*

it was fall of his freshman year of college when peter parker felt a change in his life.

after he lost everything, he had been down for so long. he didn’t want to label it as depressed, he tried to stay positive for aunt may. but every day he wondered why.

until he met you.

you were studying a different major then him, but you both shared the same minor. it was until the first time he came late to a lecture that he noticed you.

after getting frowned upon by the professor, the only seat that was available was next to you.

you could tell by the look on his face that it was a rough morning, so you shared your coffee roll with him.

that was the start of something new.

peter felt like a helpless fourteen year old again. he actually tried to look nice just to see you.

you didn’t expect honesty, or timely fashion, all you wanted was someone to talk too.

you didn’t talk much, either. but peter didn’t mind, he actually found you even more fascinating for that. and he was happy when you finally spoke more to him.

and he was absolutely smitten.

he didnt know what he felt about mj anymore, but slowly that didn’t matter when you came.

when you figured out he was spiderman, he panicked, having the fear that everything that happened last year would happen again.

but you assured him that it was different this time, and if push comes to shove you would believe him.

“professor smith is so annoying! he always has something to say just to target me.” he said, currently he was in your dorm studying for semester finals.

you chuckled, throwing a paper ball at him.

“hey! what was that for?” he said.

“you needed to be knocked out of your anger.” you said softly, shutting your laptop after finishing your essay.

“how do you finish so easily?!” he said in shock.

you shrugged, then laid down on your bed. letting out a sigh you scroll on your phone.

peter looks up at you, admiring your features. he eventually looks away realizing he was being creepy. but he couldn’t help it.

he webs your phone out your hands to catch your attention.

“why are you always on your phone when your not studying?”

“i have so much hobbies my screen time is usually low.” you say.

“yeah but still, why be on your phone when im here.” peter says with a cocky tone.

“because your not entertaining.” you say.

“do i have to be entertaining for you to like me?” he says.

“i already do like you.” you say, the words coming up like vomit.

“what?” he says, face immediately heating up.

“what?” you mock him, hiding your flustered expression you throw your pillow at him.

“hey!” he laughs, then webbing you off your bed right on top him.

once your stable your lips crash together, peter felt a spark that he hadn’t felt in forever.

pulling away you look at him, chuckling at his flustered expression

“so you like me back?”

“isn’t it obvious..” he says shyly, making you pecker him in more kisses

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『••✎••』

This was it. The crushing pressure of his hand around your throat was the last thing you were going to feel. Your world, which just ten minutes ago had been filled with the mundane concern of cold fries and a possibly sulking Peter Parker, had narrowed to a single, violent point.

You were going to die here. In this mess of a room covered in... webs? Your frantic, oxygen-starved brain couldn't quite process anything beyond the primal terror screaming through your veins. To think, the worst thing you'd anticipated was Peter giving you the silent treatment for being late. You pictured his familiar pout, the way he'd avoid your eyes while you apologized, the eventual softening of his features when you offered him the milkshake you'd bought as a peace offering.

But this… this was a nightmare. A waking, breath-stealing nightmare.

You knew something was wrong when you found the door unlocked yet so difficult to push open. When it finally yielded, it was like breaking through a thick, gossamer membrane. The sight had made your stomach drop. The apartment wasn't just messy; it was cocooned. Shimmering white strands of webbing draped over everything—his desk, the window, the ceiling, the floor. They were beautiful in a horrifying way, like a spider's larder, catching the dim light from the city outside. Panic, cold and sharp, had begun to prick at you.

And then you saw him. Slumped in his desk chair, head bowed. You hadn't even registered the red-and-blue suit at first. All you saw was blood. A dark, tacky mat of it in his hair, stark against the pale skin of his temple, a trail of it snaking down his cheek. Your own blood turned to ice. The food—the greasy burger, the cold fries, the melting milkshake—all forgotten the moment your eyes landed on that crimson stain.

You had never run a day in your life, not even to catch that missed subway the fateful evening you met him, but when he wasn’t responding to your frantic calls, you rushed to his side. Your hands shook, your breath catching in ragged sobs. You reached out, your fingers hovering over the nasty gash, terrified to touch it, terrified of what it meant.

In his unresponsiveness and your hesitation, the world slowed to a near-standstill. You had no idea how much time had passed before he snapped upward.

His head lifted with an unnatural, whip-like speed. No slow rousing from unconsciousness. Just a sudden, violent reanimation. And his eyes... God, his eyes. The warm brown irises you knew, the ones that crinkled at the corners when he smiled, were gone. In their place were two vast, inky pools of black, devoid of humanity, devoid of recognition. Pure predatory instinct.

You didn't even have time to scream. You barely had time to process that his apartment looked straight out of a horror movie and he was dressed in some kind of... costume... before you were flying.

No, he was flying. In a blur of motion, he was out of the chair and on you. You hit the wall with a jarring thud that knocked the wind from your lungs, your head cracking against the plaster. Before you could even register the pain, a hand was around your throat. His grip was like iron, impossibly strong, his long fingers completely encircling your neck. The pressure was instant and absolute, cutting off your airway with terrifying efficiency.

Your hands flew up, scrabbling at his forearm, at his wrist. You might as well have been clawing at steel for all the good it did. Your feet dangled uselessly, kicking against the wall. The room swam in a haze of gray spots and flashing lights. Sounds became muffled, a dull ringing in your ears replacing the panicked, desperate gasps for air your body was making.

And so, here you were. Trapped in the gaze of those abyssal eyes and the crushing grip of the boy you knew. The boy who made dumb jokes and shared his earbuds with you on park benches. Death was a cold, impersonal thing. But dying at his hands, by the strength you never knew he possessed? That was a special kind of hell.

The blackness was closing in, a velvet curtain being drawn around your vision. A strange, calm lethargy began to seep into your limbs. The fight was draining out of you. Your body was giving up. But your mind, in its last few seconds of lucidity, refused. It clung to a single, desperate hope.

And that hope was the size of a little green mug you’d painted with him at a pottery class. You saw it resting on his desk, a splash of clumsy, cheerful color in the dim, web-draped room.

It was your last shot.

With the final ounce of strength you could muster, you went limp for a second, gathering yourself, and then slammed your knee into his abdomen with all the force you could manage from your awkward position. It wasn’t enough to get him to release you, not even close, but you didn’t need it to be. You just needed him to flinch. To break that terrifying, empty focus for a fraction of a second.

To have enough time to reach out your left hand.

Your fingers, numb and clumsy, fumbled for the mug. Your index finger brushed against its cool, painted surface. The sensation jolted through you, a grounding anchor in the storm of your own demise. You hooked your fingers around the handle and swung.

The mug connected with the side of his head with a sickening crack of ceramic on skull. The green mug, painted with lopsided sunshines and your initials intertwined with his, shattered into a dozen pieces.

The effect was instantaneous.

The crushing pressure on your throat vanished. You dropped like a sack of potatoes, your body a dead weight on the floor. Air—sweet and glorious and painful—rushed into your oxygen-deprived lungs in a desperate, ragged gasp. You collapsed onto your hands and knees, coughing violently, your throat burning as if you’d swallowed fire. Each breath was a struggle, a sharp, agonizing pull against the bruised cartilage of your trachea.

Through the haze of tears and oxygen deprivation, you heard a sound. A groan. And it reminded you that he hadn’t made a single noise the entire time he was attacking you—no grunts of exertion, no sounds of effort. It had been a silent, terrifyingly efficient assault.

You looked up.

Peter was stumbling back, one hand flying to the very spot where the mug had struck him—the gash you’d seen earlier. The fresh impact had ripped open what was likely a poorly tended wound, and fresh, bright blood welled up between his fingers. But it was his eyes that held you captive. The abyssal black was receding, the unnatural emptiness draining away like water down a plughole, leaving behind the familiar, startled brown you knew so well. They were wide with confusion, pain, and then dawning horror.

He looked from the blood on his hand, to the shattered green ceramic on the floor, and finally to you. You, crumpled in a heap on his floor, one hand still instinctively cradling your throat as you continued to cough and wheeze.

Realization crashed over his features, a tidal wave of absolute devastation. His gaze dropped to your neck, where the red, mottled imprint of his fingers was already beginning to bloom against your skin.

"No," he breathed. The word was a shattered whisper, barely audible over the ragged sounds of your own breathing. He stared at you, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated self-loathing. "Oh, God. No, no, no..."

You attempted to say something, to tell him you were okay, that you understood, but all that came out was a pained croak. The simple act of trying to speak sent a fresh wave of fire through your windpipe. You squeezed your eyes shut, a fresh tear escaping and tracing a path through the grime on your cheek.

He didn't wait for you to speak. He was already stumbling backward, a frantic, erratic motion that had him colliding with the opposite wall. The impact didn't seem to register. He slid down it, leaving a smear of his own blood on the faded wallpaper, until he was on the floor, mirroring your posture across the room.

He looked small. Defeated. The sight of him in that red-and-blue suit, looking so utterly broken, sent a confusing jolt through your pain-fogged brain.

"I... I did that," he choked out, his gaze fixed on the purple and red marks painting your neck. His hands flew up, as if to ward off an invisible attacker, and he stared at them as if they were alien things, contaminated, monstrous. "I... I could have..." He couldn't finish the sentence. The words died in his throat, replaced by a shuddering, horrified sob that wracked his entire frame.

And in that moment, all of your own fear, your pain, the lingering phantom pressure of his fingers—it all receded, washed away by a tidal wave of concern so fierce it took your breath away all over again. You saw the blood matting his hair, the way he held his side, the tremor running through his hands. You saw the webs cocooning the room, not as a horror-movie set piece, but as a symptom. A sign of something terribly, terribly wrong.

You pushed yourself up, your muscles screaming in protest. Every movement was agony—a dull throb in your head from where you’d hit the wall, and a sharp, searing fire in your throat with every swallow. You ignored it. You crawled the few feet separating you, ignoring the way your jeans stuck to the floor with something you chose not to identify.

"Peter," you tried again, your voice a raw, damaged whisper. "It’s okay. I’m okay."

You lied on the second part, but truth felt secondary to the way he was crumbling before you. He flinched as you drew closer, his entire body shrinking in on itself, a cornered animal expecting a deserved punishment.

"Stay back," he rasped, turning his face away from you, pressing his bleeding temple against the cool plaster of the wall. His shoulders shook with silent, violent tremors. "Please. Just... stay away from me."

You stopped, your hands hovering in the space between you. You could see the fine tremors in them too, adrenaline leaving a tremulous after-effect. The food bag, with its cheerful red-and-white logo, lay toppled near the door, the contents spilling onto the web-strewn floor like a sacrifice left at an altar. The sight was a grotesque parody of the simple hangout you'd planned.

"No," you said, the word stronger this time, pushed past the burn. You didn't move closer, but you made your tone firm, an anchor. "I'm not going anywhere."

He didn't respond. He just kept his face hidden, a statue of self-flagellation carved in blood and spandex. The silence stretched, thick and heavy, broken only by your ragged breathing and the faint, distant wail of a city siren. The webs around the room caught the light again, a gossamer prison he had woven for himself. They weren't random. They were defensive. A barrier. It didn't take a genius to connect the dots: the injury, the suit, the strange strength, the webs, and that terrifying black-eyed trance.

You knew who he was. The knowledge settled in your gut not as a shock, but as a sad, inevitable truth. Of course. Of course it was him. The boy who was always late, who had bruises he'd laugh off, who looked at the world with a quiet, heavy responsibility that never quite left his eyes.

"Peter," you whispered, your own voice cracking. "Look at me."

A shudder ran through him. He shook his head, a minute, desperate gesture against the wall. "I can't."

"You have to."

"I hurt you." The words were muffled by the plaster, but the weight of them hit you like a physical blow. "I looked at you, and I didn't... I didn't see you. I just saw... a threat. And I..." He broke off, a guttural sound of pain tearing from his throat. "I can’t… I can’t look at what I did to you."

You swallowed, a painful, deliberate action. "That wasn't you. I don’t really know what that was, but it wasn't you."

You risked closing the last few inches. You sat on the floor beside him, not touching, just being there. A presence. A refusal to leave. Your proximity seemed to fracture whatever fragile control he had left. He finally pulled his head from the wall, and the sight of his face nearly broke you. The blood from his temple had smeared across his cheek, mingling with tracks of fresh tears. He looked younger than you'd ever seen him, and impossibly older all at once. He was the boy from the subway, and he was a stranger covered in scars you couldn't begin to comprehend.

His eyes darted to your neck, then immediately away, as if the sight burned him. "Don't say that. Don't try to make this okay. It's not okay. Nothing is okay." His gaze, wild and lost, scanned the room, taking in the chaos he’d created. The webs, the blood, the shattered pieces of the stupid, happy mug.

"It's getting worse," he whispered, the confession seeming to tear a hole in the very air between you. "The... the mutation. It’s... changing. I don't sleep. I get these... rages. Blind spots in my head. I wake up and things are... different. Broken. Or..." He trailed off, his gaze finally, reluctantly, landing on you again. "Or worse."

You followed his line of sight to your own hands. They were scraped and swollen from your fight against the door, from your fall. The beginnings of bruises were already blooming on your forearms. Physical evidence of the last twenty minutes. Your life, irrevocably altered.

"Peter," you said, your voice still a raw, painful thing, but steady. "We need to get you to a hospital."

"No." The denial was instant, sharp. The same reflexive fear you’d seen so many times before when he’d brush off a scrape or a bruise. But this was different. This wasn't a scraped knee from a bike fall; this was a gaping head wound and a nervous system that was actively trying to kill him. "They can't... they can't know. What if... what if it happens there? I could hurt someone. A doctor. A nurse. I can't risk it."

"Pete—"

"You need to leave," he cut in, pushing himself back against the wall, trying to create more space between you. "Please. Just go. Get checked out. Tell them you were... I don't know, mugged. Anything. But you can't be here. I'm not safe."

The hypocrisy was staggering. He was sitting there, bleeding, barely conscious, actively falling apart, and his primary concern was your safety. The same safety he had so brutally violated minutes ago. It made your chest ache with a fierce, protective sorrow. He was so far gone he couldn't even accept help.

"I'm not leaving you," you stated, leaving no room for argument. The words rasped in your abused throat, but they were solid. Unwavering. You pushed yourself up, ignoring the way the room tilted, and made a decision. The hospital was a non-starter for him, which left only one other option. You.

You were what he had.

You held up a hand, a gesture of peace, and slowly walked toward the bathroom. The floor was tacky in places, and you had to carefully step over several thick strands of webbing. The small window in the living room offered a clear view of the Queens skyline, a glittering, indifferent universe to the private hell in this tiny apartment. How many nights had he sat here, alone, fighting this battle without a single person to notice?

The bathroom was mercifully free of webs, a small, tiled oasis of normalcy. You turned on the light, and the stark fluorescence made you flinch. Looking in the mirror was a mistake. The face staring back was a stranger’s. Your eyes were wide and bloodshot, rimmed with dark, puffy circles. A deep, nasty purple bruise was already spreading from where your head had hit the wall. But it was your neck that made you gasp.

A necklace of violence. A perfect, five-fingered ring of dark, mottled red and purple was etched into your skin. No wonder he couldn't look at you. No wonder he was so shattered. You gingerly touched the tender flesh, wincing as a bolt of pain shot down your spine. The raw, burning sensation when you swallowed was now matched by a deep, muscular ache. You were a walking, breathing testament to what he was capable of. What he feared he was becoming.

You turned away from the mirror, your resolve hardening. You couldn't fall apart now. You grabbed the first-aid kit from under the sink—a dusty, half-empty box with cartoon Band-Aids and a near-empty bottle of antiseptic. It would have to do. You also grabbed a clean towel and a washcloth, tucking them under your arm.

When you returned to the living room, Peter hadn't moved. He was still curled against the wall, a statue of misery. The sight of the pathetic little medical kit in your hands seemed to break something else in him. A fresh wave of tears welled in his eyes, and he shook his head, a desperate, silent plea for you to stop. To leave. To not try and fix this.

"Stop," you said, your voice a gentle but firm command. You knelt in front of him, close enough to help, but not so close that you were crowding him. "You're bleeding all over your wall, Parker. Let me help."

He didn't fight you this time. He just watched you with those big, broken brown eyes as you dampened the washcloth with warm water and some antiseptic. His whole body flinched when you reached out, but he didn't pull away. He let you gently dab at the gash on his temple. He closed his eyes, and a single tear escaped, tracing a clean path through the blood and grime on his cheek.

The cut was worse than you'd thought. Deep, and probably in need of stitches, but for now, you could only clean it. You weren’t in the headspace to watch tutorials on suture techniques. You were just trying to hold on to the boy in front of you and make sure he didn't bleed out on you.

"So, the whole 'friendly neighborhood' thing is a pretty big understatement, huh?" you said, your voice soft. You were trying to lighten the mood, to break the tension, but it fell flat, landing in the space between you like a lead weight.

Peter didn't laugh. He just flinched again, a full-body shudder this time. "Don't," he whispered, his eyes still squeezed shut. "Please don't joke about it."

"You're right. Sorry," you said quietly. You focused on your task, rinsing the cloth and coming back to clean the last of the dried blood. "Is this what you do every night? Get mauled and then go home and redecorate with... well, this?"

He didn't answer for a long moment. He just breathed, each inhale a little shaky, each exhale a little too controlled. You could see the faint, blue-tinted outline of his collarbone through the tear in his suit, and the skin there was mottled with bruises that painted a story of a brutal fight. The suit itself was shredded at the shoulder and stained with something dark that wasn't blood. Soot, maybe. Or something worse.

"That’s… new. The webs," he finally admitted, the words barely audible. "Started a few weeks ago. I don't even... I don't remember doing it. I just wake up, and it's like this. Or I'll be trying to sleep, and my hands will just... shoot them. I had to buy a new mattress last week because I webbed the old one to the ceiling." He said it with such a flat, hopeless resignation that it hurt more than if he had been crying. It was the sound of a man documenting the slow, inevitable decay of his own mind.

You finished cleaning the wound. The bleeding had slowed, but it still looked angry and deep. The best you could do was press a piece of gauze against it and tape it down as best you could. His skin was clammy under your fingertips. You worked in silence for a few more minutes, the only sounds the distant city hum and the quiet tearing of medical tape.

"Why didn't you tell me?" you asked, the question escaping before you could stop it. It wasn't an accusation. It was a raw, wounded whisper. You thought of all the times you'd hung out, the stupid movies you'd watched, the way he'd expertly dodged your questions about a new bruise or a sprained wrist with a clumsy, unconvincing lie. You thought of how blind you'd been. How willing you were to accept the lie because the alternative was too complicated, too terrifying.

"Would you have believed me?"

His question, so quiet and direct, caught you off guard. You opened your mouth to say yes, of course, but the word wouldn't come out. And it wasn’t just the physical pain in your throat that stopped you. It was the ugly, honest truth. Would you? If he had sat you down one afternoon, over cheap coffee in a diner, and said, "Hey, by the way, that hero everyone in New York has complicated feelings about? The one who swings from buildings and occasionally gets accused of property damage? That's me. Also, sometimes my brain short-circuits and I try to strangle people I care about," would you have accepted it? Or would you have smiled awkwardly, made an excuse, and slowly backed away, convinced he was having a psychotic break?

The silence was your answer.

He gave a short, bitter huff of a laugh that was more air than sound, a pathetic, self-mocking thing. "Yeah. That's what I thought." He finally opened his eyes, and the sheer desolation in them was a physical blow. "Who would? What do you even say to that? 'Hey Peter, cool superpowers, too bad they come with a side order of homicidal rage'?"

You finished taping the gauze, your hands moving with a steady, practiced calm you did not feel. The sterile white patch was a stark, temporary bandage on a problem that went bone-deep. "I wouldn't have said that," you whispered, your throat protesting.

"No? What would you have said?" he challenged, a flicker of the old, defensive Peter sparking in his exhausted gaze. "Would you have run? Called the cops? Or just stopped answering my texts until I got the hint—?"

"Do you know Captain America?" you asked, the question seeming to come from nowhere.

Peter blinked, utterly thrown. "What?"

"Captain America," you repeated, your gaze unwavering. "You know. Stars and Stripes. The guy on the recruitment posters. Have you ever met him?"

He stared at you, his mind clearly struggling to pivot from the abyss of self-loathing to your non-sequitur. "I... yeah. Once or twice. Briefly. He's... why?"

"His best friend," you continued, ignoring the confusion warring with the despair on his face. "The one they called the Winter Soldier. Did you know about him before everything went down? Did you know he was a brainwashed assassin who'd spent the better part of a century being used as a weapon?"

"I... I read the files," Peter said slowly, his brow furrowed. "But what does that have to do with—"

"Everything," you cut him off, your voice gaining a sliver of strength, the edges still raspy but the core of it solid as steel. "Because when it all came out, when Steve Rogers found out that the person who had murdered countless people, who had tried to kill him a dozen times, was just... broken. A good man who'd had things done to him, he didn't run."

You leaned in a little closer, your gaze boring into his, forcing him to listen, forcing him to see the parallel you were drawing. "He fought for him. He risked everything for him. He went to war against the world to protect one person who wasn't in control of himself."

Peter was silent, his jaw slack. He was looking at you like you'd just started speaking in tongues.

"So you want to know what I would have said if you'd told me?" you asked, your words deliberate and punctuated by the painful throb in your throat. "I wouldn't have run. I would have risked the same once I believed because that's what you do when you see someone who's hurting that badly, Peter. You don't run away. You stay. You help."

A fat, glistening tear finally escaped and rolled down his bruised cheek, tracing a path through the blood. It was followed by another, and then another. The careful dam he had built around his pain, around the secret he had carried alone, finally broke. The shuddering sob that tore from his chest was ragged, violent, and it seemed to shake the very foundations of the room. It was the sound of a person coming apart at the seams.

You didn't hesitate. You moved the last few inches and wrapped your arms around him. It was awkward and painful with you both on the floor, but you didn't care. You pulled him against you, your chin resting on his shoulder, ignoring the rough, scratchy texture of his suit. He was stiff at first, a board of resistance and self-loathing, but you held on. You pressed your cheek against the torn fabric of his suit, ignoring the lingering smell of smoke and city grime.

"It's okay," you whispered into the fabric, the words a broken promise you were determined to keep. "I've got you..."