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‘Praise the mountain and the rain, All the gifts that still remain
But the greatest gift of all and the law above all laws is to love your friends and lovers.’
-Sufjan Stevens
The night is warm enough that when he steps out of his bedroom, he has to dodge the sweaty stream coming from their neighbor’s air conditioner.
June is probably his least favorite month of the year.
He swings down, enjoying the breeze hitting his face as he does, and lets himself get carried away by the familiar feeling. There’s no thinking, no anger or anxiety. He just swings from building to building, a ghost in the night until he’s reached his destination.
It’s a roof like hundred of others. There’s no water tower, or fancy signage. Just a regular roof, and sitting on it, a regular girl.
‘Hey, Spider-Man,’ she says, her hands forming two lazy finger guns.
She never seems to be fazed by his presence. It’s like she knows who’s really hiding under the mask.
‘Hey, MJ.’
She chews on her pen, not even bothering to tear her eyes away from her sketchbook. This MJ, he’s learned, is significantly more open to conversation than the one he sits next to in Spanish class. Her shoulders are low, her hair tied into a ponytail.
Just a regular girl, on a regular roof.
‘Can I sit next to you?’
‘Mmh.’
The night is quiet for once, and soon all he hears are the scratches of her pencil against the paper.
They’ve been meeting like this for a while.
Every other night for exactly two months and four days, to be precise.
He wasn’t exactly planning on doing this. All he was trying to do, initially, was find some peace and quiet.
Everything is so loud around him. The school bell, the chatter he walks through to get to class. Faces he’s never seen before becoming his classmates and staring at him and the other departed like the revenants they are.
There are nights where he can’t close his eyes without replaying it in his head, over and over, like a broken record. Nights where all he hears are cries, and he’s not sure they’re his own.
It’s too much.
No visit to the cabin nor its graveyard manages to make the world any quieter.
So he puts on the suit again. Pretends to patrol, when all he’s doing is swinging by the emptiest streets. He focuses on the sound of the web flying through the air, catching onto the surface.
Thwick. Sling. And repeat.
It’s easy. It’s peaceful. Especially without Karen whispering in his ear; he’s given up on the sleek upgrade Tony made for him. He’s not ready yet.
His old suit is comfortable, if not stylish, and it reminds him of an easier time. A time where he didn’t have to worry about planets, genocide, or dying.
She clears her throat.
‘I haven’t seen you in a while.’
‘I’m here every day,’ he counters.
She taps a finger on her phone.
‘On the news, I mean.’
‘Are you stalking me?’ he smiles.
‘Says the guy spending every night on my roof.’
Touché.
He scratches the back of his head.
‘What’s the story there, anyway?’ she mouths, gesturing to his hoodie.
‘The other one’s at the dry cleaners.’
She scoffs.
‘Fancy.’
‘I don’t want to wear the other one, anymore. Too many memories.’
He’s not sure why he lets it out. If she’s surprised, she doesn’t show it.
‘Right.’
She sits a little closer, her hand brushing against his. It might be a coincidence.
Her fingers graze his.
That’s nice.
He closes his eyes.
‘You know, no one would blame you for taking a break,’ she suddenly says.
‘I know.’
‘Yet you’re still here.’
‘So are you.’
‘I’m not a hero.’
To me, you are.
He pauses, unable to say it. She’s right. Factually, she’s not a hero. Not in the spandex-wearing sense of the word anyway. But she’s still here, allowing him in her space for all of two hours every other night. She could tell him to leave. She could just find another spot in the city. She doesn’t. Instead, she sits beside him as he talks, some nights less than others, an arched eyebrow and the shadow of a smile, and it’s nothing short of heroic.
‘I’m no hero either.’
She sighs.
‘I hate to break it to you, but you kind of are.’
He bites his lip.
‘I’m not even sure of what I am anymore.’
‘You’re Peter Parker, for starters.’
He doesn’t insult her by pretending to be shocked.
‘Yeah, well,’ he says with a sad laugh.
‘You’re my friend,’ she continues.
‘Oh am I now?’ he smiles, and she smiles back.
‘Don’t milk it, Spider-kid.’
He takes off the mask. There’s no point in hiding anyway. He’s been Peter Parker all his life.
He stopped being Spider-Man months ago.
He can feel her look at him, studying his face, and he doesn’t move, choosing instead to stare far ahead.
‘You seem different, you know,’ she says, her voice stripped of its usual abrasiveness.
‘Bad different?’ he frowns.
‘No, just… It’s like you’re you, but also...Not really?’
‘Oh.’
‘Peter, it’s not a bad thing.’
‘Yeah, no, I know!’ he says, eyes darting in her direction.
His mouth curls into a shy smile.
‘Hold that pose,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘I said, hold that pose,’ she repeats, grabbing her pencil.
Of course he’s different. She sees it in the way he walks and hesitates before smiling at a joke. It’s in what’s written between the lines of his forehead, in the decathlon practices he never misses anymore.
So what if she sits on her roof every other night, wondering if this time he’ll show up without the suit on?
They’re friends, the two of them. Close enough that she doesn’t mind brushing the hair off his face when his curls get in the way, and close enough that he carries her books around just so she can read as they’re walking down the hall.
But sometimes, he looks at her, a secret smile on his lips, and the scales tip over.
She’s observant. Always has been, will always be.
The new thing though, is that she worries.
Because she might like him, and he might like her back. And she feels the walls crumbling, the barriers being torn down.
But he’s different, and more often than not she finds herself missing him. He’s right next to her, and she misses him all the same.
It’s not that she wants him to revert to his old self, either. None of the departed can. She just wants him back here. As she puts the final touches on the drawing, she can see he’s gone. Eyes lost in the past, in the five years that felt like a second to them.
In the people he’s lost.
I’m here, she wants to say. Come back.
The words get stuck in her throat, like always.
When she hands him the notebook, he stares at it in shock.
‘I look…’
‘Different,’ she says, and he acquiesces.
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you see what I mean, now?’
He studies the drawing. Angry lines trace the contour of his jaw, sharp angles appearing on his cheekbones where they didn’t use to be.
His eyes seem focused on something far beyond the page, his brows furrowed into an expression he can’t quite place. By all accounts, he looks lost. Gone.
‘I think I do,’ he pauses. ‘This is really good, by the way.’
She shrugs.
‘Practice makes perfect.’
She blushes ever so slightly, and he feels a shiver going through his stomach.
Some day, he’ll tell her that she doesn’t need to worry about him being gone.
That when his eyes get lost in space, a quip, a grin, or even a tap on the shoulder from her is all he needs to get back.
‘Can I keep this?’ he asks in a small voice.
She nods.
‘Sure. It’s not like I don’t have thousands of these anyway.’
‘I thought you weren’t sketching people in crisis anymore.’
‘Who’s to say I wasn’t drawing you for other reasons?’
There’s a hidden smile, and for a second he feels something again.
It’s familiar, yet unusual.
A piece of the old Peter finding its way back in the tug of her lips.
A tug in the right direction.
‘I see.’
‘Don’t get your hopes up, Parker,’ she replies.
‘I’m not!’
‘Right.’
‘You’re smiling,’ he says, slightly bewildered.
‘And?’
‘Nothing. It’s nice.’
And it is.
He takes a long breath. Time to step in the right direction.
‘You know, you’re different too,’ he confesses.
‘How so?’
‘I don’t even know where to start.’
There’s the way she looks at him, openly.
The smiles she gives, soft, and softer now.
The light touch of her fingers grazing his.
So what if he gets lost in the past sometimes? There’s something in her eyes that make him want to stay here in the present.
It’s in the handshake Ned shares with him every day at school, in the hug May gives him every morning in between burnt pancakes.
In Happy’s Happy Meal Days with Morgan and Pepper.
‘I would draw you if I could. But… This might work too,’ he half-smiles.
He forages in the pockets of his hoodie to grab Ben’s camera.
‘Do you have three weeks to spare waiting for the answer?’ he says, pointing at the lens.
She blinks.
‘Go for it, Spiderling,’ she answers, her fingers nervously tapping on her thigh.
He thinks back to all the times he’s posed with Ben, all the goofy pictures he’s taken with Tony.
There’s something to be said about keeping mementos.
‘Did you know Flash asked me to get his yearbook signed by Spider-Man?’
She snorts.
‘What did you do?’
He fiddles with the aperture.
‘I signed it. Twice.’
She smirks.
‘Loser.’
‘I misspelled his name.’
‘No,’ she grins, and he grins back.
‘Twice.’
She laughs, and he presses the button.
So he heals. They both do.
It takes weeks, months even. And still, she sits on her roof every night.
Even when he starts wearing his new suit again.
Even when he stops coming as often. New York’s still lousy with crime, SAT prep or not.
She hears the usual thwip of a web slung above her head, and she smiles.
‘Hey, MJ,’ he says, slightly out of breath.
‘Hey, Spider-Man,’ she replies, raising her hands in two finger guns.
He doesn’t ask if he can sit next to her. They’re way past that, now.
Instead, he lets his head fall back, his thigh pressing against hers, and he sighs.
‘Rough night?’ she asks.
‘Hm, not more than usual.’
‘So, everything’s okay?’
He nods, sliding the mask off his face.
‘Yeah, everything’s fine.’
She smiles, and they sit in silence for a while, her hand sketching mindlessly.
‘Oh, right. I have something for you,’ he suddenly says before rummaging through his backpack.
He pulls out an envelope, and in it, there’s a picture of her. She studies it, her eyes squinting to try and make sense of this face she’s certain she’s never made before. Her eyes are sparkling, cheeks slightly pink, a big toothy grin spread across her face.
‘I look…’ she starts.
‘Happy,’ he says. ‘—Weird.’
He frowns, the line of his mouth stretching into an amused smile, and her nose scrunches up.
‘Different,’ they settle on.
She looks up.
Above them, the stars are shining. Probably. It’s hard to tell with light pollution. She stares down at the photo again.
Next to her, Peter lies back on the roof and closes his eyes. She follows suit, pushing her sketchbook away.
He seems at peace, all trace of seriousness gone from his face. Sure, his bones still show a little more than they used to, and there’s now a stress line permanently inked in between his eyebrows.
He’s not quite back to his old self. But he’s there .
And it’s all that matters.
His hand find hers, and she lets her fingers intertwine with his.
She breathes in sharply.
They’re both here.
He feels her getting close before her mouth even touches his.
(Spider-senses tend to do that to you.)
Soft lips press against his own, and he opens his eyes.
‘Hi,’ he says, like he’s meeting her for the first time.
‘Hi,’ she replies.
They’re home.