"What did I tell you about warning me before you had people over?" he snaps as soon as he locks it. "Ugh. You do look terrible. Go to bed. I'll bring you something to drink, but you should stay there until your fever breaks, I don't want you getting the girls sick too." Peter doesn't object. He doesn't think he could stay upright another minute even if Skip hadn't dismissed him. He stumbles off down the hall, collapses into his bed, and lets unconsciousness take him completely.
He sleeps and wakes in intermittent bursts. Waking is painful — all-over pain, pain too big to begin to approach, much less describe — but this has been true for a long time. The difference, tonight, is that he lets the dark take him as it will. Peter dreams.
"Are you happy, Peter?"
Ben is sitting across from him in a black place, on a dark plane where nothing is solid, not even Peter. He's wearing his work boots and brown jacket. It's the outfit he died in.
He looks like he's been crying. Peter sits across from him, and a few feet away.
"Hi Ben,"he says softly."I've really, really missed you."
"I'm sorry," says Ben. "I wish I had never left."
"It wasn't your fault."
"It wasn't yours either, buddy." Peter sighs. He closes his eyes.
"I know. Everyone keeps saying that. Well — Ned keeps saying it. " He laughs. It's a wavering, small sound. "But you know you wouldn't have been out that night if I hadn't left. It might not have been my fault, but I did cause it. If I had been better, you' d still be here."
He opens his eyes. Ben's are shining. He watches Peter with his mouth half-open, but he doesn't speak. "It's okay," says Peter. "I'm not saying it to make you sad. It's better, actually, if I caused it."
"How's that?"
" Because …
because if it was something I did… well, that's the only way any of this makes sense. It's the only way anything makes sense. If I'm being punished, I mean. Just… yeah. If I'm being punished." Tears spill out of Ben's eyes. They run down his cheeks, splash onto his jacket, darkening the leather.
"Honey," he says. "Oh, Peter. I' m so sorry. I'm so sorry. I wish—"
Ben dissolves.
Peter wakes to the sound of the door creaking open. He hears footsteps on the carpet, smells hops and bitter breath on the air. He wants to move, even though he can't remember why. He wants to run, but he can't. His body has turned to lead, his skin to ice.
He closes his eyes. When a hand pulls the covers back, he doesn't stir.
"Roll over," says the voice above him.
When Peter does not oblige, the hand grabs his shoulder. Starts to move him. Freezes. " Peter? " says the voice. " Peter, wake up. Peter."
Time blurs out, disappears.
When it starts up again, Peter is in the bath. He's wearing his clothes, and they are heavy with frigid water. Above him, someone is saying his name over and over.
Peter drifts. Maybe time passes or maybe none at all, and then he is dry again, and dressed in warm clothes, and that someone is lifting him back into his bed with shaking hands, mumbling something distant and unintelligible while they pull the covers back over him.
Peter hears the footsteps again, but this time they are leaving. He hears them disappear down the hall, hears their owner get unsteadily into his own bed. He wonders, briefly, why he can hear this so clearly, and then he is out once again.
He wakes slowly at first, and then all at once.
He's lying on his back in bed, staring up at the ceiling, which is bleached with late-morning light. He ' s surrounded by a salt-circle of dried sweat, and someone has put him in his pajamas, even though he's pretty sure he fell asleep in his clothes. There is a sharp clarity this morning that was absent last night. Peter does what he should have done the moment he started feeling sick: he raises his hand to the back of his neck and finds—
Nothing. No welt, no lump, not even a scab to indicate the spot where the spider bit him.
Peter gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom, and automatically jumps over a puddle of stagnant water before he can slip, kicks a towel out of the way without thinking. The bathroom wasn ' t this messy last night: this must have happened while he was unconscious. But he files that away for now. Peter he cranes to look at his neck in the mirror, certain there must be a red spot or maybe even a scar—because surely something that could have caused whatever happened to him last night would leave some sort of mark? But Peter doesn't see a mark. He sees the small hairs on the back of his neck, each of them stark against his skinhis skin, which is also dotted with pores the size of needle-tips, and a thin layer of shining sweat, all of these things as clear as if he were viewing them from under a microscope. His skin, which feels … different, under his probing fingers. Smoother, but tougher at the same time.
There are footsteps in the hall. Just as last night, Peter can hear them long before they are upon him, heavy and shuffling in a manner that means they can only belong to Skip. His heart starts to pound, and he can hear that too, but more than that he can feel it, the tha-thump of his anxiety radiating out from his chest to his arms and the back of his neck, making the hair there stand on end.
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