Winning the Game

Chapter 14

Peter had been in a haze for the last few weeks.

He went to school and swung around as Spider-Man, only to return home and slash his arms. The fog surrounding his routine reminded him of how he felt at the beginning of the year.

He was starting to get better those few months with Y/N, but then he fucked it up, like he always did. And now he was back to square one: depressed, harming himself, and completely alone.

Peter stopped visiting Y/N's room and would make up excuses as to why he couldn't study with her at night anymore. Sometimes, he heard her tap lightly on his window with a soft, "Peter?" accompanying it, but he pretended he wasn't there and waited for her to struggle back down to her fire escape.

In school, they were sort of talking, although Peter kept steering their conversations back to their calculus project and school-related topics. He knew Y/N was dying to talk to him about his outburst over his arm, but he couldn't give her the satisfaction of reaching that subject.

He also still wasn't on speaking terms with Ned, which made sitting at their usual lunch table very awkward. MJ would try her hardest to keep the peace and start neutral conversations, but Peter would barely respond and Ned was starting to get pissed at him for acting this way.

Peter knew he should talk to Ned and get over this rough patch, but he just couldn't. Something bugged him endlessly about Ned's suggestion of Y/N's true intentions, and Peter couldn't shake the bad taste in his mouth whenever he thought about it. And taking that out on Ned made it go away, at least for a little while.

February had ascended upon Midtown, and the hallways were decorated in a mix of red and pink decorations for Valentine's Day and colorful posters encouraging students to attend that year's robotics club tournament. Peter normally didn't mind this time of year, but knowing that he ruined things with Y/N and now couldn't spend nights in his room staring into her eyes as she giggled with him over memes and funny videos broke his heart too much.

As he approached his locker a week after Valentine's Day, he was greeted with an even worse sight than the usual already cringe-worthy display of giant hearts and lollipops: Brad Davis asking some shy sophomore to prom. Peter rolled his eyes, and scooted around the corny prom-posal sign equipped with glitter and some lame rhyme. He couldn't stand to think about prom, not when his last dance – homecoming – had been such a disaster. Plus, there was a small part of him that dreamt about attending this dance with Y/N and walking through the gym doors with the prettiest girl in school, but that obviously was no longer happening.

So Peter grabbed his textbooks and adjusted his sleeves to make sure his scars weren't visible and headed on to his first period class, defeated by how quickly this year had taken a turn for the worse.

-

Peter swung home bored after his daily Spider-Man duties.

Action had been light recently, and he was itching for something good to happen. Ever since the battle with Thanos that took his mentor's life, he'd wanted things to calm down so he'd feel like a normal teenager again. But, now that he was icing out his friends and all he could focus on was wanting to darken his cuts, he realized he needed some combat to keep him grounded.

With his apartment building in view, Peter noticed something strange on his side of the building: a girl was dangling from a fire escape and he could hear her struggling. As Peter swung closer, he realized it was none other than Y/N. Clearly trying to maneuver her way up to his apartment to tap on his window with minimal results yet again.

Peter sighed and landed on his fire escape crouched down. Y/N luckily didn't startle as hard as she had the first time he introduced himself as Spider-Man to her, but she did become a tad wide-eyed.