Chapter Text
He’d heard a call go out on the police scanner saying there was some kind “drunken, violent gang” causing trouble at a party on top of a loft building just on the edge of Soho. They turned out to be three drunk guys with anger management issues - or maybe a bad trip, judging by all the weird pills and powders Peter caught glimpses of, who knows. Either way, it took no time at all to web them to a railing, harmless, and all without him needing to strike a single blow.
It took him a little longer to realize that he was being filmed by about a dozen cellphones and at least two camcorders.
“...hi,” Peter said, remembering to thrown off the pitch of his voice just slightly.
“We love you, Spider-Man!” a half-drunk girl in a goth-cheerleader outfit and a glow-in-the-dark collar shouted out from the crowd. The rest of the small crowd cheered, and though they couldn’t see it, Peter grinned at them.
“I love you guys, too,” Peter said. Even more cheers sprang out as Peter gave a theatrical little bow, before backflipping from that position straight onto the railing, balancing ‘precariously’ on the edge, smiling and preening just a little at all the impressed gasps and impressed oohing and ahing they were doing. “Are the rest of you going to play nice?”
“We will!” said a slightly-less-drunk guy covered in glitter, also wearing a glow in the dark collar. Soho, man, Soho.
“Good,” Peter said authoritatively. He hoped this would play out well once it got online. The people liking Spider-Man wouldn’t really help him directly, but it would probably come more in handy one day than everyone hating him.
There was a roar of support from the intoxicated crowd, and wow, fans, Peter still had trouble wrapping his head around that, sometimes. Well, a lot of the time, actually.
Most of the time, honestly.
“Be nice to the cops when they get here!” Peter yelled out, and did another backflip, sticking to the wall of the next building over and scrambling up until he was on the roof. He peered over the edge and waved at the crowd one last time, before disappearing entirely.
~*~
But Flash didn’t actually say anything until Peter opened the door to his locker, which was when Flash leaned in and quietly asked, “Why did you decide to make everyone think Spider-Man is a dom?”
“I didn’t,” Peter said, shuffling his books and papers around in the complex pattern needed to get through two AP science courses in a row before lunch. “I was just being me, and everyone jumped to conclusions.”
“Why were you trying to act like I dom?”
“I wasn’t,” Peter said. “I was just being myself. A more intimidating version of myself, but still myself.”
Flash stared in surprise. “How come you never did that with me?”
“I did!” Peter said, closing his locker door and turning sharply to face Flash. “I just didn’t my, um, extras to back me up, back then. And that was when you beat me up.”
Flash looked apologetic, at least.
“Why the sudden interest?” Peter asked.
“Have you seen the videos of you from last Friday night?” Flash asked. “They’re...”
Words were never Flash’s strong point.
“Yeah,” Peter said with a solemn nod, starting to head towards the bathrooms.
“Right, well, you were really acting like a dom in them. Seriously, I’m starting to wonder if you’re a closet switch or something.”
“Never really felt the need or desire to dominate someone else in my life,” Peter said. “I just don’t like being pushed around by anyone who isn’t my dom.”
“Oh,” Flash said, clearly not sure how to respond to that. Seriously, why the hell was acting so weird, now?
“Now if you’ll excuse me...” Peter said, pushing open the bathroom door. Flash started to follow him, until Peter pointed to the door. The dom flushed as he realized he’d nearly stepped into the girls’ bathroom.
Peter darted into the bathroom before Flash could say anything else.
Inside, all the girls jerked in surprise at seeing him. “Sub, promise,” Peter said, and most of them relaxed even before spotting the collar on his neck.
One, though, seemed to notice the way he was eying the door. He didn’t know her name, though he did know she was the tennis captain and always blinked at the wrong moment in a photograph.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, just a dom guy being weird,” Peter said.
“Need me to make him back off?”
“Nah, I got it, he’ll probably go away soon on his own if he isn’t gone already.”
She shrugged and turned her attention back to the mirror.
Eventually, Peter peeked his head out and indeed, Flash was gone, and Peter scurried to lit class. He picked a seat, saved the one in front of him for Gwen, and started looking up the videos of Spider-Man on Friday night.
He didn’t think he was acting particularly dom-y as he watched them.
But apparently everyone else did, judging by all the comments about people wanting to kneel for him, wanting him to collar them, and even doms prefacing most of their comments with ‘if I Switched...’. Peter stopped reading when the comments started to descend into duaphobic jokes against Iron Man.
He didn’t really get how a guy in a flying, weaponized suit of red and gold armor was supposed to be less cool than a guy in a unitard.
People were weird.
~*~
“Sorry,” Peter said. “Someone made a joke earlier about how I sounded a bit like Spider-Man and I kinda freaked out.”
“So you...planned to just never talk again?”
“I wasn’t thinking it through,” Peter admitted.
Gwen pursed her lips and simply held up another bite of the curry rice thing.
“I’ll figure something out,” she said.
“Thanks,” Peter murmured.
And figure it out she did. At the end of the day, she met him by his locker and without a word, she grabbed his wrist and led him to the nearest bathroom, one of the smaller boys’ ones.
He smiled warmly at Molly on the way in, then blinked in surprise to see their lacrosse captain, of all people, pass them by to take Molly’s hand in his and walk away. When did she become a thing with one of Flash’s friends?
He turned around to ask Gwen about it, only to see her glancing critically towards the bottom of the stall doors.
“We’re alone,” Peter promised, keep his voice low and his ears on high. Though it was hard to say ‘ears’ when his entire body was like one giant ear, constantly detecting vibrations in the air around them.
“What, exactly, do you do for your ‘Spider-Man voice’?” she asked.
“Lower my voice slightly, talk a little faster, and channel my non-existent inner dom,” Peter said.
“Hmm...say something Spider-Man-y without lowering your voice.”
“Spider-Man-y?”
She looked at him, and he quickly quipped, “You know, if you’re going to rob a store, don’t dress like a robber - that just makes everything too easy, especially for me.”
Gwen nodded surely. She made Peter hold her books, stopping only to straighten his jacket before leading him out of the bathroom.
He followed her to debate practice in confusion, holding her books carefully.
“Why did you-”
“I wanted to see your Spider-Man impersonation,” Gwen said cheerfully.
“...impersonation?”
“Mary!” Gwen called out to one of the girls in the thespian hall.
“Yeah?” the other girl asked, as Peter got even more confused.
“You gotta hear this,” Gwen said with a playful excitement that didn’t seem like her at all. “Peter does an amazing Spider-Man impersonation, you’ve got to see this.”
And that was how Peter became the Midtown Science High Spider-Man Impersonator.
By the end of the week, people were coming up to them at lunch with their phones out, and Gwen pulled her scarf off Peter’s wrist and wrapped it around his face (“kinda like a mask”) before allowing him to do that.
God, Peter loved reverse psychology.
And he loved his girlfriend even more.
“Hey,” one guy - one of Molly’s new boyfriend’s friends? - asked him. “You should be the Spider-Man fanclub mascot.”
...nevermind.
~*~
“I don’t hate it,” Peter said. “I just don’t want to go, myself.”
“Why?”
“Doesn’t that seem just a bit too narcissistic to you?” Peter asked, twisting his fingers through the light chain belt she’d attached to his collar as a makeshift leash.
“So?” Gwen asked. “Considering all the bad stuff most of the official channels say about you, a dose of narcissism might be good for you.”
“I don’t want to risk that power going to my head,” he said, dropping the chain.
Peter had hoped a jovial and reassuring tone of voice would put her inquisitiveness to rest.
Instead, a step or two later he felt a sharp tug on his neck. He twisted in place to see her standing still and staring thoughtfully at him. He felt distinctly like a sample in a petri dish.
“Gwen?” he asked. He tried to take a step back to tug on the leash, but it slipped only a centimeter or two before her grip tightened around it again.
“Peter,” she said carefully. “What’s really going on?”
“Just what I said,” Peter said with a shrug.
“No, it’s not,” she said. “There’s something else going on, here.”
“You know, that thing where doms act as if you know subs better than we know ourselves is not nearly as romantic as people make it out to be,” Peter said.
She frowned. “Now you’re just deflecting.”
“No,” he said. “It’s just annoying when other people try to tell you how you feel-”
“I don’t think I know how you feel, I just think you’re not telling me something.”
Peter sighed and stepped back, his body tugging on the leash again. “Can you just drop this? Please?”
“You know asking me that is only going to make me even more curious.”
“Well, I really don’t want to talk about it,” Peter said, turning away and walking forward. For a moment, the leash was so tight he thought he was going to pull it right out of her hand, but then it loosened as she followed him, thought it remained a bit taut, her frustration literally pulling on his neck.
“Peter, why won’t you-”
“I shouldn’t have a fanclub, okay?” Peter snapped. “It’s stupid and pointless and...”
“And what?”
“I don’t want to go. And I don’t want to be a part of the club.”
“What do you mean you shouldn’t have a fanclub?” she asked, reeling him in close as they approached a more crowded street. Speaking lowly towards his ear, low enough only Peter’s enhanced hearing would pick up her words, she said, “You’re a hero, Peter, to a lot of people in our school and our city-”
“Well, they’re stupid.”
“-including me.”
Peter swallowed and kept his eyes on the sidewalk ahead of them.
“And don’t bring up my dad again, you already know what I have to say about that.”
“He didn’t think I was hero,” Peter said. “And considering how much I not only broke the promise he used his last breaths to have me make, but shattered it and stomped all over it, I doubt he would think I’m a hero now, either.”
“He thought you could be.”
“He called me a vigilante in a unitard,” Peter said. “And he was right, he was probably the only one who was right about me.”
“And you said that he said he was wrong about you,” she said. “And when he first started hunting you down, he said that considering what you were doing, it was just a ‘damn shame’ you weren’t a cop.”
Peter snorted incredulously.
“Peter,” she insisted. “You- look, if you really don’t want to go to the club, that’s one thing, but to think the club shouldn’t even exist in the first place-”
“It’s stupid is what it is. Seriously, I wear tights and wander around rooftops-”
“-and take down criminals and save lives-”
“Gwen.”
“The guilt complex really doesn’t suit you,” she said.
Peter huffed but said nothing.
She sighed. “I will convince you somehow, Peter. About all this.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Peter muttered.
He really hadn’t meant for her to take that as a challenge.
~*~