Chapter Summary: It was a cycle, endlessly spinning through the concept of time - intangible. Incomplete and constant. (Always, evermore.)
We, the burdens of infinity
Shift like autumn leaves upon sun-stroked wind
But these abyss' of starlight lies
Scald hot and heavy upon our eyes
There was a certain set of rules he had to follow – a firm expectation of responsibilities that he had set up alongside his aunt and Mr. Stark. These sometimes didn't align with his own views of responsibility, but he would rather adapt to their confined ideals than lose being Spider-Man altogether.
One of their expectations was the amount of time he spent as Spider-Man. He believed that he should spend every moment he could fighting crime, while theirs consisted of much stricter curfews and a designated rest day a week. He struggled not to fight on this last issue, but he knew that some sacrifices had to be made to continue doing what he loved.
He just never thought that his trademark carelessness was so very prevalent on the nights when he did go out as Spider-Man
His Spider-Sense was a constant buzz at the back of his neck any time he neared his apartment now and, as a result, the bags under his eyes were dark crescents of bruised skin from lack of sleep. This constant buzz also prevented a lot of things from catching his attention and made him all the warier of entering his apartment by the fire escape.
Except when it mattered most, of course.
He really should have listened when Aunt May told him to take a break for the night.
He had had two incredible weeks of Spider-Manning when he woke with a gasp, sweat pooling on his skin and making his clothes stick to him uncomfortably. His phone clattered noisily on his nightstand, ringing from a call as he clutched an arm to his chest. He gripped tightly at his shirt, the material bunching under clenched fingers. His hand wandered aimlessly over the table grasping for his phone as he panted loudly, the remnants of fear evident in his wide, panicked eyes.
"Kid?! You there? Karen says your vitals indicated extreme distress, what's happening? Do you need me to come get you?" Tony's voice rung out from the phone, worried and quick.
"N-o," his voice broke and he coughed to lower it, "No, Mr. Stark, I-I'm fine."
"I can come," Mr. Stark insisted, and Peter wondered how many times he would have to wake up from a nightmare before Mr. Stark realized he had only been sleeping, "if you need me, I'll be there in a second."
The watch that constantly monitored his vitals blinked red and he glared at it as if it was its fault entirely. He usually said yes to this sort of thing – this comfort after night time fits of fright and helplessness all wrapped up in tangled bedsheets – but saying yes right now filled him with a sense of dread.
[How could he let Tony into this room, this torture chamber of a home? Tony would surely notice, could probably feel it in the air – the shift between sickness and health, the walls that contained sinful happenings rather than teenaged mundanity.
(His soulful poverty in the face of abundant emotional wealth.)]
"No, I'm fine," he reassured, "I just – bad dream, y'know?"
He heard what sounded like a sigh of relief and Peter relaxed back onto the bed, blinking sleepily at the ceiling.
"Okay. Good," Mr. Stark said, and Peter huffed a small laugh at his muffled curse, "I mean not good. Not good at all."
"Mm-hh?" Peter hummed sarcastically, his heartbeat slowing. and he could practically see his mentor's eye roll and smirk even through the phone.
"Okay, maybe I'm slightly glad that you're not bleeding out in an alley somewhere," Mr. Stark conceded.
"It's like, almost midnight," Peter mumbled, tiredness creeping in his veins like warm hot cocoa on a cold winter's night.
"Exactly!" Tony exclaimed, "the perfect time for you to be out gallivanting across Queens like a reckless teenager."
"Oh, wait," Mr. Stark deadpanned, "that's exactly what you are."
"You caught me," Peter grinned softly, "I was just having a break night tonight."
"Well, kiddo," his mentor murmured in response, "you sure you don't need anything?"
Peter twisted his lips in thought.
"Well," he started, "going out as Spider-Man right now sounds really appealing, but it's only a bit until curfew…"
He trailed off, knowing Mr. Stark knew what he meant.
"What time did you get to bed, Underoos?" Tony asked, defeat lacing his tone.
"9 o'clock," he chirped, already rolling off the bed as his lethargy disappeared into thin air.
"Okay, well," there was the sound of tapping on the other side of the phone, "I just disabled the suit's lockdown timer so you should be free to spider it out for… hmm, two and a half hours sound good?"
"Sounds great, Mr. Stark," he answered, shuffling around the room in search of the suit.
"Alright," Tony sighed, "see ya Wednesday, kiddo."
"See ya," he called back, shimmying into his suit and slipping his mask on.
The phone beeped a long note after the call ended and Peter cringed at it, reaching to turn it off.
Slipping out of the window and swinging away, Peter beamed at the night sky above. He twirled through the air like a dancer, his body twisting into elegant silhouettes back-dropped by the heavens.
(The nightmare was forgotten – left behind in the dusty swirl of time whirling constantly between us all like sand in an hourglass.
Slipping. Sliding.
Gone.)
When he thought back on it all, he couldn't help but notice the similarities between each defining event of his life – each earth-shattering happenstance.
(It happened the same way it always did.)
When he was 7 his parents left him behind and flew to their deaths.
He hears the news and it's death, death, death. Fear, fear, fear.
Hands, hands, hands.
It could have been a metaphorical death or a real one but he supposed all of his defining moments were rotting with the stench of demise. Whether it was a decaying of the soul or the body all depended on the exact happenings.
(He is 7 and his stomach drops and he feels as though he's been dunked into cold, cold, cold water and there are the hands of his Aunt and Uncle holding him tight – too tight, too tight, too tight.
And on the air, he can smell the acrid scent of burning flesh – and on that day, he smelt death.)
When he was 8 he met a boy with a nasty grin called 'Flash' who liked to hurt others because he couldn't deal with his own hurt. It was a time of external execution of self – a crushing of childish hope and a baring of humanity to the cruel comforts of the world.
It was the fear of walking down hallways with mean words biting at his heels and social anxiety stringing up his neck like a live-wire of dread.
It was rough hands – pushing, shoving, hitting, tugging – and there was nothing to this but childish whims of callousness that we so foolishly call 'boys being boys'.
(As if it is an excuse.)
When he was 9, his babysitter began to sexually abuse him. He was slain by fear and overwhelmed by hands.
His soul was left a smoldering fire after this painful inferno of trauma had burnt it to ash. It was a sputtering flame of life.
His heart was a hummingbird thumping in his chest.
And the hands were all he felt – too close, too tight, too much.
He was 14 when his Uncle bled heavy on his hands.
It was death in a literal sense – a shining example of the fragility of mortality. It was the cold thump of a corpse on concrete and the rasp of a man's last words echoing in a young boy's ears.
He was fearful then as well, with a shaking, stuttering tongue too terrified to say anything.
Then, there were the hands.
(Pulling, grabbing, shaking – as he screamed into the night.)
There were always hands.
(It happened the same way it always did.
It happened the same way.
It happened.)
When Peter was five his father took him to a pool to learn how to swim.
Peter remembered the calmness of the water as he opened his eyes in the burning chlorine and felt his chest tighten from the lack of air. It wasn't the same as looking through tears, but it was similar. He had sputtered, then, choking for a breath that wasn't there as he drifted beneath the surface of the water he splashed with panicked hands.
He had turned the pool into a stormy sea, creating tempestuous waves with clenched, toddler fists grasping for oxygen he so desperately needed.
There was a second where he had calmed, a clear, but still so terrifying moment where he had observed the grimy tiles lining the walls and watched bubbles fly up his legs and over his face to pop freely upon the surface; reaching the liberty of atmosphere enviously easy compared to his nearly suffocating new perspective on his own mortality. He had stilled, then, inspecting the underwater world around him with wide and morbidly intrigued eyes as his lungs screamed in protest.
Then, he had struggled again, scrabbling at nothing to try to reach the surface which seemed so far away.
He had a fear of drowning after that, even when his father had dragged him back to safety and hugged him tightly in his arms. He had been afraid of so many things, once.
That fear of drowning went away sometime between being tied down by a parachute in the Hudson River and having a building crush the breath out from his lungs. A lot of his fears went away somewhere during that time. That wasn't to say he didn't experience fear, just that there was no specific phobia he could name for a while – nothing that popped out above a general and constant anxiety.
(Besides that cycle of death, death, death. Fear, fear, fear.
Hands, hands, hands.
There was something intrinsically intimidating about broad hands cupping your flesh within their fingers and stroking over places that ought not to be touched. There was something nightmarish to a man who could rip your muscles to shreds with soft touches instead of harsh blows.)
He had one true fear left, you see. He had one secret left to cling to, one identity hidden away from Skip's grubby fingers.
But, it happened the same way it always did as he stood in his - apparently - unlocked bedroom facing a monster of a man in what a billionaire so affectionately called a onesie.
It happened the same way it always did.
(Death.
Fear.
Hands.
It was all so similar.)
He was dying from this simple sense of vision. He was bleeding out upon the floor from this act of sight.
Skip grinned maliciously and there was nothing Peter could do but sob as the cold blue eyes that met his own twinkled gleefully.
"Hello, Spider-Man."
(It happened the same way it always did.)
He was a sandcastle, feeble and small made of too little, built up to too much, only to fall evermore to the constant tide that swept at the shores.
(When Peter was 16-years-old, his poorly constructed house of a heart crumbled to dirt beneath cruel fists.)