𝓈𝓊𝓃𝒻𝓁𝑜𝓌𝑒𝓇 | p.p. x reader | book one.

𝒻𝑜𝓊𝓇 ✓

"I just said I made some friends, I never said anything about a boy." Laughter filled the air around us as we walked, Adam's hands tucked into his pockets to shield them from the bitter New York cold.
"I can see it on your face. You blush every time I ask you about your new friends, you try to hide your face when I keep pushing it. What's his name? Is he cute?"
"Adam! Stop, we just met, so it's not like it'll go anywhere."
"Not yet." I hit his arm, his chest shaking with laughter.
"Just because he's a boy and he's my friend it doesn't mean I have a crush on him. Sure, he's cute, and smart and funny but we don't even know each other that well yet and-"

A quick gust of air caught me off balance, my feet stumbling before I was able to get myself upright and stable again. When I looked around me, the once busy and vibrant city streets had been reduced to nothing more than a ghost town, pieces of trash and weeds blowing in the harsh breeze. The road once filled with cars was now nothing more than an empty expanse of cracked asphalt, and I stood alone on the pale gray sidewalk.

"Adam? Adam, where did you go?" I began to wander, tracing the openings of alleyways with my eyes and leaning towards any small sound. The street was eerily silent, with the only sounds able to be heard that of the wind breaking through openings in the skyline.

There was a scream that cut through the silence; deep in pitch, raspy, pained. It sounded like someone being tortured, as if the person the voice belonged to was close to death. I ran towards it, and before I could stop, I tripped over something stiff on the ground of the alleyway I'd turned into. My head hit the pavement with a hard thud, and when I touched my hand, my palm came off red and bloody.

Except it wasn't mine.

Both of my hands had landed in a large puddle of blood, the color such a vibrant red it looked like nothing more than paint. The puddle branched into a thick trail, and as my eyes followed it to its origin, I heaved up my lunch in one go.

Laying only a few inches to the right of me, slumped against the dark brick of the apartment building behind him, lay Adam's body, face mutilated and bruised to the point it was hard to recognize him. Blood stained his white shirt and gray jacket, hands contorted as if someone had broken all of his fingers. A single bullet wound lay in the middle of his forehead, and a thick slash ran from one side of his neck to the other.

My eyes wouldn't let me look away. I couldn't move, get and run away, call anyone. All my body would allow me to do was sit there and stare at my brother, merely a corpse lost in a New York City back alley.

A silent scream left my lips as I shot up in my bed, duvet billowing around my waist as my hands frantically tried-and failed-to grip onto anything solid. I could feel the oxygen leave my lungs the moment I was able to take in any sort of solid breath, and my eyes jumped over everything in the room in an effort to adjust to the low light. When my body would finally let me keep a breath, I clutched my hand to my chest and felt my heart pound behind my ribs.

Nightmares were nothing new. Ever since Adam died, they were a frequent, almost nightly, occurrence, most nights making it impossible to get any sleep. It'd been a few days since I'd had one last, and I wished I could get used to the feeling of waking up in paralyzing fear.

I opened the window to try and help catch my breath, the chilly midnight air practically shocking my body back into proper working order. Taking a few deep breaths and for the first time wishing to find comfort in the incessant noises of honking car horns and screaming cabbies, I grabbed a sweatshirt, my canvas bag, and my sketchbook and climbed through the window and up onto the roof.

Despite the sounds of the cars on the road below, the night was fairly quiet. Distant car horns echoed through the city streets, cutting through the silence keeping me on edge. Reaching into the bag, I pulled out the small mechanism Spider-Man had given me, deciding to finish up the repairs I'd started earlier on in the day.