Chapter Text
It feels wrong. This universe, that is.
Peter doesn’t really know what it is, what’s not right, but he can feel it in an alarming way that reminds him of those first few days after he was bitten. It feels like an itch under his skin that he can’t quite scratch. A pressure in his ears that doesn’t go away no matter how much he rubs or taps or shakes his head.
There’s a wrongness that sits over every sense and every movement that screams at him: you don’t belong here. Here, of course, being this universe.
It’s been five days since Peter got ripped from his world.
Five days since he failed to be sent back.
They’re all just kind of avoiding it. Obsessing over it without ever actually talking about it out loud. Peter 1-- this universe’s Peter--had dragged them back to his apartment after-- after, and Peter 3 had done his best five-minute-patch-job for the stab wound in Peter’s side before they’d all crashed and slept for nearly 14 hours straight.
Peter had been the first one to swim back to consciousness, peeling himself out of his suit and pulling on the first t-shirt he could find. It said something about surviving NYC--the irony was not lost on him in the slightest--and Peter 1 had nearly cried at the sight of it.
Eventually, they’d found themselves sitting at a table, Peter 3 eyeing the hole in the window with barely-held curiosity, and just sort of- stared. At each other. At the floor. At this universe that had no business holding on to three Peter Parkers.
What was there to say? There was no one in this world anymore who even knew who Peter Parker was. No one to go to for help. And none of them had a single clue had to open up a portal to another universe.
What was there to do except- try to move on. Try to figure it out. Try to pretend like the very cells in Peter’s body weren’t protesting his mere existence on this planet.
In the four days since then, they’d simply been trying to survive.
The spell went wrong, that went without saying. Peters 2 and 3 should not be here. They’ve barely said two sentences on the subject, but it consumes their minds regardless. They need to go back. They need to fix this. They need- they need a job.
The three men might be superheroes, but they’re just people right now. Peter 1 is thankfully 18, and the spell might’ve erased people’s memories, but he still has a social security number and a legal identity and--their current saving grace--a bank account.
Granted, it doesn’t really have much money in it, but it was at least enough to get them a tiny, shitty apartment to call their own with a landlord who doesn’t ask too many questions. New York City is apparently stupidly expensive in every universe, and Peter’s pretty sure there are college dorm rooms bigger than this, but it’s got four walls, a roof, and running water, which is at least better than another night camping out on a rooftop.
Now, their biggest problem is rent. But Peter can’t get a job in a universe he doesn’t exist in, and as much as he wants to help Peter 1, there’s a part of him that doesn’t want to either. Because something about getting a job, establishing an identity, becoming a part of this world, feels like giving up.
It’s been less than a week.
It’s been five days too many.
Peter tries his hardest to keep it together. To stay calm and focused, filling the apartment walls with equations and theories and possible explanations. Peter 1 is out job searching, and Peter 3 spends much of his time on the roof. Peter gets it, the four walls of their tiny apartment feel like a cage sometimes, trapping both Peters in a place they don’t belong.
The wrongness sits under his skin, easier to push aside with every day that passes, but Peter clings to the sensation like a child with a safety blanket, certain that letting go of it will mean everything he’s ever loved will be lost.
Because Peter loves his world. Loves New York City. Loves his aunt and his friends and-- MJ. His MJ. God, Peter tries so hard not to think of her sometimes because it makes that wrongness, that itch, feel like needles digging their way under his skin and towards his heart. He misses her more with every day that passes.
In the meantime, though, there’s Peter.
He gives up on calling them 1 and 3 by day eight. Over a week has passed, and Peter has stopped pretending like being here, in this universe, is going away any time soon. Peter 1 has already tried the wizard guy and got left at the door. They’d sat on the floor of a furniture-less apartment that night, and Peter had been forced to accept that he was officially stuck here. Maybe for weeks. For months. For years if they didn’t find a way to reverse it.
Peter might never go home.
So Peter 1 becomes Petey, mostly by virtue of how it makes him blush and roll his eyes and protest that “I’m not a little kid!” when the other two call him that. The nickname sticks, and Peter gets to know Petey, this younger version of himself that is equal parts like looking at a time machine and like looking at a stranger.
Petey is drowning. Drowning in a depth of grief and sorrow that Peter can both understand perfectly and also hope never to understand. He knows what it’s like to lose someone, but Petey has lost his entire world and it’s killing him, just a little.
What’s worse, is how he just seems to accept it. How he seems to think the world, his friends, his MJ , are better off forgetting who he is. Peter can’t convince him to tell them the truth. The teen is determined, and stubbornness seems to be a trait they all share.
But Peter knows it wears on him. Can hear it in the way he bursts awake gasping at night, can see it in the way he stares at the city with tears in his eyes, can feel it in the tremors that rack his body whenever he brings up his aunt or Ned or MJ or some guy named Tony Stark.
Petey is drowning, and Peter has no idea how to keep him afloat.
And then there’s Peter 3. They settled on Peter B.--because of course they’d all have the same middle name, what else did they expect--and it took Petey all of three hours before it got shortened to just-- Bee. It’s one letter away from being Ben, but the way they’d both flinched when Petey brought it up makes it clear that one won’t work.
Besides, it rhymes with three. Peter’s pretty sure there are worse nicknames in the universe.
Bee finds the nickname hilarious, actually, especially when Petey comes home with a stuffed cartoon bumblebee for him the very next day. The way he’d smiled made him look ten years younger, the ever-present tension in his shoulders fading just a little.
Peter thinks it suits him. Bee has a sort of frantic buzzing energy to him. He flits between the apartment and the roof, hanging from the ceiling or tucked above the cabinets. Pretty much anywhere that isn’t the single couch they’d dragged out of a dumpster or the lawn chairs around a Home Depot bucket that currently acts as their table.
It’s not a good energy. Peter B. buzzes with a kind of near-panic that Peter can practically taste it’s so obvious. He can’t sit still, he can barely keep food down, he doesn’t sleep. He spends most of his days either swinging through the city, perched on the roof, or obsessing over notes and theories that Peter himself can barely keep up with.
He takes over for Petey’s patrol. The city has no way of knowing that it’s a different Spiderman swooping in to save them these days. Petey is busy trying to get a second job, anything to help them pay for rent and food, and Bee had been more than willing.
It worries Peter. Most things about the other two worry him, but this perhaps most of all. Because he remembers the way Bee had spoken on that rooftop, about not pulling his punches. The Spiderman in this universe already has a bit of a bad rep, and the brutal way that Bee is accustomed to taking down criminals is certainly not helping.
But Peter feels reluctant to stop him, and he knows the Petey feels the same. They both see how much Bee needs this. How much it’s killing him to sit in the apartment day after day and realize they have absolutely no fucking clue how to fix this.
Although…sometimes Peter wonders if Bee even wants to fix it. He isn’t like Peter; he doesn’t have an MJ. According to Bee, there’s not really anyone out there for him to miss or to miss him back. His Aunt May, maybe, but apparently they haven’t really been close the last few years. Like Petey, Bee had decided that everyone in his life was just…better off without him.
There’s an ever-present grief and anger to Bee that is entirely different than the kind that consumes Petey. On Petey, that grief and anger is new and fresh. It sits on top of him like a blanket, smothering his optimism and cheerfulness with the weight of it.
But a blanket can be pulled away. A blanket can be removed. With Bee…with Bee, it’s sunken into his skin. It’s made itself at home. It’s hooked itself into the younger man’s bones, an anchor that pulls on Bee every second of every day. Peter knows grief and he knows anger, but he has long since stopped wearing it like a second skin.
Bee goes out every night as soon as dusk falls and doesn’t return until the sun peeks back over the horizon in the morning. He’s always covered in some manner of cuts and bruises, stumbling through the window and straight to the shower. They’re lucky Petey managed to find a sewing machine while dumpster diving or Bee’s suit would be in shreds by now.
Yet neither of them have the heart to tell him to stop. Petey has nightmares, sure. He still grieves and cries and collects coffee cups like they’re precious gems. But Petey also goes to work every day; he says hi to people in the street and he takes walks in Central Park and he brags about getting the alley cat to trust him enough for a few pets. Petey still has a life here, is still trying to make it through every day with his chin up.
Petey has a level of maturity that Peter himself can barely comprehend, but also a youthful energy and optimism that refuses to be broken down.
Peter B. broke down years ago, and it’s never more obvious than when it’s just the two of them in the apartment together. When Petey is there, Bee is all soft and gooey and sweet. No really, it’s like his typical tough exterior melts away and he’s just another kid who loves science and fluffy dogs and pizza. Just another kid to debate old movies with and laugh over memes.
With Petey, Bee slips into the role of older brother with ease. When Petey wakes shouting, Bee is there to calm him down with gentle words and even gentler touches. When Petey cries about May or Stark, Bee is there to cheer him up and wipe his tears.
Even with Peter, who the other two fondly call either Pete or Gramps ( very much against his wishes, he’s not even that old!) Bee tends to be pretty soft. He fusses over Peter’s stab wound the entire six days--longer than usual--it takes to heal. He shoves food Peter’s way when it’s just them at night, babbling about how he’ll eat when he’s out on patrol or that Peter needs it more because he’s, quote “gotta take care of those old bones”. Bee insisted Peter or Petey be the one to take the couch, that they can have the last slice of pizza, that they be given the extra blanket.
Bee gives and gives and wants nothing for himself in a way that tells Peter that Bee is exactly the kind of person who gives his whole heart to the people he loves…and loses everything when they leave.
And when it’s just the two of them during the day, Petey at work or out studying for his GED tests, it’s readily apparent that Bee is barely hanging in there. Sometimes, he just sits, staring at the floor, his legs folded beneath him and his mask clenched in his fists. Peter doesn’t want to know what he’s thinking. He’s not sure he would know what to do if he knew.
Bee is empty, has nothing left to give, so he doles out punches instead. He’s weighed down by his grief and overcome with old bitterness. And every time he slides through that window with a new bruise to grumble about, Peter wonders how long it takes someone like that till they shatter underneath the weight.
---
The first month passes, and Peter stops counting the days and starts counting the weeks.
They’ve settled into a routine of sorts. Petey wakes first, showers and changes and heads out to grab coffee before work. He managed to get a simple busboy job down the street, and on Saturdays, he works at the local comic shop for a little extra cash.
Peter tends to sleep in, although he’s always awake and trying to coax coffee out of their dinged-up Keurig well before Bee opens his eyes. The younger man spends much of his night on patrol or clearing his head, and he never wakes before noon.
By the time Bee arrives back to the land of the living, Peter will be showered, dressed, caffeinated, and working on theories. Or, hypotheses more like it seeing as they don’t have a scrap of data that actually proves or supports a single thing at this moment in time.
Peter loves science. But he never even imagined that traveling through portals was real let alone possible.
Bee is a little better at it. Mostly because there’s still a level of nerdy, youthful excitement that simmers beneath the surface whenever Bee talks about things like string theory and matter displacement. Sometimes Peter thinks Bee is working on figuring it out just to prove that he can more than because he wants to.
Or needs to. Like Peter does.
The nights stretch longer the closer they get to winter, and Bee spends more and more hours outside of the apartment. Peter worries. He can’t help it.
Sometimes, the very idea of Peter living with and being friends with alternate versions of himself is enough to leave him lying awake with a headache brewing behind his eyes. There’s something so intangibly wrong about the very concept of what is happening in his life that it makes his brain hurt.
Petey and Bee are not his brothers. They aren’t his friends. They are, quite literally, him.
And yet-- they are so very not.
It’s been six weeks. Six weeks is surely not long enough to feel this attached to someone. But every time Petey’s voice cracks on a name or Bee jolts awake crying, Peter’s heart feels like it’s being ripped in two. Torn between his love for his own world and his desire to go home…and this growing sense of responsibility that is holding him here.
Petey and Bee need him.
Peter looks at Petey with a strange mixture of pride and hope and fear. Petey is struggling, but he leans on Peter and Bee and he lets them help him make it through. Petey wakes each day more determined than the last, and he puts in 100% no matter what it is he’s doing.
Petey is everything Spider-Man has always stood for. Peter can actually see how the weight of May’s--of Ben’s-- words have shaped him and changed him and set him on this path. Petey is human. He struggles, he fails, he cries, and he laughs. But he tries his damn hardest, every single day, to do the right thing.
It scares him sometimes.
Peter has never seen Petey as a kid because Petey has never been one, not to him. And that makes Peter so so proud every time he sees Petey lift his chin and wipe his tears and smile at New York with such determination.
But it also makes him so overwhelmingly sad.
In the small hours of the evening when Petey has come home from work and Bee hasn’t yet left for patrol, Petey talks. He rambles, more specifically, about anything and everything he needs to get off his chest. And Peter listens.
Tony Stark is not just some guy who owns a tech company. He’s not just a mentor or boss. To Petey, he’s infinitely more than that. He’s a father figure. An idol. A friend. A teammate. He meant the world to Petey; he owes him everything.
And Peter hates his guts.
Peter comes from a world where he’s practically the only superhero in the world. There are no crazy robots or Norse gods or evil time-traveling aliens.
And there’s certainly no billionaire going around recruiting fourteen-year-old kids.
Petey was a child. Sure, he was a child with extraordinary abilities, but this Tony Stark had no right to be dragging a child off to Germany to get in the middle of some pissing match between superheroes.
Peter can tell by the way Bee’s fists clench at his sides and his brow lowers in anger that he’s not the only one that feels how unfair this whole thing is. Petey doesn’t feel like a kid because he never got the chance to really be one.
Peter thinks that without him and Bee, Petey might’ve crumbled by now. Might’ve given in to the tsunami of grief. Peter thinks that the knowledge--the responsibility--Petey has to help them get back to their own universes is what is carrying Petey through the day.
Perhaps it’s the only thing keeping any of them afloat. Peter tries to remain optimistic. The math will work itself out eventually. Or Petey will make friends with wizard guy again, or some other hero will pop up with an answer, or maybe this universe will simply have had enough of them at some point just send them home. Who knows.
So Peter tries to remain optimistic. He picks up any and every odd neighborhood job he can for some pocket money, uses it to buy groceries and toiletries and to pack little lunches for Petey to take to work. He feeds the alley cat dinner on the fire escape so Petey has something to look forward to in the evenings, and he sews Bee’s suit back together whenever it becomes torn on patrol.
Peter still clings to that feeling of wrongness, determined not to forget his place here, but he lets himself settle just a little. Lets himself take care of these two people who should feel like strangers but who he embraces like brothers.
Peter talks Bee down from a panic attack one night, standing on the roof of some office building, the blue lights of a police car flickering past Bee’s pale face. He’d caught some girl who was falling, and when he’d settled her gently on the ground, she had told him she’d done it on purpose.
Peter had sensed Bee’s despair from three blocks away. He’s not sure how--he’s too damn tired to process that--but he’s climbing out the window and sprinting across the rooftops practically before he even registers the feeling.
Now, he sits on the gravelly rooftop, Bee practically hyperventilating in his lap, and hopes that if he holds on tight enough, maybe he can keep the poor man from breaking.
“S-She wanted to die,” Bee whispers, voice in shambles. Peter nearly cries at the mere sound of it.
“But she didn’t, Bee. Because you saved her. You caught her Peter.” Peter’s arms tighten further, to the point where he thinks it might leave bruises on Bee’s pale skin.
“She didn’t want to be saved,” comes the heartbroken reply.
Peter has no idea what to say to that. He never really knows quite what to say to Bee.
When Peter looks at Petey he sees a young version of himself. A version who’s faced way more hardship in 18 years than anyone deserves, sure, but a version that he can still recognize. Petey responds to the obstacles in his life not terribly unlike Peter himself might have. And he’s so young, Peter knows there’s time for him to grow and move on and overcome.
Peter knows how to help Petey when the boy comes to him for advice. Peter has no clue how to help Bee.
He takes him home, shoves him towards the shower, and throws his suit in the hamper. He waits till Bee comes stumbling out of the bathroom, thick mop of hair dripping water down his bruised skin, and bundles him up with every blanket they’ve managed to find.
Then he holds him. Because Peter doesn’t know what else to do. Peter has no clue how to even imagine what Bee must feel like. Sometimes, he thinks about what he might do if he lost MJ, but even imagining it is too painful to sustain for long. Bee has been living with this for years.
Petey wakes up at some point. Joins their little huddle on the couch without question, his eyes shining with an understanding too deep for someone so young.
“Have you ever-” Bee’s voice is soft and hoarse, his tongue coming out to lick his lips when it cracks halfway through the sentence. “Have you ever thought about it?”
For a brief moment, Peter has no idea what he’s talking about. But then every muscle in Petey’s body tenses against his side, and he knows.
Bee’s eyes are infinitely sad when he finally looks up from his lap. “I-I haven’t really. Not for real. But sometimes…sometimes when I’m falling, I imagine what it might be like to not catch myself.”
Peter didn’t it was possible for him to feel this helpless and sorrowful. Then Petey went and opened his mouth.
“Yeah, I, I know what you mean.” The youngest of them picks at a thread on the thin blanket wrapped around their shoulders. “I thought I died, once. When Thanos made the Blip happen, and I disappeared. And I didn’t want to then because I knew I was leaving everyone behind. I wasn’t even on Earth; I couldn’t even say goodbye.
(Has Peter mentioned he hates Tony Stark? He really hates him.)
“But now…I don’t know. I mean, Stark is dead. Ma- Aunt May is dead. And MJ and Ned look right through me.” Petey swallows hard, tears clinging to dark eyelashes. “It’s not like anyone would miss me if I left.”
And that- that right there is the sound of Peter’s heart shattering into a million pieces. Because Bee doesn’t do anything more than nod in understanding, and Peter looks at these two boys, broken beyond anything he could imagine, and thinks, not for the first time, that there’s nothing in the world he wouldn’t do to take just a little of their pain away.
Nothing in the world Peter wouldn’t do just to see them smile.
God, Peter hates this universe. He hates that it’s trapped him and Bee here. He hates the way it treats its heroes. He hates the way the city he loves looks at Spider-Man like he’s a menace. He hates the way someone as bright and innocent and pure as Petey could be forced to face such hardships before he even got to graduate high school.
Peter wants nothing more than to leave.
.
.
.
So why does it feel like he needs to stay?