Chapter Text
Peter never felt as alone as he did when he was surrounded by crowds of people.
It made riding the subway difficult, but it was January and his work day had been long, it was too cold for spandex, too cold for swinging. Peter stood on the crowded train hoping to God that the ground would just swallow him up right there and then.
To an outsider, Peter knew it must look like he had the perfect life. He’d graduated college with top marks, he was working for a prestigious newspaper, he had super powers and was praised by most of New York City.
On paper, he had it all.
Unfortunately, having all those things did not make up for what he had lost.
Mom.
Dad.
Uncle Ben.
Aunt May.
Gwen.
Peter had come to terms with the fact that maybe he just wasn’t meant to feel happiness or contentment, those were emotions reserved for other people. Better people than him.
As Spider-Man he was known for his quick wit, his sarcasm and his willingness to stop and joke with members of the public. He was a carrier of the disease known as happiness. It was the only way he could think to make anything better, forget about himself, focus on helping others.
But sometimes he forgot about himself for too long .
Peter couldn’t remember the last time he looked in the mirror and felt happy, he couldn’t even remember the last time he looked in the mirror and felt indifferent. He hated his body with all his might.
At 24, with the amount of exercise he did, Peter should have been lean and muscular. Instead, he was bony . His ribs showed and his hips protruded, the muscle he’d managed to keep was sinewy and looked out of place. He knew he should eat more, he knew he could be fit again, but Peter just didn’t get hungry like he used to, it was never intentional.
The scars that littered his body, however, definitely were intentional.
He had picked up the habit a little over 2 years ago, after college, after Aunt May died.
The habit started as an accident. He’d been out on patrol, swung around a corner a little too sharply and crashed into a dumpster. The edge of the dumpster was sharp and cut into the soft skin of his upper thigh.
The cut itself hadn’t been too severe, around 3 inches long and a couple of millimeters deep, but the euphoria Peter felt as he saw the blood begin to bubble up and drip from the wound had been like nothing else he’d felt before. As the blood fell Peter could feel the anxiety leave his body, it felt like he could finally breathe again for the first time in so many years.
As with every addiction, things had progressed since then. What began as small cuts to his thighs with a blunt kitchen knife had advanced to wide gashes that consistently needed stitches. Something that Peter had since become somewhat of an expert in.
Nobody knew how deeply he was struggling, he was good at putting on a cheerful facade, but things were getting tiring and Peter didn’t know how much longer he could keep this double life up.
There were just over a handful of people that Peter spoke to regularly. Tony Stark, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff, J. Jonah Jameson, the girl who worked at the coffee shop and Wade Wilson. Not a single one of them had a clue about his personal life. Tony, Clint, Natasha and Wade simply knew him as Spider-Man, he bantered with them, helped them on missions, patrolled with them. That was it, they thought he was happy.
J. Jonah Jameson, Peter’s boss, knew him as ‘Parker’, just the guy that took photos of Spider-Man, the guy that he yelled at every day of the week.
The girl at the coffee shop, Lily, was different. She knew him as Peter, the graduate, the coffee addict, the good tipper.
Peter used to think he had a crush on Lily, she was beautiful. Her dark skin was flawless and her deep red braids brought out the different shades of amber in her eyes. She was stunning. But Peter had been ultimately disappointing when on their first and only date, he came to the sudden realisation that while she was incredibly attractive, he wasn’t attracted to her.
It was a gruelling process, but that date had instilled the awareness that he wasn’t necessarily physically attracted to women at all .
He’d loved Gwen with all his heart, but their love was far more platonic than Peter ever noticed. He still saw Lily nearly every day, she was a wonderful girl and Pete liked her a lot, but when they spoke it was simply the pleasantries. The weather, what book she was reading, how work was going etc.
Pete wondered often what it must be like to have friends that he could actually confide in. It had been such a long time since he had allowed anybody into his life that the simple thought of someone knowing his favourite colour seemed insanely intimate to him now. It was something he so desperately wanted but just didn’t know how to get it.
The realm of friendship always seemed just out of his grasp.
The announcement of his station from the train tannoy shook Peter from his thoughts and he quickly managed to squeeze between two large men to reach the door before it opened.
Peter’s day had been long and work had been rough and all he wanted to do was sleep, but unfortunately there was no rest for the wicked. And especially no rest for Spider-Man.
Finally home, he donned a layer of thermal clothes underneath his Spidey suit and set off into the night. Winter in New York City was unrelenting and fierce and far too cold for the simple layer of spandex.
He’d settled into patrolling every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It gave him two days to get on with any work he needed to do for the Bugle and also left him with very little spare time.
He liked it that way.
Spare time meant more time overthinking. It meant more time feeling empty, alone, like he knew he’d always be.
Patrol was dull, painfully dull and Peter watched the sun fall behind the horizon from the crane he was perched upon. Why, whenever he was having an extra shitty day, did every criminal in New York decide to be on their best behaviour?
He just needed a distraction, literally anything, just to stop his mind from moving at a million miles a minute. He wasn’t sure when he had become so reliant on distraction to keep him from breaking down. Had it been his uncle’s murder? Gwen’s death?
Maybe it had been watching May die slowly and painfully in a hospital bed where he had no control.
Cancer. Fuck cancer.
It always started this way, Peter blaming cancer for May’s death and coming to the realisation that if he blamed cancer, then he had to blame himself for Gwen and Ben’s deaths. They had been his fault after all, as much as it was cancer’s fault that May was dead.
He could feel his breath catch in his throat whenever he thought about the people he’d lost. Peter knew he was a curse, that everyone around him would inevitably die. It stopped him getting close to people, even if he really wanted to. He couldn’t deal with any more deaths on his conscience. He was a plague. He didn’t deserve anyone to help him.
By now, Peter knew the signs of a panic attack very well. It had been several years since his first one and he’d become hauntingly familiar with them. He could feel the signs creeping up on him as he tried to slow his breathing.
Not only did Peter know the signs of when he was beginning to have a panic attack, but he also knew how to end one . His method was self destructive, but honestly, when had Peter been anything but self destructive?
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Peter wasn’t sure when he’d ended up on the rooftop, he didn’t know where he’d found the piece of broken glass. All he knew was that he was gripping the shard like his life depended on it.
This happened often, Peter’s body did things but his brain couldn’t remember the actual process of doing it. He knew he must’ve swung here, but when he tried to remember, his mind was just blank. He was sat on a crane having a panic attack and then suddenly he was sat on a rooftop in Manhattan. Poof, like magic.
He knew it wasn’t healthy.
His stomach twisted with panic harshly, bringing him back to reality, and he stared down at the glass in his hand, fuck, here we go again.
Pete glanced around him as he pulled off his left glove and rolled the sleeve of his suit up to his elbow. This wasn’t where he usually cut, but his chest felt tight and his stomach churned with anxiety. If he didn’t cut now Peter was sure that the anxiety would eat him alive from the inside out.
The first press of the glass on the pale skin of his inner forearm was strikingly painful. The glass dragged along his skin, catching a little as it hadn’t been as sharp as Peter had originally thought. He repeated the action four more times over the same area. That’s when the relief came, the relief was strongly tied to the blood he could see spilling over his smooth skin.
Through the blood Peter could see small yellow fat nodules. The first time he’d cut this deep it had damn near made him faint. But now, now Peter didn’t even class it as worth it unless he could see the inner workings of his body. He was a mess but he couldn’t help it. He craved it.
Peter savoured every minute of the solace he felt as he placed the piece of glass back on the floor. He lay back onto the concrete of the roof and sighed. The panic in his mind was quiet for the first time that day.
His stomach felt still.
His mind was silent.
His chest was light.
He wished he could feel like this all the time.
Everything was just so beautifully calm.
His blood ran over the concrete of the rooftop and Pete loved it. The warmth of the liquid against the freezing cold of the air put Peter’s entire mind at ease.
Why would he ever give this up?
But of course, all good things must come to an end.
“Spidey?”
Oh, fuck.
.
Peter felt like someone had punched through his skin, grabbed his stomach and twisted.
Everything came pouring back, the anxiety, the panic, the desperate hopelessness. With a simple word from across the roof, he felt his entire body seize. Why the fuck hadn’t his spidey-sense warned him?
Peter jumped to his feet and pulled his sleeve down swiftly with futile hope that the man across the roof had not seen what was there. Of course, he had, and when Peter finally lifted his head he saw Deadpool staring back at him.
How did he manage to look confused, even with the mask on? Pete dropped his gaze again, focussing on the pool of blood next to his feet. His blood. It calmed him slightly. Even through all the mania, Peter managed feel a drowsy sense of accomplishment about the amount of blood that he’d spilled.
“Spidey?” Deadpool repeated.
“‘Sup, Wade.” Peter’s voice sounded hollow and he still didn’t look at the man. He hoped Deadpool would just ignore it, that he’d brush over it and go patrol somewhere else once he realised that Peter wasn’t interested in bantering with him tonight.
Wade was an unusual guy, Spider-Man had known him for a while and knew that he talked to himself often, mayve Wade would maybe think he was hallucinating and leave? After all, this was very out of character for Spider-Man, right? Right?
Unfortunately for Peter, Wade didn’t leave, or brush past it.
“How long?” Wade whispered. It made Pete look up.
How long what? How long had he cut? How long had he kept it a secret? How long had he been bleeding? What?
“How long what?” Pete matched Wade’s whisper.
How long had he lied? How long had he been a coward that couldn’t deal with his emotions like a regular adult? How long had he been a self harming freak?
“How long have you felt like... this?” Deadpool’s reply was gentle, a complete juxtaposition to his usual hyperactive self. It gave Peter whiplash.
Peter’s mind was reeling. The cat was out of the bag. Wade knew. The internal dilemma of whether to tell the truth or just lie again raged in his mind so loud that he was surprised that Wade couldn’t physically hear it.
“I can’t remember not feeling like this.” The words were out of his mouth before he could even stop them.
The truth. Pete was surprised by how easy it had actually been to just let it out, but he had to admit that he almost instantly regretted it.
Deadpool didn’t reply for what felt like a very long time.
Peter had known Wade Wilson for six years and this was the first time he’d ever seen the older man this quiet in his presence when they weren’t eating.
Eventually the older man stepped a little closer to Pete, his hands raised in the air slightly, as if trying to show a scared animal that he wasn’t going to hurt them.
Pete didn’t react when Deadpool pulled him into his arms for a hug. He was warm, surprisingly warm in the freezing cold of December. Peter willed his arms to move, to hug the older man back, but they just stayed at his side, frozen against the warmth of Wade’s body.
“I wanna help, Spidey. Let me help.” Wade’s voice vibrated against Peter’s ear, leather against spandex. It made his eyes shine with unshed tears.
How on earth could Deadpool ever help? How could anyone fix the mess that Peter was? He didn’t deserve his help.
He pulled back from the hug and wrapped his own arms around himself, ignoring the scream of pain that his arm made as he moved it. Deadpool couldn’t help. Peter felt the panic building in his stomach once again, he should never have told the truth.
“Thanks Wade, but it’s okay.” It wasn’t. “I’m fine.” He wasn’t. “Just having a bad day.” Day, year, life.
How strange it was that as easy as Peter had found telling the truth just moments ago, lying was still so much easier .
“I know, he’s full of shit.” Wade muttered, obviously not speaking to Peter. Pete answered anyway.
“I’m not lying, I’m fine, see you around, Wade. Sorry you had to see... me.”
Peter swung from the rooftop before Wade could answer.
Get home, Pete.
Just GET HOME.
Don’t panic.
Everything’s okay, Pete, you’re okay.
Wade won’t say anything.
It’s fine.
You can go home.
Stitch yourself up.
You’ll be fine Peter.
Just get home.
You’ll feel better once you’re home.
You’re safe when you’re alone.
You’ll be okay.
BREATHE.