Lying Heart
It's completely light when he wanders out in the street, Peter guesses sometime in the afternoon. Before he can even make an attempt to reorient himself, though, he sees people all over the streets pointing with wide, disbelieving eyes and he figures it's in his immediate best interest to get out of here as soon as he can.
Predictably, the man took his biocable devices away from him—not that it matters, without his abilities. He forgot what it was like to be plain old Peter Parker, and now that he is again, he decides he really doesn't like it. He looks up briefly toward the sky that so often has beckoned him and he has never felt more uncomfortable just standing on solid ground. It feels like he is trapped.
He ducks into an alley. He is basically no better than the fools who go around dressing up as Spiderman at night—in fact, he looks even stupider, being out here in broad daylight. He has no street clothes, either. The last he saw, his backpack was still out on Gwen's fire escape.
Gwen. A week ago he wouldn't have hesitated to call her to come get him—after all, she is the only one who knows his secret and won't be too shocked to pick him up in a full-on Spidey suit. But he is certain that if she was mad before, now she is most certainly pissed beyond measure. He said he would wait outside her window and then disappeared for four days.
Oh, God. Aunt May. That's the first issue Peter addresses: he finds a payphone and calls collect.
"Hello?"
Her voice is so strained on the other end that Peter feels his chest constrict with guilt.
"Hey, Aunt May."
"Peter," she breathes. He hears her stumble the phone on the other end and imagines her attempting to collect herself. "Peter, are you alright? Where are you? Tell me where you are, I'll come get you right now, what happened?"
"I'm, uh." He looks up but he can't find any street signs right away.
"Are you alright?" she asks again.
He nods, then realizes she can't see him. "Yeah, I'm alright," he says tiredly. He really isn't, though. Physically he should be fine. He is just an ordinary teenage boy with a few non life-threatening injuries that will heal over time. But that's just it—Peter doesn't want to be ordinary. Peter doesn't want to be powerless. For the first time since he was bitten by that spider, Peter genuinely feels shaken, maybe even afraid.
"I'll come get you right now. Tell me where you are."
He considers telling her that he'll take care of it, but he's standing at a payphone in a Spiderman suit with no abilities and half of New York gawking at him, and really, the idea of trekking all the way to Queens with no money to buy so much as a subway ticket is more than he can handle right now.
Reluctantly, he reads off the intersection, making a mental note to remember it himself. He should know where to find this man later.
"You sit tight. I have to make a few phone calls but I'll be right there."
"Who are you calling?" asks Peter. He doesn't have any other family besides her.
There's a beat. "The school," says Aunt May. "After the first two days they insisted on reporting you as a missing person. I'll have to call them, and then the police, to let them know you've been found."
"Jesus," he mutters.
"Peter Parker," she says reflexively.
He thunks his head against the payphone and lets himself lean there, his eyes shut. "I'm really sorry," he says. His throat tightens so suddenly that he doesn't understand what is happening to him—it's been so long since he has cried that the feeling is almost foreign to him. He crushes it back, stifles it into nothing, willing his voice not to crack. "I'm so, so sorry."
"I know," says Aunt May. She sucks in a breath and Peter can practically hear the tears in her eyes. "It's alright. You're alright."
There's a minimart near the intersection selling cheap sweatshirts and sweatpants. Peter doesn't have any money, but he tries to appeal to the guy behind the counter for an exchange: his Spiderman suit in exchange for him covering the cost of the sweats.
"No way, man," says the cashier. "That looks nothing like the real thing."
"What?" Peter asks, incredulous. He shakes his head. "Okay, for the record, it looks exactly like the real thing, and that aside—"
"And it's all torn up. Look, there's like, tears in the spandex, right there, and there, and there. What the hell, man, you think I'm an idiot?"
"It makes it authentic," Peter says, aware that he is now spewing total bullshit, but so desperate for a change of clothes that he is willing to grovel. "You'll never find a more authentic suit than this, not for the price of a ten dollar sweatshirt and pants set."
The cashier shakes his head. "Come on, man."
Peter doesn't budge. "Take it or leave it."
The sweatpants are about five sizes too large and horrendous looking. He catches his reflection in the window—he looks like a disheveled mustard-colored gangster, swimming in fabric so plentiful that even if he rolled up the pants multiple times, they'd still touch the sidewalk. It doesn't matter—Aunt May recognizes him right away, pulling over the beat up compact car and slamming the brakes so noisily that even hardened New Yorkers look up in alarm.
As soon as he sees her he is certain he might just start crying on the sidewalk. He has never felt this pathetic, this vulnerable, this stupid in his whole life. She embraces him and he holds his breath so he won't let out a sob.
"I—I can't," Peter tries to explain to her when he doesn't hug her back. She pulls away and looks at him and he has to blink, hard, or else he's going to erupt. "I can't," he says again.
She nods solemnly. There's a sadness too deep in her eyes for him to measure. "Let's get you home."
He showers for almost half an hour. It feels like he does everything too slowly without his abilities—even a stupid task like opening the shampoo bottle seems infinitely more mundane than it did before. He probably scrubs himself clean two or three times, he can't quite remember, but he just feels grimy from head to toe.
Four days. Four days he was locked up in a basement, unconscious. That man had enough time to research Peter and know and understand him better than Peter does himself. The idea of it makes Peter's skin crawl. He is bone-tired but doesn't think he'll ever sleep again.
Aunt May calls him down to dinner. The pair of them sit there in silence for a long while. Peter knows he should be ravenous after four days of who knows what, but he can only stomach a few bites and push the rest of it around on his plate.
"You're not going to tell me what happened," Aunt May says.
Peter sets his fork down. "I love you, Aunt May," he says, choosing his words carefully. "But I'm going to turn eighteen next month, and I'm going to move out."
Her eyes flash. It is clear that she wasn't expecting this. "You can't possibly be thinking of moving out," she protests, "you haven't even finished high school—"
"I've already made up my mind," Peter says, as gently as he can under the circumstances. He looks up at her pleadingly, willing her to understand. "I'm not asking for permission. I'm just making sure you understand that—" Peter pauses for a moment, trying to say it just right before he makes any promises that he can't keep. "I'm just making sure that you understand that I'm always close by. That I won't be a stranger. But I just can't be here anymore."
She shakes her head. "No," she says, "you can't just leave. Peter—this year, it's just—your uncle —"
What little food is in his stomach churns unsettlingly. They almost never talk about Uncle Ben.
"You can't just leave, too," says Aunt May, her cheeks starting to redden, her fork shaking in her hands. "You can't just leave me here by myself, I don't even know what I'd do."
"Aunt May—"
"I don't care what your reasons are. You can do what you want after high school," she says, with an authority and finality that he has never heard from her in his entire life, "but until then, eighteen or not, you are staying right here."
Peter shakes his head. He has to get this over with, has to convince her that he's going through with it, because he doesn't want to break her heart when his birthday rolls around and he leaves anyway.
Before he can think of another thing to say, she abruptly stands up, rattling the contents of the table. Peter is thrown off by this gesture. Rarely has his aunt ever towered over him.
"Do you understand me?" she demands.
He thinks she'll eventually tire of this and drop the discussion, but she stares at him, her eyes steely and unrecognizable, refusing to let it go.
"Okay," Peter says so quietly he isn't even sure if she hears him, but it seems to be enough, because she takes a deep breath and sits back in her chair. Another long silence ensues. Peter takes a bite of the meatloaf just to keep himself occupied in the uncomfortable stillness. It is tasteless and grainy and he wishes he hadn't even bothered.
"That girl," says Aunt May. "You need to call her."
Peter's head shoots up from his plate. "What girl?" he asks, even though he knows full well what girl.
"Gwen. She came by here Tuesday, looking for you, you know."
Peter reddens. "She did?"
Aunt May nods. "She was a wreck. I didn't pry, but it seems that the two of you had some sort of fight before you disappeared—tell me if I'm wrong."
Peter bites his lip and stares down at his lap. "Uh," he says. "No, we did, a little bit."
She raises an eyebrow at him and Peter's face burns even hotter. "It was stupid," he mumbles. "Something just really stupid, and I tried to apologize," he says, before his aunt can chastise him. "I did apologize. But then …"
Aunt May reaches across the table and touches his hand. "I'm sure she's forgiven you for whatever it was. Now go call her and let her know you're alright."
Peter excuses himself from the table. He doesn't mention that his cell phone is god only knows where, because there's a landline in his room and there's a chance he'll find his phone eventually. If he ever gets his abilities back, that is.
He pushes the other worries aside for the time being and dials her number, which he has had memorized since the day she gave it to him. She picks up on the first ring.
"Hello?"
So the tea party was a wild success! I mean, at some point somebody definitely hid my computer so I'd stop Pandora-ing country's Top 40, but other than that, wild success. Speaking of, I don't know if anyone's heard that Kenny Chesney song "Come Over," but if you listen to the lyrics, it's like, MADE for Gwen and Peter: "I told you I wouldn't call/Told you I wouldn't care/But baby, climbing the walls gets me nowhere"
CLIMBING. THE WALLS. Just like Spiderman. I mean guys. Someone's gotta call Kenny and tell him the jig is up. Because he is obviously fanficking Spiderman through song. Or he just likes to climb walls for fun, who knows.