mysteriously more bitter than before.
“’Ey, whoa now,” said some haggard construction jockey, still clad in orange
and three sips away from hitting the floor for good. He elbowed Logan in the
ribs for his attention. “That’s Spider-Man up there? They sayin’ Spidey’s
dead?”
Logan took a tense sip. “Seems like it,” he muttered, his whole being awash
with something fierce and ugly. All he could think of was the red-head’s face,
streaked with tears as she tried to beat the hell out of him. Come to think of
it, he never had learned her real name. If he were the journal writing type she
would feature solely as Spidey’s Mouthy Chick.
“Dayum. It’s the good ones, innit? Always the good ones. You know he went into
a fire for Mack’s kid? Pulled the little bugger out. Wasn’t singed or nothing.
Pulled him out clean and didn’t take nothing for it.”
“He would,” Logan asserted.
“Always the good ones. Why ain’t no one popped them showboat X-Men yet?”
The worker laid off and Logan was grateful for the solitude. He set down his
drink and glowered down at it. He hadn’t taken the girl’s worry too seriously.
Staying as far away from the Spider kid as possible, that he took to heart, but
he didn’t think much of the pickles he got tangled in. Always seemed like a bit
of a joke in the news. When the girl had come running to him he figured it was
just her throwing a tantrum. The Parker kid was a stooge but he always could
handle himself. He’d proven that much in the few times Logan had fought
alongside him.
Dead. Fifteen years old and dead, and Logan had just walked away from the
chick.
He set a bill on the bar and took his leave. His drink, uncharacteristically,
was left half full.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
When Mary got a phone call at eight p.m., she was expecting to be helping Liz
or Kong out with Organic Chemistry. Which was a shame, because she was
struggling with it too and gnawing on her pen as she tried to make sense of the
crystalline hoodoo splattered over the pages of her textbooks. Her
concentration was shot and she was still rattled from seeing the fake death
reports on Spider-Man when the six o’clock news rolled around. Even having been
warned that it was fake this morning, the ominous little hairs at the back of
her neck had stood on end and she had asked her Mom to change the channel.
S.H.I.E.L.D. might have the right idea, but thugs like Wilson Fisk and Norman
Osborn and Otto Octavius knew Peter. Even if he got to change his name, change
his address, Peter’s face was still the same. It was a matter of time before
someone pointed him out, caught him on an errant camera.
She was hoping the phone call might be one she could steer into pleasant,
mundane conversation. She could drag Liz down that road easy if she picked the
right TV show to talk about. “Maaaary Jane Watson. How can I help you?”
“MJ?” breathed a girl’s voice.
Mary sat still for a moment, puzzling out the tortured gasping at the other
end. “…Jessica?”
“I need…Oh god…”
She was at attention immediately. “What happened? Where are you?”
“Downtown. I’m hiding in the laundry room, I just…” She broke off into
hyperventilation.
“Address, address!” Mary insisted, slamming down her paper and pen. When she
had what she needed, she hung up and lied to her Mother about helping Kitty
Pryde with her homework.
Better to use someone whose number her mother didn’t have. If she called the
Allans and found out Mary wasn’t there, life just might be over for Sneaky
Times Mary Jane Watson.
She arrived downtown and parted somewhat painfully with her available cash for
the taxi that took her. She read the address twice, then the google maps print
out three times more, and found it within minutes. Mary entered behind an old
Hungarian grandmother with groceries, which she obligingly helped carry to the
elevator, then hunted for the laundry room.
It was supposed to be closed by now, that much was apparent, but she found
Jessica Drew huddling in the dark behind a washer, clutching at her knees. She
had been crying.
“Oh thank god,” she whimpered at the sight of her. Mary crouched down, keeping
a respective distance of a few feet even if it killed her to not hug the girl
on sight. Even if it was largely useless, because they both knew that if her
power started up a couple of feet weren’t going to prevent anything.
“What happened?”
“A guy broke into my apartment.” Jessica sniffled. “I was just sitting there
watching TV. And this guy, I think he lives on my floor, I don’t know. He just
kicked the door in. And he was just like…gone. It wasn’t like before. He was
just crazy. Zombie mode. He was trying to come for me and he broke into my
place to do it. He didn’t say a word.”
“Oh my god…” Mary shivered, but not half so badly as the girl in front of her
was. Jessica looked as if she had seen a ghost. “Jessica, did he—“
“No. I beat his butt. He’s up there now. Probably still out cold. I have his
powers, you know.” She made a wretched face and wiped at her eyes and looked
anywhere but at Mary. “It’s just that he broke in. And he wasn’t saying
anything. It wasn’t like this before, people acted like themselves before. They
didn’t try to hurt me unless they would have already done that. Nobody tried to
force their way into my place. And even when I was going to the elevator, this
other dude – like fifty years older than me, this other guy tries to yank my
arm out of my socket, get me out of the elevator and tries to claw off my shirt
while I’m still wearing it, and I had to clock him to get out of there. No
one’s been this psycho before. I’m really scared.”
Mary shook her head. She chanced creeping a little closer, even if Jessica
curled up tighter. “P-“ she started, but hastily corrected herself. The twinge
of hurt on the girl’s face was brief, but Mary caught it all the same.
“Jessica, I’m so sorry, but…you’ve been hiding there this whole time, right?
You told Peter you were hiding away.”
“Yeah,” the girl nodded forlornly.
“Look, maybe this was like, an eruption. Maybe it just built up. I think it’s
one of those things, maybe it’s gotta release.”
Jessica twisted uncomfortably. Neither was happy with the notion. “Did that
happen to Peter?”
“No,” Mary said, then frowned. “Well. Maybe. I don’t know, maybe the same thing
happened with the antidote and that’s why it stopped working. Before then he
just…let’s just say he’d had worse luck avoiding people than you.”
Jessica buried her face in her knees. “So what? I should just do it with
someone to get it over with?”
“No!” Mary jutted forward and wrapped her arms around the girl, welcome or not.
Jessica went stiff, but only tremored in her grasp and wrapped her fingers
tight around the bottom of Mary’s jacket. Mary snuggled close, curling her legs
around Jessica’s and whispered into her hair. “No. You shouldn’t. You should
never.”
“Okay.”
Mary took a deep breath. “You need to go to Nick Fury.”
Jessica went deceptively still. “Ugh…”
“I know, but Jessica, what’s the next time going to be like? Where are you
going to be? Who’s going to be the guy coming at you?”
“Or girl.”
“Or girl. Weirdly enough.” Mary patted her back. “I’ll call him for you.”
Jessica sniffled and pushed out a snicker. “You’re such a gent.”
“I do my best.”
She dialed the contact given to her by S.H.I.E.L.D., just special for this
current Peter Parker predicament, and rattled off the most polite and sparing
version of Jessica’s situation she could concoct to the agent on the other end.
When she was done Jessica had pulled away from her some and was sobering up to
reason.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be hugging.”
“Yeah,” said Mary. “Sorry. I couldn’t help it.”
“Sit on the other side of the machine. Okay?”
Mary obeyed, sliding into place on the opposite side of the washer and letting
Jessica disappear from view. Unwilling to give up completely, however, she
shucked her jacket and tossed one end over to Jessica’s feet.
“This is me,” Mary said, clutching the other end tightly. “I’m holding your
hand.”
Jessica seemed to be considering the proposal, if she was reading the silence
correctly. Or maybe she was just trying to count to five and not let herself
lose it to freaky sex powers. Then the jacket went taut and Mary rejoiced to
herself.
It only took fifteen minutes for the cavalry to arrive. Neither girl had said
another word, a silent truce of awkwardness and deep, pervasive knowledge of
the other that strangers should not share. Because they were strangers, at the
end of the day, even if Mary lipped off Nick Fury when he said she could not
accompany Jessica to the Triskelion and Jessica turned around to grab her hand
and squeeze it hard, lock her eyes in a desperate, soul-splitting look before
she was carted off to a cell for safekeeping.
At least Peter would have company, Mary told herself doubtfully. Odd company,
but company nonetheless. One of the agents offered her a ride back to Queens,
which her wallet was very grateful for.
Maybe she would actually get some sleep tonight.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Peter spent most of the time drifting in and out of sleep. They were probably
drugging him, he had thought once during the thick haze. It was probably safer
for him to sleep. Rest. Maybe he would stop spewing out creepy pheromones if he
wasn’t awake.
Except that hadn’t worked out so well with the Punisher. None of them knew
about that. He’d mumbled something about it, hoping whatever security camera
they had trained on him was recording his voice too, but the words came out
jumbled and he fell asleep again midway through the confession.
Some time later consciousness crept back into play, and when Peter blearily
batted his eyes at the world there were two people in hazmat suits in the room
with him. One was rubbing his arm with a wet cottonball. The other was seated
beside his bed and resting a hand on his leg.
“Peter?” the seated one said, the voice tinny but familiar.
“Aunt May,” he croaked. He limply batted for her hand, or any part of her,
really, with the arm the second person had been attending to. The second figure
gently grasped it again and put it back down before he accidentally swatted his
Aunt’s suit loose. “Why’re you…yellowed?”
“Can I take off the suit?” his Aunt asked, deferring to the standing figure who
seemed to be paused in thought.
“You’ve never been affected, right?” the person mused. A woman, even if the
sound was fuzzy Peter was sure it was a woman.
“Are you serious? Please—“
“Okay. Okay, just be careful.”
His Aunt was revealed when the dome-like mask was lifted, her eyes watery and
her smile tragic. Peter smiled back. It felt wrong. He couldn’t entirely feel
his face so he wasn’t sure he was doing it right. “Hey there. There’s my boy.”
Aunt May brushed the hair from his sweat ridden forehead. “How are you
feeling?”
“’m all fuzzed. Good.” Peter tried to nod but the cast around his neck was too
stiff to let his chin dip down far enough. “Can’t feel myself though. All numby
numbed up.”
She laughed. “Oh lord. Sweetie, they’ve got you on painkillers.”
“Amongst other things,” added their third wheel. She flicked a needle, then
braced his arm. “Hold still.”
“Wassat?” Peter asked, trying to turn his head. The cast continued to impede
him, but so did the minor twinge of pain that still leaked through his haze.
Aunt May rushed to clutch him by the cheek.
“No no, your neck’s still healing, sweetheart. It’s okay.”
“It’s medicine. Remember that thing Janet Van Dyne gave you, when you got shot
by the cops? That healing cocktail?” The woman plunged the needle in as
gingerly as she could. Peter felt nothing. He was too busy scrunching up his
face and trying to pull his memory banks out of shambles.
“Oh…yeah. The thingie dink. Made it heal faster, ride? …Right?” He made a face
and stuck out his tongue. The words kept on fumbling up on him.
The needle withdrew and the hazmat woman patted his arm. “Yep. You’re gonna
heal up quick. Maybe not Wolverine quick, but quick.”
“Oh.” Peter paused, grinning. “Who’re you?”
“Carol Danvers. I work with Nick Fury.”
“Oh.” Peter’s smile dropped. “Where’s Nick?”
“Just relax, Peter,” Aunt May cooed. She was petting his hair now. The gesture
was appreciated. He could feel the top of his head better than the rest of his
body. Maybe it was all localized numbing, but the only part of him that wasn’t
hurt was his head. Then he frowned, because that couldn’t be true. Venom hadn’t
been that thorough. He wriggled his toes. He could still feel the blanket
brushing over them as he did so.
“I’m wigglin’ my toes,” he announced to the room.
“That’s great, Peter. That’s fantastic,” his Aunt said. The other woman fished
out another tool from parts unknown, and Aunt May’s smile went tight. She
addressed the other woman. “You’re sure – you’re one hundred percent positive—“
“I am if you are.” Danvers kept rubbing his arm. “I told you. It’s for the
best.”
“I know. But shouldn’t he at least be warned? He’s barely awake right now.
Can’t we talk about this with him?”
“’m awake,” Peter protested sourly. He looked at the thing in Danvers’ hands.
It was a gun with a needle on the end. More antidote. “Hey, that stuff’zzz…that
stuff is no good. It doesn’t work good. Tony is stupid.”
“Yes, Tony Stark is very stupid,” Danvers agreed. Somewhat sharply, Peter
thought, but he wasn’t so sure because the suit made her voice so weird, like
she was speaking through a fan. “Mrs. Parker, he needs this. You need this.
It’s a fresh start.”
“A fresh start,” his Aunt parroted. She was crying now. Peter frowned some more
and tried to roll over for a hug but his stupid body was about as mobile as a
sack of bricks. “You think he’ll forgive me?”
“He’s your kid. That’s what families do.”
“Love you, Aunt May,” Peter offered quietly. He was getting really tired again.
And tired of getting tired. His sleeping hours were off the charts, and he
wanted to talk to his Aunt some more.
Danvers was pushing that other needle in and Peter was just trying to keep his
eyes open, focused lazily on his Aunt. She sniffled and pressed a kiss to his
forehead. “I love you too, Peter. So much.”
He drifted away again. Shoot, he didn’t mention the thing about sleeping not
stopping the wonky powers again, didn’t he? Next time. There would be a next
time.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
While Jessica Drew was being herded into the overbearing towers of the
Triskelion, head bowed low and huddling close to Nick Fury in spite of all
prior protests, there was a power surge and subsequent shortage in the west
building. There was a panic, naturally, as that area housed some of their
trademark super powered criminals. Minor ones, but reckonable forces
nonetheless.
Jessica was shunted into a holding room as teams scrambled to cover, and found
Electro bouncing off the walls trying to make a break for it. He was
apprehended by Captain America with little fuss. None of the other prisoners
got loose. No one could quite figure how Electro had escaped, and the man was
knocked out too coldly for questioning.
When the girl was settled at last into proper accommodations, the pending
fiasco having been resolved in minutes, a medic was sent to check on Peter
Parker and she found his room over turned and scorched black in telling places.
Two sets of thoroughly charred remains were there, one on the floor where the
bed toppled and the other fused to a chair. Peter was nowhere to be found.
Neither was his Aunt, who had been scheduled to sit in and visit him at the
time.
The whole of S.H.I.E.L.D. went into a frenzy, and Electro was upgraded to
higher security holdings.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Peter was surprised to find himself waking to the hum of the road. The beeps
and soft hisses of medical machinery were utterly absent. He was bandaged and
stitched still, healing well, but there was a new restraint fastening him to
the seat. His eyes fluttered open and he found himself inside an unfamiliar
car. Aunt May was at the wheel.
“You’re awake,” she said tightly. Her eyes flicked to him and back to the road
just as hastily, a rigidity in her posture Peter had never seen before.
Baffled, Peter looked behind them for an escort vehicle and saw there were
none. His neck brace was gone, though it still hurt some to move.
“Aunt May? What’s going on?”
“Let me…” She trailed off, ducking her head to check the street ahead. It was
night, and the neighborhood was a nearly deserted one. She pulled into the
parking lot of a darkened flower shop and shut the car off, drawing her hands
to her mouth and breathing heavily. “Oh dear. I don’t know.”
“What is it?” Peter queried, panic waking him quicker than a morning cup of
joe. He shifted forward and the seat belt dug into his stitches. The pain was
minimal: that Danvers lady hadn’t been lying about the medical cocktail. If he
didn’t imagine all of that.
She looked him in the eye. Then, lips pursed, she fished out a paper envelope
from the mug holder and passed it to him. It had been torn previously, and
inside were a pair of plane tickets to England. One way.
Peter’s mind was already working on full speed but speech was slow to follow.
“…Aunt May, what is this?”
“It’s an option,” she provided. Her fingers pressed to her lips again and she
flattened herself against the back of her seat. “They gave me an option. And
I’m…I’m not sure if I want to take it anymore. Sweetie, they gave me a new
antidote.”
He regarded her stonily. “And they just let us go? Without testing it?”
“It’s not like the others. Peter, it’s an antidote for everything. To make you
human again.”
The night quiet turned all consuming. Peter and his Aunt were caught in a
deadlock of stares. Peter was the first to break, eyes darting to the dim
street outside the windshield. There was no one outside. “You mean…”
“You won’t be Spider-Man anymore.”
A tense lump gestated in his throat, and did not disappear when he tried to
swallow it down. “Oh.”
“They said it would be too hard…too difficult for you to stay here if you don’t
have your abilities. There are people who know who you are and could find you.
So if you – if we do it, we have to leave. And we can’t tell anyone, and we’ll
have to get new names. They offered to help with that too.”
He said nothing. Peter thumbed the tickets and stared at the codes, the seat
numbers and the fussy print detailing proper carry on procedures. His Aunt
watched him closely.
“I wanted to…I wanted to wait. To talk to you about it, but it just wasn’t...”
Aunt May pressed her fingers to her mouth, blinking, pearly tears trickling out
from her eyes. “Peter, I am so sorry.”
Peter startled. A passing car illuminated them with frigid light, and then they
were alone again. “What do you mean?” The way his Aunt immediately recoiled,
facing the window to steady herself, he began to get worried. “Aunt May?”
“In the Triskelion. It was given to me there. The woman who gave it to me, she
already injected you. Not even an hour ago.” She let herself turn again and
brushed at the steady stream that rolled down her cheeks. “Oh lord, Peter, you
were still unconscious. And you were so badly hurt. That thing savaged you. He
hurt you, and for a moment I thought that the only way I could make sure you
were never hurt again was to – Peter, I’m so sorry. I’m so terribly selfish.”
Trembling, he regarded his Aunt with eyes so wide the air began to burn them.
The stitches in his shoulder gave tiny pangs of sympathy. “You let her?”
“Yes.” She sniffled and ripped out several tissues from the box in the cup
holder. “Now I wish I didn’t, but I did. I wanted her to do it, Peter, and I
wanted to steal you away, where none of these people could find you. Look at
me! I am stealing you away. Right now, in this car. I just…I don’t know how
much more of Spider-Man I can take. Look at what’s happening to you.” With a
somber tenderness she took his hand in hers. “My baby boy. They hurt you, and
they haven’t stopped hurting you.”
He tugged his hand free. The hurt emblazoned across her face, her shimmering
eyes, would normally have broken him in two. “You just…let her take away my
powers? While I was sleeping?”
Aunt May had nothing to say to that. She covered her mouth again and retreated
to press her back stiffly into her seat, clenching her eyes shut. She was a
queasy, lilac pale.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” Peter spat.
“I’ve failed you.” Aunt May hiccuped. “I can’t…I don’t know what to say except
that I’m sorry, Peter, I’m so, so very sorry…”
A rapping on the passenger window spooked the both of them so badly that Aunt
May jumped an inch off her seat and Peter whipped around with a fist raised.
His eyes landed on Kitty Pryde. She was bent over and knocking on the window,
in casual clothes, fright drawn through her brow and gritted teeth. Alarmed,
Peter shot another look to his Aunt.
“Isn’t that your mutant friend?” Aunt May said warily. “How did she find us?”
“I don’t know,” Peter whispered. Kitty rapped more urgently, and he rolled down
the window. “Kitty? What are you doing here? How did you find—“
“No time. Peter, there’s an emergency. We need you.” She gave a short nod to
his Aunt. “Sorry, but we really do need him. Like now.”
“He’s not going,” Aunt May interjected sharply.
“What are you even saying?” Peter’s nose wrinkled. “You and who? Kitty, we’re
just coming out of the Triskelion, seriously, how did you even find us? What’s
going on?”
“Pete, am I your girlfriend, or am I your girlfriend?” With presumptuous
precision she reached inwards and pulled the handle herself, swinging out the
door. “Get out and come with me. There’s something really bad going on with the
X-Men. Jean called me. We need all the help we can get.”
Peter studied her, agape. He did not come out. He did not unbuckle his seat
belt. He could sense his Aunt tensing behind him as, he assumed, she reached
the same conclusion he had.
“Actually,” he said slowly, “you aren’t my girlfriend anymore.”
Kitty’s face went tight. Her mouth was like a zipper, lips crunched together
with fine wrinkles and the line between them ruler straight. “Well. Would you
like me to be?”
Peter scowled and bent back, kicking out from the passenger seat and slamming
her in her middle. With a yelp she flew backwards, tripping over a parking
block and rolling on the pavement. “Ugh, you little twat! You beat on all your
chicks? No wonder everyone hates you!”
“You’re not Kitty!” he yelled. His Aunt started the ignition and Peter
scrambled to get the door shut.
The imposter seethed, whipping a strange looking gun from the back of her jeans
and taking aim. “No shit, Sherlock!”
She fired, a white light signalling an energy blast as opposed to bullets.
Unfortunately for her they were already speeding away, the shot shattering the
backseat window and inviting in a seige of wind that drummed at their ears as
they fled. Aunt May drove straight and did not look back.
Peter’s heartbeat overtook the hum of the engine. Pounding. Then there was
rattling in his head, and Peter was distinctly aware that the sound was coming
from outside his ears and didn’t match his heartbeat at all.
Rattling. In his head.
“My head is –“ he started, casting a look at his Aunt because if what she said
was true, then either he had sprouted some kind of a tumor or…
He swiveled, looking in the rear view mirror to see a man, far larger and
broader than any real man should be, with a metal helmet like a dome that
covered his head completely. The thudding was his footsteps, running up from
behind towards their car. His spider senses swelled to a scream and May heard
it then too, the car rattling with the sound.
Peter gaped. “Is that the Juggernaut?”
“Oh my god,” Aunt May whispered.
She punched the gas pedal with the tenacity of a Nascar champion but it was too
late. In a split second the world had toppled over as their car was hoisted
upward, the headlights pointing futilely into the night sky. Aunt May was
screaming. The metal of the trunk squealed as it was ravaged by the ten ton
grip. Peter didn’t question his instincts, or even the strength with which he
tore his seat belt off one-handed and did the same for his Aunt. She was still
screaming as he took her by the waist, poised himself, and sent a kick into the
roof that made it fly off like a frisbee. Lucky thing, too, because if he had
to work around a puncture they wouldn’t be getting out before they were
inevitably slammed into a building.
Which was exactly what the Juggernaut was planning. He swung the car back and
heaved it at the brick and mortar minimart adjacent, but Peter and Aunt May
were already out. He had no choice but to break both of their falls on the
pavement with his still battered body. Aunt May tumbled on top of him, but was
on her knees in a hurry and trying to lift him to his feet.
“PETER!” she screamed. In that second they shared a wordless, baffled exchange
together, where they gaped at the impossibility of what had just happened and
the conversation they had just moments before.
Then it had to shatter, because his Aunt was looking back in horror at the
monstrosity that towered over them and Peter had to do something about it. The
Juggernaut stomped closer. Pain was a prevalent and debilitating factor; Peter
knew that at least three of his stitches had ripped loose on impact. Yet
nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to touch his Aunt May.
His one arm was still somewhat broken. Less broken than before thanks to the
finest S.H.I.E.L.D. medicines, but still next to useless. He had no webbing. He
had no back up, and he was operating at half capacity at best. Their best
chance was his size and speed. Peter snagged his Aunt, fumbling to put her over
his shoulder and darted between the man’s legs (Maneuver #633 on a list of
moves he never thought he would have to use), ducking low and panting hard. He
kept running. The Juggernaut gave pursuit. He aimed for an alley, hoped for a
thin passage somewhere soon, or a sharp turn off. Somewhere he could slip into
while still carrying his Aunt and lose the Juggernaut.
Why was the goddamn Juggernaut after him, again? He hadn’t been an ex of
Kitty’s, had he?
His spider senses spiked, and dropping down from above with a heavy thud was
the feral looking blonde man from two weeks ago. Logan’s buddy. Sabretooth, as
the internet called him, Peter having done his research after Tony Stark warned
him about the Brotherhood being in town. Peter skidded to a halt.
“Boo,” said the man, curling his fingers to highlight the wicked claws at the
end.
Aunt May screamed and slapped lightly at his back. The Juggernaut had caught up
from behind, a gargantuan shadow blocking the light from the alley. Peter
sweated. He looked up.
He leaped for the sky, ricocheting between the walls of the two buildings as he
made his way up, up.
The Juggernaut struck a wall just as Peter made to land on it, and the whole
thing crumbled inward. Both Peter and his Aunt screamed. The Juggernaut caught
Peter by the leg, dangling him in midair, and he only barely caught his Aunt by
the wrist before she hit the ground. Her feet, kicking wildly, were scraping
the pavement.
“Jumpy little shit, isn’t he?” growled Sabretooth. He strode closer, smirking
up at Peter with pearly, glinting teeth.
“They got jumping spiders in Japan,” provided the Juggernaut.
“The fuck does that have to do with anything?”
Peter gritted his teeth and let go of his Aunt. She yelped as she landed
jarringly on her feet, shaking. Peter twisted upwards in a flash, swinging
himself towards the Juggernaut’s face with the world’s most impressive dangling
sit up and thrust two fingers into the narrow slit of his helmet. He didn’t get
the bare eye, the man had blinked in time, but Juggernaut wailed in pain anyway
and let go of Peter’s leg. Peter dropped, rolling, leaping upright and pushing
his Aunt out past the Juggernaut’s legs.
“Go! I’ll take them!”
His Aunt hesitated, giving him a wild, frenzied look. But she listened. She had
no choice. Her shoes came off, the pumps abandoned as she ran in her stockings
back out into the street and out of sight.
“Big words,” drawled Sabretooth, “for a banged up little tyke like you. What
are you gonna do, Short Stuff, bleed on us?”
“I just might. You’ll catch what I have. It’s very nasty,” Peter snapped back.
The Juggernaut, infuriated and still keening over his wounded eye, took a swipe
at Peter. He ducked and jetted into the rubble. “Really, you’d be best off
hopping on back to your cozy little mutant lair, get yourself a cup of cocoa.
Maybe do something about that hair. Set yourself apart from other evil doers
and have a good hair cut for a change. Lord knows you’re all pretty unkempt.”
“Why is his Auntie streaking off in the other direction?” called Kitty’s voice.
The double was at the mouth of the alley now, scowling and brandishing her gun.
“Sabretooth. No witnesses.”
He grunted. “You take care of it. Me and Spidey, we’re going to have a little
tussle, aren’t we kiddo?”
“Take care of it.”
Sabretooth growled, but obeyed. He sprinted out. Peter shot after him. “No!”
The Juggernaut slapped him out of the running, sending Peter rocketing into the
rubble. He cartwheeled bonelessly and landed on his back. He struggled upright,
ignoring the pain, heart thudding. He had to get to his Aunt, he had to get out
of here.
Kitty was standing over him with the barrel of her gun grazing his chest. His
spider senses were going haywire. “Sweet dreams, Spider-Man.”
There was a flash of white. The world winked out of being.
***** The Guest of Honor *****
Chapter Summary
     Nick Fury discovers a number of unpleasant things, and Peter meets
     his captors.
Chapter Notes
     No warnings for this chapter!
     I decided to change up the summary a bit so I threw in a quote from
     an earlier chapter. Just because I was looking at it again and I was
     unhappy that it didn't convey much of anything aside from the fact
     that this is a pheromone fic, when it's actually not PWP at all. It's
     actually Porn With Too Much Plot I couldn't think of how to express
     the plot without either giving stuff away or taking out the little
     blurb I had originally, which I still like, so I went for the
     depressing quote route. Might give off a better vibe that there's a
     lot of other consequences to the porn.
     Also just in case some readers aren't familiar with the Ultimate
     universe (most of you seem to be but just making sure): a lot of
     awesome characters got personality revamps in Ultimate Marvel. Some
     of these were cool. But a lot of them just turned into giant
     assholes. Captain America is one of them. Not too badly in this
     chapter, but yeah no adorable sassy dork Steve here. I am sorry. :(
The very moment the local authorities reported a S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicle at the
site of a crash, totaled beyond repair and next to a building with half the
wall smashed in, Nick Fury sent a team to investigate. He spent the wait time
with his fingers laced, unmoving, waiting for the phone to ring or the comm to
buzz, and when they finally did he was ready to explode on whoever happened to
call. In a turn of events that might just have bordered on miraculous, he got
exactly what he was hoping for: trapped inside the car was May Parker’s purse.
Shortly after that the deep fried corpses were submitted to an emergency
examination. The morgue found fillings in teeth that should have been cavity
free, and it became apparent that the bodies were Jane and John Does and not
Parkers at all. Search teams were deployed. The building was put under full
sweep. Most of the Ultimates were called in, off duty, and ordered to different
Burroughs. A perimeter was discreetly set around the city.
But even if the Parkers hadn’t been barbecued by a half-rate super villain,
they were still not under his roof. In fact, they were probably dead all over
again.
Nick Fury slammed his fist into the sink. The thing shuddered, but still
operated with the smooth functionality it had been designed to. Everything in
the building was double, triple reinforced. With the amount of damages it could
potentially take as a prime terrorist target, combined with the traffic of
mutants and genetic alterations that walked through the halls, it was all quite
necessary.
Except when it counted the most. As usual. Nick Fury splashed the water onto
his face. It did little to cool or refresh him whatsoever. Whatever serenity he
had on reserve he mustered now, wiping his face dry and returning to the
surveillance centre outside. A small crowd waited for him there. Stark and
Rogers, a few of his top agents working with trackers already on the move
outside the facility. Hawkeye, the Wasp, and Thor were leading the search.
Rogers was eying the monitors impassively. He had been told to stay put, being
a soldier with no flight capability and a penchant for attacking problems in
close proximity. Not optimal when dealing with Parker’s current situation. “We
need more men on the ground. I can be out in five minutes.”
“You won’t be. Stay put,” Nick said smoothly. Rogers raised him a brow but he
paid it no mind.
“I’m willing to follow orders when they make some damn sense, Fury.”
“I wouldn’t be keeping you and Stark here unless I had a damn sensible reason,
now would I?” Nick growled. Of the three they had deployed Janet was mostly
harmless as a woman. Thor could stick to the air and use his crackerjack god
powers to stop shenanigans from afar, and Hawkeye was a sniper and a bowman. He
was already debating throwing in whatever Black Ops he could spare –
particularly the Lensherr twins, if for nothing other than the speed with which
Pietro could conduct a search and the scope of Wanda’s powers. In ten minutes,
Nick himself would suit up.
Stark was the only other person in the room who was in on the big secret, and
the only one who looked distinctly green. It screamed suspicious, which was
something a man like Stark just didn’t do. “Are you going to need a Fisherman’s
Friend over there Tony, or is there something you know we don’t?”
“Just under the weather, Nick,” he rattled smoothly, not once looking Nick in
the eye. Contrary to what he told Rogers, Stark had volunteered to stay behind
on his own, feeling it prudent since both he and Nick knew which way he swung
when it came to the kid’s powers.
Stark wiped sweat from his brow and proposed a new angle. “Look, I’m just
saying. Both the kid and his Aunt are missing. Do you really think it’s so
unrealistic that she might have panicked and taken him out of here? If you
recall, she was throwing a hell of a mama bear act the moment we brought her
in.”
Rogers thumbed his chin. “And how would she do that? Where would she get the
bodies?”
“An inside man.”
Nick’s patience had been teetering on a wafer thin line from the moment Parker
came in. Part of that he attributed to the bullshit powers he had magicked up
in the last few weeks, but his temper had doubled into a fully fledged monster
in the wake of his disappearance and Nick knew, deep down, that he would be
just as furious had there been no emotional tampering at all. Peter Parker was
not the average super powered brat that Nick spent his time cleaning up after.
Life would be so much easier if he was.
“And what god-fearing, paid employee of mine would in their right mind send out
a kid who is not only wrapped from ass to nose in bandages, but holed up in the
highest security and the most solitary confinement S.H.E.I.L.D. has to offer,
out into New York city without permission to do so?”
Rogers frowned and mouthed, “Solitary confinement?” to Stark, who only shrugged
uneasily as he worked up a counter to Nick’s argument.
“Look at it, Nick. The tapes show nothing. There’s no sign of forced entry or
exit anywhere in the building. It screams inside job.”
Nick squinted at the screens. “Check out what that Pryde girl’s been up to. No
– the X-Men.” The computer junkies set up a roar of typing, keyboards gone
ablaze.
“You think they would pull a stunt like this?” Rogers inquired.
“They just might. Parker’s run with them in the past. The Fantastic Four too.
They might be too squeamish to plant bodies but they’re creative where it
counts. And run through the database as well for anyone and everyone the kid’s
fought, no matter how bottom of the barrel. Everyone. Whether they’re
incarcerated, where they lurk, what brand of toothpaste they use. I need up to
date dossiers, now!”
The door creaked open, and Danvers strode in. She was straightening her tie but
was otherwise impeccable. She had been officially off duty, her weekend having
started at approximately noon yesterday, and was called in unawares when the
Parker situation had taken several turns for the worse. “So I take one day off
and we’ve already got two casualties?”
Nick paused. That was odd.
“Someone, pull up the feed for Danvers,” The tape played again, and he watched
as her eyes went wide at the wreck. No sound accompanied the shots of the car,
sans roof and with the trunk crumpled like a paper fan, and then the alley
nearby, where the wall had been smashed in and a surly store owner was
lamenting his loss on the sidewalk, smoking a cigarette and scowling. Nick
provided a stiff and embittered narration.
“Electro broke loose earlier, caused a ruckus, and Cap detained him. We found
two extra crispy fried bodies in Parker’s room. But they were plants. The
morgue worked them over and their dental records don’t match Parker’s, or his
Aunts. And not more than an hour ago the police responded to a 911 call about a
disturbance, some kind of a fight. And lo and behold, there’s one of our cars.
It’s got the Aunt’s purse and a couple of tickets to Europe. So, they were
planning an escape, and someone helped them out.”
Danvers’ eyes flickered over the damage, the catastrophic wreck of a car still
lingering in on the screens. Her mouth was parted, and she was pale. Nick
narrowed his eye and let it rove over her slowly. Calculating. “…But?”
“But then someone else made sure they didn’t get to escape. Someone big.
Possibly Venom again, but it could be anyone. There is not a single trace left
behind on that car of who wrecked it. No blood either, which means they could
still be alive.”
Danvers gripped the back of the nearest chair. She worked her way into
impassivity. “Who have we got out looking?”
“Everyone who’s not here,” Stark provided, and Danvers twitched just slightly
at the sound of his voice. “There’s a perimeter. Everyone’s on the lookout, but
no one has seen a damn thing.”
Nick counted to three and turned to face his team. Tony had slumped into a
chair, nursing a bourbon and wincing at the aftertaste. Rogers was stoic save
for that perplexed frown he reserved in lieu of pouting, having been unaware
there was an issue at all until Electro had broken out. (Remind him to give
that one a personal working over the moment he woke up.) And lastly there was
Carol Danvers, with a curious twinge in her brow. She hadn’t been able to erase
her frown entirely. Her hands were now in her pockets. Hiding, Nick thought,
because there was still an imprint in the leather back of the chair where her
fingers had choked it into a perfect mold of her hand. She was studying the
screens intently.
Very odd.
“Techies, keep at it. You three, come with me.”
Though puzzled, they all acquiesced without delay. The four of them traversed
the halls, agents bustling around and past them with a dancer’s precision, not
daring to jostle any one of them. Nick led the trio into a smaller, more
private room. Soundproof. More security.
“Secret clubhouse meeting?” Stark asked, arching a brow.
“You might say that.” Nick gestured for them all to sit, a circular table at
the centre of the room serving as their centerpiece, manned by utilitarian
chairs. There was a coffee maker in the corner on a shelf, the sole amenity in
the otherwise barren meeting room. Nick himself chose to not join them. He
rapped his fingers on the table. “Care to explain, Danvers?”
“Explain what?”
“Why you let them go.”
The two men, in a nearly cartoonish take, glanced at each other before fixing
Carol with scrutinous, bewildered gazes.
Danvers did not move an inch in her seat. “Pardon me?”
“Don’t play dumb. You’re above that,” Nick pressed. “Or you would be, if you
could keep a better reign on your white knuckling.”
She curled her lip and shook her head in disbelief. “What are you – geez Nick,
is it a crime to be stunned at how far everything’s gone to shit? They didn’t
exactly strike me as the loose a felon and plant fake bodies type of people.
Kind of the opposite. And then they got Godzilla stomped during their getaway?
That’s a little much to come back to work to, so sue me.”
“I’ve been at this a long time, kid,” Nick said, clapping a hand on her
shoulder. Danvers flinched. “I know how to read people. Really read them. Smart
move using Electro. You get to knock out the power and plant a couple of
charred up bodies without worrying about a picture perfect match. You came in
talking about casualties when you should have been asking about escapees. I
know you didn’t plan the car wreck. It took you by surprise, didn’t it? You
were gaping like it was the fourth of July.”
“Are you serious?” Stark barked. “Carol. You were in the know.”
For some time, she said nothing. Her eyes closed shut and her teeth were ever
so slightly bared, a seething resignation. Nick could feel the muscles seizing
to rock solid under his palm. No one could take their eyes off of her.
At last, the silence was broken and the pretence went with it.
“And you know what I know, Tony? Fury?” She said darkly. She opened her eyes
and set them darkly upon Nick, who gave no particular care about her death
glare. He’d been on the receiving end of worse. “The kid’s a liability. And not
just now. He’s been a liability for a long, long time. Now he’s just a menace.”
“So the first thing you do is set that menace loose?” was Nick’s scathing
assessment. “Brilliant fucking deduction, Danvers.”
“I’m not an idiot, I gave him an out. I gave his Aunt a fix.”
Stark was out of his seat. “Sorry, what fix? The antidote wasn’t working. That
was the whole reason we brought him here!”
“Antidote? What the blazes are you—“
Carol thrust her shoulder free of Nick’s grip, but made no move to escape.
“Butt out, Rogers. And yeah, your antidote was a bust. I’m talking about a fix.
I went above you. I went to Reed Richards.” Stark looked flabbergasted. She let
that slap to the face sting for a good moment before continuing. “And I didn’t
just get a fix for the new thing. I got a fix for everything. What Osborn did,
whatever shit he’s gained since then – the works. I got him to make me a gene
cleanser, and I gave it to his Aunt.”
If Carol Danvers believed in a God, she should have been thanking him that Nick
Fury was loathe to fill out the paperwork he’d be obliged to if he strangled
her on the spot. “A gene cleanser? A fucking gene cleanser? You idiot!” She
rose then, squaring Nick in the eye as she twisted out of her seat. Rogers and
Stark had both turned to statues behind her. “Congratulations on commissioning
what could be the beginning of another mother fucking genocide! And for getting
it from a source we cannot and will never control!”
Tony, for his part, was obliging himself to keep reason in the mix. Not bad for
a man who was sweating bullets. “You think Richards would sell—“
“We are in the business of worst case scenarios, goddammit! And it always comes
to that, doesn’t it?”
“It’s specific to Parker,” Danvers countered hotly. “I brought him a sample!
And yes, I am aware of what kind of bullshit this could cause, but did you
honestly believe that no one would ever succeed in making it? There’s already
numerous factions around the world trying to cook up an anti-mutant vaccine!”
Nick slammed a hand on the table. It was wholly unsatisfying, even with the
booming thud he made. “We could have delayed it – could have controlled it, if
it had come from us first and not from a barely legal prodigy who is, quite
frankly, too eager to put his fingers in every pot there is! And I don’t give a
shit if it’s special order for the kid. If he whipped up a serum that quick,
how long do you think it would take Stretcho to cook up a universal batch?”
“Why now?” Rogers prompted, “Why Parker? He’s hardly a case for a gene wipe.
The kid makes a mess, but he’s not a terrorist.” Tony shot him a tense stare.
It only rankled him further. “For God’s sake, what is it that you’re all not
telling me? Is he a terrorist?”
“If there ever was a case that needed it, Nick…” Danvers pushed, ignoring
Rogers entirely.
“Not your decision to make,” Nick spat. “Not to mention that if Richards fucked
it up, it could kill him. If he isn’t already dead because he got ambushed in
your car, after your shit serum zapped him clean of powers, by something that
could crush a Chevy like an accordian!”
She flung her arms wide and rose to shouting. “Dammit Nick, I did what I
thought had to be done! He is fifteen fucking years old! He had no place in
those tights to begin with! He needed a ten year time out before he could even
consider coming back in business, but now we both know that won’t be an option
anyway! What were you going to do? Throw him in a cell for life and pray it
didn’t get worse? Guess what? It was still fluctuating. Who knows what he could
have become a month from now. A year!”
“Carol, for someone who never met the kid, you sure as hell went out of your
way to do him a favor. Even if you blew it.” Nick crossed his arms. Partly as a
show of authority, but also to hold himself back. Rein in the urge to throttle
the woman and roar until his throat burst. “Call me crazy, but you sneaking
around under my nose, commissioning Richards, running your very own Underground
Railroad? That’s way out of line for you. You never were a bleeding heart, not
even for little kids. So I’m wondering: is this some kind of cockamie mutiny
you’re throwing here?”
“I didn’t do it to spite you, Fury,” Danvers muttered. “I did it because of
him.”
Then her slender finger was pointed not at Nick, or any unnamed figure in the
shadows. The accusation lay solely on Tony Stark. A worry wrinkle crossed his
brow. “Pardon me?”
“You’re supposed to be a genius, Tony,” Danvers gritted her teeth. “You knew
what was happening. So why on Earth would you put yourself in room, alone, with
Peter Parker?”
The silence that followed belonged to the wake of a grenade. Nick’s pulse shot
into overkill, as if there were real bullets whizzing past his head and not
just the horrendous revelations Carol Danvers was dragging to light. Stark’s
eyes had gone saucer wide. Something akin to actual anger rise in the CEO’s
voice. “Carol, if you’re implying –“
“Oh, I’m not implying. I don’t have to.” Her sneer was as bitter as bile. “I
saw how you were reacting when he came in here. You were sweating like a sinner
in church. So I did a little digging. You were the one that hauled him out of
Hell’s Kitchen. You took him into your office, just the two of you, and settled
in for a nice little chat. Isn’t that what happened? And all this while you
were working on the antidote? What kind of a man does that?”
Stark was frantic as he responded. “I did not plan that! It was a
miscalculation, Carol!”
“But you fucked him, didn’t you?”
Rogers, who had been watching the events unfold with a worsening piss scowl,
was sent flushing red and slack jawed. “You what?!”
By contrast Stark was now ashen gray, eyes trained on Danvers in absolute
terror. If he had retorts or alibis they had all abandoned him, his mouth ajar
him as he cast around for sympathy at both of the men. Nick’s fist suffered a
tremor. Rogers was exchanging disbelief for abhorration as the seconds ticked
by and nobody turned to tell him it was only poor phrasing.
Danvers, suddenly free of the bullseye and strapping Tony down in her stead,
was snarling like a dog as she threw him more bait. “I don’t hear any denials,
Stark.”
Rogers swept in. Normally a cool head guided the man, but his antiquated
sensibilities still nipped at his heels long after he’d been defrosted and
debriefed on the liberal ways of the twenty first century. He seized Tony by
the lapels and lifted him from the floor, teeth gritted. “A child? A child?!
You sick, depraved—“
Nick had condoned about all he was ready to condone in one day. He snatched
Rogers by the wrist and growled, “Drop him.”
“You’re letting this pass?! First Wanda and Pietro, now this?!”
“I would really appreciate you knowing the whole story before you decide to
strangle me,” Tony added somewhat breathlessly. Carol scoffed. “And that
includes you, Missy.”
It only infuriated Rogers more, the rims of his ears burning with the power of
it, and Nick had to move quick before Tony Stark went sailing through the wall
and they had a new body to bury. He pushed harder on the man’s wrists and used
far more volume than necessary. “It’s the whole reason why he was here, Cap.
Parker’s sprouted the world’s shittiest superpower and he has no control over
it whatsoever.” Rogers made to interject, his expression contorting with the
absurdity of the claim, but Nick gave him no chance. “People rape him. Any man
he comes into contact with has a fifty-fifty chance of getting mind-screwed
into raping him.”
“It’s not entirely—“ Stark began, but a duo of frigid glares shut his mouth.
Rogers was too busy processing the revelation to join in. It seemed altogether
too much to handle.
“You’re saying…you’re saying that he’s…”
“Developed an extremely powerful but involuntary hypnosis,” Stark deigned to
supply, even as Nick and Danvers carved him to ribbons with their eyes. “One
that not only affects the people around him, but himself. He doesn’t know what
triggers it, he can’t stop what happens, and neither can anyone who is
affected. And that is precisely why I, for one, am all for finding him before
whatever wrecked the car gets under his influence.”
Danvers’ lip curled. “What, jealous?”
Then Rogers did drop Stark, but only because he was thoroughly stunned and
Stark had slammed a hard hand into his face. The billionaire used his newfound
freedom to round on Danvers. “You know that is not what happened!”
“Well then, how do you explain why having samples from someone who’s been on
the other end was so incredibly important to your research?!” Carol was keeping
a furious but otherwise impeccable game face, save for a bead of blood
squeezing out from the end of her fist. Her nails had to be gouging her palm.
“I went through your files. You made a big damn stink about having blood
samples from a recently affected specimen. Shucks Tony, where on earth would a
swell fella like you find some of those? You fucking pig!”
Stark flung his arms out, jabbing a finger at her face as if to accuse her of
the same crimes.“After! After it happened, Carol! Check the dates, the times!
Not a single note was made about getting affected samples until after it
happened!”
“Horse shit!” she countered.
“And do you know why? Because I was not, I repeat, was NOT, about to ask the
kid to go let someone else screw him for the sake of research I might not even
need!”
“Then why did you let yourself—“
“I DON’T KNOW, ALL RIGHT?!” Raving mad, a state completely foreign to most who
hadn’t seen Stark at his lowest binges and the towers of bottles he left in his
wake, he was alternately clutching his head and brandishing his arms with a
manic energy that promised to knock down anyone who strayed too close. “I’ve
lost half that afternoon! Whatever it is that the kid does, it screws with your
brain! It ruins you! And it lingers. I’m still feeling it. I could barely watch
him come in here. I was standing god knows how many feet above him and I still
nearly lost my mind. Forty, fifty feet away, and I could feel my heart pounding
in my goddamn ears. It took you all of what, thirty seconds to wheel him in?
And one of the women on stretcher duty lost it too, and I’ll be damned if that
wasn’t the first time she had laid eyes on the kid. What does that tell you
about how strong this thing is?
“Even before – Nick, even when he first came to us, even after that, I was
feeling it. He wouldn’t leave my mind. I barely touched him and I was a goner.
I can’t remember everything I said to him when I brought him out of Hell’s
Kitchen. I can’t remember everything that happened when we – some of it’s
there, but some isn’t. It all seems perfectly normal until it’s over, and then
you’re just left spinning your wheels, wondering where the truck that hit you
went! And I am willing, one hundred percent, to bet you that anyone else who’s
been with him will tell you the same.”
Rogers was likely on the verge of cardiac arrest. Nick thought he might follow
him.
With the entirety of the room turned against him, Stark was growing defiant,
surly eyed. His teeth, commercial white even after years under assault of
coffee and booze, were bared, his sole defense against the mountainous case set
against him. “You people can’t seriously – you know me. I would never.” No one
was swayed. Desperation leaked in when he repeated himself, settling his eyes
on Nick. “Nick, you know I would never.”
“Wait outside.”
Taken aback, Tony wasted a precious few seconds living out the aftermath of the
betrayal. He blinked at the three of them, mouth open. Men of his disposition
rarely looked older than they were, exuding arrogance and penchant for Las
Vegas sins that could not be tied to the middle aged. But they also rarely
looked younger. For just a moment he resembled a kid in college, a kid in high
school. Dumbfounded by the deep injustice of life for the first time.
He reclaimed grace quickly, however, as he always did. He did not protest.
Stark slipped out of the room without a single word in parting.
No one breathed any easier for it.
“Look,” Danvers began, and was tossed dirty glares by all. She shrugged it off
like a champion. “Say what you want. I did what I believed, in the moment, to
be the right decision. The Parker situation was compromised from the get go. If
Tony’s not completely full of shit, then he’s been addled from the moment this
started. He couldn’t be trusted to come up with a decent solution, and he
couldn’t be trusted to not sabotage us in order to get to Parker again. There’s
a chance that he might be messing up the antidote on purpose. Even if he
doesn’t realize it. And the kid is better off living a normal life as far from
New York as possible. I swear to god, I didn’t know jack shit about anyone
tailing him, or abducting him. I don’t know what happened after he left the
building, and for that part? I am sorry.”
“Danvers.” Fury was quiet. The remaining pair went on alert, unsettled by the
unexpected switch in tempers. “I’m starting to think the only one here who
hasn’t been compromised is Captain America.”
Rogers bristled, but said nothing. Danvers gave him a dirty look and scoffed at
the notion. “What are you saying? I wasn’t even near the kid until I was
already cutting him loose.”
Nick shook his head and waved a finger, gluing together the bits and pieces as
he went and having no patience for interruption. “You paused. When we were
leaving his Aunt in observation. You stopped dead in your tracks and you were
staring at the kid. The only thing between you and him was glass and about ten
feet of floor space.”
“I thought you said only men could—“ Rogers interjected irritably.
“Women get panicked and motherly. Protective,” Nick explained flatly, his eyes
narrowed on their sole female companion. “Recent development. Remember what
Stark said about the woman wheeling him in? Same thing happened with the one
that took him off the scene with Venom. The reporter. Brant. He was telling me
about it on the ride over.”
“What?” Danvers shook her head. “Come on. You don’t seriously think I got a
whiff of that. You have to be in close proximity.”
“You said you looked at the reports. The full effects are unknown. There might
be physical factors, but if Stark isn’t lying about the mental effects then we
have to consider telepathy too. You ever heard of Xavier getting stopped up by
a closed door?”
She faltered. Finally. Dizzied and eyes jittery, bouncing back and forth
between imagined marks on the table, Danvers leaned down for support and
pressed her palm to her forehead. “You’re saying he’s been fucking with me,
too?”
“Not on purpose.” Nick crossed his arms. “I’m affected. There’s a protective
component. Some people are just drawn to defend him. By whatever means they
have.”
“Whatever means…” Danvers was still lost in her reverie, still transfixed by
whatever equations she was reading on the table.
“I suggest,” Nick said, pulling her upright by the shoulder and forcing her to
meet his eye, “if you do want to keep your job, that you get Reed Richards over
here A.S.A.P., and you get yourself tested. If I’m right and you’ve been hit,
you’re about as trustworthy as Tony Stark. And I can’t have you on the case.”
Danvers seethed mutinously, but nodded. She might be headstrong, but she was
professional and she was more than competent. Usually. “What about the girl?
Jessica?”
“Have Reed work on her. Get samples. Make sure he never lays a goddamn eye on
her so that we have someone we can trust to do their job. Then, if we ever find
Parker alive, we will see what we can do about fixing the mess you’ve made.”
She left without delay, fuming. Rogers approached him now that he had
regrouped, nothing but professional from top to toe. “Fury, I’d like to join
the search. I know the risks. I can do this.”
Hesitant, Nick started to shake his head in the negative, but Rogers pressed
on. “I’ll double up with someone else if I have to. Janet. We can keep each
other in line. You’re going to need a good team to take down whatever attacked
them. It’s bad strategy, splitting up your forces and keeping good men off the
field.”
He harrumphed. “Fine.” And Rogers was gone. Overeager for a fight, now, and
probably rightfully so. Nick cracked his neck and sent a prayer to the black
abyss where religion and gods might be that they could wrap this up with as
little fiasco as possible and find Parker. Preferrably alive, whole, and
unmolested. There could be more than one miracle a day. It happened, on
occasion.
Upon leaving the room he discovered that Tony Stark had listened quite
literally, and was leaning against the wall waiting for him like a soundly
scolded little boy. He was staring deeply at the wall opposite, contemplative.
“I’m resigning.” Stark announced gravely. He didn’t quaver, but the deep tone
was too much a departure from his regular voice that Nick knew his composure
was a farce. One flick and the thin serenity he had affixed on himself would
shatter completely. “After Natasha, I don’t think I can take another scandal.
Not even just amongst teammates.”
Nick dipped his head low and shot his brows high in a look that better conveyed
a sense of “Are you fucking kidding me?” than any profanity laced utterance
could do. “That ain’t happening.”
“Don’t bullshit me.” Stark let himself crack by a slim margin, ceasing the
fight against the heavy bags under his eyes and the woeful frown tugging at his
lips. “The only reason you haven’t shot me yet is because there are cameras
everywhere.”
“I wouldn’t shoot you.” Nick patted him on the shoulder. Stark sent him a
bewildered look.
He seemed altogether happier after Nick walloped him in the eye, the crack
echoing down the hall with impressive reverberation. Stark crumpled down on his
knees and clutched at his face with a groan.
“And you aren’t resigning. I’d be an idiot to let you go and sell your pretty
toys to someone else. Though I am going to have to consider what I’d do about
that in the future. It’s no good to be solely reliant on one source, right? Not
good business at all.” Nick tugged his sleeves down, erasing any sign of
disarray on his part. Stark stumbled upright and clung to the wall, chuckling
darkly.
“You’re right. It’s terrible business.”
“Because if you let yourself fall victim to Parker’s sway again, or his
clone’s, I will have no choice. You’ll be off the team. And you’ll be getting
reamed by shareholders and media alike. You’ll go down in big, bonfire flames,
Stark. You get me?”
“Loud and clear.” Stark turned and slumped against the wall, gingerly poking at
the swelling around his left eye. “Theresa’s going to have a hell of a time
trying to cover this up. I’m going to look like shit for week.”
“How sad for both of you.” Nick snorted. He thrust his hands in his pockets and
stalked towards the elevator.
“You really would do it, wouldn’t you?” Stark called. “You would kill for
Peter. Even before this, you would shoot a man over that kid if you could.”
He didn’t want to, but he stopped. He chewed on the question for a bit, lips
twisting in a grimace. Stark continued on, uninvited. “I don’t get it. Why him?
There’s a ton of kids tangled up in tights that shouldn’t be. What makes him so
different?”
There was a wickedly sharp retort for that poised on the tip of his tongue, but
Nick refrained. He forced his fists to break, loose fingered and harmless. The
hall had seemingly constricted around them, and the pressure was abruptly all
too insistent, too risky to linger in.
Before temptation kicked in, whether to turn Stark into a panda with another
sound knock to the head or to shoot out a scathing warning to never speak about
Parker again, Nick simply resumed his exit. He left Stark to fumble on his own,
no answers, no pleasantries exchanged. Not that any were expected at this
point.
He needed to join Rogers and get out on the street. The kid could be anywhere
by now.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The light invaded his sleep through his eyelids, piercing, turning the black of
rest to an angry maroon. Peter blinked in tiny measures, reluctant to blind
himself just yet.
His eyes fluttered open. He was in a cell. Not quite a prison cell, the
ceilings swooping upward in elegant metal, the walls a pale bronze born of
whatever alloy they had used to gild the room. He still dressed in his
S.H.I.E.L.D. issue hospital clothes, cast on his bad arm, and sprawled out on a
modest cotton covers. He turned and saw a shape at the end of his bed, watching
him.
Aunt May smiled at him, bright and tragic, putting her hand over his own.
“You’re up. Morning, sunshine.”
Peter blinked again, baffled at the sight of her. Then he was besieged with a
quaking, insatiable rage.
Whatever limitations his body was under – injury, grogginess, whatever ammo had
been loaded in that gun to knock him out – it all melted away and was rendered
inert. He was upright and savagely slamming his Aunt against the wall. She
wheezed and clawed at his arm. Her eyes bulged. “Geez Louise, you’re a testy
little tyke!”
“DON’T.” Peter ordered. He glowered, snarling, and pressed harder and upwards.
Aunt May’s toes left the ground. “Where is she?!”
A sarcastic smirk, too wicked to have ever graced his Aunt’s face, took over
the shock. “Come on, I thought this might cheer you up a bit. You didn’t take
so well to Shadowcat, after all.”
“WHERE IS MY AUNT?!”
Then it wasn’t his Aunt. There was a ripple through the muscle and bone that
made gave Peter a queasy turn, feeling it pulse against his arm where he held
her high. Someone much bigger than Aunt May replaced her: broader shoulders and
tight muscle, cold eyes that could shoot straight into your heart.
Peter gasped and staggered back. Norman Osborn raised a brow and fixed his
suit, the tie ruffled from where Peter had pinned him to the wall.
“She’s with us,” It scoffed. The voice was spot on and terrorizing Peter’s
remaining vestiges of sanity. “Fear not, she lives. Maybe not for long if
you’re going to keep up that attitude.“
“What are you doing?” he squawked. He gestured limply to the impossible form it
had taken. “Why—“
“You were being rude, and I don’t like getting manhandled. Thank you very
much.” Peter made a face and tried to reconcile the flippant language and tone
with the well spoken (and totally crazy) Norman he knew. He couldn’t. It felt
like watching twitchy videos online, where the soundtrack lagged behind the
picture and the mouths moved at all the wrong times. “For the record, I was
trying to be nice. We figured it might be easier on you to see your Auntie than
just waking up in an episode of Oz.”
“The…Wizard of Oz?”
“The other Oz,” Not-Norman said, unimpressed.
“How do I know you’re not lying about my Aunt? Bring her here!” Peter hissed.
“Prove it to me. Prove that she’s still alive, or I’ll—“
“Beat it out of me? Didn’t anyone tell you not to bite the hand that feeds?”
Not-Norman seemed to detect Peter was all about biting hands at the moment. He
rolled his eyes and motioned him to calm down. “Listen short stuff, you’re not
in charge around here. Your Aunt stays put in her cell, and you stay put in
yours until we say so. That’s about all the evidence I can give you. Will you
calm down?”
Peter glowered. He said nothing. The way his chest battered out the air from
his lungs looked more remniscent of a hummingbird in a panic than any human
movement. He was going dizzy, having whipped upright so fast, and had to keep
blinking to keep the numb white spots clear from his sight.
Was he under the effects of that serum yet? Charging at the shapeshifter wasn’t
so telling, that could be attributed to either adrenaline or his spider powers.
Peter discreetly let his fingers stick to his pant leg, and pulled. They
suctioned on, just as always, tugging the fabric away from his leg,. Everything
was still kosher. So what had Aunt May shot him up with? Sugar water?
At least if he had to knock this nutjob around a little, he could. And he just
might while it was wearing that face. Peter stepped backwards, scowling still.
He hated to admit it but if her goal had been to unnerve him, it had worked
perfectly. “Stop it. Change into something else. I don’t want to look at Norman
freaking Osborn when I’m talking to you.”
He chuckled at that. “Wow. Okay. Who would you like? I’m a party grab bag, kid,
anything you want goes. You got a crush on anyone else in the X-Men besides
Kitty Cat?”
The perversity had him flinching, gooseflesh raised as high as it could go.
There were many things he never wanted to hear from Norman Osborn’s mouth, and
that was in the top ten. The shapeshifter was having a riot. A sharklike grin
flashed over his face – about the closest to the real Norman as it had gotten
so far – and he stalked forward.
“How about the Fantastic Four? Sue’s cute. Or is it someone from school? The
Daily Bugle? Don’t be shy, Spidey. We’ve read up all about you. If there’s
anyone that would make you feel a little more at home, let me know okay?
So…what about that little blond number? Gwen or whatever?”
His lungs seized. Peter gaped at the shapeshifter and retreated even further.
“You know, the one that bit it earlier this year? You liked her right? She was
living with you guys after all.”
“No,” he snapped. “Shut up. You don’t get to use her. Don’t. Show me who you
really are.”
Peter hit the wall. Not-Norman slunk up close, enclosed him with a hand planted
over his shoulder. The glass boxed him in on the other side. He leaned in close
to Peter’s face and even if his spider senses weren’t pounding, his heart
certainly was. He was vibrating with the need to scream. “What’s the fun in
that?”
“Mystique.”
The voice was a baritone, and carried with it a finalty that expected
obedience. Peter found himself mysteriously quieted too. His panic was put on
pause as he lifted slightly from the wall, trying to peer around the corner for
a peek at the speaker. Mystique – as he assumed the shapeshifter was named now
– tilted his head back and grinned.
“Sorry, couldn’t resist. You know this kid tried to kick my spine out through
my gut last night, right? ”
“You’re giving our guest the wrong impression.”
“I think he might have had that impression anyway. Seeing as how we ambushed
him and all.”
Approaching from the edge of the cell was a regal figure in purple and red. The
face was not familiar. But the helmet and the cape struck upon some primal
note, an instant measure of exactly how deeply he’d fallen into trouble. Peter
snapped upright, spine straight and found himself frightfully appalled.
The two regarded each other without motion, without sound, through the glass.
Perfectly posed for a portrait on polar opposites: one a spindly limbed boy
that barely breached five foot five, and the other silver haired and erect,
stately, a virtual king in comparison.
The wretched shock of having Norman unleashed on him drained out, just
slightly, at the sight of the man. Peter was forced to scramble for dignity.
Some semblance of control, and he had so little to spare in his wafer thin
hospital pyjamas with bandages all over.
“Well if it isn’t my old nemesis, Magneto,” Peter drawled stiffly. “Oh wait. I
never even said boo to you.”
The mutant, the leader of what might be today’s worst terrorist faction, smiled
down at him. The congeniality chilled. “Matters have changed.”
“You couldn’t message me on Facebook?” Magneto did not take the bait. Peter
quailed, drawing back to the wall before he could chide himself for his
cowardice. He was suddenly very concerned about his teeth, and unsure if the
ache there was something he was churning up out of anxiety or a legitimate
threat. He had two fillings, both in the back molars on his left side. Not that
Magneto would need those, with there being a smorgasbord of metal in the walls
and floor and the frame of the bed to choose from. It would all depend on how
creative he wanted to be.
“Leave us, Mystique.”
Norman raised a brow, but drew away dutifully and made for the other side of
the cell. Now that Peter was looking he could see the thin outline of a door on
the opposite wall.
As he went he began to shrink, the clothes whipping around and rearranging just
as seamlessly as the rest of its body. Suddenly the shapeshifter was no longer
anyone Peter knew at all. The skin bled blue, dark yet vibrantly so, and now
hugged the trim curves of a woman than the bulk of a man. Her hair was a
stunning red. When she reached the door she pressed her palm to it, and it slid
backwards and open to a short turn that would take her into the hall. She cast
a look back at him, and he saw her eyes were pupiless and yellow. She was all
primary colors in a vibrance and combination you’d never expect on a human
form, topped with scale-like patches on the skin. Peter found himself
withdrawing even further. “Catch you later, Spider-Man?” She grinned again
before ducking out, and he was somewhat relieved that her teeth were an
ordinary bone white.
The door whirred and slid back into place behind her. He was not sorry to see
her go.
“You’ll have to forgive her. She’s been sour about other matters for some
time.”
Peter took a deep breath. He fought to keep his calm. The pangs from his
lingering injuries were strangely grounding, and he cuddled his fractured arm
to his chest. It had healed even more while he slept, he could feel it. Maybe
Janet had been able to cook up a longer lasting mix this time.
Or the mutants were treating him. Peter couldn’t be sure if he was on
painkillers anymore. He didn’t feel like dying, but it just plain seemed odd
that a terrorist sect would be wasting medication on him while keeping him in a
trussed up zoo pen.
“Was she telling the truth?”
“About what?”
“My Aunt,” Peter said, and did not bother to lament the needy desperation of
the plea. “Is my Aunt alive?”
Magneto regarded him casually, as if he had asked after an extra pillow and not
his only living family. “To my knowledge, yes. But you ought not concern
yourself with her any longer.”
“Ought not?” Peter repeated. He swallowed thickly. There was something ominous
about the phrase, aside from the obvious. It rumbled through his brain and
knocked things around, dropped half formed notions into place.
“Have you deduced it yet?” Magneto pressed forward. “Why we have brought you
here?”
Peter wasn’t dense. His breathing sped: he had been kidnapped by the
Brotherhood of Mutant Supremacy, whose biggest grudge against him would be that
he dated an X-Man once. If that could even count as an objectionable offense.
There was no logical motivation, no antagonism that he could think of that
justified their hunting him down, out of costume, digging up his real name and
his past. Except for one punitive, horrifying possibility. Even as the concept
burrowed into his thoughts he dodged the subject and reached for another, using
his most cautious tones. “I thought you were in prison?”
“As do many. It’s for the best that they continue to believe so. For the time
being,” Magneto explained with a smile. “There are many blessings that come
with mutant kind that humans do not yet understand. I’ve had the benefit of
allies that could help maintain the illusion of my incarceration.”
So they had a decoy. Or a very fancy paper cut out. And Nick Fury and the rest
either hadn’t figured it out yet, or had been mentally prevented from figuring
it out through mutant wizardry.
They were all screwed. Everyone was screwed.
“But…” Peter started, shaking his head hard. “I’m…look, I’ve never even met you
guys. I’ve hung out with the X-Men a couple times, but even then. You’re
kidnapping me? I’m pretty below your paygrade, don’t you think? We have to
handsew my tights, and look at you with his Holt Renfrew cape and helmet and
fancy fortress thing…” he trailed off, disheartened. He was babbling. “What do
you want with me?”
“You sell yourself too short, my boy,” Magneto chided, and Peter’s skin didn’t
just crawl: it nearly up and walked off his body. He had just been terrorized
by a Norman Osborn, he didn’t need Magneto to start calling him by the same
nickname he did. “Mystique infiltrated Stark Industries not so long ago. And in
doing so she learned quite a lot about you. She brought us the studies they
were doing on you. Your DNA.”
The air seemed thin. Peter’s head was as light as a feather. It made altogether
too much sense. “I’m a mutant. Aren’t I?”
Magneto dipped his head by a wicked shade and the smile went wider. “You are
clever. How fortunate.”
He smothered his face with his hands. Powers in fluctuation. General lack of
control, no known origin. “And nobody figured it out because of my other
powers.”
“It’s a tragic situation you’re in, my boy.” Peter grimaced and thought he
should have told him that he was not anyone’s boy, but he wisely sealed his
lips before the words could leave him. He coerced his hands into dropping, even
if only slightly, to watch the man dole out his death sentence. “You are
crippled. The alterations you have used to become Spider-Man have marred the
mutation growing inside you. Had you never taken serums you would have
transitioned perfectly. But your false powers and your true potential are at
odds, down to a genetic level. The alterations masked the mutant gene, damaged
it. Made it difficult to discern even for the likes of us. It took quite some
study before we could confirm our suspicions.”
“But…” Peter’s fingers flexed in his confusion, staring wide-eyed at the man.
“Even so, why would you just kidnap me like that? You have to know that I’m in
with the X-Men by now. I was with them in Genosha. Why are you making a special
case for me?”
“Because we will not stand for the degradation of one of our own. Charles
wouldn’t help you, but we will. We’re going to fix you.”
Peter fell silent. Ice crept through his skin with a glacial crawl and numbed
him wholly. Magneto moved closer, waving a hand in the air as if fanning away
the fear rolling off Peter in droves. “You’re confused. I know. It’s always a
shock in the beginning, but in time you will see what a wonderful gift you’ve
been given. We are going to undo the damage that has been done to you, and then
we can discuss what you are going to do with your future.”
“You can’t…no…”
“What you did to yourself before,” he said, raising a finger in chiding, “is
the gravest affront to nature that man can commit. While I am uncertain of the
origins, I know genetic tampering when I see it. You were an abomination. And
it is an insult to your true nature, your mutant nature, to continue indulging
these false powers. The forms your mutant abilities are taking now are
distorted ones. Perhaps wholly incorrect ones. All because of the meddling and
the drugs you have taken to become Spider-Man. When you have been cured, we
shall see what shape your abilities take. You are very fortunate. You have been
granted a second chance.”
“A ‘second chance’?” Peter queried, mortified.
“The world cannot remain as it is. Do you believe that there is a place for
humans in a world with the likes of you and I?” Magneto smiled, and it was the
most sincere Peter had seen from him since the conversation started. “The time
is coming much sooner than you think. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider where
your allegiances lie.”
The tight line Peter had held his lips in had bled them white. His jaw ached
from clenching. “What about my Aunt? She’s here because you want me to
cooperate, right? After you’ve gone and mutilated my DNA what are you going to
do with her? Chuck her off a cliff?”
Magneto had the gall to chuckle, as if Peter had told a dreadfully polite joke
at a cocktail party. “We’re not all so savage as that. Your Aunt will go free
when we are finished, we have no business with her. We simply did not want her
calling any cavalry. You understand.”
“Then bring her up here. I want to see her.”
“Patience is a virtue, boy.”
“I have a name!” Peter snarled.
He raised a finger to shush him. “No, you do not. You are not Peter Parker, and
you are not Spider-Man. Until we remove your alterations your mutant nature
will be hidden, and we will not know who you truly are until it’s free.”
“I don’t want you to make me a mutant! I don’t want anything from you!”
Magneto drew back, cold and unimpressed with the tantrum Peter was pitching at
him. “You’re unsettled. I understand. But you will see reason, sooner or
later.”
Then he was leaving, and no longer mindful of what Peter hollered to his
retreating back. Peter slammed the glass all over again, calling him back,
screaming for his Aunt and to be returned home, but the man disappeared down
that grandiose hall that stretched past the edges of his cell. Peter battered
the glass even harder. No one else came. The place was dead, almost
supernaturally devoid of sound. Paving the way for his frantic heart beat to
pound at his skull.
Sneaking up, prickling to begin with before crushing down, bruising, he could
feel Venom’s hand at his neck anew. The weight of Venom’s monstrous body
pressing down on his legs, the scrape of pavement against his back. Peter began
to shiver and sweat. The mix Aunt May had gotten from S.H.E.I.L.D. was
apparently useless, but he was still going to be stripped of his abilities, his
DNA gutted to make way for the ruinous mutation that had been bubbling under
the surface all along.
Peter was certain he’d rather have no powers at all.
***** Hospitality *****
Chapter Summary
     Peter and Mary Jane get a late night visitor apiece.
Chapter Notes
     Warnings for rape/dubious consent, rough sex, violence, and freaky
     dream shit. Mild breathplay too, though it's more incidental than
     played for kinks, and very brief and non-con het.
     I am so sorry about the delay on this chapter. I didn't intend to
     leave it this long, but a combination of real life factors and a bit
     of writing burnout made it hard to keep posting a new chapter every
     week. But finally, FINALLY this one is here so I hope it will make up
     for the wait. Even if it's almost as bad as the Venom chapter. (Don't
     kill me I'm sorry...)
     That said, holy balls you guys thank you for all the kind comments
     and the kudos and everything. I wasn't expecting this many of either
     to crop up period. Thank you, honestly, you're all fantastic! I'm
     going to reply to the comments later, I have to jet to work, but I
     just wanted to post this before I go and give my thanks! <3
The last thing she expected when she pulled out her phone upon leaving the
Triskelion was thirty seven text messages from Kong. Her high of helping
Jessica get to safety was siphoned out of her when she clicked through them,
growing ever more owl-eyed in the back seat of the S.H.I.E.L.D. car driving her
home.
mj I heard on the news is it tru
Mj please call me
I’m sorry mj I know everything is it true? Please please call me
No one is answering at his house
CALL ME IM REALLY FUCKING SCARED
Liz had texted her too, asking about Kong because apparently he’d called her in
a panic and demanded to hear from either her or Peter the moment Liz did. Kitty
messaged her as well, who added that Kong was acting totally suspicious and
maybe she should talk to him.
He left her a voice mail. She waited until the agent had dropped her off at
home to listen to that, her hand pressed to her mouth and seated on her porch.
Kong could barely be heard, his words overshadowed by the heavy heaving and
sniffling as he tried to stifle what might be an earth-filling flood. “Hey,
MJ…Look, I’m so, so sorry. I’m so sorry. What happened to Pete…I know what he
is. I’ve known for a while, and I’m sorry, I swear I haven’t told anyone, but
you’re not picking up and Liz says she can’t get a hold of you and I’m scared,
okay? Is he seriously fucking dead? Just like that? Please call me. Or
somebody. Please.”
Mary just drifted inside and sank into the couch, expression devoid and her
mind whirling in horror. Her mother took her temperature (against Mary’s
pissant protests) and offered to get her a hot chocolate, to which she
begrudgingly accepted and nestled against her mother’s side as Law and Order
SVU lit up their decrepit television. She sipped her cocoa and valiantly
scrounged her imagination for some grand lie she could toss at her friends to
keep them away from the truth. And came up with zilch.
If Kong knew, then Liz would know soon, and then that was it. No secrets would
be kept. Peter was not going to be at school tomorrow, possibly never again,
and Kong just might lose his marbles because that would only be proof, and it
would get out. Somehow it would get out if it hadn’t already, and the entire
school and then Twitter and Facebook and every single person on the planet
would know. Peter Parker was Spider-Man.
She was toast. He was toast.
Then her house phone rang. Her mother was the one to answer, huffing and
stomping into the kitchen, but the conversation suddenly rose in pitch and she
had burst back into the living room and handed the phone to Mary with an ashen
face. She announced that the Parkers had gone missing, and S.H.I.E.L.D. needed
to speak with her.
The next half hour had included tears, vicious shouting at the agents on the
phone and denied requests to speak to someone in charge. Mary wanted to ask for
Nick Fury himself, but her mother was right there next to her the whole time.
Ultimately she had been told to ‘keep an eye out’, and would be notified if
there was any progress, and to report in if either Peter or his Aunt made
contact, or their kidnappers did. After hanging up her mother had to hold onto
her by the collar of her shirt to keep her from stomping out the door to go
look for herself.
“Mary, please, I don’t know why these things are happening to him, or to you,
but you have to stay with me,” she pleaded. “Please. What if it’s that man
again?”
“It’s not Norman Osborn,” Mary insisted, though she herself had doubts now.
S.H.I.E.L.D. was crap at keeping people in custody, and the thought of Norman
succumbing to Peter’s new power and forcing him down made her blood boil to
steaming.
“Mary Jane. Stay.” Her mother had taken her by the arms and looked her directly
in the eyes. “Those people, they’re the ones who can save them. They’re the
ones who deal with all those crazy kooks, not us. Please, I’m worried about
them too. But I’m not letting you go out there looking for him.” She drew her
into her arms then and petted her hair, and Mary began to choke when she heard
the tremors in her mother’s voice. “What do you expect to find, sweetie? We
can’t do anything. Let the police do it. Let S.H.I.E.L.D. do it. They’ll bring
him home, I promise…”
There wasn’t much she could say to that.
Sometime later, after they had both eaten ice cream and leftover key lime pie
and her mother had kept her warm with a tight arm around her shoulders all the
while, she was allowed to go to her room and get ready for bed. Her mother
promised she was welcome to come stay in her room if she couldn’t sleep. Mary
smiled and kissed her goodnight, and bounded up the stairs with a grim turn in
her guts.
Her mother would be furious, and hurt. Mary knew that and she hated herself for
it, but she had to do something. As it was she was already flipping through the
contacts on her phone. Kitty and Johnny had better be awake, because they were
not sleeping tonight.
So when she opened her bedroom door and saw him leaning on the wall by her open
window, she didn’t scream. She did snap upright and gasp, but her alertness
stopped her from balking and chucking whatever she could reach at the dark
figure in front of her.
“Thought you’d be in bed already,” Logan whispered. His face was drawn, his
arms crossed. He might be able to heal himself but Mary couldn’t help thinking
he looked rather green around the gills.
“Does that make this any degree of okay?” Mary hissed, appalled. She hastily
shut the door and wilted against it. Her phone was deposited into her pocket.
Kitty and Johnny would have to wait. “What are you freaking doing here? How do
you know where I live?”
“Did some digging. Didn’t think you’d be at school tomorrow, all things
considered. Thought I’d come looking here,” He slipped , a curious slump to his
shoulders and a hollowness to his voice. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”
Mary scowled. “O…kay…”
He tilted his head towards a photo of her and Peter on her night table, arms
entwined and cheesy grins lighting up a gray day at Coney Island. “How did it
happen?”
“You heard?” Mary moved closer, her fear relit and gesturing for Logan to close
the window. “What do you know?”
“I just saw it a coupla hours ago,” Logan cinched the window shut and wiped his
brow as he took to a patch of wall that was barren of posters and bulletins. He
wouldn’t meet her eyes. “It was all over the news. I mean it, kid, I came to
say that I am sorry. I walked away from you when you needed me. I don’t know
how much that had to do with what killed him, but he’d been missing that whole
time through. Hadn’t he? And now there ain’t nothing I can do to take that
back.”
She cocked her head, puzzled. There had been affirmative promises made by
S.H.I.E.L.D. to notify people like the X-Men, who worked with Peter sometimes,
that it wasn’t real so that they wouldn’t try to seek retribution or come
bother his Aunt with condolences. Or worse, feel like it was safe to announce
his true identity to anyone who didn’t already know. (Shit, Kong. She could not
let herself forget to do something about that can of worms before class
tomorrow.)
But if Logan was out on his own in New York, then he wouldn’t know at all.
Mary wet her lips and motioned for him to sit down. “Logan? You might wanna
take a seat.”
He did meet her eyes then, guarded. The impeccable stillness that came over him
made Mary’s breath stop in her throat. His voice was a dangerous, wounded
rumble. “There’s something off the record, huh?”
“Sorta,” she said with a bitter smile. She joined him, thrusting her hands in
her lap and tugging anxiously at her knuckles. “Uh. So which do you want first:
the good news, or the really bad news?”
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The pavement below him was cold. Sticky, plucking at his skin as he undulated
under each thrust. Peter moaned and tossed his head to the side as Tony Stark
lapped at his pulse and rolled into him, over and over. Peter’s legs were
twined around the small of his back and bobbed back and forth. The bottom half
of his tights were dangling from his ankles. The rest of his costume was on
save for the mask, but all was mussed. Tony was in a finely tailored suit, as
always, but his cock emerged from his open fly to bury into Peter to the hilt.
With how his weight bore down on Peter he could have sworn he was in the Iron
Man armor instead.
Peter couldn’t close his eyes for some reason. He had to watch the alley around
them, cool and dim in the waning reaches of street lamps around the corners,
examine the glints on plaster and bricks as Tony pinned him down and pumped
into him without cessation, without change. The same, monotonous rhythm of a
boat on steady waters. It was just going, and going, and Peter couldn’t feel
anything but the cold and the gummy stickiness at his back. The cock driving
into his rear might as well have been thin air, if not for the sense of
pressure that remained, and the motion and the soft thumps of skin on Tony’s
clothed crotch.
“Get off me,” Peter muttered, gaze to the wall.
Tony didn’t obey. Instead his teeth sunk into his shoulder, fiery hot and
piercing. Peter felt that, the only new sensation that stuck, and it only grew
in severity as the skin parted and blood welled around Tony’s teeth. He yelped
and slapped at him, beating at the ten tonnes of millionaire crushing him into
the ground until he was suddenly alone. Tony had dissipated into the air.
Peter laid prone for a moment. He did nothing about his fallen pants, staring
upwards. There wasn’t a sky. Just a flat, navy void, like painted plywood set
pieces from a theatre troupe.
Then the sounds started again. Slapping, skin on skin. Peter was still alone,
and the sounds were coming from around the corner. Frowning, he dragged himself
onto all fours. He crawled, his knees scraping and his hands nearly sticking
for good with each time he patted them down and lifted again, the ground rising
in thin strings with them like hot mozarella.
Around the corner was another thin alley, more pavement, more navy. Venom was
hunched over and coddling something underneath his bulk, thrusting downwards in
the same metronome rhythm Tony had used on him. Pale white legs, thin and
shuddering, stuck out from either side of his waist.
Then Venom drew back, one hand cradling the head of the person below, and
continued, hunched over in an unnatural contortion for such a bulky form. Peter
could see red hair spilling out from his fingers. He crawled closer.
Mary Jane was lifeless underneath Venom. Her eyes were open and glassy, mouth
parted like a corpse. She was utterly naked, and missing the freckles that
debuted when summer reached its peak and she bared her limbs in shorts and
skirts and sleeveless tees. Her skin was a near literal white. The red of her
hair like fire, and the green of her blank eyes piercing and vivid, electric.
Her lips were vixen red. Her body moved whenever Venom did, her arms skittering
under the force and her head lolled uselessly, falling to the side so that she
was staring at Peter with a doll’s limitless focus. Devoid of thought.
Venom moved his hand. Brushed his knuckles over the crown of her head, through
her hair. Then with one talon-tipped finger, pressed into her temple. The claw
sunk in without resistance. Then the tip of the finger, down to the first
knuckle, embedded into Mary Jane’s head too. Not a drop of blood leaked out. He
pushed to the second and her jaw dropped a little more.
Peter had sunken into the ground, four inches deep, enough to bury his hands
and feet and most of his knees. No matter which way he tore himself, thrashed
his body about and hollered, he couldn’t free himself from the tar. Venom sunk
his finger into Mary Jane’s skull down to the base, and her searing green eyes
rolled back and disappeared behind the lids as her tongue draped out of her
gaping mouth. The squelching sounds of sex swelled, buffeted his ears like the
roar of a jet engine, until he could take no more and jolted awake in his cot.
He was gasping and sweating ferociously under the hospital scrubs. Someone had
turned out the lights, both in his cell and all down the hall. Peter huffed and
shivered, and tore the blankets out from the mattress to cocoon himself with.
He couldn’t remember falling asleep. After Magneto and Mystique had abandoned
him he’d been left alone, and spent futile hours scouring his cell for signs of
a workable exit. Or at least a sanctuary of some sort, because his bed was out
in the open with the one wall comprised entirely of glass. Fortified glass, as
none of his blows could shatter it and only left his knuckles and feet bruised
and throbbing.
There was a private toilet and a sink through a door that blended so seamlessly
into the wall that Peter had nearly overlooked it the first time through, had
it not been for the shadow of the inlaid handle. It wasn’t much, but it was
something. His one last hope, the vent, was only just big enough to fit his
forearm. He’d have to be in twenty pieces to get through it. And the main exit
was impenetrable from this side of the cell. Peter knew he still had his spider
strength, but even then none of his hits or one-handed prying attempts could
dislodge the door.
He retreated to the bathroom now and ran the water in the sink. Mary Jane’s
dumbfounded, sickly face was emblazoned to the back of his eyelids. He couldn’t
go back to sleep now. Awake from a nightmare and the prisoner of a terrorist
sect, threatening to strip him of his spider powers and leave him to the mercy
of whatever was left behind. His Aunt May still being hidden away somewhere,
her worth reduced to a bargaining chip. Peter grimaced and splashed his face
clean several times. His bangs were sopping wet by the end of it.
Peter was starving and shaking at his extremities, his head pounding in
commiseration with his miserable stomach. He loathed the idea of sitting out on
his bed, waiting for someone to come feed him, or push anti-Oz concoctions into
him with needles or pills. The broad window only made him feel like he was
stuck in a zoo. He crept out again and thieved the blankets and the pillow from
his already sparse bed, and set up a nest in the bathroom. He huddled himself
into a pile there, and shut the door, staring at the wall behind the sink and
unsure of what to do with himself.
Escape. He had to find his Aunt and get out. He was certain by now that he was
the only occupant in this hall. If it was a hall. There had been no other
sounds, no dialogue or passerby since Magneto had left him. He was still in
terrible shape from the last time with Venom (and just like that he had to
close his eyes and let his head clink against the bathroom wall as he sucked in
air and counted to ten, because the air had left him and for a split second he
could fool himself into feeling the inky tendrils and the tongue at his neck)
and he wouldn’t last too long in a fight with most of the mutants here, bum arm
and all. His shoulder had seemingly sealed up thanks to Janet’s cocktail, the
stitches scabbed and mostly useless, and the bruises and scrapes had all
vanished. Yet his arm was still chugging along slowly, not quite broken anymore
but still not ready to take a good swing. It would make an easy target. He
would have to work quickly, incapacitate or outrun any assailants. Maybe he
could take a run at whoever next opened the door, hope to take them by surprise
and skirt out that way.
Then he would have to contend with an entire compound of god knew how many
mutants, all of which had super powers of unknown varieties save for about
four: Juggernaut, Mystique, Sabretooth, maybe the Blob.
Plus Magneto.
Barring his immediate death or a swift but thorough butt whooping, Peter would
then have to locate his Aunt May. Then, he would have to navigate the compound,
possibly the land outside it (if they were even on land) and then locate a way
home. Knowing the Brotherhood, he was probably going to have to find a way to
fly, sail, or doggy paddle three hundred million miles back into New York. Try
to hijack some kind of automobile, except he could barely drive and definitely
could not sail or fly a plane. All while dodging the entirety of the
Brotherhood and trying to keep his Aunt alive and his stupid, horrible ass
mutant frick power under wraps.
Peter stood, and bent over the sink to splash his face a little more. He then
cupped his hands and drank the water there, and on the second round spat it
messily as he choked on the knot in his throat. He wiped himself clean on the
edge of the blanket and burrowed back inside. Try as he might, he couldn’t
think of how he could possibly be more screwed.
Sounds; heels, indelicate and flat and thudding, advanced down the hall. Peter
held his breath. It was muffled through the bathroom door, but he plainly had a
visitor. He strained, sitting upright, trying to hear for some sort of clue as
to who or why they were coming to him in the dark of night (supposedly). Maybe
they had seen him go into the bathroom on survelliance and got worried when he
didn’t come out. That he might have hung himself with the sheets or tried to
drown himself in the sink.
The door was opening, and he heard a grunt. Definitely a guy. Peter began to
sweat and folded the blanket over himself and rolled over onto his side,
shutting his eyes tightly. Play dead. Pretend like he was sleeping. Loosen the
blankets over his legs so they could spring upright and nail the guy in the
crotch.
Normally that would be a huge no no, but if it doubled to hamper the guy as an
assailant and a potential victim of his mutant power? Peter would do it. He had
no qualms with cheap shots at this point.
The bathroom door squeaked open, and instead of being an obliging target and
leaning down to get a look at him, the man spoke from up high. “Cut the
Sleeping Beauty shit out. I can hear you mouth breathing all the way down the
hall.”
Sabretooth. Peter fought not to scowl and tried a kick anyway. His leg was
swatted back to the floor like a mouse under the mercy of a cat. Peter hissed
as his heel landed hard on the tile and immediately shoved himself into the
corner, further away from Sabretooth.
“Worth a shot,” he said with gritted teeth. The mutant grinned, his canines
pointed and catching a gleam even in this dim of light. “What’s your problem?
Can’t a man sleep in his own bathroom around here? What happened to a freer,
better world for mutantkind?”
“You can sleep wherever the fuck you like,” Sabretooth said with a shrug. “I’m
here to settle a few questions.”
“Oh dear god. Now?” Peter’s eyes rolled and he moved to stand, still pressed
flatly to the wall. Normally he might chide himself over limiting his escape
routes, but with two hundred-some pounds of ugly parking in the only exit he
had Peter felt that getting distance in was more beneficial than mobility. He
would have to draw Sabretooth in, away from the door, or make sure that he
backed out into the cell again.
And quickly. Before it could kick in. How long had it been since he’d had his
last shot of the antidote? Peter wet his lips and fished for an out. “Could
Magneto seriously not wait until morning for this?”
“I ain’t here on Magneto’s dime,” Sabretooth drawled. “Tipped off the
surveillance guy to watch the ‘toon channel for a bit. It’s just me and you,
Spidey.”
“Ah, the showdown literally no one was waiting for,” Peter spat. “Unless you’ve
got my Aunt behind you and a plane stashed down your pants, I am not interested
in anything you have to say.”
“You’re a real mouthy shit, you know that?”
“Yeah, I do. And so would you, if you had any kind of business with me before
this. But you didn’t, so,” Peter gave a peevish wave of his hand. “Skedaddle.”
“Except I did, didn’t I?” Sabretooth leaned casually against the doorframe,
infuriatingly set on sticking around. “Don’t tell me you forgot. It’s been
twice now you’ve come my way.”
Peter hoped that he couldn’t hear the way his heart was pounding out a
bassline, rampant and quaking. He probably could. Sabretooth wouldn’t have been
kidding about hearing him breathe from down the hall. Wolverine 2.0, the online
messageboards concurred. Heightened senses and healing and the surliness of
five Oscar the Grouches, congealed into one Super Grouch. Peter feigned
disinterest even so. “Would we call those ‘meetings’, really?”
“Maybe not. But settle one thing for me: Hell’s Kitchen.”
Shit, Peter thought vehemently. He would be permanently fused to the wall if he
tried to press against it any harder.
“I could smell it was you. Same snot nosed punk that busted up my fight with
Wolverine,” Sabretooth tapped the side of his nose and smiled, canines brushing
the precipice of his bottom lip and his eyes unwavering on Peter’s. “I might
have just roughed you up. Taught you a lesson about interfering and been on my
way, but I was curious: why was Spider-Man waltzing around the wrong side of
town, reeking like he’d been ass-fucked into the floor?”
Frank Castle. Peter’s eyes went wide, his face morbidly hot, and he wanted to
protest that Sabretooth had imagined it. He had showered first thing.
Apparently, not thoroughly enough. The man had yanked him into his arms and
sniffed him – so that had been on purpose. Not because Peter’s mutant powers
drew him in. Or maybe it was a little of both, one aggravating the other.
Sabretooth was encased in shadows as he moved further in, his face all but
disappearing. Peter didn’t have a lot of wall to escape to but he climbed
upwards regardless, one handed and feet scrambling. The ceiling was low. The
room was thin and stuffy and hot. The door was unoccupied now, but Sabretooth
was in front of him and only barely craning his neck to look him in the eye.
“Is money that tight out in Queens? Trying to squeeze an extra dollar out of
that little getup of yours?” He clapped a hand on Peter’s knee and the spider
sense started to hum. He tilted it to the side, thumbing the cleft where his
calf pressed snug to his thigh. His claws didn’t slice the fabric but pricked
it, roughing up the threads and peppering the air between them with tiny zips.
The drumming of his pulse was unignorable, thrumming in his ears. Peter
breathed in thinly. “No,” he said, scarcely more than a puff of air. The skin
of his knee burned, Sabretooth’s hand singeing it through the flimsy fabric of
his pants.
“Well shit, it’s hard to think of another reason a good little boy like you
would be doing the walk of shame at two in the afternoon. Or…” He slid his hand
higher, nicking the fabric with his thumb to leave a line like a nylon run in
its wake. Peter shuddered uncontrollably and began to sweat at his brow. “Maybe
Shadowcat’s not your type after all.”
“I don’t…” Peter croaked. He couldn’t ignore that hand. The closeness. His
muscles seized and Sabretooth squeezed in response. Peter gasped, the slightest
of hitches, and somewhere in the pit of his gut he knew he was a goner.
Didn’t the Brotherhood know about this? Didn’t they know that no one should be
in here, with him, where they could touch him and kiss him and slip their hands
under his clothes and he wouldn’t be able to do jack shit about it? Or did they
just not care?
In the darkness he could almost imagine it was Venom again, the bulky frame
nearly black save where he could see the blond, ragged hair spilling down his
shoulders and back. Sabretooth’s voice was like the purr of a jungle cat. “Who
was he? Not your age, for sure. I could smell that much. Got a thing for the
daddy types, huh?”
Peter kept his gaze, mouth parted and molten hot all over. “It just…happened.”
“Kinda like this?” Sabretooth abandoned his thigh for his hip and yanked,
snapping Peter’s hold on the wall and dropping him down a foot before body
slamming him back against it. His breath was warm as it puffed over Peter’s
cheeks, face looming close as he weilded him by the legs and jerked them up,
cruelly curving Peter’s back and pressing his rear against the rising bulge.
His whimpers were pitiful surrenders already.
“No,” he keened weakly.
“You sure?” Sabretooth rolled against him, coercing his cock into the cleft his
ass even through their clothes, rubbing it, coaxing it to life. “Feels kinda
like you’ve done this before. How about this?” And he grabbed Peter’s legs
again to pin them to the wall, drawing a straight line from knee to knee: a
lewd demonstration of his freakish flexibility. Like a bug under glass, wings
splayed out with metal pins and a placard below. Sabretooth laughed at the
sight. “Oh, you’ve definitely done this one.”
“No!” Peter retorted, pushing his one good hand at Sabretooth’s chest, fully
intending it to be a hit but instead he had to stop and spread his fingers.
Palm the rigid muscle of his chest. It was like stone. His own cock was rising.
Pure muscle, and pressing him into the wall with no effort, and that was a
massive dick standing against his rear. “Fucking let me go, you crazy…”
“Well how’s this one?” He dropped Peter’s legs and he went stuttering to the
floor, still half upright because Sabretooth hadn’t given him the berth to fall
completely. He set his palm against his scalp and Peter felt its breadth, broad
and stiff, and wondered if those fingers could close around his head whole and
squeeze it into pulp.
They knotted into his hair instead. Dragged him up until he felt the man’s cock
bump his jaw, tented in his pants still. Peter flushed hot and his stomach
quivered, and he had to look at the floor for fear he might burst into flame,
facing the man’s crotch from mere inches away. “Bet you spend a lot of time
sucking dick. Smartass little shit like you, bet they love stuffing you up.”
Peter trembled and grappled for purchase, settling for a fold in the leg of
Sabretooth’s pants. He curled his fingers into it as if it might keep him from
falling. His knees hurt already, smarting from the tumble, but he didn’t dare
shift away. “I’ve never – no, I haven’t.”
“Oh, what a shame. What a damn shame.” He pushed at his head and made Peter
nuzzle his member with all the gentility that lions gave gazelles. Smell wasn’t
a sense that stuck on his mind often, but now he felt he knew what it must be
like being Wolverine. There was a muskiness, a resounding identity about the
heady scent being rubbed into his nose. If he ever caught a whiff of something
like it down a street at night, or passing by on a breeze, he would know it by
heart and he would be thrown back to this moment, with the denim nearly
chaffing his nose and the wildfire pumping through his veins, the dick that was
a button and a zipper away from spreading slick trails of precum over his face.
“We can fix that right now, can’t we?”
Peter swallowed and mumbled, mostly indiscernable, “Uh huh…”
“That’s right.” Peter’s head was drawn away as Sabretooth coarsely popped his
button loose, pulled down the zipper. He wasn’t wearing underwear. His dick,
rigid and thick, bobbed free and swatted Peter’s cheek. “Don’t be shy. Go
ahead. Give us a kiss.”
The heat radiating off the thing was phenomenal. Peter could taste it, even
just through the air, and though it was dark and Peter’s field of vision was
already limited to the breadth of Sabretooth’s hips the world seemed even
smaller than that. Just the length, the heat, the smothering scent. Peter
turned his head, lilted back in the new slack on his hair that Sabretooth had
given him, and kissed the shaft, open and sliding the wet side of his lips over
the skin. It had a darkness to the taste. Something out of his vocabulary, like
skin but a little more.
“Now lick it.”
Peter jutted out his tongue and started at the underside, then rolled up to the
top. Just around where the head joined the length. Sabertooth was
uncircumcised, he could feel that now, there was a ridge between the head and
the rest that tugged so slightly along with his tongue. There was a bawdy
rumble from the man above him and Peter could swear he could feel it shaking
his bones. “Good boy,” he congratulated and let his hair go to rub at his head,
petting him like a dog. “Keep at it.”
Peter steadied himself again with his palm now flat and at the side of
Sabretooth’s hip. His cast arm stayed tucked at his middle, even if he had
momentarily turned it out to further brace himself on the other hip before he
remembered. He licked again, this time starting further down and drawing up in
a flat, singular stroke. It wasn’t the best taste. Even a little bitter. But
the motion put his nerves on fire and his pants were tenting, and everything he
ever wanted boiled down to keeping some part of him on that cock. Peter licked
again, and then flicked at the tip and quivered when he tasted the beginnings
of cum. He wrapped his lips over the head and pulled back, the skin tugging
with him some way before he hit the end, bare and soft and wet. He circled his
tongue over the divide and Sabretooth moaned tormentuously when he accidentally
found his tongue probing the underside of the skin.
“Not too much – that’s it,” he guided as Peter tentatively investigated the
differences, his own dick being cut since as long as he could remember and
having to explore mouth first. He had to think, which was hard enough as it was
with his blood boiling and being boxed in by a man twice his size with his dick
in his face, but he could remember what he’d seen before this. The girls in
videos usually tried to take it in as far as they could and pumped at what
wouldn’t fit with one hand. Peter wasn’t ever really sure how much of that was
actually good and how much was just something they did for show, that wouldn’t
work or feel good in real life but hit the spot on tape, so he couldn’t bring
himself to try swallowing it down just yet. But he did close his mouth over the
end, pushing up farther, enclosing what he could without gagging and trying not
to be too disturbed by the feel of something massive and heavy in his mouth,
leaving his jaw hanging to accommodate. Peter pulled back and swirled his
tongue over the shaft and the head as he did and then clumsily took it in
again. Repeat. It was getting easier on every turn, and he wasn’t even so shy
about letting it prod the back of his mouth.
Just mirror what the rest of sex was like, he surmised. Back and forth, over
and over. He let go of the hip eventually and brushed his fingers over the
man’s balls, gently rubbing, then venturing up to clutch at the leftover shaft
and pay it the same attention the rest was getting. Sabretooth kept petting at
his hair and grunting on occasion so he figured he must not be so terrible at
this. At one point he remembered that he was supposed to suck at it, not just
run his mouth over it, and when he did Sabretooth yanked at his hair again and
moaned, tapering off into a sinister chuckle.
“Quick learner, ain’t ya Spidey?”
Peter made a sound in response but it was smothered into a meek, deathly cry.
Sabretooth didn’t let him pull away now, taking the reigns again and shoving
Peter down to impale his mouth on his cock. Peter choked when it pressed
insistently on the back of his throat. His petulant gargles only made the man
laugh more, begin to thrust, and Peter couldn’t keep up anymore. The best he
could do was hold still and let the cock jam into his mouth without his teeth
or tongue getting in the way.
He was grateful when the man pulled out for good. Less so when he was torn
upwards by his bicep and his shoulder threatened to pop clean out of his
socket. Sabretooth had him by the waist and slammed him high into the wall so
that his feet dangled half a foot above the floor until he scrambled to get
them secure against the wall, bending his knees around the girth of the man’s
middle. Sabretooth went for his pants. Peter found his ass bared, the flimsy
elastic waist of his hospital scrubs stretched wide over his open legs. His
erection was still bent under the elastic. It was unbearable and lonely and he
tried to reach for it but the next moment Sabretooth was grabbing at his
ankles. He ripped his feet off the wall and Peter’s back skidded downward, air
catching with a meager squeak in his throat, but he did not fall. Sabretooth
grabbed his rear before he could fall and pushed Peter into the wall. He had to
quickly move out his cast arm to hang at his side or it would be crushed by his
legs, knees coming to meet his shoulders and his feet lost in the air.
“You look so fucking tasty right now. Look at these lips,” Sabretooth pushed
his thumb into Peter’s mouth and pressed down on his bottom lip. Peter could
feel the blood pumping there. “All red and swollen like a whore.”
His thoughts were mostly scattered to the wind, but he still frowned and
glowered. “I’m not a whore,” he rasped.
“Oh? That so?” Sabretooth let go of his face and reached under him. He devoured
Peter with open, invasive kisses that nicked with his too sharp teeth and
smothered in their scope as he repositioned his cock against Peter’s entrace.
It was sopping wet from the haphazard blow job, and that seemed like enough
excuse for the man to start pressing in the head without trying to loosen Peter
first.
He jutted his head to the side to break the kiss and holler in shock. It wasn’t
that so much the pain – that was absent, it was all pressure and stretch by now
and Peter could concieve with a little pang that maybe he was ruined so badly
that he’d gone loose, so many people had shoved their dicks into him. The
thought stung. It was a deep and buried thing breaching its confines: pain like
a splinter rising from his gut to his lungs, piercing them before impaling on
his heart, jamming up his throat. When he shuddered tears came loose and he
shoved his cheek against the wall in an attempt to hide them from Sabretooth,
turning his head as far as he could take it. He ought not to have bothered.
Sabretooth lapped them up with a flat tongued swipe, gripping his chin hard to
draw him back in so he could reach the other cheek.
He started pumping into Peter then. His laugh was coarse, and Peter’s moans
long and mournful.
“Take it,” he hissed at him, and licked into his mouth. Spittle linked their
lips as he drew away before it broke and slopped against Peter’s chin, and
Peter had to wonder if he got off on tasting the traces of his own cock. He
pushed roughly at him and fondled his rear with one hand, kneading and stroking
and pinching as he bombarded him with a flurry of deep thrusts. The lower end
of his back was smacking against the wall and he gave out the most pathetic
whimpers as it bruises were birthed on each tender bump of his spine. “Little
bitch. You talk big but look at you now, huh? You love it. Big dicks get you
drooling, don’t they?”
And Peter, choking on his humiliation, still bit his lips and squirmed under
the heated fog he was lost in. In and out, and pushing against that little
hotspot inside already, his own dick standing tall and nearly chafing in the
hospital pants. He could hardly remember how to speak. “Yeah...”
Sabretooth laughed wildly, and pried them off the wall. Though there was a
steady and broad-handed grip around his waist Peter was loathe to lose the
support. He yelped and wrapped his good arm against Sabretooth’s neck, sticking
by the pads of his fingers on instinct. But the man didn’t drop him. He simply
lifted him up. Slammed him back down. Peter’s scream reverberated on the metal
walls like the lingering buzz of a cymbol. His thighs, threaded under
Sabretooth’s arms and around his ribs and still strangled by the scrub pants
slung around their base, squeezed hard for support. Peter started to
anticipate, push himself upward from the strength of his legs and let himself
fall. Sabretooth ceased lifting him and watched stunned as Peter did the work
on his own. He was bouncing midair, suspended by an inert hold on his waist and
the squeeze of his legs, tangled around Sabretooth’s middle in a mess of a
pretzel. His hand was soldered to the meaty flesh of his shoulder. Sabretooth
gave a salacious moan. “You are goddamn shameless. Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Shut up,” Peter hissed. He shut his eyes and carried on. He could focus on the
good bits that way without wanting to hurl over the bad. Namely, who he was
riding like a bucking bronco. Sabretooth was big, no lies about that. If he
left his eyes closed and turned deaf to the dirty jeers, the moans, then he
could pretend it was nothing. It was nobody important. Squeeze at the girth
inside of him and let it nudge at that little bump that sent lightning to the
tips of his toes and fingers without wanting to scream.
He would have killed for his cast to be gone right now. Loathe as he was to
try, his cock was dripping by now and he ached to jack off. Peter grunted and
tried to jolt himself up into a tighter angle, so that he could rub his dick
against the man’s abs with a better consistency. Better friction, too.
Sabretooth took it the wrong way entirely. He attacked his neck and his lips
and stilled Peter’s bouncing. He cemented him to his chest with a one –armed
clutch, and made for the door. His cock slipped loose as he walked, and
occasionally smacked at Peter’s ass on the odd step.
He deposited Peter on his bed, now consisting of a lonely and barren mattress.
His pants disappeared. He thought he heard them land with a feather soft thump,
but that wasn’t important when Sabretooth was crawling over him, on his knees
between Peter’s open legs and lifting his shirt to lick at his belly, bit at
the start of his ribs. His canines brushed a bruise and Peter choked. He
reached further and groped at his chest, suckling at whatever skin he could get
under his mouth. Peter’s legs tensed and slid back and forth over his sides,
ribs to hip, in appreciation. He let his fingers thread through the shaggy
blond locks and wasn’t at all surprised to find them coarse and wiry like a
dog’s, almost too thick to be human.
It was a brief exploration. Peter switched to yanking, pulling his head up and
using his legs to tug him in close with a mantis grip. Sabretooth raised his
gaze and a brow to follow. “Hurry up,” Peter ordered hoarsely. His cock was
throbbing. His ass was throbbing. Neither was happy with the sudden neglect.
Sabretooth was all smiles. “You sure came around quick enough.”
“Stop being such an asshole and just fricking—“ Peter whacked him on the
shoulder, “Shut up and fuck me.”
“Well if you’re that keen on it.” And the weight lifted off of him, his legs
were hoisted by the knees into the air and split far apart, and Sabretooth bore
down.
For a moment all Peter saw was Venom, enveloping him in shadow, skyscraper high
and foreboding. The sweat at his brow went cold.
And then the revererie was gone. Heat waves swilled back through him as
Sabretooth pressed the thick head inside him, the wide shaft, Peter loosing a
long groan at the progress until he could nearly feel the tickle of the dark
hairs at his crotch against his rear. Peter bit his lip and could feel it
bruising under his canines, but did not let go. He tried to coerce the mattress
into a fold under his fingers, give him something to hold onto that wasn’t
Sabretooth or his own dick, but it had no give. Too stubborn to give up, he
combed through his own hair instead, entwining it around his knuckles and
pulling, hard, so that the sharp pricks of hair at the brink of being uprooted
could combat with how Sabretooth filled him up and pushed against that sweet
spot inside of him. His toes were curling.
He had hoped Sabretooth would come before he did. He was still holding out. He
wanted to, so badly, but if he started stroking himself he knew he’d be
humiliated, it would be like Sabretooth had coaxed it out of him.
Whore. The word was rattling inside his skull even now.
Peter gasped sharply when he felt the tips of his claws curl around his hips,
speckle the round of his ass, and he could have sworn the mattress was made of
stone cold pavement, his skin wet with blood and spit. But no pain came.
Sabretooth only yanked him up so that his hips could meet him where he had
risen to his knees. Peter’s neck was curved cruelly, only his head and
shoulders and arms were connected to the mattress now. His erection flopped
down and bumped at his stomach. From here, Sabretooth snarled and rammed into
him like a jackhammer, red eyes slit and lip curled, teeth bared in a wolfish
threat.
“DON’T!” Peter hollered, his cry strangled by the angle of his neck. He slapped
his good hand on the mattress and fruitlessly stuck it there, hoping it would
help keep him still. His legs flailed around Sabretooth. Air came to him thinly
and he could swear he was choking on every thrust, the merciless jerks jarring
his neck and banging his teeth together. “STOP IT! I C-CAN’T— BREATHE!”
“Shut the fuck up.” If possible, Sabretooth punched into him harder. Peter
wheezed and twitched and moved his arm closer, trying to prop himself up to
alleviate the panic. It helped a little, but curved his back even more and
every pump of Sabretooth’s hips jarred his bones together, put cricks in his
joints and made his muscles sting.
He could have wept in thanks when it stopped. Sabretooth pulled out of him and
let his hips drop. Peter bounced gracelessly on the mattress and heaved for
air. The mutant seemed not to care. He only inched forward and reached for
Peter’s head next, pulling him up by the hair. Peter shrieked and snatched him
by the wrist to pry himself loose. He wasn’t letting that cock in his mouth
again, not after it had been inside him.
His spider sense rose as Sabretooth wound back and slapped him hard. His cheek
went numb. He had to blink white spots away. When Sabretooth gripped him again
and turned his face forward, Peter complied with only a baffled blink.
“Look at me,” he growled, and Peter could see now that he had himself in his
hand, slick noises following every pump and the foreskin rolling back and forth
over the base of the bright and throbbing head. He was pointing it at his face.
Peter obeyed, turning his gaze up to the sneer above him and simply gaped at
the man. He might as well have been ten feet tall, his form seeming to stretch
up and up impossibly as Peter hovered low at his groin. Peter quivered, cowed.
When Sabretooth came it splashed over Peter’s face in ungainly strings. The
first spurt caught him under his left eye, and when he gasped and tried to turn
away his right cheek got painted in ivory cream, a glob landing in his ear.
Sabretooth forced him forward again and some fell over his lips and the tip of
his nose. Peter flinched and squeezed his eyes shut, mortified. But his cock
was still hard, his belly twisted with need and some part of him knew that the
trembling wasn’t just from disgust, or fear.
He was sick, or crazy, or both. His chest had gone a little tight and he
lingered on the spot, frozen in anticipation. Hoping there would be a little
more. One last splash to finish off. None came and Peter’s stiff shoulders
wilted in disappointment.
Sabretooth followed him down to the bed, cooing and telling him he was such a
pretty little thing and pressing his palm hard against Peter’s mouth as they
hit the mattress. He reached between them and seized Peter’s cock. His cries
were muffled under the hand, and he could taste the man’s semen. It was
squished under his palm and thus trickling into his mouth. Sabretooth made no
move to wipe it away, and his hand was rough against his dick and Peter
couldn’t be sure which had his feet kicking against the bed: the bitter taste
of cum and the hand smothering his mouth, or the thick fist curled around his
dick.
He didn’t last long at all. He came with a pitiful whimper, and his own come
splashed over Sabretooth’s hand and his thighs. The mutant held onto him and
bit at his ear as he rode down from the high, his wriggling slowing to twitches
and his heart pounding in time with his head.
Sabretooth was hot above him. Stifling, and chafing where his unruly hair
rubbed against Peter’s own threadbare skin. Peter’s eyes burst open.
Impressively, he managed to slam Sabretooth into the wall while lying down with
only one good hand at his disposal. The man hit the metal with an ungainly
thud, and maybe it was his imagination but there was a slight shadow left in
the wake that might have been a dent.
“GET THE FUCK OUT!” Peter hollered hoarsely. Any elation, any sense of calm
that came with release had fled him entirely. The cum didn’t wipe away wholly
when he scrubbed his face with his sleeve in fury, choking at the smell and the
clammy remains. He shoved himself upright and awkwardly twisted his legs, knees
to his shoulders to hide his groin and pointing a rigid finger at the door to
their side. “NOW.”
“What the fuck?!” For his part Sabretooth looked more bewildered than offended.
He was openly confused and seemingly unhurt. Or already healed, as he would be.
Peter had thrown him ruthlessly into the metal wall but he hadn’t been aiming
to break a bone. “This some kind of bipolar bullshit?”
“Leave. Now!” Peter demanded again. Sabretooth’s lip curled and he snorted,
unconvinced and unthreatened by the half-undressed teenager screaming at him.
“That how it’s gonna be? You were plenty peppy just a second ago,” Sabretooth
pointed out, reclining against the wall and utterly unconcerned with decency.
His now flaccid cock still hung out of the fly of his pants. “What gives?”
“I said get out!” Peter kept jutted his arm out, stiff as a javelin from the
top of his shoulder to the very end of his index finger. Rebellious factions
wanted him to shudder, to shake that solid line but he refused to give in. He
could shake and cry and exorcise every other awful urge Sabretooth had incited
in him after the man was gone.
Sabretooth raised a brow. Then the other followed, and the corners of his mouth
lilted upright in a bastard’s smirk. “Oh,” he said. “Oh. I get it.”
“That I want you out? Get lost, you sick son of a—”
“This is your mutation, isn’t it?” When Peter went pallid he began to chuckle,
even raising a fist to his mouth and closing his eyes to relish the joke. “You
get all hot and bothered and sucker people in with you?” He laughed even
harder. “Oh, sweet Jesus. You gotta be fucking with me. That’s why you had that
little hobo posse trailing after you that day, right? Craving some ass.”
“Shut up,” Peter ordered, low and raw.
Sabretooth shook his head and kept on like no one had spoken at all. “No wonder
they have you all holed up in here. Authorized personel only. Your ankles’d
spend so much time in the air they’d sprout wings and fly clean off.” He
grabbed Peter’s left foot and waggled it high, guffawing when Peter hissed and
wrenched it free. “You really drew the short straw there, didn’t you Spidey?”
Peter was as still as stone. His pupils had retreated to tiny vicious pricks of
black that stuck to Sabretooth’s every move like barbs.
“Logan was better.”
The room went quiet. Sabretooth’s mouth hung open but he was no longer
laughing. He had Peter fixed in a tense, unreadable stare.
“…The fuck did you just say?”
And Peter, who suddenly found himself brimming with the kind of cold that made
you shiver in delight, filled the void with laughter of his own. It was high,
thin, and delirious, and made it ache around the edges of his cutthroat grin.
“What?” he spat, adder-like, “Jealous?”
Sabretooth had never looked less human. He was much more of his namesake now,
eyes dark and glittering and sharpened teeth unveiled in his snarl. That old
buzz in the back of his head swelled, but Peter was saavy enough to know he had
to dodge the swipe that came for his middle, threatening to pour his guts over
the mattress.
He landed in a crouch on the glass, scowling and wishing desperately that his
pants were still on. Sabretooth launched at him again and Peter leaped to the
door this time. It was locked, of course it was locked, and Peter found himself
calculating exactly how hard he would have to hit a man with regenerative
abilities to keep him down for the count until someone toodled along to feed
him breakfast.
He ducked and rolled from another punch, slamming his cast elbow hard on the
floor and crying out. “They’ll know!” he shouted, “They’ll know you were here
if you leave a mark on me! I’m freaking off limits, remember? You said it!”
Sabretooth came for him again, and though Peter was already mid-jump the mutant
had caught on well enough to the pattern to slam him in his middle and stop his
escape. Peter dropped to the floor but skittered away, crouching low. “Then
I’ll leave marks where they won’t fucking see them, you rat-faced little shit!”
Peter wasn’t about to give him the opportunity. He could only play keep away
for so long in the cramped cell.
So he launched, knocking the man if not unconscious then at least on his back,
and beat upon him with steely knuckles and primal shouts of fury. Sabretooth
blossomed black and blue under every hit, blood drawing around the face, and it
was all so perfectly unfair when the skin mended and the bruises were sucked
back into nothing.
Sabretooth did not put up with Peter’s rampage for long. The claws were out and
Peter sprung back to the wall to miss the swipe at his face, crouching in a
tangle of limbs. Sabretooth tugged him loose by the bicep, and after a hasty
tussle had him on his stomach on the mattress, his bulging, fur ridden forearm
bearing into the back of Peter’s neck like an anvil. He could feel the weight
on the mattress shift, Sabretooth looming over top of him and tugging his rear
into the air. Peter spluttered and tried to move away, jamming his elbow back
into Sabretooth’s ribs until the man lifted his hand off his neck and brutally
slapped his cast. Peter yowled when the agony rippled through him, quaking as
he clutched at the cast, as if holding it gently would soothe the hurt beneath
the plaster.
Sabretooth rubbed himself into the cleft of Peter’s ass. Growing hard again.
Was that the healing thing, an extra benefit from an extra quick metabolism and
mending cells? Peter writhed but made no headway on escape. The cock started
out a little meaty, some give and limpness, but as Sabretooth rolled against
him it went stiffer. Thick again, red hot. He could hear him spit copiously on
his hand and cringed as he heard the man’s hand slipping over dick. Even worse,
when Sabretooth crouched and aimed a glob of spittle directly at his hole.
“No,” Peter moaned into the mattress. Sabretooth pressed in, just the tip but
still insistent. He shoved Peter’s head deeper into the mattress, but Peter
still whimpered away, the patch under his mouth soaking with his drool. “No no
no no…”
“You keep saying that, but we both know that in a minute,” Sabretooth paused to
give a cruel shove in, burying halfway, “you’re going to be fucking gagging for
it. God’s little gift to you, Spidey.” He pushed in further, and Peter couldn’t
help the childish sobs that wracked his frame. “Better buck up and enjoy it.”
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It was all laid bare. She didn’t tell him who had been involved with Peter.
Nothing so specific as that. But Mary explained his new powers, how he had been
attacked by an old enemy and why the press insisted Spider-Man was dead, and
that the real Peter and his Aunt had been abducted mere hours ago. Logan was
stoic throughout, but Mary was getting to be a much better read of old grumps
like him and could sense the tension in his jaw just as clear as she might a
furious holler and a sneer.
“And no word on witnesses or the like, huh?” he growled.
“No, but I’ve done some digging before.” Mary tapped her laptop. “I always keep
track of what Peter does. Just in case it can help. I’ve got stuff on everyone
he’s ever fought. I mean everyone. Even the vampires, which is – eugh –“ She
waved her hand and tried not to be exasperated at how Logan didn’t even blink
at the mention (what kind of a nutty world was she living in where she could
talk about vampires with deadly seriousness and it didn’t involve the latest
plot twist for the Salvatore brothers?) “—so it’s more about seeing who’s been
creeping around New York that could possibly damage a car like that. They said
the trunk was wrecked, like someone had squeezed it, and the top was gone and
it had been thrown into a building, so they know it’s definitely something with
super powers. And if Peter’s stupid thing was activated, then it didn’t have to
be someone he’s met before. It could have been literally anyone.”
“You really narrowed it down, there,” was his sardonic congratulations.
Mary drew in a deep breath. She dove off the bed for her lumpy backpack and
fished out her lilac wallet, daisies embroidered on the side. “I’ll pay you,”
Mary said as steadily as she could manage.
It was that simple offer – not the vampires, not the abduction itself – that
got her a surly furrow of his brow. “For what?”
“I have a job. I can pay. Anything. Please.” She extricated the hundred dollars
she had leased herself for the week. Mostly for that top she had been eying at
Guess, but she could get a damn shirt whenever she pleased. “Look, this isn’t
much, but I’ve got some saved up, I can run to the bank tomorrow—“
“Kid, I ain’t taking your burger joint money.”
Mary scowled. “You will take my burger joint money and you will like it.”
“Oh for fuck’s sakes.” Logan squeezed his temples as if her very presence gave
him migraines. “No. Save for a car or some crap like a normal kid, Jesus. What
are you asking me to do? Hunt him down?”
“Help me.” Mary thrust the money at him. “Help me find out what’s happened to
them. S.H.I.E.L.D. says they’re on it but, they’re S.H.I.E.L.D.” She bit her
lip. “Peter’s never been a priority to them. They deal with stuff in Korea and
England and Iran, even. At the end of the day Peter’s just small fry. And his
Aunt’s got a bad heart, and she’s never been mixed up in this stuff before.
They might hurt her to get to him, or decide that she’s not worth keeping
around…I’ve known them both since I was in diapers, Logan.”
Logan wasn’t warming up to the idea. He had a look in his eye like he was
spearing down her thoughts, one at a time, and all she could do was stand there
with the money burning between her thumb and fingers and pray he’d take it.
“And what about whoever’s got him?”
“I…” It had been a thought. Briefly. The twenties were crumpling as she
tightened her grip, inched back the offer.
“Are you asking me to take care of them too?” Logan said slowly. Mary’s
shoulders drifted up, coralling her ears and she shook her head in spurts.
“I…don’t know.”
Logan took his sweet time assessing her. She was worried she might begin to
sweat. She hadn’t ever seen the man try anything, get involved in a fight, and
while there was a general meanness about him Mary was finding that she wasn’t
prepared to have those cold eyes set on her. She knew she wasn’t in real
danger, but knowing who this man was and what he was capable of, and, to a
higher degree, what she was too scared to ask him to do, gave her chills that
brought back times on top of the bridge, or watching Harry turn into a monster,
the clone with only half of Peter’s face left on his skull grinning at her from
behind the glass.
When Logan moved she flinched, but all he did was curl her fingers into her
palm and push her hand back. “Keep it. I’ll do what I can and I don’t want no
kinda payment from you.”
He stood, and Mary got a whiff of booze and sweat and something musky, and just
as quickly as she could see how terrifying he might be, she could also
understand how Peter might have wanted to take a taste of his lips. There was
something about the way the shadows fell on his face and the scruffy stubble at
his jaw, the broadness of his frame even if he wasn’t that much taller than
her. Mary retreated a step, cowed thoroughly.
“I owe the kid. I owe him a lot, actually. He’s put himself out on a limb for
me a coupla times and I never paid him back for shit. And I owe you. For…you
know.” He grimaced. Mary mimicked the expression.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Logan snorted. “I seem to remember a pair of fists flying at my face that
thought something different.”
“I didn’t know!” When he only raised a brow at her she huffed and threw her
hands in the air. “Fine! Yes, of course I’m still mad, but that’s neither here
nor there! We just need to find them.”
“There won’t be a we. You’re staying here.”
Mary gaped. Then she did slap his arm, hissing with untold vitriol, “No.”
“What do you think you’re going to do out there? Bat your eyelashes and hope
they’ll let ‘em go?” He pushed her onto her bed, hands clapped on her shoulders
as if scolding a very small child. “Pretty as you are, that ain’t gonna fly.
Could get ugly out there, and then where would you be?”
“With him,” Mary insisted. Emboldened by her indignation, she pushed his hands
off and stuck a stern finger at him. “I know it will be dangerous, but I do not
care. Do! Not! Care! And besides, what are you going to do if you do find Peter
and he’s still giving off those creepy vibes? Huh?”
“That won’t—“
“No, you can’t guarantee it won’t happen again. Logan, you don’t know. It’s
strong. For all we know that’s the whole reason that whatever took him, did.
It’s already snagged you once. And maybe there’s like, a chance I can stop it.”
She spoke hurriedly now, slipping onto her feet again and pushing into Logan’s
space, chiseling in her point. “It’s never happened around me. What if having
me there can prevent it? Subconsciously, I mean. Stop him from omitting
whatever the thing is? I’m his girlfriend, seeing me could jumpstart his brain
or something.”
Logan regarded her curiously. She tried some more, “Or at least I’d be able to
smack some sense into him. And you. Plus I’m immune, I’m a girl. I could
protect him from that much.”
He breathed roughly through his nose, and he was wincing again and that brought
Mary back to the idea of migraines. You would think hanging out at the Xavier
school would make him immune to spunky teenage attitude. Evidently not, as his
defiance dwindled to a curt nod and a glower. He gripped her bicep and leaned
in close.
“Fine. But you do exactly as I say, when I say. When I say sit out, you sit
out. Keep quiet, and cover your eyes if I damn well ask you too. But most of
all, I say you turn around and high tail home, you better already be running. I
ain’t getting none of your blood on my hands, not even for your boy’s sake.”
“Deal. Done.” Mary smiled grimly. It was a victory, but a small one on a long
list of battles yet to fight. She would save her whooping for when the Parkers
were home safe and sound.
“I’ll meet you tomorrow. There ain’t no point in you heading out when neither
one of us’ got a clue what direction to look in. Keep – tch—“ he gestured
vaguely at her laptop, “keep doing whatever you were doing over there, and I’ll
fish for some leads tonight.”
“Why can’t I go with you tonight?”
“You over 21?”
“No,” Mary said irritably.
“Then what the hell would you be doing in a bar on a school night?”
Mary scowled and thinned her lips into a flat, seamless line. “You’re looking
for leads in a bar.”
“I been at this longer than you, kid, don’t give me no shit.”
“I won’t if you don’t ditch me tomorrow.” She crossed her arms stubbornly. She
got a grunt and a begrudging promise to keep his word, and she wrote the
address and time he gave her down on the pad of paper by her laptop. Logan
shook his head at her all the while.
“What were you gonna do if I didn’t show up here tonight?”
Mary shrugged. “I was going to call Johnny and Kitty.”
He groaned and pinched his nose. “You ain’t gonna call them now, are you?”
Though it seemed fair to at least warn them, Mary had to pause for that. Johnny
and Kitty, who were both at least twice as qualified to be skulking around
solving mysteries as her, were still teenagers and probably just as guileless
as she was. Logan, on the other hand, was a man who knew the ropes. He knew how
to do this right. So even if she herself was tagging along and generally making
herself a nuisance, it would probably only be worse tacking on another two
overeager teenage stragglers. No matter how superhumanly gifted those
stragglers were. Sorry guys, she thought with a cringe, but she still nodded
firmly at Logan and told him, “No.”
“Good. Keep it that way.” He headed for her window. “And kid?”
“Yeah?”
He locked his eyes with hers, steady. Wary. “Leave something for your mom.”
The idea settled stiffly between them. The hushed motor of a sheepish driver,
returning late from a night in Manhattan and parking nearby, was the sole sound
that made it to Mary’s room to shatter the peace.
She swallowed thickly and nodded again, and Logan crept out the way he came.
She could hear him land heavy on the grass below her window, and moved forward
to watch him stalk away, shrouded in black and too casual, too dauntless to
belong on her little suburban street with its lazily coiffed hedgerows and
vivid red tonka trucks left forgotten on the neighbour’s lawn.
Did she move like that now? Did Peter? How much did it show in their gaits,
their eyes, their hushed voices and tensed jaws, that they didn’t belong here
anymore?
She gripped tight at her wrist. Her hand was tingling, and her stomach was rife
with knots.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
When the lights turned back on they fell onto a lumpy cocoon of blankets, inert
on the mattress. Peter was near invisible under their shield and completely
immobile. Still a little damp, his hair not quite dry yet though he had
shivered off what little wet the blankets hadn’t soaked up. He had washed
himself from head to toe in the tiny sink and vomited twice into the toilet,
and left his hospital scrubs in exile in a corner in the bathroom. Somehow the
blankets felt safer. More solid to his skin, even if he had to lay prone under
them or clutch them close to keep from sudden exposure.
Not that he wanted to move anyway.
He pulled the blankets over his head when he heard two sets of footsteps. He
didn’t want to see anyone. He didn’t even want to eat.
The door hissed open and he cringed. He heard the footfalls stop. The crinkling
of a paper. Rustles as it set on the floor, and it sounded more like a takeout
bag than a stack of notes. The mattress dipped with new weight and Peter
stopped breathing. He could feel the pressure of a hand on his back through the
blankets. Small.
“Peter?”
It was low, and hesitant. But still the voice came to his hears like a drop of
honey. Peter rose, sitting back on his heels, and slowly pulled the corner of
his bedsheets off his head and around his neck.
Aunt May, alive and whole and in the same clothes she had worn when they were
taken, was sitting on the bed. Behind the glass was Mystique, who raised her
brows at him impassively and held up her hand. “You got five minutes.”
Peter gaped. The mutant stalked off to vanish around the corner, and his Aunt
swallowed thickly and smiled at him with tears in her eyes. She spread her arms
wide.
And Peter, pale and growing thick in the throat, launched into her embrace
whole, letting the blankets fall to his waist and revelling in the smell of her
hair, the familiar crook of her neck and how her fingers trailed softly over
his spine.
“I’m here, sweetie. I’m here. It’s going to be all right.”
***** Contingencies *****
Chapter Summary
     While Peter shares a brief respite with his Aunt, everyone else fine
     tunes their plans. But there are new wrenches in the works for all.
Chapter Notes
     There's a bit of mild gore and violence at the end but I feel like
     it's pretty minor compared to the stuff that's already happened.
     Other than that, no warnings!
     ...Except that it looks like a month is now the average time it takes
     for me to crank out chapters. Sorry about the added wait time, but I
     hope you'll bear with me! I am not abandoning it.
     And once again, thank you thank you thank you all for your kind words
     and kudos and general support, I'm stunned. Every time. <3 <3 <3 I'll
     reply to comments throughout this week, gotta run and take care of
     business!
     -ETA: I meant to write 'I hope you'll bear with me', not 'you'll bear
     with me' which sounds perfectly awful and presumptuous. 8( That's
     what I get for not editing the notes as well as the fic.
“A placebo.”
“In a roundabout sense, yes.”
Nick Fury and Carol Danvers were both spearing Reed Richards with glares so
molten he seemed to melt a little into his seat. Which was plausible, given his
perturbing elasticity, and Nick would not have been the least surprised to see
him welding his back into the chair. Sue Storm stood to his left, too antsy to
sit, while Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm crowded his back like cartoon thugs.
“So, my next question becomes, why were you so intent on duping a S.H.I.E.L.D.
agent who was coming to you with a legitimate, life threatening crisis?”
Danvers fumed. She might snap her own humerus, the way she clutched at her arms
so tight from the stern cross they were in.
“Not that we’re ungrateful,” Nick tacked on pointedly. Danvers had the dignity
not to scowl at him for it.
“Well for one I was wondering why it wasn’t you yourself, Nick. Mr. Fury.” He
flicked his tongue out to wet his parched lips and bashfully dipped his head.
“Uh. You see, when Miss Danvers brought me the sample and asked for a gene
cleansing agent, saying the subject was endangering himself and others and
unable to control his own powers, I was rather shocked to find that the DNA
sample was a 99.98% match to Peter Parker’s.”
“And why do you have his DNA on file?” demanded Danvers.
“Because he’d come to us before! You remember – the clones? He’d found out he’d
been cloned? I did the testing. He came to us first.”
“Good thing too, since you just showed up at his house with a pair of cuffs and
all the brass you could muster,” Grimm rumbled from the back.
“Yeah,” Johnny asserted with a glower. Sue hissed at them both to shush.
“And so…” Richards carried on thinly, “Well…that gave me cause to be
suspicious, really, and so I just gave you a placebo to buy some time, because
I couldn’t conceive of why you’d want to strip Spider-Man of his powers, or why
you would have to lie about it if you were doing it for beneficial purposes.
Especially when we had received a message about you people faking his death
that same afternoon. And then I talked to Johnny, asked him if he knew about
Peter being in some kind of trouble –“
“And that’s how we walked in on you planning to storm the Triskelion and take
him back,” Danvers concluded.
“That was Johnny!” cried three quarters of the Fantastic Four. The accused only
huffed and stuck his chin up stubbornly.
“Well excuse me if I was wasn’t down for you guys totally ruining my only
friend’s life. Again.”
“What am I? Furniture?” Grimm interjected.
“My only friend that’s my actual age,” Johnny added peevishly.
“Danvers might not have been acting of her own accord. One of the newer
developments we’re going to need to look into.” Nick hoisted the thick manila
folder from the table beside him and dropped it in Richards’ lap. “Detailed
there in Tony Stark’s research. We need another pair of eyes on this. Stark
knows biology, but he’s more of a weapons mogul. We could use someone with more
refined experience in genetic manipulation. Storm? Richards?”
“Yes,” Sue said without hesitation. Richards looked a tad more green around the
gills.
“Of course, yes, we’ll help, but it’s going to be difficult to test anything
when he’s not here.”
“Has there been any word?” Sue pushed, her eyes broad and earnest, and Nick had
half a mind to rescind his offer and send her out. This was the same reason he
had forbade anyone from passing him a phone with Mary Jane Watson on the line
unless she had stumbled on something useful. He could still hear Mrs. Parker,
her simmering rage thinly cloaked under calm and matronly reproach. Not even
one day. One single day and this is what happens.
Nevermind that he hadn’t slept – no one had slept, extra manpower and brain
power and whatever other forces he could muster were on the front lines. Even
though his hands were tied even now. Pleas for extra funds always fell on deaf
ears, and while those with America’s reins in hand were always concerned with
super powered maniacs on the loose, Nick could not wrangle more money or more
time out of anyone for the sake of one boy. If he was affiliated with politics,
or signed onto some team rather than leading life as a loose cannon, more
alarms would have been sounded. He’d be able to look as long as he wanted, use
as many resources as he pleased. Yet as it stood, the longer Parker was missing
the more likely he would get put on the back burner, left for dead unless some
miraculous clue turned up years later.
Nick was hardly the only one tearing his hair out (so to speak) over the loss.
Tony Stark was dipping into personal funds and reappropriating what he could of
Stark Industries’ resources while keeping his employees in the dark about
Peter’s identity. Probably because he was still vying for forgiveness over
fucking him. And of course, the Ultimates were pulling through. A lot of them
took it quite personally. Van Dyne and Rogers especially, both of whom
volunteered to scour the city’s underbellies and seedy organizations for guilty
parties and witnesses.
So when people like Sue or Johnny or the Watson girl came up to him and threw
him boiling slander or puppy dog eyes as if there was more he could be doing,
sometimes Nick had a hard time keeping his fist from curling into cruel
purpose.
“We’re doing all we can,” he replied stiffly. Her lips pursed though she
pressed no further, and her brother huffed and sneered to her side. Nick shot
him a plain and deadly stare, and Johnny had the good sense to drop his gaze to
the floor and stiffen on the spot. Having one eye always helped when you needed
a little menace. He dropped the matter and gestured to their original
interrogation subject. “As for your question, Richards, we do have someone to
test on.”
Richards and the other (barely) adults were stunned, but Johnny looked nothing
but hopeful. “You mean—“
Danvers was already typing rapid fire, summoning the screen to life. It
displayed a webcam feed of a downtrodden Jessica Drew, reclining in her cell
and finishing off a grapefruit, the last standing survivor from her hearty
S.H.I.E.L.D. issued breakfast. She was making use of the laptop they had the
pity to bestow upon her, which one could tell from the angle and how closely
situated the camera was to her bed covers. She looked a shade startled, head
cocked and brows furrowed at the suddenness of the call. “Oh? Uh, hi Nick. Miss
Danvers. Hey, you’ve got a whole gang in there.”
“Since we can’t have her here in person,” Danvers provided.
“Is this one of the clones?” Richards said, gaping openly and standing out of
his chair for the first time since he had arrived. “Remarkable – but why did
they alter the gender?”
Jessica cringed in repulsion. “Listen, Bucko. You are not allowed to ask me
what freaking Doctor Octopus was thinking when he put boobs on me. Not this
early in the morning.”
Richards went pink around the ears and Grimm lightly swatted him upside the
head. “Dork.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Richards held up his hands as a measure of peace.
“Let’s try that again. I’m Reed Richards.“
“I know.” Jessica patted her head with her index finger. “I’ve got like ninety
five percent of his life stored up in here. I know who you are. Nice to meet
you in sort-of person?”
“And so…what do we call you?” Sue tried, covering her shock with even tones and
a tautly kept nonchalance.
“Her name is Jessica,” announced Johnny. His surly teenage piss fit was broken
for the moment, a small, affectionate smile curling the sides of his mouth as
he strode closer to the monitor and waved. “Hey. Glad to see you stopped being
stubborn.”
Jessica looked down at the blankets and fiddled with an errant lock of hair.
“Yeah, well…Um. So you guys are here to help find Peter? Have you heard—“
“No,” Nick quickly interjected, unwilling to deal with another hissy fit from
the girl. Danvers had been the one to deliver the news to her and had returned
looking like she had lost a year on her life and demanding a triple shot
americano. And that had been over speakerphone. “Kid, they’re here to help fix
you. They’re going to be doing the testing from now on.”
The shut gate on the Parker situation was clearly still rankling her chains,
judging from how her jaw clenched and the deep breath she took in through
flared nostrils, but the mention of a cure softened her as a whole and her gaze
snapped to Richards, then Sue. “So…okay. Okay, I guess I’m all right with that.
You need blood samples?”
“Well yes,” Richards insisted. “Among other things. I think it would be
beneficial to take stock of what the physiological states are when you’re
under-going these little spells, both of you and who you’re affecting—“
“Whoa! Hold it, Dr. Jekyll. No ‘in action’ testing. Ever.” There was a choppy
waving of her finger, pixelated and lagging. “I came here to get smooch free
and I am staying smooch free.” Johnny opened his mouth and Jessica was back at
it with her scolding finger. “I said no!”
He retreated, dejected. “I’m not perving! I’m just saying I’d do it if it’s the
only thing that would help. Pete’s my buddy, so you are too!” He watched
Jessica, who seemed nothing more than taken aback by the abrupt declaration. It
only spurred him further. “Right? Better me than anyone else. I know what’s
going on and that it’s not right or real. Plus we’re the same age. See?”
Jessica cast her eyes about her cell and wriggled on the spot. “Technically
speaking I’m still a wee toddler child.”
“And you have my permission to punch me out if I get too close,” Johnny
continued doggedly. “Right, Reed? We wouldn’t have to actually do stuff, we
just have to let it like, affect each other enough that you could do your
little science skinnamarinky-doos, and then that’s that. Right?”
“Essentially speaking, yes. It’s the most ethical approach if we’re to do that
sort of testing. We might have to use restraints to make sure you two don’t
actually get close, unless touch is a factor.”
“It isn’t,” Jessica retorted sourly. “Guys, seriously, a guy broke into my
apartment to get into my pants. It’s not something we can just like, poke at to
see what happens.”
“Listen, Jessica,” Nick said, clapping a hand on Johnny’s shoulder in a measure
of support. The kid startled, but didn’t shake Nick off. “We’re running out of
options. Even if we do get Peter Parker back, he’s still going to be at the
mercy of this crap power you two’ve up and sprouted. And there’s no guarantee
keeping you caged up and visitor free will save you, either. We’ve already lost
Parker. You really want someone to come gunning for you?”
That shut her up. Though it opened Danvers’ mouth in exchange. “I didn’t come
‘gunning’ for him, dammit.”
Nick ignored her. “I’ll leave Danvers with you to help arrange whatever
experiments need to get done. And anyone who isn’t helping with—“ He turned and
narrowed his eye. With Sue and Richards enlisted and the youngest Storm
volunteering as a guinea pig, that left one. He shot Grimm an incredulous look.
“Are you really the only one I can kick out?”
“No can do,” Grimm insisted. He leaned against the wall as if he owned the
whole building. “I’m the team mascot. I leave, the morale withers and dies.”
“It’s true,” Sue said with a shrug and a smirk. Nick scantly refrained from
loosing more expletives out loud.
“Then I’m leaving. Don’t break shit. Don’t go wandering. No snooping through
our records,” he said pointedly at Richards. “You go where Danvers permits you
to go and you do as she says. You are here on our good graces alone. And we’ll
kick the lot of you back into the Baxter Building if you cause any new messes.
I’ve got enough on my damn plate right now and I don’t need none of you heaping
on seconds.”
Richards and Sue exchanged perplexed glances. “He’s saying it like we invited
the mole people to invade New York,” Sue said.
“Didn’t you?” Nick drawled, and after nodding to the morose Jessica on the
monitor he made for the door. “Next time I hear from any of you, it had better
be with some good news.”
Behind him, Danvers sighed the sigh of someone who had just inherited a dozen
children in a family will. The last thing he heard upon leaving was her weary
plea.
“Seriously you guys, please don’t break our shit.”
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Though Mystique had left them alone (save for whatever voyeurs they had via
camera, which Peter had no doubt would be on again by now), they didn’t move
from their embrace. If anything Peter snuggled harder into her shoulder and
squeezed her tighter. She rubbed his back and then combed his hair with a
feathery touch. A serenity unlike anything he’d known settled over him. The
jumpstart to his pulse, the pressure of fresh tears at his eyes in gratitude
for the simple glimpse of her face, the tremble in his hands: all of it
withered away. He was the most calm he could remember being in his life.
Invincible and safe with her.
But they didn’t have much time.
“Did they hurt you?” Peter asked blearily.
“No, sweetheart. They haven’t. Have they hurt you? Where are your clothes?”
He didn’t mean to do it, but with her here his resolve melted, and he couldn’t
stop the words from flooding out of his mouth. “This guy came – that Sabretooth
guy, the creepy looking wolfy one – he came in here last night.”
She retracted, holding him at arm’s length and gone ashen. Her eyes darted
between his. “You mean…”
The whole ordeal spilled out of him. Unbidden. Unwanted, as if it were being
tugged out of him on a chain. Though the details were brutal he was
inconceivably serene as he divulged them. Nothing seeming to register quite
right. His Aunt burned at the brims of her ears, eyes glittering darkly and her
teeth gritted. “It won’t happen again.”
“Aunt May—“
She gripped his wrist, tight, and Peter felt a warmth like a hot bath settle
over his mind. All he could see was Aunt May. “I’ll make sure of it,” she
ascertained. Something about the strength of her voice, though she spoke not
much louder than a whisper, made Peter believe her. He nodded and she kissed
his forehead and hugged him again.
“Hold out your arm,” she requested. It was already outstretched before she
could even reach the paper bag she had set beside the bed. Peter didn’t startle
when she pulled out a medical kit, and from it drew an empty needle and a vial.
Nor when she dabbed at his bicep with alcohol soaked cotton and coerced the
needle into a vein, as if she had been doing so her whole life. He watched
lazily as it swilled full, pumped ripe with his blood, and then dripped it into
the vial for safekeeping. She plastered a bandage on and fished out a second
needle from the kit. This one was already topped up with a clear solution.
“To help you get better,” she said with a smile.
“Like the one from Janet?” he asked.
“Yes.” It was already in his arm and pushing the medicine in. Initially it
struck him woozy, but much like Janet’s serum it fizzled into normalcy
momentarily. She patched him up the same, and he prodded at the bandaids with a
small perplexity. Then she started unthreading the stitches from his shoulder,
with more tiny, fussy medical tools she had pulled out of the paper bag. She
had taken that First Aid course after she had found out that he was Spider-Man,
insisting on being able to help him when she could. He supposed there must have
been something in there about taking out stitches and administering shots.
Maybe. He could have asked but he caught a glimpse of her eyes, bright and
blue, and he thought it didn’t matter so much at all.
She pressed breakfast at him next, a plastic plate and mug each with covers
that housed scones and fruit and still piping hot chocolate, and she cupped his
cheeks and looked into his eyes.
“Peter, I know that it’s been hard so far. That we’ve gone through some awful
things to come here, and that you’re alone in this cell and you feel like you
can’t trust these people. But they do want to help you. And your mutant power
might not even be the same when it’s fixed, when they get rid of what’s in the
way. It might be something better. And even if it isn’t, they can help you
learn to control it. To use it, to make it bend to your will, and even evolve.”
Peter tried to turn away from her then, his gut giving a sudden jump, but she
gently pressed at his jaw and he was caught in her eyes again, and he realized
that she might be right. “You could be something spectacular.”
“Yeah?” he pursued.
“Absolutely.” She tapped the end of his nose and he pulled away with a laugh.
“Just hold on for a while longer. They’ll take care of you.”
He heard the click and thud of a door, distantly, and a measure of footsteps
that he was now able to pinpoint as Mystique’s for certain. She materialized at
the glass with a bundle over one arm, looking more wary than irritable, her
gaze keen and hot on Peter with a taut line about her mouth.
“Come out here for a sec,” she called, crooking a finger at his Aunt. Peter was
loathe to let her go but Aunt May slid out of his grasp as smoothly as ocean
waves, and he didn’t pursue. He was still naked under the blankets, after all,
and grown snug and content in place on the bed. She gathered the paper bag and
slipped out the door, exchanging the bag for the bundle with Mystique. The cell
door popped open again to permit her a second time and clicked shut on cue. She
held the bundle out to him.
“They’ve brought you some new clothes. Better than some flimsy old scrubs. Will
you put them on once we’re gone?”
“Sure,” Peter agreed. He took the offering with his good hand and set the
bundle beside the plate of food.
“And eat your breakfast. All of it.”
“Sure thing, Aunt May.”
She beamed at him and stroked his hair. “That’s my boy. I’ll be by later, all
right? From now on, I’m the only one that comes in and out of your room.”
“Okay,” Peter agreed. He grinned at her toothily.
“My little man,” she said proudly. She hugged him around the shoulders and
Peter did his best to reciprocate with one hand, and then she was making for
the exit again. His heart sunk as she disappeared behind the door, then waved
to him from behind the glass. Mystique took her by the shoulder and led her
away.
Peter examined the breakfast tray. He didn’t have much of an appetite, but his
Aunt said he should eat. The scone was moist, freshly baked, but thick in his
mouth and somewhat tasteless. He chewed in contemplative silence.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Mary Jane Watson didn’t bring her backpack. Or her purse. All she had was her
phone in one pocket and her thin wallet in the other, stuffed with cash, her
student ID and a picture of Peter hugging his Aunt that she had printed out
last night tucked between the twenties. She wore sunglasses and sturdy boots,
and a worn pair of jeans. After looking in her closet for decent head gear she
had to stop herself, because she was a leather jacket and a cowboy hat away
from trying to dress as Logan’s Mini Me. It hadn’t been on purpose. Not
entirely.
But it was enough of a difference that as she approached Kong’s car in the
school parking lot, the bedraggled boulder of a boy looked her way twice before
he realized what he was seeing.
“MJ?” he croaked. His face was a solemn shade of gray, but there was enough
dregs of color remaining to drain at the sight of her face.
“Hey,” she said, somewhat more quietly and more timidly than what she had
imagined. Something cool, Buffy-assertive and all business, maybe. She wasn’t
as brave as she had been rehearsing in the mirror last night. “Kong, those
messages you sent me?”
“Yeah?” Kong scrambled out of his car and fumbled to shut the door, shaking
around the hands. He crowded her close. “What is it? What happened?”
Here, she could draw on her real frustration. Real grief. It was fortunate for
her that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s cover story about a tumor meant she wouldn't have to do
too much acting. “Stop. It wasn't funny. Did Flash put you up to it? Peter’s in
the hospital and he's not okay. Seriously, I have no clue where you got the
idea—“
His eyes sparked, and life returned with a bleed of red in his cheeks. “No. MJ,
don’t.”
“Listen to me, Kong—“
“I’m not dumb, okay? I know, I’ve known for forever. That spider? That one that
bit him? And he’s gone from class all the time and when he is here he’s got
like nine hundred bruises? And then him and Kitty Pryde? They can’t even look
each other in the eye. And you don’t like her because she was with him, right?”
“Whaaaat is this about Kitty Pryde?” Speak of the devil, and so she appears.
Mary turned to find Kitty at her shoulder. Likely she had been magnetically
drawn by the sight of the two in tense conversation. “Hi, Kong.”
“Peter Parker was Spider-Man and now he’s dead,” Kong spat vehemently. Kitty
gasped out loud. Consciously or not, she brushed Mary’s hand, making to grab it
until she wisened up and snapped it away.
“What do you mean?” she said, stammering slightly. Mary only barely suppressed
the grimace of exasperation nudging at her cheeks. So much for keeping it
subtle.
“Don’t! He’s gone and you’re still trying to shut me out? That isn’t fucking
fair! That isn’t—” he dropped off the tirade suddenly, glancing between them.
“Why…why aren’t you guys crying? You went out with him. Why aren’t you…”
“Because he isn’t Spider-Man?” Mary insisted. There was some attempt at playing
clueless, and she sent Kitty a bewildered look as if to say, ‘Can you believe
this bozo?’ “Kitty? Come on. You dated the guy. There’s no way that Peter was
Spider-Man.”
Kitty’s lip curled, and Mary knew she was putting her in a crappy position, and
maybe they weren’t in that beautiful state of girl sync where they could carry
on entire conversations entirely through shifty glances but Mary made silent
pleas regardless.
Not that it mattered once a fourth voice joined the fray. “Guys?”
In tandem, all three turned to see Liz Allan, standing off to their right and
looking every inch like an abandoned puppy. “Guys…you…” Her mouth seemed not to
be working properly. She teetered forward gracelessly and grasped Mary by the
arm. “MJ. MJ, please tell me it’s not actually him.”
Mary stared, frozen. Liz carried on with halting phrases and quakes in her
hands. “I just…after Kong called me last night…everyone’s been talking and
like, Spider-Man’s dead and the news said he goes to this school and everyone’s
saying that the only person who’s missing has been Peter. Is Peter…”
Mary couldn’t breathe. She cast her gaze over the lawn. There were clumps of
people, more of them than usual it seemed, gathered in huddles. The school had
a strange hush about it, even though the muddle of voices could reach them out
here. She could even see faces, mottled by distance, looking their way as if
trying to count their numbers.
“I shouldn’t have…” Mary trembled. Kitty was suddenly gripping her other arm,
holding her steady as Liz kept her desperate clutch in tact. “Oh my god. It’s…”
“They’re all saying it, MJ,” Liz insisted. Tears were slipping down her face,
but she kept her eyes wide and open. “It’s not true, right? Please. It’s not
true. That’d be silly right? Pete’s so like, he’s so small and skinny, there’s
no way he’d be Spider-Man. It’s impossible.”
Mary took her in, at how she was starting to sniffle, her lip quavering. She
looked at Kong, withdrawn and accusing and hurt. She looked at Kitty, who was
agape and as lost as she. Then she turned to the lawn again, where her
classmates and juniors and seniors gathered and gossiped and Mr. Foggerty was
shambling down the steps and ushering them in, stiff backed and white as a
sheet.
It hadn’t started with Kong. It had started on its own. MJ couldn’t be sure
whether S.H.I.E.L.D. had held up its promise to spread word that Peter was on a
deathbed quite separate from Spider-Man’s. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe it was
just one absence too many, one excuse too many.
Too late. She was too late, just like always.
“He’s…he is.” Mary gulped. The drumming of her blood was roaring in her ears.
“MJ!” Kitty hissed.
“Oh my god,” Liz moaned, cupping both her hands to her mouth. “No! It’s not
true, it’s not Pete. MJ, just tell me it’s not Pete, please – ” Tears rolled
out of her in torrents and she shook her head, curls flying. Kong choked and
turned, resting his forehead on the roof of his car and sobbed through clenched
teeth.
“Not the dead thing. He’s not dead!” Mary barked. Both of them returned their
focus to her, owl-eyed. Kitty was carding her hands through her hair and
muttering curses to herself in high pitched tones. “Guys. Just keep it cool
today. Okay? You need to do this for me. For Peter. Tell them they found a
tumor and that’s why he’s not here.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?!” Kong flung his hands in the air. “One
of you, tell me what’s going on or I swear to god—“
Mary snatched him by the lapels and squared him in the eye. “He’s gone missing.
Him and his Aunt. Someone ripped their car apart and snatched them clean out of
it, and we don’t know why or who or anything, all right? That’s the truth.
Congrats. You’ve figured him out and you’ve figured me out. But you cannot let
everyone else keep talking about it like this. Capsice?”
“What?” Liz said thinly. “So…so he’s not even…but then why are they saying he’s
dead already?” She shook her head again. “How is this actually – how did Peter
get to even be Spider-Man? What’s going on?”
She did not have time for this. “Kitty?”
The mutant continued tugging at her hair and glowering at MJ, as if wishing to
twine her fingers around her neck instead. Hers was a mania barely concealed.
“What the hell are you freaking doing, Mary Jane?”
“Look, if it was just you and me against the rumor mill, it’s not worth
anything, right? Everyone knows you dated Spider-Man, and everyone knows I’m
dating Peter. Our defenses aren’t going to mean much. But if Liz and Kong can
back us up that it isn’t Peter, then maybe we can fend it off a bit. Even
slightly.”
“Um, did you or did you not hear about how literally everyone in the school has
guessed that Peter Parker is Spider-Man?” She pointed at Liz, who took a break
from bewilderment and grief to scowl at her.
“It wasn’t my fault! I heard about it from Tandy!”
“Guys! Shut up for two seconds and just do what I’m telling you!” Mary ordered.
Quiet reigned again. “We can do this. Just give me one day. It’s Friday, it
will just be one day. I promise. Help me cover for him. I’m begging you.”
“MJ, so you’ve just been lying to me?” Liz shook her head. “You’ve had his
whole other life and you couldn’t trust me enough to tell me?”
Mary pressed her palms to her eyes, her own tears threatening to form. Trust
Liz to go straight for the gut. “It’s not my secret life. It’s Peter’s. I just
got mixed up in it.”
“Liz,” Kong called, much more softly and calmly than before. “Look, dude’s
gotta keep a secret. You remember when that Goblin dude busted up our school.
Or those weird guys kidnapped Flash because they thought he was Spider-Man.
That stuff only happened because more people were finding out about Peter. Am I
right?” He shrugged. “It’s why I didn’t say anything.”
Mary could have thanked Thor and all the weird Norse deities in Asgard for the
return of reason. She smiled gratefully at Kong. “Yeah. That’s a big part of
it.” MJ put a hand on both of their shoulders. Kitty watched from the side,
stiff as a board and frowning. “Which is why I really need you guys to help me
here. Tell them he’s sick. There should be reports coming in to the teachers
saying the same thing. You guys back that up, and we’ll have a chance. Okay?”
She paused. “Do we have to huddle? Kitty, get in the huddle.”
“Oh lord,” Kitty rolled her eyes but entered their boney, limp-limbed circle.
Kong’s arms nearly stretched around all three girls at once, and Liz still
favored MJ as her clinging partner of choice. “The X-Men never made me huddle.”
“Well this is a Mary Jane Watson special, so deal with it,” she said with no
room for ifs ands or buts. “We need to keep up appearances. I know the moment I
get in there people are going to be on my butt about Peter, so help me out and
fend a few off. Anyone asks you, I’m inconsolable because of Peter’s tumor
thing. The official story from S.H.I.E.L.D. is that it’s in his brain. That’s
what the teachers will have heard, if they’ve already spread the word. We’ll
back that up. And Kitty? You’re going to have to—“
“—Be broken up anyway because my ex-boyfriend Spider-Man is dead, yeah yeah.”
Her feet scuffled on the ground and her arms twitched as if to draw out of the
circle, but she refrained. “What am I saying when they ask me who he was? That
I’m not allowed to say?”
“In case his family will get hurt, yeah,” MJ nodded. “He still has big time
enemies out there, it makes sense. And if pressed just. I don’t know, make
stuff up. Anything to get the heat off Peter. Just lie out of your butt until
you can’t lie anymore. And nobody bring up Spider-Man unless someone else does
it first. Got it?”
There was a pause. Kong frowned. “Are we going to break on three?”
“Uh, sure,” Mary said slowly. “One…”
“Oh for pete’s sake,” Kitty muttered. Liz glared at her from across the circle
and Mary nudged her with an elbow.
“Two. Three.”
They all slipped out. Liz rushed back in immediately and squeezed Mary Jane
into the most desperate hug she had ever given her. Mary’s heart leaped upwards
and knocked against her throat. She hugged the girl back, and Liz pressed a
kiss to her cheek when they drew apart.
“I’m really sorry, MJ. For all the times I made fun of him, or told you he
wasn’t any good,” She pressed her fingers to her lips. “I didn’t know.”
Kong scooped her up next. MJ couldn’t embrace him all the way around like she
could with Liz. To her surprise, he also kissed her cheek. He still looked
forlorn as he drew away. “Is there anything we can do to help him?”
“Um. Not yet,” MJ said. “I’ll let you know if there is. ASAP.”
“You two go ahead,” Kitty ushered. “I’ll catch up.”
They both had a hard time keeping their gaze ahead, necks craning back to stare
at the pair of them. Liz was crying again and Kong wrapped one arm around her
shoulders and led her off, finally making serious headway to class. Kitty
appraised MJ from head to foot, teeth gritted and mouth in a mean line.
“You honestly think that’s this is going to keep people from spreading the
word?”
She didn’t have to answer. The way she studied her boots was enough answer for
them both.
“And you weren’t going to come to class, were you?” Kitty poked her shoulder.
“Where’s your backpack?”
Mary covered her face. “Can you blame me?”
“Are you sneaking out without me? Or Johnny? Come on, that’s low, MJ. What do
you expect to do by yourself?”
She hadn’t had much of a reason to leave school. Logan wanted to meet later
that night, and for appearance’s sakes she ought to stay in class. But she was
so squirrelly and dreading dealing with Kong all day after thinly convincing
him that he was wrong about Peter, and spending another minute staring at a
blackboard while Peter and his Aunt were gone and possibly dead by now would
have driven her insane. “…It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“MJ, come on. You can do this. There’s nothing better for Peter we can do right
now than make sure that there isn’t a CNN special in his honor when he gets
back.”
“Or a bunch of mobsters staking out his house,” Mary conceded with a sigh.
“Believe me, I am furious too. I am mad and I hate being stuck behind and if
Liz hadn’t just strolled up here to play world’s worst messenger, I would be
running off with you.” She frowned. “That was why I came over in the first
place. Honest.”
MJ blinked at her. Forget Liz. Kitty was twisting the knife now. Logan’s name
and their haphazard plan nearly spilled from her mouth right then and there,
because if Kitty was being sincere then she really believed they were in this
together. And here Mary was, creeping around behind her back.
But she kept her mouth shut tight on the matter, and nodded tensely. “Thank
you. Kitty.”
Mary wasn’t sure what to do from there. Her arms raised an inch, and when she
dropped them Kitty raised hers, and they both shuffled inelegantly on their
feet.
“Um.” Kitty coughed. Just as Mary’s mouth opened to ask if they were going to
hug, the other girl barked out, “Let’s get to class,” and spun away on her
heel, head bowed.
“I don’t have my stuff!” Mary called out.
“Then I’ll lend you stuff,” Kitty retorted, waving her forward.
And that was that. People were filing into the school now. Mary joined the fray
behind Kitty, shoulders hunched around her front and watching the ground,
hoping that no one noticed, heart beating out in orchestral revolutions.
But of course everyone did notice, and the whispers raised to roars and she
could hear people calling out her name, Kitty’s name.
Welcome to Hell, Mary Jane Watson, she thought bitterly.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The metal rod was approximately three inches in diameter. Hollow, and torn
around the ends with strands that reached out in coils from where it had been
twisted loose. It was originally several feet long, but had been divided into
three near equal parts; one of which was punched through Sabretooth’s left palm
and into the shallow breadth of wall behind. The second was similarly placed in
his right hand. The third was embedded cleanly through the solar plexus,
segregating the tender bundle of nerves from the rest of him and setting his
every sense on fire. Blood drizzled down his stomach. He panted through gritted
teeth, jaw nearly locked in an effort to hold in the strain of the scream
trying to claw its way out of him.
“Thanks to your selfishness, he might never come to trust us. Even with proper
persuasion.”
“I didn’t fucking know that his—“ The rod wrenched in his gut and Sabretooth
stopped speaking. Out came an animal’s groan, a protest of pain too great to
relay.
“What you did and did not know is irrelevant. He is a guest here. Not a
prisoner. And did I or did I not specify that only those with my permission
were allowed to see him?” Magneto rapped his fingers impatiently on the arm of
the chair, unmoved by how his subordinate twisted and grunted and seeped blood
copiously from around the rods. “Were you one of those people?”
“No…” came the thin response.
“I can understand that perhaps you were not acting entirely of your own accord.
That is understandable. But your weakness, and your disobedience, and the
possibility that now our efforts to save Peter Parker have all gone to waste
cannot go ignored. Not to mention the needless brutality of it all.”
Sabretooth snorted, teeth bled a watery pink under the bubbles of blood that
invaded his mouth every once in a while as the pipes twisted and cut anew. The
low laugh he gave did not escape Magneto’s notice, but it escaped without
comment nonetheless.
“You know,” he rumbled low, pausing to hiss and pant, “he ain’t never gonna
come around to us.”
“And does that justify how you treated him?”
“He ain’t gonna join us. Ever. Little fuck had been sucking X-Men cock even
before he started macking on Shadowcat. And his Auntie—“
“I am aware.”
“How long you think you can keep it up?”
At last Magneto was forced to sigh. He pinched at his temples. The rods
wrenched loose, and Sabretooth collapsed to his knees as each hole sprayed
anew, sullying the wall and the floor and spattering at his clothes and arms.
Magneto paid no attention to how he curled around the injuries and struggled to
hold in the miserable keens of pain. The rods clattered to the floor next to
him.
“I had hoped…” Magneto said, trailing off as he rubbed deep at the side of his
head, an admission of the futility before he had even made his rebuttal.
Nonetheless, he tackled the thought again. “I was sincere in my wishes to see
him realize his mutant potential. This Oz business. That formula that is
masking it, it’s revolting. Appalling, what mankind is doing to delay the
inevitable. He deserved better. Whether we can fix it still remains to be seen.
We’ve only just started on his blood samples today. It could be tomorrow, or it
could be years. But more worrisome is his attitude – and the potential of
pursuit from S.H.I.E.L.D.
“We may not have years. There is only so long the illusion of my incarceration
can be maintained. As well as the nature of his disappearance. And thus far,
his mutant power has been a cause of nothing but misery to him. In ways
currently unprecedented. Had it been a simple matter of accidental deaths or
damages, we would know how to counsel him properly, convince him to hone those
skills for the better. Sexual assault…” He shook his head. “It may not be the
true nature of his powers, hindered as they are in his current condition, but
convincing him to embrace them will be difficult, if not impossible. Not
without intensive telepathic manipulation, and I am aware of the fragility of
such measures. Charles’ attempt to keep me hidden and misguided failed, and he
is the most adept of his kind. We can keep him placated, but only for so long.”
“Then what are we keeping him for?” Sabretooth grunted. He was healing already,
the holes closing in with shoots of nerves and red muscle strings and shards of
bone pushing out of the broken edges. “Gut him and ditch him.”
“As I said, we may yet be able to fix him. It’s difficult, but not impossible.
However,” Magneto nodded and waved a hand through the air, “I have been aware
of the risks from the start. In the likely event that he cannot be cured in due
time, and that he cannot come around to see reason, there are other uses for
him. Spider-Man is a world-renowned celebrity, after all.”
Sabretooth had returned to his feet, wiping whatever was still wet on the leg
of his pants with a sneer. Though he now stood above Magneto the man made no
move to raise his head to meet his eye. If anything he dipped his head lower,
letting his brows and the shadows of his deep set eyes move his expression into
contemplative predation. Cold. Calculating.
“What sort of panic would arise, I wonder, if it were revealed that the
American government had tried to cover up a mutation with their own
concoction?” Magneto’s brows furrowed further. “One that ruined the child. One
that killed him. An innocent fifteen year old boy, propped on a pedestal for
media and glory, dead because the government wished to take credit for his
successes. Norman Osborn’s project was funded by the state, after all. And if
the records are to be believed, Peter is the only subject thus far that has
escaped the insanity and transformations that come along with Oz. As a cause of
death, it’s plausible.”
Sabretooth considered that. After a tense, prodding pause, his mouth lifted,
half a smile and a snort of agreement. “Ain’t too far off the shit they’re
already pulling.”
“If nothing else, it would be incentive for undecided mutants to join our
cause. Perhaps it might sway some of Charles’ brood over to us again,
considering how close they are with Spider-Man. His youth might even persuade
human America to riot. There are enough sympathizers mixed in with the bigots
to expect an uproar, don’t you think?”
“Sure.” Sabretooth licked the remaining blood off his teeth and grinned.
“But not yet. We still have some time to work with him. He would be very
influential, living or dead, to our cause. So I would appreciate if you would
keep mum on this, Sabretooth. I’d rather not have anyone else decide to make a
preemptive strike against Peter when he’s in such a fragile state.”
“He ain’t exactly a wilting daisy. Kid can hold his own, even with a busted
arm.”
“Even so,” Magneto insisted. “You will not see him again. No one will, unless
permitted to do so by me.”
Sabretooth complied, nodding, but stayed to press one last point. “But if it
goes the other way, and he needs to be gone. You’re gonna poison him?”
“Perhaps. He’ll die in whatever fashion will provide the best autopsy.”
Dissatisfaction put the curl in his lip now, made him cluck his tongue. “Shame.
Wouldn’t mind wringing that spindly little neck myself.”
That was about the end of Magneto’s tolerance for Victor Creed. He waved the
man towards the door, remaining otherwise quite still in his seat. “Take a
walk.” When he was gone Magneto frowned, touching his lips in thought. Regret,
perhaps, or teetering on the edge of distaste. The fine lines drawn between his
brows were difficult to discern.
“What a waste,” he muttered to the air.
***** Gossip Folks *****
Chapter Summary
     The world slowly begins to clue in to the mystery of Spider-Man, and
     Mary Jane gets more than she bargained for when she finally teams up
     with Logan.
Chapter Notes
     That's right I named this chapter after a Missy Elliot song. Fight
     me.
     Warning for mild gore and violence in this chapter. What's a field
     trip with Wolverine without it?
     Again, thank you to all you kind readers, new and old alike. You
     bring me so much joy and inspiration and this would have probably
     been abandoned eons ago without you all. This is honestly the longest
     thing I have ever written in my life and I wouldn't have known it was
     possible before. (It's sitting at over 200 pages in Word, good god.)
     Thank you thank you thank you, you are the best <3
See the end of the chapter for more notes
It was 2:00 pm, and Midtown High was the definition of pandemonium.
“I have to go,” Mary said, voice low and pallid as paper. Her eyes roved, past
the cameras and sharply dressed men and women in business heels and shined
shoes, and she fought to shoulder her way through them down the steps of her
school. Even with the principal at her elbow and three cops glued to her side
and shouting at the crowd to disperse, she found a microphone under her nose
yet again.
“Miss Watson! What do you say to the allegations that Spider-Man’s death is a
cover-up?”
“I don’t know anything,” she asserted. The flash of bulbs turned her blind when
they popped at her from all angles, and her head lost all weight. She raised
her hand to cover her face and shouted louder. “My boyfriend is sick, he’s got
cancer for god’s sakes.”
The principal tugged her hard, “Everyone, go! There is no Spider-Man conspiracy
here! You are harassing my students and I will be seeking legal—”
“Mary Jane! Are you concerned about Peter Parker’s privacy and security while
he recovers?”
“What do you think about the online petition to canonize—“
“Where exactly is your boyfriend staying for treatment?”
“If Peter isn’t our man, then can you comment about your own Spider-Man
theories?”
“How do you explain Peter Parker’s absences from school coinciding with Spider-
Man’s disappearances from the public—“
It had started as rumors, whispers, then shouts down the hall. No one paid
attention in class and Kong had snapped and punched Flash in the eye when he
wouldn’t stop hounding her and Kitty with questions, and both were sent out of
class. Liz snapped at several people, who only yelled back at her with the
foulest language and sent her into livid tears when one of them called her a
fat lying bitch. Kitty had phased through the floor to escape a mob in the
halls after first period, and Mary had fled Chemistry to hide in the bathrooms
until class and lunch alike were over. Her phone hadn’t stopped buzzing. People
she didn’t know existed were texting her, calling her, all without cessation.
There was a Facebook group within the hour: “Peter Parker was Spider-Man!!
Mourn with Midtown!!” with several thousand likes and members, the count only
crawling closer to the million mark with each passing second. The girl who
started it was in twelfth grade, and Mary knew for a fact the only time she had
ever spoken to Peter was a month ago, when she was handing out slices of
Hawaiian pizza in the cafeteria to raise money for prom. Bleeding hearts and
spiteful naysayers alike were flooding the wall with post after post. Stories
spread about his Aunt’s disappearance, fueling the fire when it was confirmed
she had been inexplicably absent from work. There were pictures of Peter posted
in the Facebook group, on Reddit, on CNN, and goddamn TMZ and the New York
Times, on Yahoo Japan and sites in languages she couldn’t read. Then there were
pictures of her. Her with Peter in the school bleachers, at Coney Island. Then
her alone, with her mom and dad, with Liz, her school picture this year.
There was a thread on 4chan where they had scouted out her home address.
Combating sources also pumped up the story about his illness and how it was all
a mistake, and there were news segments debating the merits of each that she
couldn’t load on her phone while she crouched trembling on a school toilet, her
feet drawn up on the seat for fear of being found out when people checked under
the stalls.
A squad of the tenth grade staff still found her there, and her Home Economics
teacher had circled her arms around her as the rest inquired after Kitty. Mary
told them she had no idea where the other girl was, and wanted to speak with
her mother.
They told her that her mother was being detained by the NYPD for questioning,
and they were on their way over for her as well. Mary could have shrieked and
ripped at her scalp until she was bald and bleeding.
Yet she kept her lips tightly wound and nodded so slightly when they offered
her coffee while she waited in the safety in the staff lounge, and Mrs. Koertig
rubbed her back as she hunched over her knees and tried not to burst open at
the seams.
Though she had to constantly stifle her phone, message after message pouring
in, Mary had laboriously managed to key in one single, imperative text to Kitty
Pryde.
The NYPD are taking me out of school in ten.
So the uncharacteristic shrieks and gasps of the press when a head of thick
brown hair birthed out of a cop’s chest, followed by the face and hands and
body of an infuriated teenage mutant, did not surprise Mary in the least. Her
head bowed, she allowed herself a small, furtive smile.
“HEY!” Kitty hollered. “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU ALL?! HUH?”
Mary felt the grip on her go slack, and slithered. She bowed low and threaded
her way loose, the crowd no longer concerned with her as Kitty bellowed at them
all with piping hot vitriol.
“THAT GUY IS NOT SPIDER-MAN! HE’S FUCKING DYING OF CANCER AND YOU’RE RUINING
HIS LIFE EVEN MORE? FOR WHAT?! THE REAL SPIDER-MAN IS GONE! HE’S DEAD!” Mary
could hear her wheeze, knew there were real tears streaming down her face from
the way her voice scratched and crackled. She ducked under a prone camera man’s
arm, and she was free of the mob.
Mary bolted. She wanted to look back, but hesitation would cost them the whole
gamble. She heard the fizz of something electrical – right, Kitty ruined
electronics when she phased through them, so she must have shorted a camera or
a mike – and she could hear the police shouting at her to desist, ordering her
to go tangible and Kitty shrieking at them to back the fuck off, the reporters
dogging twice as hard with new questions and fervent revelations. Only her
principal, nearly drowned out by the mob, was calling her name.
Mary didn’t stop running until she was several blocks away. Her shirt was
soaked through with hot sweat, and her legs were burning like wildfire. She
doubled over wheezing behind a Starbucks, then let herself fall against the
wall for support. With trembling hands, she pulled out her phone once more.
You are a godsend, Kitty Pryde. Get out and find a safe place.
She thought about arranging a meeting spot, maybe inviting her along for the
trek with Logan after all. But then the cops would have means of getting her
phone records, wouldn’t they? There was probably some way they could snag a
printout of her text history with a proper warrant, and then where would the
two of them be?
Though her phone was still flooding, she was able to open up the reply that
came shortly after.
Tell me something I don’t know. Already on it. Turn off your phone, they might
find you.
Mary removed the battery on the spot.
 
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
When it was dark and the old folks trickled home and the young ones left decked
in party glitz, Mary found Logan waiting for her in a parking lot behind a
triad of old red brick apartments in dire need of renovations. He was leaning
against an inky black motorcycle, which was gorgeous and worn but well cared
for. Mary hadn’t known what she expected, but she wasn’t at all surprised.
Logan tipped his head to her, and did not smile. “You sure you oughta be out
here still? Seen your face all over today.”
“You’re not weaseling out of this that easy,” Mary bullied. She held aloft a
large takeout bag from Swiss Chalet, where she had, fortunately, escaped
harassment for the afternoon. “I bring you offerings of peace.”
“Are you serious?”
“Deadly.” She pressed it at him. Unlike the money the night before, he accepted
it with nothing more than a snort. “It’s the ribs. I figured that was the
manliest thing on the menu.”
“That how you always order your food?”
“Well I did debate getting you a gluten free tofu wrap, but then you would
probably hop on your motorcycle and drive away from me for good.”
Logan almost laughed. She could sense it. “Pop open the pannier and grab a beer
if we’re eating.”
“Oh. Uh.” She ought to have refused, but the request was so plainly made and
she was eager not to offend. Or look childish. There were three bottles left
inside, and she gave him one while cradling her own nervously to her chest, the
condensation slicking her hand. The combination of the motorcycle and beer set
off an alarm, but watching Logan pop the top off with a claw and swallow it
down like water reminded her of exactly who she was dealing with. He could
probably swim in a vat of Sleeman’s and come out clean to a breathalyzer the
moment he resurfaced.
She looked down at her own with a queasy turn, and tried to open it. Her palm
was bruising around the ridges of the cap and Logan coolly rescued her from
further pain. The bottle opened with nothing more than a flick and a hiss under
his practiced ministration, and Mary felt her ears go red as he handed it back
to her with a knowing smirk.
“I’ve had coolers before,” she said abruptly, and felt twice as stupid for it.
“Sure.” He tipped his bottle to hers in a cheers and took another swig, then
unwrapped his takeout box. “Mind telling me how the whole damn world knows
about your boyfriend now?”
She filled him in as they ate. Mary had already had her supper while sitting in
the restaurant, and all that she had packed in the takeout bag for herself was
an extra slice of lemon meringue pie. The beer didn’t pair with it so well, and
it was so dark and bitter and made her smack her lips in such strong distaste
that Logan snatched it from her after he had polished off his own without so
much as a word. Mary didn’t begrudge him for it.
He wasn’t too pleased to hear that Kitty was under fire, nor that her mother
and her house were already under watch and Mary had nowhere to go but with him,
or else find her hands tied and locked in interrogation with the police.
“Good thing I went looking last night. It’d be fuckin’ impossible to get clues
about your boy now.”
“So you did find something?” she pushed breathlessly, edging closer before she
caught herself and maintained their distance.
“Not much.” He paused to wipe a smudge of errant sauce from his lip with his
thumb, finished with the meal for good. “Might be bullshit, for all I know. But
somebody saw the Punisher creeping around that area before S.H.I.E.L.D. showed
up.”
“The Punisher?” Mary’s lip curled, remembering what Peter had relayed to her
about the night he left looking for Jessica. “You’re not suggesting that he—“
“Not suggesting nothing. Not until we track him down and find out what he
knows.” He crumpled the bag and the box alike, and tossed it into an open
dumpster two cars away. Mary raised her brows, impressed.
“And how are we going to do that?”
“Got a lead to follow. Someone knows where he’s holing up.” He handed her the
two empty beer bottles and told her to replace them in the pannier, and patted
the seat behind him. The helmet, which had been dangling off of one handle, was
passed off to her. “You ever been on a bike before?”
“No.”
He grinned wide. “Better hold on tight, Red.”
Mary burned bright in her cheeks, but she slid on the helmet and clambered on
behind him regardless. He was warm in her arms and his middle was thick,
nothing but pure muscle draped in leather, and her heart was pounding in a slow
escalation that she begged would stop before he noticed. The bike roared to
life, and there was a rumble in his chest that was probably a laugh.
Mary mentally damned him for being a giant tool, and gasped when they shot into
motion.
Motorcycles, as it turned out, were amazing. Not webswinging amazing, which put
her heart in her throat and made her want to holler like Tarzan (not that she
would, as her mouth was usually too close to Peter’s ear so she had to limit
her whooping) and shot her weight from her fingertips to her toes and back up
to the tip of her skull. But it was a hell of a lot more exciting than a car
ride, even with the top off, and Logan was not pulling punches on the speed.
They might get stopped by the cops should any notice the blur of their passing.
Good thing then that they didn’t have far to go. Twenty minutes later Logan was
hitting the breaks, and they dismounted discreetly on the side of a seedy
laundromat with bars in the window, tucked under an equally shabby apartment
complex. Hell’s Kitchen, naturally. Threadbare traces of her adrenaline grin
remained, but the dark shadows on stained bricks and the jaundice that had
struck everything from the dented signs and the litter on the pavement dampened
the high. She delicately hung the helmet from the handle again, and looked
inquisitively at Logan for further instructions.
“Stay with the bike.”
“Oh come on!” Mary groaned. “Isn’t it worse for me to stand out here alone and
totally unsupervised?”
“I won’t be long. You’ll be in ear shot. Guard it and make sure no one touches
it. Shit goes missing in this kinda neighborhood and I don’t have the time to
be teaching street punks a lesson.”
She squinted at the windows of the laundromat. “Is our guy in there?”
“Stay put.”
“I’ll be extra quiet.”
“No.”
“I bought you ribs!”
“What did I tell you last night?”
She bit her lip and scowled. “Stay put if you tell me to.”
He nodded (snidely, she thought, what with that half-cocked grin on his stupid
face) and told her, “Thattagirl,” before disappearing with the curt beep of the
door into the laundromat. Mary narrowed her eyes at his retreating back and
just barely refrained from kicking his bike over. If you didn’t want to be
treated like a child, you shouldn’t act like one, and she was already treading
on thin ice with this mission.
She did try to spy on him through the window. But from where they had parked it
was some distance, and all she could see was that the Logan shape had
approached another man shape and they appeared to be conversing.
This was all decidedly less action packed and productive than she had hoped.
Mary crossed her arms and groused for a while. Some part of her wondered if
maybe the reason Logan wasn’t letting her come was because he planned to use
less than savory methods to get the details from this guy. Which was a fair
point, but Mary was fairly sure not everyone had to be bullied into lending a
hand. Right? Unless this lead was some kind of criminal. Or maybe he had a good
reason to be obstinate.
She ruminated on the pros and cons and only thought herself into circles.
But it wasn’t long before the unnatural desolation of the area was getting to
her. An old tramp had wheeled his shopping cart past her, raving wildly about
bats for reasons unknown. Most pedestrians came sparsely if at all, and they
possessed a unanimous steel about them, looking her up and down with pointed
dislike.
A car, subtle silver and just a little too nice looking to belong around here,
slowed as it passed the building. Mary had only turned to soothe her nerves,
but she thought she saw someone peering at her from the windows as it crawled
along the block, and her hairs stood on end.
When she burst into the laundromat both Logan and the other man snapped to face
her. Both were fraught with tension and she had caught the man mid-holler,
something something and then, “You damn mutie!”, Logan’s fingers twined in his
collar and his back pressed close to a heavy duty dryer.
She looked between them with wide eyes. “Sorry,” she said instantly.
“I asked you to do one thing, kid!” Logan snarled.
“You’re with him?” the man, who was potbellied and balding and had a face that
looked like a lump of butter freshly rubbed on a hot pan.
“There was a car,” Mary said, pointing her thumb at the window and holding a
hand to her chest. “They were slowing down when they passed me and I got a bad
feeling.”
“What?” Logan, who was no less agitated but now pushed that hot focus past her,
squinting out at the street. He abandoned the man, who huffed and gawped at
Mary some more. Logan pressed past Mary, smoothly pushing her behind his back
and out of sight from the windows as he examined the street. She blushed a
little at the gesture.
Their audience cocked his head at the two of them. “Missy, you know who that
is?”
“Yes? Is there a problem?”
“So you’re with the – are you an X-Men too?”
“She ain’t,” Logan had turned back and was ushering her inside, a hand at her
shoulder and shooting a long glance back at the windows. “She’s with me. Doing
her a favor.”
“A favor?!” He spluttered at the both of them. “What kinda – Now look here,
Missy, this man was in here asking about the Punisher! You gotta know who – is
this the kind of business a girl your age should get mixed up in?”
“Do you know where he is?” Mary said, stepping just out of Logan’s reach,
imploring the man. “I’m sorry – I know this is a really weird request, but we
really need to know where he is.”
“What – you – why?” He shook his head, gobsmacked. Logan grunted in disgust
behind her.
“You gonna spit out something worth listening to, or do we have spend another
ten minutes watching you choke on your tongue?” Mary glared at him in
disapproval and opted to reach for the man’s hand, closing in.
“Sir?” He tried to yank back, still spluttering, but she kept her grip firm and
gentle and took a soft step forward. “Sir, please. My boyfriend and his Aunt
went missing yesterday. They think there was a kidnapping. And we heard the
Punisher was in the area before the cops showed up, so if he saw anything, he
could help us find them.”
He was growing placid under her grip and he couldn’t seem to look away from her
eyes. Excellent, she thought smugly. Turned out a little eyelash batting was
more effective than pulverizing your target after all. “Please. I’m sorry about
Logan.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he grunted behind her.
“We don’t want to hurt you or anybody else. We just want to find out where they
are and who took them. It’s important. So if you know how we can find this
Punisher guy, please. Please tell us.”
The man’s mouth gaped open and shut repeatedly and Mary thought that he looked
a lot like a puffer fish, with his wide and icy blue eyes and fleshy jowls. He
took his hand out of her grasp to wag a finger at them, some of his bluster
returning as he said, “Now, now if I tell you this, I need you to understand.
This isn’t no fucking joke to me, you hear? I let you know anything it’s
because I am deadly serious and you do not breathe a fucking word to another
soul, because the guy did me a favor. A big favor.” He turned a hard glare to
Mary. Or at least it started as one, but his gaze penetrated through her, to
somewhere far beyond where neither one of them could follow.
He lifted his hand to the air, hovering somewhere between his nose and his
chin. “I had a kid. A girl, little older than you. She went missing last year,
and they…they dragged her out of the bay, and she’d been cut up, cut all over.”
The man faltered, teeth gritted too tightly and veins throbbing hard in his
temples. “So when Frank Castle gets out and about again – his old man was a
neighbor, you know. And when he gets out again, I tell him I’ve got a room I
can put him up in. But he has to do me a favor, because the sick sonuvabitch
that done my girl up like that was out too. And he made good on that favor. You
mighta seen the papers. ”
Mary thought for a moment. There had been a wave of hysteria about the Punisher
being loose again, but there were only a few legitimate sightings, and any
killings were only suspected and not yet proven. Most recently, however: “…That
Sorkin guy?”
“That’s right,” he huffed. “So you understand. I tell you this now and it ain’t
no joke. If the cops come for him I’ll know it was you two assholes and I’ll
make sure you never forget what you done.”
“All due respect, we just told you we lost a kid of our own.” Logan barely
moved, just a tilt of his head, yet with something so small he still had the
power to snap their attention solely onto him, better than if he had pulled a
gun or popped a claw. “And the longer we stand here the better chance he’s
gonna have of ending up the same as your daughter.”
The man bristled and twisted his lips, but he did not argue. “Fair ‘nough. I
suppose. He’s out now. I ain’t sure I can call him up, but I could…”
Logan had suddenly turned to the windows. His hand was clapped on Mary’s
shoulder again, heavy as solid iron. “What is it?” she asked, stunned.
“There a back door?” Logan was pushing her towards the other man.
“Uh, yeah, just come – what’s going on?”
“Take her. Get her out of sight.”
“What?” Mary said thinly. “Logan, what are you—“
She was all but thrown into the stranger’s arms now, and as her back knocked
into his chest she could see over Logan’s shoulders, a huddle of silhouettes
approaching the door. Logan was snarling.
“Now would be a good time!”
Mary didn’t need to be told twice, already ducking low behind the washers and
speeding along in a crouch to the first door she could see, but the man was
still standing, protesting and uncomprehending.
“Now, now wait a minute, wait a goddamn minute here, what kind of bullshit are
you trying to pull—“
The door chimed and opened. Four men, from the sound of it, though the
footsteps were muddled together. Mary snapped back behind the last washer in
the row instead of dashing to the door and willed herself to erase all evidence
of her own existence. She hadn’t moved fast enough, and now her heart was
wrestling its way into her throat.
“Oh, so sorry to interrupt, gentleman.” The voice was lazy, oil slick. Mary’s
flesh crawled – she had thought maybe it was the police coming for her, but
current surveys said no self respecting officer would say something so smug.
With her photo paired with Peter’s all over the globe, she should have guessed
there would be more than one interested party snooping around for her. She
wordlessly thanked god that her Mom was already with the NYPD. Possibly
S.H.I.E.L.D. by now, even.
“We were hoping to find a little lady in here. Pretty little thing about yea
high, fifteen years old. Red head. You wouldn’t have seen one of those, no?”
“Eh?” said their host dumbly.
Logan was calm, but predatory. Even without looking she could sense the cold
glint in his eye as he surveyed the bunch. “You’re in the wrong place to be
looking for a date, bub.”
“Oh, that so?” Mary heard the man cluck his tongue before his boots clicked
closer, meandering without rush or care around the place. “Funny. That your
bike out front?”
“Might be.”
“It’s a nice bike.”
Logan snorted. “This going somewhere?”
Another man spoke now. His was a deeper tone, giant. Slow. “Irvin. You know who
that is?”
“Got an inkling.”
And yet another. “What? Who is he?”
Another. “Shit. You’re shitting me.”
“What? Who is he?”
“Who is – who the hell are you?!” yelled their host. Mary’s eyes blew wide in
incredulity (how thick did you have to be?) and for the second time today she
was stuck trying to submit telepathic orders to somebody, wishing and praying
and silently urging him to shut the hell up and just play innocent. “Look here,
I’m going to call the cops on you all if you don’t clear out—“
“Relax! Relax. Ain’t no trouble here. We just wanted to check if you saw the
little miss, that’s all. But you clearly haven’t, so.”
And mercifully, those footsteps were retreating. Mary ceased breathing,
unwilling to move until she had heard the beep from the door.
“Keep an eye out, all right? She’s lost and we’re hoping to get her back home.”
There was the ding. Mary waited, turning her head to watch the two men for
tells. Logan and the other man were equally as stiff as they watched the
windows with hard glares.
At last, Logan grumbled. “Get her out the back door. I’ll swing around and pick
her up.”
This time the man did not hesitate. He rushed her through the back of the
laundromat, through the hall of the apartment, muttering and gawping and
tugging her by the arm. “I’ll get Frank on the phone. I’ll get him.” He was
fishing out a flip phone from his pocket and laboriously texting as they
walked. “I don’t know what kind of mess you and your boyfriend and that mutie
are in, but it ain’t right, and you oughta think twice about where this is
heading, young lady.”
“Uh, okay,” Mary agreed incredulously. He seemed to have finished his message
just as they reached the rear exit. He gave her a little shake as he pushed at
the door.
“I mean it. You seem like a good girl, and I’d hate to—“
The bang was what shook her first. The sound stopped her heart entirely and she
found herself knocking into the doorframe in alarm, her ears squealing at a
pitch she was certain guaranteed lasting damage. Her eyes would not close. Red
globs and drops and little patches of hair flew out the back of the man’s head,
and the rest of him just crumpled downwards, nearly dragging her along to the
floor with the lingering grip on her arm. But even that peeled away. The
fingers trailed down to her elbow then lost contact completely. He plummeted
and hit the ancient carpet, bouncing once before resting in a graceless heap.
A man in a suit, broad shouldered and hair buzzed to the quick, snatched her by
the arm and bodily hauled her out of the building. Mary stumbled. She shrieked.
She could see a glint from his other side – the gun, and she could smell the
tang of the shot, and the blood as well now, and she couldn’t stop screaming,
couldn’t stop scrambling on her feet. She slapped and punched and wrenched her
arm free once, only to get brutally pulled back by the hair so that a meaty arm
could lock around her throat. The gun barrel hovered close to her temple. The
heat wafted off the metal onto her skin. She nearly wilted on the spot.
With an effortless heave, he swung her at the car behind them. The same silver
one from before that had slowed down to watch her. The door was open and
another set of hands yanked her inside, the thug climbing in after her and
pressing down her legs from the kicks she was loosing at his face.
They shut the door and drove. Mary was still screaming. A sweaty palm clamped
down over her mouth and she struggled upright to fight it. From the window she
caught a glimpse of the corner, and Logan was running out to the edge of it
(running?), claws out, red faced and furious as the car whizzed past and left
him in the dust.
Her mind went utterly blank, and she quieted at last. The world was spinning
around her, and voices battered at her head as numbness prickled at her every
inch.
“Jesus Christ, that was close!”
“Good thing I slashed his tires, huh?”
“That was the fucking Wolverine. The fucking Wolverine! Shit, can you imagine
the cred if we’da popped that guy?”
“We couldn’t pop that guy.”
“We coulda!”
“The motherfucker eats bullets for breakfast, Danny, how the hell were you
planning to do it?”
“Hey, show him a picture of your mother. That might do it.”
“You shut your fucking hole, Randall! I swear to god!”
“I still can’t believe it was the goddamn Wolverine. Fuck! No one’s gonna
believe us.”
“Guys, we got a lady in the car. Tone it down a notch, will ya?” The one with
the hand on her mouth, pinning her head to his shoulder, spoke much more coolly
than the other three. He patted her cheek. Mary rolled her eyes up to look at
him. He was so bland looking, so neighborly that she almost couldn’t reconcile
that sleazy nasal drip as coming from his mouth. He looked like a cookie cutter
mannequin, something out of a painted print ad from the fifties.
Then he smiled and it was like the broad blade of a hunting knife. “Hey there,
Cherry Pop. How ya doing?”
Mary didn’t answer. She was barely breathing. The big one beside her tugged her
upright and pushed her legs off of his. All she did was squeak, high and weak
in the back of her throat. The driver adjusted the rear view mirror and
whistled. The one in the passenger seat laughed and leaned back to appraise her
as well.
“Well shit. Gotta get me a super suit.”
“She’s fifteen, Danny. Ya sick fuck.”
“Ain’t no fifteen year old girls looked like that when I was in school, I’m
telling you.” He turned back to the front, chuckling and shaking his head.
“Telling you, man.”
“Don’t mind those assholes, honey. We don’t want nothing more from you than a
little slice of your time.” The oily voiced man slid his arm around her. Mary
crouched away, head going towards her knees and her hands coming up to protect
her face.
“No,” she said thinly.
“Aw, don’t be like that. We just have a few questions. Our boss is real keen on
hearing from you. You know who Wilson Fisk is, Cherry Pop?”
The Kingpin. He’d been ousted from New York not long ago by Peter and Daredevil
and this little squad of street level vigilantes she could name if she wasn’t
on the verge of vomiting, her mind looping the soar of chunks from the back of
that man’s head and his jaw dropping loose as he fell. Mary squeezed her eyes
shut and willed herself to stop crying. She didn’t know when she had started.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in…
“See, he had a few run ins with this clown around town by the name of Spider-
Man. And today, there’s you and your boyfriend, all over the news, and
everyone’s in a tizzy because a lot of people think that your boyfriend was
Spider-Man this whole time. Now I know you’ve been telling everyone he’s sick,
he’s dying, all that jazz, and you got that little X-girl screaming and shooing
the smoke in the other direction too.
“But our Mr. Fisk’s seen Spidey’s face. He pulled that mask off himself more
than once. And he swears up and down that it’s little Peter Parker under there.
Even though half of New York is sobbing about Spidey dying the other day. But
they didn’t get no ID from the body, did they? And they say it’s because his
face was all torn up – you smelling the bullshit yet? In fact, no one’s even
seen a body. So now he’s thinking maybe Spidey isn’t dead. Maybe it’s all just
some smoke and mirrors you’re putting on so baby Peter can slip out of the
tights for good. Why? I don’t know.” He wrenched her hair, forcing her to face
him straight on. Mary kept her lips shut and breathed through widely flared
nostrils and ignored the sharp pain in her scalp. “Care to shed a little light
on the subject?”
“I don’t know anything…” Words had to be pushed out, still digging their heels
in from the shakes and the intermittent loss of thought that was striking her
numb and useless. Yet Mary made herself speak. These were her last resort, her
words. Clever things she might say to get out of this alive. She hadn’t thought
of anything brilliant yet but if she could get a hold of something, anything,
just stabilize herself for two seconds she might have a chance.
“Keep in mind who we just caught you rubbing elbows with, little girl,” he
said, his deathly smile growing wider and brighter. “Don’t tell me Wolverine
let you ride side saddle on his bike out of the goodness of his heart.”
Someone snorted in the front of the car. Danny shot a quick look back at her
again, smirking broadly.
“I…don’t know,” Mary repeated, growing stronger. “I honestly don’t know
anything. He’s gone.”
The truth. She had nothing but that, she decided, because they knew who she was
and so they knew everything. She could edit it to suit her needs.
He slapped lightly at her cheek, as if she were a dog. “Come on now sweetie,
you can give us more than that. Where is he?”
Her wrist was twinging and she had to hold onto it tight so they wouldn’t
notice the rabid twitch in her hand that followed, fingers splayed straight.
Focus again. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Mary swallowed down the sobbing and the
bile that was still lurking at the back of her throat. “No, he’s gone. He’s
missing and he was hurt when he disappeared. That’s why they called him dead.
That’s why I was with Wolverine. We’re looking. Please, just…let me go, you’re
not getting anything by keeping me here. I don’t know where he is.”
“Well.” The man – they had called him Irvin in the laundromat, now that she
could think well enough to remember – clucked his tongue at her. “Ain’t that
just so damn convenient? Unfortunately, sweetheart, that means you’re gonna
have to stick with us until he does crawl out of the woodwork.”
“RANDALL!” Danny shouted suddenly. Randall was the driver, clearly, because he
was suddenly hitting the breaks so that they screeched, trying to heave the car
into a right angle turn. Mary heard two bangs, twin lights sparking in the dark
outside.
The right side of the car buckled and they spun, metal grinding on pavement.
Irvin was thrown back into the door and knocked his head hard. Mary fell into
his lap and the big man on her other side nearly crushed her as he toppled too.
The two in the front were swearing, and the car was still spinning. Another
bang, the windshield shattered, and Randall jolted and shrieked in his seat.
His foot was off the gas and the front of the car slammed into a street lamp,
crumpling around the pole.
The big guy was getting up. Irvin groaned underneath her. Randall was still
hollering, crouching over to hold his belly and whimpering like some animal,
and Danny was trying to get his door open. He and the big one were drawing out
pistols.
More shots rammed through the car, this time downing Danny via the passenger
side, and then the following round put Randall out of his misery. Mary
scrambled, pushing herself down to the floor where the bullets couldn’t get
her, wheezing in terror. The big guy tried to join her and she kicked him in
the stomach, pushing him up for no more than a second.
And a second was all it took. The window behind him crashed open too, except it
wasn’t bullets this time. He roared as three long, brilliantly sharp knives
raked his back. There was the agonizing screech of metal, another set of knives
clawing through the door’s hinges so that it fell out to the pavement. The big
guy, still alive and groping for the gun he’d dropped in shock, was seized and
thrown out of the car like a sack of flour.
Standing in his wake was Wolverine.
“LOGAN!” she hollered. Her hands shot out to him. The claws were gone with
hasty shink and he was hauling her up and out, like a child, and Mary responded
on instinct. Her legs tied around his middle and she hugged around his neck,
hiding her face there too. He held onto her with one arm around her middle and
abandoned the car at a full throttle sprint.
Behind them she could hear Irvin coming to and the big man spewing senseless
profanities.
More gunshots. Dying screams.
Logan didn’t stop running until they were around a corner, hidden in an alley
behind a fetid dumpster. He bent to let her down gently, but didn’t remove his
arms. Mary still clung to his neck too and sucked in air with life or death
desperation, her eyes shut and buried in his collar. She flinched when she
heard something explode and the crackle of fire follow. The smoke didn’t find
them, but the scent of it did, along with everything burning under its
influence. Metallic tangs, plastics, flesh, gasoline.
“You all right, Red?” Logan rubbed at her hair. Mary sniffled and gathered
herself piece by piece.
“Yeah…”
“You’re safe now. I gotcha.”
She nodded into his collar.
A slow and heavy gait, soft on the pavement but still audible to them both
through the roar of the fire, approached from around the corner. Mary shifted,
letting her arms drift away from Logan’s neck. He kept a loose grip at her
waist as they both watched the Punisher stroll up to them, stern faced and
darkened by the shadows.
“She all right?” he said. He was holstering a massive handheld gun. It looked
like he had several more weapons strapped to his person. Rifle at his back,
smaller calibers around his waist. The glow of the skull on his chest
penetrated the dim alley like a beacon.
“Frank Castle?” Mary called.
He stopped short, and nodded to her. “And you’re the Spider-kid’s girl.”
He’d seen the news. She nodded to him back, stepping just a bit more out of
Logan’s grasp. A strange calm had overtaken her in spite of the dizziness
whirling her mind around and the nausea twisting her guts. “…Thanks…thank you.”
“We oughta get out of here,” Logan rumbled. Already there were police sirens
running, distant and foreboding. “You didn’t set my car on fire too, did you?”
“Ain’t your car, but no.”
“How the fuck else was I going to tail ‘em?”
“Mr. Castle?” Mary drew out of Logan’s grip, pressing forward. “We have to ask
you something.”
“I know.” He seemed oddly morose. For a fleeting moment Mary thought it was
regret over the blood and fire and the four now dead mafia goons, but that was
silly. He was the Punisher. He punished. That was his exact modus operandi. “We
need to cut loose. Got something to show you both.”
She wanted to smile. She choked on the gesture instead, and Logan had to hold
her up all the way to the car he’d stolen. He sheltered her eyes as they passed
the burning wreckage on their way out, but her mind was already elsewhere,
stuck on the sight of a cold corpse lying prone and bloody on cheap beige
carpet, one foot sticking out the exit and blocking the door.
 
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
They had brought in his Aunt May whenever meal time rolled around. Seemingly
they had taken note that she was the only person who could face him and not get
blasted full of gross hormonal mutant crap, and Peter was all the more grateful
for it. Each time she came, he felt just a little better. A little peppier,
thinking more clearly, nausea dying down and less time spent ruminating on
Sabretooth and Venom and everyone else who had put their hands on him.
He had replaced the bedding and sat patiently between visits. They’d given his
Aunt books to pass off to him, and he would open them and peruse the author’s
prefaces as she pressed medicinal shots into his arm.
“Is that the anti-Oz one?”
“No, sweetie, not yet. They’ve got a lot of work to do before that. This is
just to get you feeling better. How’s your arm?”
He had patted his cast and told her he couldn’t feel the break anymore, and she
had pulled out thick scissors and cut it all away. She helped him wash up the
skin in the bathroom, the smell of sweat from the sheltered skin replaced with
cool vanilla from the soap. It was really a lot more effective than whatever
concoction they were using at S.H.I.E.L.D., and Peter wondered if maybe there
wasn’t some mutant around that secreted something with healing properties, or
had healing properties that could be transferred via blood transfusions or
chemical work. He gnattered away at his Aunt with these theories, and she would
laugh and pat his cheek.
“Don’t think too hard, kiddo. We’re just getting through this one step at a
time.”
He slept much better that night. Better than he had in ages.
The next morning she was back with a glorious breakfast tray. They were feeding
him like it was a four star resort, it seemed. Crispy bacon and pancakes and
eggs and fresh fruit. She popped a few of his grapes into her mouth and assured
him that she was eating just as well as he was.
Though he ate his fill no one had come yet to collect his Aunt. They left her
with him for longer and longer periods of time. All they did now was sit
together, his Aunt leafing through a crime novel from his growing assortment of
literature and Peter leaned his head against her, content, eyes closed.
Peaceful.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so…it was just strange, that he’d
found a soothing middle ground in the midst of all that had happened to him,
inside a cell in Magneto’s fortress of human-hating doom. He snuggled his nose
closer into his Aunt’s shoulder, still drowsy even now that he’d eaten.
So he must have drifted off for a bit. Not long, but long enough that the cool,
serene blank of sleep took a turn. Sights and faux sounds, snippets of dreams
pawed at him. He grimaced and huddled closer, his knees drawing up.
That was when he felt hot breath at his neck.
“Little peach. Little sweetie pie.”
Jostled back and forth, lips over his and a hot tongue pushing down as someone
fumbled with his belt from behind, squeezed his ass, pressed his hand in the
groove between his legs and rubbed at the end of his dick through his pants.
That tongue becoming huge. Elongated. Inching down his throat like some kind of
worm and vicious pointed teeth nicking at his lips and he just kept hearing the
most sordid whispers in his ear, the voice indistinguishable but the words
biting at him. Calling him pretty, promising filthy things, talking about
ripping him in two and how cute he looked when he cried.
He woke with a gasp when his Aunt’s hand pinched sharply at his shoulder. Her
grip had gone wickedly tight. Peter had to blink hard to wipe the dream away,
put himself in the cell. Cold sweat dripped down from his hairline and he
reached for his Aunt’s hand while staring straight ahead at the glass.
“Sorry,” he said, counting to five in his head and willing his pulse to stop
its mad dash. “Sorry, I was just dreaming.”
He heard his Aunt sniffle and sob. He rubbed her fingers.
Then he frowned. He passed his thumb over her ring finger again, and found it
curiously absent of an actual ring. She might have started dating again, but
she still wore her wedding ring around the clock. And it was smooth, soft, but
more taut than usual. No wrinkles.
“Oh, you poor kid. Jesus, you poor sweet thing.”
Not his Aunt’s voice.
Peter’s eyes were wide with horror as the woman holding him moved to hug him
proper. Beautiful, in her twenties or thirties, with thick silvery hair that
was tossed over her back like velvet drapes. She was sobbing as she pressed her
forehead to his.
“It’s okay, all right? I’m here for you.”
He watched her cry. He watched her blue eyes glisten and the lashes stick
together as the tears rolled out and dragged threads of her dark make-up with
it.
She flew into the wall with an echoing crack and a scream of surprise.
“Who…” Peter rose, standing, stepping off the bed with his shoulders hunched
and his fists clenched so tightly the veins were popping out, “the FUCK are
you?!”
She hyperventilated. She was still crying, sitting on the ground with her legs
splayed out like a fallen deer. She had to take several deep breaths before she
whimpered to him, “Lorelai…”
He didn’t recognize the name. But he found he did not care at all. “WHERE IS MY
AUNT?!”
Her hand shook as she raised it to her mouth. “I’m…I’m so sorry. They asked
me…Sabretooth…I’m sorry…”
The world slowed to a crawl to let a knife, unseen, intangible, yet sharp
enough to split atoms, sink straight through his chest and cleave his heart in
two. Blood swished and pounded in his ears. Peter couldn’t hear a thing.
Chapter End Notes
     Since she's extremely obscure and only ever cameos at best, here's
     Lorelai's_incredibly_sparse_wiki_page if you want a visual. :) Sorry
     Pete...
***** Auntie *****
Chapter Summary
     Peter attempts an escape, but success comes at a price.
Chapter Notes
     This chapter contains graphic violence and dub-con, as well as some
     gorey imagery.
     This one took forever to write, and I apologize for the wait. It's
     largely in part because it's a really hefty chapter (even though it's
     short), and writing it took a wallop out of me. I had to retool it
     several times, as my original plan was to make it far worse than it
     already is, but I couldn't rightly in the end. Not without ruining
     the rest of the fic.
     Thanks again to everyone who's sticking with me, or even dipped in
     briefly and enjoyed what they saw at the time. You're all amazing and
     I'm so grateful to have you here.
“They asked me to. To make you think – and to pretend I was her,” Lorelai said.
Her face twitched twice, like a glitching screen, and when she stopped talking
she seemed starstruck to be looking at Peter all over again. “You poor thing.”
“Fucking don’t!” Peter snapped down over her, fingers gutting her shoulders
like claws as he shook her loose of the hold his powers had on her. “To make me
think what? What did you do to me?!”
“That’s my power,” she whimpered. “I can hypnotize men. I’ve been making you
want to be here, and making you think I was your Aunt. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,
don’t hurt me, I’m sorry!”
The bang of the hall door didn’t startle Peter. He was shocked that it had
taken them this long to send someone to corral him. “DOWN, PARKER!”
The clop of heels in a sprint. Mystique. Peter’s eyes fell on the cell lock and
before the idea fully settled in his mind, he was yanking Lorelai up by the
forearm and jamming her hand against the sensory pad. It lit up and dinged. She
wailed as the door sprung open, and Peter dragged her out with him.
Mystique shot ruthlessly at them as Peter rocketed free, nearly nicking Lorelai
by her flying feet. Peter clutched her in front of him and snapped to the
opposite wall. Human shields had never been his style but that was the same
white blaster that she had used to gun him down in New York. If the woman got
hit, she’d only be stunned.
She deserved worse, he thought with a hateful surge, for pulling that stunt,
for oozing in like a slime and coating everything sugary and sweet and
convincing him that hey, maybe being trapped amongst mutant terrorists wasn’t
such a bad thing. For making him think that she was his Aunt.
He was so fricking stupid. He had actually been buying into it.
“Put her down, kid,” Mystique threatened. She squared the gun barrel between
his eyes. “Don’t be stupid. You’ve got nowhere to go.”
“What did you do with my Aunt,” Peter demanded hoarsely. Lorelai fretted and
whined in his grip, flinching, reaching up to pet his arm where it was clasped
around his middle. Was she still under his influence? Even now? “What did you
do to her? What did you do that made you try to trick me?! TWICE!”
“You’re going to need to simmer down, buckaroo, and let go of—“
He let her get no further, almost frothing at the mouth when he screamed,
“WHERE IS MY AUNT?! WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY AUNT MAY, YOU FREAKING—“
“SHE’S DEAD!”
Mystique’s jaw dropped in awe. Peter stopped. Screaming, breathing, moving. He
was little more than ice, cold and rigid.
Lorelai shivered in his grip and rubbed his arm with fervent desperation,
weeping openly as she carried on. “She’s dead, I’m sorry, she’s dead. She was
never here. She had a heart attack before they could catch her. Sabretooth left
her there, he left her in the street…”
“Lorelai!” Mystique spat, mortified. “What part of keep him placated did you
fucking miss?!”
“I don’t know! I c-can’t help it Mystique, I can’t shut up – he’s doing
something to me, I can’t think – I can’t—“
And then she wasn’t in his arms anymore. Peter must have lost himself, stopped
his mind for two seconds, because now he was looking down at the graceless heap
of women on the floor and the gun lost to the side, which had seemingly blasted
the cell window and left the glass cracked around a sharp splatter of a burn
mark. Mystique groaned under Lorelai’s weight as the other woman howled and
drew off, hunching over to cradle her bruised elbow. He’d thrown her. He must
have.
He was weightless as he moved and yet all too slow, pushing through murky
water, or chained at the heels. Peter stooped. The gun was hot to the touch,
even around the handle. A hand was slapping on the floor. Mystique was pulling
herself away. Lorelai was crumpled and useless, muttering sorry over and over
and flinching incessantly.
The hall just seemed so dim and heavy. He was shocked to find he was moving at
all, much less fast enough to stomp his foot on Mystique’s chest, or level the
gun at her as she tried to swing her legs around to sweep out his. She breathed
thinly, lips tight, scooting away by inches on her back with a grunt. Peter saw
a wet mark dab into being onto her shirt. Then another. He looked back up to
meet her eyes and only then did he feel the watery trails being drawn down his
cheeks and folding under his chin. With the change in angle some dropped off
while others followed the cords of his neck and died when they soaked into his
collar.
Mystique watched him with cool apprehension. Assessing. Yellow eyes so cold and
serpent-like and he wanted nothing more than to never see them again.
Though he let his mouth part and took in air, not a sound came out of him.
Peter wasn’t sure what to say. Some black, nameless thing had gone and
swallowed up his insides and sucked the words clean out of his mind.
He simply pulled the trigger. Mystique’s eyes rolled back and disappeared under
the lids with a meager flutter. She was still breathing, but out cold. Lorelai
shrieked behind him and he turned the barrel on her next, his teeth gritted as
the gun jolted in his hand with the force of the shot. Down she went, silver
hair flying and draping in ethereal ribbons over her shoulder.
Peter’s head was throbbing. He choked on nothing but the knots squeezing his
trachea, his chest. There was a limp wobble to his steps as he passed over
Mystique, almost tripping on her arm. His footfalls should have been silent,
his feet clad in nothing more than thin utilitarian socks and padding
delicately on the metal floor. They echoed to his ears even so, pounding like
drums, like pipes swung into tin walls.
There were more mutants assembled outside the hall, waiting to pounce the
moment the door creaked open. His spider senses warned him of that long before
the first blaster shot whizzed past his ear, sending Peter ducking and dodging
on rote operation. His muscles did the thinking. He took a couple shots as well
but his aim was crap, so he lobbed the gun at one's head before leaping in to
clock another, purple and tender skinned like a cabbage, in the mouth. He took
them each out without note for their features or demands or pleas; without
comment, his mouth sealed shut when it wasn't splayed open to gasp for air or
grunt with the effort of a hit, giving or receiving.
He shambled with ragged breaths out of that hall into another. One horned man
saw him, two cruel, pointed hooks like a bull’s sprouting out of his temples.
He did a double take, then rushed at him head bowed and those points trained on
Peter’s gut. When he was a hair's breadth from success Peter leaped upwards and
stuck to the roof. The man yelped but hit the wall behind Peter with a mighty
crunch, then hollered obscenities as he realized he was hopelessly stuck. His
horns had punctured the wall nearly to the crown of his head.
Peter ignored him, dropping down and moving on.
There was a window into a technological pit, where a few bespectacled mutants
tinkered away at devices and paid no mind to the onlooker in the window above.
Then there was a series of labeled rooms, all useless halls and janitorial
excess. A map, posted helpfully around the next corner he turned, told him
everything. Even mutants needed fire escapes, apparently.
Only the building itself was detailed there, with no hint as to global
location. An elaborate fortress hidden in a wilderness unknown, fit to house
the future mutant society that Magneto would hope to fill those halls. Peter
couldn't suss out an exit from where he was at. The map was a massive,
sprawling mess he did not have the time to interpret. The place was humongous.
But there was a room, titled "Comm. Center", right on this floor. Not too far.
He jetted off at lightning speed.
They would have cameras. They would know he was out, there had to be
reinforcements, more people on their way to take him down, take him out.
Mystique would wake up sometime. Sabretooth could sniff him out.
He was so lightheaded he nearly lost his footing simply by running, having to
push his hand against the wall and let it trail alongside him like a trolley
wire. His chest kept finding new ways to tighten and collapse into itself.
Sabretooth. Aunt May, in the alley, down on the ground.
Peter found the communication center.
He kicked the door open and a twiggy little man turned to him, his eyes fish
like and broadly set on either side of his head.
"Hey!" He shouted peevishly. "Who do you think you are?!"
He weighed less than a basketball. Or so it seemed when Peter chucked him
screaming out the door and several feet down the hall. He knocked his head on
the floor and grumbled in a daze to himself.
Peter shut the doors behind him and thrust a hefty filing cabinet against it.
Five minutes. Give him five minutes in here to try his best, and then he’d be
back out looking for an exit.
He probably didn't have five minutes.
Rigid fingers rapped at the controls. He wouldn't have to bother wrangling with
passwords: the Fish Man hadn't had the luxury of logging out. At least here was
something Peter was good at. Machines. Computers. Things to tinker with and tap
and compute, calming and callous, no emotive effort required. There now, he was
on some promising looking screen, there was a space there where it seemed he
could enter a number. Place a call. His nose cinched as he struggled to
remember the one he needed – one of the direct lines Nick Fury had given him,
part of the contingency plan he'd outlined when he had first sent Peter home,
just before he found Jessica in his house and chased after her and pushed into
motion every single shitty, godforsaken wretched thing that happened after.
If he hadn't left, nothing would have happened. Not Frank or Tony, he wouldn't
have met Sabretooth and sent the mutants on a manhunt, he wouldn't be trapped
here, his Aunt May wouldn't be dead.
Peter swallowed up a sob as he dialed. He prayed it was the right number. He
needed it. He needed this one thing, just one fucking thing to go right.
It barely even rang. A monitor, previously black, sparked to life, and Nick
Fury's drawn and weathered face was looking down on him. His bloodshot eye went
wide.
"Parker?"
Peter burst out laughing. It was closer to a breathless string of wheezes,
tears still leaking out of him, but Peter was laughing. He reached forward and
stuck his hands to both sides of the monitor, as if cupping Nick's face by the
cheeks.
"It's you," Peter croaked.
"Kid! Where are you?" Nick was going pale, the vein at his forehead suddenly
throbbing. He heard alarmed voices in the background. Captain America's head
tilted into view over Nick's shoulder, and then Sue Storm's. Peter sobbed
openly. "Kid -- Peter, are you okay? Talk to me."
Deep breaths. Deep breathing, he had to be quick. "It's the Brotherhood. I
don't know where I am, there’s this fortress thing. Magneto's not in prison,
he's here. He’s escaped and he’s here." Peter's eyes widened. "I'm a mutant.
It's a mutation."
The line went silent. Captain America’s jaw dropped in open offense.
Nick’s teeth were bared. “Son of a—“ and then he turned, “DANVERS. Get someone
down to Magneto’s block now, and find out who the fuck’s been squatting in the
cell this whole time. Make sure they have guns. And get someone tracing this
call!”
“We’re already tracing it!” a sharp voice retorted from somewhere off screen. A
woman, vaguely familiar sounding.
Sue Storm pushed closer. "Are you okay? Peter? Did they hurt you?"
He stared into her eyes. The blue seared at him through the strained, synthetic
colors of the monitor. Peter spoke from the lowest pit of his gut. "My Aunt is
dead."
Sue went quiet. Her hand was at her mouth and she was blinking wide at him,
horrified.
Nick Fury took over. Captain America had disappeared to argue with someone in
the background – the Danvers woman. He thought he could hear Janet Van Dyne
too. “Kid you need to get out of there. Find a safe place. They can probably
see the transmission somewhere.”
“There’s nowhere,” Peter spluttered. All his words had turned ragged and
tumbled recklessly from his mouth. “They left Aunt May to die in the street and
I don’t know where I am.”
“WE GOT IT!” shouted Danvers from the back. There was a flurry of activity in
the back now, shouts and orders and rushing footsteps and clatters.
“We’re coming kid,” Nick said. Not with his traditional bite, not with gnashing
teeth or simmering rage, but with the same firm, steady gentility Uncle Ben
always saved for him when he’d caught Peter crying over framed photos of his
Mom and Dad. “We’re coming for you.”
Peter shook his head and swallowed down an impossible lump, heart beating hard.
“I’m not gonna be here.”
“Don’t. We’re coming. Get out of—“
His spider senses roared and the screen folded in on itself, scrapping his
fingers as the two sides slammed together like the covers on a hardcover book.
The controls beneath crumpled into useless wads of metal and wires and
fractured plastic. A cutting, weighted scrape made Peter turn to find the metal
filing cabinet fleeing the doors as they swung open. Standing regal in the wake
was that very figure, clad in kingly reds and purples, that Peter had dreaded
seeing from the moment he had made his escape.
“You,” Magneto drawled, one brow raised in a look of faint disappointment, “are
far more trouble than I gave you credit for.”
His spider senses beat at him badly enough to bruise. Peter didn’t intend to
say anything, he couldn’t dare. It would be suicide.
“You killed my Aunt.”
But there was no reason to be afraid anymore. Why should he be scared of what
was going to happen? It was only a matter of delays by seconds, by minutes, and
even now when he was hollowed out and tear-streaked and dressed in the stupid
shitty clothes they had given him, Peter refused to let it end without saying a
word.
Magneto seemed to expect nothing less. He corrected him smoothly, stepping into
the room with a broad wave of his hand. The doors drifted shut behind him like
an old horror film cliché, and latched with nothing more than a scarcely
audible click. “We never laid a hand on her. She was weak. It’s a human
condition. We played no part, and you’re mistaken if you’re looking to blame
any one of us.”
“She wouldn’t have had a heart attack if you didn’t trigger it!” Peter shot
back. “It wouldn’t have happened if you’d left us the hell alone!”
“We couldn’t do that.” Magneto moved in closer. Peter grasped the chair
adjacent without a thought and hurled it at his head. A stupid move. It only
paused midair before hurtling back his way, and he had to leap aside to miss
it. Peter landed on the wall in a crouch, legs quivering, ready to jump again
in an instant.
The chance was lost to him already. Two strips of lean metal had been peeled
away from the control panel while he had been dodging the chair and flew at
him, snatching his wrists and binding them together against his back. Peter
clattered to the floor and shuddered, snapped his teeth together with a violent
curl to his lip, baring them like a savage beast. He rolled, trying to get his
knees under him. None of his muscles would obey him rightly, and his spider
sense was hounding him so ferociously he half expected to find Venom lurking in
the door.
Yet he couldn’t stop the bile from spilling from his mouth, his words molten
hot on his tongue. “I would have never joined you. You and everyone here are
stinking pieces of shit, and it’s not because you’re mutants.” He managed to
find his knees and rose on them, kneeling but proud. His eyes seared as if they
were burned by torches, he was holding them so wide, tears still streaming out
of the sides. “It’s because you are monsters. You are psychotic, self-
righteous, racist, murdering assholes. Just like every psychotic, delusional
murdering human that’s ever pulled the exact same shit on you. ”
There was a pause. Short and clipped. It seemed his vitriol was wasted,
however, because all Magneto did was huff and gave him a pitying stare that
seemed to come from fifty feet away rather than five. “Children. You’re always
so short-sighted.”
Another strip of metal, below the control table this time, screeched as it
stripped away and lassoed Peter around his calves. He toppled off of his knees
and was dragged to Magneto’s feet by a ghostly tug. An anguished wail wrestled
out of him. His spider sense was going to kill him before Magneto did. His nose
was burning against the frigid metal floor and the rest of him was trying to
curl inwards, protect his middle, cuddle his body as close as he could before
he went.
“And I am truly sorry, Peter, but you did bring this on yourself. That was Nick
Fury you had on the line, was it not?”
He heard Magneto cluck his tongue. The sole of his boot settled over his ear
and ground down, and Peter hollered into the floor, into the puddle of tears he
was growing beneath the compressed flesh of his cheeks. “SHE WAS MY MOTHER! SHE
WAS MY MOM, YOU BASTARD!”
“She was human. All humans are going to meet the same fate, sooner than you may
think. There is little use mourning what nature intends to erase.” The boot
pressed harder and Peter clenched his eyes shut. Pull as he might, he couldn’t
wrench his hands free. “I had intended to keep you alive, I’ll have you know. I
was not bluffing about wanting to fix you, should you have come around to
reason on your own time. We only asked Lorelai to pose as your Aunt as a
temporary measure. To prevent you from doing something rash. You had such
potential.”
The boot rose. His spider senses spiked impossibly higher. With the weight gone
Peter’s eyes blew open and the sight of the floor, the legs of chairs and the
console and cabinet and the stabilizing frames lining the bottom of the wall
all assaulted him with their musty, desolate grays, and Peter thought there
could be no more miserable last view than this. His pulse overthrew all his
senses. “But you chose death, Peter Parker.”
“NO!”
The force of his scream rattled his bones as it ripped through him. Shook
something loose.
He didn’t want to die.
Not even now. Peter did not want to die.
He couldn’t move his arms or his legs. He couldn’t leap up or expect any
cavalry in the next three seconds. All he had left was that niggling notion,
that subtle thing. That prickling sensation that was turning the cold of the
metal floor into a toasty, comforting heat.
So for the first time since he had kissed Johnny, since he had let Logan grab
him by the belt and swallow him whole, Peter simply shut his eyes and sunk into
it.
He could have sworn he heard the ticking of a second hand on a clock somewhere.
Counting down his last gamble. He gasped when instead of crashing down to
crumple his skull, the toe of Magneto’s boot lightly wedged under his forehead.
Tilting him upwards. Peter blinked blearily at the giant standing high over
him, wincing at the sharp stab of the lights directly overhead.
Magneto looked as impassive as ever, but the grandiosity was gone from his
voice when he spoke. It was human. Soft. “You are a sad wretch, aren’t you?”
Peter swallowed, tongue arid and stuck to the roof of his mouth, and curled his
knees tighter into his belly. Unfurling through him with sprawling fluidity,
the heat came. It was so much simpler now. He didn’t tense. He didn’t hesitate.
He let it swirl up and cloud his mind, turn his vision lazy, and watched
without repulsion as the same change was mirrored in the man above him.
The metal at his calves split to lay flat on the floor. Peter didn’t need an
order. He rolled onto his knees, his gaze never breaking with the man’s above.
He let himself rise. His arms were still bound behind his back. It was probably
a lewd picture already, him kneeling with his wrists shackled, his face inches
from the older man’s hips. Much older.
“But you are quite lovely.” He appeared to contemplate this quite deeply as he
threaded a hand through Peter’s hair. Brushed the remains of a tear away with
the soft pad of his thumb, the fabric of his gloves buttery smooth. “Can you
stand?”
“Yeah,” Peter rasped. Magneto stepped back by a fraction to let Peter rise to
his feet, only somewhat ungainly. The man was still nearly a foot taller even
when Peter was standing. He still felt like an ant beneath a boot. Only better
now: it was that unspoken sense of power, not simple brutality or bullying like
it had been with Venom and Sabretooth, that made the danger elating, and not a
crushing force to dodge. His breath hitched when Magneto’s fingers brushed at
his sides. He took a strong grip there, squeezing his waist and rubbing his
thumbs down. Pushed upwards over every rib, stilling the quick patter of
Peter’s breath, then sunk back down to trace the ridges of his hips and the
start of his thighs.
He lost himself somehow again, muddled and hazy, but within a blink Peter found
himself backed against the console, hoisting himself up to sit on it as Magneto
pushed one of his knees to the side, edging himself in between his legs. He
couldn’t stop touching Peter’s face. He had pried one of the gloves off and was
using the now bare hand to stroke Peter’s cheek, brush the hair from his eyes.
The heat, as always, pumped through him now with sweet promises of rewards.
Numbing him. His hands were still bound but the ache from the new bruises
dimmed. He could feel Magneto’s breath at his face. Lips to his temple. His
cheekbone.
When they kissed for real it was thoughtful, slow but not hesitant. Savoring
the experience. He didn’t dive in like Logan or delve into passion, like Frank
or Tony. It was only explorative. No tongue yet. Just adjusting to the space
between them and how their skin connected, how the tips of their noses glanced
upon the other’s cheeks, how their lips fit together and the comparisons of
their skin. Magento’s hand was wandering up from his knee to his waist again.
He rubbed the shirt up, exposing skin, and traced a finger over the rim of
Peter’s pants.
Then, sharp as a spear and as unexpected, Peter saw the man leaning over him as
who he was, and not a vehicle for sex. He saw who he was about to let strip off
his clothes, bite into his skin, touch him, bend his legs back. The heat was
fissured down the middle with a cutting, pervasive, burning hurt.
His Aunt was dead.
“AAAAAAAAAHHH—“ The scream was erupting out of him, primal, and Peter wrenched
back and knocked his head against metal and buttons, his bound hands a painful
lump jutting into his spine, but he could not care, he was just swinging his
legs up –
Down –
CRACK.
Hit.
“GET OFF! GET OFF YOU FUCKING –“
Swing. Down.
CRACK. BANG.
Peter flung upwards, off the panel, stumbling. Magneto was stumbling too, his
head bowed and his arms streaming behind him from the blow, and when Peter
looked over his shoulder and saw him try to straighten and felt his spider-
sense tingle, crazed and ear-splitting, he shrieked. He leaped, spinning, kicks
swinging in the way he’d adapted from real fighters, Iron Fist or Bruce Lee.
His heels hit like axes.
WHAM. The helmet flew off – CRICK. Flesh.
Bone.
His heel was wet.
His fall was disastrous. Both his knees clanked against the metal floor and he
howled out when the bones there connected. His head hit the floor, but more
softly, the brunt of the fall already taken. He could manage, no stars clouded
his vision. Peter wheezed and threw himself to the side, onto one shoulder as
he twisted and tugged and hollered, trying to loosen the metal at his wrists.
He heard it creaking. He could feel it stretching.
It popped loose and his wrists were quaking with the damage, but he was free.
Peter spun to his feet, ready to shoot in for a proper hit but slipped a little
on his right heel.
Wet. The tang of blood hit his nose the exact moment he saw his handiwork
laying limp before him. The helmet, the famed one that Magneto wore to prevent
telepaths from their prying, had been dented and had skittered across the floor
to rest upturned against the far wall. The man himself was down, limbs askew.
His remaining eye bulged, and bled out of the corners. The other was lost in a
pulp. The half of his face that Peter had kicked was crushed inwards from the
top of the ear to the nose. Exposed bone that had tore the skin, freeing the
slick reds and pinks and the mottled greys of the brain.
His spider sense had died out. The room was now a dead zone for sound. Or Peter
had stopped hearing. One of the two. Both possible. He couldn’t feel anything,
not the lumps on his head he’d taken from banging it around the floor and the
control panel, nor the beating of his heart, the petulant ache in his abused
knees.
Scent though, that was available to him. He could smell what he had done. And
he knew his sock was wet. He looked down and saw it there, navy blue but
blackened at the bottom around his heel. He could feel the slick stickiness now
that he was looking.
Peter looked to the door. No one was rattling it. Looked to the sparking wires
where the monitor had been. All the other screens were static fuzz or blank and
black.
He looked back to Magneto and the canyon he’d hammered into his head.
He hadn’t meant to. He could never. Not like…
Peter’s hands were quavering, shaking back and forth like a hummingbird’s wing.
All right. He needed to sit. Sit down. It was a slow descent to the floor and
he shook the whole way there, as if he were an ailing and elderly man and not a
fifteen year old boy who could lift cars and toss them through the air. He
landed on his rear with a hard thud and kept himself upright with his hands,
leaning back, legs loose in front of him.
He hiccuped. Gave up on staying upright and laid himself down on the floor.
Give him – he needed a minute. He needed ten minutes.
He thought of Aunt May’s smile. He couldn’t see rightly anymore. The room was
flashing out to white in spurts. His heart rammed against his chest like it
might try for escape, and he couldn’t gulp down air fast enough. It came to him
in slivers under manic rhythms. It felt like drowning. It felt like death.
He didn’t mean to.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
She could feel the hand at her shoulder, warm and broad. She turned away at
first, curling deeper into the covers, but then the wrongness of both being
covered in sheets and lying flat struck her at once. Mary jolted awake and
scooted up, her head pressing into the pillow. In the darkness above her was
Logan. His hat was gone, and he was seated at the edge of the bed, hand on her
shoulder still.
“When…why did you move me up here?”
“Figured you needed it. You were passing out.”
“I didn’t mean to.” She grimaced and sat up further. Her jacket and boots had
been removed, but she was still in her jeans and shirt and socks. Mary rubbed
at her eyes. She did not feel rested in the slightest. “Is she…”
She only looked Logan in the eye for half a second. His presence here, waking
her, was enough.
Then Mary was a flurry, the bed covers flying off as she bolted out of the bed
and went for the door. The old wood of the stairs protested under the pounding
of her feet, but she did not slow, clutching the end of the bannister as her
fulcrum she swung around the bottom of the stairs, rushing down the hall to the
quiet room she had dozed off in before.
Dr. Strange was not at all surprised to see her slamming the door open, looking
up at her with a grim smile. He was seated in Mary’s chair next to another bed,
smaller but clad with more pillows than hers had. Mary gulped at the figure
there, and approached with her hand extended. She entwined their fingers
together.
“You’re awake?” Mary croaked. “You’re all right?”
It looked to take her extraordinary effort to breathe, and maybe there was
something of a rattle to it if Mary listened closely, but she smiled thinly
when she spoke. “I’ve been better, sweetheart,” said Aunt May. She rattled
again and her eyes watered. “God, you’re a gracious sight to see.”
***** The Cavalry *****
Chapter Summary
     Familiar faces make a few comebacks as forces join to hunt down Peter
     Parker and the Brotherhood of Mutants.
Chapter Notes
     No real warnings for this chapter, aside from minor hate speech. And
     a bit of jumping around in time, but I hope it's not too jarring.
     Thanks again to everyone who's reading! Especially after something
     like 1823490821591475098 words. Whoops. We've rose to the climax
     though and we're inching ever closer to the end. SLOWLY BUT SURELY.
     Major love to you all, seriously! <3 <3 <3
When Frank Castle, Logan of no known last name, and Mary Jane Watson had
collectively piled into a stolen car and pulled up at the one and only Dr.
Strange’s house eight hours prior, the man came out to greet them and was
mystically not stunned to see them decorated with blood splatter and smelling
of smoke.
“Someone had an adventure without me,” he had remarked dryly, before sending
the still reeling Mary upstairs with his manservant Wong, who had offered her
wet towels and to launder her jacket. She had thanked him with a whisper and
stood shaking in the bathroom for five minutes, alone, riding out the panic she
could still feel washing over her nerves. She flipped up the toilet seat and
hovered over it on her knees, hair pulled back to her nape, waiting for her
stomach to turn itself out. It never did, even though she forced a few coughs
to coax it along.
When she felt fit to face them all, she tiptoed back down to join the other
three and slipped in beside Logan without a word. He put his arm around her on
sight. Frank Castle was perched on the edge of a couch, hunched over a beer
that he held forlornly between his knees, staring at the floor. Doctor Strange
himself had a bourbon or a whiskey or something of that ilk, elegant golden-
brown and swirling in a fussily etched tumbler. Mary had only ever seen him on
television but he looked a lot less lively up close, waxen faced and lavender
bags puffing out under of his eyes. Logan had a beer in his hand too, and was
already down to the last sip.
“Just told them what happened,” Logan said. He hadn’t changed out of his
bloodied shirt, but he had washed whatever had gotten on his skin. Mary
supposed Dr. Strange wouldn’t have anything in either of their sizes.
“Hi,” she said, nodding and holding a hand out to their host. “I’m MJ. Um.”
Peter’s girlfriend.
“I’ve heard. I’m Stephen,” he smiled at her, shaking her hand with the warm
delicacy grown men always reserved for her.
“Yeah. Peter’s told me about you,” she said. Strange flushed around his ears.
Castle looked up from his reverie, strained around the eyes, and Logan’s gaze
flicked between them both.
There was a queasy (and mildly furious) jump in her gut when it occurred to
Mary that of everyone in the room, she was the only one who hadn’t slept with
her boyfriend. Judging from his sidelong glances, Logan had sussed out as much
too.
“Good things,” she added hastily, and hoped that would patch the whole matter
up. “Nothing but good things.”
“All right,” Strange smiled. He was still unable to meet her eyes. Logan
squeezed her arm and she shrugged in response.
“You got any idea who it was in the car with you?” Castle intervened.
“The Kingpin sent them,” she said, “They wanted to know where Spider-Man was.
Nobody’s buying that he’s dead.”
“Of course not,” Strange cut in. “No offense. But now that they’ve leaked your
boyfriend’s photos there’s a whole slew of people swearing he’s still alive. It
was a crapshoot of a cover story, and no body to boot.”
“No shit,” Castle remarked.
Mary frowned at him. “Never mind that. How did you find us tonight? How did you
even know where to look?”
“I called him,” Logan answered. He let her go to fish a phone out of his jean
pocket. Flip phone. “I got this outta the guy when I was searching him for his
keys.”
Castle rustled in his corner. “His name was Delmar.”
“You serious? Poor sunovabitch.”
The landlord. Mary pursed her lips. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Castle. It’s my
fault.”
“Was bound to happen. If it wasn’t you, someone woulda shot him over me,”
Castle remarked, as if he were commenting on the takedown of a gazelle by a
pack of lions on a nature channel. That was life, that’s nature, it’s a mad
world and all those clichés. He took a contemplative swig, tense throughout his
whole form. Mary supposed that was the most eulogy the poor man was going to
get. “Was on my way back to my place anyway. Those mafia fucks were clean
enroute.”
“I’m still sorry,” she insisted.
“Kiddo, it’s all right,” Strange said. “I think you’ve had a tough enough day
as it is.”
There wasn’t much she could say to that. Logan jostled her and offered the last
of his beer to her. Mary almost laughed, but took a fraction of a sip to be
polite. It did help some, and Strange offered to have Wong get her hot cocoa
instead. She opted to sit while she waited, leaving a careful foot and a half
between herself and the stone-still Punisher. Logan bristled, but did not join
her.
“So…” she said without a trace of subtlety .
“Down to business, huh?” Castle replied, his voice no more than a Sin City
rumble. He drained his beer and clacked it onto the table. “I don’t know who
took your boyfriend.”
“But you were there,” Mary pressed.
“After. I found the car, and I found his Aunt face down in an alley.”
She gaped. “You what?”
“She’s alive. She was out, but alive. Not by much, though.” Castle rubbed his
forehead. “Took her to a hospital and had her registered under Jane Doe. They
were trying to get an ID on her.”
“And then the news broke,” Strange added.
“Then the news broke. So I had to break back into the hospital and fish her out
of there before anyone realized that Spider-Man’s Aunt was hooked up by the
nose their machines. I didn’t have a lot of options where to go. Don’t know who
or how many people the kid’s pissed off, so I went with my gut.”
“Even if I’m not that kind of Doctor,” Strange shrugged.
She faced him, then Castle, back and forth with the hair-trigger suspense of a
squirrel on the open ground. “…So she’s here?”
She gave them no time for answers, bursting off of the couch. Logan caught her
by the wrist before she could commence her one-woman siege upon the Strange
household. “Sit back down, Red, she’s sleeping.”
“I want to see her!”
“Let her be for now.”
“How do we know it’s really her—“
“I can smell her, kid, it’s the real deal.”
Mary scoffed. “You know what Peter’s Aunt smells like.”
“Don’t start lipping me again.”
“As I was saying,” Strange said loudly, squeezing in between Mary and the door
with peaceable hands raised, “I’m not that kind of doctor, and we’re lucky that
she had some real treatment before we had to take her out of the hospital. I’m
doing what I can with spells, but she’s still recovering. And it would be best
that we didn’t wake her.”
Mary fumed, but settled with a glower, ripping free of Logan’s hold to cross
her arms. “Spells.”
“Yes. Spells. I’m hardly a master of it but at least a heart condition’s easy
enough to manage. At least the aftermath of it. I found a few incantations in
these dusty old books and she’s doing better by all accounts.”
“You couldn’t have got her a real doctor by now?” Logan asked.
Castle shook his head. “Thought about talking to S.H.I.E.L.D., but you can’t
ever be sure with those assholes.”
“No, you’re right,” Mary admitted bitterly. “You probably did the right thing.
Whoever did it knew they were leaving the Triskelion. They would have had some
connection to S.H.I.E.L.D., or a line tapped or…I don’t know. Something.”
“Should we contact them now?” Strange pressed. The question was aimed at Logan,
which ruffled Mary a bit, but she pushed to answer regardless.
“No. Maybe not.” She started to fiddle with her hair. “I’m not sure. We still
don’t know who attacked them. She hasn’t said anything?”
“She hasn’t woken up.”
The couch rustled. Frank Castle stood, and though he could no longer lower his
eyes to the ground in his solitary grousing, he still refused to look at a
single one of them. He had eyes only for the exit. “I’m out. You three can
settle it from here.”
“You’re leaving now?” Mary asked, flummoxed.
She would almost rather he had kept not looking at her, because when he did
meet her stare she could see in the squint, the angry furrow in his brow and
even the film noir set of his frown, that he was haunted. Some sharp and
relentless thing was cutting away at him even as he stood in the domesticity of
a plush living room with a freshly finished beer in his gut. And Mary, who had
spent a great deal of the last few weeks loathing each of the men standing here
now, at last understood what Peter meant when he said he worried more for them
than himself.
“I owed the kid. Far as I know, I’ve paid him back the best I can.” The nod he
gave her held the finality of an execution. “Hope you find him.”
Logan tossed him the dead landlord’s keys and phone as he made for the door.
All three watched him go in silence. Mary’s heart rose to the pitter patter of
her mind as she tried to think of some brilliant cure, some form of saving
grace. It was hard to think what wouldn’t anger him further, what wouldn’t
shame him, what wouldn’t call it out too obviously. What would actually get him
to let it go.
She trotted to the door, still unsure of what might come out of her, and called
to him in the dark of the door steps. “Mr. Castle?”
Her answer was a flash of light shifting on metal, and the swing and thud of
the car door. Frank Castle was reduced to a flat, inky silhouette through the
window. The engine roared to life and he pulled away, tail lights winking out
of existence behind a sharp corner. He might not have even heard her at all.
Or he had, and he didn’t want to bother with her. Though it was summer and a
scorching one at that, there was a subtle chill settling into her bones through
from the night air.
It also occurred to her that he’d been drinking. Mary cringed and sent a silent
prayer to whoever would listen that he wasn’t going to crash the car somewhere.
When she returned inside Mary accepted the now ready and steaming cocoa from
Wong without a word, pressing it to her lips dourly. Strange had absconded to
some other chamber without them, and that only left Logan once Wong abandoned
them too. He was watching her closely, head cocked.
“You’re just like him, you know that?” At her bemused look he added, “Parker.
You both think you can fix everything by talking it to death.”
She scowled at him. “I don’t get into half as much trouble as Peter.”
Logan snorted.
“And I dress better.”
“You and the rest of New York.”
“I don’t know. Have you met Moon Knight?”
Strange re-entered, somewhat more composed, and offered to show her to Aunt
May’s room then. Mary had accepted without a second thought, and later drifted
off to sleep next to the woman, empty cocoa mug dangling from her fingers.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
By the time Jean stomped past them to pick up the phone that Saturday morning,
Bobby Drake had out-driven, out-shot, and out-hookered Kurt Wagner on every
conceivable level.
“Have either of you seen daylight since you picked up that stupid game?”
“If the strip club is daylight, then yes, about fifty times.”
“The strippers are pixels, Bobby.”
“Very nicely shaped pixels,” Kurt assured.
Bobby bit his lip as he made a particularly spectacular landing. “God bless
GTA.” Beside him Kurt nodded sagely and murmured a prayer. Jean made that sigh
that came with her grandest eye rolls and switched to complete cordiality as
she answered the phone.
“Hello – Logan?”
He was hopping out of his car, now sadly compressed into an automotive
accordion, and yanking out the driver of a sweet little sporty number that
happened to be passing by when Jean suddenly patted the couch and gave them
shush hands. He groused, but paused the game and turned to watch her argue with
Logan.
Except she wasn’t arguing. She was looking more and more like she’d uncovered
some macabre murder scene. “You what? Okay -- what?” She looked upwards, free
hand now tugging at her already sparingly short hair. “Peter Parker? That
Parker?”
Kurt prodded his shoulder. “Zat is the guy…”
“Spider-Man? Yup, pretty sure.” Or Kitty’s Nerd Ex, as he had been called
around the house, but that was beside the point. There had been a ton of talk
about him on the news lately and some idiot had pulled up pics of the guy in
his civvies and put them on the net, and that was after S.H.I.E.L.D. had taken
the extra pains of sending out a suit monkey to tell them that he was
officially retiring and they all had to pretend Spider-Man had died.
Basically it had been a huge hairball and a chief subject of gossip around the
house, and if the Professor hadn’t intervened citing S.H.I.E.L.D.’s wishes as a
cease and desist, they might have acted on the muttered plans about sneaking
off to the Big Apple and finding out why Spidey’s life was exploding into a
huge ball of suck.
“Oh my god, you’re kidding – okay you’re not kidding, you’re really not
kidding. Okay. I’ll patch you through to the Professor. Cripey cripe cripes.”
She took the phone away, tapping in buttons with her lips pressed finely
together.
“Vat’s up?” Kurt asked gingerly.
“It’s the Brotherhood,” she rattled back. She didn’t look up to face either of
them.
“Whoa! Okay, we thought you were talking about Spider-Man?”
“I am. We were – oh man. Guys, I think we need to suit up, like now.” The phone
blared again and Jean thrust it away in disgust. “This is not about the gas
bill. If this is about the gas bill right now, I’m giving everyone over there
such a migraine. Hello?”
It wasn’t. She shot them both a foreboding look, pale and grim. “…Nick Fury?
This is the actual Nick Fury?”
Bobby’s pulse soared. She snapped her fingers at them, urging them to hustle as
she started to transfer that call over too. As if that wasn’t ominous enough,
Charles Xavier’s voice was suddenly chiming in their heads and every other
mutant’s in the mansion.
Everyone, report to the jet. Get in uniform. There will be an emergency
debriefing once we’ve assembled.
Kurt sank into the cushions, dejected, and picked up Bobby’s controller to end
the game. “So much for GTA day…”
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“I’m so not ready for this,” Johnny groaned. He flexed against the strap
holding down his left arm and found next to no give in it. Across from him
Jessica Drew, similarly bound, was offering a timid smile in apology.
“You don’t have to do this. I’m sure we can get some S.H.I.E.L.D. peon
instead.” She tried to shrug and only barely managed. “I really am sorry for
yesterday. They said the new restraints are Hulk lite, so no…uh, no repeats
today. Hopefully.”
“Hopefully,” Johnny parroted.
“I see they got you new pants.”
They both went quiet. Jessica cleared her throat. “Are they going to be able to
fix—“
“You split them from crotch to knee.”
“I know.”
“Funeral’s on Monday.”
Jessica cringed. “Seriously though, sorry again.”
“I’m more mad that Reed had to see me in my underpants.” With half a boner
rising in their confines and a clone of Peter Parker trying to gulp it down
whole, but neither one wanted to say that bit aloud. Even if, under different
circumstances, Johnny wouldn’t mind a cute girl…
Which was leading into equally dangerous territory, because even before he had
to spend all day looking at her Johnny had to admit that Peter-as-Jessica made
an extremely cute girl. That propelled him back to the same questions he’d
posed himself after making out with Peter, because he’d also had to concede
that Peter himself made an extremely cute boy. He could scarcely think about it
without glancing over his shoulder, fearful that someone might look at him and
just know he was thinking gay thoughts. (Remind him to avoid that Jean girl and
Professor X and anyone else who could scour his brain.) Sometimes he figured
that maybe it was some lingering after effects of his powers, especially after
MJ had gone into detail about just how crazy they could get, but there were
times when it all felt just as genuine and curious as it did for any hot girls
he met. Even when he had come back and been playing cards with everyone at the
Parker’s he had kept stealing sidelong glances at Peter and admiring the way
his hair fell into his eyes, and his impish smile. Once you saw it, it was
impossible not to notice. He only hoped that Peter – or MJ – hadn’t caught on.
He’d get punched by one of them. Maybe both. Probably definitely both.
And Peter’s cuteness lead back to Jessica’s cuteness and being forced to get
super hot for her five times yesterday before they’d called it quits and Reed
focused on the blood work, gnattering on about triggers and indecipherable
clods of DNA. Yadda yadda yadda science boners. Johnny sighed and wished ever
so earnestly that he had never volunteered as a woody-springing guinea pig in
the first place. “At least he says he’s making headway.”
The door, some heavy duty Star Wars-esque affair, inexplicably blared open. Sue
sprinted in, throwing a hand in Jessica’s direction and the air glinted like
glass. She had put up a shield.
“Sue?” Johnny said in alarm.
The screen above them blared to life. Reed was there, and Ben, the former of
which hammering buttons madly as he spoke to them. “Experiment’s cancelled.
Sorry Jessica – we’ll release you once we’ve got Johnny in the clear.”
“Whoa, what? Where’s the fire?” She squirmed in her bindings, baffled.
Sue was hitting buttons on the panel that controlled Johnny’s restraints, and
they popped open one by one. “Johnny, we gotta get a move on. They found
Peter.”
It was as if someone had shot them both with 100 volts. Johnny and Jessica
jolted as one, stiff and upright even for how soundly strapped they were.
“For real?” Jessica ventured, awestruck. Hopeful. “He’s alive?”
Then Johnny was rattling at the restraints, and Sue could not pop them loose
nearly fast enough. Fire was crackling in his hair.
“Get -- Get me out! Let’s go, now!”
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“With all of you here, Danvers is staying behind to make sure no one blows up
New York while we’re gone. The X-Men have been alerted about the Brotherhood’s
location, and officially invited along for the ride.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Hawkeye badgered. He was leaning against a panel
that Tony Stark, already cocooned in his armor, wasn’t punching coordinates
into. “A lot of them are pretty…not adults.”
“Magneto’s their favorite sack of crazy. And we need the telepaths.”
“What for?” Janet interjected, jogging into the pit and slipping into her seat.
Nick shot her a withering look.
“You know why.”
Thor, who was already seated and clasping his hands together in thought,
murmured the sobering truth. “You wish to know if the boy lives before we
arrive.”
Stark stopped typing. Janet took a deep breath, likely intended to be silent
but failing utterly.
“The feed cut out, Fury,” Stark muttered. As good as he was at keeping a cool
head, and distant as the man became behind the suit, there was a clear waver in
his typically easy lines. The quips were coming snippishly, if at all, and he
had defaulted to a low, husky register to speak with, sounding more and more
like an animal wounded. “They had to have found him. He ratted on Magneto’s
great escape. I don’t think they’ll be inclined to show him mercy.”
Nick had hoped it would be obvious enough without stating. He looked steadily
forward. “Odds are slim,” he admitted. His throat was clasping shut. His chest
was burning. None of it showed, he had years of practice to thank for that, but
god, it was stinging like it hadn’t for years. “You’ve all seen the
transmission now. But if he is dead, and if there are no other captives being
held there? Then I’ve got no qualms letting the big guns blaze.”
“Aiming to kill?” asked Rogers. Not disapprovingly, for once.
“If we have to. Magneto’s not been cooperative, to say the least. And the
telepaths might come in handy if Parker’s alive and still spewing his shit
pheromones in every damn direction. They could at least try to shut that off.”
In the man’s cell, once the ammo had been brought out and measures taken to
check for common illusions, they had found the illusion spewing, C-list mutant
terrorist Mastermind, aka Jason Wyngarde, and his girlfriend in the cell,
taking a sweet S.H.I.E.L.D. paid vacation for god knows how long now. Both of
them were currently entering the wringer, being questioned by the best agents
he had to spare. He was taking a lot of people with him, considering where they
were headed. Taking down the Brotherhood’s stronghold hadn’t been the easiest
last time, and Nick was loathe to go in unprepared.
Pietro and Wanda, thankfully, were needed far away in Thailand for a different
pursuit, and were discretely left clear of the loop in case either one of them
decided it was a nice day for defecting back to Daddy.
The engines fired up. Communications blared too, other agents successfully
boarded on other decks and ships, artilleries ready. The Fantastic Four chimed
in on their own channel, using one of Reed’s fiddly radios even though they
were on the same damn ship as the rest of them. Nick grimaced as they rose from
the ground.
“We got at least some good news. The Aunt’s alive.”
Janet in particular perked up. “Are you serious?”
“She’s at that kook Dr. Strange’s house, with the girlfriend too.” Nick let
himself smile, even if by halves and only for a second. “We’ve got a car out to
pick them up and the Pryde girl and haul them back to headquarters where they
belong.”
“So they lied to Parker about his Aunt?” Stark remarked coldly. He was stiff as
a statue at the controls.
Janet gawked and shook her head, turning to share affronted looks with Rogers.
“Shitholes,” she said in astonishment. “They’re all a bunch of shitholes. Why
would you do that to a kid?”
“If they’re smart, then that’s the worst they’ll have fucking done to him.” No
one spoke after that. Nick wasn’t sorry for the slip.
If Parker was in anything less than one piece when he got there, you’d have to
excuse him for his appalling unprofessionalism.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Aunt May was fighting to keep her eyes open, the lids fluttering even as she
spoke. “Where’s Peter?” she rasped, squeezing Mary’s hand.
“Missing. He’s still missing.”
She inhaled a sour breath through her nose, mouth twisting. Then her attention
was at the doorway and she scowled faintly. “Is that…That’s the one from the X-
Men?”
Logan had joined them. He made no move to come so much as an inch closer,
standing guard as he leaned against the frame. “Yes,” Mary said hurriedly.
“That’s Logan. He’s been looking out for us.”
“Mmm.” Aunt May drifted for a moment, nose wrinkled and eyes sealed shut. Dr
Strange sat up straighter at Mary’s panicked look.
“She’s fine. It’s just the spells – they require a lot of sleep. I’m sorry.”
Aunt May shook her head on the pillow, muttering to herself until she could
summon her focus once again. She peered at Logan again through bleary slits.
“They were yours.”
Logan’s head tilted. Mary jostled their entwined hands. “What do you mean? Mrs.
Parker…”
“There was a big one…the Juggernaut. Peter called him the Juggernaut. He
grabbed our car and…” she swatted her hand limply in the air. The name was one
that Mary had done minor research on, but only enough to know who he was allied
with and what he could do.
Logan, however, went suddenly stiff, jaw clenching. “The Juggernaut? You’re
sure about that?”
Aunt May nodded weakly. “I heard about him once on the news. I’m pretty sure.
And the first one, she was pretending to be that girl. That Kitty girl. She
tried to get Peter out of the car and then she shot at us, and then the
Juggernaut came, and there was another…a big man, a big lion-looking man…” Aunt
May was wincing, sweat shimmering at her brow. Dr. Strange swiped a tissue from
the nightstand and blotted it away. “They sent him after me. Peter told me to
run and I was trying…but I couldn’t…”
Tears, now. Mary took over for Dr. Strange, throat swelling as she watched the
woman grow fainter and sadder. Logan swore vehemently and tore out of the room.
“It’s okay, Mrs. Parker, you don’t have to say anything else.”
“Please find him,” she begged in a wisp. “Please find my boy.”
“We will,” Mary whispered. Aunt May grimaced and Mary bent down to kiss her
cheek as she was lost again to sleep.
“I’ll watch her,” Dr. Strange promised. Mary nodded, stroking the woman’s hand
with her thumb one last time before making to follow Logan.
He was on the phone when she caught up to him in the hall, demanding to speak
with ‘the Professor’ and running through the details of Peter’s situation. He
only paid her mind when he hung up and slung the cell into his pocket, giving
her a sidelong glance. Mary knew what was coming before he said it.
“You’re staying put.”
“I know.” A part of her was still thumping with the need to go, to find Peter
and hold him close and rip apart the ones that took him by whatever means she
could, but Mary knew better. She had Norman Osborn and the bridge, she had that
skinless psycho clone of Peter’s, the Kingpin’s posse from yesterday. Each
incident spoke of her complete and utter uselessness. She’d tried her best to
rebel against it and now there were five fresh bodies with her name on them.
“At least we found Aunt May,” she said, lost in a hush.
“We’re gonna get him, too,” Logan assured. “I gotta go. They’ll be swinging by
in the X-Jet to pick me up soon.”
She was gnawing at her lip. “Do you think that it’s…Logan, what if it’s a
mutant power? Why else would the Brotherhood be after him?”
“Kid, you’d be hard pressed to find a bunch that’s better at dealing with out
of control mutants than us.” He patted her shoulder, let his thumb rub
soothingly over the denim of her jacket. “I mean it. You stay here with his
Aunt and don’t do anything stupid. Get S.H.I.E.L.D. on it if they’re not
already.”
Mary couldn’t argue with any of it. She had to think of Peter, how he’d need
her when they brought him back. He’d need his Aunt. She nodded, squaring him in
the eye with a look that spoke of the fire lighting her nerves, her surging
adrenaline even if she was standing motionless in hall god knew how many
hundreds of miles away from the fight. She whispered, “Give them hell.”
He smirked. Though it seemed a large part cocky he also looked strangely proud.
Maybe she had come off more bloodthirsty than she had thought. “S’one of my
specialties.”
He was out the door the next moment, leaving nothing behind but the engorged
knots in Mary’s belly.
Just as she was thinking she ought to call someone at S.H.I.E.L.D., bugged
lines or not, the phone rang on its own. Within a minute Dr. Strange rushed out
to find her in the hall and informed her that S.H.I.E.L.D. was on its way to
collect her and Aunt May.
“They’ve found out where all the little mutants are hiding and are on their way
now. They’ve got your mom out of police custody too. I’m guessing they want you
where schmucks like the Kingpin can’t get you,” he said with a small shrug. The
knots twisted even further in her belly and Mary crossed her arms with a bitter
huff.
“Have they got a two bedroom apartment over there? Because I’m pretty sure
there’ll be schmucks after us for the next thirty years.”
“Well. Something will work out, I’m sure. They’ll either find a better lie to
cover you with or…if not, you have my sincere condolences. You might want to
invest in a good pair of shades and some big thugs to follow you around for a
while. I hear that’s usually how it’s done. They shouldn’t be long though – uh,
you’re probably hungry. Quick breakfast before you go?”
He led her into the kitchen himself, no Wong this morning, and she caught him
surreptitiously hiding some strawberry poptarts from view by sliding a box of
Special K in front of them.
When her ride did come, there were five agents at the door, stretcher in tow.
The largest of which introduced himself as Hutcherson and shook her hand. “Miss
Watson. We’ve got Miss Pryde in the car already, and we’ve set up
accommodations at the Triskelion for all of you.”
“My Mom?”
“Already waiting for you there.”
Dr. Strange shook her hand, and Mary had pulled out her wallet and tried
valiantly to offer him the money Logan wouldn’t take. He too refused, laughing
and pressing it back into her palm, telling her to treat herself to some new
shoes when she got the chance. He led the other four agents forward, stretcher
in tow, while Hutcherson put his hand on her back and guided her outside. There
were two vans alone on the other side of the street, the morning crisp and
still quiet save for the sparse chirping of birds. Mary wasn’t even sure what
time it was, come to think of it.
"Hey! Hey, you! Red!"
There was a wiry looking homeless guy (she assumed) approaching from the left,
blond and gaunt around the cheeks, waving her down. The agent pushed her
forward with true muscle behind it and Mary stumbled a little. She shot him a
stunned look over her shoulder, affronted.
"Get in the car," he ordered, clipped and steadfast.
"Hey! You're his girlfriend right? You're Spider-Man's girlfriend?"
Mary ducked her head and walked quicker, catching Kitty's faint silhouette in
the black window. The agent ushered her forward alone, staying back to shoo
away the interloper.
"Hey! Don't walk away from me!"
"Sir, you need to step back."
"I need to talk to her," he insisted, eyes steady on Mary. "I need to talk to
you."
Mary trotted faster and kept her gaze on the ground.
"Don't fucking walk away from me! HEY!"
"Move along, son, this doesn’t concern you."
"Come on, lady!"
She hopped into the car, Kitty scooting aside to make room as she slammed the
door shut. The world outside disappeared, birdsong silenced and the angry hobo
gone on mute. The bliss of the armored car.
"What's his problem?"
"He's raving about Spider-Man, what else?" Mary said hurriedly. She gave the
girl a once over, and decided: to hell with pretenses. She leaned over for a
desperate hug and Kitty seemed all too happy to oblige. "Glad you're okay."
"Samesies." It wasn't entirely true. Kitty looked like she had barely slept a
wink and was dressed in the same clothes as yesterday, but she was alert and
unharmed. That was as much of a miracle as Mary needed. They drew away from
each other, smiling but still stuck in urgency. "So you found Aunt May?"
"They should be wheeling her out any moment now. Where's your mom?"
"Vermont. She picked a good weekend. Nobody knows what she looks like up there,
but S.H.I.E.L.D. is still sending out a ride for her. Can't believe it's the
Brotherhood, though," Kitty groaned. "And they're still frigging benching me! I
was an X-Man, for crying out loud! This is my exact forte!"
"I guess they feel like you're too involved? Considering…"
"Maybe. Is that blood?" Kitty was reaching over to pick at a small speckling of
red at the hem of her shirt, sticking out where her now clean jacket couldn't
cover. Mary folded the fabric back, sullen.
"It's a long story."
"I've got ti– where did the agent go?"
Mary turned to follow the bewildered stare Kitty was sending out the window,
and saw the homeless man next to them, bending down to peer inside.
She snapped out, aiming to click the lock shut but the door swung open before
she could. He leaned back in, one arm settled on the roof and the other keeping
the door splayed wide, like how the jocks cornered girls at their lockers.
"You got a minute?"
"Get out, creepazoid!" Kitty spat. He looked to her, unmoved.
"You're the other one, huh? Phaser Girl."
"It’s Shadowcat," she barked. He wasn’t deterred in the slightest.
"And you're Mary Ann."
Mary inched back. He didn't smell bad, and he was younger looking up close.
Maybe less scruffy than he had seemed at first. It was more the tempestuous
cloud he carried about him, a Jack Nicholson throwback to the Shining days,
that made her think they ought to be running. She wet her lips and answered
cautiously. "Mary Jane..."
He snorted at that. "Okay. Phaser Girl and Blazer Girl. Look, I just want to
know what's up with Spider-Man."
"Why?" Mary queried. Kitty leaned over her with raised hackles.
"Where did the agent go?"
The man smiled. "Inside? Come on, it's an easy question."
"He's dead," said Kitty.
"Yeah, I don't think he is," he countered, flashing teeth.
Kitty was refusing to back down. "What's it to you?"
He wasn't smiling anymore. The shadows seemed to dip further into his face,
turning the bones and the hollows and the curves outlining his eyes into
dramatic rises and falls. "I need him," he said.
It was as if the first wind of winter had rushed at her, pricking her skin to
numbness. Patches of gooseflesh rose all over Mary, and she reached backwards
to seize the other girl by the wrist. "Kitty..."
"He screwed me over. Your little boyfriend, he turned me into a freak. He ever
tell you that?" He paused for only a moment, giving them a hair's breadth to
answer. Neither did. "No? I thought he wouldn't. He likes to pretend he's such
a saint. But the guy ruined my life. And now I'm stuck. And I'm hungry, and I
can't ever stop feeling it gnawing at me, everywhere. Non-stop. I feel like I'm
going to go up in smoke every minute, every day, and no matter what I eat I'm
fucking starving.
"Funny thing about it is, the only thing that makes it better is him. Being
near him, it all goes away. Poof, like magic. He’s makes me feel human again. I
don't understand it myself, but he's got something I need." He let go of the
open door to press a finger into Mary's arm. She shied away. His touch was icy
cold. "And so right now, you've got something I need. I know he's not dead, and
I know you're not piling into this secret spy car to go for ice cream. So.
Where's he at?"
Mary could barely speak. Drawing the air for it had become impossible. “You
need to leave,” she ordered waifishly, eyes wide.
“Do I?” He laughed at her and shook his head. “Come on. What’s it gonna take to
get him to crawl out of the woodwork?” His gaze bounced between her and Kitty
with an insidious glint. “I mean here’s both of his chicks, cozying it up in
the back seat, and he’s still nowhere to be seen. But that’s probably because
he’s a huge fag. Bet he didn’t tell you that either.”
“Shut up,” Mary hissed. Livid. Terrified. Her wrist endured a spasm and Kitty
grabbed her arm, turning them into a knot of white knuckled grips. Kitty used
the tangle to subtly pull her back and away. “You stop talking. You’re the one
who raped him. It’s your fault he almost died.”
The man’s grin faded to a putrid sneer, pure ice in every word. “That’s how
he’s telling it, is he? You must have not seen him when we first met. He was
crawling all over me, crying about his stupid girlfriend dumping him. Which one
of you was that?”
Though she couldn’t move her eyes from him if she tried, Mary still saw the
door open to Strange’s house behind him through the hazy outskirts of her
vision. The figure exiting stopped still, then whipped out something from their
middle.
“BROCK!”
The man turned and took a bullet for his efforts, the foreboding bang quaking
the empty morning. But there was a burst of black oil leaping out of his chest,
rippling and coating him with a new skin as he recoiled from the blow. Kitty
yanked Mary backwards, and her snakish grip around her bicep was the only thing
she could feel as her body floated, intangible, through the leather and metal
of the car. The two of them sailed out of the passenger side.
“RUN!” Kitty shrieked. Mary did her best to oblige and didn’t look back.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
He had been half certain he was going to die from the strain alone, his heart
booming like a cannon, threatening to blow any second. His stomach had turned
and chucked its contents around like clothes in a dryer. Movement was
impossible. All his strength had fled him and he had laid, fetal, on the cold
metal floor with nothing more than his shuddering and desperate panting to show
he was still alive.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been down, but not once did the mercy of
unconsciousness pay him a visit. Peter rode out the shakes and the nausea and
the sweltering, suffocating terror that he was going to drown in nothing but
air.
But he could think a little better now. He was blinking, guarding his middle as
he rolled onto all floors and spat on the floor. No bile. He hadn’t actually
vomited. He spat again though, just to clear out the sour taste in his mouth
from all the close calls.
Peter sat back on his heels and tilted his head back to the ceiling, guzzling
air until he could feel his lungs full and flush again. His pulse simmered and
slowed.
Okay. He’d had a fit. Peter swiped the sweat off of his brow and refused to
look at the figure across from him on the floor. It was okay. Lots of people
had fits. Honestly it was a shock that it had taken him this long to have a
complete and total breakdown, considering how stupid his life was. And it was
too much. With his Aunt May –
Peter moaned and curled over his legs, palms pressed to his eyes. Tears flooded
there and he sobbed to himself, even as the sharpest edge of his mind urged him
back to clarity.
He was in deep trouble. He was alive, and Magneto wasn’t, but that couldn’t
have been helped. Magneto had been trying to kill him, and Peter had been
terrified and unwilling to bend over for the umpteenth time, not even to save
his own skin. Aunt May was gone and all he wanted to do was let his insides
crumble and squeeze until he died too, but he wasn’t sure he had time to let it
all sink in now because he was still stuck in the godforsaken Brotherhood of
Mutants’ secret lair and he had just murdered their ringleader, and how was it
that no one had yet come in here to carve him up for that tidy offense?
He hoped it would be quick when they did.
Peter rolled flat onto his back and watched the ceiling, still sniffling,
breath scraping his ragged throat. Getting up was an impossibility in his
state, and a pointless venture, anyway. He had nothing. He had no family. She
was gone. He was useless as Spider-Man now too, little more than a joke. A
complete embarrassment. A pariah. He’d have to spend the rest of his life
locked away in solitary confinement. Who would even want him like this? He
rubbed his hands down the sides of his face, puckering his cheeks, his lips.
Just as Mary Jane had that night in his room, joking about him having a butt
face and blowing him raspberries. Telling him she loved him.
He let his eyes close and then her face was outlined in the thin darkness. The
curve of her lashes, her nose, each and every freckle and the way she laughed
and the way she cried, the way she grimaced when she found bell peppers in her
food.
It took him some time, lying in his self-imposed blackout and coasting through
the chokehold misery had on every muscle and bone and tendon in his body, but
Peter pushed himself upwards. He didn’t deserve her. But he needed her. Needed.
Without Aunt May she was his last thread of sanity, and when he thought of her
Peter had the will to get up, he could rise to his feet, he could stumble on
rubbery legs towards the door and reach for the handle.
Though little else waited for him outside now, he ached to see Mary Jane again.
Even from a distance. Even for a moment.
There were no glances spared to the body behind him. He would lose his nerve if
he looked. It might be stiff by now. How long did rigor mortis take to set in?
If he knew he could at least get an estimation of how long he’d spent spasming
on the floor like a dying bug, but he would probably have another fit just
thinking about touching it.
If no one had found them yet, then maybe no one would find them. Not until
Peter had found somewhere safe, or stumbled over wherever they kept the land
rovers. He’d figure out something.
Luckily for him, the hall was still clear. Even that little fish guy he’d
thrown out earlier had seemingly gotten up and padded off to parts unknown.
Maybe to get his head looked at. Was it because Magneto had come after him? Did
he tell everyone else to go mind their business elsewhere while he skipped off
to crush Peter’s skull under his boot?
…Oh god. What an awful time for irony. His own sock was now clinging to his
heel through the dry bloody crust between the knit and his skin, and crunched
damningly when he walked on it. His own tell-tale heart.
Peter opted out of continuing on foot. The walls felt more solid, he could
stick with all fours rather than teeter around the compound on two shifty feet.
And his heel wouldn’t have to touch the floor, he’d only have to tread on his
palms and toes. He ripped off both of his socks when he hit the ceiling and
tossed them to the floor. He should hide them in the room: it might be less of
a red flag that something had gone hideously wrong inside, but there was no
chance he was opening that door again. For anything.
There was still a damning stain around the skin of his heel, but Peter didn’t
have time to deal with that. Now that he’d made up his mind about escaping he
was consumed by the need to do it.
Peter scuttled further down the hall, and slid around the corner.
He avoided most doors, and at one point had to halt and huddle in a corner as
best as he could as two mutants went sprinting past him. They didn’t notice him
high above, and were fraught with a panic of their own. Maybe someone had found
Magneto by now. Peter waited until their footsteps were long past, then bolted
as best he could manage on the roof.
Fortune smiled on him when he found an elevator. It wasn’t even key operated,
no retinal scans or pass codes. Peter clambered inside and hit the first floor
button, collapsing against the back wall again.
His spider sense was a delicate, steady hum, and had been since he’d passed
those two mutants. Something was up. Or they were out for him, looking still,
or maybe Magneto had the building programmed to self destruct in the event of
his death.
Which was ridiculous and maybe he wasn’t thinking clearly after all, but
honestly, if anyone was self-important enough to do it? It was Magneto. Or Dr.
Doom.
He hid against the button panel when the doors opened until he was sure that
his spider sense wasn’t buzzing, then he zipped out and leaped to the wall,
running sideways for some distance before rounding a corner and returning to
the floor for better speed. Ground floor. He would find some way out here.
First exit he could, he was taking, and he’d figure things out from there.
Or or or—
Peter skidded to a stop, and doubled back.
Was that a hangar?
No. A sign leading to it: there was a long, steely hall stretching beyond the
door that he could see through the minute round window, but the sign couldn’t
be lying. Peter’s heart thudded. He’d given it loose thought and he knew he
probably couldn’t pilot an aircraft for crap, but he was smart. Really smart if
he was being frank, especially with machines, and if there was anything like
the X-jet in there with a programmable autopilot? Now that, he could do some
fiddling with.
Peter slipped inside and ran further. It was far colder in this hall and he was
loathe to stop moving, lest it sink in and kill his nerve.
With zero preface the metal yawned and echoed. Shook. Then there was quiet.
Peter halted, whipping his head back and forth to see which angle he was going
to get assaulted from. Something had happened, something big. If death and
vengeance weren’t coming for him already then Peter wasn’t sticking around to
wait for them. He dashed off again.
There was another door, then two or three. Peter shouldered past the locks,
ignoring the bruise he’d have for shoving his way through metal, and gaped
openly. Three large jets, sleek. Armed too, he realized uneasily with a look to
their underbellies. He might have difficulties entering New York airspace with
giant effing missiles strapped to the bottom of his escape plane. Assuming he
could even fly one. Ought he check the rest of the hall? Maybe they had a few
rides without city ravaging explosives as bonus features.
His spider senses shrieked. Peter jumped, spasming and tumbling like a spooked
cat twenty feet from where he’d been standing, landing on all fours. There was
another entrance some distance from his, on the left.
Sabretooth, gobsmacked, surveyed him up and down from the frame of the door,
hand still locked on the handle. Peter trembled, rising upright. Sabretooth’s
gaze flicked to his foot.
He could smell it.
The man’s stare was like needles. Like ice. Peter was drawing back, spine rigid
straight. “What the fuck did you do?”
Peter took in the mutant with alarming focus, his every nerve a livewire. He
wasn’t just afraid anymore. A burbling flame was rising deep in his gut. His
chest went tight. He didn’t recognize his own voice when he croaked back:
“The same thing you did to her.”
***** Counting Down *****
Chapter Summary
     Peter and Mary Jane face down their monsters, and find that time is
     on neither of their sides.
Chapter Notes
     Warnings for very violent violence here.
     Oh dear god how has it been nearly two months. REAL LIFE GOT REALLY
     REAL FOR A BIT, OKAY. April was hell, and then there was a dark
     period of very severe writer's block, and I had to take a break from
     both of my chaptered fics and dive into a few one shots to pull
     myself out of it.
     I'm very, very sorry to have kept you waiting this long. Especially
     on such an awful note.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
“You son of a bi-”
Peter didn’t permit him the luxury of pet names. He had lurched forward with
such ferocity that Sabretooth had to dodge him or get his head knocked clear
off. He had leaped to the side and skidded on all fours like the animal he was,
claws raking gashes into the metal floor. Peter was on him again in a
heartbeat. No holds barred now, and he did hear the fantastic crunch of bone
when his fist collided mercilessly with the man’s collar bone.
For the first time in his life, the sound did not cow him. It fed him. Good, he
thought, chest blooming with hateful flames and his teeth gritted to aching. He
wanted to snap him clean apart. He’d killed his Aunt. He’d raped him,
viciously. He was shit, he was garbage, and Peter was overcome with the
insatiable urge to wrap his fingers around that meaty neck and squeeze it into
pulp.
At the moment he had to settle for leaping backwards – claws and all, made it
tricky to stay too close for long – and snatching up a wheeled metal drawer
chest, rattling with tools. He chucked it at Sabretooth. It missed, but it flew
clear into a plane and crunched the nose inward like a puncture in a soda can,
one of the propellers snapping off. Sabretooth dove at him, swiping. Peter
somersaulted back. Then abruptly launched forward, feet first, landing both
soundly in the man’s gut and sending him careening back into the wall some
thirty feet away.
The metal dented and creaked.
Sabretooth slid down, landing on his feet, huffing and wiping blood from his
mouth. Peter could hear the bones cricking to correct themselves, and was
outraged at how fucking cheap his powers made it all. Sabretooth laughed.
“Ain’t playing around no more, are we Spidey?”
“I’m going to kill you,” Peter said. It came without vehemence. No growling or
sneers. Just a plain and simple statement of facts, only the mania in his wide
eyes betraying his savage state of mind.
Sabretooth huffed and spat on the floor, righting himself with a roll of his
shoulders. “Funny. I thought you were one of those wishy washy do-gooding
types. What was it that made you change your mind?”
“Stop talking.”
“Was it your Auntie? Really?” Sabretooth sniggered and flexed his claws.
“’Cause I read your file. Your Uncle corking it didn’t quite do the trick?”
“YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
“And that sweet blond piece that was living with you. You telling me that
didn’t get you riled up? Pretty young thing like that…”
He was not allowed to talk about them.
Peter rocketed into him, fist nailing hard against the metal where Sabretooth’s
head was just moments ago. He hissed at the throbbing, but had no time to nurse
the bruising. His spider senses sparked and he had to bend away from a swipe to
his stomach. Sabretooth would have his organs on the ground before he let him
get a hit in, but Peter could not be deterred now. He was taking him down, he
would ruin him.
They were little more than blurs. Swipes and blunt punches, grunts and yelps.
Peter’s pant leg was shredded and there were parallel gashes down his thigh,
but not too deep. His jaw throbbed where Sabretooth landed a wallop, but Peter
was paying him back in kind. The man had claws and he had his healing, his
size, but Peter had speed and power. He was jabbing, kicking, and even snatched
him by the collar and hurled him into the ground like a whip. Sabretooth was
winded on impact, and Peter hastened to use those precious moments before he
regained his breath. He zipped in to stomp on one wrist, put his hands out of
commission for long enough to get at his head, but though he cracked the bones
beneath his heel the other hand was jutting upwards for him already.
Peter hollered, his calf bleeding hard as the claws sliced across it and he had
to stagger away and hold it tight. Sabretooth rolled over, crouching, eyes dark
and trained on Peter as he panted and stared him down from a distance.
“Real fucking cute,” Sabretooth grunted, but his grin was gleaming and feral.
“Almost makes a guy forget what you look like ass up and biting pillows.”
He knew it was coming. He expected it sooner, honestly, but it still did
nothing to salve the body-wide sting of that remark. For an instant, a flash,
he was back in that room. In the dark. On the mattress. Pinned.
Peter trembled and squeezed the gash tighter. “Don’t even--“
“That’s the real deal, isn’t it? I can smell it on you, you stupid fuck.”
Sabretooth was rising. “Did he touch you, precious? Did the big bad Magneto
give you a scare?”
He struggled upright. He had to shut him up, he had to, or was going to flip.
His skin was crawling. Anger still pulsed and rioted in every inch of him but
there was icy quivers leaking in, and Peter knew that if he did not kill him
now, he would be running and he wouldn’t stop until he dropped to the ground
dead.
Sabretooth was strolling closer. Strolling, not even taking this seriously
enough to jump or stalk. “There ain’t no way you could have gotten close enough
otherwise to make him bleed. Cheating little shit. Or did you get scared
because you liked it?”
Peter jabbed for his face. Sabretooth was expecting that. He battered at
Peter’s side and Peter hit the ground in a roll, but when the claws swooped
down to rake across his face he launched himself high in the air, sailing over
Sabretooth wholly and landing behind. He immediately struck out with a kick. It
failed to knock him down again but he would be damned if he gave up that easy.
Peter jerked forward, taking another punch to the ribs just for the chance to
give a solid uppercut to the jaw.
His spider sense was wailing. He was livid hot.
No.
Peter jolted. He lost where he was, dizzy suddenly, stumbling backwards. With
alarming detail he recalled that pot on the stove with the instant macaroni,
leaning over it stupefied while Logan stood at his side.
Sabretooth was cackling. “What’s the matter, Spidey?”
He felt like he was melting. “No!” he shouted. He was leaping upright, bleeding
calf shrieking from the effort but he had to get out of reach. Peter scrambled
up the wall in a crab’s walk, but his body was limp and wilting, and he
couldn’t seem to concentrate hard enough to keep the stickiness in his feet and
fingers.
The boom of Sabretooth’s laughter chased Peter up the wall and frolicked over
the metal, every sound now a clanging omen in the echoes. “Should I be counting
down?” Sabretooth slapped the wall and it shuddered, and Peter’s weak grip had
him slipping down a foot before he could catch himself. Heat sprinted through
the tracks of his skin and he nearly cracked his head on the wall he jabbed it
back so fast, eyes wrenched shut. Peter hammered it in again, and again,
praying hysterically for the spell to pass as he worked up black bruises on his
skull. Sabretooth’s claws made a melody of long screeches as he dragged them
down the metal wall, humming to himself.
“Come here,” he cooed, the sound of his voice slipping down Peter’s spine like
hot butter. Deep, demanding. Animalistic. “Come on down, Petey. I’m waiting.”
He’d been able to stop it before. Peter thought of his Aunt. Clawed after the
memory of her, feet up on the arm of the couch with her dish gloves still on,
demanding he bring her tea and cookies. Kissing his forehead.
Kiss. Dark. Sabretooth in the bathroom, plunging into him while Peter was
rammed against the wall.
He couldn’t take it. He had to get out. It was the only way.
There was an exit on the opposite end of the hangar. If he jumped to the
nearest plane, then hopped from top to top until he reached the far wall, he
could outrun Sabretooth. He was sure.
Peter leaped.
His calf spasmed on the spring and butchered his trajectory.
Sabretooth had jumped too. He batted him out of the air like a volleyball.
The fall jostled and knocked his bones when he collided with and skittered over
the hard cement. Peter yelped in pain. Tears sprouted in dismay. He moved to
push onto his hands and knees but Sabretooth’s foot was shoving down on his
spine and he was flattened down again like a bug.
To Peter’s horror, the man dropped a knee on either side of his waist. One hand
pinned his head down. Peter thrust an elbow back and found his arm ensnared,
shoved down to the floor. He snatched the other along with it when Peter tried
to pry his fingers off.
More perturbing than anything was how Sabretooth’s thumb was rubbing slow
circles into his hair. His cock twitched. Peter whimpered.
“Shouldn’t’ve pussyfooted around, huh,” he whuffed directly into his ear, and
Peter was gone. He writhed upwards, spine arching as he gasped. Hard. So hard
and the guy had barely done anything, and Peter wanted to sob and rub his
erection into the floor and die all at once, and he was too stupidly
dumbfounded to stick to any of it. It hadn’t been this bad since it first came
to him. All he could do was lay there panting as Sabretooth lowered down,
enveloped him. The weight was tremendous on his battered frame. Peter’s cheek
was glued to the frigid floor, and he stared unseeing at the entrance door he’d
left behind.
“Hey, I’ve got a fun one,” Sabretooth hummed into his ear. In a burst of
clarity Peter puffed and panted and tried to wrest his arms loose but only
returned to blank dizziness for his pains: the wriggling was just pushing him
closer to Sabretooth and rubbing their bodies together. The moan that left him
spoke more of pleasure than pain or panic, and Peter loathed himself for it.
Sabretooth chuckled and licked over the hollow of his throat, a rough, cat-like
swipe before he spread his fingers a little wider over his head. His thumb
treaded further to his neck, the tip of its claw tickling at the top of his
pulse. “If I go light as I can, how many strikes do you think it will take to
hit gold?” When Peter kept gasping and made no motion to reply, Sabretooth
snorted and carried on with a giddy lilt to his dank and devilish voice. “Last
guy made it to eleven. But you’ve got thicker skin so I’m betting fifteen.
Maybe edging on twenty. Eighteen? Any guesses?”
That claw was pressing in, not to puncture but to illustrate its point.
Motionless, and just above his throbbing pulse. The jugular. Peter could only
hiss, his mind half gone even with his spider sense screaming about the
impending bloodshed. “Please…”
“Oh well. I’m still betting, I ain’t got nothing to lose. We’ll say fifteen,
because I’m pissed and I might just slip. Ready?” The claw pressed harder. All
he had to do was bend his thumb to draw it down. No blood yet, but it raked the
skin all the same, and promised worse thereafter. “One.”
“No…” Peter squirmed, tried for his legs instead. Flailing them upward to
strike clumsily at Sabretooth with the backs of his heels, but that only
exacerbated the heat and made him thrust his rear up, rub it against the
mutant’s belly. Sabretooth purred, the vibrations pulsing into Peter where they
connected. He undulated against him for good measure.
“Don’t get cute now, kid. Two.” There was blood this time. Thinly it came from
the shallow canal, burning like a paper cut. Sabretooth put the claw back at
the start without hesitation, and drew it down again. “Three…”
There were no decipherable words in Peter’s bellowing. Just madness. Fear and
lust, even now. Sabretooth was getting off on this. He could feel his erection
dawning, invading the junction between his legs with its thick insistence. He
even put a kiss on his temple and stayed put there, his teeth imprinting on
Peter’s skin as he grinned and counted the next stroke as if it were a tender
secret.
“Four.”
The blood was starting to slide down the underside of his chin in one anemic
stream. His spider sense was going to burst every vessel in his brain, it was
making such a racket. Sabretooth was laughing. The claw was back at the top.
“Five.”
The chink and clatter above was so distant from the claw raking down his throat
that for a moment, Peter thought he was hearing things. Then there was glass
raining all around them, shattering on the floor. His spider sense flared. A
colossal thud shook the ground from mere feet away.
Snikt.
Shing.
He could feel the air streak past him as Sabretooth jutted off, backing away.
Peter was free. He scrambled, still weak in the limbs as he turned over and
craned his neck upwards.
Heaving, white teeth glinting in the snarl and tiny shards of glass squeezing
out of the skin as it wove back together. The sleek costume. The silver of the
claws.
“You keep your fucking hands off him, Creed,” Logan growled, murder gleaming in
his eyes.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The bellows tailed the pair as they dove away, streaking through the narrow
alley and erupting into the next block. Kitty let go of her when they hit new
asphalt and took a sharp left. Mary had no clue where they intended to go. Any
S.H.I.E.L.D. help would be coming from Dr. Strange’s house, and the Baxter
Building and the Triskelion were pipe dreams if they stayed on foot.
“Kitty!” she shouted, huffing madly as she fought to keep up.
“I know!” the other girl called back. Her hair whipped left and right as she
gained their bearings, never slowing. She swung her arm out to the side. “This
way!”
Their new path was a quaint indie shopping strip that strung out as far as they
could see on either side. Nothing had opened yet. Pedestrians were sparse, but
the few milling about were staring at the pair of breathless girls sprinting
down the sidewalk. Kitty was cussing to herself with every step, and Mary
wheezed inelegantly beside her.
“Bus?”
“Where?!” Kitty snapped back at her, “We’re not waiting!”
“But if we see one—“
“Shht!”
“Where are we going?!” Mary shouted. “There’s people –“
“I don’t – no, there! There! Around that corner!”
They pushed harder, regained their speed. They swung around the block and Kitty
commandeered her by the arm of her jacket into yet another scum dusted alley.
The girl collapsed against a weathered gang tag, poisonous magenta against
earthy red. Her head was tossed back and hand at her temple. Mary hunched and
braced herself against the wall as she too scrambled to retrieve her breath.
“Think this is far enough?” The words tumbled out of her at a ninety degree
incline, wispy with terror.
Kitty matched her pace exactly. Her eyes were wrenched shut. “Probably not.
This guy. That’s the guy who—“
Mary nodded. “Yeah.”
“What else do you know about him?”
“Um, um – genetically engineered suit. Liquid suit. Don’t ask me how that
works. Peter’s dad and his dad were working on it and it’s made with Peter’s
dad’s DNA, so it’s like—“
“This already sounds too weird for seven a.m.”
“It’s seven?”
“Who knows. Do you have your phone?”
“Oh god…” Mary fumbled through her pockets. Miraculously, it hadn’t been wedged
out of her pants in the mad dash. “Who…would S.H.I.E.L.D. have made a call?
Radioed?”
“They don’t know where we are yet. Someone at the house might have called by
now, but..”
“Okay.” The phone nearly slipped out of her fingers. She was rattling still,
and weak. She couldn’t help but think of Aunt May in the house. If Venom had
turned to attack the agents inside, he might find her. He might kill her. Would
bullets even do a slip of damage? Was that all the agents were armed with?
And she was here with Kitty. Whose only super power was the ability to slip
through walls like a ghost, and potentially mess up electronics. Which left
everything on Dr. Strange’s shoulders until back-up could arrive, and Mary
wasn’t exactly sure what it was that Dr. Strange could do. Turning Venom into a
toad would be convenient.
Kitty edged in next to her, clinging to her bicep, and Mary obligingly turned
the phone so they could both listen head to head. There was the blare of the
dial. Two rings.
The whistle of air as a black mass sailed in to crush the pavement in front of
them.
Both girls shrieked. They were tumbling again. MJ had to relive the curious
sensation of floating through solid matter, seeing nothing but the terra cotta
innards of bricks until they burst into a malt shop diner. The waitress dropped
the chair she was moving with a short yelp.
“What the ever-loving fuck?!” she spat at them.
They were on their feet. MJ could barely feel her legs but she was somehow
still running, Kitty smoothly phasing them through each table and even the
waitress herself (there was quite a lot more indignant screaming), and she
could hear Kitty muttering, “Go, go, go—“
The wall shattered behind them – and that was the only word for it, because
brick should crumble and not burst open at mach five into shards, but that was
exactly what happened when Venom barreled through the restaurant wall. Kitty
yelped, tugged again, and MJ wasn’t expecting the sudden drop but she landed on
her feet when they hit the sewers below.
Kitty was cursing in the highest pitch in the human register. The sullied water
splattered as high as their thighs as they bolted through it. The stench was
robbing Mary of air.
Like the restaurant wall before it, the cement overhead came apart like the
blooming burst of fireworks. Kitty was quick enough to snatch her and turn her
intangible before they were stoned to death by rubble the size of footballs. A
familiar hiss alerted Mary of exactly how deep a mess they were in. The black
web was strung straight through her chest and threaded down to the water behind
her.
“Webs?!” Kitty bemoaned. They were already dodging to the side and gunning for
the black recesses and tunnels ahead. “He has webs?”
“News to me too!” Mary shot back. Peter really ought to be more forthcoming
with what the creeps he came up against could do, because then crap like this
happened and Mary and Kitty were so, so screwed, and she was wracking her brain
for some game-changing detail. Had Peter mentioned so much as one weakness
about this guy?
Maybe not to her. Or maybe there wasn’t a weakness at all.
This time the pavement crumbled clean over their heads. Kitty nearly missed her
shot to save them both, hauling MJ against the wall of the sewer with a pained
cry.
“Phase us through the wall!” Mary keened. Her heart was pattering like a
rabbit’s on the run.
“So we can drown in dirt?!” Kitty screeched back.
The tidal wave hit as suddenly as a sniper’s shot when Venom dropped down.
Neither girl was prepared for it, and Mary shrieked when Venom followed it with
a blow that knocked a three inch hole in the cement between their heads. They
both dodged, but in opposite directions. It wasn’t until she felt her knee
knock solidly against the wall that she realized their mistake.
“Kitty!” she screamed, but the wicked tips of claws closed around her middle
and she was airborn and shrieking like a animal to slaughter. Venom rocketed
through the air and landed with the devastation of a cannon ball. Mary was
slammed down onto a sidewalk and she could feel her bones rattle. People were
screaming. People were running. Blazing white gaps punctured the world around
her and the blaring ache of a bruised skull encompassed all.
She could hear Kitty screaming too.
“NO!”
Her vision was coming back. Venom was crouched over her and Mary was seized by
something deep. Primal and paralyzing. Second hand tales from Peter could do no
justice to the real thing: this was a wild bull reimagined on a human frame.
His skin was black and slick as ink, and cold to the touch. There were bulges
of muscle she was certain no human should have, surging out of every inch of
him. The jagged teeth belonged to some creature out of the deepest parts of the
sea. A foot of tongue lolling out, dripping down on her forehead from above.
The white eyes like ink blots, which merged so seamlessly with the arch of his
face they might well have been paint and not eyes at all.
It was looking down at her. Impassive, unreadable, save for the cruel crescent
of shark teeth.
The jaws opened wide and a noise that could shake a city apart blasted her
point blank. A screech. Animal and yet not. Everything within her was wiped
clear. She forgot what words were, how to form sound, how to blink. Her jeans
dampened all around her groin and when the noise was over, she realized she had
wet herself.
Tears piled at the corners of her eyes.
There was screaming all around, the thuds of feet as everyone around them
scattered. The street was fuller than she had thought.
“LET HER GO!”
Kitty was running towards them. Venom reached up, whipping off a black line to
a Prius parked across the street and lobbing it towards her. She threw up her
arms and the car whistled through her, but there was still a holler of terror
and a damning squelch. Kitty dropped to her knees, ashen, and the ambient
screams intensified. Mary could just barely see the legs of an errant
pedestrian sticking out from under the crumpled trunk, black sneakers and loose
jeans, now soaking with blood.
At last she joined the shrieking. She battered at Venom with all her might and
was rewarded with his palm driving into her face. It was big enough to swaddle
her head, his claws nearly meeting in the back. He was squeezing her. He jabbed
her head against the pavement and she saw white again and burbled wordlessly
against his palm, delirious. She wasn’t sure what parts of her were working
anymore. Her hair was wet. The claws had pricked into her scalp somewhere and
she could feel the blood oozing out and clumping her hair in with the gravel.
If he didn’t crush her face into the pavement she would explode under him
unprovoked. It was nothing short of warfare from the inside, her heartbeat an
assault on her ribs and the pins and needles aching that came with the gusts of
air in and out of her lungs. Every muscle had melted from the bone. She
couldn’t move them.
“Please!” Kitty cried, the word cracking down the center like lightning
splitting the earth. “She can’t help you! He’s gone! We don’t know where he is!
Let her go - he’s not coming here!”
Mary was rising. Her neck craned as the rest of her body dangled beneath it.
Panic revitalized her. Mary had to slap her hands around the trunk-like wrist
and pull herself to compensate for the strain, before her neck snapped under
her own weight. She kicked blindly. Her spit swelled on the ridges of her lips
and his palm as it enveloped her from chin to brow, halting her protests and
pleas.
The voice that licked at her ears was dark and doubled like the demonically
possessed, something risen from the pits of hell. “He’ll come for heerrrr…”
Frigid whips latched onto her skin, her clothes. Few, then more, and struggle
as she might she only became more tightly entwined. He let go of her face and
she was not greeted with the bright sun of morning, but with the inky skin
billowing open, folding her into a mess of teeth, his jaw open and his tongue
lashing around her throat like a leash.
Cold.
She was screaming. Kitty was screaming.
Mary kicked and slapped and writhed, her every nerve fraught with horror,
nauseous, high. Her legs went buttery and were lost, sensation stopping where
the blackness had swallowed up to her hips.
Liz. Peter. Mom. Her mother, she had no idea –
All light winked out.
                             *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
She hadn’t wanted to risk them getting lost in the dirt. They would suffocate.
Intangibility didn’t negate your need to breathe, and Kitty didn’t understand
the specifics of it but she knew that for a fact from experience. If she
wandered into the ground blind neither one of them might have come back out.
But they would have had a shot.
They might have.
And as Kitty kneeled on the street, hands scraping on the pavement where she
had caught herself from collapsing, neck craned and transfixed by the black
beast mere yards away, the weight of the maybe took her bones and her organs
and her beating, frenetic heart, and crushed them all to pulp.
“Mary?” Kitty called. Screams faded into the distance as the pedestrians fled,
sirens wailed closer. Kitty shivered, gaping. “Mary Jane?!”
She’d seen it wrong. That couldn’t be right. That was too quick. That was
impossible.
It – Venom – was looking her way. Teeth parting. Kitty had sunk into the ground
by four inches, unaware of when she had made the switch from solid to ghost.
She drew back now, curling her toes into the cement, ready to spring.
Then it bulged. Kitty stiffened. Venom was twisting, loosing growls as its
chest burgeoned from the sternum out. The skin went taut and parted into
strings. Fleshy pink peeked between the gaps.
Kitty rose, stunned and mortified, and the bulge puckered like plastic bubbling
in heat. Punched out. Venom fell backwards from the force of the next burst
outward, like a pummel or a kick, and the strings split open and the bulge
unfurled wet and loose from its body.
Mary Jane.
Kitty’s hands flew over her mouth.
For a moment, that motionless bundle was Mary Jane, eyes glazed and jaw dropped
and clothes half melted off, but then as she tumbled to the ground her limbs
convulsed. And it occurred to Kitty that her skin was unusually pink –
darkening still. She could see the gooseflesh rising all over her even from
this distance.
The bones were stretching. They creaked. The gooseflesh wasn’t gooseflesh, but
wiry hairs sprouting out all long and shaggy, encompassing her legs and arms
and across her face, and those glassy green eyes were now bleeding through with
glowing, sickly yellow.
While Venom righted itself on all fours with its back in a repulsive arch, the
girl it had spat out was shuddering, changing, her teeth grown long and sharp
and her dainty arms suddenly thick as she grew, one foot, two feet, several
feet, hunching over as she savagely eyed the monstrosity before her.
When Mary Jane bellowed, it was with the flatness and blast of a bear’s roar.
Kitty nearly bowled over from the power of it, weak kneed in piercing awe and
outrage.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she hissed.
Neither monster had ears for it.
Chapter End Notes
     Again, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Ultimate Marvel: here
     is_MJ's_goblin_form. And here's her wiki_page if you want to read
     about it.
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their work!