Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Teetering on the tip of your tongue is a rant, locked and loaded and trying its damnedest to burst out, detailing with uncomfortable precision how your class is filled to the brim with idiots. You keep it safely behind the locked doors of your teeth, though, seeing as how the rant’s subjects are currently brushing shoulders with you, and will be doing so for the next hour and fifteen minutes. Forty five minutes into your weekly two hour photography class, after half a semester has already rushed by, and it finally sinks in. Your classmates wouldn’t know a good picture if it punched their lights out.

Which is exactly how you felt after seeing one photo in particular taken by one of your classmates, a sentiment seemingly not shared by anyone else in the class. The guy who took the photo — underneath it in a small, clean font reads the name ‘Peter Parker’ — you’ve barely even shared pleasantries with him throughout the run of the semester so far, but it’s clear his talents are leaps and bounds above the rest of your class. He has this ability to capture movement and intimacy in such a way that you almost have to avert your eyes from the photo; it’s too intrusive. Whether it’s you who’s intruding on the scene captured in the photo, or it’s the one that’s intruding on you, you can’t really tell, but that’s part of what makes you like it so much. The boundaries between art and audience are butchered. It’s arresting. And among the sea of photos from the rest of your peers, it outshines them so much it’s almost unfair.

Today the class is running a workshop, a chance to get some peer feedback after the mid-semester assessment. Everyone uploaded the work they had done for the assessment, and they’re now displayed, all twenty something carefully crafted pieces, alongside each other in a pseudo-exhibition. The class is required to study them, jot down their thoughts and engage in discussion, all of which will later be collated in the class’s online forum, but for now, you play the role of critics at a museum. The feedback is all to inform your work going into the final project at the end of the semester, and despite there being several weeks in between then and now, it’s still too close for your comfort. Not only that, but having your work judged and marked by your professor is already daunting enough without having to display it in front of your classmates, but as you’re constantly reminded, dealing with criticism comes with making art. And besides, hearing how your classmates discuss some of these photos, you aren’t even sure if you can trust any of their opinions.

Although, that’s probably unfair. There’s some good work in this class, and at the very least, most of them are getting the recognition they deserve. You’re just annoyed that your favourite one seems to fly under everyone’s radar.

You now have almost a full page of feedback written down on this one photograph alone, even though your professor advised the class to keep the feedback brief and to the point. You’re in the middle of writing down yet another aspect to the photo you noticed that caught your fancy, when you realise someone’s joined you in your scrutinisation. You move slightly aside to allow them some room.

“What do you think of it?” they ask.

“It’s amazing,” you say, still writing.

You scribble down the end of your sentence, read over it, if only to cement the thought in your head, and look back up at the photo before your classmate replies.

“…Really?”

You bite back a frustrated sigh. “Yeah, I think it’s great.” You turn to your classmate. “Oh.” You laugh lightly, and wave just a little bit awkwardly. “Hi, Peter.”

He smiles back. “Hey.”

You gesture to the photo. “It’s some really good work.”

He shrugs. “Thanks.”

The small chatter of the rest of the class filters through the air. You hear someone talking about a photograph with a fish in it — you thought that one was beautiful. Someone in another group makes some comment which produces a loud burst of laughter from the other side of the room. Briefly you turn your head to the disturbance before returning your gaze to Peter’s photo. Somewhere in the room, you faintly hear someone mention your name, and you can tell they’re talking about your photo. Not too eager to hear feedback on your work just yet, you block the sound out as best as you can. You look back up at Peter and smile politely. You’re not sure what else to say.

“So, uh,” he starts, and clears his throat. “Is all that for me?” He’s gesturing to your written notes. The top of the page has his name in your handwriting, followed by the title of his work.

“Oh. Yeah.” You look up and down the page. You didn’t realise how it looked, especially compared to the short paragraphs you wrote for every other photo you saw so far. “I basically wrote a whole essay, huh?”

He smiles. “All good things, I hope?”

“Oh,” you scoff. “All great things. Between you and me, yours is the best photo in the class.”

Peter barks out a laugh. “What?” He dismisses your comment with a wave of his hand. “I bet you’re saying that to everybody.”

You laugh as well. “No, really!” you say. “I think it’s great. You should enter it into a competition or something, I can totally see it winning.”

He scrunches up his face. “Nah.”

You blink. You look between him and his photograph. “Don’t tell me you don’t like it.”

“Eh.” He shrugs. “It’s not my best work. It was kinda rushed.”

You look at the photo again, keeping your eyes there. It’s beautiful.

Peter takes a half step closer to you, your personal spaces tangling together. He has that in common with his photo. He gestures vaguely towards it. “Like, the composition is a mess. Everything feels off balance.”

You look down at your notes. “I thought that was intentional.”

“I wasn’t intentionally trying to make it bad.”

You chuckle in spite of yourself. You look away from the photo, shaking your head. “I’m not hearing it. I think it’s wonderful, even if it didn’t come together like that on purpose.”

Peter still doesn’t look convinced. He steps back from you and nods his head slowly. “Thank you.”

You give him a quick smile.

Once again the sounds of the class make their way between the two of you. You look down at your notes again. There’s still a few more photos you have to write down your thoughts for — you’d had a good look at all of them already, but you got distracted from articulating your opinions in written form by the allure of Peter’s photo. You do want to go off and be done with your feedback, but at the same time, the idea seems incredibly, painfully boring to you now. For some reason, you don’t really want to leave Peter’s side. You tell yourself you just want to discuss his photo more, even if he already made clear his feelings on it. Who doesn’t want to get to know the artist behind the art? It doesn’t hurt that even after your brief exchange, you can tell — he’s easy to talk to. And easy to look at. Suddenly the urge to get to know him better grips you tight and refuses to let go.

Beside you, Peter clears his throat. “Um, this is embarrassing, but…” He grimaces self consciously. “What was your name again?”

You give a short laugh that’s more similar to an exhale through your nose. “Don’t worry about it,” you tell him, along with your name.

“Oh, right!” He clicks his fingers. “I saw your photo. I liked it.”

You avoid his eye contact, sucking air in through your teeth. “Yeah?”

“Yeah! That was the one with the, uh…bus stop, right?”

You nod, still not looking in his eyes. “Yeah, that’s the one.” Even though he already said he liked it, you’re dreading some backhanded compliment to come out of his mouth next.

“What’s up?” Peter asks, cocking his head to the side in an attempt to steal back your eye contact. Eventually you relent and give it to him, trying (and failing) to fight off a smile. Peter grins. “Don’t tell me you don’t like it.”

You roll your eyes good naturedly and shrug. “It’s alright. I think whatever feedback I get will speak for itself.”

Peter shakes his head. “I’m not hearing it. I thought it was wonderful.”

You nudge him lightly with your elbow. “Stop stealing my lines,” you laugh.

He feigns hurt for a moment before laughing along with you.

The thought flashes through your mind that it has been an absolute waste of half a semester to not have befriended Peter right from day one. You have to make up for lost time now.

“So,” he starts, beating you to the punch. He smiles down at you, and it’s contagious; he holds the smile for a moment or two before suddenly remembering he had started talking. “Uh…” He looks around the room, as if a conversation starter is hiding in one of the corners. Peter’s a little awkward, you realise, but not in a way that makes you want to run and hide from a shambling mess of a conversation. It’s endearing, and you get the sense that he wants to keep talking just as much as you do. He swallows, before swinging his gaze back to you. “…Why’re you taking this class?” he asks. “You wanna become a photographer, or…?”

The question’s as small talk-y as small talk can get, but it nevertheless is a step in the two of you getting to know each other better — or even getting to know each other at all. You’re glad he asked it. Honestly, he could’ve asked anything and you would’ve been glad. You chuckle lightly. “No, nothing like that. I just had some free space left for an elective. I thought a first year photography class would be something nice and laid back before I graduate.”

Peter blinks. “Oh, you’re graduating?”

“Yeah,” you nod. “This is my last semester.” The fact that you’re mere weeks away from being done with school entirely is one that excites and frightens you so much that you mostly try not to think about it at all.

“Huh. Cool,” Peter says, matching your nods. “What was your major?”

You cry internally just a little that Peter so quickly changed to past tense. You cling to your final few weeks before graduation, a number that is rapidly ticking down before your eyes. “Film studies.”

“Oh, very cool!” Peter says, now smiling wide. “You gonna become a director?”

You force a dry laugh. “Well. We’ll see…” The truth is, you still don’t have a concrete idea of what you’re going to do after you’re finally done with school.

“You know, actually…” Peter starts, thankfully not picking up on your internal struggles right now (or at least if he did pick up on them, he mercifully ignored them). “The reason I got into photography in the first place was because of Rear Window.” 

You hum. “Hitchcock,” you say, not especially intelligently. At least Peter shifted the topic to something you have a bit more of a handle on than the terrifying prospect of whatever lies in your future. “Good choice,” you add, offhandedly.

“I mean, Jimmy Stewart literally defeats the bad guy by taking pictures. How cool is that?”

“Oh, no spoilers!” you quickly say, putting your hands over your ears. “I haven’t seen it yet,” you admit.

Peter looks like you just personally insulted him. “‘No spoilers’?” He blinks, shaking his head, as if trying to rid the absurd notion from his mind, all the while clearly holding back a laugh. “First of all,” he puts up one finger, “it came out in like the fifties, nothing counts as a spoiler anymore, and second of all,” he puts up another finger, “you haven’t seen Rear Window? How? You’re a film studies major!”

“I know, I know!” you laugh. You heard the accusation coming as soon as you said you hadn’t seen it. Every classic you haven’t seen is a disgraceful smear against your reputation. You don’t really have any reason why you haven’t seen it yet, either. “I just haven’t got around to it. I’ve seen, like, every other Hitchcock movie.” Slight exaggeration. You’ve seen maybe three.

Peter looks so disappointed. “Rear Window’s the best, though.”

You laugh again, a little self conscious this time. You almost feel guilty, like you’ve personally let Peter down. “But is it better than Rope?”

“What’s Rope?”

“It’s,” you stutter, “a Hitchcock movie.”

“Oh.” He does this tiny little shrug. “I haven’t seen it.”

“It’s my favourite of his,” you say. “It’s probably not his best, but…I like it.” You give a small smile.

Peter looks you up and down. You don’t know what to make of that; it’s a quick little movement of the eyes, so quick you almost don’t catch it, so quick it almost seems subconscious. It probably was, anyway, and you probably did the same to him sometime throughout the conversation. It’s just something people naturally do when they notice someone else. You don’t know why you’re fixating on it so much. 

Peter takes a deep breath. “Well.” He smiles. “It seems like we both have gaps in our movie history knowledge. Although, I do think yours is slightly less justified.” He puts his hands in his jacket pockets, shrugging. “Film studies major, that’s all I’m saying.” 

You scoff, a little dramatically, as if he’d just majorly offended your honour.

“It’s just—” Peter laughs. “It’s one of his most popular movies!”

You laugh along with him, not for the first time in this conversation. Somewhere in the back of your mind you register that the tables have turned; now you’re the ones in the class whose discussions have all but veered far from the assigned topic at hand. You wonder whose heads have turned at your laughter, but after less than a second of thought, you decide you don’t really care. You sigh, still smiling. “You really love Rear Window, huh?”

“I think it is a perfect movie. Virtually flawless.”

You whistle. “High praise.” 

Peter shrugs. “Yeah, well.”

A light chuckle leaks out past your lips, excess laughter leftover from just a few moments ago. You’d been dreading this workshop ever since you noticed it on the weekly class schedule (your professor didn’t even do the courtesy of verbally warning the class of the upcoming horror) and this whole morning was filled with a mantra of ‘Two hours, and then it’s over.’ Now that seemed like a self inflicted curse. Two hours with Peter — less than that, even, the clock close to ticking over the hour reminds you — and then it’s over. Until next week, sure, but who knows if he’ll even turn up next week? Not that you’ve been keeping track of the class’s attendance, but there are some faces that certainly feel more frequent than others. Peter’s is not one of them.

You look at Peter now, properly, for the first time. He said that his photograph was rushed, and you kind of get that vibe from all of him, like he threw himself together at the last minute right before walking into class. He pulls it off well, though — an image presents itself to you of Peter all put together, without his badly concealed bedhead, with perfectly ironed clothes all lined up nice and straight, and it feels…not wrong, necessarily. But definitely off. You like him like this. It’s part of his charm, you suppose.

You don’t want to make assumptions. But if you want to be friends with Peter (and you do, suddenly, and it feels like a magnet is pulling you towards him), you get the feeling that if you don’t latch onto him quick, and with enough strength behind your grip, he’ll fall through your fingers, with no hope of catching him again.

“You should show it to me sometime,” you say, before you can really stop yourself. “And I can show you Rope.” You’re not entirely sure if the offer is serious or not. At least if it is, you won’t have to worry about whether or not Peter will decide to do something about fixing his attendance. You decide the offer is serious.

Peter considers the offer. “Deal,” he says, after a moment. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” He cringes. “I don't know why I said that, I’m sorry.”

You laugh, loudly, before clamping a hand down over your mouth after Peter gives you an especially embarrassed look. “It’s fine,” you tell him. “Sorry I laughed.”

Right as Peter goes to respond, the voice of your professor silences the class.

“Okay!” she says. “Five more minutes everyone, then back to your seats. We still have a lot to get through today.”

You look at the clock. Only an hour left.

“Right,” Peter says, drawing your attention back to him. “We should. Probably do our work.”

You take in a breath, nodding. “Yeah,” you say. You gesture to his empty hands. “You should probably write something down.”

“Oh, right…” Peter looks down at his hands, like he just noticed that they have nothing to show for the last fifty or so minutes of milling about the classroom. What was he doing this whole time — was he even here this whole time? Did he even show up at the start of class? You can’t remember. He pats down his jacket, then his jeans, fishing out a single black ballpoint pen from its pockets. He looks around his person again, and gives up after nothing else magically appears in his possession. “I, uh,” he checks again, “seem to have forgotten my notebook.” He smiles awkwardly.

“Here,” you say, already having turned to the middle of your notebook to rip out the pages right from the staples. It comes off clean. Peter reaches for it, but before you hand it over and before you can really stop yourself (again), you hastily write your number at the top of the page. You all but shove it into Peter’s hands. “For whenever you wanna do movie night,” you say.

There’s a fraction of a second where you’re certain that that was far too forceful a move, and if anything you should have asked his number rather than dropping yours on him with all the social grace of a baboon on roller skates. But if there’s anything that (nearly) four years of college has taught you, it’s that you can’t be shy if you want to make (and keep) friends.

Any worries you have are put to rest anyway when Peter beams brighter than the sun. “Great!” he says. “Yeah, I—” he stutters. “Will do. Thanks. That’s—” He nods. “Thank you.”

“Sure, no problem,” you say, not really knowing how else to respond.

“I’ll, um,” he points down at the paper. “I gotta write, like, thirty pieces of feedback.”

“Yes,” you chuckle. “Have a fun five minutes.”

He walks backwards away from you, giving you a small salute. “Will do.” He somehow manages to smoothly sidestep a classmate behind him before finally turning away from you and towards the wall of photographs.

Why’d your professor have to go and open her mouth? You sigh, turning back to your written notes. Your thoughts on Peter’s photo seemed to take up the whole damn book. You flip to the next page, and cram your feedback for the last few photos on it, taking your seat before the five minutes is even up. Peter’s among the last few stragglers, and once your professor calls for them to wrap it up, you see him go back to his seat, marked by his waiting bag and laptop, all the way on the other side of the room. No wonder you had trouble noticing him before today. But it would be too weird if you got up and went to sit next to him right now; you’d take a stab at that next week. If he’s even here next week.

The remaining hour passes slowly and ends with your professor reminding the class to upload your feedback on the online forum. You pack your things relatively quickly, the first to stand up once the lesson’s over, hoping to say a quick goodbye to Peter before you rush over to your next class. But evidently, you are not the first person up, because you can’t spot Peter anywhere — when did he leave? He must be even more rushed than you first thought.

The rest of your day passes in mind numbing routine, and Peter barely crosses your mind until you’re back home in your apartment, your photography class’s forum pulled up on your laptop and your notebook open on top of the keyboard.

It really shouldn’t be so hard to just transcribe what you’ve already written into the ready and waiting text box, but for some reason, it’s taken aeons. The other twenty something photos were only time consuming in their sheer quantity, and in the fact that you had apparently written quite a bit for every photograph — it just didn’t seem like it compared to how much you wrote for Peter’s, but it was absolutely obvious compared to how much everyone else was writing. Oh, well. It really only proved a problem when writing up Peter’s feedback.

It would dwarf every other comment he got. And contradict them. The majority of your time spent on the forum is filled with your complete indecision on whether to open yourself up and actually express your opinions, or keep everything hidden inside. It would just be so much. You would be too much.

You eventually compromise. You stick to your guns, praising Peter’s work, but you cut out at least half of your comments — there’s a lot of superfluous stuff in there, anyway, so you just stick to what’s necessary. It still ends up being embarrassingly long, so you cut out an extra sentence or two, until its length is similar to the rest of the other comments you’ve written. After nearing an hour of cutting and chopping up your feedback, reading and rereading and rereading and rereading to make sure it’s even at all coherent, you finally hit post if not to just be done with it once and for all.

Tentatively you bring up your photograph. Not everyone in the class has commented on it yet, and you quickly scroll through the ones already there. You don’t dare read them properly, at least not yet, not until you actually have to start working on the final assessment.

You scroll to the first comment.

Posted by Peter Parker – Wednesday March 8, 12:06 PM

You furrow your brows at the time of posting. That would’ve been in the middle of class, not ten minutes after the two of you spoke. A couple of the next comments share similar timestamps, 12:23 PM, 12:39 PM, and you don’t really blame them — the lecture today wasn’t particularly gripping — but Peter really got in on the ground floor there.

You hesitate to read even his feedback. You briefly skim it, curious enough to just get the general vibe, and even once you determine that yes, it’s all seemingly positive, you’re still not psyched about getting into the nitty gritty details of what he wrote. You close your laptop, trying your hardest to free yourself from thoughts of college for at least until tomorrow morning.

Your apartment is more like a broom closet that someone shoved a bed inside, but it’s close enough to your school and probably the only one you could afford, so you put up with what you’ve got. You switch on your shitty little second hand TV to the evening news, filling your apartment with background noise as you get started on making dinner.

“—early this afternoon. Shortly after, the web crawler was seen intervening in a would-be traffic collision, stopping a careening school bus from crashing into multiple vehicles.”

The news anchor drones on as you rummage through your fridge and freezer, looking for something simple enough that it would be ready within the next few minutes. You land on a microwavable lasagna — perfect. It’s a little sad, but at least it’s quick and, most importantly, hot. You pop it in the microwave and lean against the kitchen counter as it spins.

From the kitchen you can see your TV as it shows images of Spider-Man on a busy New York street, some time earlier today as he escorts a group of children off of a school bus. There’s at least a few parents who’ve already arrived on the scene, and one mother snatches her child from Spider-Man before pointing an accusing finger at him, and yelling something that you can’t hear over the news anchor’s voice over. The image cuts to a father of one of the kids, being interviewed shortly after the incident. Whether it’s because of the whirring of the microwave right next to you or your general inability to be invested (or both), you can’t really make out what he’s saying with a great deal of clarity, but from what you gather he seems to be fairly pissed off that Spider-Man was involved at all. You do catch the word ‘whiplash,’ though — apparently his kid having neck pain was worse than his kid dying. 

You don’t know how Spider-Man can do it. You can barely deal with unhappy customers at work, when their grievances are just over a messed up coffee order or a long line, but when the stakes are actually life and death? And it’s bad enough that Spider-Man gets the occasional protester among the people he saves, but the media relentlessly going after him doesn’t help, either. The news channel you’ve turned to isn’t even anti-Spider-Man in any significant capacity, it just doesn’t make any effort to be explicitly pro-Spider-Man.

“Jeez,” you breathe, watching as the screen cuts to shots of him swinging away, “will that guy ever catch a break?”

You have half a mind to change the channel, but the thought is interrupted when you hear your phone vibrate a couple of times from across the room. You make your way from the kitchen to where your phone rests next to your laptop and notebooks on your desk, and check your notifications.

[Unknown Number] Hey, it’s Peter :)

[Unknown Number] I just saw your feedback for my photo! Thanks for the kind words

There’s a rush through your body, like golden light shooting up from your chest and flooding your brain, manifesting in a wide grin spread across your face. It’s not a reaction you were expecting — it’s just a message from a guy you met today, after all — but you’ll take the sudden burst of happiness from Peter’s text over what was shaping up to be a fairly pedestrian evening. You open the conversation and text back.

No problem, you too!

You keep the thanks at that, not really wanting to give away that you hadn’t actually read all of Peter’s feedback yet. You quickly add his number to a new contact, using the same naming convention you’ve stuck to for the past four years whenever you meet someone new — their first name followed by the code of the class you met them in. Peter’s comes up as ‘peter phmd1023’. Just as you hit the save button, your phone vibrates again and a new notification pops up. You go back to the conversation with Peter.

I’m excited to see what you do for the final

Haha, thanks. I can’t wait to see what you do as well :)

You tap against the sides of your phone, wondering if you should add any more to the text, any more to the conversation. You tap on the blank bar at the bottom of your screen to bring the keyboard up again, having half the intention to type something out but zero idea what you should actually say, when the microwave beeps from the kitchen.

You turn your phone off, holding onto it as you step back into the kitchen, grabbing a knife and fork and opening the microwave. You put your phone and the cutlery down on the bench as you take out the now steaming lasagna, your stomach immediately grumbling at its heavenly aroma.

Across from the TV, your armchair greets you like an old friend as you settle down into it for dinner, grabbing the remote and flipping through the channels until you find a rerun of some sitcom you’d seen a few years ago and had forgotten all about. It serves just as much as background noise as the evening news did, and as you take your first bite of lasagna you pull up your messages on your phone.

In lieu of responding to your text with words, Peter has reacted to your most recent message with an emoji — a simple enough gesture, polite enough to let you know that he doesn’t necessarily have anything more to say. You wouldn’t otherwise think anything of it, ordinarily, except the emoji in question is one that provides ample opportunity to read way too far into it. He reacted with a heart emoji.

Which is normal in this situation, you have to tell yourself. You heart react to your friends’ messages even when they’re saying the most inane shit, and they do the same in return — if anything it’s just a way of acknowledging that you’ve read the text at all. It means absolutely nothing more than that.

It means nothing, you remind yourself. Don’t read into it. It means nothing.

It means nothing.

You take another bite of lasagna.

You don’t know why you want it to mean anything, anyway, or why you’re so hung up on it in the first place. You turn your phone off and throw it on your bed, and pull the lasagna into your lap, relishing in the warmth it provides.

The sitcom is good at distracting you from your own thoughts and you sit there watching it, and the episode that plays after it, even after you’ve finished your lasagna, the empty aluminium tray sitting on your coffee table, getting colder by the minute. Your phone stays quiet for the rest of the night, laying abandoned on your bed sheets, no more messages or notifications of emoji reactions to send your head into a spin as you try and decode them. 

You figure that’s for the best, anyway. The night turned out to be just as mundane as the ones before it, and as the hours plodded along you could slowly feel your brain switch off for the rest of the day. In your current state of mind, if someone reached out to you — if Peter suddenly launched into a deeply emotional and philosophical conversation with you, or even if he just said hi, you wouldn’t know what to say. You probably wouldn’t say anything at all.

Eventually, you turn the TV off, and silence surrounds you.

Chapter Text

The semester rushes along, no matter how much you want to drag it back to a screeching halt, or at least force it into slow motion. Graduation approaches like a speeding car, but there’s not much you can do to move from its path; you’re stuck, blinking, blinded by the headlights. You know it has to hit you eventually.

The only thing that gets your mind off of your impending future is your photography class. You’ve migrated from sitting near the windows of the room, the side your professor tends to favour in her lectures (and thus, the side where it’s easiest to hear her and not have to rely on your college’s less-than-optimal speaker system), and have instead taken up sitting right near the door — right next to Peter. His attendance, as you already suspected, is spotty at best, and in the handful of weeks left of classes, you only manage to catch him a few more times. Out of all your time left before graduation, it seems to go fastest when you’re with Peter.

He has this ability to make everything else around the two of you fade away, and even in the moments when you’re not talking, when you’re supposed to be jotting down notes on digital image capturing and workflow processes and production techniques, you find yourself wrapped up in the world of Peter Parker. You know your time even just sitting next to him is limited — it’s often ten, fifteen, twenty minutes into a lesson before Peter even shows up, and you always have to rush to your next class, anyway — so you allow your thoughts the luxury of wandering. There’s just something about him. As the weeks go by you’re faintly aware that the more you spend time with Peter, the more likely you are to catch feelings for him — it feels almost as inevitable as graduation. It’s like you can see a crush rising just over the horizon, and you sit, sunken in calm anticipation, for its rays to eventually warm you. You’re not there just yet, though, and it’s easy to dismiss the idea when it hasn’t grabbed you full force yet.

Ignoring the inevitable, does, at times, feel like ignoring the sun.

It’s a foggy morning on the day you and Peter agree to meet. Classes are finally over and you have mere days before exams start, and your photography class has elected to use the allotted time for the dreaded, the unthinkable, the downright horrid — student presentations. The easy part of the final assessment is over — finally reading each and every single piece of feedback for your mid-semester assignment, putting what you gathered into your approach for your final work and bringing it all together into a photograph that you’re actually pretty damn proud of — that was nothing. The second part now looms. A seven minute speech on your photograph, acting as a reflection on your work, how it emerged from topics covered throughout the semester, and in particular, any inspiration drawn from at least one contemporary New York photographer whose work was studied in the class.

“How on Earth am I supposed to relate this back to Gregory Crewdson?” you ask Peter after not having written a single word in the full twenty minutes you’ve been sitting in the college library.

“That’s who your main inspiration is?”

You’re taken aback by Peter’s almost judgemental tone; that certainly came out of nowhere.

“No, sorry, I meant—” he quickly backtracks. “I mean, you’re right. I wouldn’t have guessed. I don’t get a lot of…Crewdsonian vibes from your photo.”

“I know,” you say, burying your face in your hands.

“Just write about someone else, then,” he suggests, shrugging one shoulder.

You groan into your hands.

“I’ll take that as a no.” Peter resumes typing on his speech. He’d messaged you just last night to see if you were interested in spending some time working together on your speeches before you had to present them next week. You took him up on the offer, barely having had any time to work on your presentation so far. Besides, you won’t lie — it made your heart flutter to know that Peter actually wanted, and asked, to spend some time alone with you. Sure, it was basically just a glorified version of your classroom interactions, but still. It was nice of him to reach out.

You lift your face back up. “He actually, legitimately is my inspiration. It just doesn’t look it.” You sigh, falling back in your chair, staring at the blinking cursor on your all but blank document. “I’ll just bullshit something, I guess,” you mutter to yourself.

You can tell Peter is only kind of half listening, especially when it takes him a couple of moments before he stops typing again. “Don’t do that,” he says. Or maybe he’s got better hearing than you thought. “If he is your inspiration, then just be honest about how your work reflects that. The words must be in there somewhere, right?”

You rub the back of your neck. Looking at your photo, removing yourself from the process of making it, you honestly can’t see how you would justify it. But unfortunately, Peter does make a good point.

“You do make a good point,” you tell him.

He smiles. “I try my best.” He goes back to typing.

You sit there for a moment, across from Peter, amongst the nervous chatter of students swamping the library. It always gets so crowded around finals — you’re gonna miss pulling all nighters there to get a paper done, or scouring the shelves for some esoteric director’s biography or an archival film clip that’s been lost to time. For all you know, this is the last time you’ll even need to come in here. The rest of your other classes already completed their courses before the finals period, opting instead for assignments rather than exams. They were absolute behemoths of assignments, sure, and at the best of times you were barely convinced you would pull yourself through it, but here you are, on the other side. Just one more seven minute speech and you’re home free.

The commotion of the library cradles you. You’ll miss its embrace.

The clacking of Peter’s keyboard cuts through the clangour, a consistent cadence catching your cognisance until it comes across as though the encompassing clamour is entirely quelled.

You clear your throat. “Man, you are…” You puff a breath out through your cheeks. “Just typing away, huh?”

He doesn’t look up from his screen. “Mm-hmm, I’m almost done.”

“You’re almost done?”

“Yeah, I got, like, a paragraph and a half left.”

“Jesus Christ, Peter,” you say. “I’ve barely finished my introduction.”

“Well, that’s what this is for,” he says, gesturing between the two of you. “We can brainstorm, we can plan and shit.”

“I’m the only one who needs to do that, though.” Why did he even invite you here today if the majority of his work was already finished? “How are you so fast?”

He shrugs. “I guess I have more motivation? You said this was your last assessment, right?”

“Yeah, it’s just this, and then I’m done.”

Peter nods. “Yeah. I’ve got three exams next week which I still haven’t studied for. I’m pretty much just using this to procrastinate.”

“Ah,” you smile, “the truth comes out.” You’re more than familiar with that trick. If you hadn’t learnt how to work procrastination to your advantage, you probably wouldn’t have even made it through your first year, let alone all four. That’s something you definitely won’t miss; cramming for finals right as they’re on top of you. You feel sorry for Peter that he’s going through that right now. “What classes are those for?” you ask.

Peter takes in a breath and lists his classes off on his fingers as he says them. “Advanced Principles of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology of Nucleic Acids, and Microbial Genetics.”

You blink. You could’ve been given a hundred years to guess all the classes your college offers and you still wouldn’t have come up with that combination of words. You certainly didn’t know that Peter was taking classes like that alongside something that seemed so straightforward to you as ‘Photography and Place.’ “Wait,” you start, “what’s your major?”

“Molecular and Cell Biology.”

“Oh.” You sit there kind of stunned for a moment, not really sure what to say. Mostly you’re just surprised that you’ve known Peter for several weeks now and have never known what his surrounding classes are. It never really came up before. “I guess I’ve only seen you in Photography,” you say, cocking your head to the side, “I just assumed you were an Arts student.”

“Yeah, no,” Peter nods, fiddling with his hands now that they’re off his keyboard, “I’m minoring in Photography, actually.”

You furrow your brows. “They let you do a Science degree with an Arts minor?”

“Apparently.” He shrugs, smiling. “I only started the minor this year and they haven’t stopped me yet.”

“Huh.” You have to admit, a lot of your brainpower isn’t being dedicated to this conversation right now — instead it’s being rerouted to hastily reworking your image of Peter as this super artsy indie photographer type and widening the scope to include this entire science-y side you had no conception of before now — a side which apparently dominates, considering it’s his major. You try to picture him as a doctor or something, staring down the barrel of a microscope, decked out in a white lab coat and blue disposable gloves. It definitely suits him. “That’s, um…” you start, trying to steer your brain back onto the road of the conversation. “That’s a little late to start your minor.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, isn’t it your…” You leave the end of the sentence hanging. For a second you were convinced that Peter was in his last year of college, same as you. You’re not entirely sure why; he’s never given any indication that he is. You’ve just assumed that he’s the same age as you — but that wouldn’t necessarily place the two of you in the same year. “Are you a…junior?” you ask, hedging your bets.

“Sophomore.”

“Really?” you say, and it comes out slightly louder than you intended. You quickly lower your voice back to a normal volume, hoping that your surprise wasn’t so over the top. “I thought you were at least…”

“Well, yeah, actually, it’s been—” Peter starts, shifting to sit up straighter in his seat, laptop cradled between his hands. “I would’ve been in my third year right now, but I didn’t go— I took a year off after high school before I started college.” He gestures as he talks, waving a hand over an imaginary timeline of his academic career.

“Oh, you took a gap year,” you say. “Nice.” That would explain it. You’ve never actually met someone who took a gap year before. If anything, you were more used to people starting college earlier than normal rather than later. “Do anything fun?”

Peter shakes his head. “Nah, nothing like that. There was just.” He looks down, tapping his fingers slowly against the back of his laptop. He takes a moment before he starts talking again — he takes a few, and in the time you’re waiting you’re almost not sure he’s even going to keep going. But he eventually starts up again. His voice is just a touch quieter. “There was a lot going on after I graduated. I needed to take some time…” he raises his head, sighs, his eyes gazing into the distance behind you. He shrugs. “Basically to sort myself out.”

“Oh,” you say. It comes out almost as a whisper. You didn’t mean it to, you didn’t want it to — silence feels too heavy, too awkward to carry right now. You swallow. “Right.”

Your gaze kind of stumbles all over the place, not wanting to look directly at Peter right now, but also not wanting to look like you’re avoiding looking at him. Eventually it lands on Peter’s bag resting next to his seat. You’re faintly aware of the fact that if you don’t speak up now, if you don’t say something, there won’t be much saving this car crash of a conversation. You can’t find the words.

“But I’m here now.” Peter says. The words draw your attention up, a reflex more than anything, really, and you lock eyes with him. A grin starts to peek out on his face. “And hey, if I’d started when I was supposed to, we probably would’ve never met.”

You exhale. “That’s true.” 

The road you took that brought you here doesn’t seem like much in hindsight, let alone when you’re in the middle of driving down it — it’s just your life, and you don’t see the turns too well when you’re taking them. But it still all led you here, every left or right turn, every intersection for every decision no matter how big or small. In all that time, the road Peter was taking was hidden from your view, until now, when the winding streets brought you together. He’s just barely clipped you.

Peter taps his fingers against the back of his laptop. 

You arrive back in the moment.

“Sorry,” you say, “I just completely interrupted your flow.”

He smiles, sitting back in his chair. “It’s fine. I’ve got a week to finish.”

“Peter,” you chuckle. “You should do it now.”

“You can talk.”

You smile. “You’re the one with three other finals you haven’t studied for yet.”

“You’re the one with barely an introduction done.”

He’s got you there. You throw your head back until it hits the top of the seat. “I know what I want to say. I mean, mostly.” You look back at Peter and shake your head slightly. “It’s just getting the words from out here,” you tap against your temple, “and onto here,” you say, pointing at your laptop screen.

Peter chuckles. “That’s always it, isn’t it?” he says, quickly clicking a thing or two on his laptop, typing something for a brief second. “Okay, how about this,” he starts, looking back up at you. “We go back to working for like, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, I’ll probably be done by then, and if you still haven’t figured out what to write yet, I’ll help you out.”

Something about his offer, something about the way he says it, something about his smile — that crush on the horizon is breaking. You nod. “Yeah, deal,” you say. “Sounds good to me.”

“Cool,” he grins, going back to typing at his absurd pace. “The words are in there somewhere!” he says, eyes still trained on his laptop.

You laugh. He sounds like a motivational speaker. “The words are in there somewhere,” you repeat.

Peter only ends up taking ten minutes to finish writing, and in the time that he does, you successfully wrap up your introduction and get started on your first paragraph. Or at least, a paragraph. The entire structure of your presentation is up in the air, and every time you feel yourself heading down any particular direction, the wheel is yanked out of your hands into a complete left turn. You jot down all the points you have to, or at least all the points you want to cover over the course of the speech, and you could see them rearranged into about fifty different orders. As soon as one version presents itself to you as the undisputed best one, another pops up that seems hellbent on contradicting it. You scramble to keep the car from swerving.

Peter pulls his seat up next to yours once he’s closed his laptop and put it on the low table between the two of you (or rather, the low table that’s now in front of the two of you — it’s honestly more of an effort to turn to talk to Peter rather than to just look straight ahead at him, but the proximity feels worth it. Again, you remind yourself, it’s nothing you haven’t experienced before sitting in class next to him, but it’s still something…more. The movement, the two steps it takes from where he was to where you are, the dragging of the overly-padded-but-still-somehow-ridiculously-uncomfortable armchair (which, of course, wobbles relentlessly off balance no matter how much you adjust the legs), the lean to reach his bag now when he belatedly realises he needs something from it, all of it, the not lying stagnant — just to sit next to you. You try not to read into it too much). The fresh pair of eyes helps, and so does actually explaining out loud what you want to write for the first time since you started on this presentation — the default that your brain goes to to explain it all gives you an indication of which direction to take your structure. Peter helps point out any glaring problems — a connecting thread or two that you had skipped over, and especially the overwhelming amount of points you intend to cover. 

(“Are you sure you’ll be able to talk about all of that in seven minutes?”

“I’ll just talk really, really quickly.”

“With how many words that’ll probably end up being, I’m…not sure that’s humanly possible.”

“That’s my superpower, Peter.”

“And you're only using it for a speech?” He clicks his tongue, smiling. “What a waste.”

“You’re right, I should be fighting crime with it. I’ll recite essays at criminals to stop them in their tracks.”

“Honestly, I can kinda see that working.”) 

With your mess of a structure finally cleaned up and put together, the road from now to being done with it all is clearer than ever. All you have to do now is write it.

Peter gets to work on his presentation again, reading over his speech and making edits before starting to put together his slides for the visual component. The two of you are working independently again, but he keeps his chair by your side the whole time.

As it turns out, you know exactly what you need to say for this speech, and the words flow out of you now like gas from a cut fuel line. You fall into a steady rhythm of writing, reading your notes, planning, editing and you don’t even realise that you’re more than halfway through the speech until Peter falls back in his chair, sighing loudly.

“Everything good there, buddy?” you ask.

“Everything’s great,” he says, stretching out, his long legs hitting the table.

“Watch out,” you laugh.

Peter slowly sits up straight. “That was a productive hour.” He puts his open laptop down on the table.

You blink, looking down at your own laptop screen. The cursor blinks back at you on an all but blank page, a sentence or two hanging from the top. You scroll up to the page before it, blocks of text crowding the screen. “Yeah,” you say, “I got a lot more done than I thought I would.”

“That’s great!” Peter grins.

You smile back. You really couldn’t have done it without Peter. Sure, you would’ve eventually gotten through it, you always did, but you’d get through it way more slowly, with about ten extra added tonnes of stress and a far, far sloppier structure to guide you through it. Just by helping you out today he’s made the whole process unbelievably easier — and you’re not sure why those thanks don’t immediately leap from your mouth. 

“What time is it?” you ask instead.

Peter fishes his phone out of his pocket, quickly checking it. “Eleven thirty-six.” He puts his phone away. He turns his whole body to face you. “Do you wanna…” he points behind him, towards the entrance of the library, “take a break? We could grab lunch; get something to eat. There’s this great new Mediterranean place on campus,” he says, resting his hands on the armrest between you two, “although— I’m not sure if they’re open yet; they might only open for lunch…” He starts shifting again to get his phone out.

“Oh, uh…”

“Hm?” Peter doesn’t look up from his phone.

“Actually, I should…” 

Peter’s eyes meet yours. 

For a second, you don’t breathe. It’s a little daunting, you realise, a little too late for it to be fair, to both you and him — it’s a little daunting to spend time with Peter outside of the routine you know, the routine you want. The library cradles you. Graduation approaches like a speeding car. 

You don’t want to leave anything right now, you don’t want to stop studying, at school, with Peter, college and high school and middle school and elementary school all behind you instead of in front. You’re stuck, blinking, blinded by the headlights. 

For all of Peter’s supposed movement you fixated on, the chair, the two steps to here from there — that was barely a fidget. Now he’s actually making a move — and you baulk. You want him to stay where he is, at least for now, when everything else around you is moving too fast for you to get out of the way. 

You close your laptop. 

“I’d better get going.”

Peter blinks. “Oh.”

“Yeah, it’s just that…” You swallow, reaching down for your bag and slipping your laptop inside. “I rode my bike here, and I really wanna beat the rain.”

“Oh,” Peter says. He turns his phone off, puts it down. He nods. “Of course. Yeah, it was raining super hard this morning. I don’t want you to get caught in that.”

“Yeah.” You pull your bag up onto your lap. Peter begins to pack up his stuff as well. “This was good, though,” you say. “Thanks so much for your help. I actually know what I’m doing with this presentation now.” You can hear it in your voice, you’re being just a little too polite, too formal with him, like it’s the first day of semester again and everyone’s doing ice breakers.

“Don’t worry about it,” Peter says, standing up once he’s gathered all his things. You follow suit. The two of you stand there for a moment, nothing between you but a day cut short by your own hand. Why did Peter have to ask you out to lunch anyway? You would’ve been happy to stay sitting there working on your presentations until the sun went down. “I’ll, uh,” Peter starts, gesturing towards the library doors, “walk you out.”

“Right. Thanks,” you say. 

You leave the library with him.

Not much is said during the short walk to the bike rack, just small talk about how much work each of you have left on the presentation. Once you’re outside and feeling the cold seep into your bones, the dark clouds above threatening to spill, you actually are anxious to get home quickly. Snuggling up in bed all cosy and just laying there, rain drumming against the window all the while your thoughts assault you is exactly what you need right now. You unlock your bike from the rack, stuffing the chain in your bag. You mount the bike.

You turn back to Peter before you head off, your path laying out in front of you through the parking lot and out onto the bike lane home. “Good luck on your finals, Peter.”

“Thanks.” A small smile flashes across his face.

You pedal away.

A myriad of parked cars sail past you as you head to the exit. Now that you’ve committed to going home, it really starts to hit you — just how much of an idiot you are.

It’s just lunch. It’s not a marriage proposal. Things wouldn’t change.

You keep your eyes trained on the exit, though. Even if you were to turn back now, who’s to say he hasn’t already started walking off? It’s not like you’ll never see him again, anyway. You just don’t want to deal with anything outside of school right now. You just want to be able to deal with school.

It happens quickly.

There’s a break in the line of parked cars, and someone’s eager for it. You hear it before you can register it — the squeal of the tyres, the roar of the engine — you turn to look behind you just in time, and swerve out of the way of the speeding car.

The wheels fall out from underneath you. The asphalt comes rushing up to greet you, slamming against your legs first, then your arms and hands as you reach out to stop it from hitting the rest of your body. Your bike is tangled in between your legs, the metal angry against your skin. You turn to find the car.

It approaches. It has its high beams on, and with its suffocating proximity, you’re temporarily blinded. You can feel the rumble in the ground as the wheels scramble towards you, the deafening cry of the beast near shattering your eardrums. You dive to save your body, your legs still trapped under the frame of your bike. The car, not caring, too fast to have stopped even before you hit the ground, still has a fraction of a second before its brakes kick in. Your bike, still one with your legs, crumples, its back wheel no match for the car’s front one. The cacophony of creaking and snapping metal is horrifying.

The car stops.

You still have feeling in your toes, in your legs, you have feeling all over. Most especially in your chest, where your heart rages against the bars of your ribcage, frightened and determined to escape. Your breaths are fast and deep and mix with the car’s own. You cough.

A door opens and slams closed. You can barely sit up without hitting the side of the car; you prop yourself up with one hand and lay another on the metal frame.

The high beams scatter your vision, but behind their light you can see the vague shape of a man, throwing his hands up as he storms around to see you.

“What the hell, man?!” you shout, surprised your voice can hold its own.

“What’s wrong with you?” he yells, not even an instant after you’ve closed your mouth. “Watch where you’re going!”

You can still barely see him. “You ran into me! Watch where you’re going!”

“Hey! Hey!” a shout from the distance calls. You can’t see who it is without getting blinded, but your suspicions are confirmed once you turn to see who belongs to the footsteps running from the sidewalk and through the empty parking spot up to your side. Peter crouches down next to you, putting a hand on your back. “Hey, are you alright?”

A good deal of tension in your body is let go, just from seeing his face and hearing his voice. “Yeah, I’m fine,” you say, then gesture to the mangled wheel underneath the car, “but he fucked up my bike.”

The man takes a step towards you and Peter. “If you were looking where you were going —”

“Are you kidding me?” Peter says, standing up and forcing the guy to back off from you. “Did you not see the entire cyclist right in front of the spot you were speeding into? Or were you in such a rush this morning that you forgot to bring your brain along with you?”

The driver is undeterred in his yelling. “It’s a parking lot,” he says to Peter, then leans past him as he turns to you, raising an accusing finger. “Hey, if you decide to ride a bike around cars, you have to accept the dangers tha—”

“It’s a shared space, genius,” Peter interrupts him.

The man stares daggers at Peter. “Hey, fuck you, buddy. Who asked you to get involved?”

Peter shrugs. “Nobody, but I thought getting a general sense of what was happening might be pertinent to my interests, seeing as you ran over my friend here.”

“I didn’t run over shit—”

“My bike is literally under your wheel,” you say.

The man glares at you. He looks back at Peter for a second, who doesn’t say anything, before storming off back to the driver’s side, yanking the door open and slamming it shut. You flinch as the wheel starts turning again, but as the car jerks backwards and off of your bike, you feel a sigh swim out through your chest.

From the middle of the lane, the car’s window rolls down. The man sticks his head out. “Happy?” he shouts.

You scoff. Your bike barely looks like a bike, and you have to yell at him from on the ground. “No!”

He gives you the finger as he speeds off.

“What an asshole,” Peter mutters beside you. 

You sigh, throwing your head back, but immediately regret it as a twinge gets sent through your muscles. You rub your neck.

Peter once again crouches beside you. “You okay?” he asks. “Did you hit your head?”

“Nah, I’m fine,” you say. You shift your body from its awkward position, trying to sit up properly. “I just—” Something stings your leg, and you let out a hiss between clenched teeth.

“Shit,” Peter says, looking down at where your bike meets your legs, “you’re bleeding.”

You look down as well. “Oh.” A small trickle of dark red crawls over the curve of your calf. “So I am.” You blink. “I didn’t even notice.”

“You probably had a bunch of adrenaline pumping because of the car coming at you; would’ve dulled it.”

“Yeah, true,” you say. It’s a long, thin piece of metal, a spoke from the wheel broken off from the edge, now planted in your flesh instead. You try to lift your bike off of you, now aware of the injury, but the pain in your leg flares up against it, crying out at every movement you make. You try to shift your leg from underneath, and it’s not a fan of that, either. “Fuck, it’s really lodged in there.”

Peter looks back and forth. The two of you are still on the ground, in the middle of the mouth of the empty parking spot. “This isn’t really the best place to perform first aid,” he says. He moves across from you, finding the offending spoke and where it meets the centre of the wheel. He lightly takes hold of it with each hand, before locking eyes with you. “Okay, I’m gonna break the spoke off,” he says in a low voice. He nods his head in a gesture to the side of the parking lot, past the sidewalk on the other side of the parking space. “Do you think you can limp to that bench?”

You turn to look at it. It’s about twenty or so feet away, you think. “Uh, yeah,” you say, “but wouldn’t breaking it off jostle it in my leg—?” You turn back to Peter. He’s too focused on what he’s doing, and breaks it off before hearing you out.

You flinch. 

Your leg doesn’t protest against the breaking. 

“Huh,” you say, relaxing. “I didn’t even feel that.”

Peter shrugs. “Yeah, I’ve got…good muscle control.” He starts lifting the bike off of you.

You shift to sit normally, your leg only slightly irritated at the movement. “Jeez, I didn’t realise how brittle those were,” you say, looking closer at the clean break on the spoke sticking out of your leg. “I mean, aren’t they made of metal?”

“They did just get run over,” Peter says, dragging the bike away to give you space.

“Okay, fair.”

Peter holds out his hands and you grab on. “Alright, one, two…” 

Slowly, you lift yourself up and find your footing. You test out the strength of your legs; apart from the puncture wound, being crushed against the hard metal of your bike frame with the power of a car behind it has already caused a good deal of bruises to flower. You’ll definitely be wearing longer pants in the days to come. Despite the aching and bleeding, it’s not hard to stand on your own, and you take a couple of steps to test it out. 

“You good?” Peter asks.

“Yeah. I can walk on it, it just stings where it’s…” you wince, looking down, “…sticking out of me.” You take a few more steps, limping through the parking space. You turn back to Peter, who has a trained eye on your walking; he’s got one hand out, ready in case you need help, and one hand holding the mutilated bike. You stop in your tracks. 

Your bike is not light. You’ve been riding it for a good few years and you still have to use two hands whenever you carry it. And sometimes you even struggle with that. “Are you good?”

Peter starts holding the bike with both hands. “Yes.”

You nod. “Okay…” 

Peter doesn’t make a move to say anything else, so you keep going. 

It only takes slightly longer than your usual walking pace to get to the bench, and even after being up and about for only a few moments, it’s still a relief when you sit down to rest. Peter puts the bike down on the other side of the bench, out of the way of any pedestrians on the sidewalk. 

He sits down, patting the space on the bench between you. “Alright, leg up.”

You comply, not particularly enjoying having a good view again of the foreign piece of metal currently burrowing its way past your skin. The blood, although not fast flowing, has started to drip further down your leg. It tickles.

Peter takes his bag off and brings out a small lunchbox-sized pouch, placing it next to where your leg rests and opening it to reveal bandages, band-aids, alcohol swabs, gauze swabs, disposable gloves, pins, pads, patches, small towels — everything.

“You have first aid supplies on hand?” Peter nods as he pulls out a couple towels and a large band-aid, before rummaging through his bag again and pulling out a water bottle. “That’s not something you see often.” You do have a first aid kit, but it’s somewhere at home — you can’t even really remember which cupboard it’s probably shoved in the back of.

“Yeah, I, um…” Peter starts, unscrewing the cap on the water bottle. “My skateboard is one of my primary modes of transportation, and I can get a little cut up sometimes.”

You refrain from asking how bad he is at skateboarding.

Peter puts the water bottle down, and lightly grabs the spoke. “Okay, as soon as I remove it, apply pressure with this.” He hands you a small towel.

“Got it.”

You brace yourself as he removes it, one hand pulling the spoke out, and the other on your leg. He’s careful and slow as he does it, and you can feel his grip flexing ever so slightly from the tip of each finger right down to his palm as his skin meets yours. You clench your teeth, your hands clamping down on either side of the bench.

Eventually it all comes out, the tip of the spoke covered in your blood. You take the towel Peter gave you and lightly press down on the wound. He grabs a tissue from the first aid kit and wipes your blood off the spoke before chucking it in a small plastic bag and placing it to the side.

You exhale. “That wasn’t as deep as I thought.”

“That’s good,” he says. He pours some water over his hands, getting the sidewalk all wet as he washes them thoroughly. He takes another of the towels and dries his hands off. “I know I’ve already asked you, but are you okay?” he says, slightly smiling.

You chuckle. “Yes, I’m fine. A little bruised and sore, but…fine.”

“Did you see your life flashing before your eyes?”

“No, I didn’t,” you say, “all I could see was that asshole’s high beams just…frying my retinas.”

Peter laughs. “Okay, take it off,” he says, nodding his head at the towel on your leg. “Is it still bleeding?”

Tentatively you remove the towel. You wipe away the blood that already spilled, waiting for one moment, two moments, three, four, and finding nothing else flowing out.

“Nope,” you say.

“Great.” Peter grabs the water bottle. “This might sting.” He pours water on the wound to clean it off, and you wince. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Peter puts the water bottle down and quickly dries your leg with another towel. His touch is soft, deliberate. “Okay, uh…” He starts rummaging through his first aid kit.

“Something wrong?”

“No, I just need…” He puts a thing or two aside. It’s not a big first aid kit, but he has so much stuff crammed in there, and apparently not a fantastic organisational system, that he has to take a second before he can see what he wants. “There’s a bit of a skin flap and I wanna put it back over the wound, but I need… Oh, here.”

He pulls out a bunch of q-tips, takes one, and puts the rest back in where he found them.

His hands are on you again, again careful and slow as he nudges your skin back into its place. You didn’t realise how much the spoke had jostled around in your leg; instead of a clean, straight hole down into where it impaled, the wound is slightly cut open and looks almost diagonal. It’s nothing big, but you’re glad you have Peter here to fix you up.

He pushes the flap of skin a couple more times and you catch the fleshy underside before it fully covers the wound.

“Ugh, gross,” you gag.

“Eh, I see this all the time,” Peter says. He throws the q-tip in the bag with the spoke. He doesn’t take his hand off you just yet.

“You get impaled a lot when you skateboard, huh?”

He shrugs, grabbing the large band-aid. “Eh…”

You laugh. “Peter, you’re not getting stabbed, are you?”

Peter laughs as well. “What? No. I don’t even know anyone who’d wanna stab me.”

“That guy in the car was thinking about it.”

“Yeah, right after he’s done making you roadkill.” He unpeels the band-aid and places it over the wound. Luckily it’s big enough to cover the whole thing, and with it finally on you, his skin leaves yours. “All done,” he says. He smiles. “Good as new.”

You slowly swing your leg down to rest on the ground. You kick it up a few times, checking out the band-aid against your skin. Despite the still faint stinging, it’s looking much better than before. You smile. “You make a good nurse, Peter.”

“Thank you,” he says, packing his first aid kit away. He puts it back in his bag, along with his water bottle, and gets up to throw away the garbage in a nearby bin.

You’re looking over your bike when he gets back. 

“Jeez,” you breathe. “How am I gonna get home now?”

Peter sighs. “He really did a number on it, huh?” He looks up at the sky, holding out a hand. “And I thought I felt it sprinkling earlier, too.”

“You sure that wasn’t just my blood?” Peter chuckles. “I’ll get an Uber, I guess,” you say, taking your phone out and quickly ordering one. After you’re done, you put it back in your pocket. “Two minutes. Five dollars extra for a bike rack,” you scoff, rolling your eyes.

Peter leans back on the bench, resting his hands behind him. “Shame I can’t just skateboard you home,” he says.

You laugh lightly. “Yeah, as long as you can carry me on your back the whole way there.”

“Who says I can’t?”

You smile. “We’d be so off balance; you’d drop me, and then I’d be even more scraped up than I am now.”

You gasp. Quickly, you take your bag off and rip it open, yanking your laptop out and checking it all over. In all the commotion, you had completely forgotten about it.

“Is it okay?” Peter asks, leaning forward.

You can’t see any scratches on the surface, and when you open it to turn it on, it appears to be working normally. “Yeah, thank God,” you sigh. You close it and put it back in your bag.

“Wouldn’t wanna lose all the work you did today,” Peter says offhandedly.

“Yeah.”

It’s quiet between you two. You tap your fingers against your bag, your laptop safe inside, and rest it against your uninjured leg. You sigh, sitting up straight and looking Peter in the eyes.

“Peter, thank you so much for today,” you say. “For everything. You’re a lifesaver.”

A warm smile slowly blooms across his face. “Don’t worry about it. It’s no problem.” You really believe he means that; it’s not just something he’s saying.

You can’t help but smile back.

The Uber driver back to your place is quiet, giving your mind room to wander. Your day definitely didn’t turn out the way you thought it was going to, and definitely not the way you thought last night after your phone chimed with the invitation from Peter. 

Your thoughts keep drifting back to the feeling of his hands on your skin, gentle but confident. Caring. The memory, a silent shadow of the real thing, still manages the weight of it, and you feel the pull of it — the pull to him — in your chest, you feel it strengthening with every second that you drive further away. You let it guide you into warmth, and you bask under the rays of the light of day, the sun finally broken over the horizon.

You have to stop yourself; you’re certain that your feelings for Peter are slowly filling up the car, and soon enough you’d be suffocating under them, drowning the driver along with you. You kind of want to suffocate in them, though. You want to feel his hands on you again. You should have just gone out to lunch with him. You want to see him again. You want to feel his hands on you. You want to study with him. You want to see him. You want to feel him. You put the window down.

The air outside is stinging cold, and you feel it prickling all over your body once you finally get out of the car, in the few split seconds after thanking the driver and closing the door as you rush to get into your apartment building, dragging your fucked up bike into the elevator. The clouds hang low and miserable.

The first thing you do once you get inside your apartment after putting your bag and bike down and taking off your jacket is rummage around your kitchen and bathroom cupboards for wherever you put your first aid kit. You eventually find it, with a stack of pots and large bowls — that you didn’t even remember you had — resting on top of it. You open the kit, check everything that’s supposed to be in there is, in fact, in there (and hasn’t been crushed by the pots and bowls) before making dedicated room for it in one of the cupboards you actually frequently use.

You flop down on your bed. Your legs ache. You check your phone. No messages. You don’t really feel like doing the rest of your presentation right now. You turn your TV onto something mindless.

It doesn’t rain once the rest of the day.

Chapter Text

Closing up isn’t the worst thing about your job. At least, it didn’t used to be, when you could zip back home on a non-mangled bike and be in your apartment, comfortable, not fifteen minutes after you turned the final key at the front of the store. But now, with your primary mode of transport out of commission for the foreseeable future, you’re not necessarily looking forward to the fifty minute walk home at eleven o’clock at night.

It’s been almost a week to the day since you’ve been forced off your bike and you still haven’t found anyone to cover your shift. You’re still not sure how you seem to conveniently, miraculously be the only one at the small cafe-bar who both 1) knows how to close up and 2) is actually available for that shift. You have half a mind to hold one of the new hires hostage at the end of the day and force them to close up by themselves, even if they mess up the finances and leave the door unlocked. Who are you kidding, though — it’s always going to be left up to you.

At the very least the walk home will give you some time to go over your speech for the billionth time before tomorrow. In a move that surprised no one, you still ended up procrastinating on the assignment despite the plethora of time you were given to complete it. At least you actually got it done, you tell yourself, that’s really the main thing. You lock the Coffee Bean’s door behind you, try the handle, and when it successfully stays closed, you turn to cross the road.

And bump straight into someone.

“Oh,” you kind of half-yelp, more as a reflex than anything. You steady yourself on your feet. “Sorry about that.”

The guy you ran into, cloaked in an almost entirely deteriorated puffer jacket, mumbles a response, which is better than a yell or an insult, so you leave it at that and quickly cross the street.

The night air falls around you in an indifferent embrace — the weather has finally decided to warm up over the past few days, and you reckon summer had a word or two to say to winter about holding April hostage, and that it wouldn’t take May too, not if it could help it. You hope summer sticks to its guns. It’s enough having to walk home at all, but adding hypothermia on top of that might just be enough to send you over the edge. 

You recite your speech to yourself internally, going from the top. You should be able to get through it a fair few times before you reach home. Honestly, being able to get through it even once without forgetting anything would count as a win.

It’s quiet on the street. Usually, you wouldn’t have noticed — you wouldn’t have even been here anymore, you’d probably be a few streets gone by now. The stars, as always, refuse to show themselves, but even the moon isn’t out tonight. Your way is lit by street lamps.

It’s quiet on the street. You assume it’s normal. There are sounds of the city, somewhere, you can make them out — they feel like they’re a state over, walled off from you somehow, like you get to have this pocket of peace all to yourself.

Well, not all to yourself. There’s some people milling about. A car cruises by every minute or so. Across the road, a ragged puffer jacket catches your eye.

It’s quiet on the street, and it has been for a bit now. You’ve been walking for a few minutes already, the Coffee Bean a decent distance behind you. You reckon you would’ve been about a quarter of the way home on your bike by now. And if you’d taken the trains, well… Even if they decided, for once, to actually work when you take them (you’re never sure if it’s your luck or New York’s. Probably both) it didn’t feel worth it to shave a measly ten minutes off your commute. At least this way you get some exercise, right? You quicken your pace. Across the road, Puffer Jacket keeps up.

He could be walking in the same direction as you. Being a pedestrian is not a crime, or even anything to be suspicious of. You’ve mostly kept in a straight line, anyway. What’s a turn or two followed? You’re normally on your bike, anyway — who’s to say this isn’t this guy’s daily routine? You’re being paranoid, you know it.

You slide your backpack off and swing it around in front of you, unzip it and rummage around inside it, looking for nothing. You stop in your tracks, rummage some more, before zipping it back up, putting it back on, and turning back around to head in the direction of retrieving whatever you’re pretending to have forgotten. You don’t make it half a minute before sliding your gaze to the corner of your eyes. He’s turned too.

You walk steadily. Worst case scenario, he crosses the street. The road is your only protection right now. Best case of action is to not acknowledge him. You think. You hope. It’s quiet on the street. 

He would hear you on the phone to the cops, and even if they get here before he realises, what would they do? Arrest him for walking? 

Stalking’s a crime, isn’t it? 

Does this count as stalking? 

Fuck, you don’t know.

You make a turn you made nine hours ago on your way to work. Two questions immediately clash in your mind, brutalising each other, not caring for the damage inflicted on their playing field of your mind in the chaos: 

Do you really want to lead him back to your work?

Do you really want to walk down unknown streets?

One of them has to prevail, and quickly. The turn leading to the Coffee Bean is already in your sights, and the steady pace of your walk is ultimately slave to your stalling mind, so between then and now, either your brain will make the decision or your feet will. The dilemma rips your mind open, and your thoughts spill out onto the empty street, unbridled anarchy in the quiet. He’s not following you just because you ran into him. He was outside the Coffee Bean. Waiting. For you? Or for an empty store? The store keys clang against each other in your jacket pocket. You clamp your hand down around them. Your skin protests. Tough, you tell yourself — it’s too loud otherwise. You can’t draw attention to yourself. You’re breathing too loud. You’re walking too loud.

A line cuts the quiet in half, killing it before you had the chance. It zips above your head, a messy, barely even diagonal angle from one side of the street to the other right down along its length. It sticks to a wall behind you, one belonging to a building you’ve passed three times today already.

The other end of the line rushes through the sky. A blur of red and blue follows where the line had cut the air; louder, faster, and already gone by the time you realise what’s happening. Still, your eyes follow him, and they drag your body along with them, until you’ve turned fully to see Spider-Man’s retreating back. His head’s not in agreement with where his body’s going, though; it’s turned to look over his shoulder.

He disappears, turns around a corner before you can even think to get his attention and your steps don’t hesitate to fall back into the rhythm you had told yourself was the safest. Work is even closer now. You’re still being followed.

You focus on blending in with the quiet. If you can melt into the pavement itself, fall in through where the grass has grown in between the cracks, you won’t even be there to follow in the first place. You try your hardest to dissolve.

A second zip through the sky kills the quiet again. It comes from behind you this time, and before you can turn to look, the rush follows soon thereafter. Spider-Man soars over your head. A couple of street lamps ahead a silhouette thuds against the metal bar overhanging the sidewalk and perches there in the dark.

You plant your feet. 

You stare daggers up at Spider-Man. Well, maybe not daggers — hooks, perhaps, and you will him towards you, hoping he can hear your thoughts yelling at him to get down here. Now.

Apparently he can. The moments in between your silent plea and him landing, two feet on the ground with a light hand accompanying for balance, couldn’t have been long, but you’re not too sure. It was long enough for you to realise your follower had stopped, too, waiting on the other side of the road, turned towards you now, watching. It was long enough to remember the very real backlash towards this Spider-Guy and your very real lack of any sort of interaction with him, ever. But right now he’s all you have, and your desperation far outweighs your doubt.

He stands up straight. 

“Hey there,” he says, half-jovial, before stopping himself. He looks you up and down. “Hey—” he starts, voice suddenly serious, concerned. Careful. “Are you okay?”

“No.” Your voice is quiet. Without moving your head you look across the road.

Spider-Man follows your gaze. He doesn’t hide that he’s looking at the guy, turning his head, then his whole body until he’s perpendicular to you. You’re hoping it’s some sort of intimidation tactic.

“Is this guy bothering you?” he asks you.

“He’s been following me,” you say, looking between the two men.

“Hm,” is all Spider-Man says. Then he turns to you. “Wanna get out of here?”

Relief bubbles up inside of you, and mixes with a healthy dose of gratitude until it escapes your body as a nervous chuckle. Tension in your shoulders drops, so much so you almost feel like jelly. “Yeah. Please.”

He nods his head in a gesture to the path behind him, your path into the unknown. “C’mon, I’ll walk you home.”

“I, uh…” The sidewalk looks sickly in the street lamps’ yellow light. You hold your voice level, low. “That’s not— I’m—” you stutter. Your eyes dart to the puffer jacket. You could’ve sworn the road got thinner.

“Or not,” Spider-Man says, putting his hands up in a show of willing rescission. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he adds.

“No,” you say, quickly. “I mean— Yes, I do want to. I just don’t think that walking is the best option right now.” You actually turn your head to look at Puffer Jacket. You acknowledge him. He stares back at you. A stone starts to set in your gut.

“Oh, I getcha,” Spider-Man says. “You want a shortcut through the sky. Funny, I didn’t really take you for an adrenaline junkie.”

You chuckle again, in spite of yourself. In the corner of your eye, a red hand reaches out to you.

It’s not to take, you realise, pulling your eyes off of Puffer Jacket. His arm is outstretched to hold you.

“Yeah well,” you shrug, voice turning shaky, “never judge a book by its cover, right?”

In the step you take towards Spider-Man, Puffer Jacket, uneager to tarnish his immutable record, follows suit. The parallel lines the two of you have drawn all night are broken in his steady march towards you now, cutting the road in half.

You all but leap to Spider-Man’s side. “Yeah,” he starts, raising his voice for the whole street to hear, “except when that book is clearly up to no good.” He pulls you flush with him, aims at a point somewhere above, and shoots a web. Puffer Jacket starts to run. “Seeya dude!”

You yelp; the ground is robbed from beneath your feet. The night air, once aloof and stagnant, now rushes to greet you, like it’s an old friend, hugging you so fiercely the two of you merge into one. You breathe it in, too much, and the very depths of your lungs tingle at the rush of fireball sky now thrashing around in your chest. Your arms scramble to cling onto Spider-Man, and belatedly you realise there was probably no need — he was nowhere near close to struggling to hold you steady with his own strength. Underneath your palm the muscles in his back flex and relax and flex again in perfect, smooth movements as he lets go of his web from one building and swings to the next.

You hold tighter onto Spider-Man. You’re not going fast, and you’re not even that high up, but the world is still rushing past you in a blur you haven’t seen since you were a kid being pushed on a swing set. Your breaths sound like gasps.

It’s less than thirty seconds since your feet left the ground that you once again find stable footing. You stumble when Spider-Man sets you down gently, and he puts an arm out to balance you, an offer you accept eagerly.

“Whoa,” he laughs. “You alright there? Your first web-swing can be pretty overwhelming.”

You step back, laughing too, if only because your lungs are clambering to keep up with the changes in the air around you. “Fuck, man. Holy shit.”

You blink back into the world around you. You’re standing above it, you realise, on the roof of a building a few stories high, the asphalt and concrete below you not even visible from this vantage point. You rest your hands on your knees.

“You good?” Spider-Man asks.

You nod.

“I think we lost him. I made a couple of weird turns back there, so unless he has superspeed he shouldn’t have any clue where we are.”

You nod again. “Thank you.”

“Don’t sweat it.” 

He doesn’t talk for a moment or two. You focus on getting your breath and bearings back.

“That walk home is still on the table, by the way,” he says.

You look up at him, still hunched over, and shake your head. “No, I…” You exhale. “I wanna go home.”

He tilts his head. “Hey, seriously… Are you okay?”

You hang your head. “I just wanna go home.” You straighten up to your full height. “I’m usually already home by now, but my bike got fucking demolished, and none of my coworkers would cover for me, so I was gonna walk, even though I would get home at, like, midnight, but I thought it would be fine, even though I have to wake up early tomorrow for a stupid fucking presentation that I have not prepared for, like, at all, and then this dude started following me and I just froze and I didn’t know what to do and I just—” You sigh.

Spider-Man puts a hand on your shoulder. “Hey. Whoa. Breathe.”

You inhale, slowly, and your lungs itch for the rush of swinging through the sky. You breathe out.

“There you go,” Spider-Man says, and pats your arm. It’s only a bit awkward. “Look, don’t worry. I’ll take you home.”

It’s hard to get a reading on him behind the mask, but not impossible. He’s probably asked you about ten times tonight already if you’re okay, and he doesn’t seem eager to retract his hands in case, you figure, you still need help getting your balance or if you’re in dire shortage of supportive arm pats (both of which you wouldn’t actually mind, despite feeling fairly steady on your feet now). There’s something in his voice that draws your trust from deep in you — you feel it on the small of your back, crawling up your spine and nestling in your neck, right at the base of your skull. Maybe it’s that you can always kind of hear his smile when he talks. You can almost see it, too — it’s a blur in your mind’s eye, a face obscured by the light, but it’s there.

A small smile crawls across your face to match. “Thank you. Really.”

He nods in response. “Now,” he starts, “whereabouts are we headed?”

Any doubt you had from when he first landed in front of you tonight starts to hide away, its tug on your heart much lighter now. You’ll be home soon.

“Uh, Lower East Side,” you tell him. “Is that okay? Like, to get to, I mean.”

“Yeah, for sure!” Spider-Man says. “That’s super close. I was actually on my way to Manhattan already. Lucky you.”

You pause. “Are you sure the…lack of buildings won’t be an issue?” Spider-Man zips all around New York nearly every day, so you don’t doubt it’s a route he takes all the time, but he’s not usually carrying around an extra passenger.

“Pssh.” He dismisses the notion with a wave of his hand. “No problem. I mean, if you’re worried about it, I…” He considers something for a moment. “Can you swim?”

“…Excuse me?”

Spider-Man laughs. “Sorry. Just— in case I get a little too close to the water. I mean, I won’t,” he stresses, “but, you know. In case.”

You shake your head in disbelief, a small laugh escaping you. “I— What?”

“I’m kidding,” he says, “I’ve got my swinging licence, I swear I know what I’m doing. You’ll be fine.”

Maybe against your better judgement, you believe him. You give him the address of your apartment building and agree to help in pointing it out to him once you’re over there.

“Okay,” he starts, holding out a hand again, “you ready?”

You nod, taking a step towards him.

He pulls you against him, arm around your waist. “Hold on tight,” he says. He looks at you for a moment before turning to aim his web, and in that moment you swear you could see his smile again. 

Your takeoff isn’t as frantic this time; Spider-Man shoots a web high up on the wall of the building neighbouring you and grabs it tight, then yanks it to launch the two of you into the air. 

For an instant you’re floating, suspended in midair, still close enough to the roof below you that it wouldn’t hurt if you fell.

Immediately he shoots another web, further forward than the first, and the two of you swing into the street.

You already had a taste of this, but knowing what’s coming doesn’t make the rush, the rise, the fall and flying through Brooklyn streets any less incredible. Once again you weave through the blur of the world, everything passing you by so quickly you couldn’t process it properly even if you tried. You clench your grasp even tighter around Spider-Man as he takes you down roads and routes you wouldn’t be able to from the ground. He turns halfway through a street, soaring over a low row of buildings. You’re flying. For a second he’s not hanging onto any webs, it’s just you and him in the sky, above the streets and the sidewalks and the light of the street lamps. 

Then you drop; you hit the bottom of the swing from a web he shot so fast you didn’t even see it, and then you’re up again.

The buildings stop, as sheer as a cliff face, and the two of you burst out into open air. Your grip tightens. Spider-Man transitions seamlessly through the lack of buildings, though; just as smoothly as any other turn he made, he webs and swings and in a motion or two, you’re underneath the Williamsburg Bridge.

The night is already dark, but under the shadow of the bridge, the waters of the East River are a pool of inky blackness; the void of the universe right beneath you. If you fell now, you would never stop.

Although, that’s the thing — you can’t even imagine falling. Not right now. Spider-Man’s arm around your side isn’t tight, but it is strong. Despite knowing him for all of two minutes you trust he’s going to get you home. You relax in his arms, loosening your grip. You don’t fall.

The water ebbs and flows, rushing to and away from you a few more times as Spider-Man swings under the bridge. Before long, it’s gone, replaced by the familiar concrete and asphalt.

All tension gone from your body, you feel weightless in Spider-Man’s arms. The ground from this far up doesn’t make your stomach flip or your heart skip a beat; you’re just viewing the world from a different angle. That’s all it is. Dropping from the apex of a swing is hardly even thrilling, knowing that not having the following ascent is an impossibility.

“Where’s your place?” Spider-Man asks. He has to raise his voice over the wind.

You’re swinging down the wrong direction of a one-way street, and at the end lies a familiar set of basketball courts.

“Turn left up there, then the first right, and it’s like, the second building on the left of those courts,” you yell. You’re not sure if it’s loud enough; you can barely even hear yourself.

“Got it,” Spider-Man says, and follows your direction to the letter. “Roof or ground?”

“Uh— Either?” you say, and a second later, the night air grinds to a halt around you.

The ground’s beneath your feet again. And you’re cold.

After a moment or two of orienting yourself you realise the coldness is most likely due to Spider-Man no longer being pressed up against your side. You stumble back slightly.

“Whoa,” he breathes, and catches you, his hand light around your wrist.

It is a little weird, isn’t it? Now that you’re out of any immediate danger, you fully appreciate the masked super-human right in front of you, who not two seconds ago was closer to you than… well, than anyone had been in longer than you’d care to admit. Of all the people, you wouldn’t have bet on Spider-Man. Although, the possibility of something like this happening was just one of those things you kind of have to come to accept with living in New York. 

You suppose you were right to trust him, in any case; he did get you home. If anything it at least feels good to be proven right.

“I’m okay,” you say, preempting his inevitable ask. You sigh through a smile, and plant your feet steadily beneath you. You make eye contact with his big, white, bug-eye lenses and let out an involuntary laugh. “Thank you,” you say.

He lets go of your arm and nods. “All in a day’s work,” he shrugs. “Or, night’s, I guess. You’re welcome,” he says.

You smile. 

Looking around, you’re greeted with yet another rooftop, although this one you’re already familiar with. 

You’re home.

“If you see that guy again,” Spider-Man starts, pulling your attention back to him, “give me a call, okay?”

You’re not exactly sure how to ask for Spider-Man’s number. You shake your head. “I’m not gonna be in that situation again. I mean, I’ll warn my co-workers about him, but.” You scoff, and wrap your arms around yourself to warm up. “Someone else who doesn’t have to walk an hour home can take that shift.”

“Yeah, about that…” Spider-Man starts as he begins to pace slightly. “You said your bike is, uh, out of commission right now, and that you’ve got… What was it? A performance early tomorrow morning?”

“Presentation,” you say. “A speech. What about it?”

“Well, how are you getting to it?”

You give him a look. You start talking before you can really stop yourself. “Spider-Man, are you offering?”

He shrugs. “Well, if you don’t have any other plans…” That smile was peaking through in his voice again.

You don’t know what to say. “Are you serious?”

“As a car crash. I just figure after a night like tonight it wouldn’t hurt for you to have a sleep-in. You know, I— I can pick you up in the morning,” he offers.

You laugh. “My own personal taxi service,” you say.

“Exactly! Who could refuse?”

Plenty of people, you think, for plenty of legitimate reasons, none of which seem to be popping into your mind right now.

“The walk from here to ESU isn’t long,” you tell him, smiling.

“Oh,” he says, “yeah. No, I know. But… what better way to shake off the nerves before a big speech than an early morning swing?”

“Who says I have nerves?”

“You said you haven’t prepared for it. Like, at all.”

He’s got you there. 

“You don’t have to,” you say. “It’s just a speech. I’m not gonna be in danger or anything. Surely there’ll be some crime going on that’ll need stopping or something.”

“Nonsense,” he says. “I have a duty to all citizens of New York and their problems, which includes limited transport options.”

You take a second to consider it. 

You don’t really know why you’re going through this whole song and dance; you know exactly what your answer will be.

He’s offering you a chance to fly again.

“Tomorrow morning,” you say. “Here. Say…quarter past eight?”

“Done,” Spider-Man says. “I’ll see you then.”

That was easy. 

This night certainly turned out better than any expectations you had for it. You’re half convinced you’ll wake up in bed any second now, the wall-crawler and his generosity a fragment of your sleeping mind’s imagination.

Spider-Man starts backwards away from you as he gives you a casual salute goodbye. You grab his lowered arm around the wrist before he can get too far away. 

It’s warm under your skin, his suit a foreign texture over the hardness of his toned muscle. He shifts his arm in your grasp; you feel the muscle and bone turn, real.

“Thank you,” you say. Your voice comes out a bit quieter than you expected. “Really. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t shown up.”

He gives you a small nod. “Of course,” he says. His volume matches yours. “It’s what I’m here for.”

He lays his hand on yours and you let go. His strides to the edge of the roof are smooth and quick, and once he perches on the ledge, he turns his head back to look over his shoulder.

He launches from the roof. Still looking back at you, he turns his body in midair until he’s fully facing you as he falls. You run to the ledge. Your eyes meet as he shoots a web out to the side, and with his free hand he gives a single, giant wave goodbye as he swings off into the night.

You sigh.

It’s actually a few minutes earlier than when you would’ve normally gotten home on your bike, you realise after closing your apartment door behind you. The mangled thing stares back at you from the other end of the hallway. You get ready for bed as quickly as possible.

You’re exhausted. You didn’t realise it until you got here. You run up the steps to the library (you don’t know whose bright idea it was to make so damn many of them — clearly someone who doesn’t have to climb a mountain every time they have to get to class), but you’re hardly making any headway. You inch forward with maybe every five steps you take — if you’re lucky. Mostly, you’re just stuck in the same spot. You hold your head down, straighten your hands out to cut through the air and you lengthen your strides, run on the balls of your feet. It helps a bit, but not much. The peak of the staircase isn’t getting any closer. There’s someone calling to you from up there, and if you don’t get any faster you’re going to be late. You push up the stairs. You might as well be running through jelly.

Your phone vibrates its alarm at six A.M on the dot and your hand instinctively snaps out to stop the horrid thing. You have two hours left to prepare.

You’re already on the roof at eight o’clock. Better safe than sorry you tell yourself, reciting your speech under your breath. It doesn’t have to be deep seated in your brain, you just have to hold onto it for the next half hour and then you can let go of it entirely. You go through it twice, only having to check your notes a handful of times.

8:17. You turn your phone off. He’ll be here. You start your speech over.

A little ways into the third paragraph there’s a quiet thump behind you. You turn and are greeted with honestly a little too much bright red for this early in the morning.

“Spider-Man,” you say, still not fully believing it.

“Hey,” he yawns from where he’s perched up on the roof access door. “Ach,” he exclaims, quickly shaking his head free from the tiredness. He jumps down in front of you, looks you up and down. “You ready to kill this speech?”

“I— Uh. Yeah,” you say.

“Awesome. Now, remind me: Empire State, right? Uh, where exactly…”

“You can just drop me off at Washington Square Park.”

“Oh. Cool. That makes things easier. What time’s your presentation?”

“Eight thirty.”

“Shit,” he says, “isn’t that like, now?” He checks his wrist for a watch that isn’t there.

“It’s in ten minutes,” you assure him.

“Then we better go.” He holds his hand out.

You know this dance. You step towards him, he pulls you close, and the next thing you know, you’re soaring through the sky.

It’s like you never left. You’re almost convinced this is where you’re supposed to be — what has your life been leading up to if not for this moment, right now, flying through the air? Your grip tightens on Spider-Man, but not like last night, out of fear of falling, but like you would to anyone who’s close to you and experiencing a miracle at the same time you are. The instinctive grasp to pull someone near and say, ‘You see this too, right?’

It goes by too quickly. In mere minutes you have ESU in your sights, and luckily enough, Spider-Man picks a corner of the park right across from the building your speech is scheduled to be in. You land on the sidewalk.

“Whoa,” you laugh lightly. You balance yourself. “I think I’m getting used to that.”

Spider-Man lets you go. “Hey, good luck on the speech, alright? And maybe start saving up for a new bike.”

“Yeah,” you agree. “I know I said it last night, but really, thank you. I… I don't know how to repay you.”

“You don’t have to,” he says immediately.

“I want to.” You say it almost the instant he stops talking; the words practically leap from your mouth. “You know, ‘cause…you didn’t just save me last night, you went out of your way to help me this morning, too, which I never would’ve— I mean, I know you help people, and you’re the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man and everything, but you get such a bad rap from the press and people are dicks to you for no reason, and it’s just not really fair, and um…” Christ. You haven’t word vomited like that in a while. “Anyway,” you trail off. “Hey, you know what? Come by the Coffee Bean, like, whenever. Free drinks on me. Alcoholic or not.”

“Oh,” Spider-Man says. He hesitates for a fraction of a second. “Well, yeah, I mean, I probably shouldn’t drink and swing, but I might take you up on that.”

“Please do.”

He nods resolutely. He’s silent for a second, before taking a deep breath in. “Well, I don’t wanna make you late for your presentation.”

The building looms across the street. 

“Right.”

It’s not getting any closer or further away. You have to cross eventually.

You sigh. 

“God, it’s just this, then it’s over.”

“…What?” he asks quietly, like he still hadn’t decided whether or not to say it halfway through saying it.

You blink. “Nothing, sorry.” You shake your head. “Just…life, you know? Things ending. Everything changing.” You shrug heavily. “It happens. Anyways. Thanks for saving me. Come round for a coffee, okay?”

“Yeah, ‘course,” he says. He stands there for a second, and you’re not sure if he wants to say something, or if he’s expecting you to say something, or if he’s just zoning out in the middle of a sentence. Eventually he takes a couple steps back. “Good luck on the speech. You’ll crush it.” He shoots a web. “I’ll see you around.”

You smile as he zips away into the sky.

8:24. Shit.

You dash into the building across the street. Luckily the room scheduled for your class’s presentations is on the first floor, but like most buildings making up your college campus, it is an absolute maze to navigate, even after four years here. You get to what you’re pretty sure is the right place — you see a couple of people milling about in the hallway outside the exam room, one you can actually place from your class — but there’s one notable face you can’t find.

You and Peter had agreed to meet up before your speech, since his was slated to be the second one after yours, if only to give each other moral support. You’re five minutes late, though, so you figure it’s fine if he is, too. You only hope he hasn’t forgotten about today altogether. He doesn’t seem that scatterbrained, but you wouldn’t put it past him. You read over your notes.

8:29. Whoever’s in there giving their speech now still hasn’t come out yet, which is fine by you. They can stay in there all day for all you care.

Right as you start fantasising about having your speech pushed back a day or even a week due to whatever ‘unforeseen circumstance’ you’re imagining is going on in there, the door opens. Typical. A classmate you recognise but could not, for the life of you, remember the name of (despite a not insignificant amount of interactions you’ve had with him) walks out. You nod to him in quiet greeting, a gesture he returns before leaving.

Frantic footsteps clatter down the hallway. You turn towards the commotion. Peter, in all his definitely-just-rolled-out-of-bed glory, catches your eye as he dashes in. He gives you a quick wave as he jogs, then a double thumbs up accompanied by a brilliant grin.

You stifle a laugh. That puts your nerves at ease better than any pep talk ever could.

Behind you, you hear your professor read out your name. You whip around.

“Oh, good,” she says, looking up from her clipboard, “you’re early.” Early? What, was the starting time just a suggestion? “Come on in.” She steps aside from the open doorway.

You smile politely at her as you enter the room.

Seven minutes. Then it’s over. You can do this.

Setting up the slides and waiting for the go ahead from your professor and the assistant grader is probably the hardest part of the whole ordeal. Once you get started, the words flow easily and in a close enough facsimile of natural human speech that you can almost be convinced that you know what you’re doing. 

It’s strange, though; you’ve never been a fan of public speaking, and whittling the audience down to two doesn’t really make it any easier for you, but as you walk through your creative process for the final project for some throw-away first year elective that you honestly just chose at random, it all seems to slip away from you. 

The words aren’t much more than sounds your mouth is making, and you click to the next slide whenever your hands tell you it’s time to. Your body moves itself for you. What did you have planned for after this again? You’re gonna go home, and just…do nothing. 

You don’t have any more classes to rush to after this. In a few weeks you’ll graduate, then after that, or maybe before, you’ll buckle down and look for a real job. Well, an extra job. 

But for now you have to talk for a few more minutes about your understanding of the relationship between photography, memory and the nature of place before you can go out and do everything else. 

You click to the next slide.

It’s over before you know it.

They chat to you for a bit after you’re done, asking some further probing questions and you develop a decent back and forth which hopefully proves you paid enough attention in class. They thank you for your time, and send you out.

Peter’s waiting for you.

“Well?” he says. “How was it?”

The two of you walk a little ways down the hallway from the exam room.

“Honestly?” You shrug. “Fine.”

There’s not really any other way to put it. You could’ve seen it being nerve-wracking, anxiety-inducing, down right catastrophic — and maybe it would’ve been for any other assessment. Not so much as a sweaty palm or a racing heart. You float through the hallway, looking down on it from above.

“Just ‘fine’?”

You exhale. “Yeah. Huh.” You look back to the now closed door, your entire school life behind it. “I said what I needed to say. I did what I needed to do.” You look back at Peter. You shrug. “It was fine. It was good.”

He smiles warily. “Are you okay?” he asks, half-jovial.

“Uh…” Things ending, everything changing. It happens. “Yeah. No, I’m good,” you say, dragging your hands down your face quickly to snap you back into the moment. “Sorry. I…didn’t sleep much last night.” You laugh lightly.

“Oh.” Peter nods. Then he nods for a few moments more. Then he opens his mouth to say something, with nothing coming out for a second, before, “Something happen?”

You shake your head. “No, not really. Just. Nerves.”

That came out quick. You blink. What was that? Your body still on auto-pilot? Your mind starts to scramble, quickly rewinding the conversation from its beginning to now, frantically reviewing everything you’ve said to expose any other potential bald-faced lies. It’s more or less an outlier, though, and you’re not really sure what to do with it.

But what would you do with it? ‘Actually, sorry, I lied, I went web-swinging with Spider-Man last night. This morning, too.’ Maybe not a topic for discussion in the less than five minutes before Peter’s final presentation. So you just let it sit.

“But anyways,” you start, and lightly hit Peter’s arm with the back of your hand, “how’re your exams going?”

He nods. “Yeah, good. Fine. Well, you know.”

You hum. “I know.”

He chuckles before cringing slightly. “Might’ve been not just ‘fine’ if I had…” he grimaces, “shown up to class with more ‘consistent and enthusiastic efforts,’” he finishes, squishing the last few words into over-exaggerated air quotes.

You laugh, maybe a little too loudly for the quiet hallway. “Which one said that?”

“Advanced Principles of Biochemistry,” he says, looking a little proud of himself. “Couldn’t even wait till after classes were finished; he was begging to tell me that.” You scoff at his professor and the sheer nerve. “As if I was the only one who didn’t show up all the time.”

“Okay, but,” you say, “were you the only one who just slept through class when you actually did show up?”

Peter smiles, hesitating. “…Probably not?”

“Oh,” you say, chuckling, “well, then that settles it.”

Peter laughs. “Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear who’s in the wrong.”

You smile.

And there’s the kick in the heartbeat. It’s good to know that after everything that’s happened in the past ten or so hours — being stalked, swinging through New York streets with Spider-Man himself, and putting a close to seventeen straight years of education — that your heart still actually works. You’ve gotta hand it to Peter, though — somehow just being here, laughing in sync with each other, is what makes your heart race the most out of anything.

You indulge in the acceleration; give in to it just because you can. It’s been a week since you last saw him in person, since you fully accepted your complete and utter infatuation, but you have been texting back and forth a bit every now and then in the interim. Just little things, exchanges that could hardly even qualify as full conversations, but each successive one chipped away at what hold you had until you found yourself falling. It’s only been a week, one where you haven’t even met up with Peter in person until now, and yet those little distanced interactions have pulled you to where you are now, completely basking in the rays of Peter’s presence. Just last week you were running from them.

Everything changes — the world moves around you at its own pace and marches forward whether you’re ready to join or not. You’re falling though, you can tell, from high above, and everything is approaching, inevitable. 

But you don’t think you’ll crash land. If anything, you’ll make sure you don’t.

“You have any more exams after this?” you ask.

Peter shakes his head. “Nope. This is the last thing.” You smile. That was exactly what you wanted to hear. Maybe you’ll have something else to do today after all. “God, I can’t wait to have more time on my hands,” he says, throwing his head back.

“Well, as someone on the other side, I can tell you it’s great over here.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” you say. “Now that I’m done with the semester I have all the time in the world to appreciate…” you shrug, “that water fountain,” you say, pointing to one. “Or, the two entire pamphlets on that notice board. Or the scuff marks on the floor,” you add, kicking at the linoleum.

“Wait, stop,” Peter says, “I don’t have time for any of that!” he laughs. “I still have—” he checks his wristwatch, and you could swear his eyes actually bulge. “Oh, shit,” he mutters, then swings his backpack off, quickly rummaging through it before producing a crumpled set of notes. “Like, two minutes left,” he chuckles.

“Oh, shit,” you echo, a grin growing on your face.

He pushes the notes into your hands. “Quick, help me go through this.”

“Uh,” you stutter and it mixes with a laugh, “alright.”

In the remaining time before Peter’s speech the two of you speed run through the points he needs to cover, and, confident that he’ll remember at least seventy percent of it, he heads into the dreaded exam room with an expression of good luck from you, complete with a return of his earlier double thumbs up and giant smile.

Ten quiet minutes later, Peter emerges.

“Well?” you say. “How was it?”

You’ve never seen him more satisfied with himself. He nods slowly. “Crushed it,” he says.

“That good, huh?”

The two of you walk away from the room again, this time heading to the building’s exit.

“I crushed it,” he repeats. A little chime sounds off from his phone, muffled by his jean pockets. “Why doesn’t every class end with an oral assessment?” he says as he pulls his phone out, checking it.

“I think at least half the students would revolt,” you say. “Probably more.”

His attention is divided between you and his phone. “But it’s so good to just, like…have a conversation.” He taps a few things on his screen. You honestly can’t tell if he’s texting someone or what. He furrows his brows ever so slightly. “To actually talk about…what you learned.” He sets his jaw.

“Uh,” you start, “do you need to take that?” you ask, gesturing towards his phone.

“Yes,” he says, not looking up from it. He quickly stashes it away, before looking at you like he just remembered you’re there. “Um, I’ll see you next—” he starts backwards down the hallway— “Oh. We don’t have class next week,” he says, quickening his pace. So much for not doing nothing the rest of the day. Right when you thought you could have some time with Peter with nothing else going on — either a class you’re supposed to be paying attention to, or your brain making up reasons to get in your own way — you’re quickly reminded that this is Peter Parker you’re talking about. You don’t think there’s a universe that exists where he isn’t flaky. “Uh, I’ll see you around, yeah?” he promises, practically jogging.

“Is everything okay?” you call after him.

“Oh, yeah, everything’s fine,” he calls back. “Seriously, don’t worry. I just—” he gestures behind him, “gotta run!”

He turns and runs.

You’re left alone in the hallway. 

Well, whatever it is, you can always ask him about it later.

It’s a thirty minute walk back to your place, but with nowhere else to be today you don’t mind taking the time to unwind. A decent walk — in broad daylight, at least — would certainly cut down the amount of time you spend alone in your apartment lying around, doing nothing, staring at the ceiling from your bed and contemplating your future. Well, the walk at least leaves you ample time to scroll mindlessly through your rotating set of social media apps. You’re watching a mildly funny cat video when a news alert pops down at the top of your screen. You’re prone to just dismissing these notifications — it’s basically reflex at this point — but your eye catches a certain hero’s name which gives you pause.

BREAKING NEWS: Shocking live footage reveals Spider-Man battling Green Goblin atop Oscorp Tower

You wince. Pocketing your phone, you speed up just so. The fight wouldn’t come down here (probably — you hope), but you’ll feel safer the further away from Midtown you are. Besides, you kind of want to watch that live stream properly when you get home. That’s something to do, right? It’ll be a little weird watching news coverage of Spider-Man now that you’ve actually interacted with him. You just hope that no one you know gets caught up in the crossfire.

Chapter Text

It’s sweltering in the elevator. Whenever this building was built, they clearly did not have to deal with the same summers that you do now. Luckily you’re alone, and you check to make sure your sweating armpits aren’t too obvious.

“Goddammit,” you hiss. 

You try to fan your shirt dry, then shove and shift it under your arm in what you hope is the least conspicuous way possible. Hopefully they weren’t too noticeable during your interview.

You really want to get this job. It’s not something you’ve dreamed about your whole life or anything, but it pays well and would actually put your degree to some use. And it’s something you know you’d be good at, too. The managing editor, Robbie (as he insisted you called him after a few awkward ‘Mr Robertson’s from you), certainly seemed to think highly of you and your writing, promising that you’d hear back from him by the end of the week. It’s a promise you’ve heard countless times before, and by now had gotten used to it being broken practically every time it was made, but something about the rapport you built up with Robbie is letting you get your hopes up.

The elevator thunks to a stop as it reaches the first floor. The doors open to reveal Peter.

“Oh,” you say, involuntarily. You blink in surprise and perk up a little.

After the briefest moment he locks eyes with you and you get to see the recognition in his face spark. It takes a second or two for something in his brain to kick into gear before he says, “Hi.”

You step out of the elevator to Peter’s side. “Hi yourself,” you say, smiling.

“Uh,” is all he says, and it’s quiet. He’s just kind of looking at you. His eyes are darting back and forth between yours, and his brow furrows slightly. “Uh,” he says again.

You open your mouth to say something, you’re not sure what, just anything to help him out here, but at that moment his eye catches the closing elevator doors. He quickly reaches out to hold them, then kind of half-stumbles into the elevator.

“I gotta, um…” He gestures in almost every direction around him before he finally settles on pointing upwards. “It’s— It won’t… I won’t take long. I have— I’ll…”

“I’ll wait down here, okay?” you tell him.

“Yeah,” he nods, “okay.”

“Okay,” you smile. The doors close.

That was a pleasant surprise. You can’t keep the smile off your face. You must’ve caught him at a point in the morning where he hadn’t properly talked to anyone yet and wasn’t prepared to so suddenly switch into Social Interaction Mode, but you have to admit, it was pretty cute. You find an empty seat to wait in in the lobby.

You and Peter haven’t seen each other in person for a couple months, not since your final photography presentations, but the two of you have been texting nearly every single day. The past few days you’ve been somewhat neglecting to keep in touch with him though, you have to admit; you were entirely focused on bagging this job that everything else kind of fell to the wayside. You have no idea what he’s doing at the Daily Bugle — obviously he must work here in some capacity, and you strain your memory to see if he’s ever mentioned where he works or what he does. Nothing seems to come up, though, which kind of makes sense, anyway. It’s not like you’ve ever mentioned your own career prospects to him before, and the whole conversation would stress you out enough anyway that you would’ve done your best to avoid the whole subject in the first place. Maybe that wasn’t the best route to take though; if you’d known that Peter works at the Daily Bugle, he could’ve put in a good word for you, or you could’ve gotten this interview a lot earlier.

It doesn’t really matter anyway, in the end. You’re here now, post-interview, with or without anybody’s help, and the strength of your own skills is what’s going to pull you through (or leave you hanging). You’ve done your fair share of film analysis essays over your academic career that writing up a palatable opinion piece on current popular movies in an entertainment column every week should be child’s play. You really want to get this job. And it’s not like you haven’t dabbled in this field before — the Daily Bugle doesn’t seem desperate enough to get to the interviewing stage with writers who haven’t actually written anything. You let out a deep breath. Robbie said he likes how you write. You just hope he likes it enough to pay you for it before rent is due.

You pick at your shirt, pulling it slightly away from and back to your chest over and over in an attempt to fan yourself with your collar. It doesn’t really work. You curse every person who walks through the doors of the building for letting out even any bit of that poorly air conditioned bliss.

Your matters aren’t helped any when you notice Peter walking up to you from the elevators. It’s hard to tell if your face was already this warm before he got here or not.

You spring to your feet. “So,” you start as he reaches your side, “you come here often?”

Peter shrugs. “I freelance here,” he says, before adding, “sometimes. Now and then. I didn’t, uh…” He looks you up and down. “Do you…work here…?”

“Eh,” you grimace, which turns into a smile, “I’ll know by the end of the week.”

“Oh,” he says, nodding. He looks you up and down again. “Uh,” he starts, and fails to follow up. He keeps his gaze on you for a moment before apparently suddenly remembering he’s in the middle of a conversation, and gestures towards you just slightly falteringly. “Congratulations,” he pairs with the gesture.

You chuckle. “Thanks.” You cock your head to the side. “For…?”

“For…” He does and redoes his gesture as he trails off, and you can’t help but think of it as his body’s very own buffering wheel. “For getting the job, probably,” he eventually gets out. “Um. It’s a pre-emptive…congratulation.” 

He opens his mouth as if to say something else before apparently deciding against it, pressing his lips together in an awkward tight half-smile. Not exactly the brilliant Peter Parker grin you’re so fond of, but you’ve been missing his face over the past couple of months enough that you don’t really mind either way.

You smile, quickly glancing at the ground. “Thanks. I haven’t had, like, a proper job interview in a while, so I was a little rusty,” you say.

“I’m sure you were great,” Peter responds automatically. “Who did the interview? It wasn’t Jonah, was it?”

“No,” you say. “Christ, I mean, thank God. He scares me.” Peter does a little nod in agreement. “No, it was, uh. Robbie. Robertson.”

“Oh, Robbie,” Peter says. “Yeah, he’s great. I love him.”

You hum in non-committal agreement. “Yeah, well,” you start, and it must be the jitters from the interview still lingering, or from suddenly running into Peter after too long of not seeing him, or maybe the heat is just starting to get to you, but you remember how he easily slipped through your fingers the last time the two of you were together. You’re not eager for a repeat. 

You ask without really thinking. 

“I could,” you shrug, “tell you more about it over brunch…?”

The proposition floats in the air between you, like a deflated balloon after a full day of hanging loosely against a mall ceiling. 

Peter lazily grabs for it.

“Yeah,” he says, and fishes out his phone to check something before quickly putting it back. “I could do brunch.”

You get the impression he isn’t really thinking either when he accepts it.

Which doesn’t bother you as much as you think it maybe should; it’s not like you put any more thought into the asking of it. In any case, at least you asked, and at least he didn’t say no — intentional or not, you’re actually getting what you’ve wanted for the past few months. You feel the tips of your ears heat up ever so slightly.

“Great,” you grin, and start gathering your things. You exhale lightly once you’ve got yourself in order. Between the job interview and asking Peter out to lunch, you’re not sure which is going to overwhelm you first — you try to just keep moving, just to get ahead of it all, to somehow get in front of the tightness building up inside your own chest. It’s a stumble and a half, but at least you’re moving forward. “You know any good spots?”

Peter pauses. “You were the one who suggested brunch.”

“You’re the one who works here,” you shoot back.

“Freelance. Sometimes.”

You chuckle. “Well?”

He thinks for a second. “Well, yeah, there’s this sandwich place — Friar’s. It’s out of the way, cheap for the city. And, crucially,” he locks eyes with you, like your very lives depend on his next few words, “tourists don’t know about it yet.”

You nod. “Sounds good.” You gesture towards the front doors. “Lead the way.”

Peter takes you down a few streets, down a couple of turns you would never have thought to make, and in a matter of minutes you’re rescued from the blistering rays of the blinding sun, welcomed with open arms into the cool, actually properly ventilated atmosphere of Friar’s. 

You immediately fall in love. What’s not to like? The lunch rush hasn’t hit yet, so you and Peter make it up to the counter, place your orders and find a booth in what feels like record time. Now you really want this job. As a matter of fact, you need it. Before, all this morning, that was just shallow desire — but now that you know it’s a short walk from a place like this? It’s a downright necessity.

Your iced latte cools your palms as you wrap your hands around it, the condensation creating tiny puddles on the tabletop. You nurse it as you chat with Peter about the interview, giving your neatened-up and cleanly presented version of a bacon egg and cheese (which, you will admit, if the price was any higher you would’ve scoffed at the sheer pretension emanating from the dish) a chance to cool down before you dig into it.

“I mean, I’ve written articles for newspapers before,” you tell him. He’s already braving the heat of his pastrami sandwich, washing down every other bite with his chocolate frappé. “Freelance. But you know how that is. And they were mostly independent companies and…like all online stuff. Which — I mean, I know print media is dying and everything, but — it would still feel really cool to actually hold something I made, you know?” Your latte slides in between your hands as you absentmindedly pass it back and forth. “I mean,” you continue, “that is, if…”

“With what I know about Robbie and what I know about you,” Peter says, bringing your attention to him, “I can’t see him not hiring you.”

You sigh. “I hope you’re right. I really want a steady job. And I really want my job search to be…fucking done with.” You lean back in your seat. You’ve been talking a lot for the past few minutes. It wasn’t something you actually picked up on until Peter spoke up, but you’re pretty positive there’s usually more back and forth in your conversations than this. Since when did you get into monologuing? “But enough about me. What’ve you been up to?”

Peter had just taken a bite. He looks like a deer in the headlights. “Oh.” He nods, chews for a bit, and then swallows. “Yeah, you know.” He wipes his face with a napkin, shrugs. “Not much.”

“Freelancing?”

“Yeah.” He nods. “Actually I’m hoping to…not as much.” He picks up his drink, but he doesn’t take a sip, he just plays with the straw. “I’m trying to wear down Jameson to get me an actual contract, but,” he scoffs, “where else would he get the budget for his endless flat top haircuts?”

You laugh lightly. Your sandwich isn’t as hot any more. “Good luck, man.” You start eating.

“Eh, it’s fine. I’ve been interning at this place that…doesn’t not pay me. Between that and freelancing, you could almost mistake me for someone who actually has an income.”

“Oh, that’s—” You swallow. “What’s that like?”

“Yeah, good.” He nods. “Mostly.” He keeps nodding. “It’s at Octavius Industries. I may or may not have fudged my qualifications on my resume a bit, because it is definitely more biophysics than biochemistry, but I’m— I’m getting by. I care about the work, you know? It’s something that I believe in, so if anything, that’s a good motivator.” He keeps playing with the straw.

“What do you do?”

He doesn’t let up with the straw for a few moments more, considering his words, before putting his drink down. “So,” he says, wiping his hands on his jeans, “we’re… What we’re working on right now is building these sensitive, like, fully functional prosthetic limbs.” You raise your eyebrows. If your mouth wasn’t full of sandwich right now, you think you could even manage a ‘wow!’. “Or, at least that’s the end goal,” he continues. He sits up a little. “They’re still working on getting full funding for the project, but the lead scientist showed me some of the long term plans and it’s— it’s,” he chuckles lightly, “really cool.”

He smiles. 

It’s the first proper, unfettered smile you’ve seen from him today — his eyes are lit up, and he’s not even looking at you, not really, but the excitement and the pride and the pure joy slowly seeping from his side of the table is palpable. It’s infectious. You smile, too.

“Peter, that’s amazing,” you say.

He nods, and if you squint you could almost see his smile turning into a grin. “Yeah,” he says, “I know.”

His eyes fall off you for a second, caught on something behind you, and his smile freezes. 

The light fades in his eyes, and before long, his smile follows, and his posture, too. 

He picks up his frappé and drinks.

You turn. Behind you, above the counter, playing on low volume is a TV showing the news — a reporter talking, her face pulled together in professional emotional distance, the screen split to show her next to footage of the city at night, dark, all lights gone out, smothered in inky blackness. Asleep. Scrolling along the bottom of the screen, a banner reads, THE CITY MOURNS THREE YEARS SINCE ELECTRO’S FINAL ATTACK. The footage is intercut with his first appearance in Times Square, then his final fight with Spider-Man, the shot of the power grid shaky and far off — you can barely see the sparks on the dark horizon — before cutting back to just the newsreader in a studio.

“That was today…” you say under your breath. You hardly even realise you said it until it’s out.

You turn back to Peter. He’s staring at the table. 

He must’ve known. All morning. That’s what it was.

A question bubbles up within you, one that you already know the answer to. You don’t know how, but it’s like Peter’s already said ‘yes’ even before you piece the words together in your mind. It’s almost as if his answer has to be ‘yes,’ purely because the question exists. Because you thought to ask it. Because you thought it. Like you were the one who brought this tragedy into his life, into being.

Briefly you think that if you don’t say it out loud, he doesn’t have to say yes, but it doesn’t matter now. Someone’s already dead, all because you thought of asking if they were.

Your voice is low, steady. “You lost someone—” you start, before cutting yourself off. To ask him if he lost someone too feels…disingenuous. Unearned. Unfair. You don’t know what she would think if she knew you were going around saying you lost her, but you don’t think she’d appreciate it. You breathe. “In the blackout?”

He spares you from having it said out loud. From delivering the death sentence concretely. It takes him a second, but eventually, Peter nods.

It’s not fair to her for you to feel like you lost her — hell, you didn’t even remember that today was the anniversary. 

Your first year of college. You were desperate to move into your own place, and you didn’t care what that looked like. It was your first and last time in student accommodation.

You first met your roommate on move-in day, and that day was the longest amount of time you ever spent with her. Anika was nice enough, as far as you could tell, maybe a little on the awkward side, but that was never what bothered you. You never got to see any other side of her. Or, really, any side of her at all — as the weeks ticked by, steadily, you saw less and less of her. You’re not even sure what she was out doing, what her schedule demanded of her — you vaguely remember she was a science student, but that’s it. You don’t think she didn’t like you. It didn’t seem like anything concerning was going on. You just didn’t see each other. You essentially lived alone for your first year of college; the only times you saw Anika were on days that didn’t really feel right in the first place — you remember that she was the one who broke the news to you of a monstrous humanoid lizard rampaging through New York. Even then, she was fairly straight to the point, almost distant. You’re not sure if she didn’t like you.

At the time, you weren’t mad at the fact that you basically got your dorm room all to yourself. It certainly helped you realise that you were perfectly fine with living alone — something you still prefer today. But you’d had expected, anticipated — even wanted — a roommate. Half of the dorm wasn’t yours, and that empty space hung around you even when you left the room.

The last time you saw her was without fanfare, without note. It was sometime around the exam period, you guess. You didn’t see her when you moved out. She had gone back to live with her parents over summer break, and you’d found your apartment off campus.

Almost a year since the day you met her, they had finally counted all the casualties from Electro’s attack several days prior. Her name was hard to miss. It sat right at the top of the dead — Anika Adhikari.

You weren’t friends. You were barely roommates. She had a picture of her parents and her older sister on her desk — you saw them far more than you saw her.

You felt then, as you feel now, reminded of her death, entirely hollow. There’s a space where the feelings should go, but you’re not sure how to — or even if you should — fill it.

Peter’s silent.

He looks small in the booth. There’s a hollowness in him too, in his eyes, that you can almost see yourself reflected back in. But the way it hangs on him — it’s clearly heavier than yours. More unwieldy. Like it drags behind him, never easing, especially not today. Today, it drags gashes deep into the earth as it trails behind him, ripping up any solid ground he’d hoped to surround himself with. You can’t imagine.

And you didn’t even realise.

“…I’m sorry,” you barely say.

Peter’s smile is sombre. It doesn’t meet his eyes. “It’s okay.”

A breath leaves you.

You’re not sure how you could possibly stomach the rest of your meal.

You turn back to the TV. It’s easier than looking at Peter right now, it’s easier than turning towards whatever’s left of the conversation. You play back the three or four prominent memories you have of Anika as the news turns to a larger discussion amongst the newsreaders.

You still can’t hear it, the volume turned low underneath the chatter of the patrons around you, but the banner at the bottom of the screen has changed. 

SPIDER-MAN: MORE HARM THAN GOOD?

The hollowness slowly fills, a trickling of frustration pouring into your gut. Thoughts start buzzing across your mind, quick retorts and rebuttals to whatever you’re imagining the newsreaders are saying. No, Spider-Man didn’t save Anika three years ago, but that doesn’t even come close to implying that her death was his fault.

You turn back to your food. “Good lord,” you mutter.

“What?” Peter says.

You sigh. You’re eager for a subject change. 

You shake your head. “Nothing, it’s just—” You click your tongue. “I dunno. It’s been three years and they’re still blaming Spider-Man for it.”

Peter shrugs. “They blame him for everything.”

“Yeah,” you say, “you’d think they'd get tired of it eventually, right?” It’s not fair, the things he has to put up with. “If the sun fell out of the sky they’d somehow find a way to attach his name to it,” you say, rolling your eyes. “Or call him a menace for not stopping it. Like when Green Goblin attacked last month—” actually, it was a couple of months ago now, wasn’t it? “Or…you know, whenever — everyone was on Spider-Man’s case that he broke out of the Raft again.” Frustration begins to boil up. You adjust in your seat, sitting up a little straighter. “As if it’s his fault if the prison system fails.” You scoff. “It’s not like he’s going around like, ‘Hey, Green Goblin, I actually love it when you harm innocent people. This jail break’s on me!’ He’s the reason more people aren’t dead.” 

You sit back. That wasn’t really all meant to come out at once like that, but you feel more touchy than usual right now.

Peter has a look on his face that you can’t pin down. If you had to put your money on it, you’d almost say he looks unimpressed. You’re not sure.

“Sorry,” you say, quickly. You’ve never actually talked to Peter about Spider-Man before. “I don’t mean to preach.”

His look doesn’t let up. “No, please,” he says. “Preach all you want.”

You’ve never actually talked to Peter about Spider-Man before, you realise, fully. You’ve had chances to, certainly, you even have a hell of a story to tell about the masked man, but you’ve never really acted on it before. In fact, you’re more likely to dodge the topic, if anything. As if your time web swinging with Spidey was a precious jewel, and if you exposed it to the elements, it would lose its shine. Maybe you should’ve brought it up, though. You’re prone to assuming that all the people you interact with in your day-to-day life are generally pro-Spider-Man, but despite your now months long friendship with Peter, you’re realising just how little about him you actually know.

Peter furrows his brow. “What?” he says, snapping you back to the present.

“Oh.” You blink. How many of your thoughts were visible on your face just now? “Nothing,” you say. “It’s just,” you shrug, “you don’t seem convinced.”

“Yeah, well…” Peter says non-committally. He drops his head as he rubs the back of his neck for a moment or two. “No, I love Spidey,” he says, looking back up at you. “He’s a great guy.”

“…But?”

“But, I don’t know.” He shrugs. He looks at you half-expectantly, as if you’re well aware of where his thought process is heading. After you respond with nothing but silence, he sighs. “He just… He doesn’t really seem like he’s on top of things, you know? The Green Goblin does keep breaking out. I just feel like he could be doing more.”

“More…?”

You don’t have to ask what more means. At least, you don’t think you do. You don’t know who Peter lost three years ago, or how, but you wouldn’t exactly blame him if some resentment built up.

You can feel your gut immediately pushing back at the idea, though. It’s not Spider-Man’s fault. You feel your thoughts coalesce as you prepare to defend him.

Although, you wonder, briefly, would you be doing the same a few months ago, before you interacted with him? Would you be as ready to defend him before you had a hell of a story at the ready? Or is this all about some inflated sense of importance on, in actuality, an entirely insignificant interaction with a hero?

It’s hard to say. You’re pretty sure you would have. Spider-Man saving you didn’t change your opinion about him. It just reinforced what you already presumed, now complete with first hand evidence.

You’re totally not biased.

“I don’t know, though,” you say. “He’s just one guy. It’s not like he’s doing nothing. He’s doing everything he can. Which is actually, like, a lot. If anything, sometimes it feels like he takes on more than he can chew. I don’t know how he’s not burnt out yet.” Peter makes a weird sound, like a scoff he gave up on halfway through. You don’t really know what to do with that, so you just shrug and say, “I think he does his job fine.”

It’s the tip of the iceberg. You’re not sure where your sympathy has gone, but you have half a mind to grab Peter by his shoulders and unload every thought you’ve ever had about Spider-Man, about his heroics, about his good deeds, about his kind heart — but the weight of it pulls you back.

“Mm,” is all Peter says. He shifts his frappé back and forth between his hands. You’re not even sure if he fully took in what you said.

You feel like you’re crossing some sort of line here. Maybe Peter really does blame Spider-Man, specifically, for the death of whoever he lost. Maybe he really, actually believes that Spider-Man is a menace, and that the city is worse off with him existing.

Is this a friendship ender? 

That feels dramatic, and your instinct is immediately to say no — your reasons against it quickly stacking high in your mind, not the least of which being that you really don’t want to lose Peter, for any reason at all — but how he sees Spider-Man is indicative of… something, right? You couldn’t say what, right now, on the spot, and maybe this really is you being precious about Spider-Man, but the thought of closing up your friendship with Peter has already entered your mind, so this has to be dealt with now.

“Do you really not like him?” you ask. If you’ve already crossed a line, you might as well make your positions clear. “Like, actually?”

Peter’s eyes narrow and he cocks his head ever so slightly, and you think for a second that you could almost detect a hint of a smirk. You quickly decide you’re seeing things, though, because otherwise you’d have to actually think about whatever the hell that means — does he legitimately want to debate you or something? Oh, God. You just wanted to make things clear — but no, you didn’t see it because it didn’t happen, so you don’t have to think about it in any way whatsoever. He keeps just looking at you, though, as if there’s something, anything to read into in of the most point blank questions you’ve ever asked him — although, if he was going to read into anything you’ve said to him, you guess it’s best that he does it now and not when you’re actually trying to hide something (say, for example, your feelings) from him.

It still takes him just a bit too long for your liking for him to actually hear what you’re saying.

“No, I— Okay, look,” he says, finally, sitting up straight. He exhales. “I think he’s great. And I think the city’s better off whenever he’s around. He’s the only one who can really take on all the crazy villains that seem to be just sprouting up everywhere these days. And he really does not deserve, like, ninety percent of what the press says about him.” He pauses for a moment. “Especially since airing opinions about him like that, on a platform like that, to so many people, does nothing but breed distrust and division among New Yorkers,” he continues. “It makes more people feel more unsafe for no reason, it makes people feel publicly validated to take an actual, like, physical stand against him — I mean, villains know that Spidey doesn’t even have the public’s trust behind him — they fight, which of course means more damage to the city; it’s easier to paint Spidey as a menace once again; people who don’t feel safe in New York and people who hate Spider-Man are instantaneously validated of their fears — the very same fears that were initiated by the press themselves — it’s,” he throws his hands up, almost as if in defeat. “It’s… I mean, it’s the news cycle. What are you gonna do? It is malicious and spiteful and unrelenting, and Spidey definitely does not deserve to be the face of it.

“But.” He pauses again, considers his words. “I’m just saying. In a private conversation…between two friends.” He shrugs. Then sighs. “I think he also has room for improvement.”

You stare at Peter. That wasn’t at all what you expected to come out of his mouth. 

For all your rushing to defend Spider-Man, Peter’s already out way ahead of you, ready with points you hadn’t even considered until he brought them up. It’s almost embarrassing how ready you were to go to bat for him, now that you know Peter could clearly outclass you, regardless of what stance you took on the matter.

And why would you want to, anyway? Peter’s friendship is more important than digging your heels in over a topic you shouldn’t feel so personally invested in in the first place.

“Well, I…” you start, “guess I can’t fault you for that,” you say. You clear your throat, gathering yourself together. “Man, you’ve really thought about this, huh?”

Peter pauses for a fraction of a second, then nods. “When you take photos of the guy and they’re printed under headlines you,” he laughs drily, “vehemently disagree with, it can make you a little…philosophical.”

“Oh…” you say. Your head falls back slightly. “You take photos of Spider-Man.”

“Yep,” Peter says, picking up his frappé. “It would be great to have a less…uh, dangerous gig with the Bugle, but what am I hired for, if not to fuel Jameson’s Spider-Man obsession?” 

This changes things. Everything, really. There are so many questions you want to ask. Has Peter met Spider-Man? Is having to put himself into dangerous situations for pictures of him the reason why he (might) have (possible) resentment? Why would he take on such a risky job if he’s not even on an actual contract? Even if he was, why would he? How has he not busted down Jameson’s door and demanded a contract if their Spider-Man articles are the main stories they’re peddling? And, assuming there really are no hard feelings between him and Spidey, how does he contend with working somewhere that is so blatantly opposed to the existence of a hero he — supposedly — supports? And, more to the point, how will you?

“I…guess I should take a page out of your book, then,” you find yourself saying, “if I’m gonna be working at the Bugle.”

Peter shrugs. “Well, as long as you don’t give five stars to any of those anti-Spidey propaganda movies, I think you’ll be fine,” he says. 

You give a slight laugh, but it’s a little hollow. You do know how Peter could keep coming back to this job, no matter the answer to any of those questions — it’s the same reason you desperately want to be hired there, despite the headlines they push out every day. 

The two of you sit in silence for a moment, just a short one, but the space is filled between you with a train of thought you know you’re both riding.

“It’s a job,” Peter says. “We all do what we can.” It sounds so simple when he says it. “I mean, even I’m trying to get an actual job there, of all people.” He sighs and sits back in his seat. Then quickly, he adds, “And I’m Spidey’s number one fan.”

You look Peter up and down. He seems to be in the middle of an internal conflict to either staunchly maintain or completely avoid eye contact. “…I still can’t tell whether or not you like him.” 

At the very least, you don’t think you’ll be bringing this topic up again with him any time soon. The rollercoaster you’ve gone on today is more than enough.

“I think he’s cool,” Peter says. “Like, actually. He can do some really sick backflips.”

“Oh.” You smile. “Well, in that case,” you say. Peter matches your smile. “He seems alright to me.”

Peter chuckles.

It’s good to hear him laugh.

The two of you finish up your meals, and by the time you leave Friar’s, the lunch rush has well and truly hit.

It’s still hotter than the surface of the sun outside, especially now as the day sludges along into the afternoon. You think about asking if you guys should do this again sometime, and you don’t know why, but you stop yourself. It’s too hot to do anything, you reason, let alone form a complete sentence right now.

Besides, if you do get the job, then you’re going to be seeing a lot more of Peter anyway.

How quickly after you get hired would it be appropriate to put in a word to Jonah to get Peter signed onto a proper contract?

“Well then,” Peter starts, drawing your attention away from your hatching plans. He turns to start down the street, squinting from the glare of the sun. “See you around?”

“Yeah,” you say, giving a small wave. “See ya.”

He waves back before heading off.

The first thing you do when you get home is crank up your window A/C unit and take the coldest shower you can. The heat still clings to you desperately, so you resign yourself to an afternoon of sitting in your own sweat. You’re kind of used to it by now.

It’s an hour or two after you’ve settled down in your apartment, scrolling mindlessly through streaming services from your bed and trying your best to keep hydrated, when your phone buzzes.

It’s an email.

From Robbie.

You snatch your phone from where you’d thrown it on your bed.

Immediately your chest regresses to earlier today, to before, during and right after the interview, where it finds that aching yet familiar tightness and grips onto it with all its might. You scan the notification. Your eyes jump from line to line of the preview, fragments of words, morphemes, letters being the only thing small enough to filter through into your mind. It’s only once you manage to piece together the words ‘great time’ and ‘potential’ that you let yourself even entertain the notion that the email could be remotely positive. Although, that word, ‘potential’ — it’s loaded. It could be a way to talk you up, to point out a strength he noticed today, or, on the other hand, it could be a way to let you down easy, to compliment despite the rejection.

The rest of the preview doesn’t give you a lot more in the way of clues. It cuts off on the word ‘maybe.’ Maybe. In this scattered state, you swing back and forth on what your future looks like. Maybe you’ll be comfortable, second job in hand, doing what you actually want to do with your career, or maybe you’ll still be searching for something that seems forever out of reach. 

The tightness in your chest coils in on itself, ready to snap. If you don’t open the email you’ll never have to know.

Fuck it. 

You dive head first into opening a new tab and loading up your inbox.

The first thing you notice — and you have to take a second to really comprehend it — is the fact that this email was clearly written by Robbie, not some pre-generated message sent out with just your name subbed in.

Your heart beats a rhythm underneath the words.

I had a great time interviewing you today. I’ve read through your previous articles and I think you show great potential. With some guidance, who knows? -- maybe you’ll be the next Arnold Sibert. 

Which is to say, I’m more than happy to offer you a position at the Bugle. I can see you’ve got a lot of things to tell the world, even if your portfolio doesn’t always show that off. I assure you, working with us will get you to develop that voice of yours in no time.

You'll make a great addition to the team. I'll shoot over a contract once you're ready.

Your grin grows with every word you read, and for the second time that day, you can’t keep the smile off your face. You kick your feet against your mattress and let out an emphatic “Yes!” to no one in particular.

You sit up, tossing your laptop next to you on your bed and grab for your phone again.

Before you do anything, before you reply back to Robbie, before you reread the email to make sure that yes, indeed, you really got the job, you open up your phone to your messages with Peter.

You quickly tap out a text.

Guess who just became your coworker !!

After a moment or two, you see three dots bouncing. Just as soon as they appear, they vanish, then pop up again and stay there, longer this time, the ellipsis almost agonising amidst your joy.

Heyyy congrats dude!

He accompanies the message with a sticker of a cartoon duck wearing a party hat and blowing a party horn, streamers and confetti falling down around it. You laugh out loud to yourself and send back a thanks.

You turn your phone off and fall back down onto your bed.

The smile on your face relaxes as you stare up at the ceiling. It seems further away somehow, the old stucco and mysterious stains (kudos to the upstairs neighbour) having retreated to leave you some room to actually breathe. Your future, the possibilities, the opportunities, fill up the empty space between you and it. They float around the room.

The tightness in your chest unfurls. 

You breathe.