Web
Part Two
Author: kevswitchau
Pairing: Peter Parker/Casey Connor
Genre: AU: Faculty/Spiderman crossover
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Sex, drugs, language…
Disclaimer: I
don’t own the rights to these characters, I’m just playing with them.
Note:
Thanks again to the Kinky
Hobbit...man, your brain goes where few dare to follow!
And you can’t fight the tears that ain’t falling
Or the moment of truth in your lies
When everything seems like the movies
Yeah, you bleed just to know you’re alive
Iris (The Googoo
Dolls)
Peter had been
watching the kid all afternoon. He had felt something. Some kind of pull...sort
of like the pull you feel when you look into a pet shop window and see a single
puppy whimpering at the world.
Peter watched him
hunch his shoulders and try to make himself look small every time someone came
close. Saw him flinch when one of the jocks fixed him with their eyes, or even
when he thought they did...man, had
they done a job on this kid.
A puppy was a good
analogy, Peter decided. A puppy that had been whipped and kicked but still
skulked near to its tormentors, hoping that just once, one of them would extend
a kind hand.
But of course, none of
them did.
Peter muttered,
shaking his head. The kid oozed fear. And Peter had learned long ago that
predators just loved that smell.
Peter knew that
feeling...that fear. He remembered it well. Nice guys do finish last in this
fucked up Universe, don’t let any politically correct asshole or doped up
guidance councillor tell you otherwise. Nice guys finish last, and usually get
their faces smashed in doing it.
But for Peter...that
was all over. There was a second of
pain, and life as he knew it had ceased to exist. And now he sometimes missed
just being that innocuous kid who nobody cared about...who nobody knew. He
missed just dorking around with his camera and his darkroom, and not giving a
flying fuck if the whole world went to hell, because that was probably where it
belonged anyway.
With a new life came
new responsibilities, an ugly cliche but a true one. One of the first things to
go were friends. You couldn’t afford to get too close to anyone...and before
now, Peter had liked that just fine. It wasn’t like he’d had a whole posse of
buddy-types to begin with. But in this kid, Peter sensed a kindred soul of
sorts, and the more he tried to ignore it the stronger the pull became. So he
had walked on over and offered his hand.
Peter had sat across
from Casey Connor all afternoon, watching him sip coffee, waiting for him to
calm down after the run in with the assholes at the bleachers. The tall one was
relatively harmless. Peter sensed that he was a smart kid with a bad choice of
friends, who rarely gave in to the violent streak he held just below the
surface. He was mean, but he wasn’t particularly dangerous.
The other one, though,
was trouble. Casey had called him Gabe, and Peter had heard the fear in Casey’s
voice as he spoke the name. Gabe was mean and stupid. Not a good combination.
Peter had felt it radiating from him, something feral, something that liked to
make smaller kids cry and bleed.
He was gonna have to
watch that one.
The afternoon had worn
on into evening as Peter and Casey had found a mutual love of photography...of
the dark room. The sharp odour of the chemicals, the solitude, and the feeling
of creating something from nothing as images are lovingly coaxed from
previously blank sheets of paper. As Casey had loosened up and dropped the
barriers, Peter found himself somewhere he’d never been before.
He liked this guy. Really liked him.
It was more than the
paternal protective feelings that he’d had earlier. Casey was fresh. He was
unique. He had an innocence which, although dented by his treatment at the
hands of others, had not been destroyed. Alongside Casey, Peter felt at once
old and rejuvenated. Weary of the world, but willing to take a closer look.
This was unexpected,
but not entirely unwelcome.
He had offered to walk
Casey home, and Casey had accepted. For the entire way, their conversation
flowed easily, and the first time Peter had heard Casey laugh, it had almost
floored him. He laughed like a ten year old, the sound was full of light. Peter couldn’t remember the last time he’d
laughed like that. Perhaps he never had.
More than once this
evening, he’d felt the urge to tell Casey. To just open his mouth and let it
all out. The spider. The powers. Everything. Somehow he thought Casey would
believe him. Would understand.
But of course, he
didn’t. This was his burden. Casey had enough of his own.
He sat on the bus and
pulled his coat tightly around him. He still felt surprise when he touched his
own body. His own hardness. He had gone from 90 pound weakling to action man overnight,
and it still felt as though he had warped into somebody else’s body...that he
was living under some other guys skin. Sometimes he had the insane urge to cut
the foreign skin open to see if he could crawl out. Sometimes he wondered if
bleeding would make him feel whole again...would make him feel himself. It hadn’t gone further than
that though...no further than the wondering. No further than the thoughts. Not
yet anyway.
At least he had been
able to replace the lenses in his glasses with plain glass, so that when he
looked into the mirror, it was his
face looking back. Sometimes he just stared at his reflection for hours,
assuring his mind that it really was him. He really was there. But sometimes it
didn’t stop that feeling that he was falling, that he was melting away, and he
was terrified of what would rise up to take his place.
Peter barked out a
laugh. I’m going insane he thought –
not for the first time. A grey haired lady scowled at him from across the
aisle, and he grinned at her, his smile a rictus stretched across a mask of
forced normalcy. Oh yeah...losing it big
time. She sniffed and turned away as he giggled again. The sound was high
and panicked. He knew he was teetering on the edge...he just had to pull
himself back in time.
Maybe I should just stay away from Casey, he thought, fingering the slip of paper in his
pocket.
“Give me a call, OK?”
Casey had said, handing him the number.
“You bet,” Peter had
grinned, pocketing the number before taking Casey’s hand and shaking it warmly.
Maybe I should just stay away.
He turned his face to
the window and watched the lights pass him by. His favourite game used to be to
guess what was happening in each house he passed. He used to picture happy
families and warm dinners, gently lit rooms with laughing children and loving
parents.
But now...now he knew
the truth. Now he knew that behind the bright facade lay dirty little secrets.
Tears and violence. He’d seen so much of people’s lives lately, and he longed
for the days when he could naively imagine that there was happiness behind
every smile.
He raised a hand and
slowly wiped at the tear that tracked it’s way down his cheek. Who was he
kidding? He couldn’t stay away from Casey. He couldn’t stay away now even if he
wanted to.
Kevswitchau 2002
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