Chapter Text
Swinging into his apartment through the open window, Peter heaves a sigh, shoulders sagging as he yanks his mask off. He tosses it carelessly to his left, and it catches onto the sticky strands of a web hammock in the corner of the room.
Yeah, that’s been happening more lately: the webs. The cocoons. Courtesy of his recent arachnid mutations, his new pair of organic spinnerets are producing so much silk that Peter himself isn’t even sure how the hell they still can. Shouldn’t they, y’know… be out of juice by now? …Is it even really “juice”? “Ammo”, maybe? Whatever. He may be half spider, but he truthfully has no idea how his new body works in greater detail. Especially since it keeps mutating unpredictably against his will.
Right now, all he cares about is the fact that he’s freaking starving. Loosening the red and blue suit, he wriggles his limbs out of it; lets it fall to the floor, molting the skin of his superhero identity. Peter grabs four slices of pizza from the fridge on his way through the kitchenette to the bathroom. Eating in the shower has been a game-changer for him: no crumbs to clean up, he can chew while washing his hair, he can drink the shower water if he’s thirsty. Considering the water is safe enough to rinse his open wounds without leaving an infection behind, he figures it’s fine to drink, too. Perks of having superhuman organs. He has no roommates to judge him for leaving clothes everywhere and bringing leftovers into the shower, anyway.
The gratefulness for his lack of roommates immediately pushes his thoughts toward Ned and MJ. He wonders how they’re doing, wonders if their adjustment from just friends to friends and roommates was natural or difficult to navigate. His chest twinges with a familiar feeling that he hasn’t really found a name for; something deep and aching, like strands of webbing yanking on his rib cage, tendrils drawn tight and quivering with the effort of not letting go. Peter struggles with that: the “not letting go” thing. He swallows a bite of cold pizza, forcing himself to swallow the feeling with it.
Peter always feels better after a shower; more human. Ironic, considering the fact that he seems to become less human and more spider-mutant-thing with each passing day. It is uncomfortably frightening to consider the possibility that, one day, he might mutate to such an extreme degree that his human DNA will become totally recessive: existent, but visible to no one. Not even himself.
…To a degree, Peter feels that way already. Like he exists, walks and breathes and speaks— but his soul is a fossilized fragment buried beneath centuries of rock and ash, never to be witnessed again.
These thoughts occur more often than Peter likes to admit. They are much too dark for the bright mind of a twenty-something genius.
Towel-drying off, he downs two more pizza slices— reaches for another, and groans in betrayed disappointment when he realizes he’d eaten the last one. Just as his shit luck would have it, that had been the only food in his tiny fridge.
A sigh of complete and utter exhaustion huffs out of him as he jumps into bed. His whole body aches. It always does after a fight, but lately, he’s been aching and sore constantly. Likely a consequence of his adapting body, Peter reasons.
“E.V., activate sleep mode,” he mumbles, her automated reply muffled in his ears as he drifts off to sleep. The monitors turn off, but the computer doesn’t shut down: it tracks Peter’s vitals, keeping record of any notable changes for Peter to review in the morning, and activates the motion sensors at the apartment’s windows and doors. A lackluster security measure, sure, but Peter had actually implemented the feature for himself: to prevent another incident of waking up naked in a web cocoon dangling out the fire escape window. If triggered, the motion sensors activate specialized alarms— with pitches so high they’re inaudible to normal humans, similar to that of a dog whistle— to wake him up.
Thankfully, those alarms don’t ever sound to wake him up, so Peter sleeps uninterrupted through the night.
Peter doesn’t mean to, but he sleeps for an entire forty-eight hours. Unaware of the time passage, he wakes up on the ceiling, cocooned in yet another web. It doesn’t surprise him. This cocoon feels stiffer than usual, though; sturdier. Groggily, he inspects the silk strands. They’re definitely thicker, like two of his normal strands braided together to form something with even greater tensile strength capacity. Huh. That’s kinda cool.
But they’re also… damp? Peter chews on the inside of his cheek (a bad habit he’s fallen back into during the last four years alone) as he ponders this, and then he registers the wetness on his face, too. Ugh, did he seriously drool in his sleep? He hasn’t done that since he got his braces off in middle school.
Narrowed eyes follow the thickened strand he’s inspecting, finding it still attached to the spinneret on his left wrist. A dragline, then.
Peter wiggles himself free from the webbing and disengages the dragline from his spinneret, allowing him to fall back down onto his bed in a controlled drop. He yawns, stretches, hears his neck crack. Absently, he rubs at his wrists, his tired brain not quite awake enough yet to register the fact that they’re incredibly sore. He has a pretty high pain tolerance. Sensory tolerance, though? Not as big of a threshold. Perhaps that will come with exposure practice and time.
“Hey, E.V., what’s the summary on my…” he trails off, waving a hand in the air and at himself.
His computer companion understands what he means. The monitors turn on, graphs and data populating on the screen: his heart-rate, his frequency of movement, his energy use, his blood oxygen levels, his total time asleep—
He blinks, leans forward, pushes his messy curls out of his face like that will do anything to improve his eyesight or change the stats on the monitor, and looks at that measurement again. Total time asleep: 48 hours, 29 minutes, 11 seconds.
“I slept for two days?!” Peter exclaims, rushing off of his bed toward his desk so he can click through the data— and, woah, okay, apparently that was a bad move, because he gets lightheaded instantly. Instinctively, he juts his wrist out in the direction of the ceiling to anchor himself so he doesn’t fall flat on his face. Nothing comes out. He falls flat on his face.
Sitting up, his vision blurs and his head spins, pulse thrumming loud in his ears as blood rushes to his head. His mouth hurts and his nose is throbbing with pain from smacking right into the hardwood flooring. He rubs at it with his thumb, pinching and poking just to make sure it isn’t broken or bent. It isn’t. Thank God, because he isn’t sure he even has the capacity to self-heal right now; especially if he isn’t producing webs. Jesus Christ, he feels like shit.
“Peter, your blood sugar is critically low, and you are dehydrated.” E.V. observes.
Still sitting on the floor, Peter leans back against his bed, the corner of the crooked mattress pressing uncomfortably against his skull. “Yeah, no shit,” he snaps. God, his head hurts, his wrists hurt, his back hurts, his nose hurts, his mouth hurts. He swallows down the saliva that’s pooled in his mouth, which does nothing to soothe the dryness of his throat. At the same time, he feels a pang of guilt nag at him. “Sorry, E.V., didn’t mean to snap. I feel terrible.”
“No worries, Peter.” She says in that same flat tone of voice, but Peter swears he hears an inflection of concern and care. Shit, he really tossed his brain out of whack, huh? He is hallucinating the friendliness in the computer’s automated voice, he’s certain. But sometimes it really does feel like she is his only companion; after all, he talks to E.V. more than he talks to MJ, Ned, Frank, even Detective DeWolff. That’s pretty pathetic, isn’t it?
Something happens on the monitor. “There is a convenience store stocked with electrolyte drinks, high-protein foods, and basic carbohydrates less than one block from your apartment. Those should help.”
With a grunt of effort, Peter stands, running his fingers through his hair in an attempt to tidy the strands. He pulls on a random pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that passes the sniff test.
“Thanks, E.V. You’re the best.” He replies, backpedaling to grab his wallet when he, once again, tries to web it into his hand before remembering his spinnerets are dysfunctional. He really, really hopes that’s temporary.
The walk to the bodega is short, which Peter is grateful for. Thankfully this is New York and no one really gives a crap if you look like you fell out of bed five minutes ago. Especially since that is exactly what happened, in Peter’s case. Yawning, he rocks back and forth on his heels, ignoring the faint humming of the refrigerators’ compressors that he’s sure no one else can hear, as he considers the drink options before him. Pedialyte, Powerade, Gatorade, coconut water, fancy flavored water with minerals and stuff. He is tempted to just grab the Pedialyte since it was the first thing he saw, but he’s twenty-freaking-two. Pedialyte is for babies. He grabs some Gatorades, like a man.
He thanks the cashier and takes the bag of Gatorades, protein bars and pre-packaged sandwiches, trying not to flinch at the overstimulating sound of the plastic crinkling.
Peter figures the sandwiches will last him a couple days. He really needs to go grocery shopping, but he really, really would rather die. Plopping himself gracelessly into his desk chair, he clicks through the data E.V. had kept track of while he goes through the contents of his bodega run: he uncaps and chugs a Gatorade. Eats the salami sandwich. Finishes a second Gatorade. Wolfs down all three protein bars. Starts on the tuna sandwich as he switches tabs to the browser. He scrolls through the news for the last two days, hoping to God he hadn’t missed anything important and possibly deadly. He stops chewing and pauses at an article about a violent fight between The Punisher and Scorpion. God damn it all, how did Scorpion escape prison already? And why the hell did Frank get involved?
…Oh, right. Because Peter’s been asleep for two days. Matter of fact…
Wheeling his chair over to the nightstand, the boy grabs his phone and plugs it in. When it boots back up, he has two messages from an unknown number (Frank’s newest, probably), a missed call from the same number, and a message from Ned. His heart does an excited little skip, at that.
Peter, hey! Hope everything’s okay, dude. MJ and I are kinda worried. She said she hasn’t heard from you, and my spidey tracker app hasn’t flagged your location in a couple days.
Peter feels a smile tug at the corners of his lips, and that feeling from before is back again, settling in his chest against his will. Taking another bite of his sandwich, he types out a reply with his free hand:
hey!! i’m all good! sorry for worrying you guys!
His thumb hovers over the phone screen while he ponders an excuse. Of course, Ned and MJ both know that Peter is Spider-Man, but they don’t quite know the full extent of his recent changes. Peter supposes that might be a lot at once; that the black eyes and organic web shooters and cocoons would be off-putting. Scary, maybe? Though he doubts MJ would be scared. Unnerved, perhaps.
It would be different if the three of them were still close, like before: they’d wanna know what was going on with him, no matter how strange, and MJ would be pissed at him for deciding to hide things based on his assumptions that his friends would be better off not knowing. His eyes burn, suddenly, and his chest feels like it's been crushed under the weight of missing being known.
…But that isn’t reality anymore. Ned and MJ have known Peter for one whole week, if that. They’ve built Legos and watched movies and played video games together: normal, casual, surface-level friend stuff. But arachnid hormones and mutations so intensely bizarre that they cause Peter to sleep for two days straight against his will, in a cocoon of webbing he doesn’t remember weaving? Yeah, that seems like a little much, for the beginning of a friendship. The last thing Peter wants is to spook them away. He’s lucky enough that he has them back in his life; that they actually want to hang out with him. He won’t ruin that. He can’t.
Chewing the last bite of his tuna sandwich, he completes his text to Ned, adding:
just had to rest for a lil while and spend some time tweaking my tech. got too absorbed in it and forgot to charge my phone :(
He hits send and tosses his phone aside. Then his stomach rumbles.
“What the hell, man?” Peter says. To his own stomach. He rummages through the bag of stuff from the bodega, looking for another protein bar to satiate the last of his hunger. But all that’s left is a ham sandwich.
…And he’d thought that the three sandwiches and three protein bars would last him a couple days? Bullshit, apparently. Why in the goddamn hell is he so hungry? It’s making him cranky and irritable. Peter squints down at his abdomen accusingly. If he’s this famished just because he’s about to start his goddamn monthly cycle, he swears he’ll kill someone. …Something. …Okay, so maybe he’ll just smash a glass or crush a soda can or whatever.
The hunger squeezing his belly is promptly ignored as Peter sets the ham sandwich aside for later. He’ll be too tired after patrol to wait for DoorDash. He’s made that mistake one too many times lately: ordering food as he swings himself home, falling asleep right after, waking up and opening his door to find the delivered meal from the night before sitting on the mat, cold and soggy and pitiful. Or, the food will get stolen. At least then someone enjoys it while it’s still warm, Peter reasons.
His phone dings on his desk, and he automatically thwips a web in its direction to grab it. The phone actually lands in his hands. He does a double-take as he recalls, in quick succession, that his spinnerets hadn’t been functional this morning, that he hasn’t attempted to use them for a couple hours— still assuming they would fail— and that they are now, apparently, fully functional again. He laughs a little to himself, happy to have his main source of transportation back online. Well, not online, per se, but— you know.
Back to business, then, he supposes, pulling his suit on. There’s probably a lot to catch up on in terms of crimes committed while he was MIA.
And, in fact, there is: a wanted drug dealer has been spotted within the last hour at a bar, according to the police scanner. Peter remembers this guy: he’s had a few run-ins with him before. He sells Xanax, weed, Adderall, sometimes smuggles and distributes harder stuff like cocaine when he can get his hands on it. Which wouldn’t be that bad, all crimes considered, but the man is wanted for a reason: his stuff is laced. Six people have died of a fentanyl overdose, and all of them got their drugs illegally from one of the dealer’s contacts.
Swinging along the edge of a skyscraper, Spider-Man pulls up the address of the guy’s last location. He gets there in three minutes. Sure enough, there’s the target: slumped against the outside wall of the bar, flicking ash off the end of a half-smoked joint.
Spider-Man hadn’t really been expecting a fight, especially since the guy is more than likely cross-faded, but apparently this dude has goons or henchmen or bodyguards or whatever-the-hell-they-wanna-be-called to fight his battles for him. They’re no Hulk or Captain America, that’s for damn sure, but they’re decent enough for Spider-Man to get some exercise in.
“Ever competed in a potato sack race?” Spider-Man quips, silently delighting in their confused expressions for half a second.
He webs two of their clenched fists at the same time as they lunge forward to punch him, leaping over their heads onto the brick wall to connect a dragline between their hands. Crawling down and narrowly fitting between the two men, he wraps the same dragline strand around the knees closest to one another. Then he poises himself on the ground in front of them and pulls the dragline like the thread of a stitch before disconnecting it from his spinneret. The tension forces the men together, side-by-side, hands and one leg each rendered immobile. They tug at the webbing in opposite directions, and both try to take a step forward; of course, without accounting for the fact that one of their legs is webbed up with the other man’s. They fall on the ground, and Spider-Man grins behind his mask.
“Yeah, I don’t think you guys would win one.” Spider-Man remarks, all too amused. “Too bad.”
The last assailant is actually more of a challenge. Her agility is surprisingly impressive, and she pulls a pistol and fires a 9mm at Spider-Man without hesitation. Shit, why didn’t the other ones have guns? He dodges the bullet, thanks to his Peter Tingle (...that sense really needs a better name, he determines), but when it lodges into the wall next to him, just barely stopped from breaching through to the other side, he clenches his jaw. If that were powerful enough to completely go through brick and concrete, it would’ve injured an innocent civilian on the other side. And these people have ruined enough lives.
Spider-Man webs a thick layer over the barrel of the pistol, then connects a dragline to wrench the weapon from the woman’s grip. The drug dealer himself, the man he’d actually come here for, pulls out a gun of his own almost immediately, as if he had been expecting and maybe even waiting for his comrades to lose first. Spider-Man webs the barrel of that one too, but just a millisecond after it fires a bullet that grazes his forearm. Crawling up the wall for leverage, he pulls the weapon into his own grasp and then sticks it onto the wall with webbing, webs the man’s mouth shut, webs his arm against his chest, webs his other arm against the dumpster behind them, webs his torso to it, webs his feet together, crawls above him to drag the silk strands over his shoulders, around his throat—
A honking car horn startles him back to the present. Spider-Man blinks, his vision clearing— though his sight had been clear before, just… different. His face is wet behind the mask, lips and chin and throat soaked in his own saliva. His gums ache to high heaven. He gasps when he sees the silk strands of his webbing, the ends still connected to his spinnerets, around the drug dealer like a mummified straight-jacket of sorts, and stretched against the man’s throat. One strong pull and he… he—
Spider-Man disengages the webbing, crawls closer to the man to detach the material from his throat. The man flinches away from him, mumbling something inaudible behind the web shutting his mouth. Peter sees a flash of nervousness in his eyes, like the man genuinely feared for his life. At the hands of New York’s beloved Spider-Man, no less.
Horrified, Spider-Man crawls back up the wall to the roof of the bar, anchors a line to the next building over, and hurls himself away from the scene just as police sirens howl in the distance.
Stumbling noisily inside the apartment, Peter wrenches his mask off with a wet cough. He’d been swallowing mouthfuls of his own saliva on the way home, but between that and trying to breathe while hurdling and launching himself hundreds of feet in the air over and over, it seemed inevitable that some of his saliva was accidentally inhaled.
He doesn’t bother getting out of his suit all the way; he just stumbles to the bathroom, leaning in toward the mirror. Observing. His saliva looks… fine. Thicker than usual, maybe, but just slightly. It’s not shiny and eerily black like his eyes get, sometimes. Like he’s sure his eyes got during that fight.
Opening his mouth, Peter draws his lips back, eyeing his teeth and gums. Maybe his gums are a little inflamed and redder than usual. But the soreness, the ache, the pain throbbing in his mouth. It’s unbearable. Not because it’s terribly painful, but because it’s constant, and it makes his pulse way too loud in his ears. It started this morning after he fell flat on his face out of bed, and he had assumed it was because he knocked his teeth on the floor. Pressing his thumbs along his upper gum-line, his whole body jolts in surprised pain when the pads of his fingers press above his canine teeth. Which, now that he looks closer… those areas are protruding. Kind of similar to how the silk glands in his wrists protrude just enough beneath his skin to create a noticeable bump, if you’re really looking. But surely his body isn’t creating more silk glands, right?
“Hey E.V., how ‘any s’inne’ets can one s’ider ha’e?” He asks around the fingers under his lips.
“I’m sorry, Peter, I don’t understand the question.”
He takes his fingers out of his mouth; runs his tongue along the bumps above his canine teeth. They’re there, for sure; he can feel them now that he’s looking for something out of place. But it’s quite subtle.
“How many spinnerets can one spider have?” Peter repeats.
“In general, many species of spiders have six. However, the total number of spinnerets can vary from two to eight, though they are always in an even number.”
“Six…” He mumbles to himself, feeling a sense of unease and dread settle in his gut. Surely these bumps in his mouth aren’t another pair of spinnerets? A mouth full of web sounds like a horribly claustrophobic way to choke to death, he thinks. He shudders at the image.
“Are you referring to the recent changes above your upper canine teeth, Peter?” E.V. chimes from across the apartment. Rubbing at his sore gums, Peter walks over to the desk with an affirmative reply.
Two thermal scans appear on the monitors: E.V. is programmed to capture these images while Peter is asleep if she detects a significant change in Peter’s phenotypic DNA. The first image is from almost two weeks ago, and shows the congregation of heat within Peter’s wrists as his body was forming the organic spinnerets. The second image is a thermal scan of his body while he was asleep yesterday; as expected, there are paired heat signatures right beneath his nose, where his gums would be. She zooms in on these, increases the image definition, and puts it side by side with the older scan, with that one zoomed in on his wrists. “Those appear to be different organs, as their anatomy is much simpler than that of the silk glands within your wrists, Peter. The newly-formed glands beneath your gums lack the tail and ampulla sections of a silk gland organ, meaning—”
“That the synthesis of spidroin proteins isn’t possible...” Peter finishes, his brain quickly connecting the dots before E.V. finishes her explanation. He regards that thermal scan. It’s challenging to make out the entire shape of each new gland since they’re so damn small, but it is different from the silk glands he has. These new paired organs are simpler, with an oval-shaped portion connected to a thinner duct that ends at the root of his canine tooth. Almost subconsciously, he tongues over his gums and teeth and upper palate.
He’ll probably be doing that a lot until he gets used to the change.
For the next couple days, Peter works on tweaking his inhibitor. He hadn’t been wearing it lately, since he’d assumed he’d gotten his arachnid quirks under control after fighting for his life against the ninjas Jean had sicced on him. But that was before these new glands appeared and threw a boulder in his path to peaceful coexistence with his spider half. He frowns, thinking of Dr. Banner, stuck in prison just because he lost control. Peter feels incredibly responsible for that. He still hasn’t figured out how he’s going to get Bruce out of a heavily-armored and constantly-surveilled superhuman containment prison.
Blearily, Peter wonders how many phenotypic changes he’ll go through until his body is done. He thought the spinnerets and black eyes were it. Obviously not.
The inhibitor now modified and always attached to his skin under the suit, Peter feels in-control enough to continue his usual patrols. DeWolff actually has a potential assignment for him; she said she’ll reach out in the next couple days if she gets the go-ahead to recruit Spider-Man’s help.
…But there’s still something off. His Peter Tingle is constantly on alert now, activated to the lowest possible degree, like a train of thought that’s been catalogued to the back of his brain: he can ignore it for a bit if he seriously concentrates, but— like a dripping faucet— it can’t be ignored forever. Not when it is so constant, just enough to be aggravating, just enough to force his body into fight or flight, causing the tension under his skin to build, build, build… A leaking pipe on the verge of bursting. Drip, drip, drip…
Peter practically throws himself through his fire escape window, immediately shutting it behind him and wrenching his mask off with jagged breaths. His chest stutters with each inhale and wheezes with every exhale as if his lungs have shrunk, unable to take in enough oxygen. It only feeds the adrenaline-induced panic. Shaky, gloved hands covered in dirt and grime wipe harshly at the drool on his chin as he stumbles into the shower, fingernails clawing at the suit to yank himself out of it, like he is disgusted with the feeling of wearing it. When his grip catches on the inhibitor on his neck, he rips it off, and it’s like a gasp of fresh air for his brain. But only for a moment.
He turns the water on to the hottest setting and stands under it motionlessly, hoping the temperature will burn away the buzzing sensation beneath his skin. His mouth hangs open, fingers pressing so hard into the aching spots above his canines that his fingers turn white. His body won’t allow him to use his super-strength on himself; he can only use his strength to its highest unmutated “human” capacity. Though his wrists feel the strain anyway, forearm muscles compressing the already overworked silk glands beneath his skin. It isn’t enough to provide real relief. Copious amounts of drool leak from his mouth like honey spilling from overfilled hive cells as steam coils menacingly toward the ceiling. He’s shaking, twitching occasionally in reaction to nothing at all, as if his body is trying to force the energy out of his system with each muscle movement.
Humiliatingly, this has become a new routine. He stays like this for hours after every patrol, now: under the scalding spray of water, arms shaking with the effort of trying to alleviate the ache in his mouth, saliva pooling and dribbling from his lips like he’s a rabid dog. He stays until his body is so hot and exhausted that he teeters along on the edge of passing out. Then he stays even as the water runs cold.
DeWolff calls him about that assignment; says she has approval from the department head to recruit Spider-Man’s help in capturing a dangerous assailant.
Dangerous is perhaps an understatement. Spider-Man is nearly choking to death on coughed-up blood and saliva behind the mask, limping from a deep slash to the thigh. Two police officers have already been critically injured. DeWolff, through an earpiece, tells Spider-Man to stand down. Assures him they can try again later when they are better prepared for the man’s arsenal.
But he’s already here, isn’t he? Their guy is right in Spider-Man’s grasp, and it had taken so long to estimate his location in the first place. Spider-Man isn’t giving up this fight. Not when he’s this close to succeeding.
…He’s just as equally close to failing, but he doesn’t dwell on that part of the situation.
The odds tip over in the favor of their target as the man grabs Spider-Man around the throat with one of his metal gloves. They’re damn near unbreakable: made with stolen Vibranium from Wakanda. That glove shoves him into the wall, pressing him against it with an unbeatable strength that increases by the second. And while Spider-Man is gasping and choking for air as his trachea is compressed, bloodied saliva filling the back of his throat, he recalls his conversation with Yelena, and thinks: surely this is Big Potato Stuff, right?
Just as the edges of Spider-Man’s vision begin to go dark, he hears a small metallic crunch behind his head. With it, his body jolts like it’s been electrocuted. Immediately, his eyes shift to black, his feet plant on the man’s stomach, his hands find purchase on his shoulders. Flexing his fingers and toes to engage his sticking ability, Spider-Man uses all his strength to crane his neck forward, super-strength struggling momentarily against the glove’s indestructibility.
And once his mouth is positioned behind the end of the glove, he opens his mouth and bites. Through the mask, through the man’s clothes, canines lodging into skin.
The man says something, makes a noise, stumbles back and tries to yank his arm free. But he can’t escape, because Spider-Man is sticking to his clothes, clinging with just phalanges like an insect. His spinnerets create twin draglines against the man’s body, anchoring himself more securely to his prey as his jaw works to dig his fangs deeper.
A notable warmth leave his gums, and it takes with it that unbearable ache. The sensation is comparable to the coziness of hot coffee being swallowed, settling into his belly. It feels correct, natural, instinctive. It feels like relief.
Spider-Man tastes foreign blood amongst his own, now; a decent amount of it. It drips out between his lips, down one of the Vibranium gloves, onto the concrete below in an incriminating splatter. His pulse is racing so fast he feels it throbbing in his teeth, and his jaw twitches and clenches harder. Distantly, like he’s underwater, he registers that his chest seems to rattle with a chittering sound, like his ribs are vibrating against one another. Almost like some morbid purr of satisfaction.
A minute later, the man crumples to the ground like dead weight, his metal gloves clanging uselessly as he loses consciousness. Only then does Spider-Man unlock his jaw and dislodge his teeth.
“Spider-Man!” DeWolff shouts.
Flinching, blinking rapidly as the black clears from his eyes, Spider-Man turns his head to the detective. Her concerned expression shifts to one of confused horror as she sees the dark stains of blood on Spider-Man’s mask and on the front of his suit. He swallows nervously— regretting it when he tastes the man’s acrid blood— because he isn’t sure if DeWolff interprets the blood as his own, or if she thinks he…
Heart sinking, his chest stutters as he struggles to take in a full breath, still feeling like he’s on the verge of passing out, a little. “De-Detective, wait, I— I didn’t mean—”
“You should go,” she interrupts. “...you were technically only approved to be here off-the-books. You’ve made a scene, Spider-Man.” Sighing, she steps forward and pulls on a pair of gloves, cuffs their target after removing his weapons: still unconscious, still bleeding from his forearm. Alive, though; Spider-Man can hear his heartbeat. “We couldn’t have caught him this time without your help. But I need to clean up your mess.” She levels him with a look: one of firm direction, but there’s a sense of care behind it. Worry, maybe. The expression reminds him of Mr. Stark. “You need to go. Get control of yourself.”
Spider-Man can only nod, shakily. He steps back— foot crunching against the broken remnants of his inhibitor— as he shoots a dragline up and away from the scene.
When he gets home, he’s already crying before he even removes the mask: hot, nonstop tears down his face, tracking lines through the drying blood upon his cheeks. He spits up the rest of it, rinses his mouth out over and over like it will wash away the evidence of his freakish crime. Tries to push the memory of the man falling limp beneath him to the farthest corners of his mind. What would Mr. Stark think? He would be so disappointed, if he were here. And he would have every right to be, because even Peter is disappointed in himself.
…Overcome with shame and guilt and anxiety, Peter vaguely registers that for the first time since they emerged, the glands above his canines don’t hurt.