The gas was dissipating, his eyes were adjusting to the dark, to the city lights reflecting through the windows. Even with the lights still off, New York City was never completely black. So why couldn’t he see? Peter waved a hand in front of his face, willing it into focus. No dice. It was just the dark–it had to be just the dark. He hadn’t needed his glasses since he was sixteen; he’d been basically completely blind before that. And then, overnight, he’d had perfect (better than perfect) vision, had tucked his old bent glasses in a drawer in Forest Hills, and hadn’t touched them since.
Distracted, dizzy, he didn’t notice the incomer until they collided, Peter landing flat on his back on the floor. Fuck. No tingling, no spider sense yelling you’re an idiot, look out! Just full-on chaos and Spider-Man down on his ass in the middle of a stampede. Hell of a hero he was. (And now they all knew he was Spider-Man, so he wasn’t just some fallen, clumsy kid, he was a fucking superhero making a mess of himself.) He squinted up from where he’d fallen, hoping to make out something familiar in the cloudy darkness–still, no luck, Peter Parker was blind as a bat. “I’m–I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t see you. Are you… okay? I guess. Are you okay?”