The sun climbed to its rightful place in the eastern sky slowly, blisteringly, imperiously.
Peter knew because he had been up since up since five-thirty the previous morning, and as night had fallen, he had been unable to sleep. Or unwilling to (maybe both). The teen shifted his weight against the rough railing he had been leaning against for the past couple of hours and sighed.
Up here, a mere fifteen to twenty feet above the ground, he felt the closest to home he could ever feel in this place. The rooster crowing was definitely out of place, though.
For a city kid who had grown up his entire life amid the choir of car horns, the grumble of engines at all hours of the day and night, and the nearly perpetual murmur of human voices all around him, living out here—in freaking Missouri, of all places—was like stepping straight from a blizzard into a blazing desert. There was no reconciling the two places or the two lifestyles.
(Which he guessed was the reason Pepper had reached out to Mr. Barton)
(Which was also the reason he was so miserable right now)
(Which was selfish to think because they only wanted to protect him).
Peter frowned and shook his head, an all too familiar pang of guilt twisting around in his gut. The rooster crowed again. The bird was on the other side of the farm, but to Peter's enhanced and now extremely deprived senses, the rasping scream of its voice seemed to be right next to his ear.
With another sigh, Peter shifted his weight to the other foot and rocked back onto his heels, away from the railing of the barn loft. The lights had just flicked on in Mr. Barton's house. He supposed he needed to get back into bed before anyone realized that the sheets were just as empty and impeccably folded as they had been since the previous morning (because May and Mrs. Barton and Mr. Barton seemed to worry about him too much—and he hated it).
The teen took a few stiff steps towards the loft's edge, hopped and perched nimbly on the railing, and then leaped off. His web deftly attached to the single pulley beam extending from the small space, and he was swinging—just for a second, though it felt like the world because it had been so long. He hit the ground lightly and sprinted across the dew-stricken grass until he reached the backside of the house.
He paused a little underneath the window and listened for voices or footsteps and then, hearing nothing but the myriad of birds in the trees ringing the farm, latched onto the side of the house and climbed cautiously up to his window.
He pulled it open, slipped inside (just like he used to do at the apartment in Queens, before—), and pushed off his shoes and socks, rolled up the wet cuffs of his jeans.
By the time May cracked open the door to check on her nephew, he was already underneath the covers, eyes closed, breathing regularly.
May smiled, a little bit sadly, perhaps, at her boy and then very quietly shut the door (he was adjusting, wasn't he? Things were going to be better, safer here, weren't they?)
As soon as the doorknob clicked, Peter opened his eyes again, rolled over, stared at the ceiling above his head.
There were no car horns, no engines, no people voices. Just silence, memories, and the rising and falling of his own chest in the semi-dark of the room that he couldn't see as his own.
Outside, the rooster crowed again.