"Why wouldn't I be alright?" replies Peter a bit too quickly. Maybe Gabriel was shitting him -- maybe it was just a dig at the way he often dresses in dreams, like he's still onstage slaying gloriously fake vampires (but never a vampire himself -- never, not even when he was a kid coming up with his first scripted show). There's not really a surreptitious way to check and reassure himself, but he tries anyway, clasping one hand over the other wrist to check his pulse...which he can't seem to find.