Peter woke up in Dr. Pym's lab. For a moment, he was confused by the plain white ceiling above him. Where were the plastic stars he'd been staring at before falling asleep? His spider-senses tingled, reaching out for clues to his whereabouts.

"Peter!"

Hope's voice sent Peter scrambling upright, scanning his surroundings frantically. He registered pseudo-familiar white walls and stainless steel fixtures before Scott and Hope appeared in his field of vision.

"He's back!" Hope called over her shoulder, hands gripping Peter by the shoulders. "You're back, hey, Peter, breathe, you're back."

It wasn't until she said something that Peter realized he was breathing erratically. He forced himself to inhale and hold it until his heartbeat slowed marginally, then exhale in a rush. Inhale, exhale, until his breathing was normal again.

Scott, a bracing hand on his back, wore an expression of concern.

"You alright, kiddo?"

Peter nodded and tried for a shaky smile, which mustn't have been very convincing if Scott's face were anything to go by.

"Yeah." he assured. "I'm okay. I'm- How long was I gone?"

"Almost eighteen hours." Hope said.

Eighteen hours? Peter lowered his head, grinding the heel of his hand into the space between his eyebrows. That was the longest he'd ever been gone, including the time he went back to Venice. That made sense, because he'd spent longer in the past this time, but it was still discomforting. A whole day had lapsed.

Scott helped him to stand as he tried to push off the bed, catching his elbow when his legs almost gave out. A moment to steady himself and Peter was upright. He shrugged Scott off with an assurance he felt fine and made his way slowly to the bathroom, where he splashed his face with water.

He was back. The blip had taken him when he was asleep and relocated back to the present. That was good, it should be a relief, and yet all he could think about was the empty pallet on Quin's bedroom floor.

What would he and his mother think when they woke up and found Peter gone? They seemed to assume he was some sort of runaway, so maybe they'd think he just went on running. If he'd known he was going to leave, he would have left a note thanking them, or... something.

Peter groaned and splashed his face again, scrubbing wet hands into his hair and pushing it away from his forehead. What was he thinking? He shouldn't have spent all that time with them to begin with, never mind leave them evidence of his existence. They were part of a time where he wasn't meant to be. Suddenly disappearing from their lives was a good thing.

But it still felt lousy. Quin's home was the first place Peter had felt close to another human being in longer than he cared to admit. He missed it, even though his time there had been short.

Without drying off any, Peter wandered back out into the main chamber of the containment unit. Scott was pacing near the door and Hope had retreated back to the monitoring station, where both her parents stood muttering over displays.

"Hey." Scott said quietly as Peter approached. "Are you really okay?"

The answer to that was longer and more complicated than Peter was prepared to get into at the moment, so instead he just nodded.

Dr. Pym knocked on the glass wall, drawing their attention.

"Glad you're back with us, Peter." he said. "Do you know what time you jumped to?"

"No." Peter replied, walking over to speak through the glass. "I wasn't anywhere I recognized."

"So no idea where the jump took you? No landmarks you could describe?"

He shook his head.

"Can you at least tell us how long you were there?"

"At least five hours. I blipped out while I was sleeping, so it could've been more."

Dr. Pym turned to look at his wife, who was busy typing something into the computer. She glanced at him and nodded, then handed Hope a stylus, indicating a second graph below the one tracking his blips. Hope made a new set of marks.

Should he tell them about staying with Quin? It seemed like the kind of things Dr. Pym would want to know, but Peter couldn't see how it would be a relevant datapoint. He'd been warned about introducing outside influence on the past and he hadn't. One dinner with a stranger wasn't going to change the course of Quin or Henrietta's lives.

And selfishly, Peter wanted to keep those memories to himself. They were a comfortable reminder of what life could be like, especially in the middle of this mess.

He decided not to tell them about it. Instead, he cleared his throat and shifted his weight, trying to get a better look at the displays.

"So, what kind of readings did you get? Any idea what's happening?"

The Pym-Van Dyne family exchanged glances. Peter, not at all reassured by this, looked to Scott.

"I'm mostly here for moral support." Scott admitted, sounding sheepish.

Peter flashed him a grateful smile, then turned his attention back to the monitors.

"Your quantum frequency dropped." Janet said. "You went from registering high, to far below normal levels in about thirty seconds. Then, your frequency spent the next eighteen hours shifting rapidly between high and low until it spiked suddenly, then you were back."

"Which means... what?"

Dr. Pym sighed and pulled his glasses off, pinching the bridge of his nose. The Van Dyne women looked equally uneasy, though they hid it behind soft frowns. Apprehension twisted in Peter's gut.

"On a quantum level, you're vibrating." Dr. Pym said, replacing his glasses. "Shaking so fast it's moving you through time and space."

"That's not good. At least, that doesn't sound good." Scott said. "It's not good, is it?"

Hope gave Scott a wry look.

"No, Scott."

"I was sort of hoping this was one of those times where I was wrong."

Peter ran both hands through his hair. He wasn't a quantum theorist, but he got the gist of what vibrating implied. That on some level, he was being shaken apart, dispersed, and then reforming in a different time and space.

And Scott was right. That wasn't good. In fact, it was very, very bad.

"We need to stabilize you. Soon." Dr. Pym said, gravelly.

"What about what's causing it?" Scott piped up. "I mean, something's gotta be doing this to him, right? He didn't just wake up like this."

"You're right," Janet agreed. "It's likely that something is causing Peter's frequency to fluctuate, but the problem in dealing with the space-time continuum is that it's possible that the cause could be coming from anywhere, any time."

"Like it hasn't happened yet?"

"Or happened a very long time ago."

Peter spun on his heel and walked away. Behind him, the Pym-Van Dyne's and Scott continued to discuss his predicament amongst themselves, leaving him to pace along the back wall of his suite. He was glad to be left alone, because right then he couldn't be sure if he was even capable of words.

The thing about vibrating was that most of the time there really wasn't any harm in it. But if you shook something hard enough, for long enough, at just the right speed and force it did one of two things; break or completely disintegrate. If on a quantum level Peter was actually vibrating, then the longer it continued the less present in his own time he would become. The less present in any time. And then eventually, he'd disperse into particles scattered across space-time.

Which would make the second time in his life that he turned to dust. Looking down the barrel of non-existence again was more numbing than Peter would have expected.

He missed Quin. If he'd woken up on Quin's bedroom floor, it would have been to his big blue eyes and his cheeky smile. Henrietta would have made them breakfast. Peter could have pretended to be a normal, uninteresting teenager.

Instead, this was his reality.

Over the next few days, Peter was understandably subdued. He tried to drag himself from his funk by participating in the research being done on him, but there was only so much he could understand. Quantum mechanics weren't his area of expertise. Still, the Pym-Van Dyne family humored him and at least tried to guide him through the various tests they were doing.

Not much was learned. Several more blips were plotted, some minor enough that he only moved from one side of the room to another, while others took him around the city again. Peter spent a miserable afternoon in Crown Heights during a sleet storm, huddled under an awning without a coat. Someone took pity on him and bought him a coffee.

The only sure progress made was in recognizing the difference between long and short blips. Smaller jumps barely unsettled Peter at this point, often overlooked entirely except for the deja vu factor, while longer ones were accompanied by nausea and disorientation. Anything above a four hour jump left him woozy and in need of support for at least a few minutes after restabilizing.

Scott was midway through a rambling story about a pizza truck and his co-owners at X-Con Security Consultants when Peter blipped. As ever, the movement from one point in time to another felt instantaneous. One moment he was in the lab, the next he was stumbling into a crowd of people on a street he didn't recognize.

People jostled Peter back and forth before he managed to scramble his way out of the throng and into a side alley. His head spun and the remnants of his lunch threatened to come back up. Bracing both hands on the building in front of him, Peter leaned over and let his head hang limply. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the nausea to pass. It did, albeit slowly, and he managed not to upchuck anything in the process.

This had been a big jump. He could tell from the lingering effects of it and his unfamiliar surroundings. Only his two biggest blips had taken him to locations outside of New York and this made a third. Where and whenever he was, he was a long way from where he had started.

Peter stood slowly and pulled his hoodie closed over his chest. He was glad he'd taken to wearing at least one extra layer, it meant he wasn't as cold as he would have been without it. Hood on and zipper drawn up to his chin, he stole back out onto the street, glancing around for some signage that might give him an idea of where he was.

One thing Peter had learned was that there wasn't much point to staying put when he blipped. Exploring, staying still, he'd go back eventually either way. If all he did was wait, the time disparity would just be hours wasted. Might as well do something while he waited to be drawn back to the present.

Following the flow of the general crowd, Peter found himself approaching a hub of noise and activity. He popped up on his toes to peer over the people in front of him and glimpsed bright lights against the dark backdrop of the night sky. Crossing beneath an archway of wood and garlands, the street opened abruptly onto a crowded city center.

Peter stopped, startled by the onslaught of colors and carols. He found himself in a circle of open space surrounded by old buildings with modern shops on street level. Strings of lights had been hung from lampposts in a spiderweb overhead, the posts themselves wrapped in bright tinsel and streamers of blue and silver.

Vendors peddling hot drinks had set up on several corners, their little carts manned by red-nosed servers with smiling faces. There were tables and booths of holiday wares from carved ornaments to handmade candles. A fat Christmas tree had been set up at the dead center of the plaza, its boughs laden heavily with more ornaments than Peter had ever seen on a tree that wasn't over ten feet tall.

It reminded him of Union Square, but smaller and with less of the New York City buzz. This place felt homey. Still fast paced and energetic, like any city, but not overwhelmingly cramped the way New York was.

Peter ducked and weaved between happy couples and sprawling families, wandering the outer sidewalk surrounding the inner circle of festivities. This was a decidedly more pleasant outcome than showing up in an empty park or underneath a Venitian bridge. Maybe the universe was trying to apologize for his previous, much more disastrous blips. And it wasn't done, either.

With his eyes drifting across his surroundings, soaking in the holiday atmosphere, Peter did a double take. His heart leapt comically in his chest, bouncing around his ribcage like he'd swallowed a particularly excited frog. Before Peter could think better of it, he was reacting, cupping a hand around his mouth and raising his other arm in a wave as he called out;

"Quin!"

The first cry of his name didn't get a reaction, but having done it once already, Peter called out to him again. This time, Quin started and swiveled his head, looking for the source of his name before finding Peter through the crowd.

Their gazes met and it was him, Quin, but it also wasn't him. At a distance, the image of someone else flitted before Peter's eyes, there and gone too fast to catch. Something nagged at him, in the slope of Quin's shoulders and the stubble on his cheeks. Gone were his baggy clothes and lazily ruffled hair, this Quin swept his hair away from his face and wore fitted jeans. Even his parka was gone, replaced by a long coat with a high collar.

Peter realized too late that in the handful of days since he'd last seen him, Quin had lived years.

Suddenly, Peter wished he had better control of his impulses. All he wanted to do was turn and run as far as he could. But it was too late. Quin was making his way through the crowd towards him, sidestepping a stroller and slipping between giggling schoolgirls. Too soon, they were standing within a foot of one another.

"Fancy meeting you here, Peter."

It took a moment for him to unstick his voice from the back of his throat.

"Hey, Quin."

Quin smiled, but it lacked the cheerful edge Peter remembered. In fact, now that he was seeing him up close, there was something dulled about him. Like the shine had been scuffed off polished silver.

"Didn't think I'd ever see you again. You sort of..."

"Disappeared?" Peter offered, followed by a nervous laugh.

"Yeah."

The lack of accusation in Quin's voice should have been a relief, not the source of a new wellspring of guilt. Maybe it really hadn't had any impact on his life to have Peter gone before he woke up. It was possible that he'd held no expectations for him at all. But it felt as though he'd let Quin down.

"I'm sorry." Peter looked down. "I didn't- I mean I wasn't going to, but I- I sort of had to. It's hard to explain. I should've said goodbye."

"That would've been nice, yeah." Quin said. "But you didn't and now here we are."

"I'm sorry."

"Hey. What'd I tell you?"

It only occurred to Peter after he looked up and opened his mouth to speak that Quin was expecting him to remember something from who knew how many years ago. That it meant Quin remembered what he'd said. And something about that notion, that he still featured in his memories, made Peter's heart flutter uncontrollably in his chest.

"That I'm not a burden."

"Exactly! So quit apologizing." Quin was smiling again. "So, what, you happen to be in the area? Back in town for the holidays?"

"Just passing through." Peter said, not untruthfully. "But I'm here for now."

"That you are."

There was a pregnant pause in which they both stood, looking at one another with smiles a little too fond for two people who had only met once before. Peter especially knew that being keen on Quin was stupid. They existed in two separate times, which he could never explain to him, and he was unlikely to ever be around long enough for a real friendship to form.

Yet, despite that depressing reality, Peter felt drawn to Quin in a way that made him selfish enough to steal whatever moments he could. At least then he'd have a few good memories to fall back on as he disintegrated out of existence for the second time in his life.

"I was just gonna have a look around, you wanna maybe walk with me?" he offered, hopeful.

And Quin, with far less hesitation than Peter was expecting, said; "Yeah."

They started by walking the outer rim of the plaza, looking into warmly lit shop windows and critiquing their choice of decorations. Quin was a font of pithy commentary that had Peter in stitches before they'd gone more than ten yards from where they'd started. He kept up a rolling drone of dry wit through the whole circuit, often at the cost of disapproving looks from elderly couples shuffling by.

Quin guided them through the crowd into the hubbub of holiday activity with a hand between Peter's shoulder blades. There was no set path to follow, so they bobbed and weaved where gaps formed between people and glanced around at the merriment where they could.

Peter hadn't noticed himself beginning to shiver, but Quin had, and dragged them over to a vendor selling hot apple cider. The white paper cups didn't come with lids, which made it treacherous to sip the scalding cider while walking, but they tried anyway. It was sweet, spiced, and warmed Peter all the way through.

They had to stop eventually, one too many close encounters between their mostly-filled cups and the front of their jackets making stillness a necessity. They retreated to the outer sidewalk and leaned against a building, shoulders touching as the sipped their drinks.

It had been maybe an hour, but Peter felt lighter than he had in months. When he was with Quin, everything about the life waiting for him in the present slipped away. Just like the night they spent drinking cocoa and building the Falcon, there was a sense of encapsulated happiness to this experience.

Except that as he glanced over at Quin, Peter couldn't help noticing that he looked more than a little worn around the edges. He'd noticed, as they walked through the cheerful throng, that the light never quite reached Quin's eyes anymore. The way he smiled was different, almost bland, and he walked with slumped shoulders.

Up close, it was worse. There were circles under his eyes that spoke to exhaustion and lines on his face that hadn't been there when they first met. His stubble was getting long and the shadow of a frown lingered around his mouth. Quin looked thinner, too. He looked like a man who was struggling to keep himself in one piece and trying desperately not to let it show.

The silence between them suddenly felt heavy. Peter struggled to dismiss his observations, wanting to sink back into his comfortable little bubble, but he couldn't. Desperate to fill the silence, Peter said the first thing to come to mind.

"I meant to ask earlier, how's your mom?"

As soon as he spoke, Peter wished he hadn't.

All the light in Quin went out, like a candle being snuffed. Hell, Peter hadn't even realized there was any warmth left in him, but there had to have been because it was just gone now. Everything about him went cold and empty.

Peter knew what was coming. He knew before Quin even forced his jaw open to speak.

"She died last year. Cancer."

It felt like someone punched him in the lungs.

He'd met Henrietta just days ago. She had been alive, cheerful. Cooked dinner for them and scolded her rambunctious son, but talked proudly about expecting his acceptance letter to M.I.T. And for Quin, who had so obviously loved his mother more than anything in the world, she'd been gone for a year.

Peter tried to make sense of this information, but his mind wasn't cooperating. How could she be gone? He'd just seen her, blowing them a kiss on her way to bed, perfectly fine. Henrietta hadn't been sick, or weak, or shown any sign of being in distress.

Or maybe she had been. Perhaps she'd been sick all along, but hadn't shared as much with her son. It seemed like the kind of thing she might do. And Quin couldn't have known, because somehow Peter was sure that he would have been walking her home that night instead of finding strange, crying boys if he had.

What had been days for Peter had been years for Quin, and when his mother died she took a piece of him with her.

"Quin I- I'm so s-"

"You didn't know." Quin interrupted. "You couldn't have known."

It wasn't an accusation, but it sounded like one. Like Peter wasn't there and he should have been, because maybe if he was, Quin wouldn't be walking around without a heartbeat.

Peter reached out and gripped Quin's arm, fingertips pressed to the inside of his wrist. Quin looked down at his hand, then up at Peter. God, his eyes used to be so bright. They were big and blue and sparkled like sunlight on the ocean, and now they were blank gray.

"I'm sorry." he said. "I'm sorry, Quin."

The words "I understand" and "I've lost people too" were heavy on his tongue, but Peter couldn't find the strength to say them. Whatever pain Quin felt was unique to him, a burden that only he could comprehend. Even if they shared the experience of loss, the aftermath was individual.

Quin held Peter's gaze, unmoving and silent. He could have been a statue, if it weren't for his chest when he breathed. Eventually, he looked away, ducking his head as he dumped the remainder of his cider onto the pavement.

"Come on, let's go." he said, and didn't wait to be followed back into the rabble.

Peter hastened to copy him, tossing his cup into the same nearby trashcan as he darted after Quin's back.

Going back to the crowd of holiday merrymakers felt like stepping from an ice bath into a sauna. The press of bodies was too much, their voices too loud, their very presence a cloying weight on Peter's being. Quin walked ahead of him, separate but close enough to glance back every so often to be sure Peter was still there. Those quick looks were the only thing keeping Peter from leaving.

No more sightseeing was done. They walked a circle around the plaza for no reason besides doing something, mingling with the crowd for the sake of anonymity rather than shared enjoyment. Quin walked fast and left it up to Peter to keep pace, which he did, until finally they began to slow down.

They found a break in the throng surrounding the Christmas tree and slid into the gap, claiming the space for themselves. A waist-high fence had been erected around the tree, keeping them several feet from its glittering boughs. Even so, the fairy-lights cast a glow on Quin's skin, lighting the warmer honeyed tones in his hair.

Objectively, he looked handsome. Festivity suited him the same way certain color palettes looked better on certain people. If he had been the Quin that Peter met first, he would have blended seamlessly into the backdrop like someone had painted him in. But this empty Quentin, he stared up at the tree and its lights like if he looked long enough, maybe it would fill him up again.

"She used to drag me here every year." he said. Peter didn't need to ask to know he was talking about his mother. "She loved all the decorations, all the people. Sometimes we'd spend an hour just walking around the tree, pointing out the ornaments we liked."

Quin laughed, but without any actual laughter. He just shook, a dusty breath wheezing from between his teeth.

"I told her once that I thought it was weird, since we didn't even celebrate Christmas, but she didn't care. It made her happy. All this... made her really happy."

Peter stepped closer, brushing their shoulders together. When Quin didn't shy away, he boldly leaned into him, resting his weight against his side in what he hoped was a comforting gesture.

"We didn't get to come last year. She was- She couldn't-" A shuddering noise left Quin. He pressed back against Peter. "I don't know why I'm here."

Peter thought he knew what a broken heart felt like. Calling things off with MJ barely a month after confessing to her had killed a part of him, even if it had been for the best. Peter thought that that was heartbreak, but he had been wrong.

This was the feeling of his heart breaking. Helplessness and anguish as he watched someone he cared for gut themselves, and there was nothing he could do to help.

Of all the things he wanted to say, not one felt good enough to voice aloud. Instead of trying to cobble together words that would ultimately mean nothing, Peter reached for Quin. He took his hand, just like he had the night they met, only this time he was the one who held on first.

Slowly, Quin's fingers curled around his.

They walked away from the tree, away from the crowd, back to the sidewalk. Somewhere, the music over the plaza had changed to old Christmas songs rather than carols. Peter kept their hands held loosely between them, tethered together, but only just.

Though Peter was still unfamiliar with his surroundings, Quin seemed to know where he was going. Their trajectory had them headed towards one of the decorated archways out into the rest of the city, which led who knew where.

"You can call me Quentin."

"Huh?"

"My name." he clarified. "You're still calling me Quin."

A faint tingle along his spider-senses raised the hair on the back of Peter's neck. Something a little like panic began to tick inside his skull.

"Quentin?"

"That's me." he sighed. "Quentin Beck."

The bottom fell out of the world. The bubble popped.

Suddenly, Peter was as alien as he ought to be in a time that wasn't his.

And he could see it now. What had been nagging at him since he laid eyes on Quin again, the familiarity he couldn't place. It had been missing before, he'd been too young when they met, but the addition of years and scruff changed him.

If Peter filled in his beard and added time to the lines of his face, gave him two additional inches of height and bulked him out with more muscle... He was Quentin Beck. The same Quentin Beck who would one day become Mysterio and betray Peter's trust. The same Quentin Beck with hundreds of lives on his conscience and motives Peter couldn't begin to comprehend.

And he was holding his fucking hand.

Only he wasn't, he was holding Quin's hand. Quin who was Beck, but not yet, not in the ways that mattered. This wasn't the man who had walked Peter in front of a train and watched it hit him. He was a grieving son, alone in an ocean of people. The same young man who shared cookies and made cocoa. The one who took Peter's hand when he was at his lowest and led him away from it all.

They were the same person as much as they couldn't be. Beck and Quin. Quin and Beck. Quentin Beck and Mysterio.

It didn't make sense.

Peter was so busy trying to grapple with his new reality that he missed Quin pausing beneath the archway. He bumped into him lightly and halted, blinking himself rapidly back into focus. It wasn't Beck standing in front of him.

Quin was looking up. Peter, busy staring at him, almost missed it when he said;

"Mistletoe."

"What?" Peter said dumbly, then jerked his head up.

Sure enough, the archway was hung with several boughs of mistletoe, spaced in intervals from one end to the other. Without meaning to, they had walked right beneath one.

"Oh." he said, then tried to laugh it off. It came out thready and nervous. "That's..."

Quin hummed.

His voice wasn't even right! Beck's voice was deeper, which made sense when Peter considered the age difference between the person in front of him and the man he'd met. Still, nothing about Quin rang true with what Peter knew about Beck. He'd accuse them of being different people if it weren't for the fact that Quin looked just like him, sans a decade or two.

Quin let go of his hand. Peter missed it immediately.

What he meant to do was say something, anything, maybe ask if Quin had been considering a career as a criminal lately, but that didn't happen. Peter's voice died before it ever made it to his tongue, because Quin's fingers were under his chin. He was tilting his head up.

Quin kissed him. There, under the mistletoe, Quentin Beck pressed a lingering kiss to Peter's lips. The kiss was chaste, warm, and lasted an eternity while also ending in a second.

When Quin pulled back, he did so slowly. His gaze flicked over Peter's face, taking in his wide eyes and parted lips. The hand on his chin disappeared, leaving Peter bereft of all contact and so much colder without it.

Quentin Beck had kissed him. Quentin Beck had kissed him.

Peter wanted to feel disgust, anger, but all he could think about was how gently Quentin had moved his head and how tenderly he had kissed him. That he had done it with such intention, rather than just pecking him quickly, like he wanted to be kissing him. And wasn't that a thought; that Quin wanted to kiss him.

Before he could find his voice again, Quentin smiled. It didn't fit his face, all hard at the edges and paired with empty blue eyes.

He stepped back, away from Peter.

"It was good to see you again, Peter."

And then Quentin turned around and walked away, leaving Peter standing beneath the mistletoe alone. He watched him go, caught between running after him and running away.

In the end, he didn't move.