Fanfiction: About a Spider-Boy (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)
Here is a Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse fic loosely inspired by About a Boy, because I really wanted to write about Peter reluctantly getting attached to Miles. I posted about this fic concept back in 2018; I'm glad I got around to writing it at last!
Title: About a Spider-Boy
Fandom: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 3,100
Summary: Some teenager called Miles Morales keeps begging Peter B Parker for Spider-Man lessons. Peter is determined not to care about this kid.
There’s a knock on Peter’s apartment door. He jerks out of bed, yanks on his T-shirt and sweatpants from yesterday.
He takes a moment to glance at the clock while he’s getting dressed. Coming up to eleven. He keeps swearing that tomorrow he’ll be up and dressed before nine.
Maybe it’ll be MJ, here to take him back. It never is. But maybe this time.
He opens the door.
It isn’t MJ. It’s a kid, probably here to sell girl scout cookies. Boy scout cookies? Do they have those?
Anyway, Peter’s already exceeded his cookie budget for the week.
He makes to close the door.
“No, wait!” His visitor jumps forward, pressing his palms against the door, holding it open. Kid’s stronger than he looks. “Uh. Are you Spider-Man?”
Uh-oh.
“Why would I be Spider-Man?” Peter asks, letting go of the door and trying to look as unspiderlike as possible.
“He keeps coming back here,” the kid says. “You and Spider-Man are the only people who ever go in or out.”
Has this kid been stalking him?
“You got me,” Peter says. “I’m Spider-Man’s boyfriend.”
The kid looks startled, then frowns. “Wait, wouldn’t you go out together sometimes? Like, on dates and stuff?”
Yeah, maybe, if it were fifteen years ago and Peter still had it in him to occasionally make an effort. Now, though?
Damn. He needs to stop thinking about this. He’s actually starting to feel kind of bad for being such a lousy boyfriend to Spider-Man.
“I don’t see how my relationships are your business.” Closing the door, take two.
“No, no, no!” The kid plants his shoulder against the door. “I really need to talk to Spider-Man. Is he home?”
It really doesn’t seem like Peter should be struggling in a battle of door-closing against someone who’s, what, four years out of single digits? “No autographs.”
And suddenly his spider-sense is going crazy, and he freezes.
It’s not - not a warning of danger, exactly. It takes him a moment to make sense of it.
Hey, Peter’s spider-sense is saying. That’s you.
His visitor is an actual child, barely teens at most, and also black, so Peter has a few questions for his spider-sense, but it continues to insist. That kid in front of you? He’s you.
He’s really not.
Unless...
“Wait,” Peter says, stepping back from the door. “You-”
He loses his train of thought when the door slams hard into the inner wall of his apartment. He guesses that’s what happens when you let go of a door someone’s really struggling to hold open.
“Oops,” the kid says, scratching the back of his neck. “Sorry.”
The door handle’s left a dent in the plaster. His landlord’s going to have questions. Peter closes his eyes for a moment, pinches the bridge of his nose.
When he opens his eyes again, he sees the kid trying to sneak very quietly past him, into his apartment.
“Hey!” Peter makes a grab for the kid’s shoulder, and the kid-
The kid disappears.
Peter thinks for a moment it’s teleportation. Or super speed, maybe, moving quicker than the eye? But then his hand connects with something and, okay, he’s definitely got a hold of the shoulder he was going for, even if he can’t see it. Kid’s invisible.
Well. That’s new.
“Any chance you got bitten by anything weird and glowing recently?” Peter asks.
“Yes,” the kid says, flickering back into visibility. Doesn’t look like he can control it. “Oh my God, yes, that’s why I’m here. There was this spider - I’m a Spider-Man, right? I’m a Spider-Man.”
“You’re not a Spider-Man,” Peter says. “There aren’t Spider-Men. There’s Spider-Man.”
“And that’s you,” the kid says. “Right?”
Peter looks at him for a moment longer, then groans, dropping his hand. “Look, kid, what did you come here for?”
The kid stares at him like he can’t believe he’s being asked. “I mean, I need - I’ve got all this crazy stuff going on! I don’t know how to control this! Like, how do I use these powers? What am I supposed to do with them?”
“Do what you like,” Peter says. “I don’t care. So long as you’re staying out of trouble, it’s none of my business.”
“But you already know about this, you’ve been through this,” the kid says. “You can teach me, right?”
“I’m not your dad,” Peter says. “Go home.”
“I don’t need a dad. I’ve got a dad. I just-” He hesitates. “I need help.”
“You’re not gonna find it here. Ask someone else.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll just talk to my teachers. I bet they’ll know how to deal with having spider powers.”
“Hey, there’s a great idea,” Peter says. “Just stay out of my life, okay?”
The kid hesitates, glancing along the corridor, further into Peter’s apartment. Peter is not above webbing him up if he makes a break for it.
“My name’s Miles,” the kid says at last, edging reluctantly back toward the stairwell. “Morales.”
“Great,” Peter says. “I’ll send you a Christmas card.”
He shuts the door.
Hopefully he never has to think about that again.
-
There’s a very annoying alarm ringing non-stop in Peter’s ears, the window of a jewellery store’s been smashed in, and two guys are fighting a Spider-Man cosplayer on the sidewalk. Just another day in New York.
It takes him a moment to notice all the webbing that’s been shot haphazardly everywhere. Either this is a very dedicated cosplayer, or Miles Morales is very bad at listening to advice.
(Or there’s another spider-person running around New York. Peter isn’t sure he’s ready to think about that possibility yet.)
Peter tends to turn a blind eye to burglary by this point. There’s a small, nagging part of him that keeps bringing up the image of Uncle Ben, however long it’s been, but he’s only got so much time and energy. He needs to conserve it for bigger things, like abductions and the occasional half-hearted attempt to clean his bathroom.
He’s not sure he can turn a blind eye to the kid getting himself killed.
He ducks down an alley and comes out in spider-gear. Swings straight into the head of one of the guys, foot-first, and webs him down. Turns around to see Miles taking down the other one with-
With some kind of electricity power?
Peter hits a button on his wrist - it’ll send the location of the incident straight to the police, way more convenient than calling, he developed the app himself - and gives Miles a stern look that he... probably can’t see through the mask, come to think of it.
“Whoa,” Miles says. “Uh, thanks.”
Peter points up at the store’s rooftop and then shoots himself up there. Looks down to ground level to see Miles making a few short, punchy movements with his hand, not actually managing to produce any webbing.
Definitely hasn’t mastered his powers. Definitely should not be getting into fights, even if you ignore the fact that he’s just a kid.
After a full twenty seconds, Miles finally manages to fire off a shot and get himself up on the roof, or close enough. He scrambles the last few feet up the side of the building and walks over to Peter with a small, exhausted wave.
“You really don’t know what you’re doing, huh?” Peter asks.
“I asked you to teach me,” Miles says, sounding slightly aggrieved.
“Not like I can teach you about the invisibility,” Peter says. “Or that electricity thing. Go ask Pikachu for help.”
“I did okay, anyway,” Miles says. “I stopped them, right? I mean, we did.”
“Yeah, about that,” Peter says. “You can’t get into fights with criminals.”
“You told me I could do what I liked!”
He was thinking more along the lines of ‘cool parkour’, but apparently what this kid likes is getting beaten up by thugs. “I told you to stay out of trouble.”
“I thought you meant, like, don’t do crime,” Miles says.
“Pretty sure you just committed battery.”
“It’s what you do, right?”
“Okay,” Peter says, “I am a horrible role model. Absolutely do not follow in my footsteps. They’re not leading anywhere good.”
-
Peter tends to leave one of his apartment windows open when he goes out. It’s a convenient shortcut, and what intruder is going to come through when he’s this many storeys up?
Yeah. About that.
Peter comes into his living room to find Miles lounging on his broken-down couch, reading a comic book, dressed in his Spider-Man costume from the neck down.
“Hi,” Miles says.
“Out,” Peter says.
Miles pushes himself up onto his elbows. “Aw, c’mon.”
“Is this your apartment?” Peter asks. “No. Am I in any way related to you?” Probably not, right? “No.”
“We have the same spider powers,” Miles points out. “That’s related, right?”
“We do not have the same spider powers. You have unfair cool extra spider powers.”
Invisibility? That’s an actual, real superpower. When kids have ‘what superpower would you have?’ conversations at school, invisibility is something that actually comes up. Nobody ever says, ‘You know, I really wish I could shoot goo out of my wrists.’ But the kid gets the invisibility, and Peter’s stuck with the regular spider powers.
Not that the regular spider powers aren’t cool. It’s just frustrating to know that they could be cooler.
“I just need you to teach me how to use this stuff,” Miles says.
“I can’t teach you. I don’t know what you need to hear.”
Miles frowns. “I’m pretty sure you know. I mean, you had to learn it, right?”
“I had to learn this stuff over twenty years ago,” Peter says. “Sometimes, when something happened a long time ago, you forget the details. Of course, you wouldn’t know that because you’re a child and everything in your life happened yesterday.”
Miles bristles. “I’m a teenager.”
“Correction,” Peter says. “You’re a teenager and everything in your life happened yesterday. Everything’s pretty much instinct for me now.” He fires off a webshot, to demonstrate what a totally natural manoeuvre that is when you have all his years of experience, and breaks the mug on his windowsill. At least it didn’t get the window. “I don’t remember the basics.”
“Well, you’d still know more than anyone else, right?”
“Just figure it out on your own,” Peter says. “It’s what I did.”
“That’s what I was trying to do,” Miles says. “Someone told me not to fight the robbers.”
Ugh. He’s got a point. Yeah, Peter figured it out on his own, but not without casualties. If Miles gets into fights without knowing what he’s doing, or if he-
If he tries to catch a falling person without thinking about the physics of it-
Peter closes his eyes for a moment. He can’t believe he’s doing this.
“Okay,” he says, opening his eyes. “One lesson.”
-
Peter pulls his key out of the lock, walks into his apartment and immediately trips over something. Barely manages to shoot his hands out and stick them to the wall to prevent himself from going down.
He’s ready to blame himself; wouldn’t be the first time or even the fifteenth he’s caught himself in the trap of his own clothes strewn across the floor. But, when he gets himself upright again and turns to check, he finds it’s an unfamiliar bag, slung clumsily into the corner by the door.
It looks like a schoolbag.
Peter has a bad feeling about this.
“Kid?” he calls.
“Hey,” Miles’s voice calls back.
Peter stalks through into the living room to find Miles lying front-down on his couch, watching TV.
“I’m gonna make you pay your share of the electric bill,” Peter says.
Miles glances up at him, maybe trying to gauge if he’s serious. Seems to reach the conclusion that he isn’t and looks back at the TV.
Damn. Peter was really trying to look serious.
“What are you doing here, kid?” he asks, sitting heavily down on the unstable armchair he usually tries to avoid. It screams in protest. He’s definitely going to fall straight through the seat one of these days.
It’s not like the couch is in better shape, but the fact that he’s already fallen through that seat at least takes some of the suspense out of it.
“It’s been a week,” Miles says. He turns the TV off, rolls over onto his back and sits up with an ease that makes Peter sickeningly jealous. “I figured it was time for another session.”
“I’m not guitar lessons,” Peter says. “Weekly extracurricular spider practice is not a thing. I’m pretty sure I said last time was a one-off.”
Miles pulls the sleeve of his stupid store-bought Spider-Man pyjamas most of the way up his arm, and Peter draws in a breath through his teeth without thinking about it. That is a bad bruise, broad and deep violet, standing out even against the kid’s dark skin. It disappears up under his scrunched-back sleeve, probably runs all the way up to the shoulder.
“Ouch,” Peter says.
“I was swinging,” Miles says. He’s not looking at Peter; he’s staring fixedly away from him, at the wall. Not lying, Peter’s pretty sure, but embarrassed. “Went to make the next shot, and it just didn’t come. I slammed straight into the side of an apartment block.”
“Then stop swinging around,” Peter says. “At least then maybe I’ll stop finding you in my apartment.”
Miles pulls his sleeve back down, looks at him again. “I’ve got these powers. I can’t just not use them, right?”
Peter tries to think back to getting bitten, to how he’d have reacted if someone had tried to tell him he couldn’t use his powers. Honestly, he’s been telling himself for a while to give up his powers for his own good, and he never even pretends to listen.
So Miles is going to keep using them. And, if he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s going to keep hurting himself.
“One more lesson,” Peter says. “On the condition that you don’t come back next week.”
-
Peter enters his apartment and closes the door behind him with his foot. “Kid?” he asks, through a yawn.
No response.
He walks through to the living room, has to turn on the light. The TV is off. There’s nobody on the couch.
It’s definitely been a week.
Where is he?
Nobody in the bathroom either. Peter’s starting to get worried, possibilities flashing through his mind - abduction, taking on a supervillain, web-based city traversal accident-
Wait. Peter told him not to come back. Did the kid actually listen?
Damn. He was kind of looking forward to pizza tonight. They shared one last week, ravenous by the time they were done with training. Peter’s been trying to cut down on takeaways, they’re not good for his bank balance, but he figured he could get away with it when he had someone else to feed.
Still, at least he doesn’t have the kid bugging him any more.
He doesn’t really know what to do with this evening now. He ends up sleeping most of it away.
-
Peter keeps an eye on the news, wonders vaguely whether he can put together the locations of the ‘New Spider-Man?’ reports and figure out where the kid goes to school. Just swing by, check he’s doing okay.
Too creepy? Too creepy.
He could try to send Miles a message. How, exactly? Take down some criminals and spell out HEY MILES U OK in webbing at the scene? Whether Miles is okay or not, he’s going to be considerably less okay if the bad guys figure out who Spider-Man is trying to contact.
He needs to forget about this. Just let the kid do his own thing, make his own mistakes. It’s easier not to get involved.
Peter can barely keep himself alive, and he’s just one person; he does not have room to worry about anyone else.
-
Peter’s insides kind of jolt when he opens his door and sees Miles there, and then jolt harder when he really takes in the scene.
“Hey,” Miles says, wincing.
“Oh, shit,” Peter says, before remembering that’s something you’re not meant to say around kids.
Miles is leaning heavily on the doorframe. There’s a wound in his head, hairline to eyebrow; it looks like it’s been bleeding pretty bad.
“Didn’t want to bother you,” Miles mumbles. He’s fidgeting with the torn-open Spider-Man mask in his hands. “I, uh, I couldn’t - my dad’d have questions-”
“Okay, you need to get out of this corridor.” Peter ushers him inside. “We can do the explanations once we’ve made sure you’re not dying, what the hell.”
That’s probably not something you’re meant to say to an injured kid either. He’s not great with kids.
They just about manage to fit into the tiny bathroom, Peter mostly in the doorway and Miles sitting on the side of the bath. Peter cleans away the blood, swearing to himself. He heals pretty fast himself; he doesn’t know if Miles has the same thing.
“There were these muggers,” Miles says, quietly.
“Not sure how this happened really matters,” Peter says. “Whatever it was, it was stupid to take it on when you’re ten years old.”
“I’m thirteen,” Miles mutters.
Now that Peter’s got it mostly clean, it looks like the cut’s not really bleeding any more. It must have been bad, but it’s healing up well. Faster than Peter could manage, probably.
Peter’s way more relieved than he wants to be. If he’s relieved, that means he cares. If he cares, that means he has to worry about this happening again.
“And,” he says, “if you’re a little less reckless, it looks like you might make it to fourteen.”
Miles lets out an unsteady, audible breath: a kind of shaking voiced sigh. “I’m not gonna die?”
“Not right here in my bathroom,” Peter says. He’s taken enough hits himself to be reasonably confident. “Which is good, because you would not believe how much my landlord complains about that kind of thing.”
Miles scrubs his hands over his hair, then leans down and rests his arms across his knees, head down. Peter can see him trembling.
“Any chance I can get you to sit back and leave vigilante justice to the adults?” Peter asks.
“They were going after a girl in my class,” Miles says to his own legs. “I couldn’t just do nothing.”
Peter closes his eyes. Pinches the bridge of his nose. Struggles with himself for a long, long moment.
“Fine,” he says at last, dropping his hand. He opens his eyes. “Once you’re back in action, I guess it’s time for weekly extracurricular spider practice.”
Miles looks sharply up at him. “You mean it?”
“Apparently,” Peter mutters reluctantly. He’ll have to get a new couch, if he’s going to keep getting home to find Miles on it; that thing can’t be good for a growing kid’s back. “You want pizza?”
Title: About a Spider-Boy
Fandom: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 3,100
Summary: Some teenager called Miles Morales keeps begging Peter B Parker for Spider-Man lessons. Peter is determined not to care about this kid.
There’s a knock on Peter’s apartment door. He jerks out of bed, yanks on his T-shirt and sweatpants from yesterday.
He takes a moment to glance at the clock while he’s getting dressed. Coming up to eleven. He keeps swearing that tomorrow he’ll be up and dressed before nine.
Maybe it’ll be MJ, here to take him back. It never is. But maybe this time.
He opens the door.
It isn’t MJ. It’s a kid, probably here to sell girl scout cookies. Boy scout cookies? Do they have those?
Anyway, Peter’s already exceeded his cookie budget for the week.
He makes to close the door.
“No, wait!” His visitor jumps forward, pressing his palms against the door, holding it open. Kid’s stronger than he looks. “Uh. Are you Spider-Man?”
Uh-oh.
“Why would I be Spider-Man?” Peter asks, letting go of the door and trying to look as unspiderlike as possible.
“He keeps coming back here,” the kid says. “You and Spider-Man are the only people who ever go in or out.”
Has this kid been stalking him?
“You got me,” Peter says. “I’m Spider-Man’s boyfriend.”
The kid looks startled, then frowns. “Wait, wouldn’t you go out together sometimes? Like, on dates and stuff?”
Yeah, maybe, if it were fifteen years ago and Peter still had it in him to occasionally make an effort. Now, though?
Damn. He needs to stop thinking about this. He’s actually starting to feel kind of bad for being such a lousy boyfriend to Spider-Man.
“I don’t see how my relationships are your business.” Closing the door, take two.
“No, no, no!” The kid plants his shoulder against the door. “I really need to talk to Spider-Man. Is he home?”
It really doesn’t seem like Peter should be struggling in a battle of door-closing against someone who’s, what, four years out of single digits? “No autographs.”
And suddenly his spider-sense is going crazy, and he freezes.
It’s not - not a warning of danger, exactly. It takes him a moment to make sense of it.
Hey, Peter’s spider-sense is saying. That’s you.
His visitor is an actual child, barely teens at most, and also black, so Peter has a few questions for his spider-sense, but it continues to insist. That kid in front of you? He’s you.
He’s really not.
Unless...
“Wait,” Peter says, stepping back from the door. “You-”
He loses his train of thought when the door slams hard into the inner wall of his apartment. He guesses that’s what happens when you let go of a door someone’s really struggling to hold open.
“Oops,” the kid says, scratching the back of his neck. “Sorry.”
The door handle’s left a dent in the plaster. His landlord’s going to have questions. Peter closes his eyes for a moment, pinches the bridge of his nose.
When he opens his eyes again, he sees the kid trying to sneak very quietly past him, into his apartment.
“Hey!” Peter makes a grab for the kid’s shoulder, and the kid-
The kid disappears.
Peter thinks for a moment it’s teleportation. Or super speed, maybe, moving quicker than the eye? But then his hand connects with something and, okay, he’s definitely got a hold of the shoulder he was going for, even if he can’t see it. Kid’s invisible.
Well. That’s new.
“Any chance you got bitten by anything weird and glowing recently?” Peter asks.
“Yes,” the kid says, flickering back into visibility. Doesn’t look like he can control it. “Oh my God, yes, that’s why I’m here. There was this spider - I’m a Spider-Man, right? I’m a Spider-Man.”
“You’re not a Spider-Man,” Peter says. “There aren’t Spider-Men. There’s Spider-Man.”
“And that’s you,” the kid says. “Right?”
Peter looks at him for a moment longer, then groans, dropping his hand. “Look, kid, what did you come here for?”
The kid stares at him like he can’t believe he’s being asked. “I mean, I need - I’ve got all this crazy stuff going on! I don’t know how to control this! Like, how do I use these powers? What am I supposed to do with them?”
“Do what you like,” Peter says. “I don’t care. So long as you’re staying out of trouble, it’s none of my business.”
“But you already know about this, you’ve been through this,” the kid says. “You can teach me, right?”
“I’m not your dad,” Peter says. “Go home.”
“I don’t need a dad. I’ve got a dad. I just-” He hesitates. “I need help.”
“You’re not gonna find it here. Ask someone else.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll just talk to my teachers. I bet they’ll know how to deal with having spider powers.”
“Hey, there’s a great idea,” Peter says. “Just stay out of my life, okay?”
The kid hesitates, glancing along the corridor, further into Peter’s apartment. Peter is not above webbing him up if he makes a break for it.
“My name’s Miles,” the kid says at last, edging reluctantly back toward the stairwell. “Morales.”
“Great,” Peter says. “I’ll send you a Christmas card.”
He shuts the door.
Hopefully he never has to think about that again.
-
There’s a very annoying alarm ringing non-stop in Peter’s ears, the window of a jewellery store’s been smashed in, and two guys are fighting a Spider-Man cosplayer on the sidewalk. Just another day in New York.
It takes him a moment to notice all the webbing that’s been shot haphazardly everywhere. Either this is a very dedicated cosplayer, or Miles Morales is very bad at listening to advice.
(Or there’s another spider-person running around New York. Peter isn’t sure he’s ready to think about that possibility yet.)
Peter tends to turn a blind eye to burglary by this point. There’s a small, nagging part of him that keeps bringing up the image of Uncle Ben, however long it’s been, but he’s only got so much time and energy. He needs to conserve it for bigger things, like abductions and the occasional half-hearted attempt to clean his bathroom.
He’s not sure he can turn a blind eye to the kid getting himself killed.
He ducks down an alley and comes out in spider-gear. Swings straight into the head of one of the guys, foot-first, and webs him down. Turns around to see Miles taking down the other one with-
With some kind of electricity power?
Peter hits a button on his wrist - it’ll send the location of the incident straight to the police, way more convenient than calling, he developed the app himself - and gives Miles a stern look that he... probably can’t see through the mask, come to think of it.
“Whoa,” Miles says. “Uh, thanks.”
Peter points up at the store’s rooftop and then shoots himself up there. Looks down to ground level to see Miles making a few short, punchy movements with his hand, not actually managing to produce any webbing.
Definitely hasn’t mastered his powers. Definitely should not be getting into fights, even if you ignore the fact that he’s just a kid.
After a full twenty seconds, Miles finally manages to fire off a shot and get himself up on the roof, or close enough. He scrambles the last few feet up the side of the building and walks over to Peter with a small, exhausted wave.
“You really don’t know what you’re doing, huh?” Peter asks.
“I asked you to teach me,” Miles says, sounding slightly aggrieved.
“Not like I can teach you about the invisibility,” Peter says. “Or that electricity thing. Go ask Pikachu for help.”
“I did okay, anyway,” Miles says. “I stopped them, right? I mean, we did.”
“Yeah, about that,” Peter says. “You can’t get into fights with criminals.”
“You told me I could do what I liked!”
He was thinking more along the lines of ‘cool parkour’, but apparently what this kid likes is getting beaten up by thugs. “I told you to stay out of trouble.”
“I thought you meant, like, don’t do crime,” Miles says.
“Pretty sure you just committed battery.”
“It’s what you do, right?”
“Okay,” Peter says, “I am a horrible role model. Absolutely do not follow in my footsteps. They’re not leading anywhere good.”
-
Peter tends to leave one of his apartment windows open when he goes out. It’s a convenient shortcut, and what intruder is going to come through when he’s this many storeys up?
Yeah. About that.
Peter comes into his living room to find Miles lounging on his broken-down couch, reading a comic book, dressed in his Spider-Man costume from the neck down.
“Hi,” Miles says.
“Out,” Peter says.
Miles pushes himself up onto his elbows. “Aw, c’mon.”
“Is this your apartment?” Peter asks. “No. Am I in any way related to you?” Probably not, right? “No.”
“We have the same spider powers,” Miles points out. “That’s related, right?”
“We do not have the same spider powers. You have unfair cool extra spider powers.”
Invisibility? That’s an actual, real superpower. When kids have ‘what superpower would you have?’ conversations at school, invisibility is something that actually comes up. Nobody ever says, ‘You know, I really wish I could shoot goo out of my wrists.’ But the kid gets the invisibility, and Peter’s stuck with the regular spider powers.
Not that the regular spider powers aren’t cool. It’s just frustrating to know that they could be cooler.
“I just need you to teach me how to use this stuff,” Miles says.
“I can’t teach you. I don’t know what you need to hear.”
Miles frowns. “I’m pretty sure you know. I mean, you had to learn it, right?”
“I had to learn this stuff over twenty years ago,” Peter says. “Sometimes, when something happened a long time ago, you forget the details. Of course, you wouldn’t know that because you’re a child and everything in your life happened yesterday.”
Miles bristles. “I’m a teenager.”
“Correction,” Peter says. “You’re a teenager and everything in your life happened yesterday. Everything’s pretty much instinct for me now.” He fires off a webshot, to demonstrate what a totally natural manoeuvre that is when you have all his years of experience, and breaks the mug on his windowsill. At least it didn’t get the window. “I don’t remember the basics.”
“Well, you’d still know more than anyone else, right?”
“Just figure it out on your own,” Peter says. “It’s what I did.”
“That’s what I was trying to do,” Miles says. “Someone told me not to fight the robbers.”
Ugh. He’s got a point. Yeah, Peter figured it out on his own, but not without casualties. If Miles gets into fights without knowing what he’s doing, or if he-
If he tries to catch a falling person without thinking about the physics of it-
Peter closes his eyes for a moment. He can’t believe he’s doing this.
“Okay,” he says, opening his eyes. “One lesson.”
-
Peter pulls his key out of the lock, walks into his apartment and immediately trips over something. Barely manages to shoot his hands out and stick them to the wall to prevent himself from going down.
He’s ready to blame himself; wouldn’t be the first time or even the fifteenth he’s caught himself in the trap of his own clothes strewn across the floor. But, when he gets himself upright again and turns to check, he finds it’s an unfamiliar bag, slung clumsily into the corner by the door.
It looks like a schoolbag.
Peter has a bad feeling about this.
“Kid?” he calls.
“Hey,” Miles’s voice calls back.
Peter stalks through into the living room to find Miles lying front-down on his couch, watching TV.
“I’m gonna make you pay your share of the electric bill,” Peter says.
Miles glances up at him, maybe trying to gauge if he’s serious. Seems to reach the conclusion that he isn’t and looks back at the TV.
Damn. Peter was really trying to look serious.
“What are you doing here, kid?” he asks, sitting heavily down on the unstable armchair he usually tries to avoid. It screams in protest. He’s definitely going to fall straight through the seat one of these days.
It’s not like the couch is in better shape, but the fact that he’s already fallen through that seat at least takes some of the suspense out of it.
“It’s been a week,” Miles says. He turns the TV off, rolls over onto his back and sits up with an ease that makes Peter sickeningly jealous. “I figured it was time for another session.”
“I’m not guitar lessons,” Peter says. “Weekly extracurricular spider practice is not a thing. I’m pretty sure I said last time was a one-off.”
Miles pulls the sleeve of his stupid store-bought Spider-Man pyjamas most of the way up his arm, and Peter draws in a breath through his teeth without thinking about it. That is a bad bruise, broad and deep violet, standing out even against the kid’s dark skin. It disappears up under his scrunched-back sleeve, probably runs all the way up to the shoulder.
“Ouch,” Peter says.
“I was swinging,” Miles says. He’s not looking at Peter; he’s staring fixedly away from him, at the wall. Not lying, Peter’s pretty sure, but embarrassed. “Went to make the next shot, and it just didn’t come. I slammed straight into the side of an apartment block.”
“Then stop swinging around,” Peter says. “At least then maybe I’ll stop finding you in my apartment.”
Miles pulls his sleeve back down, looks at him again. “I’ve got these powers. I can’t just not use them, right?”
Peter tries to think back to getting bitten, to how he’d have reacted if someone had tried to tell him he couldn’t use his powers. Honestly, he’s been telling himself for a while to give up his powers for his own good, and he never even pretends to listen.
So Miles is going to keep using them. And, if he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s going to keep hurting himself.
“One more lesson,” Peter says. “On the condition that you don’t come back next week.”
-
Peter enters his apartment and closes the door behind him with his foot. “Kid?” he asks, through a yawn.
No response.
He walks through to the living room, has to turn on the light. The TV is off. There’s nobody on the couch.
It’s definitely been a week.
Where is he?
Nobody in the bathroom either. Peter’s starting to get worried, possibilities flashing through his mind - abduction, taking on a supervillain, web-based city traversal accident-
Wait. Peter told him not to come back. Did the kid actually listen?
Damn. He was kind of looking forward to pizza tonight. They shared one last week, ravenous by the time they were done with training. Peter’s been trying to cut down on takeaways, they’re not good for his bank balance, but he figured he could get away with it when he had someone else to feed.
Still, at least he doesn’t have the kid bugging him any more.
He doesn’t really know what to do with this evening now. He ends up sleeping most of it away.
-
Peter keeps an eye on the news, wonders vaguely whether he can put together the locations of the ‘New Spider-Man?’ reports and figure out where the kid goes to school. Just swing by, check he’s doing okay.
Too creepy? Too creepy.
He could try to send Miles a message. How, exactly? Take down some criminals and spell out HEY MILES U OK in webbing at the scene? Whether Miles is okay or not, he’s going to be considerably less okay if the bad guys figure out who Spider-Man is trying to contact.
He needs to forget about this. Just let the kid do his own thing, make his own mistakes. It’s easier not to get involved.
Peter can barely keep himself alive, and he’s just one person; he does not have room to worry about anyone else.
-
Peter’s insides kind of jolt when he opens his door and sees Miles there, and then jolt harder when he really takes in the scene.
“Hey,” Miles says, wincing.
“Oh, shit,” Peter says, before remembering that’s something you’re not meant to say around kids.
Miles is leaning heavily on the doorframe. There’s a wound in his head, hairline to eyebrow; it looks like it’s been bleeding pretty bad.
“Didn’t want to bother you,” Miles mumbles. He’s fidgeting with the torn-open Spider-Man mask in his hands. “I, uh, I couldn’t - my dad’d have questions-”
“Okay, you need to get out of this corridor.” Peter ushers him inside. “We can do the explanations once we’ve made sure you’re not dying, what the hell.”
That’s probably not something you’re meant to say to an injured kid either. He’s not great with kids.
They just about manage to fit into the tiny bathroom, Peter mostly in the doorway and Miles sitting on the side of the bath. Peter cleans away the blood, swearing to himself. He heals pretty fast himself; he doesn’t know if Miles has the same thing.
“There were these muggers,” Miles says, quietly.
“Not sure how this happened really matters,” Peter says. “Whatever it was, it was stupid to take it on when you’re ten years old.”
“I’m thirteen,” Miles mutters.
Now that Peter’s got it mostly clean, it looks like the cut’s not really bleeding any more. It must have been bad, but it’s healing up well. Faster than Peter could manage, probably.
Peter’s way more relieved than he wants to be. If he’s relieved, that means he cares. If he cares, that means he has to worry about this happening again.
“And,” he says, “if you’re a little less reckless, it looks like you might make it to fourteen.”
Miles lets out an unsteady, audible breath: a kind of shaking voiced sigh. “I’m not gonna die?”
“Not right here in my bathroom,” Peter says. He’s taken enough hits himself to be reasonably confident. “Which is good, because you would not believe how much my landlord complains about that kind of thing.”
Miles scrubs his hands over his hair, then leans down and rests his arms across his knees, head down. Peter can see him trembling.
“Any chance I can get you to sit back and leave vigilante justice to the adults?” Peter asks.
“They were going after a girl in my class,” Miles says to his own legs. “I couldn’t just do nothing.”
Peter closes his eyes. Pinches the bridge of his nose. Struggles with himself for a long, long moment.
“Fine,” he says at last, dropping his hand. He opens his eyes. “Once you’re back in action, I guess it’s time for weekly extracurricular spider practice.”
Miles looks sharply up at him. “You mean it?”
“Apparently,” Peter mutters reluctantly. He’ll have to get a new couch, if he’s going to keep getting home to find Miles on it; that thing can’t be good for a growing kid’s back. “You want pizza?”