Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was fine.

It was not his fault.

It was just a mistake.

PP: Hey Foggy It’s Peter, I was wondering if you could give me a call back when you can? It’s not a big deal, just need a little bit of legal advice. Thanks

It was fine.

It was not his fault.

It was just a mistake.

FN: Hey pete, what’s up? Did you get a new number? Why don’t you call Matt man? You know he loves you best.

Peter laughed nervously. His hands shook and he had to retype some of the words twice.

PP: actually, can you not tell him I messaged you?

There was a long wait. Now that they’d started, his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He couldn’t make himself put down the phone.

FN: So, it sounds like I should. But I won’t. For now anyways. Go on.

Peter let out a breath from high in his lungs. That was all he could ask for. For now, anyways.

PP: I think someone’s stalking me.

Foggy said there are degrees of stalking and he could file for a restraining order if it was bad enough. He said that he had some friends in the city who he’d talk to who might be able to help him figure out if that was the best way to go. In the meantime, he told Peter not to look up any of the degrees because they would just give him anxiety, and hoo boy, was he right. The academic side of Peter could seriously go take a fucking hike because he’d been sitting at his desk for hours, reading and re-reading all the descriptions, like a hypochondriac trying to match their symptoms to the appropriate stage of cancer.

His other phone, the old one, the one he was planning on burning at the lab with as much firepower as he could get his hands on, sat innocently on the stack of papers by his desk.

He wanted to throw it at the fucking wall. But that wouldn’t fix this shit. Not even super-human strength could fix this shit.

Well, no. That wasn’t entirely true.

Super-strength could fix this, but he wasn’t about to make Spiderman a murderer just because Peter Parker couldn’t get his fucking act together and make healthy decisions for once in his fucking life.

He glanced towards the window and his knee involuntarily started bouncing.

It wasn’t his fault.

It was just a mistake.

He’d taken the first step.

It was going to be fine.

“Dude, what gives?” Little Spidey barked at him as they beat it down the street away from the convenience store. He’d maybe put a little bit too much force behind the finishing blow to their friendly, neighborhood armed robber. He’d probably broken a shoulder.

Oops.

“Hey, I’m talking to you.”

Oh, shit, he hadn’t realized he hadn’t answered.

“Sorry, just having a shit day,” he told her.

Peter could practically feel the waves of her skepticism, but thankfully, she dropped it and went on to describe this one time someone had tried to shoot up the organic goods store she worked at and Jolie behind the till had made the guy stand in line like everyone else. He’d lost his nerve after a few minutes there and had wandered out apologizing.

It was a good story and it kept Peter from running through the list of symptoms in his head for almost 45 seconds.

He got home to his facebook messenger on his desktop losing its goddamn mind, four messages from Ned and two from MJ.

Ah, choices, choices.

He opened the messages from Ned first because he had seniority in the best friend arena. Ned wanted to know if he could have Peter’s go-ahead to dox the fucker to put an end to this. Peter didn’t know how much good that would do at this point because it wasn’t like they didn’t know exactly where he lived and worked already. And he didn’t want the guy’s life ruined, he just wanted him to stop. And to never speak to him ever again. Ever. Please.

He regurgitated this information into a text and sent it off to Ned, turned off Facebook’s notifications on his desktop, and opened MJ’s texts.

MJ asked if he was okay and if he’d gotten in touch with Foggy yet.

He fired off an affirmative followed by an emoji with bared teeth.

His phone informed him that he had multiple work emails. He opened the page just to get them off his homescreen and his blood froze in his veins for a second.

“Apology” read the subject line.

No. No, no, no, no, no. That’s how they fucking get you.

Uh-uh. Nuh-uh.

He closed the app but didn’t delete the message because Foggy told him to keep everything for now but not to read any of it. Period.

Oh, Fogs. Always trying to save them all from themselves.

He called Ned to fend off the impulse to read the message and listened to him go through his ever expanding list of colorful epithets to describe the entire situation. He listened and agreed until Ned had to go. He promised he wouldn’t read anything and hung up. Then he called Shuri because she’d definitely be awake and told her nothing, while letting her scold him for being unreachable and boring. After Shuri hung up, he went to sleep.

Or rather, he went unconscious for a bit.

Peter woke up late and slammed himself in the shower and tripped over a box outside his door on the way out. It was a cardboard one, a normal, innocent-looking package.

But he knew better.

Uh-uh. Nope.

He scrambled up, locked the door, and fled down the hallway at top speed.

“Pete, I’m borrowing you for a minute,” Mr. Stark announced mid-kidnap. Peter managed to throw his tools more or less back onto the counter before being dragged off to the seventh level of hell. Also known as “Mr. Stark’s Screech Box” and “the basement labs.”

There was no music playing when they got there and the silence was so surreal, Peter was positive they’d entered an alternate dimension until Mr. Stark steered him over to one of the rows of stainless steel demonstration tables off to the side.

Peter’s heart dropped along with his stomach and his throat started to close.

Two of the tables were covered in packages. All cardboard. He knew without looking at the shipping tags that they were all addressed to him.

He put a hand over his mouth and tried to breathe.

 In. 1. 2. 3. Out. 1. 2. Oh my fucking god. In. 1. 2. How many were there? Out. 1. 2. How long had he been doing this? In. How long? In. How? In. In. In.

“Peter, you’re having a panic attack,” Mr. Stark said slowly, suddenly right up against Peter’s ear. What the fuck, did he teleport now? Was that the actual purpose of this visit? Were the boxes just a joke? Maybe they were addressed to Mr. Stark. They had to be addressed to Mr. Stark.

“Bud, we’re gonna sit down. Let’s sit down, there we go.”

Mr. Stark held Peter’s elbows and helped him slide down to the floor without collapsing. He sat down with him and pulled Peter’s hands away from his mouth.

They had to be addressed to Mr. Stark. They had to be. It was a joke. It was a joke. Oh god, please let it be a joke.

“Breathe with me, Pete.”

He tried but he couldn’t. It was just too much, everything was too much. There was at least 100 of them. 100 packages to match the 100 facebook messages to match the 100 emails and text messages.

“You’re not listening, kid. Breathe. World’s not crashing down. Here, let’s try this. Tell me what this is.”

One of his hands was pried open and an object forced into it. It was cold. It was metal. An alloy. Steel, it was steel. Iron and Carbon and trace other elements.

“What is it, Pete?”

“A wrench,” he gasped.

“Good. Now this one.”

Again and again. Until the cold of the metal wasn’t so jarring. Until he could see his own legs underneath his hands again.

He stared at the socket wrench in his hand in silence for a minute. Mr. Stark didn’t say anything for a while and then let out a big sigh. Sitting on the floor was probably hard on his old back.

“So I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this isn’t a secret admirer situation we’ve got here,” Mr. Stark noted.

Peter laughed to keep himself from collapsing into tears.

“No,” he confirmed.

“How long?”

“2 months,” he said.

“Escalating?”

“Yessir.”

“And you didn’t tell me because?”

Ahahaha. That whole laughing not to cry thing wasn’t fucking working. At all. Even a little.

Peter felt personally offended and lied to by every dramatic film he’d ever seen.

“I thought I could handle it,” he choked.

Mr. Stark sighed again and scooched in a bit closer. Peter knew after years of reading his body language that this was an invitation for a hug. He hung his head in guilt and shame and let the tears drip onto his pants. Mr. Stark wrapped his arms around him and pulled him in until the crown of his head knocked against his collarbone.

“I’m sorry,” Peter sniffed. One of Mr. Stark’s hand rubbed firmly up and down his back.

“Tell me how it started so we can figure out how it ends.”

Chapter Text

He met Harry in undergrad. They were roommates their first year in the dorms and he was handsome and kind and suave and wealthy, basically everything that Peter wasn’t.

Naturally, they hated each other.

To the point where Peter put in a request to leave University Housing and told Harry that when he was ready to pull his head out of his ass, he’d be waiting for a fucking apology in Queens.

He’d shocked himself with such vehemence. They didn’t talk like that in his house. But then again, in his house, you didn’t just invite yourself out with other people’s friend groups and talk down to their best friend of 13 years. You did your fucking laundry and didn’t borrow books without asking. You sure as fuck didn’t bring girls home to a shared space and ask your roommate to sleep somewhere else at 11 o’clock on a fucking Tuesday.

Peter’s anxiety kicking up hadn’t made the conflicts any easier. It turned out to be a blessing that he had to move home for the second half of the first year. He’d had to start medication and go to some therapy and Aunt May knew a hell of a lot more about helping him come down from an anxiety attack than some 19 year old RA on the graveyard shift at the front desk.

He’d thought that was the end of it, seeing as Harry studied Biology and hadn’t come in with the ridiculous amount of transfer units that Peter had. He was stuck in all the intro classes while Peter rattled through the intermediate ones with the second years. Not to mention the second major. And Spiderman. And the therapy. Peter had been too busy to run into him after that.

Until a few months back, when he ran into Harry at a conference SI sent him to, ostensively to report on Stark Industries’ recent developments in bio-materials, but actually to spy on what the fuck the other labs were working on so that SI could do it faster and better.

Anyone who ever said science was objective and above competition was a lying sack of shit.

Harry was there. Of course he was. He was heir to Oscorp, the bio-labs on the other side of Midtown. Peter should have known he’d be there. But he’d been distracted. Science and time will do that to you. So when he’d looked up and finally placed his finger on just where he knew that tall hair and square chin from, Peter had choked on his drink and swam up current, through the crowd to go hide in a corner and chat to the waiters.

That had been nice. Stacy and Babs were delightful people who worked very hard and Peter still had Babs’s business card for her music on his desk.

Babs and Stacy, however, knew exactly who Harry Osborn was and shut down when he approached them to commandeer Peter’s attention.

Like a dick.

An entitled dick who always got what he wanted.

Peter couldn’t make himself smile as Harry reintroduced himself and said “I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

Peter weighed throwing his drink in his face and storming out divorcée-style with pretending to go into anaphylactic shock to escape this interaction. They were both pretty good. He needed to take his badge off first, either way. 

He squinted and took a sip of his drink, waiting for an opportunity to flip his badge over while Harry prattled on about how he’d grown a lot since undergrad and was impressed with Peter’s credentials. Peter was running out of drink by that point and was happy for it because it would give him a far less confrontational way to escape. Unfortunately, Harry fucking noticed this and snagged a new glass for him from a passing waiter and held it out with a smile. Peter kind of wanted to drug test it. He took it because he hadn’t been raised in a fucking barn but didn’t drink it so that he’d have a full glass for Phase Two of the operation.

He’d always wanted to be a divorcee. The flair. The drama. The feather boa. Wade would be so fucking jealous.

He lost his chance when a group of people seized their opportunity to talk to the SI rep and the heir of Oscorp all at once. He handed out business cards politely, but then one of the women recognized his name and declared that she knew his advisor back at Cornell because she’d had the same advisor; she kidnapped him to go celebrate their alma mater.

Peter had thought that was that.

A lost opportunity to be a dramatic bitch, perhaps. But another would surely arrive again in future.

It came when he ran into Harry at a pastry shop in Queens while trying to order a cake for his aunt’s birthday. The lady behind the counter didn’t understand what he meant by “the one with natural colorings please.” She kept bringing tubes of food dye out for him from the back to read to make sure they were okay. It was sweet, but like, he didn’t need a specialty cake. He just wanted the one behind the one on display behind the counter.

Harry crept up behind him and somehow conveyed to the lady in perfect Italian what Peter had been trying to get her to understand and she was delighted that she didn’t have to make a new cake. Peter contained his disgust with the circumstances on his aunt’s behalf and thanked Harry (again, he wasn’t born in a fucking barn) and went to leave but the guy caught his elbow and asked if they couldn’t talk. Please?

Peter had empathized with Wade’s stabby impulses so strongly in that moment that he’d shocked himself. He agreed to the talk purely to prove to himself that he was not in imminent danger of becoming that kind of vigilante.

And Harry had apologized. Sincerely and resoundingly for being a dick at CUNY and for making him uncomfortable at the conference.

He said that he’d felt bad for weeks after Peter had left the dorms but hadn’t wanted to apologize over facebook or the phone. He’d been hoping he’d run into Peter through their classes, but they’d never had the same ones for some reason and by the time graduation had come, he’d kind of forgotten about the whole thing. And that carried on until he saw Peter’s name showing up in the photo credits of The Bugle. He’d tried to find him again, but no dice. The Bugle’s staff said he had been an intern and was then a freelancer, so they couldn’t give out his information.

Harry decided it wasn’t meant to be and had tried to forget the guilt. But then he’d seen Peter’s name on the conference program representing Stark Industries and, yes, maybe he’d been too forward. It hadn’t been the right situation.

Peter was positive he hadn’t worn the right face through the entire discussion. Mostly because he was still fucking pissed about it. 18 year-old Peter had had a lot going on which any decent human being would have recognized and maybe been sensitive about. It is not normal for 18 year-olds to have fucking flashbacks and breakdowns in the middle of their dorms 3 out of 7 nights per week. C’mon, man. Even snotty, snobby 18 year-old Harry could have recognized that.

“I wasn’t in a great place back then,” Peter had told him firmly. “Actually, I haven’t been in a great place until recently. Thanks for the apology, and for the help with the cake.”

And he’d thought that was it.

Again.

Like a fool.

Harry had visited Stark Industries and Peter had crashed into him in the lobby after 3 days of no sleep. Peter was a different person with no sleep, he was informed by multiple reliable parties. And he owned up to it. He didn’t always regret it, but he owned up to it.

He’d splashed scalding coffee down his hand in the collision and had sworn and yowled like a bat out of hell. He’d scared the piss of out Harry and insulted him thoroughly in front of his entourage and Norman Osborn before screeching in frustration at the sound of another alarm from the lab entrance (someone trying to sneak in yet another fire extinguisher, for fuck’s sake. He’d just ordered 6 more, there was no need for this shit you dumb fuckers) before storming off to the lab.

He’d been re-introduced to the entourage two hours later, still fairly manic and disheveled, as the Lab Coordinator for Labs 35 to 40.

Harry had offered to buy him replacement coffee and to pay for his dry cleaning which had mystified Peter.

As if he dry-cleaned his fucking clothes.

Anyways, he’d apologized for being a dick and had gestured to the stunningly clean and smooth operation behind him (now, anyways, you motherfuckering menaces; why can’t you behave the rest of the goddamned year like Labs 12 and 17?) in explanation. Harry and his dad were impressed, as they should have been, and later extended an invitation to visit Oscorp to all the Lab Coordinators at SI to return the gesture.

Peter hadn’t wanted to go. He had some. Well. Painful memories associated with Oscorp. Which no one would ever need to know about. Especially not the CEO and heir of the company.

But. Long story short. Peter went. And went to the after party. And he’d gotten maybe a little smashed with Manny and Saanvi who were fascinated by his apparently iron-clad liver and were secretly documenting his descent into intoxication for the others back home.

Harry had shown up mysteriously to the dive bar they’d all ended up at after the after party. And Peter was drunk enough at that point to feel the need to give him a piece of his mind.

He told him that actually, no, he still wasn’t fucking ready to accept his piece of shit, entitled ass’s apology and the reason he hadn’t been able to find Peter all these fucking years was because, unlike Harry, Peter didn’t have a rich daddy to buy his place into his fancy school and promise him a place in his fancy lab. He had to work, son. All the fucking time. And if Harry’d really wanted to apologize all these years, he would have messaged Peter on facebook like a normal fucking person asking to meet up. He told him to get fucked with his shitty ass excuses and leave the rest of their poor, penniless asses alone already. For fuck’s sake. The fucking nerve of yous.

Apparently this? Turned Harry on?

And they’d.

In the bathroom.

Yeah.

That was a thing that had happened.

He wasn’t proud of it.

He’d never done it before and he didn’t intend to ever do it again.

But ever since, it was like Harry was obsessed with him. Like he was the one that got away or something. It was creepy. Originally flattering, but now, totally off-base and scary.

He’s started with the emails and with telling Peter that he’d thought about what he’d said and that he was exactly right. Harry wanted to use his privilege to help people. So he’d started taking his lab job more seriously and wanted to discuss some of it with Peter if he didn’t mind.

Peter had apologized and said he was unfortunately too busy with moving into his new apartment and the lab to meet up.

Harry had said that was fine and had told Peter he’d started volunteering for a charity organization working with the homeless. He said he’d be around Queens in a bit if Peter wanted to meet up for a chat.

Peter had had a stripe of flesh removed from his body by an inopportune crowbar at the time which was taking a long-ass time to heal. He’d begged off for an injury from work and said that he was on prescribed painkillers and wasn’t much company.

Harry sent him photos of the event. They were fine. Pretty clearly taken by someone for a newsletter, but okay, sure whatever.

He’d said that they were good photos and he hoped people really got some relief at the event.

Then Harry cut right to the chase and said he wanted to take Peter on a date and Peter said, ha. Woah, there, partner. We don’t know each other and I am not attracted to you.

And Harry obviously said, then why did you let me fuck you?

And Peter obviously said, because I was drunk out of my mind.

Harry said to this, give me a chance, I just really admire you and want to become a better person for you.

And Peter said, wow, I’m glad you want to be a better person, but don’t do it for me.

Harry told him that he’d leave him alone if they just went on one date, just one date, to see if they were compatible at all.

And Peter went, huh, this sounds a whole lot like those threads MJ sends me, will he start spouting abuse if I don’t answer?

The answer was yes. Yes, he would.

So Peter told him to get fucked and to stop blowing up his phone and it dropped back to the pleading for a date bullshit and things started escalating from there. To the constant messages and gifts and the threats and the weird feeling of being followed.

And he thought he could just wait it out, that Harry would get bored or realize it wasn’t gonna work and he’d just fucking drop it. He was a smart guy, Harry. A scientist like Peter. But he was either blind to the possibility that someone wouldn’t want him or he wanted to get revenge on Peter for making him feel bad.

Or it was a kink? Peter didn’t know anymore, he just wanted it to stop.

Mr. Stark chewed his lip and listened to all this nonsense with concerned eyebrows.

“Well fuck,” he diagnosed.

Peter groaned into his hands.

“I talked to a lawyer about maybe getting a restraining order,” he said.

“Against the heir to Oscorp? Good fucking luck.”

Peter groaned with more oomph. Mr. Stark rubbed at his beard, thinking.

“Maybe an absolutely insane lawyer with no regard for themselves or their career could swing something useful,” he mused. “But I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

Peter decided to lay himself out on his side in anguish. For once, no one stopped him. Mr. Stark had instructed all the other Lab Coordinators not to let him throw himself on the floor to suffer. Or knock his head against shit. The other Lab Coordinators, the fucking traitors that they were, had written that shit into the fucking training manual and Peter had been caught and outed by multiple interns and research assistants since. He’d had to confine all suffering behaviors to the inside of his office and it just wasn’t the same.

“I know a guy,” he grumbled miserably.

“Murdock?” Mr. Stark asked.

“Yeah.”

“Thought he moved across country after that DA nightmare.”

“He’s still got his New York license.”

Mr. Stark peered over him with a raised eyebrow.

“Murdock’s not gonna come all the way back to New York for a stalking case, Pete.”

Peter laughed and didn’t even cry this time.

“Sometimes, sir, you know absolutely nothing.”

“You lied to me?” Matt gasped, grabbing at Foggy’s face in horror on their side of skype.

Foggy caught his hands and licked the palm of one of them. Matt grimaced hard in disgust.

“You don’t have exclusive rights to being a shithead,” he shouted after Matt’s tactical retreat to locate hand sanitizer.

“Sorry, Pete, it’s really terrible that you have to go through this,” Foggy told him while Matt climbed up on a counter behind him and swore at the child-lock Foggy must have installed on the top cabinet. Peter could not ignore this, try as he might nod along with Foggy’s sympathies. He made a show of looking over Foggy’s shoulder and back to incite an explanation. Foggy finally noticed and turned back.

“It’s not up there anymore,” he said.

“The fuck did it go then?” Matt demanded. “You said alcohol.” He jabbed a finger at what must have been a braille label.

“It’s in the first aid kit.”

Matt scrambled off the counter and grumbled off out of the frame.

“It’s alcohol,” Peter heard him calling from further away.

“You should be happy, I finally decided you weren’t in danger of fucking drinking it.”

Why did they have to move to California?

Come back.

Once Matt returned, he tried to explain better what was going on. Matt and Foggy gave him zero judgmental looks about the whole fucked in a bathroom thing which he decided he wasn’t gonna think about too hard. Matt cocked his head when he explained just who it was he’d fucked in a bathroom.

“Osborn. As in, like the lab, Oscorp?” he clarified.

Peter held his head in his hands and nodded.

“Well, fuck,” Foggy announced. He patted Matt’s shoulder. “Just go ahead and list it as Murdock, Attorney at Law, okay? Don’t get me involved in this mess.” He almost got out of the frame before Matt trapped him in a headlock and pulled him back.

“We’re on it, kid. Send over everything you’ve got so we can verify. Restraining order is usually pretty easy. Guy sounds like a bag of cats.”

“Mr. Stark doesn’t think a restraining order is gonna stick,” Peter told them.

“Yeah, probably not. Go get one, anyways,” Matt said like it was no big deal.

“It’s Oscorp, Matty. They make cancer drugs. Prosthetics for vets. They aren’t gonna just take their future CEO getting marks on his record,” Foggy noted, pulling at the arm around his neck. “If it comes out that Pete works for the competitor, they’ll say he’s fabricating it and might throw out a slander charge or argue that he’s the one stalking Osborn.”

Well, fuck.

Peter hadn’t thought about it that way.

Maybe Foggy had been the brains of the Nelson-Murdock operation the whole time and had just fed Matt intelligent information directly into his ear to spout off where and when it counted. He could believe it. He’d personally witnessed Matt get behind the steering wheel of a truck full of explosives and realize his mistake only after he’d hit the gas.

“Fuck,” he groaned. “What am I supposed to do then?”

“Have you read any of the shit?” Matt asked.

“Yeah, I mean. I stopped reading after Foggy told me to.”

“Oh, good,” Matt said. He turned to Foggy, took both his hands, and vanished from the frame. Judging from Foggy’s irritated expression, he’d knelt down in front of him.

“I love you,” Peter heard him say, “So much. Do you know how much?”

“You’re embarrassing everyone present,” Foggy observed.

“Will you promise not to slap me if I contradict you?”

“No.”

“Will you promise to slap me somewhere with more muscle and less fragile bone, than say, my face?”

“No.”

Matt popped back up.

“Okay, I tried. Pete, read everything you’ve got but open the packages in Stark’s presence in case you have a panic attack or get anthrax-ed or something.”

Get

Anthrax-ed?

This was now a possibility in Matt’s head?

“I’m sorry did you imply that something in there might kill me?”

“Great point. Read all the mail at the lab, too. Just in case. We need more information.”

Foggy pressed his fingers into his forehead and hunched forward in silence.

“C’mere,” he said softly after a moment, holding a hand out next to him.

Matt danced out of arm’s reach.

“And when you’re done report back. I’ve got a great feeling about this.”

“C’mere.”

“Am I about to fucking die, Matt?”

“8 out of 10 probability you won’t. Remaining 20% should be taken care of by being in Stark’s presence. Look for patterns. Codes. Repetition. Weird imagery. Catalogue the stuff in the boxes. Preferably digitally, so I can read them later.”

“Peter, ignore him. He’s not feeling well. Ask Mr. Stark to help you figure out a way to open the boxes safely and send us all the correspondence,” Foggy said calmly. Too calmly. Was that what cold fury sounded like?

“I’m getting mixed messages here, guys,” Peter just about whined. It was called for. It was as if his second set of parents were fighting and asking him to pick a side.

“Why don’t we do this,” Foggy said, still far too reasonably for a man whose husband had perched himself on the kitchen counter to remain safely out of his grasp. “Pete, why don’t you choose what you feel most safe doing and we will respect whatever choices those might be?”

Okay.

He could roll with that.

He said as much and Matt shrugged as if to say “it’s your funeral.” Foggy gave him a cool look over his shoulder and then returned his attention to Peter.

“We’ll look through whatever you find, Peter, and decide if there is a legal situation here which might take the pressure off. If there’s not, this might be a Spiderman thing.”

“I understand,” he told them, “And thank you, by the way. For doing this. So much.”

“Any time, kiddo, we expect you for Christmas, by the way, don’t think I forgot. Bye, Pete.”

“Bye.”

Chapter Text

Here’s the thing.

The proverbial rub.

Having a clear course of action does not necessarily mean that you follow it. That’s not how anxiety works. Anxiety works by looking at a set of entirely reasonable avenues to pursue and doing a totally different fucking thing that makes you feel like shit regardless.

And Peter’s totally different thing was called “nothing.”

It wasn’t paralysis. It was worse. He knew what he had to do, he knew what he was able to do. But he couldn’t make himself do it. The thought of doing anything made his chest tight and his stomach ache and his hands shake.

“Don’t freeze,” Shuri had told him back when they were just two kids knocking around a lab. Grown-ups upstairs trying to hash out an agreement that no one would respect.

“You have no control over anything if all you do is stand still,” she’d said.

Right, but how do you thaw? Peter asked himself, trying to swallow back misery and tears.

He got a message from Foggy two days later that said simply “Are you okay?” which he stared at in the breakroom and tried to figure out the right answer to.

‘Okay’ as in, breathing and functioning more or less without bodily pain? Yes. Yes, he was okay.

‘Okay’ as in, maintaining a healthy sleep pattern and not being consumed by crushing despair? Mmmmm. Was there a soft step below ‘no?’ Maybe something uplifting like “I feel like shit all the time, but two cans of Monster can sometimes alleviate that for about four hours?”

He typed out three responses and deleted them all and laid his head on his arm in frustration. He tried another two, groaned out loud, and dropped his forehead onto his wrist.

“Hey,” Saanvi suddenly snapped from the doorway. Peter cracked open an eye to take in her suspicious squint and warning finger.

“Head up,” she commanded.

He gestured to the arm clearly between his head and the table.

Saanvi hmphed and pointed two fingers to her eyes and then in his direction before carrying on, on her way down the hall.

He was gonna find that manual and he was gonna steep it in hydrochloric acid and there was no one who was gonna stop him.

How do you thaw? Is a question best answered by someone who’s already done it, Peter decided.

He clocked out early to go to catch a train to Brooklyn.

Steve Rogers opened his door, thank fuck. Peter wasn’t actually in a position for tons of planning and foresight and so realized halfway through the train ride that it was the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday and Cap had a schedule like no other. He could have been anywhere in the world, but there he was, in New York City.

“You look terrible, kid,” he said before ushering Peter inside and pushing him down on the couch while he made coffee. Peter twisted back and threw an arm over the back of the couch so he could watch him.

“Steve, I need some advice,” he said. Cap looked up and met his gaze. Peter rarely called him by name. He dropped his gaze back to the bag of ground coffee in his hand and continued measuring out spoonfuls to feed into the top of the machine.

“Advice can wait until the coffee is done,” he declared.

Cap took his coffee with one cream and one sugar and made Peter’s the same way without asking him. Peter didn’t usually take sugar, which Cap was fully aware of, as the Falcon and Barnes often waxed poetic about this as a representation of his soul.

“A bit of sweetness’ll do you some good,” Cap said evenly, watching Peter cradle the mug. “What’s the matter, Pete?”

“How do you thaw?” he asked the cup. Cap would know what he meant. He always did.

But he didn’t answer right away, because Steve liked to take his time to think things through. He watched Pete watch the mug for a moment without lifting his own.

“Depends on what you’re thawing for,” he said, “And what you’re thawing from.”

See?

Cap always had the answer.

“Someone is stalking me,” Peter told him, “Leaving me hundreds of messages. Leaving packages outside my house; at the lab. I know him. I pissed him off, I think. And now he won’t leave me alone.”

Cap waited patiently with his blue eyes. In photos they were always so cold, but, surrounded by his cracked leather couch and the gaudy wooly rug on the floor, the giant beast of a monstera plant a lady at Sam Wilson’s work had foisted off onto him and a kitchen counter covered in handwashed glasses, they were green. Sea green. Patient.

Peter dropped his own eyes back to the mug.

“He’s important, this guy. Big money. I talked to some friends of mine, lawyers, who told me a restraining order against him probably won’t stick. I think they want to see if there’s some other charge they could bring against him. They want me to send them everything I’ve got.”

Cap and his green eyes took a sip of coffee.

“But you don’t want to,” he said over the lip of the mug.

Peter shook his head.

“Why don’t you want to?” His tone didn’t waver, didn’t lilt up into the question. Peter rocked the mug and watched the coffee lap against its walls.

“I just. It’s my fault,” he said, “I shouldn’t have pissed the guy off. I should have just gone on a date with him and let him see that it wouldn’t work out. And I don’t want Ma—my friends to have to read through all that abuse because I was too much of a coward to just deal with it earlier on.”

Steve leaned his head to the side and reached down to set his mug on the floor by the couch.

“There’s a lot going on here, Pete,” he said. Peter swallowed and found that he couldn’t make himself meet Steve’s eyes. He watched a bubble of coffee on its surface skid along the edge of the mug’s wall. He swallowed and blinked and kept his eyes down. He heard Steve settle back onto the couch. Creaking leather. Why didn’t he buy a new couch?

“Do you really think this is your fault?” Steve asked.

Peter swallowed hard again and nodded minutely at the mug.

“Because you told someone no?” Steve clarified, “Why did you tell him no?”

Peter sniffed and rubbed a hand against his nose.

“He’s a self-important, entitled piece of shit,” he said. Steve cracked a grin at him.

“Big money,” he said. Peter hummed in agreement. “He work?”

“Barely. His dad got him a job in their labs.”

Steve huffed the chuckle of someone who’d kept themselves awake, counting the money for rent, counting the money for food, counting the money for bills. Adding it all up and then counting again just to be sure. Every night, like a lullaby. Relief without sleep.

“Sounds like a piece of work,” Steve observed.

“Yeah, he’s a real shithead,” Peter agreed. It made Steve laugh and the knot in his chest loosened a little bit.

“So where does this all leave you, Peter?” Steve asked through his smile. There was a thud and a scrape upstairs and followed by curse.

“Buck’s got it in his head that he can catch a mouse with his bare hands,” Steve explained lightly.

Hand, Peter wanted to correct, but he left it. There were better questions to deal with.

“I’m stuck,” he said, “I can send my friends everything I’ve got and hope they find a case, or I can read through it myself and try to find a motivation or a pattern or something.”

Steve rubbed his lips together and tipped his head from side to side.

“Well, there is another option,” he noted.

“Just kill the fucker,” Barnes’s muffled voice shouted from upstairs.

That got Peter’s attention. It also reminded him that Barnes and Cap both had enhanced hearing and he probably should have remembered that earlier.

“I don’t want to hurt him,” he said firmly, “I just want him to stop.”

Steve chuckled again.

“I mean, okay. Not what I was going for, but a good point.”

“Or not,” Barnes barked from the stairs. He shuddered down them and brushed the plant out of his face at the bottom. He picked up Steve’s cup from the floor on his way to the kitchen and took a sip while rummaging through one of the cupboards.

“Cheese is in the fridge,” Steve reminded him. Peter wasn’t sure that was thing which people needed to be reminded about, but he knew fuck all about 1940s refrigeration, so maybe it was. Barnes didn’t even turn their way.

“Mice ain’t eat cheese, Stevie, how many times I gotta tell you?” he groused.

“Mice’ll eat anything, Buck, you’re just not trying hard enough,” Steve replied.

Barnes grimaced at him and went back to the cupboard.

“Kid, just kill the fucker, he ain’t sound like he’s contributing to society or anything. Ain’t worth the time or space,” he recommended.

“I don’t kill people,” Peter reminded him.

“Alright fine, have it your way,” Barnes grumbled, “Hire your boyfriend to do it for you. The big one. Not the medium one. Hey, where the fuck did the medium one go?”

The big one. Wade.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Peter qualified.

“The merc? Yeah, I fucking hope not. If yeah, then you’d oughta know I saw him out with a gorgeous gal the other day. I mean, a real stunner. What’s her name, Steve, you remember?”

“Domino,” Peter answered for him.

“Yeah, that was it. Now, she’s a keeper. Steven why ain’t you ever wear black leather for me, huh?”

Steve did not appear overly invested in the discussion.

“I’ll borrow Nat’s catsuit,” he said off-hand. Peter cringed at the idea of old-man sex. “Buck, scram, would you? Peter and I are having civil discussion.”

“Too good for ratcatchers like me, doll?”

“Fortunately.”

“S’alright, I’ll come back later. With your fucking rat.”

“Bring me your trophy, oh handsome knight.”

Barnes gave him a filthy wink and a grin.

“Now we’re talking,” he decided. He plucked a jar of peanut butter from the very back of the cupboard and slammed it closed, taking it and Steve’s mug with him back up the stairs.

Steve watched him go with enormous suspicion.

“Anyways,” he said, “As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted, there is another option here.”

“Which is?” Peter encouraged. Steve gave him a pointed look. It was his ‘please use your brain’ expression. He waited for Peter to figure it out.

Which wasn’t fair, by the way. Peter had come here for advice. If he’d been about to figure this shit out on his own he wouldn’t have come all the way to Brooklyn—oh.

Steve gathered from the look on his face that he’d figured it out.

“I’m not saying it’s a great option,” he said, “All I’m saying is it’s an option. Might get you more answers than slogging through the written shit.”

Barnes cackled upstairs. Peter chose to believe that he’d trapped his prey because he kind of hated the thought that he’d figured it out faster than himself.

“I am not going on a date with Harry,” he snapped.

“Oh, his name’s Harry,” Barnes swooned through the wall. Peter directed his fury at Steve to make him stop. However, in a matter of seconds, Steve had gone from the gentlest, most helpful human being in all of Brooklyn to scathingly unsympathetic. His green eyes had gotten hella blue.

“You’re the one who asked for advice, Pete,” he noted.

Fuck this man.

And fuck his horse.

He was not going on a date with Harry.

He was not going on a date with Harry.

He was not going on a date with Harry.

PP: You know what, you fucking asshole? You incorrigible shithead? This has gone on for long enough. I’ll go on your fucking date if it means you stop fucking texting me.

PP: But if it don’t work, and you call me one more fucking time or send one more goddamn package to my place of work, so help me god I am calling the police and finding some way to sue your ass, do you hear me?

“Ned, I have fucked up so bad. I am beyond fucked, and I need you to kill me now. You don’t have to be merciful, I am a sinner and a whore and I deserve all of God’s wrath.”

Ned didn’t answer right away, which was fine. Fair, even. Anyone would need time to appreciate such a humble request.

“Okay, so you went and saw The Nun,” was what he had when he finally came to.

Not ideal. But there was still a chance to save this.

“There’s not a whore in The Nun, Ned,” he corrected gently, “And you’re not listening. I need you to kill me.”

“Me. You want me to kill you.”

“Yes, I’ll write a note and everything, we can stage it like a suicide.”

“Dude, I’m pretty sure Michelle has always wanted to kill you. Ask her.”

“I can’t,” Peter told him. He couldn’t stop spinning the old phone on his desk. It had been silent. Dead silent. Chillingly silent for the last four hours of his breakdown.

“And why not?”

“Because she will skewer me and never let me die. The point is escape, here, buddy. Keep up.”

“Peter, I think you need to start taking your meds again.”

Why, sir, what would give you that idea?

“What did you do anyways?”

Peter forced himself to stop spinning the phone, but all that did was make him start rubbing his thumb across the zipper of his jacket and that was bad news, that. That was how Peter ended up with many zipper-less sweaters. He stuffed the hand under his thigh.

“I’m going on a date with Harry,” he admitted.

Ned hung up.

Called back and hung up again.

Called back and almost got through a full sentence before hanging up a third time.

NL: I can’t speak to you because I don’t want our last spoken words to be the ones in my head.

PP: that’s fair

NL: I called Michelle.

PP: Okay that’s fair too

NL: I just need you to know that I am NOT okay with this

PP: I didn’t expect you to be

PP: k MJ’s calling me. I love you man, no one could ever replace you and im sorry bye

Mr. Stark came down into the lab and did a double take into Peter’s office when he passed it, like basically every other person that day had.

It might have had something to do with Peter trying to type out emails and supply requests with snot and tears pouring down his fucking face.

Yeah. It was probably that.

Peter grabbed another tissue and blew his nose. He dabbed at his cracking eyes, added the victim to the fluffy pile in front of him, and went back to figuring out how many ‘c’s and ‘m’s recommendation had. R-e-c-c-o—no, that wasn’t right. R-e-c-o-m-m-m—obviously not.

“Hey Pete?” Mr. Stark asked cautiously with his hands gripping the doorframe. Peter turned his head so that he’d get an optimal view of the waterworks.

“Yes?” he warbled. Mr. Stark grimaced.

“Okay, talk time. We’re having a talk.”

“No, no, I’m good,” Peter assured him as he barged in and closed the door behind him anyways. “Talking got me to this point, so I’m actually thinking about taking a vow of silence.”

Mr. Stark paused in dragging Peter’s visitor’s chair out from the corner to stare at him in disbelief.

“I am having a really hard time separating the emotion from the dramatics today, pal,” he said carefully. He parked the chair across from Peter and sat down in it, slouching.

“So?” he said.

“So what?” Peter replied. He reached up to scrape away some of the, by then painful, saline dripping down his face.

“Explain this,” Mr. Stark instructed, waving at his face.

“Oh this? This is the culmination of every decision and identity I’ve made for myself over the past ten years,” Peter told him.

Mr. Stark grimaced again.

“Pete, if this has anything do with the uh, stalker guy, it isn’t worth it. If you’ve got reason to believe it’s Osborn, that’s fine. It’s bleeding over into SI, so we’re within our rights to sic a lawyer on the guy, that’s why we have a legal team. Hell, we’re obligated to—”

“No, this is all Michelle Jones,” Peter creaked miserably. Oh, god. Just the thought of it made him want to crawl under his desk. He reached for another tissue.

“Michelle Jones,” Mr. Stark repeated incredulously, “MJ? Your little friend from high school?”

Peter blew his nose and leaned back to keep the tears in. It hurt less than them burning the rims of his eyes.

“She ain’t little,” he amended.

“She did this to you? Christ, kid, what did she say? I mean, hold nothing back, this obviously needs some air.”

“Or maybe it doesn’t?” Peter offered, “Maybe it’s already experienced plenty of air? Maybe we can just let this happen and never talk about it or anything else ever again?”

Mr. Stark’s face said fat chance. He reached into Peter’s backpack next to the desk and unearthed the can of Red Bull in the side pocket. He plonked it on the desk top and stared at Peter through the top half of his glasses’ lenses.

“Speak,” he ordered.

Well, sir, you fucking asked for it.

So, if you ever needed a play by play of every shitty, ego-centric, even slightly problematic thing you had ever said, done, or thought in your life, your girl was Michelle Jones. She kept those fucking receipts, boy, and she slept on those things until the day of reckoning.

She whipped those fuckers out in addition to her fucking excel sheet/venn diagram of every human soul who was or would be disappointed in Peter’s actions. And don’t you worry, folks, she had one for all the non-human souls as well.

He couldn’t believe he’d disappointed Carson. Carson had done nothing in his pure, doggy days to deserve such disrespect. Peter was ashamed, ashamed to have caused even one drop of suffering in so angelic a being. Especially since Carson didn’t even know his was being treated in such a despicable manner. That was even worse. Peter was reinforcing fucking norms of animal abuse and neglect over here and Carson was just taking it in his beautiful, innocent doggy stride.

“Peter, I think we might need to get you back into counseling, honey,” Mr. Stark told him as compassionately as he could over Peter’s increasingly vociferous distress.

“I don’t need a fucking counselor,” Peter only mostly sobbed into his desk, “I just need to be a better person, Mr. Stark.”

“So I’m getting the feeling that you and Michelle had a fight, here, Pete. Let’s maybe talk about why this fight happened, huh? Why don’t we talk about that?”

The lab walls weren’t exactly sound proof in the office space and the thought that people were listening to Mr. Stark half-shouting desperate attempts to persuade Peter that life was still worth living sent him right back into despair.

“Oh my god, I am so sorry,” he sobbed, “This is so embarrassing for you, I mean, for me, but definitely for you, Mr. Stark. I shouldn’t have even come in. I’m sorry, I’ll leave. Lemme just—” he started to transfer his heap of tissue into the trashcan by the desk.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Mr. Stark said, suddenly standing up and grabbing his arms to pulling him around, away from the computer. He crouched down and held Peter’s forearms so he could look him in the face. “Peter, kid, I’m not—I’m worried. Everyone’s worried. This is a stressful time for you. And we get that, and I’m sure Michelle is just upset because she loves you. Okay? That’s where this is coming from, alright? So why don’t we do this? Why do you come with me down to the basement labs and have a nap for a little while and maybe we can talk when you’re feeling a little better. Is that doable?”

No.

No, it was not.

He had to suffer, Mr. Stark. He’d betrayed his aunt, his uncle’s memory, Carson, Cornell, Ned, feminism, the Human Rights Council--he could go on.

“Okay, kiddo. I tried. This is now non-negotiable. Up you go. Either you walk or I carry you, and you know I will.”

Peter woke up on the beat to shit sofa in Mr. Stark’s personal lab feeling like dog shit. His eyes hurt so fucking bad. They didn’t want to open. Once he finally got them pried, more or less, open, he looked across from him and discovered a box of Kleenex and bottle of Advil on the coffee table next to a glass of water. The lab’s floor lights were dark. Someone had left the set above him on. Probably the same someone who’d thrown an old quilt over him.

He levered himself up and felt the quilt drop to the floor. He tried to remember how the fuck he’d gotten there, but all that was there was the fucking weight of distress over his conversation with MJ. God. It had mostly sunken to a deep throb, thank fuck. He picked up the quilt and started folding it, and in doing so, finally noticed his phone on the sofa’s arm with a post-it note tacked over the screen.

“I called your aunt,” it read, “She’s gonna help you make an appointment with your therapist when you wake up. I talked to MJ too. And Ned. Come up to the Resi floor when you wake up, champ. We need to chat.”

Oh, lord.

Oh, Jesus.

God, someone help him.

It was 2 in the morning, so Peter had thought that maybe he’d have a chance in hell in escaping the tower before any mouth flapping occurred.

He was wrong.

It was the way of things, at that point. He should have known. What he really needed to start doing was having a thought, writing the thought down, and then doing the fucking opposite of whatever that thought was. That’s what he needed to start doing.

“Peter, I am nocturnal. You know I don’t sleep. You’ve known this for years,” Mr. Stark lectured him in his personal living room.

Fucking F.R.I.D.A.Y.

Peter was going to find her control center and a screwdriver on the same day one of these days.

“Miss Potts makes you sleep,” he grumbled.

“Is Pepper here right now Pete? No. No, she is not.”

“I don’t want to talk, Mr. Stark,” Peter pleaded.

“Yeah, no. I got that feeling.”

“Listen, I know it sound crazy and I totally deserve MJ’s fucking ire, okay? I get it. I’m sorry for not telling you—” Peter started.

“What have I told you about listening to those old fucking coots?” Mr. Stark said over him, “They were probably fucking with you, Pete. Cap does that shit for his own entertainment, kiddo. He’s just a sad, lonely man who needs a fucking hobby.”

“Yeah, a sad lonely man surrounded by not one, but two lovers, a stupidly comfortable house, with genuine investment in other peoples’ problems, Mr. Stark.”

It appeared that they had reached an impasse.

“Fine,” Mr. Stark said in a rare moment of dignity, “He’s fucking whatever. The point is that he gave you bad advice.”

“The point is,” Peter argued, “That he gave me the only advice which might actually keep anyone from getting hurt in this situation.”

“What the fuck did Mr. Insane Lawyer say, then? He want you to throw yourself off the bridge or something?”

“No, Matt thinks that there’s fucking anthrax in one of those packages and told me to open that shit in a vacuum. And I’m 90% sure the reason he won’t tell me anything else he suspects is because he wants me to acquire a minor, but preferably major injury, so he can go ahead and press charges for attempted murder.”

Because Matt was secretly a massive dickhead who thought ehn, Peter would heal.

He wasn’t wrong.

And that case would in fact be very compelling.

But Peter would rather not play the near-brush-with-death game more than twice this year.

Mr. Stark’s face did something complicated to describe his feelings about Matt. Which was fine. Matt had a list in his head of all the shit he wanted to say and do to Mr. Stark, and Peter could almost guarantee that Matt’s were more creative.

“Alright. Time out,” Mr. Stark said. “Help me understand. You have arranged a meeting—”

“A date.”

“—a date with Harry Osborn. The very same man who your lawyer thinks is trying to murder you, because what? You didn’t want to send your lawyers the paperwork, Pete?”

See, when you put it like that it sounds crazy.

“Well, yeah,” he said.

“Well, yeah,” Mr. Stark repeated. His intonation went done at the end, just like his faith in Peter.

“Kid, I will read through the paperwork myself and send it to your psychotic lawyer. Just give it here.”

“He’s stopped,” Peter told him. Mr. Stark went still, then switched his legs to cross.

“Stopped.”

“Not even a peep since I said yes. I slept last night. Still no messages today.”

Keep frowning like that, old man, and those wrinkles were gonna set up shop forever.

“And what, praytell, are you gonna do on this date?” Mr. Stark pressed irritably.

Peter rubbed his sweaty palms up and down his thighs.

“Well. Apparently, he’s taking me to Coney Island.”

Mr. Stark flailed in distress.

“Coney Island. He’s taking you to Coney Island. For a date. For your first date.”

“Well, yeah,” Peter said.

“He’s Harry fucking Osborn and he’s taking you to Coney Island.”

Damn son, let’s reel in the classism. The most devastating part of this scenario was that Harry was probably going to ruin Coney Island even more than it had already been ruined for Peter.

“I mean—”

“How fucking convenient—”

“Mr. Stark—”

“You ain’t going alone.”

Wait.

What.

“Yeah, I am,” Peter snapped, standing up. “I’m not a kid anymore, Mr. Stark, I can handle myself on a shitty date at Coney Island.”

Mr. Stark stood up, too. Peter had grown a couple inches taller, but it was only noticeable when they were stood toe to toe as they were. He clenched his jaw and used every millimeter of those two inches to stare Mr. Stark down.

“He is a stalker who may be trying to murder you, Peter. You aren’t going alone.”

“I’m Spiderman, sir. I can handle it.”

“No, you’re Peter Parker,” Mr. Stark snapped, “You are my employee, and you can be shot, stabbed, and poisoned just like any other damn person. If you want to go, fine, that’s your prerogative. But Stark Industries’ name is on this bag of cats now, kiddo. If you get hurt, we could be implicated for not doing enough. I’m not taking that risk, for you or the company. You aren’t going alone, end of discussion.”

Chapter Text

Mr. Stark told him he was to be accompanied on his shitty date by Captain Bad Decisions himself, who he was currently blaming for Peter’s entire predicament. Barnes was apparently jazzed. Cap was apologetic.

“Didn’t mean to push you one way or another, Pete,” Steve admitted over the phone, his voice small and tinny over the rush and screech of the train.

“It’s okay,” Peter fumed, “I’m thinking that this is at least 70% my fault.”

“It’s not,” Steve stipulated. “But if it makes you feel better, I fucking hate the Cyclone and can guarantee you Buck will make me ride it at least six times. Maybe I can puke on your stalker in righteous retribution?”

You know what, Cap?

It was kind of an appealing idea.

DD: Peter

DD: Peter I am drowning in an ocean of emptiness

DD: A veritable sea of nothingness

DD: A stunning lack of paperwork and communication which gives me a very strong feeling that you have either died or are off somewhere doing something monumentally stupid.

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): RED you’re BACK

DD: Not talking to you, go away.

DD: Spidey you have 24 hours before I call Michelle

S2: Woah, that’s ominous, is smth going on, Spidey?

SM:  DON’T CALL MICHELLE

S3: dude you wanna maybe not incriminate yourself?

S2: ^

DD: Convince me.

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): oho this shit is gonna be good

SM: i’m fine I’m at work don’t call michelle she is not in a great mood

DD: And why not?

SM: because I’m an idiot

DD: What the fuck did you do?

SM: I am not emotionally able to answer that question at this point in time.

DD: Oh okay, just one second

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): oh you fucked up baby boy

SM: thnks Wade

DD: hey pete, its foggy

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): hi nelson <3

DD: hey wade!

DD: sorry Pete, you didn’t answer my texts so I got worried. I won’t tell him next time, but I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Me and matty are actually going to be in NYC this weekend to help a friend of ours tie up some business there. Maybe we can meet up to see where you’re at? Just want you to be/feel safe, bud.

Peter got up to close his office door so he could pound his head against the table in peace.

That was playing dirty. Matt knew Peter couldn’t say no to Foggy.

He was fucked. He was fucked with Mr. Stark and now he was fucked with the two of them.

SM: I can’t, sorry I have a date

S2: WAHT

DD: oh

DD: okay, that’s not what I was expecting. Sorry matt’s having feelings and wants the phone back 

DD: THIS IS MATT PETER IF ITS WITH THAT FUCKHEAD WE’RE GONNA HAVE WORDS

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): woah what fuckhead

DD: IT IS ISNT IT

SM: i’m really fucking sorry i wasn’t thinking

DD: You’re damn right your sorry I had a strategy lined up and everything I dug up so much shit on this guy which you would know if you’d just FUCKING CALLED ME

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): Alright time out

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): Red, can it and cool the fuck off

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): Someone explain what’s going on

Peter typed and erased four answers with shaking fingers. Matt’s icon started typing.

Oh hell no. That kick in the ass helped.

SM: I got it DD. Wade some guy’s been stalking me

SM: and Matt was gonna help with me with it but

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): stop there

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): where are you

Nope, nope, nope. No murder. Zero homicide.

Damage control, now, Parker.

SM: i’m handling it. I told him we’d go on one date and he stopped. So I’ll go on one date with him and it’ll be terrible and that’ll be the end of it.

DD: Do you seriously think this is how stalkers work, Peter? No, you’ve just given him exactly what he wants and now he knows that you will bend under pressure. Absolutely not. Cancel it. Tell him your blind cousin is having a nervous breakdown in SF and you need to reschedule never.

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): how long has this been going on? what’s this guys name?

Peter needed to get himself under control before someone outside his office heard him panicking and called Mr. Stark. He literally could not deal with one more heart-to-heart or disappointed stare.  

He took in a deep breath. And let it out. In 1.2.3. and out. He clenched his jaw and cleared his throat. Popped his back and set his chin at the phone.

SM: I need you two to calm the fuck down

SM: I have told both of you six thousand times I’m not a kid anymore. I made a fucking mistake. I see that now. I’m sorry. I’ll handle it.

Wade and Matt both started writing at the same time. Peter’s gut sank at how long they seemed to be going for, but he kept his jaw clenched to keep himself together.

Little Spidey got there before either of them could, bless her.

S2: is that why you’ve been stressed out lately?

For some reason, the question slowed his pulse even better than the deep breathing.

SM: yeah, sorry I didn’t tell you.

S2: it’s okay its personal, I had a guy try to stalk me once. It’s not great but I guess its better than a sniper or smth. Is there anything we can do to help?

Louis’s little icon popped up right under hers.

S3: that’s stressful as hell, man. Sorry that happened to you. If you need anything just give us a shout.

Awwwwww.

Miles’s little icon showed up, too, even though Peter knew that kid was definitely supposed to be in class. Not that Peter had ever had the high ground in that debate.

S4: hi, my dad is a police officer. I texted him and he says that you should report the guy to the police.

 They were trying so hard to help. It genuinely brought Peter back to base.

SM: a restraining order isn’t gonna work for this guy, miles, thank you for asking though (also, your dad’s a cop? Dude.)

S4: okay why not? (I know. It’s a lot)

SM: his name is Harry Osborn. He’s the heir to Oscorp. He’s got enough money and influence to ignore an order or put the blame back on me.

Little Miles started typing, but Matt, whose little note hadn’t gone away through the entire conversation, jumped in before he could finish.

He’d sent a voice message, which meant he was steamed enough to not have the patience to deal with the voice to text option.

“I’m not trying to demean you, Peter, sorry if it came across that way. Just frustrated and wish you had talked to someone before making such a decision.”

He didn’t sound mad? More tired. Peter could imagine him pressing fingers into his temple.

It didn’t make Peter feel better, but it also didn’t make him feel worse, which was a welcome reprieve that point.

“Norman Osborn knowingly re-hired a known felon two years ago to head his lab,” Matt’s voice continued, “His name was Connors, some kind of biologist. But Osborn neglected to reflect the guy’s record on any of Oscorp’s yearly audits.”

Connors? No fucking way. Yeah, Peter knew Connors, although last they’d met, the guy had been huge, scaley, and angry as hell. How the fuck had he gotten out of prison so soon? He was basically an unsuccessful terrorist.

“That means that someone, somewhere, is cleaning up the guy’s record. If Oscorp hired someone in the DOJ to do this, that’s a federal felony,” Matt went on in his message. “If it goes to court and the blame goes on Norman (which it undoubtedly will), Harry will be forced to stand in for his father in the event of his absence, which means that he would have more eyes on him and less time carry on with his very busy harass-Peter agenda. That could be mitigated further by putting an even brighter spotlight on his ass. I.e. the restraining order.”

Matt’s message continued in a second voice message under the first. Peter clicked on it as fast as he could and tucked the phone back up against his ear.

“Fogs and I were planning to raise the cases of illegal hiring practices and falsification of state and federal documents,” he said, “Then file a restraining order and throw all that over to Karen to do her thing. Whatever she comes up with at The Bulletin should catch on pretty quick because Oscorp’s recently been in hot water for failure to comply with FDA standards in their bio labs. “

“Would that stop the stalking? Not 100% sure, but it would sure as fuck put them on the defensive to prevent their CEOs from doing anything which might further jeopardize the company’s market value and reputation. And it would mean that Harry would have to take a restraining order seriously, as secondary violation, especially with evidence of threats to the plaintiff’s physical/mental well-being, can put him in felony territory if you have the right lawyer. Which, Peter, you do fucking have. Three of, actually.”

Christ. Matt hadn’t been trying to kill Peter after all. And he’d already spent all the time Peter had been trying to spare him digging through Oscorp’s audits.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Peter had agreed to a date with Harry Osborn for nothing.

Jesus fucking Christ, Parker, this is why you aren’t allowed to do things. You fucking--Alright, okay, no. That was enough of that.

Mistake made, lesson learned. Don’t freeze, you don’t have control over anything if you stand still.

Move forward.

Step 1.

SM: matt I am so fucking sorry I didn’t realize you’d already done so much work on this

Step 2.

SM: but also what the am I supposed to do now?

SM: if I cancel, it’s just gonna piss him off more and he might get even more aggressive, which is yeah, good for our case, but really bad for my mental health and, as has become pretty fucking clear to everyone by now, I am already not in a position to be calling the shots over here

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): I have an idea

DD: apology accepted, just answer your damn phone next time and call fogs at some point, he’s worried sick about you. you might consider going back on the meds by the way, I hate them too, don’t get me wrong. But they help with the self destructive impulses.

DD: first thing is first, you need to cancel your date, we’ll deal with the fallout as it happens

SM: okay, will do. Thank you.

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): hey, morons. I’m not joking, theres a way to spin this

Peter blinked at the phone in surprise.

DD: oh here we go

SM: what do you mean wade?

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): you need a witness right? to this whole false docs thing?

DD: yes, and that is going be challenging. May need to lay on some oscorp folks to get them to talk.

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): or not

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): why not use baby-born?

What the fuck, Wade? No. Hold on.

Peter had to give the guy a chance, if there was a way to save this, he couldn’t afford to be picky.

DD: why not get your head examined

SM: explain pls

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): Red, honey-bear, you wanna be the pot or the kettle in this situ?

DD: whichever one’s got less capacity for being disgustingly wrong, darling

S2: what is wrong with you two?

SM: Wade, please explain.

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): all these brains and I still gotta do everything around here

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): you’ve got the perfect set-up for some casual espionage right now kiddo. go on the date. get Osborn the second coming to think youre into him. Cuddle up all picture perfect and he’ll start spilling, they always do. Wear a wire for that shit, feed him a few drinks, and you’re golden. Straight from the horse’s mouth. You got your witness, you got your stalking evidence, and you’ve got a fuckload of blackmail for the future.

Wade was so fucking smart.  

DD: I am conceding on the premise of convenience but I want the record to show I am NOT happy about it

SM: Wade you’re so fucking smart

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): when are y’all gonna figure out I’m do this shit for a living

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): for fucks sake

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): And baby boy, sincerely from me to you, get your life together. This shit is just sloppy

Peter sat back in his chair with his hands on his knees. He now had a game plan. A million people in his corner. Extra support at the site of the future operation.

He sat still for a few minutes, eyes closed, just appreciating the gradual wash of relief as anxiety seeped out of his bones.

A clear plan of action. Extra support. He was going to be fine. Things were working out for the best.

But when Wade Wilson tells you you’ve gone off the rails, it’s seriously time to sit down and have a think about your place in the universe.

He stood up from his desk and grabbed his coat.

He clocked out early and went straight home and changed into the suit. It was only six in the evening, but he’d never been able to find himself just as Peter Parker. He stared in the mirror before he went back out.

Steve’s eyes had seemed like they changed colors in the light of his home, but Peter’s had always been brown. Warm brown, but not chocolate or anything like that. When he was little May had set him on her lap, her chin on his head, his hands in hers, and told him that he had eyes like autumn trees. He hadn’t understood then; he’d only heard of brown eyes as chocolate or honey or ‘brown pools’ whatever the fuck that meant, but he could see it now. Autumn trees, tiny bursts of orange and brown and yellow. Wet leaves trampled and bruised by feet. Dark trunks and branches revealing their nooks and crannies, reaching for the light. Warmth despite the cold.

He shaved the gray from his face.

His jaw was harder than he’d ever remembered it. He watched it in the mirror and thought of Ben’s.

Who did he want to be when he grew up?

Was it still Ben? May? Had it become Mr. Stark?

Or had it become Wade or Matt or Foggy or MJ or Ned?

He tapped the razor against the ceramic basin of the sink and turned on the faucet to clean it out. At the moment, it felt like he was sorting through the clippings of everyone’s various disappointment. He couldn’t remember what it had meant—what it had been about him that had made them come stay in the first place.

Make a list, his therapist had told him once, of all of things you are good at.

He’d struggled with that at the time. The things he was good at were all shit like science and math and academic decathlon and running errands for May.

“Why is it important that you’re good at those things?” his therapist had asked.

Why? You don’t ask why you’re good at things, he’d said. You just are or you’re not.

“Okay, how did you become good at those things,” she’d asked instead.

Now, that was a question Peter knew the answer to. Practice. He’d practiced. He was good at math and science and academic decathlon because he studied them and went through the facts, the formulas over and over. He solved forwards and backwards and built frameworks to place new numbers, new facts into. It was muscle memory and assimilation. The new into the old. The old transformed into the new.

He was good at running errands for May because she’d taught him how to run them and had then trusted him to use the formula. He’d gotten into college because he’d found the formulas online. Here’s how to write a personal essay. Here’s how many As you need, how many Bs and Cs you’re allowed. Here’s how you make an impressive GPA. Here’s how you write a resume.

It was all within reach. It was a just matter of figuring out the formulas.

It didn’t translate well to Spiderman. Yes, Spiderman was made out of formulas, made out of genes and chemicals and physics, but there were no constants or coefficients with people, no rhyme or reason from one to the other; the only thing you could do was practice and watch and start writing down patterns.

Spiderman had to make his own formulas.

Peter had to make his own formula.

“Okay,” he told the autumn in the mirror. “Let’s pick out the best parts.”

Spiderman found Peter Parker in the crests and slops of arcs through and over the city, whipping through orange haze and black-blue sky. He found him on the tops of blaring white streetlights and in the cracks of slabs of vertical concrete. His fingers scraped against chain link fences and his heels thumped against rotten, old scaffolding and he skidded through the city on old chip bags and burnt out cigarette butts.

He found himself in his body between a man with a raised fist and a child. Between the looks of shock, awe, and terror.

He put the pieces together and found himself listing them off to the flare and twinkle of lights, the rush of wind in his ears on the old meeting perch, a roost more like, that he and Wade and Double D used to meet on.

It was higher than the current meeting roof, so he could talk to himself without feeling judged.

“I’ll be warm like Ned,” he told the city, “And decisive like Michelle and kind like May. Maybe confident like Matt and compassionate like Wade. Grounded like Ben.”

To be as smart as Mr. Stark needed no mention. But to be passionate like him and resolute like Steve, those were worth the words.

He’d be like all of them, but first he had to be an apology. He dug out his phone. The screen’s glare hurt his eyes for a second.

“I’m sorry for being closed-off and reckless,” he texted Ned and Michelle, “I’m working on it. Thanks for being there anyways.”

The answer from Ned was immediate.

NL: It’s okay, it happens. Did you get help? Let me know if you need anything. I’m not mad anymore.

MJ’s came after he’d gotten back home. After a shower.

MJ: Stop doing this to yourself and you won’t have to apologize.

Chapter Text

Peter had done his fair share of spy operations, but that didn’t mean he’d done them well--or even successfully for that matter.

The Widow had taken him aside when he’d turned seventeen and sat him down and said,

“The big doe eyes aren’t going to work on people much longer.” By which she’d meant ‘I’m about to put you through living hell for the next year, and on your eighteenth birthday, I will reward your frankly pathetic efforts by putting you on the go-list right above Iron Man.’

This was not saying much. Mr. Stark was not allowed to do any espionage, for any reason, on any mission, ever. Being placed just above him was the super equivalent of getting an award for holding a gun without shooting your foot: basic competence achieved.

So, yeah, Peter was a shit spy. That was fine, he’d come to terms with it. There was a reason the Widow was the black spider while he was the red and blue one. But the problem was that he needed to become a better spy and he had less than 48 hours to do it.

He ran through the list of spy-skills he sucked at in his head and tried to figure out which ones were most applicable to the situation. Cunning, yes. Disguise, yes. Acting, yes. Torture-techniques, no. Pain tolerance, maybe?

An hour of making lists and googling exciting things like ‘how make boy think you’re into him’ was unfruitful.

What he needed was an expert in manipulation. What he needed was Michelle.

The knock on his door inspired both relief and fear in the bottom of his stomach, both of which were assuaged by Michelle bitching through the door “C’mon, Parker, it’s heavy.”

“It” turned out to be two grocery bags full of soda and liquor.

“Uh,” was all he could say as she shoved one of the bags into his arms.

“You said we’ve gotta think,” MJ told him over her shoulder, already shoving all the shit on his counter over to the sink. “So we’re gonna think.”

“Drunk?” Peter clarified, just to be sure.

“Drunk,” MJ confirmed with a hand on her hip. “You’re stuck in the same patterns right now, we need creativity.”

He relented and shut up and let her rummage through his cabinets for some pint glasses. He cracked open the rum.

Around drink four, he dropped his couch cushion and snapped up from the floor.

“I’ve got the fucking Winter Soldier,” he told MJ, who was also on drink four and busy rearranging all his glass and table ware in the cabinets.

“Oh, go on,” she said. She mercifully left the cabinet alone for the moment and tucked one of her feet under the other on the counter.

“I’ve got the fucking Winter Soldier,” Peter repeated, “Why the fuck am I doing this shit when the fucking Winter Soldier is chaperoning my fucking date?”

“What’s he gonna do?” MJ asked.

Any-fucking-thing he wanted was the honest answer. Bucky Barnes was going to make Steve Rogers ride the Cyclone until he puked, however many times that was going to be. And if he intended to be as hideously incorrigible as he could be (which he 100% was), he was gonna do that shit first thing and then flirt mercilessly with Cap in every possible way, being sure to be photographed in every compromising position to be found in the park.

Mr. Stark really knew what he was doing when he picked Peter’s chaperone, hadn’t he? Steve was going to hate that shit. Steve was going to drag his heels and beg Peter with his eyes to make the torture stop every step of the fucking way.

It was fucking perfect.

“We just gotta flip it,” Peter explained to Michelle.

“The fuck are you talking about?” she slurred at him derisively, eying the cabinet with renewed interest. Peter abandoned his nest of pillows to get closer and explain.

“Harry knows I work at Stark Industries,” he said, “And Stark Industries works with the Avengers, so it makes sense I know the Avengers.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“So I’ll say, I’m sorry, this was meant to be our date, but Mr. Stark asked me if I could chaperone the old people while I was doing it.”

“What the fuck, man.”

“No, no. Listen. If we have to check-in on Cap and Barnes, then Barnes can get me set up the next move each step of the way. He’s like first on the go-list, Michelle.”

“The fuck is a go-list?”

“It’s the list of people you call for covert missions,” Peter explained with sloppy hand gestures, “But that’s not important, what’s important is that I don’t know how to get info out of people and I’m the worst spy in existence, but if Barnes and Cap are listening in, then they can orchestrate whatever ridiculous fucking circumstances they think would get Harry to talk.”

“So you need two wires,” Michelle noted. She leaned a palm against the edge of the sink, but, true to form, did not fall into it. Peter was just a little jealous. If he was as drunk as her, he’d definitely have fallen in. And with his luck, he’d have gotten stabbed by a fork or broken glass while he was at it.

“Yeah, one for me and one for the other two,” Peter agreed.

“I mean, it’s either that or just let Harry talk himself out,” Michelle said, “He could probably do that.”

“Yeah, he could, but if he says jack, then I’m fucked. The goal here is to never have to do this shit ever again in the history of mankind. If we got Barnes and Rogers helping out, then the chances of needing a do-over are smaller.”

Michelle chewed on her lip as she thought it over. Then she shrugged.

“Yeah, alright, why not?”

Peter had planned on going to Stark Industries to knock up a few bugs, but he went to Brooklyn instead to see if the Cap duo would be down with the plan. He got off the train successfully and had been picking his way through Brooklyn just fine until he literally tripped over Miles and his buddy in the street on the way there. He levered himself and his newly skinned elbows up from the pavement and turned slowly to give the both of them a nasty look.

Miles was immediately and appropriately horrified.

“Spid—”

“Miles.” Peter interrupted because c’mon, kid. It was broad fucking daylight. Miles’s friend lit right up, which told Peter basically everything he needed to know. Miles realized his buddy had given away their other secret and was further mortified.

“I can explain,” he said.

Peter stared down at himself and then the sidewalk and then the spot where the two of them had been lying trying to stick their hands into a fucking storm drain. He did some mental calculus and realized that he could not care less what the fuck they’d been doing. He had a timetable to keep.

“I am going to call what is happening right now a warning,” Peter told the kids, but mostly Miles, “And then I am going to send you six thousand lab safety videos about the dangers of slips and falls in the workplace.”

Miles grimaced because he, like Little Spidey, had no appreciation for health and safety in a shared, multi-use places.

Peter hauled himself the rest of the way up. Or he tried to. He more like popped up only to recoil and slam his forehead right back into the concrete. Once the shock had worn off, he realized his right hand was stuck flat to the pavement. He gave it a jerk. It did not come loose. He gave it another jerk with more bicep, but still no dice. He laid the rest of the way down and pressed the opposite palm against his forehead.

“Not today,” he pleaded with the Lord, “Just give me today.”

“Uh, maybe I can explain, now?” Miles tried as gently as he could.

Peter waved the only free hand he had for him to continue and carried on rubbing his forehead into the sidewalk miserably.

“It’s gotta be some kind of tar,” Miles’s friend observed, evidently tickled that he was finally meeting the real Spiderman and witnessing his suffering all in one day. “It just showed up this morning coming out of everyone’s pipes and hoses and stuff.

Peter looked under his elbow, back to the storm drain the two of them had been staring into and sure enough, there was a weird black stain, glossy like tar or resin, dribbling slowly down the curb into the overflowing drain. He looked up and down the street in front of him and saw a veritable river of the stuff seeping down gutters.

He readdressed the storm drain.

There had to be no less than 18 chemical waste hazards going on there.

If that shit got into the sewers, they were going to have some fucking problems. And while Peter didn’t have time for another Lizard or genetically enhanced rat-man, he also didn’t have time for tar investigation. He had a motherfucking date.

He had a motherfucking date, God, please.

“Harley a block up said it burned her cat’s paws,” Miles’s friend continued. “And Kirby said he saw like a huge glob of it, like the size of a person, standing over his mom’s flowers. You can see the marks of it, too. They’ve got toes, right Miles? Like, people toes.”

Miles knew better than to answer, the sweet boy. His friend didn’t take the hint through his excitement. He knelt down low and whispered in what he had to think was his conspiracy voice,

“Is this a job for Spiderman?”

Peter dry sobbed into the ground.  

It took super-strength to get his hand off the ground. This problem solved, he was then left to deal with the new problem of having a hand covered in tar and an enormous hunk of pavement.

Miles’s friend stood in awe while Miles used his own super strength to try to separate the piece stuck to Peter’s hand from the tar, while Peter hooked an arm around a streetlight. Hopefully, to outsiders, it just looked like a kid helping his neighbor with your basic sticky substance and not like two enhanced morons doing their damnedest to not peel all the skin off Peter’s hand.

“This is amazing,” Miles’s friend breathed.

“When did this start?” Peter asked the streetlight. Miles pressed his lips together and his arm shook trying to break the strand of tar between Peter’s palm and the piece of concrete.

“Like, 4 in the morning,” the kid gritted out. The strand snapped and he went flying back. Peter cracked his neck against the pole and swore.

“Woah, what’s going on here?” a warm voice interrupted. Peter blinked up from his pain to see a tall black man in a police uniform staring at him and what was now quite obviously his kid bowled over on the sidewalk.

So this was it. This was how he went.

Arrested and thrown in prison for abusing a cop’s kid.

Yeah, that about figured.

“I have no idea, officer,” he told the man honestly, “I’m just trying to go on the worst date of my life.”

The officer laughed.  

“Not a great attitude to start with,” he said. Miles visibly relaxed and scrambled up from the ground.

“No, sir,” Peter agreed as earnestly as he could, “But I’m working with what I’ve got.” He glanced back over to the tar clogging up the storm drain. “If you don’t mind me saying, sir, you should call Damage Control to get this whole situation,” he gestured to the drains with his nasty-ass, but concrete-less hand, “Sorted out. I’d do it myself, but I’m off-duty and, like I said, my terrible date is nigh.”

“Off-duty?” Miles’s dad asked, “Are you some kind of--?”

Peter stood up and held out his hand. Then, on second thought, he switched them so the non-sticky one was offered, “Peter Parker, Stark Industries Lab Coordinator. Floor specialist in material research and development.”

Science almost always defused social situations. People were either impressed enough that they stopped asking questions or bored enough that they asked you different ones. It worked like a charm with Miles’s dad. He took Peter’s hand and shook it.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Parker,” he said, “And thanks for the heads-up. We’ll go ahead and give them a call right now.”

Miles had adopted an expression of disgust and disbelief at these social niceties. And probably at Peter acting like a normal human being, actually. Now that he thought about it, none of the copycats had ever spent real time with him as Peter Parker.

Was that a thing he should try to fix? Some kind of team building thing?

His phone chirped and brought him back to business. It was from MJ asking ‘what did they say?’

He thanked the officer for not arresting him, gave Miles a warning look, and excused himself to gun it towards Barnes and Rogers’s neighborhood.

Steve did not answer his door this time. Sam Wilson did and invited him inside.

“I heard you’re in the shit,” he said without batting an eye.

“Oh my god, you have no idea, I just shouldn’t leave the house,” Peter sighed. “Do you know when Barnes or Cap will be home?”

“The local asshole is upstairs painting his nails,” Sam said. “It’s best to leave him be for a bit.”

Peter had no clue which super soldier that was supposed to reference, and he was pretty sure ‘which asshole?’ wouldn’t do him any favors, so he decided to leave it as it was.

“Would you happen to know how long that might be? I’ve got this date—”

“So I’ve heard,” Sam said, leaning the small of his back against the counter. “Actually, I’ve been hearing all kinds of things about you lately, you know that? People say you’ve been under a lot of stress, been showing, and I quote, ‘a tendency towards unhealthy coping mechanisms.’ Peter, are you self-harming again?”

What.

No.

Again?

Where had they gotten this ‘again’ business? And why was everyone so fucking invested in his miserable existence? Had he not proven time and time again that he was Double D’s protégé in the city-wide human disaster rankings? Had someone snatched the title out from under him while he wasn’t looking?

“Not self-harming, so maybe ‘people’ need to start minding their own damn business,” he decided to reply sweetly.

Sam was not impressed. He took a mug off the counter and took a judgmental sip of its contents. It felt like being caught cheating by a fourth grade teacher who’d learned over time that the best way to address that shit was through vigilance and disappointment.

“Not self-harming,” Peter reiterated.

“Head-banging is self-harming,” Sam said without missing a beat.

“Not head-banging,” Peter amended just a touch more sharply than intended.

“Why did Stark write it into your lab manual then?” Sam pressed.

Fucking.

Jesus Fuck.

For the love of

He was absolutely burning that fucking thing.

Sam continued to analyze him over the lip of the mug.

“Doing alright there, bud?” he asked, knowing damn well what rage Peter was trying (and failing) to contain.

“Not self-harming, making shitty decisions,” Peter corrected. “And I am working on that and talking to Steve or Barnes is going to greatly help me work on it further.”

“’Cause we got a date with a stalker, yeah?” Barnes offered as he came down the stairs. His nails were pristine and glossy black. There wasn’t even a smudge out of place. It was eerie. Peter was relieved to see him anyways.

“I need your help, Sarge.”

Barnes studied him for a moment, frozen in the act of stealing Sam’s coffee. He gave him one of his terrifying lop-sided grins.

“I am great at helping,” he said. 

“Team Cap is down,” he told Michelle on the phone. She made a noise of contentment and then hummed.

“Okay, so Team Cap is going to get you into position, then, but you still need wires. Where do you get wires?”

Peter knew exactly where to get wires.

“Karen Page,” he told her.

Karen dropped the wires into his hand with pursed lips and cut eyes. Matt and Foggy must have filled her in on the whole mess, and she had opinions she was waiting for permission to release into the world. Peter sighed.

“Go on,” he groaned.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said.

“Yes, you do. Just go ahead.”

Karen sighed and relaxed her lips.

“Peter, Matt and Foggy are always happy to help you, you know that, right? They help me all the time, even though they live across the country. Especially for this kind of thing. A stalker is a major invasion of privacy, you know? They manipulate you on purpose so that you think it’s your fault that they’re doing what they are.”

“I know, Kare,” Peter promised her, “I just got wrapped up in it and got anxious and everything started feeding into each other.”

Her brow furrowed.

“And are you--?”

“I’ve got an appointment with my old therapist in a few weeks. In the meantime, I’ve gotta cope the best I can.”

Karen dropped her head to the side and reached out to squeeze Peter’s shoulder.

“If you need anything, anything at all, you tell me, okay?”

“Alright, yeah, I’ll tell you.”

“If you don’t, I’ll send Frank around to check on you.”

Jesus fucking Christ. Unnecessary threats over here.

“Yes, ma’am. Understood ma’am.”

Peter had two wires, an invested super-spy, a plan, and potential back-up. He was pretty sure he was ready to go. All he had to do now was pick out his clothes.

Because this shit was a date. And he had to act like it was a date.

The thought of dressing pretty for Harry made his skin crawl.

“Do you think an uncured badger skin would do the trick?” he asked Ned over the phone.

“And just where are you gonna find badger at this time of year, Peter Benjamin?” Ned snapped back irritably. “No. You will go for the fucking goose, and you will like it.”

Peter was fresh out of dead goose, so when he woke up the next morning, he threw on a soft, faded red t-shirt and a pair of dark jeans. He skipped the boots and went for the high-top Vans because they were going to Coney Island, alright? He was not losing a boot on some damn swing monstrosity for Harry.

MJ demanded a picture.

MJ told him to change his shirt to the other red one so his tits looked bigger. Ned agreed, the bastard.

Peter didn’t even have tits, he had pecs at best. All his muscle was in his arms and thighs. Steve, though; Steve had pecs big enough to be tits.

Oh god, Steve. That poor bastard. Barnes had said that Peter was not, under any circumstances, to tell Steve what was going on. He said that this was imperative for the success of the mission. He was just going to have to find out everything on the fly and deal with it, apparently. Peter wasn’t sure if that was the point or that was the punishment.

Just before he left, he activated the wires and sent a messages to the bodies who would be monitoring them. He sent up a prayer on Steve’s behalf as he caught the train to meet his maker.

Peter had suboptimal memories associated with Coney Island. Mostly of smoke. And a semi-crashed plane. And of nearly dying at the hands of the Vulture.

Seeing the sign was enough to send the Spidey Sense crawling. It didn’t like that screams were happening for no good reason, either. Each step towards the entrance felt like a step towards a drug ring.

He almost got through the gate when a voice called his name to his right. And there was Harry. All smiles and bright eyes and crow’s feet, wrapped up in a black pea coat.

Who the fuck wears a pea coat to a theme park?

God, fucking rich kids.

Peter had to school his face out of its disgusted squint. He didn’t have to make himself comfortable, he just had to make himself believable. He didn’t smile when Harry approached him, though. He kept his face in neutral.

“I’m so glad you showed,” Harry said brightly. “I thought maybe you’d have second thoughts or something.”

Peter let a silence hang between them long enough to be uncomfortable. He only had one chance to open this shit and he was going to do it right, so help him God.

“I want to make one thing clear,” he said, making sure to keep a steady voice, “I am not here because I fucking like you or because I think you’re fucking cute or because you wooed me, capish? I am here because you are threatening my fucking safety and sanity, and this is the only way for me to get you to fucking stop. So what is going to happen next is that you are going to convince me that I shouldn’t call the cops on your ass. That is what is going to happen.”

Harry’s grin faded a little bit, unlike Peter’s desire to whack him with a baseball bat right on the platform, and he cocked his head.

“What are you talking about?” he said.

“What am I talking about?” Peter repeated. He wasn’t sure he was hearing this right. It was hard to hear anything over the rush of his blood pressure. “What am I talking about? I’m talking about your fucking stalking, you piece of shit, that’s what I’m fucking talking about.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Harry said, “I haven’t been—why the fuck would I stalk you?”

The most intense silence Peter had ever experienced to date fell between them.

Peter’s gut reaction was to roar ‘WHY THE FUCK WOULD I KNOW YOU MONUMENTAL DICK?’ loud enough that the sea gulls would hear it, but 1.) he wasn’t there to embarrass himself. 2.) He had exactly 1/8^th more composure than that and 3.) something was wrong with Harry’s tone.

“Peter,” Harry said, entirely sincerely, “I haven’t been stalking you. I don’t know where you got that idea.”

“Are you trying to fucking gaslight me?” Peter blurted out.

“No, why would I—why do you keep saying this shit? I mean, I get that I was a dick, alright? We already talked about this. I said I was sorry and you said it was fine and I get that you’re not entirely over it but—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Peter ordered. His heart throbbing in his ears. Sergeant Barnes was saying something to him over the comm in his ear, but he couldn’t deal with that right now. He steepled his hands over the bridge of his nose and pushed hard. He took in a deep breath and let it out.

“When was the last time we spoke?” he asked as calmly as his rising panic would allow.

“Spoke? Like, the other—”

“No, you fucking moron, spoke. In person. When?”

Harry was getting freaked out which was fine because Peter was just about entering meltdown territory.

“After we, uh.”

“After we fucked,” Peter finished for him.”

“Well, yeah.”

“And after that?”

“Are you--?”

“Answer the question before I pass out.”

“Peter, maybe you should—”

“Did I fucking stutter?”

Harry’s eyes were wide and his breathing started to ramp up with Peter’s.

“Okay, uh. I, uh. We chatted, and I told you about the soup kitchen and you weren’t uh, receptive. And I asked you on a date and you said no, and I’ll admit, I got pretty rude. And I’m sorry for that, I mean, I wasn’t thinking about it and my buddy told me it was really fucked up and then I was thinking about it and it really was fucked up. So, I tried to apologize, but you didn’t answer. And then you texted me saying you would go on this date. And I said I couldn’t wait to see you and that I was sorry for what I’d said before and you said it was okay, and that you understood.”

Peter wanted to fucking cry.

He was going to fucking cry.

“I’m going to have a panic attack,” he told Harry between gasps.

“What, right here in the station?”

“Do I look like I wanna fucking do this??” Peter demanded of the floor, trying to count in his head.

“Fuck. Fuck,” Harry swore. Peter could see his coat jerking around as he tried to catch his breath. He must have been looking for a quieter place.

Fuck was fucking right.

“Okay, this is fine, Peter. Listen, you’re fine. Whatever this is, it’s just a misunderstanding. You’re gonna be fine. Ah! Here, okay, I’m going to touch you a little bit, sorry, I should have asked. Can I touch you a little bit? Just on your arm.”

God. Fuck. It was just getting worse with every second he spoke. What had Peter done to deserve this?

He barely felt Harry’s hand on his elbow, pulling him out of the station and to a bench just outside the arches. Harry’s hands pressed him down until he was sitting and then he knelt down in front of him. He clenched his hands on his knees and looked up into Peter’s face, brow furrowed, biting his lip a little bit.  

“What do you need?” he asked.

“For you to be my fucking stalker,” Peter ground out.

Harry chewed his lip and his eyes darted around.

“Maybe, uh. What else do you need?” he asked.

“You’re not my fucking stalker,” Peter sobbed.

“I? Can be? If that would help right now?”

There could not be a more wrong answer.

Chapter Text

Steve was a human therapy dog. He came crashing out of the station in a blue t-shirt and a ball cap and bulldozed Harry aside without a second thought. He dropped down to his knees and placed one of his enormous gentle hands onto Peter’s. It put off enough heat to draw Peter’s focus away from his distress and to Steve’s close presence.

The steady rise and fall of his chest, emphasized by what Peter realized were the lines of a tattoo on Steve’s inner arm and the solid blue of this shirt, was enough to help him catch his breath.

Barnes took up the all important role of terrifying the living shit out of Harry while this was happening.

Harry threw his hands up defensively and denied having anything to do with any stalking and, without prompting, held out his phone to Barnes and told him he could check for himself.

That was his first mistake. Barnes accepted the phone but failed to alert Harry that this transaction had actually been a one-way, permanent exchange. He looked Harry up and down and guessed his passcode on the third try and went through every one of his message apps right there in front of him.

Harry didn’t know what to make of any of this because he was not Peter’s fucking stalker, holy hell.

“Pete, I’m gonna say to stop thinking about it for a minute,” Steve murmured. “Just focus on breathing easy. Or think of it this way, you just saved me from being ridiculed by a gang of eight-year-olds on the Cyclone.”

Peter had to huff a laugh.

“What world do you live in where there’s gangs of eight-year-olds?” he coughed wetly.

Steve went a little rigid.

“They are horrible,” he said. Barnes snorted.

“If you stopped going to fucking primary schools, you’d be a lot happier, pal,” he noted, stowing Harry’s phone in one of his bottomless pockets and standing up. Harry stumbled up with him, so as not to be subjected to the brutality of one of his downward stares.

“Can someone please explain to me what’s going on?” he asked desperately.

Barnes gave him the slowest blink in the history of mankind.

“No,” he decided.

“Buck.”

Barnes squinted at Cap. Cap made his jaw jump back. Barnes tossed his head in disgust.

“Ugh, fucking fine. Bitch, you’ve been hacked. Used, darlin’, like a fucking rag. Someone’s hacked your accounts, stolen your number and been sending Pete here hundreds of messages. Sending packages upon packages to Stark’s lab. He’s put ‘em all out on these tables, damn near built a castle outta ‘em, and they’re still coming.”

“Hacked?” Harry repeated.  “No, that can’t be right, I’ve got everything encrypted, it’s—my dad’s had everything encrypted since I was a kid for security reasons. For the labs. That’s not possible.”

“Your passcode is 1457, you’ve got a whorl thumbprint, and your email password is probably a jumble of letters one of my breakers can solve in, ehn, Imma go with 30 seconds,” Barnes said, measuring Harry up, “It’s cute how y’all moneybags think you’re exempt from this kind of shit. Sorry, kid, the shitty news is you’re only human.”

“I don’t—what kinds of shit is this guy saying?” Harry demanded. His face had to be at least three shades paler than it had been in the station. Barnes reached right into Peter’s pocket for his phone and grabbed his hand to get through the lock screen. He pulled up Peter’s personal email and held the phone out to Harry, so that he could see the stream of messages sent from his account. Peter could practically see Harry’s pulse throbbing in his throat when he looked up.

“This—but—but I don’t even have your personal email?” he said quietly to Peter.

No, Peter hadn’t given it to him.

“You sent yours to my work account, didn’t you?” Peter asked, remembering the subject line “Apology.”

“Yeah,” Harry said weakly scrolling through the emails. “Oh my god, Peter, I’m so sorry this is happening. I didn’t know, I swear. I’m so fucking sorry. I don’t know how they got these pictures of me.”

Barnes took the phone and shoved it back into Peter’s hands.

“You know what this means,” he told Steve with a grin.

“No,” Steve countered.

“Sorry was that ‘no’ you don’t know?”

“You know damn well what that no is.”

“Sorry, doll, lotta ‘nos’ going on here, I’m so fucking thick, you gotta excuse me.”

“Buck.” Steve’s warning voice was enough to bring thousands of people to their knees, but not enough to curb the morbid enthusiasm of a super spy.

“You stay here for a second with this lug,” Barnes told Peter cheerfully, “I gotta go make some phone calls.”

“James Buchanan.”

Barnes gave Steve a cutesy finger wave and sprinted out of range before he could get up from the bench. Steve twitched, clawed his hands on his knees, and then took in two steady deep breaths.

“Okay, let’s take this one step at a time. Peter, I’m gonna need you to go home. Mr. Osborn, I’m going to need you to have your security team check for any and all breaches of your media.”

Harry nodded mutely. Steve took pity on him.

“If they don’t come up with anything, that’s okay. Buck will probably send you a full security report when he’s done.”

Harry rubbed his eyes in frustration and nodded again.

“I’m gonna take you home, Pete,” Steve told Peter. He wanted to refuse because riding the subway with Captain America was probably worse than crawling into Mr. Stark’s personal car in high school in terms of discretion. But he was tired. Exhausted. And Cap was nothing if not safe and steady.

Cap didn’t make them ride the subway. He called a cab and threw an arm over Peter’s shoulder in the backseat. The weight was grounding.

Mr. Stark lost his goddamn mind. He didn’t want Peter to be alone in his apartment. He wanted Peter to sleep at the tower. Peter didn’t want to sleep at the tower. He wanted to be surrounded by his things and his smells and not the constant reminder that something was so much more wrong than he’d thought it was.

He told Mr. Stark that if he really wanted to do something, he could send an explanation of what happened to the lawyers.

Given the endless vibrating of his phone, Peter got the feeling that Matt was freaking out on the group chat. He was surprised to find that it wasn’t Matt, but the kids. One of the others must have told them and they were absolutely terrified for him.

The kindness and concern in the messages weighed heavy on his heart.

He wished that it didn’t, but it did. It felt like guilt. Like he’d made them worry before, and now, because he couldn’t make it go away, they were worrying even more.

He just felt so fucking tired.

He took a few days off work and stayed under the covers as long as he was able.

Wade jimmied the lock on his apartment door on the second day. Peter almost cared enough to get up, but upon realizing from the soft commentary on his choice of alcohol that it was Wade, he turned over towards the wall.

He didn’t have much peace before Wade was climbing over him, squirming his giant-ass body into the space between Peter and the wall and accidentally-on-purpose stabbing him in the stomach with all his ammunition bags.

Wade pulled down Peter’s duvet with one finger and, once in view of Peter’s pissed off face, bopped his nose.

“I missed you,” he said.

“Wade.”

“Yes, honey bunches?”

“Get out of my bed.”

Wade wriggled in securely.

“No can do, baby cakes. Got my orders this morning.”

He kept bopping Peter’s fucking nose. Peter flopped over the other way and pulled the duvet over his head.

“What the fuck do you mean, ‘orders?’” Peter groused into his pillow. Wade threw an arm over top of him and hugged him from behind. It pissed Peter off even more.

“Wade.”

“Hmm?”

“Off. Orders. Go.”

Wade didn’t move. Of course, he didn’t.

“WADE.”

“Kiddo, when did you get so grouchy? Remember when you used to come to me for hugs?”

Yes, because back then, Peter had been a little scared of Wade and hugs had helped remind him that Wade was a good guy, a guy on his team, in his corner. Hugs from Wade now were no less affectionate, but definitely abused.

“You used to let go,” Peter snarled.

“It’s only because my love for you has grown, Petey-Pete.”

“I hate you. Tell me your orders.”

“Awwww, you’re just like Red at your age.”

“You didn’t even know Double D at my age. Orders, Wade.”

“Sure I did, our souls call to each other.”

Peter threw off the duvet and leaned over Wade glaring directly down at him.

“Orders,” he demanded, “What are they. If you’re not going to share, get the fuck out.”

Wade was quiet for a moment, and then Peter was crashing down on to his huge fucking chest.

“Orders are to protect Peter Parker,” Wade sang merrily. Rocking the two of them back and forth with increasing jubilee and violence.

What the fuck? Did Wade make these orders? Wade sometimes called things orders that were actually just one of his voices’ thoughts. But on the other hand.

Peter shoved at Wade’s chest until he ceased the horrible rocking.

“Wade, did someone hire you?” he asked, lighter in tone in hopes that Wade would be more receptive to answering the question.

It worked.

“Yep, your good ole buddy ole pal Stark did.”

“Oh, okay,” Peter said, “Hey, you free for a hit?”

Wade cocked his head.

“You’d have to offer a hell of a lot, kiddo.”

“Bed rights,” Peter negotiated.

“Tempting,” Wade said, “Keep going.”

“Double D’s secrets.”

“Oho, now that would be a good deal.”

Peter leaned in.

“Whatever you want.”

Wade laughed, snapped up, and locked Peter into a new, more terrible form of hug.

“Oh, baby boy, you’re trying so hard. Red tells and has always told me more secrets than he’s told you. But you’re so cute when you try, you know that?”

Peter decided he could accept this defeat only with alcohol and a nasty fucking call to Mr. Stark. He threw himself out of bed and stormed into the kitchen, searching for Mr. Stark’s contact number in his phone. He dialed and took several swallows of the whiskey on the counter. He plonked it down and crushed the phone to his ear.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Mr. Stark finally answered.

“You paid my fucking friend to be a fucking guard dog?” Peter snarled.

“He’s the best in the business, Pete.”

“What planet are you from where you think this is okay?”

“Barnes is digging up some concerning information, Peter. I’m just fulfilling my obligation to protect my staff.”

“You’re saying you’d hire a motherfucking mercenary if Orion from Accounting got stalked?”

“If Orion’s stalker was malicious and interfering with his life, then yes. I would.”

Peter slammed the phone down on the counter to take another pull of whiskey. He picked the phone back up once the burn had traveled down into his stomach.

“Mr. Stark?” he said.

“Yes?”

“I quit.”

He hung up and threw the phone onto the couch.

“Wade, your employer is no longer mine. Get fucked,” he called towards the bedroom.

“Not how it works, Spidey, you know that,” Wade called back.

“If you’re texting Double D right now, I’m pulling your toes off. Not breaking them. Off. Clean off,” Peter volleyed.

“Which one you gonna start with?” Wade ask-shouted back.

Peter damn near put a fist through his wall. He whipped around and stormed back into his bedroom where Wade was texting in his bed.

“What the fuck is it gonna take for you to leave me the fuck alone?” he barked.

“What is it gonna take for your dumbass to realize you’re in over your head?” Wade asked smoothly, dangerously. “What is it gonna take for you to understand that there are people who don’t want you to be alone right now because you make stupid fucking decisions for yourself when you’re like this?” He sat up on the bed and put the phone down carefully to the side. “What is it going to take, Peter, for you to learn how to ask for fucking help when you need it?”

“I did,” Peter snarled back. “I literally just did. And look where that shit got me. I don’t need you to come in here and tell me how to live my fucking life, Wade.”

“When the fuck did I ever give a shit about how you live your life?” Wade demanded. “Here’s a hint, kiddo. I don’t. I literally could not care less about who you’re fucking, what you’re snorting, and if, when, and where you ever fucking sleep. That shit’s not my problem. But you know what is? Some psychopathic fuckhead who’s manipulating you. That’s my problem. And you’re gonna let it stop being your fucking problem because, if it hasn’t become painfully obvious to you by now, you can’t fucking handle it. And, because it probably hasn’t occurred to you, or if it has, actually sunk it yet, it’s not actually your fucking fault it’s happening. So sit down, put up, and shut up. I ain’t leaving. Deal with it and start with the right toes.”

Peter’s heart couldn’t process all that. All he knew was that it was hurt and it made him angry.

He left the bedroom for the bathroom.

He grabbed at the sides of the sink and tried not to scream. It took so much effort to hold it back and to keep himself from cracking the ceramic that his hands started shaking. He tore himself away from it and threw off his clothes and cranked the shower’s temperature up as high as it would go. He pressed his fingers as hard as he could against his skull and breathed out the cold air in his lungs as the steam rose.

He felt better post-shower.

Not enough to face Wade again yet, but enough to sit out on his couch and hug his knees, trying to remember who he was disappointing again. He could list them in his head, but he couldn’t list them aloud because Wade would hear.

He settled for counting them. Forwards and backwards. Solving for X every time. There was always a new X. The Y somehow managed to stay the same.

It always fucking stayed the same.

He didn’t hear Wade’s footstep behind him. He just felt the hands on his shoulders.

“Don’t cry, Pete.”

Easy for him to say.

Wade’s Ys never seemed to stay the same.

“Everyone’s whys are always the same, baby boy.”

No, they weren’t.

“Move over, ‘kay, now c’mere.”

Wade’s body was hard, so fucking hard. He never seemed to have a lick of fat on him. It made hugs from him uncomfortable, no matter the sentiment behind them. It might have been the gnarled, tough skin underneath the suit that made it feel that way. His breathing was slow and steady.

“I don’t know what to do anymore, I don’t even know what I am anymore. No matter what I do or who I try to be, it’s always wrong,” Peter told the hands kneading into his shoulders. He turned his head to press his cheek into the slightly softer spot at the top of Wade’s pec.

“Not it’s not, and yes, you do,” Wade said.

“Why is it always easy answers with you?”

“’Cause it don’t always gotta be so complicated, Pete. Who do you think you are?”

Peter sniffed.

“I don’t know.” He said, dropping his eyes.

“Yeah, you do.”

“I’m Spiderman?” he tried.

“You sure?”

Peter swallowed. Then nodded.

“You don’t sound so sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“If you ain’t sure, then just give it up.”

Peter’s heart stopped dead. He jerked back from Wade, searching his face for the cause of that statement.

“Why would you say that?” he creaked. “Oh my god, why would you say that?”

Wade smirked.

“Alright, take it easy. My bad. Spiderman. The fuck do you do then?”

“I save people,” Peter said, mopping his eyes.

“Why?”

“Why? Wade, what kind of--?”

“You were the one rattlin’ on about whys earlier, kiddo. You tell me. Why the fuck do you save people?”

Peter curled his hands into fists. He thought about Uncle Ben bleeding out on the pavement.

“Because they need help.”

“Huh. Funny that. Sounds like what Red says.”

“No, Matt’s got. Matt fights to keep the other guys from hurting people.”

“Why?”

“Because—because they need help.”

Wade looked down at Peter and his closed fists.

“Starting to see a pattern here? Stop making this harder than it is. It’s Spiderman’s job to save people, so fuck, kid. Save yourself. And let someone’s whose job it is to protect people do that.”

“But—”

“Ah. No takes-backsies. Spiderman saves. Deadpool protects.”

“Deadpool kills.”

“And Deadpool protects. See you didn’t pick a two-part answer, that was your bad.”

Peter laughed.

Mr. Stark sent a message asking Peter if he was ready to be reemployed and he sent back a message apologizing.

TS: it’s alright kiddo. Can be a hard space to be in. Good news is that Barnes found your nightmare. The bad news is bad. It’s pretty fucking bad actually. But your lawyer is going fucking nuts.

TS: have I mentioned he’s fucking insane

TS: he’s so happy Peter who is this guy he just started laughing over skype

TS: is the guy with him his boyfriend or his handler? Like, he can’t even stay in the frame

PP: that’s his husband. Hes blind he can’t see the frame. What’s happening

TS: yeah that has become exceedinly clear

TS: he’s apologizing for your sociopath’s behavior that’s the kind of thing spouses do all the time

PP: Mr. Stark what’s happening can you call me?

TS: uh, no? Your lawyer has forbidden all of us from discussing it with you. he says he fucking called it and he’s got exclusive rights to your reaction

Peter stared at the phone and then back up at the tv where the guy in the middle chair had just learned he was the father. Wade cheered for him; he’d been slandering the guy on the left since the second commercial break.

“Wade, they found out who it is,” he said. Wade turned his way in interest. “Matt’s not letting anyone tell me, though. He’s coming to the city to talk in person.”  

“Fucking drama queen,” Wade sneered, then returned to the screen.

Peter watched him shit talk the next gal’s mom and tried desperately not to point out the irony.

Matt was literally bouncing upon invading Peter’s apartment. This, in itself, was highly unusual and bode very poorly for Peter. Matt’s default mode was clinically depressed pasted over with snark. Foggy did his best to curb the enthusiasm by grabbing Matt’s arm and reminding him quietly that this was Peter’s actual, honest to god real life they were talking about. And that worked for maybe fifteen seconds altogether because Wade popped out of the bedroom and, upon seeing Matt, immediately demanded,

“Bitch, whodunnit?”

Which set Matt off into a delighted tizzy all over. Wade bounced with him because he was easily excited.

Foggy shook his head at both of them and introduced Peter to the third person who had come with he and Matt.

“This is Kirsten McDuffie,” Foggy said, gesturing to the woman with warm skin and dark hair tucked into her ponytail. She’s your third attorney and our second partner.”

“Third partner,” Matt corrected. Kirsten gave him a blinding smile, the aura of which somehow translated to danger in Matt’s head. He ducked onto the other side of Foggy to get out of arm’s reach.

“Second,” Foggy re-amended.

“You’re Spiderman,” Kirsten said to Peter, ignoring both of them.

“Nope,” Matt said over Peter’s surprised “what?”

Kirsten laid into Matt with another nasty look. Matt gave her a defiant chin.

“Your hair is so fucking red,” she reminded him. Matt practically hissed at her.

Peter felt intensely uncomfortable. He turned to Foggy, ever the beacon of calm and guidance, for an answer. Foggy looked between his two partners like an eldest child contemplating which younger one deserved to be pushed into a lake. He noticed Peter’s hesitance and gave him a reassuring smile.

“Kirsten was an assistant DA here in the city before she moved out west with us. She filled in for my absence while I was sick.”

Well, that was good news. The DA part. The third partner thing, Peter absolutely hadn’t been expecting. Neither had Wade, apparently. He was fascinated by her and the way she seemed to know and cram her fingers into every one of Matt’s insecurities.

“Can someone, uh, tell me who is stalking me now?” Peter asked Foggy.

“Oh, yes, of course. Sorry we didn’t do it immediately, it’s not the kind of thing we uh,” Foggy trailed off.

“If anyone has record of anything, we’re fucked,” Kirsten said easily. “So communication is going to have to be pretty tight.”

Matt just vibrated.

“Okay?” Peter said, “So?”

“Fucking Osborn,” Matt tittered with glee, “It’s fucking Osborn.”

Peter blinked in surprise.

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s not him. He didn’t even know it was happen—“

Matt grabbed his shoulders with frankly shocking strength and shook him.

“Not that one--no one gives a shit about that one—fuck that one. No. We’re talking the big cheese, here Pete. The fucking kingpin of medicine. I have so much shit on him, this is my life’s fucking mission, Peter. I was born for this. God had put me here for this.”

Peter wasn’t sure whether he was understanding or if his brain was just trying to protect him by blocking out huge swaths of Matt’s speech. He referred to Fogs and McDuffie. McDuffie was biting her lip, trying not to laugh. Foggy looked more tired with every second.

“He means Norman,” Foggy explained.

“He’s fucking obsessed with you, Peter,” Matt catapulted at him before Foggy even finished the statement. “I mean, obsessed. And I don’t know why. Yet. I don’t know why yet. I will find out and once I do, I am going to add it to the shit binder. Where is the shit binder? This child deserves to see our hard work and dedication.” He released Peter to go invade Foggy’s backpack without asking.

Peter watched him go as the realization of how fucked he actually was started to sink in.

“I think I’m gonna sit down,” he said quietly. Foggy pushed past the others and followed him to the couch. He took a calm seat with Peter and let him stare at his knees for a bit.

“This is a dream,” Peter decided. Foggy’s eyebrow bent in sympathy.

“I wish it was, Pete,” he said.

“Why me? What have I done to deserve this? I don’t even know this guy. He visited my lab once and I insulted him.”

Foggy reached across the space between them and put his hand on Peter’s wrist.

“You haven’t done anything wrong, Pete. This has nothing to do with you. Osborn’s a pretty shady guy once you start digging.”

Kirsten came around the couch and sat with her legs crossed on the ground next to Foggy.

“He puts on a big front to stakeholders,” she explained, “But the FDA and the State have more than a few cases against him personally and the company overall. You aren’t the first person he’s subjected to this kind of behavior. The last, unfortunately for him, was the District Attorney herself.”

Holy shit.

“What the fuck.”

“I know,” Kirsten said. “The power balance there was more equal, though. She threatened his relationships with his stakeholders and he backed off. You, unfortunately, don’t have that kind of leverage. I mean, if Stark jumped in, that would be one thing, but besides that being a virtual declaration of war in the tech industry, it might hint that you are, well, who you are.”

Peter could only nod. People knew Spiderman was Iron Man’s mentee. When it had first come out, it had been pretty explosive, with some people thinking that Iron Man himself had chosen someone to be Spiderman. Some people thinking that Spiderman was some kind of heir to Stark Industries. Tony’s long-lost child. There had been hella rumors.

If Tony rushed into expensive, extensive litigation on behalf of a mid-ranking employee, people would start noticing shit that didn’t need to be noticed.

“I’m just. Why?” he asked the room.

“I will tell you,” Matt said leaning over Fogs with his hands on the back of the couch, “After step 1.”

“Matt has a theory,” Foggy explained.

“Matt has a hypothesis,” Kirsten amended. “With zero evidence to back it up, but which he is fully prepared to argue anyways because he is an idiot.”

 “Matt has a fact because I know I am right and I can prove it,” Matt snipped at both of them.

“Okay, so prove it,” Kirsten snapped back. Matt Daredevil-snarled at her just a little bit and groped at Foggy’s hand.

“Why did we partner with her? She’s mean and she’s rude,” he whispered.

“Matthew, you partnered with her first,” Foggy stage whispered back. Matt was horrified at the memory.

He covered this up by dropping a two inch binder full of paperwork into Peter’s lap. Its corners stabbed him in the thigh. Matt tapped a finger on it furiously.

“This is your case,” he told Peter. “And it is a very good case, but it has a lot going on and needs a string to tie it together, so we’re gonna need your help.”

It certainly looked like it had a lot going on. Just from the side, it appeared to contain both braille and ink copies of things along with what looked like newspaper clippings and tax documents. It probably had a table of contents. Peter could imagine Matt giggling away manically in the wee hours of the morning typing one up for it, shifting commas around so that it was perfect.

“My help?” Peter repeated, blinking himself back into focus, “Oh. Sure, of course. What do you need?”

Matt hopped over the couch, right into Foggy’s lap so that he could stare Peter as closely in the eye as he could. Foggy, bless him, just sighed and wrapped his hands around Matt’s waist in resignation.

“Uh,” Peter stammered, unused to being the object of Matt’s absurdly intense lawyer-focus.

“Give me a motive,” Matt told him.

Chapter Text

Matt and Wade had always had some kind of soul connection when it came to hounding people, but Peter had never been on the opposite end of that. Foggy and Kirsten did their damnedest to reel Matt in, but he wasn’t coming quietly, or even at all if Peter was being honest.

The man was a monster.

He shoved Peter’s feet up onto the couch and physically deposited McDuffie onto it between Peter and Foggy before opening the shit binder and beginning to haphazardly cover Peter’s living room in a time-line of events over the last twenty-five years in document form.

He kind of mumbled as he went and kept coming back to Fogs and McDuffie for hyper-specific questions like ‘audit of 2004?’ which they seemed to know the answers to. He dumped papers into Foggy McDuffie’s laps to scan through and instruct him where to put them. He started dumping shit in Peter’s lap. It started with a series of news articles, which turned into some missing persons reports, which bloomed into a series of print outs with marker-circles with question marks next to them in addition to what had to be hundreds of pictures of Peter.

Peter picked one up of him in the lab, looking frazzled and going off on Harry. He couldn’t remember there being anyone with a camera or a phone out in that group.

Matt had just finished his life-sized diorama of Frosty the Snowman’s house when he whipped back to Peter and gestured at all of it, demanding, “Motive.”

Peter took in all the paperwork.

“Can I have more context?” he asked.

“If you give me motive,” Matt bargained.

“Matthew,” Foggy warned. Matt grimaced at him, but reined it in.

“Norman Osborn isn’t just interested in you,” he explained, “He’s been tracking your whole fucking family. He’s fixated on you specifically because he’s super fixated on your dad, but he’s dead. Or gone. Actually, we don’t know anything here for sure. Is your dad dead or gone?”

Peter blinked.

“My dad?” he clarified.

“Yes,” Matt said impatiently, “Biologist Richard Parker. Very science-y. Wrote many papers in a language neither of my two degrees has prepared me for, but which church, of all things, has. So much Latin. I kept feeling like someone was gonna tell me off for not wearing my tie right.”

“Oh my god, Red, you went to Catholic school,” Wade chirped from behind the couch, the only remaining safe place to lay on the floor.

“Two Catholic schools,” Matt corrected. “Three if you include Sunday School.” He thought for a second. “Okay, so maybe four, but I was only at that other one for a week, so it doesn’t count.”

“Oh my god, what did you do?” Wade said, on the alert for instances of Matt’s misbehavior as per usual. Matt stared his way contemplatively.

“No comment,” he said. Wade twisted himself up in delight.

“My dad is MIA, presumed dead,” Peter interrupted before the two of them got too far off track. “My mom, too. I don’t remember them at all; I don’t do much bio, I just studied it to be able make more shit out of organic materials. Compostable, degradable, that kind of thing. You need to know biology.”

There was a lull in the room.

“Do you know what your dad did?” Foggy asked, “What he studied?”

Peter rubbed a palm against his forehead and tried to remember. Ben had tried to explain and then May had said, ‘no, no, I think it was’ and tried to explain, but both of them eventually got frustrated and agreed that it was biology, definitively biology.

“I think it had to do with genetics,” he said, “I honestly don’t know, the last time I heard about it, I was like 12 and didn’t really care, Ben was just sad and I wanted to cheer him up and he and my dad were kind of tight. He liked talking about him.”

Foggy had emotions about this anecdote and pressed his hand on his heart. McDuffie was doing a damn fine job pretending she had emotions about it. Matt was totally uninterested.

“Yes, but do you know what he studied in particular? Here. I have science, you are science, make sense out of this,” he collected a portion of snow from the floor and shoved it at Peter’s shoulders.

Peter took the papers and flipped through them. They were articles from the 1990s, written by his dad with his mom and Dr. Curt Connors as additional authors. Huh. No one had ever mentioned that his mom had been a publishing scientist too. That was sexist.

The articles were the kind written by researchers for the 20 academics in that field. They were dense as fuck. Peter couldn’t recognize any of the formulas they were prattling on about, although he did pick up enough to recognize that it was a discussion around genetic mutations and a series of possible ways to induce one. This was followed by a huge debate on the ethics of doing so and the unpredictability of what kind of effects the mutation would have.

“They were trying to figure out how to induce a genetic mutation in animals,” Peter explained. “They’re saying that the genes are all funny and hard to access and that someone needs to develop a formula to locate the right ones to target and to figure out how much mutation is sufficient to induce the desired effect.”

Matt stood in front of with palms out, waving at Peter. Peter handed back the files. Matt took them, then shook his head and shoved them back into Peter’s chest with double the force.

“No, no those. I mean you, Peter. You are the mutation.”

Peter felt his eyebrows flatten.

“I’m the mutation,” he repeated.

“Yes, yes. You’re the end goal of the mutation they’re looking for. Do you not see this?”

“Matt, they’re trying to make this happen in mice.”

“Peter, they’re fucking dead and Connors moved onto fucking spiders, listen to me. I’m not crazy. It’s all a circle. Your parents are connected to Connors. They mysteriously disappear after publishing some shit about a formula. Connors goes on to be hired by Oscorp to do research on spiders. Connors goes off the wall and comes up with a formula which turns him into a huge lizard man.” Peter filed Matt’s frantic gesticulation for ‘huge lizard man’ away for a rainy day. “Spiderman stops him. He gets a fucking ridiculous litigation team, gets out of jail early, goes back to Oscorp, and is given his old job back without so much as a by your leave.”

Peter nodded along because he didn’t want to make Matt feel bad even though he was maybe a little bit on the wrong side of the street with this one.

“Matt,” he said slowly, “I know why Connors hates me in particular. We had a lengthy discussion about it in the sewers after he broke my arm. And like, don’t get me wrong, I kind of hate him, but he’s a brilliant biologist. I mean, seriously brilliant. The reason Oscorp wants him back is because he’s literally the best in his field and he produces a lot of work with tangible, useful results for things like skin grafts and stem cells. There is a fuckload of money in that right now. Oscorp, as a business, would be stupid not to take him back in any capacity they could.”

“It’s not so much about Connors, Peter,” Foggy interrupted. He held his hands out for Matt and pulled him in to sit between him and McDuffie by his waist when he didn’t come of his own volition. Matt bounced his knee irritably and glared at Kirsten’s knee.

“Norman Osborn is obsessed with your research and with Dr. Connors’s,” Foggy explained, “He’s been following you since you started at Cornell. Sergeant Barnes and the Widow did something I don’t want to think about and produced a report of his personal intranet bookmarks for the last five years. You published two articles with your professor, right? Both of them are flagged with high importance in the bookmarks, which is weird because your research, like you said, is in a completely different field. Given that Connors is Norman’s lab director, they must have talked about the research that led him to where he is currently, so Norman could have searched you to see if you were continuing your dad’s work, which would, evidently, be useful to his company.”

McDuffie jumped in, taking up the baton for Team Law School.

“But when he searched your name,” she said, “All he must have gotten were papers about steel alloys, which could not have been what he was looking for. Any other person would have just dropped it. But he didn’t. He flagged them as high importance and then he rehired Connors and put him on a new project which isn’t listed on their website. Anywhere. Which is weird because everything else they do is.”

“Lizard research,” Matt hissed, repeating what was rapidly becoming Peter’s new favorite gesture.

“Norman has to have sanctioned this as CEO,” McDuffie continued as though Matt wasn’t even there, “We’re talking a whole separate project here. He’s got to be invested in this for some reason. And while whatever he’s working on is important, it’s not really our problem; our problem is what is going on here that concerns you, Peter. And that is that Norman thinks that you know something about your dad’s research and he either wants it or wants to get rid of it.

“And, interestingly enough, Norman is obsessed with Spiderman,” Foggy said. “Barnes and the Widow said that they pulled a log of his internet history the other day and he checks The Bugle page at least twice a day. Barnes cornered Harry and brought him in for a chat and he says his dad seems really stressed out when he can’t find any news on Spiderman at any given time. Last year when you took a semester off, Harry said he was and I quote ‘emotionally volatile,’ even though the company was doing fairly well at that point. He also, and I quote again, ‘despises’ the copycats.”

“He hates them, well, us, enough he sat on in on a national police Q & A about vigilante activity,” Matt noted. “He registered for membership a month in advance.”

“So the issue at hand is that Norman seems to have made a connection between your parents’ research and Spiderman, which means he could possibly have made the connection between you and Spiderman. But we can’t be sure,” Foggy continued, “What also isn’t so clear is why he’s choosing to stalk you instead of, and don’t take this the wrong way, just murdering you. This guy has the means. And if he’s concerned that you’re Spiderman or even if you just have information he doesn’t want getting out, he could just send someone after you to put down the problem. Hence why Stark’s got Wade here for you.”

“What we’ve got to do,” Matt jumped back in, “Is get him out of a place where he can do that. We’ve got plenty of shit to raise, like, five cases of fraud and malpractice in the labs against him, but that’s not going to get to the guy personally. We need to draw a clear connection between Norman and you, but that’s hard because he’s been going through Harry, or rather, a virtual Harry.”

“Which is beyond fucked up,” McDuffie noted.

“What we need is a motive,” Matt explained, “A really simple, clear motive between you and Norman, that a jury could understand and come back to. We can knock the stalking up to felony status if the former DA agrees to testify to repeated behavior, but there’s no guarantee of her doing that because she has the empathetic ability of a rock. So we’re gonna need an alternative if she doesn’t agree to testify.”

“Which is why we’ve actually got to spin back around to Matt’s original plan, Pete,” Foggy said with kind, sympathetic eyes, “And figure out if Norman is trying to cause you bodily harm. If he is, then we can frame this as an if A and B, then C function. If Norman thinks you are carrying on some version of your dad’s research and that research poses a threat to his company’s success, then this escalating violent behavior is stalking and possibly conspiracy to commit assault. That is a story a jury can follow.”

“And that keeps Spiderman out of the picture,” McDuffie added.

It made sense.

Really, it did.

And Peter appreciated Foggy putting it into terms his brain understood.

But there was still something niggling at the back of his neck. He flipped through the papers and kneaded at the place at his nape where the Spidey Sense had coiled.

“But what if he’s not?” he asked, still flicking through the papers in his hands. “What if he’s just trying to scare me or, I dunno, what if he claims he’s just super into me or something?”

“Not an option, he’s definitely trying to kill you,” Matt decided.

Peter gave him a skeptical look.

“Then why I am still here? If he’s got the guns you think he does, why am I not dead yet?”

All three lawyers turned in Wade’s direction at the same time. He made an interested noise behind the couch, apparently just deciding to tune back into the conversation.

Peter sighed and dropped his head forward onto his knees.

“So I’m gonna have bust another arm for this shit after all?” he asked.

There was a thoughtful silence.

“I mean, we could go for a leg?” Matt suggested.

“Or,” McDuffie said to cover for his asshole-ness, “Norman could hire a hitman to get information out of Peter. If said hitman is willing to testify against Norman and bring forward an invoice or proof of payment, that might be enough to raise the issue of conspiracy of aggravated assault or murder. And that for sure would put Norman out of commission for a while.”

There was another thoughtful pause.

“I mean, yes,” Foggy said reluctantly, “And besides that being a fucked up thing that we, as lawyers and defenders of the law, could not possibly condone, it would depend on this hypothetical interested party knowing a hitman, preferably one not stupid enough to implicate them all on the stand.”

“Anyone know any friendly hitmen?” McDuffie asked the room, but really Wade.

“That depends,” Wade said amiably, finally sitting up behind the couch, “I got more scumbag colleagues than I got fingers and toes, but if you want someone who ain’t a compulsive liar, you’re probably gonna wanna go up bit higher in the ranks.”

He paused, rubbing a thumb against his chin.

“Dom might do it, actually, if you asked real nicely, I guess. But you’d have to uh, maybe have a conversation with her about fancy court etiquette. She’s been binge-watching Law and Order again and has got a certain idea in her head of what court is like.”

Peter didn’t know Domino well enough to know if that meant her idea of court was a barfight or seduce-the-judge-and-jury kind of thing.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.

And anyways, he was just about resigned to getting another minor to moderate injury for the sake of putting an end to this shit. It was getting complicated. He didn’t know many hitmen. He didn’t need to, killing wasn’t his thing. He had Wade and he had the Punisher in the absolute worst case scenario. He didn’t really need anyone else in his line of business.

He appreciated the others’ efforts though. They were really trying hard to find the path of least resistance for him. The furrow in Foggy’s brow and the knuckles he had pressed against his lips said he was rummaging through his mental files of morally gray people he’d represented over the years, whereas Matt’s pout and twitching eyes said he was trying to decide if he could keep up the Daredevil gravel on the stand for an entire hour.

Because Matt was actually the worst attorney in the entire fucking city.

Foggy sighed just as Matt lit up and squirmed around in his grip to slap a hand on each side of his face.

“I just had the worst fucking idea ever,” he said breathlessly.

“Oh perfect,” Fogs said without missing a beat.

Matt, it turned out, remained full of secrets. A man sized vessel of unshared knowledge. Given that the guy could not lie to save his life, it was almost insulting how little Peter and Wade knew about him.

Like the fact that he’d had a fucking twin running around this whole goddamn time.

Her name was Elektra, she was a career assassin, and she turned out to be just as fucking weird as her blood brother.

Matt located Elektra in some cheap-ass hotel room on the Upper East Side with stunning efficiency and introduced the tiny package of rage and violence that she was to Wade and Peter and McDuffie, while Foggy asked her loudly just how many graves she’d clawed her way out of by that point.

Peter got the feeling that there was some history there which he didn’t want to touch with a ten foot pole.

Matt had a different way of talking to Elektra. It was a curious mix of telekinesis and exasperation. The conversation in which Elektra agreed to trick Norman Osborn into hiring her to do in Peter Parker took place almost entirely in pauses.

Matt said, “Girl, I got a job for you.” And Elektra said, “Oh?”

Matt said, “Involves Oscorp.” And Elektra smiled like a shark and said, “Say more.”

And Matt. Fucking. Didn’t.

Instead he said, “Need it done clean. Would do it myself but can’t be attorney and witness.”

And Elektra adjusted her tin foil hat to get on his frequency and said, “Alright, when do you need it by?”

Matt said “Yesterday,” and Elektra said, “Consider it done; how long are you back in the city?”

And that was the negotiations, done and over with. Foggy’s face was twitching with how hard he was trying to tamp down his hate by the end of it. So much so that even Wade started looking between Matt and his nightmare sibling and Fogs, trying to figure out who to escort from the premises first.

Elektra reached out and took both of Matt’s hands. She swung them back and forth like she and Matt were two teenagers on a date.

“This is going to be so much fun,” she sang.

“Bitch, that’s my husband,” Foggy finally snapped.

“Bitch, get fucked, he was mine first,” Elektra snapped right back.

Matt cleared his throat and continued to reveal abso-fucking-lutely nothing and Elektra whipped her face back to him in betrayal.

“Matthew,” she gasped, “You didn’t even invite me to your wedding?”

And somehow, that was their assassin acquired.

Team Law School abandoned Peter and Wade to their own devices and told Peter to do exactly nothing.

“If you so much as lift a fucking finger out of the ordinary, I will come strangle you for ruining my fucking case,” Matt threatened as Foggy and McDuffie tried to drag him out of Peter’s kitchen. They were off to visit Karen for a little bit and then touch base with Elektra, none of which Peter was allowed to know about so that he would be the perfect, innocent victim on the eventual stand.

Matt did not let him keep the shit binder or read anything else from it.

Peter realized, watching Wade burn chicken nuggets in his oven that this had been a gesture of kindness. None of the three of them wanted him obsessing. They wanted to confine his anxiety to the single near-death experience he might soon experience.

“Wade, how do you become an assassin?” he asked.

Wade hummed thoughtfully.

“Well, mostly you don’t get caught,” he explained without explaining anything at all.

Matt said not to do anything out of the ordinary but failed to specify whose definition of ‘ordinary’ they were going off of here. Technically, Peter’s ordinary was falling off skyscrapers and breaking up knife fights. So after two hours of shit tv, Peter told Wade they were going out.

Spiderman saves people.

Peter was just out here doing his job.

Peter went to his other job the next morning with only one cracked rib and explained to exactly no one why the fuck a giant lumbering red and black Babadook was following him around, getting underfoot like the world’s shittiest puppy.

He could feel everyone’s eyes on him and so chose to re-enable his TA power of pretending that everything was just fucking fine until something caught fire.

Wade was no fire. Wade was intern-repellant. If Peter had known how well Wade would make his staff behave, he would have brought him to work months ago.

Wade was unbelievably fascinated by the lab’s bio-degradable polymer project. He could not get it through his head that not all polymers were plastic. He could not understand that the ability to burn was a desirable outcome, but not the main purpose of this material. He figured out within ten minutes how to make the material twice as flammable and three times more useful in the manufacture of explosive devices and did not care that this revelation sat almost entirely opposite the current company line.

The other Lab Coordinators were horrified.

The interns were horrified.

Peter’s research assistants tried to extract a promise from Peter to bring Wade in for the rest of the week because Peter’s research assistants were the same fuckheads who kept bringing in unnecessary fire extinguishers.

“Peter, why is Wilson in Lab 38?” Mr. Stark asked on his daily rounds of being a busy-body.

“He’s my bodyguard,” Peter said. He didn’t mention that his personal email was once again blowing the fuck up with angry messages from “Harry” for having called off their date. He flicked through to the next set of supply orders and screened them for rogue requests for plexiglass. And fire extinguishers. And fucking post-it notes, they had post-it notes in every color of the rainbow. He was up to his eyes in post-it notes.

Mr. Stark looked out into the lab proper. Daniels and Lovett were out there doing a great job of wearing goggles and ear muffs for the first time in their lives. Peter was pairing them with Navil and Alverez for the next two million years, he’d decided.

“And yet there is no one currently guarding your body,” Mr. Stark observed. Peter looked up at him over his glasses.

“Well, thank god you’re here then, sir.”

Mr. Stark’s mouth twitched like he wanted to laugh, but he was currently in Boss-Safety Mode and wasn’t allowed to.

“Your lawyer hates me,” he noted.

“My lawyer hates me, too,” Peter informed him and returned to his supply orders.

“I didn’t realize you had three.”

“Me neither.”

Mr. Stark watched Alverez slam a steel bucket down on top of the oil their quad had just accidentally ignited like a champ.

“Are they sorting shit out?” he asked.

“My lawyers?” Peter clarified. “Yeah, Murdock is a man on a mission right now. I have been informed that my job is to sit tight and not die.”

Mr. Stark chuckled.

“I’m really sorry this is happening to you, Peter,” he said. “Is there anything I can do to help you out here, bud?”

Peter thought about it. The elevator pinged and Wade came out, led by Bautista, the tiniest of the floor’s interns. She had evidently taken one look at Wade and measured his worth by the number of paper towel rolls he could carry. His arms were stuffed full of them. Bautista led him triumphantly towards the break room.

Peter couldn’t help but smile a little.

The mundanity of the lab and the ache in his side and the memory of Matt’s fucking lizard mime in his living room made him feel more stable than he had all week.

Things were fine.

They weren’t his fault.

They were going to be okay.

“Nah, I’m actually doing a lot better,” he told Tony.

Chapter Text

Peter was trying to make sense of Little Spidey’s physics textbook with her when he got the call. He took the measuring cup he’d been using to demonstrate their current topic with him when he got up so Wade wouldn’t have a container to pour the energy drink he’d found in Peter’s sock drawer into.

Wade pouted at him as he went, but the second he was distracted, Little Spidey snatched the can and took a huge gulp, helpfully giving him new problems to focus on.

Harry was calling.

Peter held the phone and thought of Matt’s threat in his kitchen. If he was understanding the situation correctly, he was supposed to be waiting for an assassination attempt, not a phone call. And he was understanding the situation perfectly fine. He’d become invested in seeing if Matt’s helltwin had a matching suit of armor. He might have had money on it with Wade. It might have devolved into a situation involving his pride.

“Spidey?” Little Spidey called behind him, still happily emptying the Monster to Wade’s despair. Peter realized he’d been staring at his phone for too long. He flipped it over and let it carry on ringing.

He trusted Matt and the others. He needed to trust that they knew what was best here. He wasn’t going to fuck things up this time.

Harry called back enough for the phone to vibrate right off the desk and into the coveted measuring cup, which had since collected a third of a can of Monster and a fistful of marbles Peter had nabbed from one of his plants.

Wade and Little Spidey were apologetic and called for a ceasefire in their squabbling.

Peter chose to interpret this as a gift from the cosmos, however.

Mr. Stark did not see this as a gift from the cosmos.

“This is the second in one month, kid,” he grumbled, then as an afterthought added, “You know the new Starkphones are waterproof?”

Peter set his brand-new, warranty-acquired phone on the edge of his desk and stared at Mr. Stark over the tops of his glasses.

“They are also out of my price range,” he pointed out.

“I could just give you one,” Mr. Stark countered.

“I’ll flush it if you do.”

“Why are you like this?”

Peter swiveled back to his desktop with pursed lips and typed as loudly and obnoxiously as he could without answering. Mr. Stark sat in his chair for another few seconds before deciding he wasn’t going to get an answer he hadn’t already heard. He sighed and levered his old bones up.

“Alright, comrade, have it your way.”

Peter watched him rub at his back in vindication as he left.

“Matt, listen, I can’t keep bringing Wade with me everywhere I go,” Peter groused on the walk home from the train station, “He’s attracting attention and endearing himself to my neighbors. People’ll be knocking on my door asking for fucking sugar next. When is your gal gonna come try to kill me already?”

“These things take time, Mr. Parker,” Matt snipped back. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

“Ugh.”

Peter unlocked the door and threw his keys in the bowl. He looked over his shoulder to watch Wade bounce off to go rummage through his drawers for any remaining hidden Monsters. Joke was on him, Peter had hidden the Rockstars in the linen closet while he’d been in the shower.

“Harry’s been calling me,” he noted. “The real guy.”

“Obsessively?”

“Define obsessive.”

“More than three times.”

“Then, yes, obsessively. Six or seven yesterday. Twice today. Get the feeling he has something he wants me to know about.”

“Hold onto that for sec,” Matt directed. Peter heard him put the phone down to go consult his fellow legal professionals.

Peter liked to imagine the three of them as a gang of finches with all their heads bent together, tittering and blustering at each other before hunkering back into their elaborate grooming procedures. It was a much nicer image than the more accurate one, which was a emotionally volatile, blind pitbull being sat on by two slightly less volatile ducks. Why ducks? Because Wade had said so and the image would never leave Peter’s mind ever now that he’d put it there.

Speaking of Wade. He knew that rattle.

“Dude, that is my underwear, leave the fuck off,” Peter barked at his bedroom door. He heard the drawer close sheepishly. That’s what he fucking thought.

“Tell him if he has something to say, he’s going to need to talk to your legal counsel first,” Matt said in his ear. “But text it to him so we have a written record.”

“Alright, will do. Also, top three Wade repellants?”

“Sandalwood, babies, artificial watermelon.”

“Wade you fucking heathen,” Peter shouted back at the door. “What kind of person hates watermelon?” then to the phone, “Thanks, Double D, I’ll keep you in the loop. Give me a heads up when Rome is built.”

Matt laughed and said bye.

Harry responded to Peter’s text with five question marks, but all Peter could tell him was “That’s what they fucking said, man. I dunno what else to tell you.”

Harry didn’t see why they couldn’t have the conversation over text until Peter reminded him that that shit was exactly what had gotten him where he was to begin with, and then he relented and asked for Peter’s lawyer’s number.

An hour later, at the grocery store Peter got another text.

HO: Your lawyer is unhinged and I’m only allowed to talk to you through text.

HO: are you bringing a case against my dad???

Peter repressed the juvenile glee he experienced upon seeing that ‘HO’ was texting him. He was a grown-ass man. It wasn’t Harry’s fault his parents hadn’t had any foresight or concern for his wellbeing.

Wade interrupted this awe-inspiring display of restraint by thrusting a bottle of green liquid dish soap in front of his phone screen with undue vehemence and shaking it until Peter relented and put it in his basket. And then he was off again. A man on a mission for toilet paper. Peter watched him go with great suspicion.

For a guy who spent so little time at home, Wade sure had opinions on domestic furnishing.

PP: did my lawyers say that?

HO: I think your lawyer called me a complicit piece of shit

HO: not in those words but like, he’s got some serious eyebrows

HO: and then your other lawyer said that they had cause to believe that someone closely associated with me is trying to do you harm??

HO: which I get, but like, the only person associated with me who knows the encryption codes for our stuff is my dad.

HO: hence the question

Peter hung his basket on his forearm to text back.

PP: if that’s what my lawyers said then we’re gonna go with that

The next text came on the train while Wade was gathering plenty of attention as per usual, but, for this ride, he found himself at the mercy of a group of Girl Scouts who were fascinated with him.

They totally kept calling him Spiderman.

Wade totally did not correct them, but the Peter didn’t have to say anything because a trio of teenage boys were defending his honor on his behalf.

“Spiderman’s got red and blue,” one of the boys said in the tone which only adolescents and persons named Matthew Murdock and Jessica Jones could achieve, the latter two only while severely inebriated. “Red and blue.”

“But you got the eyes,” the girls told Wade, making eyes over their own with their hands to demonstrate.

Wade made his suit blink with him and the girls went wild.

“See??” they shrieked at the boys, “He’s Spiderman, only Spiderman can do that.”

“He’s got swords,” one of the other boys pointed out desperately. Peter admired him for his exasperation. Keep practicing and one day, you too, child, could end up a Lab Manager.

“Spiderman’s got a sword,” the girls defended, which was news to Peter.

“Spiderman doesn’t have a sword. He’s got web,” the last boy chimed in.

“You can make web-swords,” the girls argued.

Could you?

Mental note – check hardening capacity and attempt to sharpen.

Their stop arrived in time for Wade to execute a mute, careful slink out the door before everyone else; he fucking gunned it to the exit before anyone could catch him. Peter looked back at the car to see that he’d somehow managed to stay just out of the kids’ line of sight when he’d done this and all seven were up in arms about how Spiderman had left the car and just fucking vanished on the platform.

He snorted and smirked down at his phone screen.

HO: don’t take this the wrong way but what the fuck would my dad want with you

PP: my secrets

HO: your what

PP: you heard me asshole get fucked if you don’t wanna believe

Miles’s little buddy from a few days ago was losing his shit in Peter’s apartment while Miles tried to get him to focus and, secondhand embarrassment aside, Peter was having a great fucking time.

It was like watching a shorter version of himself chase after a shorter version of Ned. More importantly, Miles was painfully embarrassed at his pal’s fanboying, which was beautiful. He was so easy to tease.

“We call him Bitsy,” Wade instigated to Miles’s horror. The friend (Ganke, he’d introduced himself as Ganke) clapped his hands over his mouth in joy and turned to Miles with wide, reverent eyes.

“Bitsy,” he whispered.

Miles looked moments away from slapping him. And Wade. And possibly Peter for grinning behind his knuckles.

“We do not,” he growled, “And we are here because of the lizard, Ganke. The lizard, focus.”

“Right. Lizard,” Ganke repeated, clearing his throat. “There’s a huge lizard in Miles’s storm drain, like super huge. Possibly person sized. It’s eating the tar.”

Wade made a noise of interest.

“Red is gonna lose his shit,” he observed.

Peter considered it.

“When you say ‘person sized,’ are we talking like, hobbit or Gandalf?” he clarified.

“Oh, definitely Gandalf,” Ganke answered. Miles sunk his head into his hands and shook it slowly at everything happening around him.

“Red is gonna lose his shit,” Wade repeated in delight.

“Who’s Red?”

“Translucent and scaly or just scaly?”

“Just scaly with big claws, like a huge iguana,” Ganke chirruped alongside a perfect claw mime.

Peter weighed this in his head. Didn’t sound like a Connors deal. Sounded like someone was experimenting on their pet and fucked up big time. He referred to Wade.

“I mean, it would probably cheer him up a little bit,” he conceded. Wade squeaked in pleasure.

“Say no more,” he said.

“I DIDN’T BRING THE SUIT,” Matt roared, shaking the shit out of Peter and contributing nothing but excitement to the room.

“You don’t need the suit because you’re not going anywhere,” Foggy reminded him firmly, tapping his stack of papers on Karen’s floor irritably and placing them neatly on top of the enormous pile of documents in the middle of their camp site. Karen was 100% poised to steal some from the couch, just waiting for the remaining two lawyers to lose focus.

Matt was heartbroken.

“Fifteen minutes,” he pleaded.

“No,” Foggy snapped. McDuffie smashed her fan of papers to her face to hide her schadenfreude.

“Ten?”

“Did I fucking stutter?”

Matt groaned and sunk miserably back onto the floor with the other two. He curled up next to Karen for sympathy pets.

“I have done only what you’ve said this whole time, Fogs.”

“Not fighting a security guard is a low bar, pal.”

“He deserved it.” Matt leaned into Karen’s humming and carried on scowling. “All I’ve ever wanted is to fight a lizard man.”

“And all I’ve ever wanted is for you not to do that.”

“Untrue. You can’t just make up shit you’ve never wanted me to do arbitrarily.”

Karen crowed in agreement and did not bend under Foggy’s menacing eyebrow.

“I ain’t scared of you, Franklin Philip,” she threatened. Foggy reached over and pushed the pile of papers farther away from her.

“And the same to you, Miss Page,” he said. “Poor behavior means no story.”

She squawked and shoved Matt away from her.

Peter was starting to see just how this was about to go down. As soon as Team Law School got the charges filed, Karen was going to paste that shit all over her paper. Possibly all over the building. She was practically thrumming with anticipation.

“Well, alright, just thought we’d ask,” he said. “Any word on Rome?”

Matt perked up just as Foggy melted into his shoulders in disgust.

“Got a date. We’ll be back in SF until it happens, but then we’ll be back.”

“With murder charges,” McDuffie added, looking bemusedly down at all the paperwork they were evidently pre-emptively filling out. Probably to save themselves the headache later.

“Am I allowed to know said date?” Peter prompted. The following silence told him everything he needed to know. He sighed. “Does this mean Wade’s gotta follow me around for another two weeks or something?”

“No,” Matt announced. “Actually, Wade needs to take some bait. Wade,” he said, tipping his face up towards the man himself, “I’m gonna need you to take some bait. And possibly beat the shit out of my ex.”

Wade was all ears.

“Is it good bait?” he asked.

Matt shrugged.

“No clue. Asked her not to use people parts this time, but she listens to maybe a fourth of what I say, so we’ll see.”

“Sounds fun,” Wade chirped. “I do got a weekend job coming up, though. Was going to reassign this one,” he waved at Peter, “To Nathan for a minute. Can I take the bait then?”

Peter was struck with horror. Even Miles tugging gently on his sleeve could not bring him back.

“I am not letting Cable inside my house,” he stated.

“I mean, preferably before then, but again. Unclear at the moment. She said she’s still negotiating the terms,” Matt explained to Wade. “If you see something unusual, that’ll definitely be her. Just go ahead and follow whatever it is the best you can.”

“Hello? Victim speaking? No Cable. I’ll be fine on my own.”

‘Who’s Cable?” Miles asked Peter quietly. “Can he fight a lizard man?”

Matt made an upset noise at the reminder. Wade laughed.

“Don’t worry, Red, we’ll bring you a piece to hold,” he assured him with a rough hair-ruffle. Matt shoved him off.

“Just take the fucking bait and dip out when it’s appropriate. Pete, whatever happens, just let it happen. It might seem a little extreme, but it’s important you’ve got documentable marks.”

That was fucking comforting.

He gave the team his recent volley of texts with Harry, which had ultimately devolved into a guessing game of what his secrets were. Harry was just awash in a sea of cluelessness. It almost made Peter feel bad, but not enough to make him want to apologize.

After the handoff, they had to leave Karen’s apartment to go scare a giant lizard man out of the sewer system.

It ended up being far more involved than anticipated. Louis was not happy to be called out to deal with anything that had scales. So of course he was the one the lizard man decided was an optimal perch. He valiantly did not scream at any point during the process of coaxing the creature out of its temporary den of sewer trash. He did not scream when it latched onto his waist and tried to walk its crazy feet up the side of his body. He only screamed a little when he overbalanced and fell into the rushing water in the sewer with a literal man-sized iguana wrapped around his shoulders. Peter paid for the poor guy’s ride home before he throttled Miles for bringing the issue up to begin with and then Little Spidey for being her usual antagonistic self.

As soon as he was gone, the humanoid iguana opted to wrap itself around Miles until Miles did the cute new thing he’d started doing where he involuntarily entered camouflage mode. Wade was beside himself with this discovery.

Little Spidey ended up finding the perfect place to scratch on the thing’s side which made it start purring and cuddle up to her to steal her heat.

Peter called Damage Control because Mr. Stark’s reaction to the issue was “a WHAT?” which led Peter to believe that SI was not prepared to handle this one. Damage Control sent out a team of reps who were bambuzzled enough by the actual presence of an iguana man that they didn’t give anyone on the Spidey Team a hard time. Little Spidey showed one of the agents where the excellent scratchy spot was, and they were ultimately able to lure the thing into a van for transport.

It was an exciting night.

It almost made up for the one a few days later.

Peter was bitter because not only had he lost money to Wade, he’d also legitimately thought he was going to die at Elektra’s hands.

Elektra did not wear armor, for one. Which was the most important upset here. Peter could have sworn that anyone who was even tangentially associated with Matt as Double D had to be as dramatic as him with the whole costume business.

But no.

Elektra wore black clothes, black gloves, and a bright red scarf. That was her warrior get up. Peter could not even hope to understand.

After she’d broken Cable’s (Wade's temporary stand-in while he 'took the bait,' whatever the fuck that meant) metal arm and been somewhat subdued with several bullet wounds, she told Peter sweetly that she didn’t have anything to lose like Matt did, and so didn’t need the armor.

“We match when he’s in the Mask,” she offered. “Used to match in Columbia gear, too, but then I dropped out.”

“You went to law school?” Peter asked, waiting for the police and trying to stymy the bleeding from his broken nose.

“Not for long,” she hummed, swaying back and forth under Cable’s full weight like a mongoose. She finally stopped and surveyed Nathan with interest. “Why do they call you Cable?” she asked.

“Are you fucking serious?” he growled back. Peter learned later that it was a bitch and a half for him to fix his arm. He strategically chose not to point out to him that if your support mechanic was Wade, you kind of deserved not to get shit done properly.

Elektra put on an amazing show for the police. She waited until they’d replaced Cable’s weight with that of five officers before raising holy hell and going for Peter one last time.

Ergo, his fear for his life.

Those blades were terrifying. He could only imagine what kind of stabby tornado she and Matt were like together.

Peter, for his part, got to spend an exciting night in the back of an ambulance, and then in the ER, having his skin sewn back together, and then in the OR while they tried to find the source of the internal bleeding.

It was fun.

Not.

May was pissed. She couldn’t act like it, though, not in front of all her colleagues who didn’t know Peter had both a healing factor and the ability to escape scrapes like that on the whole. Instead, she held his hand and patiently ground his knuckles before wringing the story out of him as soon as the doctors left them alone for a minute.

She then decided she was going to kill Matt. The only thing that stopped her was Peter finally spilling about the stalking, at which point she went from furious to even more furious.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered.

“I didn’t want to scare you,” he whispered back, ashamed.

“Honey, you don’t have to do this shit alone,” she said; she smoothed his hair back with her hand.

“I know that now,” he told her, “And now I’m not.”

“I’m going to murder that man,” she murmured cheerfully.

“Matt?”

“No, the other one. Murdock’s on thin ice, though.”

“Totally valid, but let’s not mention either in front of the police,” Peter requested.

“We’re back,” Matt sang, dragging McDuffie into Peter’s apartment by her elbow. “And we’ve got probable cause and a reliable witness.”

McDuffie tried to escape his grasp, but he wasn’t having it. Peter watched them as Little Spidey carried on plastering stickers over the cast on his arm. It had been loving placed there by a doc horrified to find a rogue bullet lodged in it. Peter hadn’t even felt it, so he didn’t blame the team looking after him for missing it the first time.

“Your sister is a fucking demon,” Peter told him.

Wade waved from the couch.

“Nathan used a bad word to describe her,” he tattled, even though the guy had refused to come back to Peter’s apartment.

“She completes me,” Matt said without missing a beat. “But more importantly, she completes our paperwork and has produced a written agreement for services rendered to one Norman Osborn.”

“It is literally a piece of paper with two boxes for ‘murder’ and ‘maim’ Peter Parker, signed by Osborn and Elektra,” McDuffie pointed out.

“And they’re both checked,” Matt noted airily. “Assassins aren’t exactly known for their paper trail, but anyways, she’s agreed to testify while she’s being held in prison.”

Peter suspected Matt was going to turn right around when this was over and get her acquitted.

“Is she going to be okay?” he asked nervously. Matt paused and gave it some thought.

“Yeah, she’ll be fine. She said she’s already joined a gang and a drug trade. It’ll be good for her to branch out for a minute,” he decided.

Wade buried his face into his arm to contain himself. Peter wondered how the fuck Matt made it out of whatever the fuck training regiment they’d both endured with even a fifth as much morality as he had. It truly made him see the guy in a new light.

Peter then noted a distinct lack of Foggy.

“Uh?” he tried to gesture but got hissed at by Little Spidey for upsetting her canvas. “Where’s--?”

“Fogs is talking to the police as we speak,” Matt explained.

“And you’re not there because?”

“The DA hates me.”

“I thought she got thrown out?” Peter asked.

“They all hate me,” Matt shrugged.

“And they hate me for defecting to the dark side now,” McDuffie added.

“Don’t worry, they all love Fogs,” Matt assured him.

What the hell kind of team were these guys? He was distracted by his phone buzzing. He pulled it out and opened the message, but had barely done so before more started coming in.

HO: peter im so fucking sorry. something just happened and

HO: can we meet up to talk? lawyers whatever, i don't care

HO: i just really need to talk to you like now

HO: like now now if you get me

Aw, fuck.

Chapter Text

It was at least convenient that Peter had all his lawyers in the same general region of town when he got the texts. They waited for Fogs and tried to figure out a decent location for this chat to occur. Matt went from excited to uneasy in the blink of an eye and he and McDuffie found a corner to whisper in for a little while. When Foggy arrived, he shoved a letter formally stating that Peter’s claim had been received and was being reviewed by the authorities before joining his avian comrades in the corner.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Matt finally said through the susurrus, “Let’s see if he’d let us use one. Peter, can you call Stark?”

Mr. Stark was more than happy to allow this discussion to take place in one of his conference rooms, mostly because he was a paranoid, overprotective sonuvabitch and he was going to be gung-ho on anything which allowed him to terrify the fuck out of any and all things Osborn.

Foggy gently persuaded him that this would not help Peter’s case, however, and chose the perfect moment to have this conversation. That moment being the second Miss Potts entered the lab. She stopped just outside the elevator and listened to the end of Foggy’s request for ‘please, no intimidation techniques,’ before announcing,

“Yes, of course, Mr. Nelson was it?”

Which left Mr. Stark with one option, really, if he knew what was good for him. Which he did. Occasionally.

So Peter and his plaster arm of fruit and veg stickers ended up sitting in one of SI’s conference rooms, between Matt and McDuffie as they debated logistics and recording and possible next steps over his head. He’d never been invited into one of these discussions before and he rapidly decided that he wanted out. The less he knew about the shitshow that was the US legal system, the better. For his anxiety if nothing else.

Harry came in, escorted by one of SI’s finest, and sat down, pale as a ghost, at the table across from Peter. He wrung his hands and shivered a few times before the security guard left to stand outside the door.

Foggy, Matt, and McDuffie assumed the position, or what Peter could only imagine was the position for each of them. Foggy straightened his back and folded his hands on the table. Matt leaned forward on his elbows with his fingers laced together. And McDuffie stared dead ahead with a pen in her hand. Peter almost felt his own back creak with the urge to sit up straight between all of them.

“Mr. Osborn,” Foggy started, “It isn’t often that someone in a position such as yours submits to a meeting without legal representation of your own present.”

Harry wrung his hands harder.

“I understand that this doesn’t look good Mr.?”

“Nelson.”

“Nelson. Right. I totally get that this looks really bad for me, and under any other circumstances, I would would never reach out to Peter like this, but. But I am concerned for my dad right now, and. Um. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to explain—maybe I’ve just misread the situation—maybe I’m making a bigger fuss of this than I need or—or—”

“Mr. Osborn, take a deep breath,” Matt interrupted in one of the gentlest tones Peter had ever heard him use, “You’re obviously troubled by something involving your father and it is, I believe, everyone in this room’s understanding that the situation here is delicate.”

Peter wondered if Matt was trying to soothe Harry so he could get a better read of his pulse. Harry tried to take a few deep breaths to calm down, but it didn’t look like they did him much good at all.

“I think my dad’s trying to kill Peter,” Harry burst out all at once. Peter’s heart clenched. He glanced at the lawyers at his sides. They had all mastered the art of exhibiting only mild surprise, apparently.

“That is a serious accusation, Mr. Osborn,” Matt noted. McDuffie started writing. “And, even though I do not represent you, I would caution you about making such a claim without an attorney present.”

Harry flexed his hands hard enough that Peter could see the tendons in his knuckles. His jaw was shaking a little bit, and if Peter was reading his face right, he might have been about to cry.

Oh, hell no.

What the fuck.

This shit was not okay. He didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t in control here. If it were him by himself, he’d have probably just blurted out, “I know, that’s the point,” but Matt had, at some point, wrapped a hand around his wrist. He squeezed lightly to keep Peter quiet.

“Why don’t we recommence this meeting when you’ve acquired representation, Mr. Osborn?” Foggy offered amiably. “We are only interested in protecting Peter, you see; we aren’t interested in harming you in the process. Furthermore, if you’re seriously concerned that your father is at risk of harming our client, then it is our professional obligation to report this to the police, and we do encourage you to do so as well.”

“I can’t tell the police,” Harry breathed. Peter raised an eyebrow.

“And why not?” Matt asked for him.

Harry clenched his hands again and searched Peter’s eyes.

“I know,” he said miserably. “Peter, I know. I didn’t mean to find out. I didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. But I can’t—he’s my dad. I can’t—”

“Mr. Osborn, you’re getting upset,” McDuffie interrupted abruptly. “I think it is best that we end this meeting now. For all of our sakes. We will report the matter to the police—”

“I know you’re Spiderman,” Harry said, staring right into Peter’s eyes. “I’ve known since we fucked, I think. I just didn’t believe it until yesterday.” The Spidey Sense roiled and squirmed, but Peter found that he still felt totally in control. He met Harry’s gaze dead on and steady. Matt made a noise of derision and made to stand up, but Peter grabbed him before he did. He found himself tipping his head towards Matt’s and whispering, “Let him talk.”

“How about no?” Matt murmured back, “This could fuck up everything we’ve worked for, Peter. We need to keep this shit out of every record. This is not a game.”

“And I get that,” Peter said softly, “But he wouldn’t come here just to say that. There’s gotta be something else. We need to know what that is.”

Matt pulled back and considered him for a second before leaning over to consult Foggy. Foggy hissed audibly and jerked to glare at Peter behind Matt’s back. Peter cringed away from his clenched jaw and felt bad for throwing a wrench into their case. McDuffie leaned out behind Peter and made a ‘what the fuck’ gesture to Foggy who retaliated with showman’s hand as if to say ‘look at all this shit this idiot is doing.’ Several violent gestures later, McDuffie huffed and returned to her position and Foggy grumpily to his. Matt rubbed a thumb across his jaw uncomfortably and then sighed.

Peter felt kind of like a shithead, but he held his ground.

“My client is not here to entertain here say, rumor, or lies,” Foggy snapped viciously. Harry flinched and Peter’s insides cringed. “So, if you would like to explain how and why you feel that this is relevant to your claim, we do encourage you to do so. Now.”

Peter totally understood what Matt saw in Foggy now. Deep down in there, Fogs had some rage too.

“I—” Harry stuttered, “I don’t care that you’re Spiderman, Peter. I literally don’t. It’s just that my dad’s obsessed with Spiderman and he’s—I think he’s done something really terrible. And I think he’s going to try to hurt you, Peter. And maybe hurt other people, too. Definitely hurt other people. He’s my dad, but I can’t let him do that.”

Harry swallowed hard and his face trembled a little before he hardened his jaw to keep himself under control.

 “Green Goblin,” He said, numbly, “That’s what he’s called himself. He wants to fight Spiderman. He wants to kill Spiderman. I think he’s going to go out and do what he can to draw him out into the open. I heard him talking about it to Dr. Connors.”

Peter opened his mouth, but Matt clasped a hand on his wrist again.

“For the record, my client does not accept any of your statements as fact. And also, how can you be sure this isn’t just a joke?” he asked, and Peter was glad that he was still calm enough to be asking the important questions. “Green Goblin? This is ridiculous, you must understand how absurd what you’re saying sounds. Perhaps you have misunderstood, Mr. Osborn. Perhaps this is some kind of inside joke between your father and his director.”

“I’m sure it’s true,” Harry said.

“Okay, sure, we can play crazy too,” Foggy snapped irritably, “What exactly, in your hypothetical situation, do you think he’d do to draw Spiderman out?”

He half-glared at Matt while he asked. McDuffie watched him, too. Peter didn’t understand what, but they seemed to be asking Matt a question he couldn’t read.

Harry held out his hands helplessly.

“I don’t know. All I heard was something about a bridge.”

“Where is he?” Matt asked.

“He’s still at home, as far as I know,” Harry said.

“He know you came here?” McDuffie chimed in. Harry turned to her when he answered.

“No.”

Matt pushed his shoulder into the chair, tipped his head back, and scrubbed his hands through his hair. The other two lost the tension in their bodies too.

Peter didn’t fucking understand. People were in danger. He didn’t understand. Why weren’t they doing anything?

“God,” Matt swore. Foggy smirked but hid it behind his fist. McDuffie leaned forward on the table and hid her mouth with interwoven fingers.

“Uh, sorry?” Harry asked, blinking and tucking his hands down to clutch at his knees.

“I mean, and you’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Osborn, fuck. I can't say I'm surprised, but I am a little disappointed.”

Foggy actually laughed.

Peter was about to lose his goddamn mind.

People were probably dying, guys. If not right then, then soon.

“Alright, alright, alright,” Matt grumbled, collecting himself, “Okay. Listen, I have one more question for you, Mr. Osborn.”

Harry sat up straighter and leaned forward.

“Yes, sure. Anything.”

Matt clicked his tongue and dropped his head to the side. He sighed.

“Why are you lying?” he asked disappointedly.

Peter was pretty sure his entire body short-circuited.

That was.

It wasn’t.

There was no way.

But. But Matt wouldn’t lie. He was so bad at lying. Matt was the literal worst at lying. In the entire universe. Which meant that Harry had to be lying. That was the only possibility here.

“I’m not lying,” Harry said, shocked.

“Yeah, you are,” Matt groaned, throwing himself forward and then up. “And here I thought you actually had something to say. Whatever, we’re done.”

“S’alright, boo, I’ll buy you a drink,” Foggy told him fondly. Matt gave him a flirty smile back.

“Maybe I’ll buy you a drink, counselor,” he teased.

They were disgusting and Peter thought that that deserved more of his revulsion, but he was still fucking shell-shocked. They were leaving now? That was it? They weren’t going to address the elephant in the fucking room that was Peter’s fucking identity being on the line here? Or the potential masses of people about to be thrown off a bridge?

McDuffie tapped on Peter’s forearm and gestured for him to follow them. Blinking, he slowly stood. If, for nothing else, to pin Matt to a wall outside and ask him what the fuck he was thinking.

“Wait,” Harry said, “I don’t understand. I’m not lying.”

Foggy closed the door behind them and they said nothing for thirty meters, the walk to the end of the hallway.

“Does someone want to tell me what’s going on?” Peter snapped once they’d turned the corner.

“What’s going on,” Matt said, “Is that he’s trying to play us. Both of them are, actually.”

Peter stepped out in front of him with a hand between them, ready to push against Matt’s chest. This was fucking ridiculous.

“People are in danger.”

“They aren’t,” Matt informed him.

“They could be--”

“Peter, people are always in danger. But this? No. Yeah, maybe Norman’s this Green whatever. And yeah, maybe he’s planning some grand event to blow up Times Square or something, but kid. Take a step back. Look at the bigger picture. We’re in the middle of Manhattan. No news stations talking about it. No people screaming.”

“He could be planning it. He could be preparing to go out right now.”

“Peter, he wants you,” Foggy interrupted. “He wants to do you in. He wants you off your game. If you panic and run out there, guns blazing, that’ll be giving him exactly what he wants. He’s using Harry to get what he wants and—”

“Harry’s in on it,” Matt finished for him. “Norman keeps using him to get your trust. He wants you to admit you’re Spiderman and he wants you go out so he can hurt you and the second you give in. That’s when people are going to start getting hurt. If you’re the one who makes the first move, he’ll feel justified in whatever he’s planning to do. He’ll blame it on you.”

“But—”

Matt bowed his head. His shoulders rose with the breath he took to keep himself calm. After a moment he brought his head back up and firmly gripped Peter’s shoulder.

“Kid, listen. Listen to me, if for nothing else, then on this, okay? I don’t have a lot of wisdom in me, but I’ve got this. There are times in your life, Peter, where the second you start swinging, you put yourself in a position where you can never stop.” Matt breathed deep again. “My dad died doing that shit, Peter. Walked himself back into a corner, thinking there were no other options just because he couldn’t see ‘em. He died swinging.”

Peter didn’t want to disrespect Matt or his dad, but his heart was still pounding, screaming for him to do something.

“Matt, I can’t do nothing,” he said.

“There are more options than the ones you give yourself, Peter. That’s what we’re here for. Do you trust me?”

What kind of question was that? Of course he trusted him, and Foggy, and McDuffie. Of course he did.

He nodded. Matt let go of his shoulder.

“Then let us carry this weight for you. Harry is lying. Norman is trying to distract us from what we have set out to do, and I will be damned before I give in to some kind of mind tricks by a bastard like him. We’re sending Harry home to daddy, saying that we didn’t believe him and we will carry on with this lawsuit, so help me god.”

The lawyers thanked Mr. Stark and told him that all Harry needed was to be escorted out of the building. Information? Nothing useful. Rattled on about some Halloween character, no. Guy seemed to be having a mental break. Seemed to think Peter was Spiderman, must have just seen Wade and gotten confused.

Peter watched Harry stumble after his escort, throwing hurt looks in his direction. He caught Peter’s eye and held it, pleading with his eyebrows. Foggy put a hand on Peter’s shoulder and turned him away and he took a deep breath and told himself that he needed to actually trust the people he said he did.

Peter woke up the following Wednesday feeling like fried shit. He put on a suit. They had an arraignment to attend. He didn’t know how they’d done it, but the law team had really put their back into the whole ‘speedy trial’ business and made that shit happen, double time.

It probably had something to do with the whole Elektra situation and then the notes and recording McDuffie had made on her phone of Harry’s conversation with them.

God.

The severe lack of terror action over the weekend made Peter feel like an idiot. Like some kind of pawn. It made him feel empty and helpless like he a few weeks back. Had it only been weeks? It felt like it had been years.

He tried to stave it off, the heart pounding and the shaking hands, the sinking feeling that something bad was going to happen at any moment. He reminded himself that he would be fine. He was surrounded by, besides the Babadook, an angry pitbull and his ducks. And said pitbull and ducks had called Harry and Norman on their bullshit and put their foot down on Peter’s behalf. They’d probably saved him so much misery.

But the ache in his heart was back.

It hurt his pride more than anything that Harry had tricked him twice; that he’d likely been stringing him along this whole time, from the train station to the conference room. Playing the good guy. But then again, that kind of manipulation certainly fit with the Harry Peter remembered rooming with. The guy who tumbled into their shared dorm with his face pressed into some gal’s neck, saying, ‘Whoops, sorry Peter, didn’t think you were gonna be in tonight, I guess we’ll just take this somewhere else,’ in a tone which told Peter that it was his turn to say ‘No, no, it’s fine, I was just leaving actually’ even though he was in the middle of a panic attack.

Either Norman had coached his fucking kid on making the perfect wobbly lips and puppy eyes or Harry had dug out his old tantrum skills from back in the day.

Spiderman saves people.

Get fucked.

Spiderman saves innocent people. And sometimes even dickheads who dig their own graves, yeah, Spiderman sometimes saves them too. But Spiderman doesn’t have time for people trying to play the victim.

Had he learned nothing in nearly 8 years of therapy and falling off cliffs—both physical and metaphysical?

He wanted to trade the Spidey Sense for some more common sense, please. Now. Or six million years ago. Dealer’s choice.

Wade tried to cheer him up by showing up with matching boutonnieres of some kind of orchid and baby’s breath and it actually did make Peter laugh. It shook up the jitters a little bit. They shook again when Wade had to unpack all his weapons onto Peter’s coffee table before he could put on a suit of his own to enter the courthouse with him. There were just. So. Many. More than could possibly fit on Wade’s body. And when Wade set down his ammunition belt, they discovered he’d put a box of the stuff in upside-down and it decided to pour out all over the table and floor.

With supreme self-control, Wade decided that the bullets were a future-Wade problem; he pinned both boutonnieres on himself and yanked his mask over top of the whole ensemble. Somehow, he looked even more like a hitman. He held out his arm for Peter to take before they left for the subway.

Peter did not take the arm. But the gesture was kind.

Foggy whistled at Peter in the suit to make him blush and then scolded Wade for his court attire. Matt was interested in the boutonnieres and, because Wade was always game to be an enabler of the weirdest of Matt’s tendencies, he plucked one off and pinned to Matt’s lapel, to Foggy’s irritation. The man had been doing his best to steer Matt away from anything that even hinted at a wedding for years. He relocated the pin to McDuffie’s enormous tote bag, which did nothing but inspire a game of musical boutonnieres. 

Peter found that the calm he felt watching this nonsense was lost when Wade had to go back to sit behind the four of them next to May, and Norman Osborn, flanked by a literal gang of attorneys in sharp charcoal suits came in to take his place at the table opposite. One of the attorneys, a tall older guy with a paunch, gave Matt and Foggy a filthy look. Neither acknowledged it.

Peter swallowed hard. He didn’t want to look at Norman. He already knew what the guy looked like. He was like a grayer, squatter version of Harry. Not by much, just enough to carry the kind of gravitas his son lacked.

While Peter didn’t want to look at him, he could feel Norman’s eyes on him like a hawk. The Spidey Sense crawled. He shivered. Next to him, Peter heard Foggy narrating what was going on quietly to Matt. He referred to the attorney with the paunch as ‘Professor,’ and Peter distracted himself from the desire to bolt by trying to work out if Osborn was insane enough to go find one of the guys who taught Matt and Foggy specifically to put them down.

He probably was.

They all rose as the judge entered and were then seated again at her request. McDuffie had gone through how the day would look with Peter multiple times. She told him that, because they had the police on their side for once, they were in a slightly better position to make shit happen.

The judge was saying something, but Peter couldn’t focus on it. Matt seemed to notice his internal panic. He nudged Foggy to give Peter a squeeze on the shoulder.

“Relax,” Foggy whispered in his ear, “We aren’t scared of Professor Veller. He’s been cultivating cobwebs in his head for the last thirty years. Man used an overhead projector in seminar. In seminar, Peter. And then he could not understand for the life of him why Matt kept threatening to file a complaint.” Matt gave Peter a little smirk and a wink and went back to paying attention.

Peter would do anything to see a gangly grad-school Matt throw down with the man on the other side of the aisle over archaic school supplies.

Norman Osborn and his sharp, unyielding gaze pleaded not guilty to the charge of attempted murder in the first degree which was everything that everyone expected. Peter refused to meet his eye at any point during the event.

And before he knew it, that was them done for the day. Matt explained that it had to go to a grand jury next and then they’d have another arraignment and then they’d get shit on the road.

Peter decided he had neither enough suits or sanity to deal with this shit on his own. He found some relief, however, in watching Foggy square off against a passing detective in the courtroom lobby.

“You keep away from my mother, you hear me, Nelson?” the detective barked over the din.

“I won’t, but it continues to bring me joy to watch you try to keep us apart,” Foggy cooed after him, waving.

A week later and they were going to trial. Proper trial. Like Law and Order, only with hopefully less drama and more Norman Osborn being proven guilty.

Ha. Fat chance.

In the drama department, at least.

The Bulletin published its (but really Karen’s) story possibly minutes after Peter and company left the arraignment. Not to be outdone, The Bugle decided to weigh in to call bullshit. The story was then taken up by every press and tabloid Peter had heard of, plus several he hadn’t. He was pleased to find that, on the whole at least, he was being referred to as ‘Cornell graduate’ and ‘SI Scientist’ for once. Usually, when he made the papers, it was ‘Spiderman Defaces City Monument,’ ‘Masked Menace Upsets Baby,’ ‘Local Vigilante Runs Puppy Mill,’ and so on. It was kind of nice to be acknowledged as a harassed member of the scientific community; allegedly, it gave him credibility in the eyes of the public.

The media was similarly up in arms about the return of Nelson & Murdock, attorneys at law, thought to have left New York to never return. McDuffie managed to fly under the radar for exactly two days before it became known that she was the second, not the third, partner in the firm in California.

Matt was scolded by no less than three women for being unfaithful to his husband outside the court building and, given that he flat out refused to read news coverage of any of his cases in progress, Wade delighted in watching him go through everything he’d done in the last year which might warrant this impression.

Of course, Mr. Stark wanted to attend the trial as well, both to support Peter and to hold two middle fingers up to Osborn for the entirety of the proceedings, but his entire PR team managed to persuade him that, for Peter’s sake, he was going to stay home and huff in the lab. Peter kind of wished he had come. But that would, in a way, also be playing into Norman’s hands. It was Peter’s job to put some distance between himself and Spiderman. And that meant putting some more distance between himself and Ironman.

But that didn’t mean putting some distance between himself and the Spidermans. Little Spidey took the day off work and sang Christmas carols at the top of her voice with her hands over her ears until Peter ran out of ‘you don’t have to’s. Louis texted the group chat to say he’d be there and answered none of Peter’s replies, even though he answered everyone else’s. Miles was upset that he couldn’t beg off school. He demanded to be kept in the loop.

Dave, of all people, showed up to the courthouse in a suit just barely wide enough for his shoulders; he gave Peter a crushing hug. It turned out his daughter had torn her ACL playing soccer and he’d had to deal with that over the last few weeks, but he’d been following the drama on the group chat and said he was totally there for Peter if he needed anything at all. His daughter stared up at Peter in a pretty dress, crutches in hand, and told him he looked ‘scratchy.’

Which was perplexing.

Like, his face? Or his general being?

“Charlie, we don’t call people scratchy,’ Dave chided her. She addressed Matt instead.

“You look sick,” she said simply. Dave panicked. Foggy laughed so hard he snorted. Matt cocked his head and hunkered down to explore this new information.

“What kind of sick?” he asked.

“Just sick,” Charlie informed him.

“I don’t know what sick looks like, help me out here.”

“Like, old.”

Foggy burst into new laughter and had to leave the room to go cough his lungs out in a less echoey space. Matt evaluated the child closely, probably weighing her heart beats and memorizing her heat signature.

“You look short,” he said flatly, and added yet another tally to his enemy list.

Chapter Text

There’s a thing which no one tells you about trials and it’s this: they’re boring as hell.

Peter was there, listening to people prattle on about legal procedure and the alleged mishandling of evidence and the alleged improper acquisition of evidence, and he found that the thing he was most fixated on was the frankly stunning abuse of the word ‘objection.’

He’d always thought that ‘objection’ was like the trump card in a lawyer’s deck. To be whipped out to demarcate a turning point in the case or force an opponent to his knees or some shit. But, and he was shocked and appalled to admit it, Legally Blonde had this one in the fucking bag. People really did just throw out objections whenever it pleased them. Well. It was probably strategic. Peter hoped it was strategic. Didn’t make it any less fucking bizarre though. Matt had to have objected to at least five things in one hour and Foggy to two and McDuffie to three, and that wasn’t even counting the times they all objected together, which was adorable, but also made Peter leap out of his skin.

It was like sitting between a bunch of people who were championship charades players while he was the only beginner.

At one point, while Professor Whoever-the-Fuck tried to argue that evidence had been tampered with, Matt objected with such violence that the judge threatened to throw him out in contempt. The Prof gave Matt a self-satisfied smirk, over by the polished wood in front of the witness stand, but the judge caught him on tail end of her swing and informed him that,

“Despite Mr. Murdock’s unfortunate behavior, the objection is sustained. Move onto your next point, counselor.”

Matt gave the guy a blinding smile and settled down to cozy up next to Foggy. Foggy cozied right up back and they both gave the guy a long, hard stare and grin.

Peter had the distinct impression that, in literally any other setting, they would have started full-on making out just to maximize the guy’s discomfort.

So that was entertaining.

A ray of sunshine in an ocean of boredom which washed over Peter again until the judge called for a recess.

“You’re doing great, Pete,” Foggy assured him out in the hallway as Matt dug through his bag for something.

Peter was busy trying to reach the energy drink Little Spidey had snuck in for him, otherwise he would have made a snippy remark about how all he’d done was stay quiet. Wade, in his goddamned crusade against everything Peter loved, leaned back just so, so that can was even higher.

Peter stood back and was just about ready to leap up onto his shoulders when May’s Family Honor alert went off in her head and she snapped her head over her shoulder to give him a nasty look. He sheepishly relaxed his limbs. She pointed at him and then her eyes.

“Waaaaade,” Peter whined instead, edging over so that Wade’s body hid May from view.

“Causes cancer,” Wade reminded him.

“Uuuuuuuuugh.”

“Go have a coffee like everyone else.”

“Maaaaaaatt.”

Matt was usually sympathetic to Peter’s burning need for caffeine as he, himself shared this addiction. Thus reminded, Foggy interrupted his rummaging to ask him if he wanted a coffee and Matt nodded, without looking up.

“Wilson, stop harassing my client,” he said, finally liberating the binder he’d been hunting for in Foggy’s bag. Peter jerked back toward Wade with a self-satisfied smirk and made grabby hands for the can.

“Cancer,” Wade emphasized.

“We’ve got witnesses coming up and I need him awake,” Matt justified. Wade sighed hard enough to drop his shoulders and forfeited the can. Peter took it and cracked it open to take an enormous gulp. People in the hallway looked around for who the fuck had just cracked open a beer in court. Wade cringed watching him chug half the drink.

“Peter, you’ve got a job,” Matt said, waving at McDuffie as she escaped them for the bathroom. “And that job is to answer everything they ask you in a few hours honestly. Be painful about it.”

Peter took a more reasonable sip from the can and thought about it.

“How painful?” he asked.

“Excruciating. Don’t worry, Kirsten is going to help you.” 

What did that even mean?

Foggy reappeared with three cups of coffee and pushed one carefully against Matt’s knuckles until he took it and paused in reviewing his paperwork to take a sip. He choked and Foggy fucking gunned it to intercept Kirsten on her way back from the bathroom. He shoved the remaining coffees into her hands as Matt threw down the binder and went chasing after. Kirsten watched them go and approached Peter and the others with trepidation.

“Nelson’s in a mood,” she noted with high eyebrows.

They all heard a squawk down the corridor, the sound of a man being caught.

“Is that a good thing?” Peter asked. He looked at the coffee cup Matt had very nearly dropped.

“Probably?” McDuffie offered.

No one really knew what to say to that. Peter let Little Spidey have a drink from his can and Wade stomped off for a distraction from their blatant disregard for their well-being. Then May came over to pat Peter down and fawn over Little Spidey and ask McDuffie if things were going well for them.

Foggy and Matt returned after a minute or so, with Matt gripping Foggy’s elbow more tightly than was necessary. Matt took Foggy’s coffee from Kirsten and meaningfully took a sip of out it before flinching at it.

“Is this about the security guard?” he demanded. “Are you still mad about the security guard?”

Foggy took the cup from him smugly.

“It is a symbol of my love.” He watched Matt pick up the enemy coffee and then lit up. Matt jerked his head his way at the same time. “Matty, don’t touch that. I just had the best idea.”

“No, you didn’t, because I just did.”

“Give it here.”

“C’mon. No lizard man. No security guard. Lemme have this one at least.”

Foggy pouted but relented.

“Fine. But it was my idea first.”

“Noted. Where is he?”

“Guys, no,” McDuffie pleaded. “We are in public.”

Matt and Foggy gave her dual neutral expressions. And Peter realized exactly what was about to happen.

Those two idiots were about to prank their fucking teacher in open court.

In the shuffle back into the courtroom proper, Matt set off for a second and to find Professor Dickhead. Rumor of the exciting demonstration about to occur traveled fast through Peter’s side of the audience. Dave shushed his daughter when she pointed after Matt excitedly.

It turned out that Fogs had dumped half a salt shaker into the coffee. Not a spoonful. Not a quarter. An entire half.

It was taking everyone superhuman effort to keep straight, sober faces and not look after Matt as he wriggled through the crowd over to the other door while they waited for theirs to be reopened.

Matt bumped up against the prof just before he entered the courtroom again and, while Peter couldn’t be sure since he had not been blessed with super-hearing, appeared to apologize for his earlier disrespect. He offered the coffee cup a little sheepishly and the professor said something, looking down his nose at his former pupil, and then overly-graciously accepted the cup. He then joined his fellow sharks on their side of the aisle.

And then the other door was opened and everyone on Peter’s side pasted on the appropriate expression and marched back into the room.

Norman Osborn would not stop fucking staring at Peter and it was making him stupid uncomfortable. The thought of the guy typing out email after email, accusing Peter of being a slut and a liar made his stomach turn. The thought of him saving every picture of Spiderman, probably memorizing every part of Peter’s body gave him the chills.

He grimaced back and then whipped his head towards the judge.

The policeman who had accepted all Peter’s evidence and had taken his statement at the hospital was on the stand, answering questions posed to her by McDuffie. She answered them firmly, noted that Peter was in really bad shape, having just come out of multiple surgeries, when she’d met with him. She said she was surprised that he’d been as coherent as he was, but by the time they’d spoken, he hadn’t been on any narcotics, just extra strong ibuprofen.

His ribs smarted a little bit just thinking about the surgery. Those scars were going to take forever to heal.

Next up was one of the doctors who had operated on Peter, who explained that the wounds he had sustained were inflicted by someone who knew what they were doing and had aimed to kill. Peter got to see some gnarly fucking pictures of his pale-ass on the big screen, which was something. They weren’t flattering. He hoped Dave was shielding his kid’s eyes behind him.

“Was Mr. Parker able to tell you who inflicted these wounds upon him?” McDuffie asked the man.

“Yes, he did. He didn’t really have to, though. It was fairly obvious who had done it,” the doctor said. “I believe the woman was still in the room when the police were called.”

“And do you happen to know the name of that woman?” McDuffie continued.

“Uh, all I know is that her name is Elektra,” the doctor said, “I’m afraid I don’t know her last name.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” McDuffie said.

She sat down.

The next person who went on the stand was the detective who’d added Peter’s case to the mountain on his desk. Peter had met with him. He’d been nice enough, for a cop. More or less sympathetic.

McDuffie asked him a similar round of questions, going through the police’s understanding of what had occurred in Peter’s apartment that night. But then the professor stood up after her and started pacing the space in front of the stand.

“Detective Juarez,” he said, “When your officers arrived to the scene, how many persons did you find in Mr. Parker’s apartment?”

The detective watched him like a guy trying to catch a gnat.

“Three,” he said.

“Three. Yes, so there was Mr. Parker, who was, as we have been informed, in poor shape at this time. There was this woman named Elektra, according to Mr. Parker anyways. Who was the third person?”

“A guy called Nathan Summers,” Detective Juarez said.

“Nathan Summers. This is a name we haven’t heard before. Can you please explain who Mr. Summers is?”

The detective frowned.

“Mr. Summers was, to my knowledge, standing in as a body guard for the man Anthony Stark hired to guard his employee.”

“So he is a bodyguard? Is that his primary occupation?”

The detective’s look was souring.

“Mr. Summers did not speak with me beyond to give a statement of the night’s events.”

“He did not consent to an interview?”

The detective sighed.

“Mr. Summers is in a precarious legal situation as, according to SHIELD, he is not of the present time.”

“Not of the present time? What do you mean by that?” the professor pushed.

Peter was pretty sure the detective was starting to get pissed off.

“Mr. Summers is from the future, Mr. Veller,” he said curtly. “And is, unfortunately, stuck in this time due to an incident he is not at liberty to discuss. He does not have any identification documents whatsoever. The reason that he is not present today is because there is no way to take his record because there is no way to identify him, because there is no record of his existence, according to him, his prosthetic, and SHIELD, for another several decades.”

There was a lull in court while people absorbed this. The professor collected himself and continued.

“Right, so who was Mr. Summers standing in for as a body guard?”

“Wade Wilson, the man hired by Anthony Stark.”

“And is Mr. Wilson present today?”

What the fuck kind of question was that? Wade was literally sitting right behind Peter in a bright red, full-face mask. He had peeled off the mask on request at the security checkpoint and scared every officer in the place shitless; so much so that, for the sake of maintaining order in the courthouse, they’d just let him keep it on.

“Yes, he’s uh. The one in the mask behind Mr. Parker.”

Wade waved.

The judge could not possibly raise her eyebrows higher.

“And what is Mr. Wilson’s profession, Detective?”

“Objection,” McDuffie snapped, “Mr. Wilson is not here as a witness, your honor. It has already been determined that he was not present at the scene of the crime and all details regarding his employment have already been submitted to evidence.”

“Sustained.”

McDuffie sat back down. The professor took a frustrated breath but carried on.

“Detective, were you able to interview this woman named Elektra?”

“Yes.”

“And when were you able to conduct that interview?”

“When she stopped trying to strangle my men, Mr. Veller.”

Peter tried to imagine Elektra causing chaos at the police station. It wasn’t hard.

“Can you be more specific, Detective?”

“Ms. Natchios put up a significant struggle at the scene of the crime and attacked Mr. Parker a second time in front of myself and seven of my staff, sir. Mr. Summers helped us to de-escalate the situation a second time, which unfortunately resulted in Ms. Natchios losing consciousness until her arrival at the station, at which time we attempted to offer her medical support. She woke up and re-enacted the scene at Mr. Parker’s apartment on eight officers in my station, thankfully, with less weaponry. Although, I’m not entirely sure that that made a world of a difference. My staff are all on medical leave, Mr. Veller.”

Damn.

Peter did not glance at Matt, but he could practically feel the pride radiating off of him. He was 100% going to turn around and get that girl acquitted. Either that or funnel her enough cash to make her queen of the yard or some shit.

“Did Ms, you said, Natchios? Did Ms. Natchios explain her reason for behaving in such a way in her statement, Detective?”

“She did.”

“And what did she say?”

“She said she was hired by a man named Norman Osborn to, and I quote, ‘murder and maim’ the Stark Industries scientist Peter Parker. She provided a document indicating this.”

“Is Ms. Natchios educated, detective?”

Peter did not see what that had to do with anything. Neither did the detective.

“Excuse me?”

“Apologies, let me rephrase the question. Has Ms. Natchios been educated through, say, high school or college?”

“I didn’t ask, sir,” the detective said.

“I say this,” Professor Asshole noted, “Because it is rare for people of such occupation to have received a formal education, and therefore it would appear odd and potentially out of character for her to have produced a written agreement in this case. Ergo, it is a possibility then, that someone coached Ms. Natchios in this affair and told her to produce such a document. Is it your understanding then, detective, that Ms. Natchios always produces documents such as these in her line of work?”

“Objection,” Foggy barked like a gunshot; it made Peter sit right the fuck up, “Your honor, the counselor is leading the witness.”

“Sustained.”

The professor grimaced at Foggy.

“Detective,” he said without breaking eye contact with Fogs, “How much did Ms. Natchios say she was to be paid for this alleged deal?”  

“$50,000.”

“And was this amount transferred from any of my client’s accounts to hers?”

“No, we do not have evidence of this.”

“Did Ms. Natchios state that she had been paid for the job prior to carrying it out?”

“Yes, she did.”

“By what means? Cash?”

“No, sir. Direct deposit.”

“Can you please explain to the jury what direct deposit is, sir?”

What the fuck? Why? Peter saw Foggy’s eye twitching a little in irritation. Matt pawed at his elbow a little bit to keep him steady. Peter remembered the overhead projector incident and decided that, yeah that shit made a lot more sense. The guy probably thought that just because he didn’t understand technology, the jury wouldn’t either.

“Sorry, what?” the detective asked. “You want me to explain direct deposit?”

“Yes.”

“Uh. Alright. But I don’t know much about it. I just know what you give someone your bank details and they take money out of your account on your behalf.”

“And there would be a record of this transfer?”

“Yes, in the bank statements.”

“And was there such a record in Ms. Natchios’s statements?”

“Yes.”

“And was there a corresponding record of this exchange in any of my client’s statements?”

“None that we could find, sir.”

“Interesting. So, just to be clear. There is no evidence that my client, Norman Osborn, paid Mr. Parker’s assailant, despite their alleged agreement.”

The detective grit his teeth.

“That is correct.”

“No further questions, your honor.”

Matt popped up the second he was able with his stick in hand. He addressed the detective.

“Detective Juarez, thank you for coming today, I understand that the lack of staff in your office is making your life challenging, to say the least,” he began amiably, “But, in reference to what the defendant’s counselor has implied, could you please tell us: how many accounts does Mr. Osborn have to your knowledge?”

“Oh, somewhere around fifty, including the business ones,” the detective answered, still stiff but slightly more at ease with the attorney on his own side.

“I see, thank you, detective,” Matt noted, “ And when you and your team reviewed these accounts, did you happen to note if more than one thousand dollars went out of one or more of these accounts per month?”

“Yes.”

“What was the lowest amount your team observed leaving the accounts?”

“The lowest? Probably two or three thousand dollars.”

“Probably?”

“The absolute lowest was around two thousand.”

“Per month?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting,” Matt said in the exact same tone as Professor Dipshit earlier, “And none of these payments went to Ms. Natchios’s account?”

“That is correct.”

“Did any of them go to the defendant’s personal accounts?”

“Beg your pardon?”

Matt flexed his fingers on his stick.

“Did any of the payments of two thousand dollars or more--were any of those payments transferred to Mr. Osborn’s personal accounts?”

“Not that I am aware of. They appeared to go to vendors.”

“All two thousand dollars, or greater amounts, in each account?”

“Well, not all of it. We aren’t sure who all of the payments went to.”

Matt smiled the smile he gave people right before he did all their fucking teeth in. Peter was surprised that the detective didn’t seem to notice the malice behind it, but then again, he didn’t know Matt very well.

“Did you notice any consistencies in the vendors to whom the money was paid?” Matt asked.

“Yes.”

“And they were all earmarked for their intended purposes?”

“No.”

“No? Can you please explain.” Matt requested, grinning like a shark.

The detective shifted uncomfortably.

“Well, not all of them were marked for ‘supplies’ or the like. Nor could we always glean from the merchants’ names what the payment’s intended purpose was. There were several payments which went to accounts we could not verify the owners of.”

“Owners, plural?”

“Well, owner. It appeared to be the same merchant.”

“In what kind of amounts?”

“Each was different. Five hundred from one, something like two thousand from another.”

“I see,” Matt said, “Thank you, detective.” He let his head wander a little bit around the courtroom, thinking. “Detective, would it be outlandish to assume that the combined sum of the money transferred to this single unknown merchant was in the range of fifty thousand dollars?”

Silence in the fucking court. Holy shit, Matt really had gone to law school, ladies and gents.

“I have not done the math, but I would say that that assumption is not outlandish,” the detective said, obviously pleased that Matt was on his side and not Norman’s.

“And you were unable to verify this merchant’s account, correct?”

“That’s correct.”

“And, because this was a merchant account, it was not included in your review of the defendant’s financial records?”

“That’s correct.”

“But you would say that this merchant was a close partner of Mr. Osborn and his company, based on the amount of trading going on between them?”

“Yes, sir. That’s correct.”

“Interesting,” Matt noted again entirely for the jury’s benefit, “So what we know is that approximately fifty thousand dollars was transferred in different amounts to this merchant’s account from various departments and offices connected to Oscorp. And yet, we do not know who this merchant is and what purpose the money was used for. Is that correct, Detective Juarez?”

The Prof looked like he was ready to wring Matt’s fucking neck. He was nearly purple. His hand twitched towards the cup of coffee and Peter’s stomach dropped. He forced himself to look dead ahead.

“That’s correct.”

“Has anyone on your team looked into whether the money transferred into Ms. Natchios’s accounts came from this unknown merchant, detective?” Matt pressed.

“They have not.”

“Is that something which could be done within a reasonable amount of time?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I see. No further questions.”

They took another recess after the most amazing event of the century, which was Professor Shit-for-Brains taking a massive gulp of coffee to keep himself calm in the wake of his former students’ insolence and spewing coffee all over the defendant’s table and floor.

It was amazing.

Matt and Foggy put on the most scandalized faces Peter had ever seen. Matt even clutched at Foggy’s arm a bit to play up his shock and horror.

The judge did not know what to make of this and naturally decided the man was having a stroke. She damn near called the medical officials before Prof. Asshat was able to collect himself enough to admit that he was not having a stroke, nor had he been poisoned.

His team and Osborn went white with embarrassment. As soon as the recess was called, they engaged an intense group huddle around the guy.

Matt and Foggy grabbed McDuffie and made themselves fucking scarce, telling Peter to keep up the good work.

The furious professor found the three of them anyways, on a warpath as he was, and, right there, in front of God and everyone, roared at Matt that he would not be intimidated or insulted by such juvenile nonsense.

To which Matt responded, in a hurt voice, “I’m so sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to mix up the salt and sugar. When they put them in the same containers like that, I just have a hard time telling them apart.”

Thereby, again, in front of God and everyone, successfully making Veller the fucking dick here.

It was beautiful.

It was so beautiful, Wade was weeping, dabbing delicately at his eyes under the mask.

Chapter Text

They had an hour lunch which was pre-empted by many sympathetic pats and Dave’s daughter drawing a hang-in-there kitty for Peter to tuck into his pocket. It definitely looked more like a terminally ill cow chomping down on a log than a cat, but he appreciated the sentiment.

Wade claimed responsibility for fetching lunch and allowed no one to place an order, to Matt’s despair. He left after loudly making a list of dietary restrictions.

“What’s he going to do? Just like, guess based off our personalities or something?” Little Spidey asked.

Peter assessed her.

“You look like you like Korean fried chicken,” he noted. She spun around to him with huge eyes.

“Dude.”

He was pleased and smug about it.

“Me next!” Dave’s kid demanded, having observed the proceedings while her dad went off to talk to someone he apparently knew on the other side. She hobbled over eagerly and stood in front of Peter and Little Spidey with a cowlick which would not be tamed.

Peter raised an eyebrow and crouched down to pull at her cheeks and pick at her hair.

“Garlic bread,” he decided.

Charlie went still for a second before freaking the fuck out and scrambling off like a baby giraffe on her crutches, shrieking for her dad.

“Dude,” Little Spidey murmured.

Wade came back with cardboard boxes that did not appear to be filled with toxic waste, which was a great start. He’d found pupusas. He’d found an assortment of pupusas. Even Matt, who was possibly the pickiest eater Peter had ever met, allowed that pupusas were an acceptable lunch.

“Do Wade,” Little Spidey whispered to Peter, parked next to him on the concrete in the courthouse’s little garden. Peter chuffed and put down his box for his water.

“I can’t, I know him too well, it doesn’t count,” he whispered back.

“What the fuck?” Matt interrupted in shock. Peter looked up to find him maybe two yards away, holding two coffees. It took a second for one of his few remaining braincells to drop down and then rattle through his brain like a pinball before he realized exactly what was happening.

“Oh, god, no,” he stammered. Matt edged back a bit with concern written all over his face.

“No, no, no, whatever you’re thinking, Matt, it is not that. We were talking about Wade’s--”

“Someone say my name?” Wade asked, popping up behind Matt and startling the shit out of him. Matt crept away from him a little too.

“No,” Peter emphasized. Pissed because Little Spidey wasn’t even trying to hide her cackling and was drawing the attention of other people chilling in the courtyard. “That is—no. Matt, just. Absolutely not.”

“Uh, absolutely yes,” Wade corrected, just to be contrary. Matt scrambled away from him and wriggled in between Little Spidey and Peter to maximize the distance between them.

“Pete, please take it from me, it’s not worth it,” he whispered into his ear. Little Spidey slapped a hand over her face and started to make tiny dying noises underneath it. Peter regained his sixth sense and tried to grab her before she popped up to get Louis’s attention and ruin his fucking life for the rest of time.

“Your sex life is horrendous,” he reminded Matt over Little Spidey’s struggling, “We promised to never speak of it again, and I am not sleeping with Wade.”

“Yeah, he makes me sleep on the floor,” Wade whined disappointedly.

Matt raised both eyebrows in his direction, then returned to Peter sympathetically.

“What you do with your body is none of my business—”

“Please stop.”

“All I’m saying is that I’ve been there—”

“Where is your husband? For the love of god, where is your husband?”

 Peter snatched Little Spidey’s hand out of the air and pinned it to her side, but it was too late, Louis had seen her flailing. He waved back and started to make his way over.

“Just make sure you use so much lu—”

“FOGGY.”

Thank fuck and Jesus and everyone in between, the man had just put a foot into the doorway of the courthouse proper with a new cup of coffee in hand. He looked over his shoulder and returned from the doorway.

“Matthew, you had one job,” Fogs barked, “Leave Peter alone, he’s still got three hours to put up with you.”

Matt pursed his lips and then pushed the second coffee in his hand into Peter’s carefully before clasping his shoulder sympathetically.

“Your body is a temple,” he said.

“Oh, what kind of temple?” Wade prodded.

“It doesn’t matter, Wilson, you’ll burn in all of them,” Matt snapped at him.

“Right, godless heathen and all that.”

“More like amoral shithead, but sure.”

“You kiss your mother with that mouth, Red?”

“Bold of you to assume I have a mother, asshole.”

Fogs knew both of them well enough to know that Matt’s prolonged absence meant nothing but trouble; he arrived to put out the flames before the two of them really got started, and Peter managed to buy Little Spidey’s silence in the nick of time by promising to babysit her little sister for whole day on her behalf. Louis asked her what was up once Matt was off, huffing on Foggy’s arm, and she told him about Peter’s party trick.

Peter fucked it up on purpose so that Louis would leave without asking any questions.

As soon as he turned his back, Peter gave Little Spidey the noogie of her life before May caught him and made him apologize for abusing her new favorite child.

The trip back into the courtroom was sobering because Peter found that he was the one who had to go up on the stand next. His stomach ached at the prospect.

It ached when he stood up to walk to the stand. It ached when he swore he’d tell the truth and nothing but the truth. It ached when he sat down and felt like it was gnawing a hole in itself when the judge asked him to state his name for the record.

“Peter Benjamin Parker.”

“And what is your profession, Mr. Parker?”

“I am a Lab Manager for Stark Industries.”

“Thank you.”

The judge allowed Foggy to question him first, which loosened the knot in his stomach just a little bit. He trusted Foggy. Franklin P. Nelson. He trusted both of them. Peter had seen Foggy cradle Matt’s bloody head in a hospital bed while his insides bled together; he’d told him, “you’re going to be alright” with conviction enough for both of them. He’d felt Foggy’s tight hug when he was eighteen and terrified that he might be anything but straight; he’d promised Peter that he was just fine the way he was.

Foggy was a lot like Spiderman in that way.

He saved people too.

He wasn’t going to let Peter fall.

“Mr. Parker, can you please explain for the jury what happened on the night of the incident which resulted in your hospitalization?” Foggy asked.

Peter explained. Foggy nodded.

“Do you think you can also explain to the jury any action previous to this which you think might have resulted in this incident?”

Which ones? The emails? Text messages? The death threats? The boxes he’d never opened? The sleep he’d fucking lost? The crippling, freezing panic he had in doing anything at all the night after he’d reached out that very first time?

“Four months ago, I started receiving aggressive messages from my college roommate,” he heard himself say.

“What was the name of this college roommate?” Foggy asked.

“Harry—Harold—Osborn.”

“And he sent you aggressive messages?”

“Yes.”

“Explain what you mean by aggressive, please.”

You can’t take a compliment.

You’re a fucking slut.

You don’t deserve to live.

“Name-calling,” Peter felt himself say, “The use of homophobic slurs, degrading comments about my body and intelligence, inappropriate insinuations about the relationship between myself and my boss.”

“And these were from?”

“Harry. All of the messages were signed by Harry. They came from his email addresses and  phone numbers.”

“Did the comments change over time, Mr. Parker? Or did they stay within the range of things you have just described.”

“They changed over time.”

“Could you please describe how they changed?”

“They became more aggressive. Harry told me what he wanted to do to me if he could. Sexually, physically—violently. Occasionally, I received death threats.”

“Thank you, Mr. Parker, I understand that this is difficult for you to talk about.”

Peter swallowed. The knot was tight, but he was getting used to it again. Like he always had. The human body is amazing. It assimilates to all kinds of states of being. It adapts. Consumes pain and throbbing pulses and burning eyes and makes that its new normal. Tells the brain that the way to deal with this is to clench the jaw and tip the head back and take deep breaths.

In. 1. 2. 3.

Out. 1. 2. 3.

Until the feeling passes for long enough to locate a distraction.

Eventually even the jaw clenching and head tipping become second nature. Anxiety becomes just another state of being. The body adapts. You are looking for a distraction. Always looking for a distraction.

“Mr. Parker, it is my understanding that you have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, is that correct?”

“Y-yes, sir. When I-I was eighteen.”

“If at any point in the proceedings, you begin to feel anxious, please let me or the judge know and we will take a break, is that alright?”

This is Foggy. Foggy won’t let you fall. Foggy’s swung and caught far bigger cases than yours.

“Yes, sir.”

“Peter, take a breath.”

He did.

“Good. How long have you known the defendant’s son?”

“We were assigned to be roommates in our freshmen year of college at CUNY. So, about seven, almost eight years.”

“And did you know him to be violent?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you notice if he had any stalking tendencies? Perhaps he was fixated on a person he was dating, or perhaps he spent excessive time reviewing someone’s social media?”

“No, sir, I did not. But I was also ill at this time. I left CUNY’s dorms after the first semester.”

“Thank you, Mr. Parker. So you two were only roommates for what, three or four months?”

“Yes.”

“And what was your relationship with Harry like?”

And so the questions went. Picking and prodding through everything he’d done with Harry. How they’d run back into each other. The visit to Stark Industries. The night of bad decisions. The gifts and the anxiety and the confrontation with Mr. Stark. The following consultation with lawyers. Wade. The whole nine fucking yards.

He was exhausted. He did not hyperventilate on the stand, though, and that made the knot a little proud. May wiped her eyes and her nose and held her chin high for him and, when he started to feel a little lost, she jerked her chin a little and he sat up and breathed deep. Little Spidey was also good to watch because she spent the whole time glowering at the back of Norman’s head.

Norman—Peter didn’t look at Norman.

He refused to.

He refused to give the man the satisfaction of seeing just how badly Peter’s cage had been rattled. He didn’t want to see the guy’s fucking smirk as he watched Peter shudder through all the shit that he’d done. He was probably proud of it. It probably turned him on in some sick fucking way.

He wished Mr. Stark had come to hold up those middle fingers. To list out every name he had for Norman. He had a lot of them. He had a whiteboard full of them which, if left unsupervised, he added to unrepentantly and had to hide when anyone from outside the company visited the lab.

“So after this date of yours, you realized that Harry wasn’t stalking you after all,” Foggy noted. Peter came back to Earth.

“Yes, sir.”

“And what gave you that idea?”

“I confronted Harry and he had no knowledge of anything I was talking about.”

“And what happened then?”

“I had an anxiety attack. The messages and packages kept coming. I couldn’t go to work. Mr. Stark found out about what had happened and assigned me a bodyguard. He said that because the packages and messages were coming to my work email and address, it was his legal responsibility to ensure that I received protection and accommodation.”

“Mr. Parker, do you know who was sending you these packages?”

What.

“Uh, no, sir. I assumed that they were sent from my stalker.”

“And did any of them have a return address?”

“No, sir.”

“Where there any details within any of the boxes, perhaps a shipping slip, which told you who had purchased the items?”

“I didn’t open any of the boxes,” Peter said.

“Why not?”

Why not? Because Matt thought they might be full of fucking anthrax.

“I was uh, scared of what was inside them.”

“Why?”

“Because whoever was stalking me was sending me death threats? And I didn’t want to accidently open a bomb or find a human hand or something?”

The jury shared a bunch of  horrified looks with each other.

Yeah, y’all. Same.

“I see. Well, on your behalf, Mr. Parker, the police have taken the liberty of opening one of the parcels for you. Were you aware of that?”

Holy fuck, were they dead?

“No, sir. Uh. When did that happen?”

“In the course of the investigation. Your honor, if I may present the items?”

Well, it wasn’t what Peter expected. It was a watch. A Rolex. Expensive as fuck. The receipt in the box said it was at least seven hundred bucks. Peter could not think of anything he would have been less likely to purchase for himself. His secret super-talent was breaking his webslingers, which were the only watch-like objects he owned. It was a goddamned miracle that he hadn’t fallen to his death yet, honestly.

“Mr. Parker, have you been in the business of looking for a watch lately?” Foggy asked him.

Peter leaned out of the stand to see the damn thing better.

“Uh, no. I don’t do watches, never have. I have a perfectly functioning phone.”

“Kids these days know nothing about style,” Foggy huffed, which made the jury laugh. “Well, despite your lack of appreciation for the better things in life, Mr. Parker, I can inform you that the police were able to track the purchaser of these materials through the receipt left in the box containing this gift. And interestingly enough, we found that the account which purchased this watch was an unverified merchant account with no name attached to it.”

No shit? Well fuck, and here Peter had thought that he and Matt and McDuffie had been building a case on minor terrorism or something.

Foggy brushed his fingers against the desk closest to him and addressed the jury.

“Ladies and gentlemen, given this morning’s testimony, I am now wondering whether the account used to purchase this watch is not the very same one used to transfer payment to Ms. Natchios for her services. And I’m sure that you are all wondering the same, therefore I’m pleased to say that Detective Juarez is currently doing us a favor and checking the accounts for both of these transactions as we speak. If it becomes apparent that the account is the same in both cases, then it follows that whoever controls that account both stalked and attempted to murder Mr. Parker. No further questions, your honor.”

Peter was ready for all that shit to be done, then and there, but the defense had other ideas. They held a conference over Norman’s cold, silent head, and ultimately agreed to send Veller up to the stand to question Peter. He gave Peter a once over when he reached his favorite stalking ground in front of the stand and then leveled a really awful smirk at him. He had the kind of face that didn’t smile enough for it to seem natural.

If it could have, the Spidey Sense would have hissed at him.

 “Mr. Parker,” he said like oil slick, “It is my understanding that you have been a long-time supporter of Stark Industries, is that true?”

Oh hell no. This is exactly what Foggy had said would happen all that time ago.

“Can you please define ‘long,’ sir?” Peter asked.

Get fucked, old man.

If he thought he was going to make Peter’s life difficult, he had another thing coming. Veller must have seen the new determination in his brow because he slowly tilted his head. Evaluating.

“Let me rephrase the question,” he said instead, still managing to sound like the kind of lawyer who showed up in daytime tv despite his fancy professorship, “How long have you worked for Stark Industries?”

“I’ve been employed by SI since my graduation from Cornell, sir.”

 “So about six months?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how about unofficially?”

Ha. Nice try, shithead.

“I have never been unofficially affiliated with Stark Industries,” he stated flatly. Veller scoffed.

“Mr. Parker, it is my understanding that you’ve interned at Stark Industries since you were a teenager, is that not correct?”

“Yes, sir,” Peter told him, “However, I was listed on every directory as exactly that. There are no unofficial internships or associations at Stark Industries.”

Veller did not appreciate the technicality. Peter didn’t fucking care.

“Right, Mr. Parker, my mistake. So you’ve been employed by Stark Industries for the last ten years or so in some capacity?”

“More or less,” Peter allowed. Veller hummed and started up his condescending pacing again.

“And in that time, would you say that you’ve developed an allegiance to the company?”

“I’m not sure I understand your question,” Peter said, purposefully obtuse, “I don’t feel an allegiance to anyone, sir.”

He wasn’t exactly lying. Peter Parker hadn’t pledged allegiance to any one and Peter Parker did not intend to start doing any of that shit any time soon.

Spiderman, though. Spiderman had a problem and that problem was called ‘teamwork.’ He had more alliances than he could fucking count at that point.

Veller grimaced.

“Perhaps let me explain myself a bit more clearly,” he said, “What I mean to ask is if you have any personal or professional aversion to the defendant or his business? Perhaps you take issue with the company’s scientific research or with Oscorp’s business structure?”

“I have an aversion to anyone who tries to kill me, Mr. Veller,” Peter informed him smoothly.

“And that is understandable,” Veller countered, “And would be even more understandable in this case if there was a specific motive linking yourself to my client. So please forgive me if I seem like I am asking strange questions. I simply want to know what potential linkages you might have to my client to help the jury see all possible motives for the charge. Do you have any idea what might link the two of you?”

 “Sorry, are you asking me for possible motives or links between myself and the defendant?”

“Both, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Peter watched him carefully.

“Well, I don’t know about motives, sir, but the defendant’s current lab director was my parent’s research partner,” he explained, “And besides this, as I’ve already said, the defendant’s son and I are acquaintances.”

“Was your parents’ research partner?” Veller repeated.

Wow. It was like he hadn’t even bothered doing his own research. If he had, he’d have known that he was walking right into a minefield he wasn’t coming back from.

Whatever. It wasn’t Peter’s job to put up warning signs here.

“Yes. Dr. Curt Connors published approximately six papers with my mother and father, Richard and Mary Parker.”

“I see, and what happened to end that partnership, Mr. Parker? Was there any bad blood between your parents and the defendant’s lab director?”

You dumbass.

“I wouldn’t know.”

The defense was thrown. They must have legitimately thought that they could just blame everything on Dr. Connors or some shit. And Peter totally got that. Dr. Connors was an easy scapegoat. He knew Peter. He had a stake in Peter’s family’s research. He’d definitely had a falling out with Peter’s dad and he was an unhinged terrorist who had no business walking the streets, as far as Peter was concerned. But was he some kind of grand orchestrator? Some kind of stalker? Nah. Dr. Connors was a fairly straightforward guy and an even more straightforward lizard. He wouldn’t stalk Peter, he’d just break down his door and try to eat him or something.

Matt, who’d probably heard every word of the defense’s panic, made a complicated expression and hid his apparent glee by leaning over and muttering something to Foggy that made him cover his mouth with the edge of his palm.

Veller recovered before the others on his team and did an admirable job trying to save the shitshow he’d just walked his team right into.

“I’m sorry, could you please explain this answer?”

Peter shrugged.

“I mean I wouldn’t know if there was any bad blood between my parents and Dr. Connors.”

The defense started whispering to each other again. They sounded like pages turning in a test center.

“Why wouldn’t you know?” Veller pressed.

“Because both my parents have been missing since I was two and a half years old and have been presumed dead since I was five,” Peter said offhandedly, “I was brought up by my aunt and uncle who weren’t exactly fully briefed on my parents’ research and careers, sir. I didn’t know who Dr. Connors was until I met him at Oscorp on a fieldtrip when I was fourteen, and even then, we didn’t speak for more than a minute at most.”

Technically the conversation he’d had with Connors in the sewer had been with the Lizard and, technically it had been screamed, so as far as Peter was concerned, that didn’t count as ‘speaking.’

“The only person who might have known if there was tension in that relationship was my uncle, who was, unfortunately, murdered the same year I met Dr. Connors,” he finished.

Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw one of the ladies on the jury put a hand on her chest and look at the guy next to her silently. He wondered if he hadn’t accidently stolen McDuffie’s future thunder by blabbing too early, but she seemed pleased over there at the table, so he decided that he was probably fine or at least forgiven. Veller tried to gain control of the situation again but was struggling. He’d fucked up. The jury was clearly on Peter’s side in this now, emotionally if nothing else. Veller stepped back to discuss with his co-counsels, but didn’t sit back down, so Peter seized the opportunity.

“I think I understand the connection you are trying to make here, Mr. Veller,” he said, “And I wish I could tell you what you want me to say. But unfortunately, I’m exactly where you are. I don’t know why the defendant would do this to me. I don’t know why he’s interested in me. The links between myself and him are tangential at best, to my mind at least. And I mean, I can say with confidence that I’m not here trying to slander Mr. Osborn on behalf of Stark Industries. Nor am I here trying to get back at him in some kind of round-a-bout vengeance for whatever happened to my mom and dad. I’m not even that mad at his kid anymore. All I know is that someone has been stalking me and that person tried to kill me and the police believe that Mr. Osborn was the one who did those things and his son believes that he did them, too, so what else am I supposed to think?”

McDuffie leaned over Peter’s empty seat to converse with Matt, and Matt tucked his still-red head up close against hers so no one would hear what they were saying. Foggy caught Peter watching them and gave him a bouncing little nod of approval. Veller’s lips went tight and, rather than responding to Peter, he turned around to refer back to his own team, one of whom really wanted his attention. He leaned forward and allowed this eager-beaver to voice his opinion and nodded.

He returned to his place in front of Peter.

“Mr. Parker, you referred just now to the defendant’s son saying something regarding his father to you, can you please repeat that?”

Peter glanced over at Matt and company. They all shrugged in various iterations. It was kind of hilarious.

“Yeah, uh. Harry told me that his dad wanted to kill me.”

“A bold statement,” Veller noted. Peter stared at him as much skepticism as he could muster.

“I mean, yeah?”

Veller grew more confident.

“What was Harold’s reasoning for such a claim?”

You really wanna go there man? He glanced back over to Team Law School and saw that Matt had started grinning with all his teeth. It was honestly unfair that he still had all of them after the shit he’d been through. Peter had two fake teeth wired into his skull for fuck’s sake, where was the justice in the world?

Peter sighed and took the manic smile for what it was.

“Harry told me that his dad thinks I’m Spiderman,” he said flatly, “He said that his dad is a guy called the Green Goblin, who’s trying to kill Spiderman. Ergo, sir. His dad is trying to kill me.”

There was an awkward silence during which Peter was pretty sure that the judge was wondering what the fuck she had done to deserve this case.

“That’s,” Veller started, but couldn’t finish. He looked miserably from his table, to the judge, to the prosecutor’s table as if someone over there would have an answer for him.

They didn’t.

Team Law School was suddenly on their absolute best behavior over at Peter’s table. No manic grins. No skeptical eyebrows. All three appeared to have dug out their designated ‘fascinating’ expressions for the occasion. They were apparently content to let Veller stew in a silence of his own making, so Peter followed their lead and waited for a question.

It didn’t come.

Veller was in a tough place, Peter could see that. He could throw Norman’s kid under the bus to get his client off. He could call Harry crazy. Say he’d had a mental break. That his client was innocent of all charges, that it was his son who’d orchestrated this whole thing. But if he did that, Harry was definitely going to be the next suspect and everything had his name on it, so there was absolutely no question that he’d be found guilty, at least of some pretty severe stalking charges. And while before, that probably wouldn’t have been a big deal, now, the press were sitting outside the courtroom door, foaming at the mouth for even the tiniest shred of detail.

If Harry took the fall, it would be in the papers—every paper—the second those doors opened, and it would be on Oscorp’s shoulders for the foreseeable future.

There was only one heir, after all.

On the other hand, if Veller didn’t condemn Harry, he would essentially have to allow that Harry had been in his right mind when he’d spoken to Peter; that he wouldn’t play around with accusations like that. And all that was as good as admitting that Norman legitimately believed that Peter was Spiderman in open court. And if the accounts came back as Matt and Foggy suspected they would, there was going to be some fairly undeniable proof he’d tried to kill Peter because of it.

That was the kind of shit that got people doped up on Haldol in a padded room for the rest of their lives.

Now, in Peter’s and Matt’s and Wade’s world, that Norman was the Green Goblin and the Green Goblin wanted to kill Spiderman just because he was Spiderman would and did make 100% sense. People tried to kill supers just because they felt threatened all the time. That shit was normal. That shit was expected. But they weren’t playing in that court right then. They were all playing normal people, the second anyone took a step out of line, they were all done for.

If the prof knew the truth, he knew he’d talked himself in a fucking corner.

And given his gaping and the intense bird conferencing going on over there, he definitely knew.

Peter almost found himself feeling a teensy bit sorry for the guy.

Almost.

Veller finally turned around. All of the other lawyers on his team nervously took their seats again. Peter tried to meet Norman’s eye, but, huh. Imagine that. He didn’t want to play ball anymore.

“I’m sure Harry must have been confused,” Veller tried, unable to keep the desperation out of his voice. Matt and Foggy jerked towards him at the exact same moment with the exact same ‘bitch, please’ expression.

Peter knew without looking that they were going to ask the judge to play the recording.

They asked the judge to play the recording.

The judge allowed it, visibly regretting every decision that had led her to that moment.

They played the recording. They played it all the way through Matt’s swearing and Foggy’s attempt to comfort him and it stopped at Harry’s, “I don’t understand, I’m not lying.”

You could have heard a pin drop in the echoing silence in the room after it switched off.

“N-no further questions, your honor,” Veller stammered. He sat down.

The judge called for a fucking break. Thank Jesus.

Chapter Text

Peter needed about six cups of herbal tea and half an hour of meditation the second he got off the stand.

He got neither.

He got his phone blowing up with Ned’s and MJ’s texts demanding to know if he was okay and how things were going. He got his ribs cracked in a hug from McDuffie. And he got Aunt May locking him in her arms and murmuring how brave he was and how sorry she was that he had to go through that against the side of his neck.

And it was a lot, if he was honest.

Too much.

He gently pulled away from May, promising her that he was alright, and took the next ten minutes to go hide in a little alcove two hallways down from the courtroom he was stationed in. He clenched his fists and took deep breaths and tried to find his center again.

His hands wanted to shake and his throat wanted to close and, even though he knew he was winning here, his stomach panged in anguish. He hugged it and squatted down to press his forehead into his knees.

Only two more hours. He only had two more hours. Elektra and the accounts. That was all. Matt had scampered off as soon as the doors opened to go get the results from the police. Elektra was Matt’s sister. He was in total control of the situation. And if he wasn’t, Foggy and McDuffie had their hands outstretched in a safety-net of sheer legal know-how to catch whatever fell through.

Things were going to be okay.

He was fine.

It wasn’t his fault.

Things were going to be okay.

Peter didn’t hear Wade approach, but his bones popped when he crouched down next to him and Peter jumped. Wade put a hand on his head to keep him down.

“You’re doing great, buttercup,” he said lowly. “Sticking it to the man and everything. Red says things are going exactly as they should be.”

Peter found he had nothing to say, even though the weight of Wade’s hand was a bit grounding. He just wanted it to be over. He just wanted everything to be quiet and still and not tense for a while. He wanted to go jump off a skyscraper, to let his limbs go and let gravity take up the burden for him for a few seconds.

“Pete, you’re gonna be just fine,” Wade told him.

He nodded to his knees.

There was a scuffle and a shout in the hallway which brought both of them out of the quiet. Wade took his hand off Peter’s head to see what was up. Peter looked up at the release of pressure just in time to witness Matt hit the ground in the main hallway.

His glasses shattered as they skittered away and Norman was on him with a fist raised above his head. And there was the crack of an impact followed by another. Someone started shouting and Peter and Wade were both leaping out of their mutual crouches before it even properly registered in Peter’s head what was happening.

Norman had landed the first hit next to Matt’s eye and had then launched into a series of more in the same area and Matt, in public and startled at the onslaught, could only throw up his arms to protect his face. He managed to land a discreet and strategic kick to Norman’s knee which dropped the guy right on top of him, too close to his face and chest for him to connect another fist.

Three security guards and half of Norman’s defense team rushed forward, but Peter could see in a second that whatever the fuck was about to happen next was not going to be pretty. He jerked forward and choked. Jerked again to be thrown behind Wade, hard enough to send him stumbling for a second.

Wade shot him a dangerous look over his shoulder that Peter’s years of experience translated to ‘do not fucking move.’ Without saying a word, he took two steps and reached right in the mass of people; he ripped Norman out of the group, directly off of Matt, by the back of his tailored suit, and dragged him over to the nearest wall.

He slammed Norman’s back against it, hard enough to crack his head.

“You wanna calm the fuck down, pal?” he asked with zero inflection in his voice.

Norman said something to him which Peter couldn’t hear because he was running over to Matt, who was coughing, recovering from the hands which had found their way to his throat under the throng of people. He didn’t answer Peter’s “Are you okay?”s. He just shook his head and swallowed several times. Touched his face gingerly, feeling for broken or fractured bones in his cheek. His lip was bleeding and blood was pouring out of his nose, staining his otherwise pristine collar. He seemed shocked more than anything, not too badly hurt, so Peter pressed his own sleeve against his nose to help staunch the worst of the bleeding.

Foggy’s voice suddenly rang out over everyone’s heads and he shoved his way through the crowd to drop down next to Peter. He batted Peter’s hand away from Matt’s face and smoothed thumbs over it, temple to chin, wincing when one of them came away bloody. He had tissues in his pocket which he dug out and pressed to Matt’s nose and told him to hold while he felt the back of his head for swelling. McDuffie managed to squirm her way over, too. Her shoulder brushed Peter’s when she knelt for a second next to Foggy. Then in a flash, she was up on her feet, rounding viciously on the group of lawyers standing, horrified, in the crowd behind her.

“This is a court of law,” she shouted, not even a suggestion of a break in her voice, “And you can’t even control your client? What the fuck kind of lawyers are you? We’re pressing charges, here and now. Assault. Now. Where is the fucking judge?”

“You have no right to hold my client,” Professor Veller snapped back with a furious finger at Wade.

“Your client just assaulted my fucking partner,” McDuffie roared back, “And you’re a motherfucking witness to it, as is everyone else in this goddamned hallway, you piece of shit. Mr. Wilson is acting in Matthew’s defense, so you let me know when you’re ready to pull your fucking head out of your ass. It’s either now or in front of a fucking jury. Security, we need an officer.”

“We don’t—” one of the sharks sputtered to the guard behind him.

“NOW,” McDuffie shouted over him. The security guards were much more scared of her than they were of the other guy and so started radioing in.

But then someone started laughing.

Bone-chilling laughing.

Peter closed his eyes and sucked in a breath because he didn’t want to—he couldn’t deal with this shit. Not here. Not now.

Norman had lost it, had absolutely fucking lost his goddamned mind. He wasn’t resisting Wade’s grip at his neck, he was leaning into it, wrapping his hands around Wade’s wrist and forearm. Nearly petting it. Cackling, hard and long and shrill. The Spidey Sense shivered and Peter saw Matt’s eyes darting around, wincing hard, trying to find the source of the noise that was grating on his ears.

Peter made to stand, but Matt reached out and caught ahold of his sleeve, dug his fingers in deep to keep him close. A sign to stay still. Do nothing. Wait.

“Wade, let him go,” Matt shouted above the guy’s own ruckus.

“You outta your mind?” Wade demanded without looking back at them. Norman was practically oozing down his arm.

Matt let go of Peter’s sleeve and pushed himself up.

“No. Let him go.”

Wade didn’t want to. His shoulders stayed tense for a long ten seconds.

Despite all their fussing and bickering, he was fiercely protective of Matt, and Peter remembered noticing a few times, even as a kid, Wade checking in with Matt after something in the work brought his blindness front and center. Usually it wasn’t a big deal and Matt shrugged or joked it off. Peter had always wondered if it was more rude to point it out or to ignore it. Wade told him once that he should just ask, but he’d never known how to.

Wade finally relented when the ten seconds were up, but he didn’t go gently. He shoved Norman against the wall hard and snarled in his face before dropping his grip and backing off. He kept himself between Norman and the crowd. Muscles tense and coiled in his shoulders. Norman continued to laugh, horribly, and in the absence of Wade’s arm, pressed himself up against the wall as if he couldn’t stand on his own.

“I’m not scared of you, Mr. Osborn,” Matt announced over the noise. Norman’s cackling died off slowly. With the abatement of the sound, Peter finally heard the shuttering of cameras and realized that they were all surrounded by the fucking press. They’d been surrounded by the press the whole fucking time, dear Jesus.

“I won’t be intimidated into dropping this case,” Matt told him firmly when Norman had trailed off and had started rocking his back against the wall. “And I won’t let people walk out of here thinking you’ve gone insane, sir. So, as a professional defense attorney, it is my advice to you to get your act together and take what you’ve got coming with a little dignity. Let’s go.”

Matt reached down and scraped his fingers against the floor to scoop up a manila envelope. He didn’t bother chasing the shards of red glass that had once been his shield. Foggy held out an elbow and he took it. McDuffie leaned down to pick up Matt’s cane as they walked away; she glared at Norman over her shoulder and grabbed Peter’s elbow. She pulled him with her back into the courtroom.

As soon as they were out of sight of the cameras Matt made a furious noise ahead of Peter. Foggy pulled his elbow out of his grip to wrap it around his waist and murmur to him softly.

“He’s pissing me off,” Matt growled, just loud enough for Peter to hear it.

“I know,” Foggy soothed.

“I wanna fucking fight him.”

“I know.”

“I wanna break his motherfucking arms.”

“You’re doing so well, Matty. Just a little longer.”

Yeah, just a little longer.

The judge was not happy to see Matt’s bloody, glasses-less face. She demanded an explanation and Matt refused to give it to her, not trusting himself to contain his rage. His hands were shaking minutely next to Peter. Foggy stood up and spoke on his behalf. He called Matt “my husband” instead of “my partner” in front of both judge and jury and they responded, to Peter’s gratification, with scandalized expressions directed at the defense.

“Is this true?” the judge demanded of the defense.

Eventually one of the sharks had to speak up and confirm it. The security guards at the door confirmed it as well.

The judge leveled an outraged expression at Norman.

“Would you like to explain yourself, Mr. Osborn?” she asked in a tone which left no room for discussion.

“No, your honor,” he said simply. All traces of his outburst had vanished. Peter found that he hated him even more than he already had.

“Unfortunate,” the judge said, “As I will have to hold you in contempt of court unless you can provide me with an exceptional reason to strike the plaintiff’s attorney—the plaintiff’s blind attorney—yards from this courtroom. Now is your chance, Mr. Osborn.”

“I’m afraid I cannot provide such a reason,” he said, coolly.

Peter’s hands clutched at his knees on their own volition.

God.

Harry hadn’t been lying on that at least. His dad really was insane. Two-faced. Untrustworthy. Possibly a future terrorist.

Matt clenched his hands into fists hard enough that Peter could see the veins in his knuckles. He carefully moved them from the table to his lap.

It was one thing to be hit by a guy out for revenge. It was another thing to be hit by that guy and to have to just fucking take it. When Matt was Matt Murdock, he had to just fucking take a whole lot of shit. And he had to swallow down his pride and his talent and his awareness of every weakness in a person’s body to do it.

It was no wonder he needed Daredevil. No, actually, it was no wonder he became Daredevil, with that kind of life, day in and day out.

Foggy noticed Matt glaring dead ahead and laced an arm through his elbow. He twisted his head to murmur to Matt softly. A tiny bit of tension left Matt’s shoulders and he let his glare drop and wander away from the judge.

The judge held Norman in contempt and said that she was greatly displeased with his behavior. She asked Matt if he required medical aid and when he started to get too furious to answer to what he perceived to be an unconscious addition of insult to injury, Foggy did on his behalf again.

The judge watched him carefully and then wrote something down.

McDuffie asked to submit the report on the accounts that Matt had picked up to evidence. The judge allowed it.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” McDuffie said, residually angry and not bothering to hide it, “The reason the defendant is unable to provide an exceptional reason for his assault on my partner is because he would have to admit that he knew what the reports retrieved by my partner would reveal. And that is that the account used to transfer payment to Ms. Natchios and the account used to purchase the watch sent to my client by his stalker are, in fact, one and the same.”

Oh, thank Jesus.

Peter could practically feel himself deflate.

“And, as myself and my co-counsels have indicated earlier, the person who owned this account are closely associated with Oscorp, the defendant’s business. Given the defendant’s reaction to this information, it would appear that he has a particular interest in not allowing this information to come to light, which I am sure Ms. Natchios will further illuminate for us all.”

McDuffie sat down and Peter could practically feel the heat of her indignation. The judge asked the defense if they had anything they’d like to add.

They didn’t.

Elektra entered the room with a swagger and a smile. It was kind of unfair that she could make even an orange jumpsuit look like a fashion choice.

She sauntered up to the witness stand and waited patiently while the officers with her unlocked her handcuffs. She watched them for a second and then looked up at the tables. Her eyes ran over Peter; she raised a judgmental eyebrow at his suit. He glanced down at it self-consciously and found it fine.

She smirked for having tricked him into looking and then glanced at Matt to tease more.

All expression dropped right off her face upon seeing the blood drying on Matt’s and Peter could have sworn the temperature in the room dropped. He shivered. The Spidey Sense cringed. Elektra looked away, back at the guys in front of her who had just unclicked the handcuffs.

She allowed herself to be led up to the stand. She didn’t regain her playful face, not even a little.

Huh.

So that’s what loyalty looked like in those two’s world. 

Cool, cool, cool.

She was going to fucking destroy the defense.

She fucking destroyed the defense.

Foggy, the same guy who Peter was pretty sure wanted to suffocate Elektra in her sleep, set their differences aside long enough to stand up to question her. He and she went through questions so fast it felt like a quick-fire round in a game show.

“Ms. Natchios, please explain your family background.”

“Father was the Greek ambassador on behalf of the United States from my birth to his death. Mother was a housewife, died in labor.”

“So your national status is?”

“I have dual citizenship with Greece and the United States.”

“Profession?”

“Assassin.”

“How do you know Mr. Parker?”

“I was hired by the man at the defense’s table to murder and mutilate Mr. Parker.”

“How much were you paid for this?”

“Fifty thousand dollars.”

“Did you make any agreements or have any contact with anyone in the defendant’s family besides himself?”

“No on both counts.”

“Were you hired or paid by anyone on the plaintiff’s counsel to seek out the defendant’s patronage?”

“No. I’ve discussed nothing of the like with the plaintiff’s counsel.”

Well, yeah. Mostly because she and Matt didn’t need to talk to communicate, apparently.

“How do you know Mr. Osborn?” Foggy asked.

“A representative of Mr. Osborn contacted me regarding an advertisement of my services. I agreed to a meeting. The representative took me to meet Mr. Osborn who outlined his requirements and offered me $40k. I negotiated to $50k. I drew up an agreement, and the defendant and myself signed this document. He transferred the money to my account and I went to go do the job.”

“The money was transferred to you prior to the job?”

“Yes.”

“Who transferred it? Do you remember the account number or name?”

Elektra cut her eyes at Foggy.

“I didn’t look. We don’t ask these kinds of questions in my business, Mr. Nelson.”

“But you do keep records of your jobs, Ms. Natchios?”

Elektra huffed.

“I am the daughter of an ambassador. I worked on his behalf and in other types of business for many years before my current gig; I know a thing or two about record keeping. But if you want specifics, then yes. I keep records and require wet signatures for any hit more than 10k. Anything less than that and my bank doesn’t ask too many questions. Anything more than that, and they get ideas in their heads that the money isn’t mine, honestly earned.”

“I see,” Foggy said. “And you are absolutely positive that the man who hired you to “murder and mutilate” Mr. Parker is the defendant? His son, for example, did not act on his behalf—as his representative or otherwise?”

“Listen,” Elektra said, a bit more harshly than anything else she had so far, “I get that people think that assassins are morons with bigger guns than brains, but I’m sorry, that’s just not how it works. You heard of the Punisher? Would you call him stupid? No. No one can avoid the feds for as long as he has without having a solid brain on them. Even Wilson over there in the mask isn’t an idiot. He’s just playing the part to fool all you civvies, and boy howdy, isn’t it working. I am not mistaken, Mr. Nelson. There is no room for mistakes in my business and there are no second chances, so you’ll all understand that when I say I generally do my best to reduce as much risk as possible, I actually do it.”

She turned her icy stare over to the defense.

“The man who hired me was Norman Osborn,” she said, “And I know it was Norman Osborn because I met him in his office at Oscorp at 8pm two weeks prior to this day. I have his signature and the date on my documents, which, it is my understanding, have been submitted to evidence. I did not meet his son, I’m not interested in his son, and I’ve never been interested in his son. I first spoke to Mr. Parker the night I tried to put his lights out and I haven’t had contact with him, anyone on his defense, or anyone associated with him since. You can check my facility’s security cameras. You can check the visitor’s cameras. And so I’m gonna say it one last time before I start to get a little angry, Mr. Nelson, Norman Osborn, the man with the brown hair sitting at the defendant’s table, paid me $50k to murder and mutilate Mr. Peter Benjamin Parker, the young man sitting at the plaintiff’s table, approximately two weeks ago. Norman Osborn specifically asked me to make it hurt and he specifically told me he wanted Mr. Parker dead because he was, and I quote ‘making things difficult for me,’ unquote. I don’t know what exactly that refers to and it’s not my job to care. So I don’t. Do you have any other questions, Mr. Nelson?”

Foggy met her stare with his own.

“No, Ms. Natchios, thank you. No further questions, your honor.”

Foggy sat down, but Elektra kept on watching him. Her eyes threatened him with unspoken questions. ‘What happened?’ ‘How could you let this happen?’ ‘Who did it?’ ‘Tell me who did it so I can strangle them where they sit.’

Foggy looked away. Matt folded his hands on the desk next to Peter. His jacket sleeve brushed Peter’s and he must have tuned in to his and Elektra’s weird-ass fucking radio frequency or something, because as soon as his fingers touched each other, Elektra snapped her attention to him instead of Foggy and then turned livid, wide eyes over to Norman. She was just about glowing with hate.

The defense was understandably terrified to say anything. Peter saw Professor Veller turn to his colleagues and shake his head.

C’mon y’all, you gotta at least try.

Nose goes it or something.

The weakest link was selected. The earlier eager-beaver and future murder victim threw his shoulders back and stalked over to the witness stand.

“Ms. Natchios,” he proclaimed like a kid who’d watched Hamilton once and decided that that was how lawyers were, “Is it true that you have ties to someone on the plaintiff’s counsel?”

Elektra was evidently trying to decide if she had enough string at her disposal to tie the fucker’s feet to his head.

“I do,” she said smoothly.

The idiot grinned at her, proud of the admission.

“Can you please elaborate?” he asked.

Elektra looked him up and down slowly before answering. He was either too wrapped up in his own brilliance or too fucking stupid to understand that she was pinpointing every one of his sensitive spots for future reference.

“Matthew Murdock and I dated for six months when we both attended Columbia University for law,” she noted.

This set the audiences whispering. The sharks didn’t want to be too optimistic, however, and kept their necks bent.

“Would you consider that relationship to have been serious, Ms. Natchios?” the young shark asked.

She waited until he met her eyes so she could lean forward and say: “Depends on your definition of serious. I tried to have Matthew murder someone with me while we were dating, but he didn’t go for it. Turns out we had and continue to have insurmountable differences over what ‘good’ and ‘fun’ mean.”

The audience and the jury didn’t appear to know what to make of this line of questioning, interesting as it was.

“But you and Mr. Murdock have stayed in contact since then, is that correct?” the young guy asked.

Elektra raised an eyebrow.

“I mean, since he found God again and got married and left the city? No. He doesn’t write. He doesn’t call. You might even say he’s been avoiding me.“ She gave Matt an accusatory look that Peter wasn’t entirely convinced wasn’t genuine. Then she swiveled back to the young guy expectantly.

She waited.

He sweated.

She leaned forward and leaned her chin onto her laced fingers.

He obviously hadn’t planned this far ahead. He cleared his throat.

“Did you want me to tell you about our sex life back then or?” Elektra offered.

“NO,” the guy blurted out, “No. Sorry. Uh. Ms. Natchios, did you and Mr. Murdock ever speak about anything regarding this case?”

She huffed in amusement.

“No, I’ve already said this. And Mr.?”

“Jacobs.”

“Mr. Jacobs, we appear to be getting off track. The only briefing I received from anyone in this room came from your client, and those were my marching orders. Now, I know it’s not my job to tell you what to do around here, but I’m pretty certain you’re supposed to poke holes in my story. And honey, you’re not doing a great job of it. Partially because you’re just not good at what you do, despite that fancy suit you’ve got on. But mostly because my story is true and I have no reason to lie on behalf of Parker over there. If I really knew what was good for me, I’d be testifying against Parker actually. I’d be saying I never met with Norman Osborn. Never even heard of the guy. Certainly didn’t get paid by him, and didn’t lay a finger on Parker, either. That was all Summers, you know, the guy the police couldn’t interview? Mr. I’m-from-the-future? Now, me? I’m innocent, your honor, I’m being framed by the plaintiff and his legal counsel, who may or may not have a grudge against me.” Her face lost more expression with every word, “But that’s not what I’m saying, is it, Mr. Jacobs?”

Jacobs was sweating bullets over there. He edged back towards his team and they tried to advise him, but Peter knew the second the only gal on the team put her head in her hands that the nightmare was over.

Jacobs looked mournfully over to the judge.

“No further questions, you honor,” he said in despair.

Chapter Text

Case fucking closed.

Norman Osborn met the fury of a jury who didn’t even bat an eye at his team’s last ditch insanity plea.

Yeah, no. Not with the blood still drying on Matt’s collar in front of them. Premeditation was premeditation, it turned out.  

The press went fucking wild. The second Peter set foot outside the courthouse, he was found himself and half his defense and party swept into SI security so as to protect them from the onslaught of the public. Everyone except Wade, who was trailing behind, tapping on camera lenses in fascination instead of answering anyone’s questions. Peter looked over his shoulder to see him pinning one of his boutonnieres on a tiny girl in her mama’s arms who was mesmerized by him.

Matt noticed what was going on and snapped back at him to get his ass in gear, but it was too late. The baby had already latched onto him to Wade’s horror and the mama’s shock.

Foggy snickered and Matt sighed in exhaustion. He shook his head at Wade’s calls for help and pushed Peter forward with a hand on his back.

“He made that fucking bed,” he grumbled, “Let him lie in it.”

Peter wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be feeling, but what he was feeling was a kind of emptiness. A quiet. A solitude.

Wade had finally gone home--practically skipped home. Dom and Cable apparently had a new job for him, one which did not involve sitting in a stuffy courtroom for hours at a time and which involved that which was nearest and dearest to his heart: a pile of explosives.

He crushed Peter in a hug before he left.

“I’m so proud of you, baby boy,” he sang, swinging Peter from side to side like a fucking ragdoll. “My l’il Pete, all grown up. Wearing suits and going to court and everything.”

He suddenly froze. Peter was dying. Peter could not feel the ground beneath his feet.

“Don’t you fucking become Red now,” Wade warned sharply. He dropped Peter so he could shake a finger in his face. “He is boring and no fun, and you, Peter, are none of those things.”

“I’ll try?” he gasped/promised.

Wade was pleased. He patted his head.

“No more nice boys for a minute either,” he decided. “They’re bad for you. Try bad boys. Or bad girls. Or, you know what, bad people in general—just make sure they’re poor this time, okay?”  

Wade Wilson’s advice for the lonely: just make sure they’re poor, alright?

“Will do, Wade,” he promised.

And then Wade was off to the wind once again and Peter’s apartment felt much bigger than it was. No one was blowing up his phone. His email was silent. The police had taken all the packages and letters outside his door.

He had an empty house.

So he left it.

Ned was insistent that the new Star Wars game was better than the old one and he was so fucking wrong it was painful. And that wasn’t even the booze talking.

MJ snorted at them both and carried on texting one of her work friends who was allegedly not a friend, rather someone who had 20% of a human brain and was capable of decent human speech. She jerked the phone away when Peter tried to lean over to determine the name of this human brain.

“Get fucked, Parker.”

“You have a cruuuuush,” Peter sang.

She gave him wide eyes and he retreated to smash himself up against Ned for protection. Ned did not acknowledge him.

“A cruuuush,” Peter whispered in MJ’s direction.

She stood up and he didn’t have time to jump out the window.

“You seem a lot happier,” Little Spidey noticed, swinging her legs off the side of their perch. Peter grinned at her through the mask. It was too cold to take off the masks up as high as they were. The kind of cold and windy that made Peter irrationally want ice cream.

“I’ve slept more than four hours every night this week,” he said proudly.

Little Spidey’s mask stayed still the way it did when she was searching for the right answer to a fucking stupid question. Peter could only imagine her customer service face.

“I want a pink suit,” she announced instead.

“Pink?” he repeated.

“Yeah, pink.”

“Why? What’s wrong with red?”

“My sister thinks pink is cooler,” Little Spidey pointed out reasonably.

Peter stared at her in horror.

“You told your sister??”

Little Spidey gave him a flat look and then sighed.

“She’s eight and she digs through my shit. I didn’t tell her, but now I’m in her debt so she doesn’t tell Mimi or Mom.”

What the fuck.

“What’s a Mimi?”

“My sister.”

What the fuck.

“You have two?”

Little Spidey snorted at him and sat on her hands.

“Three.”

“Holy fuck.”

“And a brother.”

“OH My GOD.”

She laughed out loud.

“It’s tough being an only child, isn’t it, big guy?”

“Three?” Matt clarified in horror.

“And a brother,” Peter told him.

“Oh my god.”

“That’s exactly what I said.”

Fogs and McDuffie had run off with Karen for a last-minute dash through the city before they left for the one in the other bay. Something about finding a certain brand of mustard they couldn’t live without. Matt opted out of this mission. He’d apparently had a chat with Elektra and spent some time at his old gym instead.

Elektra refused all legal aid. She said she had something exciting cooking and she would be damned before Matt ruined it for her.

“Is she becoming like, a mob boss?”

Matt weighed the idea in his head.

“Ehn. No, that’s not really her style. If anything, I’d say the other way. She’s probably made friends with some mob bosses.”

“Dude, how are you not worried about her?”

Matt propped his chin on the heel of his palm and shrugged.

“This isn’t the first time she’s been to prison. Ain’t the first time she’ll escape it either. She’s got enough money and guns and guts to handle herself without me just fine.”

Oh, so escape was imminent then. Alright, that was cool.

“Also she’s a bitch and she bites me every time she gets out. Every time. And, like, hard. So the farther I am from her the better.”

What the fuck. Who were these fucking people?

“How did you guys even meet?”

Matt cringed and hid in his coffee.

“I’m gonna have flashbacks,” he mumbled.

Peter went back to work the next Monday and nearly leapt up onto the ceiling at the rattle and snap of thirty poppers going off upon his arrival to the breakroom.

His team sang him a rousing rendition of Ding Dong the Witch is Dead for a good minute and a half before Mr. Stark ripped open the door to the breakroom to find the source of the noise interrupting his meeting with Lab 41’s team. Everyone scattered. Peter managed to extract his head from his shoulders to smile sheepishly at Mr. Stark.

“I guess they missed me?” he offered.

Mr. Stark gazed heavenward. Well. Lobby-ward.

“We are having visitors never again,” he declared. He took in the confetti littered all over the tables and floor. “No parties, either.”

Peter waited until he was halfway down the hall before calling, “Yessir, Scrooge, sir” at his back.

His team cheered him on from the lab doors as he gunned it for the elevator with Mr. Stark right on his heels.

Peter got news that Norman Osborn had lost his goddamn mind and killed two guards in his cell. He had a long, hard think in his office chair about the fact that this was the same guy who spent months sending Peter fucking horrible messages and who’d gotten his hands around Matt’s throat.

He wanted to text Harry to make sure he was okay, but then again.

No.

He didn’t have to do that.

This wasn’t his fault.

He had nothing to do with this.

He was fine.

SM: DD, did you hear the news?

DD: I WANT TO USE THE EMOJIS

SM: uh what

DD: Fogs says there’s one with sunglasses

DD: and that’s me right now and I WANT IT

DD: someone post it for me

S2: here you go

S2: [sunglasses emoji]

DD: yes thank you tiny monstrous one, I can die in peace now

SM: so you’re taking this well

DD: well yeah. He’s going to get out eventually so we ought to celebrate the small victories

DD: also we should probably start making plans for how to deal with the Green Goblin soon-ish. Any suggestions?

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): I have sixteen

SM: no bombs

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): I have twelve

S4: I have 1!

S3: I have a tentative 2.

S2: does anyone know how to change a tire?

D2: yes

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): NO

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): FOCUS DAVID DO YOU HAVE A PLAN OR NOT

D2: yes?

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): how many

D2: I dunno, 2 off the top of my head

DP (´｡✪ω✪｡´): allowed. Little Spidey, what tire do you need changed?

DD: DON’T TRUST HIM CHILD

Well, onwards and upwards, Peter figured.