The Broken Spider-Man - A Peter Parker Fanfiction

Chapter Two - Five years

TW: mentions of death, mentions of trauma, mentions of mental health issues

~Five years later~

Rain pelted against my living room window, framing Queens as the grey and ugly place that it had become in recent years. I sat by the open window, my jumper wrapped tightly around my shivering body as I sucked the cigarette smoke into my lungs before moving the cigarette from my lips and blowing the smoke out of my window. I repeated the action as I looked over the streets of my home city, the one that I used to love but now couldn't wait to escape. I had been trying to escape since the death of Spider-Man, five years ago. Well, everyone had assumed that he had died after he had stopped showing up to stop crimes, but no one really knew what had actually happened to him. Since Spider-Man had disappeared, crime in Queens had slowly but steadily gotten worse, up until the point where you were called stupid for leaving your house without a loaded gun. I sighed and breathed out the last breath of cigarette smoke before putting it out on the windowsill. I shut the window, my body shivering as the cold air seemed to have penetrated every fibre of my being, the chill going directly to my bones. I walked to my sofa and sat down, my hands pulling my boots onto my feet as I started to get ready. As if on cue, my phone started to vibrate on the cushion next to me, showing my best friend's name and face. I rolled my eyes at her impatience as I picked the phone up and put it to my ear.

"Hang on, hang on, I was getting ready and then got a sudden craving for a smoke." I shrugged, holding the phone between my shoulder and my cheek so that I could pull my other boot on.

"I thought that you'd stopped smoking." She scoffed.

"I know that that's what I said, Blake, but it takes twenty-one days to break a habit, I've only been not smoking for a week." I returned.

"Babe, that twenty-one days doesn't work if you start smoking again?!" she exclaimed. I rolled my eyes as I stood up and grabbed my bag.

"Whatever, dude. I'm leaving now, I'll be there in ten minutes." I mumbled as I opened my front door and walked out of my apartment.

"I'll hold you to that." She replied. I rolled my eyes once more and hung up, not bothering to say 'goodbye' to her as I locked my front door. I looked up and down the hallway like I always did. My eyes wavered as May Parker stood at her door, unlocking it whilst holding a paper bag of groceries. She looked up at me and gave me a small smile as she did. I hesitantly returned it, tears pricking my eyes as she opened her front door and disappeared into her apartment. That was someone else that I hadn't seen in five years. Peter Parker. After MJ's death, Peter had quickly broken his promise of us going through it together, not that I could blame him. But whilst I had drowned my sorrows in school work and college applications, Peter had started to drown his in liquor bottles, fights, and pills. After only a month or so, Peter dropped out of high school completely and dropped out of the Stark Internship too, leaving it to the imagination what had happened to him, past having potentially died. Though, I hoped that he was still alive. After all, he had been as close to me as MJ had been, and so it had hurt when he had chosen to get high and drunk over letting me help him get through it. I couldn't blame him, though. I sighed, shaking my head and ridding my mind of the depressing thoughts as I headed down the stairs on my way to my daily coffee date with Blake. I headed down to the lobby and out of the doors, sighing as walking through my home city every day was a painful reminder of the superhero that we once had, and that we had now lost. I walked along the streets as I tried to drown out the sounds of crying and yelling, the distant wailing of sirens meaning fuck all anymore in Queens. The people had stopped taking the police seriously a long time ago, it just took us losing Spider-Man to realise that he had become our main way of stopping crime. I walked up to the coffee cart, smiling at Blake as I walked to her before looking up at Danny.