Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As far as your coworkers were concerned, you smoked like a damn chimney.

Chapter Text

Actually, Peter turned out to be alright.

You didn’t manage to keep your name a secret for that long - it had been barked at you the second you’d stepped foot back into the kitchen, and Peter had been incredibly annoying about it; repeating it to himself, letting it roll around on his tongue like he was testing it, shaping it with his lips and teeth. Then, he’d spent the rest of the week saying it as much as possible, after every damn sentence, until you threatened him with a pizza wheel to the throat and revoked his first name privileges. And then, he’d taken to cycling through odd nicknames until he found one that stuck.

“I think I’m calling you Pineapples today.”

“You already used that two weeks ago, mister.”

“I’m running out.”

“Then shut up.” He throws you a sarcastic salute, and then he’s off to ask the regular on table three if she’s ready to order for the fourth time, even though she always gets the same thing, like clockwork.

Peter’s fallen into the routine quite well, you think. He’s stayed quiet about your little breaks, and in return you let him accompany you, lending him a cigarette and your lighter every other hour, soaking in the fresh air - though he’s usually just pleased to smell something that isn't oil or tomato-adjacent. He’d even started contributing a few dollars to the week’s rations of cigs like you’re some sort of tobacco-based landlord; which he really didn’t need to, but you’re not going to stop him. You like his quiet, you like his odd combinations of fountain sodas that hurt like needles and taste like battery acid, and you can tolerate his company.

It’s been a few months or so, but you still haven’t quite figured out what makes him tick, why he hasn’t been battered down by the industry yet. Your first month at Joe’s was spent weeping in the cleaning closet like a minimum-wage Cinderella, after getting yelled at for the tenth time in the space of two hours. There had been countless cuts on your fingers and burns on your arms, but Peter seemed to be taking it all in his stride.

Stupidly optimistic. Stupidly cheerful. Stupidly nice - in the worst way.

Niceness didn’t get you far nowadays. You didn’t think he’d make it, but he’s done pretty well - no snapping or crying or threatening to quit, before remembering rent is due next week and there’s no groceries in whatever tin can is serving as your fridge. That was one of your favourites.

Yeah, he was late to the odd shift, turning up sweaty (and once, bloody), but he’s the only one who can lift the grill to clean it on his own, so Sal refuses to fire him. He just claps Peter on the back, nearly sending him across the room, and tells the same stupid joke about daylight savings being over for the year. No one really gets it, but he’s the boss, so you all laugh anyway.

You liked him - correction, you just liked him more than other new hires, you were otherwise indifferent to him. But, you liked him enough to get Sal to reprint his nametag, even though he became quite fond of being called Peber. He wasn’t entirely incompetent at his job either; he didn’t slack off like the high schoolers that came and went every summer, but he didn’t take himself too seriously, like the randoms that would treat the diner like the US Navy boot camp. A week or so ago, management (not Sal, one of the big bosses) had tried to make one of the servers get rid of her acrylics, so he ran to the CVS on his break and bought some ugly nail polish. Then he’d spent half of his break painting his - then your - nails in solidarity. You didn’t even like her that much, you just happened to hate management more. The rest of your shift was spent accidentally smudging neon blue on your uniforms and the register until your manager relented, and let Trisha keep her nails.

“What would I do without this thrilling hijinkery? This tomfoolery?” He’d mused to you, fumbling with the cotton rounds and acetone they’d given you to take the polish off. It had come out of his paycheck, but he didn’t seem to mind, just enjoying the company.

“Keel over,” You had answered, grabbing at his hands to help him, the polish coming off in one fell swoop, “hopefully.”

It wasn’t like you were talking outside of work like heathens, though, you didn’t even have each other’s numbers; as it should be. Mixing work with your personal life was a dangerous game and you took it very seriously, it had taken weeks of asking until Sal even knew your second name. It was a pain in the ass; people get too close, and then they start bugging you in your free time when you don’t get paid to deal with their bullshit. Absolutely not. Peter was annoying, and he’d probably be even more annoying over the phone, sending smiley faces and punctuating his texts like a weirdo.

It’s a sleepy midday in Joe’s, and the regular brunch rush has slowed to a trickle, the last few stragglers dotted around the tables. In the corner, some college students are frantically flicking through battered copies of Pride and Prejudice, while another one snoozes in the beams of light that spear through the front windows, head pressed to the glass as his coffee grows cold.

You’re leaning against the counter, chin in hand, watching the students panic as one of them drops their notes into the pool of grease that their pizza swims in, when there’s a sudden hand on your shoulder that startles you.

“Stuck again?”

“Just thinking, man, give me a minute.”

You’d been poring over the New York Times crossword during the lull and Peter has apparently come to help, popping his tawny brown head over your shoulder to give your answers a once over. For a while, you’d shoo him away, until you realised he was good at them. Now, your mornings were often spent trying to get an answer out of him, while still maintaining the illusion that you didn’t need his help.

“Cough cough, ‘blew’, cough cough,” Peter mumbles under his breath, pointing to thirteen across as he sweeps past, his back pressing to yours as Angela charges through in the opposite direction; a tray of stained and chipped coffee mugs in one hand, and a pitcher in the other. She gives you a Look, one you’d been seeing fairly recently as of late. She’d been swearing up and down that Peter had a crush on you, that he didn’t stop talking about you, blah blah blah - but you’d only been shooting her down. Peter didn’t like you, you were just friends. His hands on your shoulders didn’t mean anything, he was just affectionate. There weren’t feelings involved, you were just close in age and got on well, that was all.

That was all. Seriously. The guy drove you nuts.

“As in the colour of the sky?” You barely look up from the newspaper, left there by some guy who did nothing more than seemingly use it as a coaster, the tip of your pencil caught between your teeth. Peter is at your shoulder again, on the other side, drying a plate, and when you look up at him he’s staring at your mouth, watching.

“As in ‘went down on.’” It tumbles out of his mouth absentmindedly, before his eyes widen and he jolts away from you faster than you’ve seen him move before - even though you’d once seen him catch a fly between his fingers, inches away from landing on some poor kid’s spaghetti. His face is bright red, and you can practically hear the wires in his brain frying as he’s trying to string together whatever words he remembers into an apology. It wouldn’t matter anyway, you can barely hear him over your own cackling.

“Oh- Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Oh my God.”

“Jesus Christ, Parker.”

“It just came out, I’m sorry-!” He’s slumping on the counter, covering his head with those long forearms of his, groaning so loud you can hear it over the clatter of Angela dumping the dirty cutlery in the sink. She’s pulling The Face again, through the service window, and you wave her away, frowning at her. Peter sinks into a ball on the floor, face hidden behind his hands, but you can still see the burning red flush along his hairline, spreading to his ears. The college kids in the corner haven’t noticed the commotion, demolishing the pizza in record speed, but you’ve disturbed Sleeping Beauty by the window, rousing him with your merciless teasing. Peter seems to be re-embarrassing himself with every passing second.

“Oh my God. I’m gonna walk into traffic. It just keeps replaying in my head. Make it stop.”

“I didn’t know you felt that way about drying the dishes, Peter, if you want me to leave you alone-”

“Stop!”

Teasing him felt like a reward for all of his annoying parts; the awful attempts at banter, the way he was so content at work, how he didn’t harbour any resentment to the unsuspecting public of New York. Maybe you were envious of him, how he could just brush everything off, and that nothing phased him - Sal thought you were jealous because Peter was overtaking you as his favourite, but not a single word of that sentence was true. It was a well-known fact that Sal’s favourite was whoever was standing in front of him at any given moment.

Some part of you, buried deep, deep down inside, liked messing with him because you got to hear him laugh about it later. You started actually looking forward to work, hoping he’d be there in his stupid little apron, stupid little sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and his stupid little notebook at the ready to take orders. Since the second you’d been forced into it, you’d thought the Joe’s uniform was hideous and unflattering, but then Peter came along and wore it surprisingly well. It fit with the rest of him; taking a bad thing and making the best of it.

Your smile falters, and you turn away from him before he starts to ask questions. Fuck’s sake.

Some voice in the back of your mind (perhaps belonging to Angela, but sounding more like your own with every painful second) swears up and down that Peter likes you. Like, likes likes you, and this was just grease on the fire. The way he was looking at you, like you hung the moon and stars, you knew it all too well. That would be fine on its own - people had crushed on you before, it was no big deal - it was the other voice in the back of your mind that really bothered you. The one that wanted to tell him how nice his new haircut suited his jawline, the one that wanted to wax lyrical about the one time you caught a glimpse of him making the pizza dough with Sal, flour streaked across his browbone, hands kneading and pulling and stretching. Even now, you can’t help your gaze lingering on his knicked-up fingers, rubbing at his mapled eyes and pulling his hair over his face. He's looking up at you from the floor now, all pitiful and pink, trying his best to hold back his own laughter.

Whatever diner-based deity looking over you decides to be ever so merciful, and you’re called away by a customer who is apparently upset you’ve given him an ‘americay-no’ when they asked for a black coffee. Never change, New York.

It’s nearly an hour before you see him again, thanks to both the lunch crowd and The Mysterious Sticky Substance making another appearance from the back drainpipe. You were camped out in the store cupboard, elbow-deep in a shelf that was pretty much all cheese when he walks in, toting what must have been a litre of pizza sauce. The air becomes thick, and you’re not sure if things are just gonna be weird between you for a bit, or if you’re just reading into things. You’re too old for silly crushes, for fuck’s sake, you can at least talk to him like an adult.

“Hey, Parker.” Perfect. Short, sweet, casual but not too casual.

“Ahoy, Captain.” Even better. The vice on your chest loosens a little.

The dusty box television in the top corner of the diner squeals to life outside the pantry, crackling with static as it attempts to find its tuning. It’s been Sal’s routine since long before you started to watch the news on his break after the lunch rush, leaving flour and tomato stains all over the freshly-cleared tables and chairs, that you inevitably had to clean up. There’s some news story about a deli robbery on the corner of Broadway and West 40th blaring out of the speakers as Sal fiddles with the remote, trying to find a volume he’s happy with - which usually ends up being entirely too fucking loud.

“Hey, look!” Sal calls your name over the noise, and you pop your head out of the cupboard to see him pointing the chunky remote at the screen, waving it around like it had suddenly become a laser pointer. You can feel Peter moving beside you as he slides the pizza sauce onto the shelving, your shirts brushing together, the starched fabric rustling loudly. “It’s your best pal.”

You’re confused until you see a familiar blur of red and blue, and then you’re rolling your eyes as Spider-Man zips in to stop the robbery, webs flying like streamers - though that could just be the television distorting the image. It was probably older than you, knowing Joe’s.

“Ha-ha, very funny, Sal.”

Peter looks more awkward than usual as you retreat back into the cupboard, stood there like a wooden board, watching you rolling up your sleeves in preparation for tackling the pasta shelf. You’d forgotten to get a pack of cigarettes on your way into work - you’d been going through them faster thanks to Peter - but you’d hidden a carton in here a while back in case of an emergency, though you can’t quite remember where. He shuffles awkwardly on his feet as you slide your hand between the tagliatelle and fusilli, waving it around behind the containers before removing it and repeating with the penne and farfalle.

“Do you- Do you not like Spider-Man?” He asks, tentatively, and you freeze. You were hoping it would be a little longer before you’d have to talk about Spider-Man, if at all, but fate seemed to think otherwise. Apparently, it was a very polarising topic, one that the entire staff disagreed with you on - to the extent that they’d started calling you J. Jonah Jameson, and ribbing you at any mention of him. Once, on your day off, he’d swung by the diner in pursuit of a speeding truck, and you’d not heard the end of it for weeks; the whole diner talking about how you probably would have heckled him from the sidewalk.

“It’s not like I hate him. I just don’t idolise him.” You answer, scrabbling around in the dark for the fold-up stepstool that’s usually in the corner, a flashlight held between your teeth and illuminating the way with its lacklustre beam, muffling your speech. “Apparently that’s a controversial opinion. Can you get the light?”

“You think people idolise him?” Peter understands you well enough and flicks the light on, the bulb sparking to life and flooding the room with a grim wash of colour. You both squint, adjusting to the fluorescence before you resume your hunt. The stool is nowhere to be found. “What are we looking for?”

“Cigarettes.” You answer, squatting down to the dusty floor to continue your search under the shelves. All you see is a glimpse of an old mouse trap before you’re getting back up, deciding that you don’t get paid enough to deal with it. Peter is poking around too, rearranging jars and crates of vegetables in search of your emergency cigs. “I think people pin too much hope on him. It’s all well and good he helps people, but they expect him to be able to help everyone.”

Peter hums, and you hesitate for a moment, pursing your lips together before you decide to carry on.

“It’s unrealistic. You can’t expect so much from just one guy who probably has his own problems to deal with.”

“You think Spider-Man has problems? He’s a superhero.”

“He’s just a guy, Parker.” You turn to face him, and he’s balancing a whole forest’s worth of seasoning jars under his chin, some odd expression on his face. The same one as when Sal makes him a sub when he didn’t have time to eat after class, or when you got him an iced coffee from the bodega before a particularly long shift. It was something akin to shock, eyes all round, like he wasn’t used to being looked at and acknowledged. “What? He is. He doesn’t sound much older than us, really.”

Peter seems to get defensive, ducking his head. “I thought he sounded older. He was always Spider-Man, not Spider-Boy.”

“Well, he was clearly a kid when he started. I just thought he was my age.” You’d been around sixteen when all that Spider-Man stuff started kicking off - you didn’t pay much attention at the time, but looking back it was alarming how young he sounded. There was the odd crack and squeak in his voice every now and then, muffled behind the mask, and always accompanied by an awkward, throaty cough as he forced his pitch into a deeper register. It made you angry, that some poor teenager was out in Manhattan in the dead of night, putting himself into these risky situations so people would be safe. High school was enough of a hellscape on its own - he didn’t need all that superpower shit on top of his SATs. It made you angrier to think about how people just let him help without thinking about him as a kid. Encouraged him. Relied on him.

“It’s too much pressure on him to have to look out for everyone. And unreliable. What if you’re getting mugged in West Village, and Spider-Man is way uptown, taking his midterms? Or in Spanish class? Or in Brooklyn? People just expect him to be there when he can’t. It’s impossible.” It seems the footstool isn’t hiding in the vegetables, so you check the sturdiness of the bottom shelf, then step onto it, and then the next one, using the shelves as a ladder. Peter’s watching you, eyebrows all in a nervous tangle, worrying at his bottom lip - though you’re not sure if he’s more concerned with your safety, or your opinions on a guy in spandex.

“Are you okay up there?”

“I’m fine, dude, it’s only a few feet up. I’m not made of glass.” Jesus, it’s dusty on the top shelf, a thick layer of grey fuzz across the lacquered wood you daren’t touch. There mustn't be a single thing up here in date; surely this would be past you's best hiding spot. “I just think we shouldn’t put that much responsibility on a kid. He’d be in college now, probably. College is hard enough without having to babysit the whole of New York. It’s stupid.”

“I’ve never really thought about it like that.”

“Yeah, well. He’s never done much for me, so maybe I’m biased.”

“Really? Never? Feels like everyone has a Spider-Man story.” Peter says, almost absentmindedly, and there’s an odd pang in your chest. Ah, you’ve said too much. He picks up on the sudden change in mood, your sudden stillness, and he hesitates, watching the back of your head.

Three blocks away, you think you smell smoke. You always think you’re smelling smoke.

“Well, uh, there was a fire in the kitchen. A while before you started. Kinda bad.” The whole ordeal was simultaneously the foggiest, and the clearest memory you had, everything morphing into a blur of heat and ash. You’d been at your usual spot on the back step, sleeves bunched up as far as they went in the June city heat, letting a cig burn between your fingers. It was a quiet day, one of the last school days before Summer vacation, so there was this anticipatory feeling fogging the diner, like some unspoken, evil creature lurking in the corner. You thought it was just the dread of three-thirty, when the kids would be let out of school and become menaces for pizza, crowding the diner with their backpacks and school books and what-not.

Then Sal had called for you - some problem in the walk-in fridge - and you’d left your cigarette on the doorstep, nipping into the break room to grab a toolbox. After that, it was all just smoke and the roar of fire, everywhere. Somewhere, your brain remembers the texture of old tablecloths as you stuff them along the bottom of the door to stop the smoke getting in, how glass sounds when you pound your fists against it, how your throat ached for days afterwards from the screaming and the burning air, but you don’t actually remember doing any of it. The sensation of it lingers, only just masking the terror that has stamped itself into your bones.

“Everyone managed to get out fine but I got stuck in the break room. I just had to sit there and hope it didn’t get through the door.” You bury your head in the shelves again, avoiding the inevitable look of pity, the tuts and sighs, the usual shit. After your third empty and awkward apology for something that was nothing to do with them, every reaction seems to hurt just that little bit more.

“Oh.” Oh. ‘Oh’ was probably the best thing he could possibly say. ‘Oh’ is everything you need and more.

You can’t recall who you had been screaming for. It must have started as for Sal, then Angela when you realised Sal wasn’t coming, then just for help from anyone - anybody - until you gave up and saved your breath, crouching low to the floor where the air didn’t scratch at your lungs and make you wheeze.

It was only once, once, but you’d called for Spider-Man, and you’d spent the rest of your time stuck in there berating yourself for giving in to the fantasy of it - that some guy in a morph suit would break the door down and get you to safety.

Your chest tightens, a vice around your ribs, squeezing until you swear you feel them crack. In your head, you’re wracking your brain, trying to remember if you put your cigarette out that day, or left it burning. The pounding in your chest is cold, cold like your smoking spot had been in the summer, cast in the shadow of the high-rise next door.

No. You’re not doing this at work. Peter’s looking at you. Not in front of Peter.

“When they put it out, there were all these people. Firefighters and coworkers and even a fucking camera crew. You know who wasn’t there? Spider-Man.” Your searching has become almost aggressive, an attempt to distract yourself from the faint stench of soot that had suddenly cropped up, even though you’re sure you washed the odour out of your uniform ages ago. Smoke follows you around in thick puffs, appearing out of thin air when Sal sparks the cookers to life in the morning, flooding the kitchen - only to vanish when you blink. It scalds your eyes, cakes in your hair. It lingers like tobacco on your fingertips. “They- They had to replace everything.”

“Well-”

“Stuff just happens, and it will happen whether Spider-Man is there to save you or not. Spider-Man is maybe there, six times out of ten, if you’re lucky. And even then, he’s just some guy with his own life. Spider-Man can’t do shit, dude. The only person you can really rely on is yourself.” Your eyes are stinging now, but you can’t tell if it’s from the dust, or from the hot ball of panic that sits on its haunches in the back of your throat, humming through your nervous system, holding tension. You sniff, pawing at your face, and there’s that acrid smell again; you swear you see it in the shadows - thick, dark plumes of smoke.

Where’s it coming from? Was it you? Where’s Peter?

“What’s with all this goddamn smoke-”

“What smoke?”

“Don’t lie to me, man, it’s not fucking funny, there’s-”

You’re panicking, turning, and a jar slips from the shelf, knocked out of place by your elbow. The bulb glares at you, the light reflecting from the glass in thick, blinding stripes, and your foot slips, your grasp on the shelf’s edge wavering in the confusion.

“Fuck-” Someone gasps - maybe you - as your hands scrabble for something to hold onto, to stop the movement, the room lurching around you. the shelf unit wobbles, pulling away from the wall, and slowly tips forwards, taking you with it. Further, further, further.

Then you’re still. Waiting for the smashing of glass. For the crack of your skull on the floor, your eyes screwed up. There’s no air in your lungs, - it’s been forced out of you with the impact of landing on something; a vice across your stomach, like you’ve forgotten how to breathe. There’s the hollow tinker of plastic on the floor as the shelf’s contents rush past you, toppling off of the upper rows.

“Holy shit - I’m sorry!” There’s a voice miles away, your body is moving again, turning slower now, but your feet aren’t touching the floor. Someone must have caught you. When you open your eyes, there’s an arm around your body, holding you. It’s slight, but pins you into another body with a surprising strength. The other one is raised above you, holding the shelving unit up at an angle, an old burn scar licked across the underneath of it. The same arms you saw lift the cookers and kegs of oil, the same hands you saw kneading pizza dough, caked in flour.

“Shit.” You manage to wheeze out, as Peter pushes the shelf back into place and sets you down on the floor. Lowering you until you’re in a heap on the lino, he kneels in front of you, looking increasingly panicked. Your breath is rattling as you gasp for air, your voice coming out taut and reedy. “What did you do to me?”

“I must have winded you, I’m sorry! Uh - shit, um-!” He has the jar in his hand - how the fuck did he manage to catch that? - and he sets it down, his hands coming to rest on your shoulders. “It’s- It’s when the diaphragm gets a sudden impact and spasms, and-”

“I know what it fucking is!”

“Just, uh- deep breaths!”

“I’m trying!”

Peter seems to sit with you on the floor for a year or two, grimacing sheepishly as you try and ease the pain in your sternum, gulping as much air down as you can in between coughs and splutters. After a while, the squeezing in your sternum subsides, and then you’re just sat together on the dirty floor, among the dust and stray fusilli twirls. The shelf must have held more seasonings, because you’re surrounded by plastic tubs of them, scrawled with Italian in black sharpie.

“That was so embarrassing for me.”

“How? It was an accident! If anything, I should be embarrassed that I-”

“If you apologise again, I will hit you.”

“Sor-” His mouth snaps closed, chin tucked to his chest as you glare at him. “...Okay.”

“That’s better.” You watch him nod, but his face is still in the same pained expression, guilted and grimaced. From the diner, Sal is borderline oblivious, the television’s blaring finally coming to a stop as he returns to the kitchen to press pizza bases. Peter dusts off his trousers, then helps you to your feet by your elbows. He lifts you almost effortlessly - not surprising, considering how easily he can carry other things - but you jolt with his touch, wriggling out of his grasp.

The warmth of his hands lingers on your skin, seeping through your uniform and burying itself into your bones. One of them reaches out to you, and then brushes a few stray hairs from your face, the heat of him blooming along your cheek and ear. You stare at each other for a moment, and you can see his eyes darting over your frame, analysing, checking you for injuries, before stilling on your face. His lips draw themselves into a thin line, a breath shuddering through him, the only movement in there.

Even under this awful, stark lighting, his eyes are warm and rich, the same tone as the hair that curls over his forehead, covering the freckles that dust the peaks of his skin. You’re almost frozen for a moment, just looking at each other, and then you force yourself to speak.

“Thanks, Peter.”

“It’s nothing.” He smiles, and it brightens up his face something stupid, clearly pleased that you called him by his first name - for once. You didn’t do it often, but it felt appropriate now, even though the intimacy of the whole thing made you want to throw up. You were co-workers, not friends, you shouldn’t be doing all this touchy-feely shit.

“I’ll clean this up, you go and get some water, or something-” Peter turns you towards the door, steering you by your shoulders, before bending down, a hand outstretched to the mess on the floor. You watch as you reach out to him, almost unconsciously, taking up a fistful of his shirt.

“No, I’ll do it, It’s fine.” You cut him off as he opens his mouth to protest, tugging him away from the shelf. “It’s my mess, let me sort it out or I’ll feel all weird and guilty about it.”

He debates with himself for a moment, and you can hear the gears ticking in his head as he looks you up and down, deciding what to do. You feel odd under the intensity of his stare, like you’re some specimen on a microscope slide in his lab class, or a statue at the MoMA he’s trying to figure out. Somewhere between examination and perhaps admiration, but that’s probably wishful thinking. Very wishful. You can’t stand yourself. Peter makes his choice before you can start spiralling again.

“I’ll get you the water then, it’s the least I can do.” Like he hadn’t just stopped you from breaking your neck like an idiot. Fuck, he was annoying. You’d give anything for him to be just a little more cynical, to make one bitchy comment about work, anything, instead of being the token happy-go-lucky pretty boy. Every day was spent silently begging him to be worse. Like you.

“No more climbing, okay?”

“I won’t.”

“Maybe you have one more person to rely on now, hm?” There’s another small smile from him, and all of a sudden, you’re embarrassed about the rant you’d been in the middle of when you’d fallen. It was all incredibly cliche, now that you think about it, and you grimace.

“Maybe. You’re beating Spider-Man, at least.”

“Yeah?” Pete’s smile falters a little, his arm jerking at his side, before he places his hand on top of your head. It’s probably one of the most awkward interactions you’ve ever had, even though he was probably just trying to comfort you. Instead, you both cringe at each other, faces wrinkling uncomfortably.

“Dude.”

“Sorry, that was weird. I regretted it as soon as I did it.”

“Get out of here, you freak.”

Peter scarpers, head hidden in his hands once more, and you’re - quite frankly - glad to see the back of him. No more confusing feelings. Now, to deal with this mess. You start with the jar you knocked from the top shelf - some pickled onions that went bad in the nineties, from the looks of it.

There’s some sort of thick cobweb on it, different from the ones you normally see. It must be fresher, as it stuck to your hands and the glass like glue, a sinewy bundle across the label. You shudder at the idea of some huge, mutant spider lurking in the cupboards of Joe’s, with webs the size of bungee cords. Gross - someone should really clean up in here more.

Not you though, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Chapter Text

Things had been weird between you and Peter since the cupboard incident. Awkward and stilted - somehow worse than when you two were first on the closing shift together, and you’d accidentally walked in on him in the bathroom and singing to himself. He did that a lot - he’d started picking up the old Italian songs Sal would play, mumbling along under Sal’s booming voice. A few weeks ago, he confessed that he’d been learning Italian on Duolingo, and since then you’d seen him engage in a few shy conversations with the regulars - turning that usual bright pink when they complimented his accent. He was fine talking to them, to everyone, you were the only outlier.

It must be you causing the weirdness - maybe you were just projecting and overthinking stuff, and Peter was just being Peter. You felt like you owed him something after all; he’d basically stopped you from becoming a pancake on the pantry floor. It’s hard to pay something like that back; it wasn’t like he was putting himself in danger every day. Not that you didn’t have his back - in fact, it felt like you were constantly kicking out customers that got aggressive with him, coming to his rescue like a knight in shining apron. He kept saying he just had ‘one of those faces’, and that he didn’t mind being a fall guy for a customer to yell at, but you’d been defending his honour anyway. You liked standing up for him because it made you feel powerful, like you were on the same team; you two versus Manhattan. And now he was avoiding you like the plague. You hadn’t finished a crossword in weeks without his unsolicited help.

You had talked some shit about Spider-Man, maybe he was a really big fan and that's why he can barely look at you. Maybe they were even friends, and you’d been ragging on him right in front of Peter because of some weird grudge. And maybe Peter hates you now, and is gonna tell Spider-Man what you’d said. Maybe Spider-Man knows you think he’s stupid, now you really won’t have his help when you need it. You’d have to ask Peter - no, you’ll sound like an idiot. Jesus Christ, you can’t stand this fucking guy.

“Smiles, guys come on!”

The whole Joe’s crew is lined up in a row for the annual staff holiday party picture, decked out in ugly sweaters and stupid hats. Usually, it was a Christmas party, but after careful consideration of how the Joe’s staff was no longer just Catholic Italians, Sal promoted the affair to a ’non-denominational winter festivity gathering’. However, after taking all night to put up decorations, he’d clearly hit a few snags after realising very few of his decorations were appropriate for what he had in mind.

You suppose that’s how Peter ended up with a paper printout of a dreidel safety-pinned to his sweater. Sal had put it there with entirely too much intimacy, patting him on the chest and telling him over and over about how welcome he was and how he was part of the family, ‘but not in a mafia way, don’t worry!’. There were some other trinkets littered about too; your favourite Santa statue had been robbed of his hat and sleigh, demoted to just an old man wearing an odd amount of red, as well as a Rudolph figurine with his nose coloured in black. There may have been some confusion towards the end, though, as one wall was devoid of anything apart from a single sticky note reading ‘kwanzaa??’, and the nativity scene had a cherry tomato in the manger where the baby Jesus should have been. On the counter, there were a series of tea candles lined up as a mock menorah, despite the fact that Hanukkah finished well over a week ago.

“Oi, Camino, look alive!” Sal is clapping you on the back now with his large hands, snapping you out of your thoughts by gripping your shoulders and giving you a slight shake. The bells on your stupid antler headband jingle out in protest, and you shrug him off of you, scowling. Peter chuckles to himself next to you, and you snap your glare to him, eyebrows knotted something fierce.

“What, Parker?”

“Camino. It’s funny.” This fucking guy. Speaks a few words of a different language and now he thinks he can laugh at you. Asshole.

There’s a fair chance your frustration is channelling itself as anger towards him. Maybe. Perhaps.

“Yeah, keep laughing dude, he calls you Magro.” Sal had a range of nicknames for Peter; though he usually just called him some variation of ‘that guy’ or ‘the boy’, and everyone would know who he meant. The whole kitchen had been doing it for months, with the serving staff being completely oblivious until Trisha slipped up and called for him through the serving hatch, hollering for ‘the boy’ to come and take out the trash. Peter sticks out his tongue at you, and you mirror him until you’re both engaged in a rigorous battle of face-pulling.

“Hey, hey! Nice faces in my photo, okay?” Sal scolds, fiddling with his phone on the precarious tower of pans and recipe books serving as a tripod. You behave, shuffling next to each other as Sal directs the photo, herding everyone closer and closer together to fit in the frame. “I want to commemorate the first Not-Christmas party!”

You roll your eyes, already sick of the stupid bells on your head. Peter picks at the dreidel drawing beside you, tinsel wrapped uncomfortably around his neck. Sal tuts.

“Come on, Pete, don’t be shy! Get in a bit closer, they don’t bite!” He orders, waving the two of you towards the group, and you scooch awkwardly. Surely there’s no way you could get any closer to them now, but Sal seems to fancy himself an artist, hemming and hawing at the composition of the photograph. “You’re all so stiff, people! At least act like you’re friends!”

“My mouth hurts from smiling already,” Peter murmurs to you, and the fog in your mind clears a bit. Clearly, the need to complain about the staff photo outranks whatever awkwardness you had going between you previously, and you’re incredibly grateful for it. Bitching about work was incredibly familiar territory, miles more comfortable than pretending your coworker hadn’t just saved your life.

“You want to just pull a straight face?”

“No, I’m scared he’ll curse me out again. You know how scary it is to be threatened with a wheel of Parmesan?”

“That, my friend, is called a Sal Special. You should be privileged-“

“Hey!” Sal is talking again, and for a split second, you’re scared he’s got the Parmesan again. Instead, he just looks close to tearing his hair out - well, whatever’s left of it. He’s gesturing at you, squinting at the camera. “Pete, come on, put your hand on Grumpy’s shoulder or something. Everyone else is touching!”

When you look at everyone else, the difference is stark. You and Peter may as well be in different countries compared to the rest of the staff, who are all stood in a clump, arms thrown around each other for the photo. The thought of Peter touching you makes you feel a little bit sick, but you can’t quite pin down why.

“Jeez, you don’t have to look so upset about it, it’s only me,” Peter says to you, leaning close, his breath on the whorl of your ear. The sensation of it sends an almost violent shiver through your body, and before you can think about the facial expression you may have subconsciously pulled, his arm is thrown over your shoulders.

He’s warm, like the other few times you’ve touched him - the dude must run like a radiator - and you feel his hand on your arm, hooking you and pulling you in tight to him. You hate to admit how nice he smells; fresh like clean laundry, patchouli, a hint of cinnamon from helping Sal bake the cannolis you sell at the holidays. You’d had to fight the urge to make some sort of inappropriate joke when you’d seen him piping in the filling, only for him to say something along the lines of being good at ‘creaming’ and immediately get heckled by everyone else in the kitchen.

“Ah, there’s a smile! What a rare treat.” Sal teases, and you immediately drop whatever face you had been making, your lips burning from the stupid grin that had betrayed itself on your mouth. This shit was so embarrassing. You wish Peter was an incompetent idiot, or that he was just that bit more annoying so you would stop talking to him altogether, or that he was ugly - anything. Instead, you’re in the crook of his arm, pressed to the side of his rib cage.

You can feel the beat of his heart through his sweater, strong and paced against your arm. He twitches the tiniest bit, hesitates, and then apparently decides to bite the bullet.

“You look nice, by the way.” He’s back down at your ear again, and his quiet voice stirs up quite the tornado inside you, a warmth pooling in your stomach - something between comfort and shock. You mumble back to him through clenched teeth, baring them in the most begrudging smile you can muster. Sal is hurrying back towards the group, the mass of Joe’s staff squeezing together even tighter as the photo timer ticks.

“Nice?” You raise an eyebrow, jabbing the sharp of your elbow into the softness of his stomach. He barely reacts, avoiding even glancing in your direction, but there’s a rosy flush creeping out of the collar of his shirt.

“Yeah, like, uh… pretty.”

Your shocked expression will be immortalised forever on the walls of Joe’s, because that’s when the photo flash decides to blind you. You’re still blinking the echo of the bulb out of your eyesight, vision swimming, when Sal comes round, showing the photo.

God damn it - you look like a mess, and even worse, Peter looks great. Fuck this guy.

Sal is gone again before you can say anything, swept into the tide of your coworkers while Peter stands at your side, irritatingly amused, hands shoved into the pockets of his pants. It was weird to see him in normal clothes, oddly intimate without the stiffly pressed trousers and aprons. And here he was, parading around in jeans and a sweater, like a normal person. Once, he’d been late and wearing a hoodie, but that was the closest he’d come to being regularly dressed. You don’t think you've ever even seen his crotch before, his apron usually tied tightly on his hips. Not that you were looking at his crotch much, Jesus.

“Get that look off your face, you smug bastard.” You’re hissing at him, and his mouth is fighting whatever expression he wants to make, flipping wildly between a smile and a feigned scowl, eyes simmering with mirth.

“I can’t wait to see it on the wall, immortalised forever.” He’s still wearing his stupid converse, you notice, squeaking beside you as you storm to the drinks table Sal has set up, and you decide you hate them. How dare he look nice? What was his problem? It’s like he wants to see you suffer, this awful imp of a man.

“Yeah, until it accidentally gets knocked off during a closing shift.” Somehow, he gets there before you and intercepts the punch bowl, filled with Sal’s infamous concoction of Campari and whatever the hell else he puts in there. It didn’t really matter what it was, because it was delicious and meant that you had no memories of these parties - usually a good thing. Peter pours himself a drink into one of the paper cups left out - Sal didn’t trust anyone drunk with glass - and you think he’s going to take a sip, before it’s held out to you.

“Destruction of diner property? You sick, sick animal.” He’s grinning away, the excitement palpable around him as he fills another cup, not noticing your face fall behind the rim of your cup, nose itching.

It had been you, hadn’t it? That day.

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Your voice is low, tearing along your throat, scratching like you’d been inhaling smoke. You replace the scratching pain and the smell of ash with the bittersweet, herbaceous burn of the Campari mixture, downed in one gulp to wash it away.

“Huh?” He turns to you after replacing the ladle, barely taking a sip before seeing your empty cup, eyes wide. “Jesus Christ, you drank it already?”

“Another, barkeep!”

Peter refills the drink as you grimace, the alcohol scorching your throat. There’s music now, as Sal shuffles the playlist you’d helped him make; an odd mix of Italian opera, pop, and the most non-religious Christmas songs you could find - which was, surprisingly, not very many. It was an odd process, sitting in the office with Sal on your Sunday shift, watching him bop his head to a song he liked, only to disappointedly skip it at the first mention of Santa or Jesus. You’d tried to explain that it wasn’t that serious, but he was very committed to having the party be as inclusive as possible.

“You’d get caught if you broke the picture, anyway.” Peter’s holding the cup out at you again, barely audible over Last Christmas. Apparently this one, despite containing Christmas references, was given a pass because ‘heartbreak is universal, Camino!’. Not that you were complaining, it was a certified banger.

The two of you walk to the far wall, filled with rows and rows of staff Christmas party pictures from years back, as early as the late seventies. When you’d first joined, you’d spent hours looking at them, little snapshots of lives - the Joe’s family evolution. There was Joe himself in most of them, until the nineties, when he moved upstate to manage another diner, and Sal made his debut in the eighties, surrounded by bright colours and absolutely massive hair. You’re in a few of them, younger and brighter, smiling wide, in the old restaurant decor, before the fire meant you had to replace most things. Peter points at you, grinning, and mimes scratching your face with his fingertip.

“People would see you do it, it’s right in plain sight.”

“Not on the closing shift, it’s usually just two people to clean and tidy.” You’re both leaning against one of the tables, examining the pictures, hundreds of faces smiling back at you. In the one from last year, Sal has two fingers up behind your head, as mock bunny ears. “I’d need someone who wouldn’t rat on me.”

“Not me then?”

“The day I’m on the closing shift with you is the day we’re not friends anymore.” Hell is a special place called ‘The Closing Shift with Peter Parker’, and you hope you never have to go there. He’d probably be all upbeat and shit, disgusting. Not that you worked many of them, but when you did, you needed a sullen and sombre atmosphere with minimal talking, otherwise you would lose your mind for good. You’re a good deal into brooding, sipping at your drink, when you notice Peter hasn’t said some awful, cheesy retort; instead, he’s just looking at you, grinning away like he usually does when you mess up.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“We’re friends?” He says, and you’re groaning, trying to get away from him, but he follows close behind - like a puppy who finally got someone to play fetch. This is probably the worst moment of your life, you’d rather fall off the shelves again than have Peter Parker tailing you with that stupid, smug smile. You’re trying to shake him off, but he’s persistent, jeering at you the whole time. “We’re friends now? Want to braid each other’s hair? Where are we going, bestie?”

This was the exact opposite of what you wanted; you knew you were getting too close to this asshole and you were supposed to start icing him out, but the slippery bastard has wiggled himself back in. You say you can’t stand him, you’ve told the whole staff and even him, to his face, multiple times, but you don’t think you could imagine Joe’s without him now. Thankfully, Sal comes to your aid, calling over the music.

“Hey, Rudolph, come help me with the cannolis!” It takes you a moment to realise that he’s talking about you. It’s only when Peter flicks at the antlers on your head, tinkling the bells, that it sinks in. Helping Sal with the cannolis was the worst part of the holiday party - he was entirely too bossy and over-protective of them. It didn’t matter to you or anyone else if they got smashed or broken, everything ends up chewed up anyway, but he’s fiercely determined to protect the delicate pastry - which usually means him snapping at you that you’re not holding a tray ‘right’, even though you’re holding it the exact same way you do on the other 364 days of the year.

“Want me to help, bestie?” Peter chimes beside you, leaning into you and bumping his shoulder into yours. You swat him away, escaping his contact before someone could make a nosy comment on it. Angela, thank God, is engrossed in a heated debate with Trisha, far too invested in dishing out kitchen gossip to notice the proximity between you. She’d really ramped it up since the cupboard thing, gushing about how romantic it was that he’d saved you and completely ignoring the fact that you could have been seriously hurt. As much as you hated being compared to some sort of ridiculous lump in distress, the least she could do was ask if you were alright; she only found out because she’d seen Peter taking a glass of water to the pantry and had to be nosy.

“Go fuck yourself-”

“Hey, come on! They’ll get soggy!” Sal is shaking a pair of oven mitts at you through the service window, and you escape Peter’s friendly, eager clutches to duck under the counter flap and disappear into the kitchen.

It’s a while before you get to talk to Peter again, catching glimpses of him chatting with your coworkers and dancing around like an idiot as you bring out trays of fresh cannolis, throwing back cups of punch between trips. Sal turns into one angry bastard when he makes them, but goddamn are the cannolis worth every second of it. The trays are cleared within seconds of being set down, your coworkers becoming blood-thirsty vultures and grabbing as many as they can and stuffing them in pockets and bags. When you’re finally done, you come back out to Peter wearing some dusty fedora he must have dug out of the lost and found box, set at a jaunty angle, and he flicks the brim as you pass. There’s a cannoli in his other hand, between his fingers, and he mimes smoking it like a cigar, puffing on one end. You look around, checking the trays to see if you can snag one of the pastries before they were gone; but you think you missed the boat.

“I didn’t get one.” You frown at Peter, and you pretend to tremble your bottom lip, despite the fact that you’re actually quite disappointed.

“Yeah, ya see?” He crows, adopting an accent you can’t quite place until you realise he’s pretending to be an old-timey mobster. He’s - well, let’s just say the accent is interesting. Then, he pulls a cannoli out from behind his back, grinning as your eyes light up. “Made you a cannoli special, see?”

“Yeah, what’s special about it, slick?” You eagerly take the pastry he’s holding out to you, putting it to your mouth and pretending to take a drag, mimicking his accent. He’s delighted, a wave of excitement wracking through his body and sparking in his eyes.

“Turn it over, doll, give it a look-see.”

From the right way up, it looks like a normal cannoli, but when you turn it upside down, there’s a tiny smiley face piped in filling, flattened smooth by the bottom of the pastry resting against the tray. It was a small gesture, but it made your heart squeeze in your chest, a thrill rushing through you like a tidal wave.

“Oh, dude,” You instinctively drop the voice, and you’re ashamed of how excited you are by it, an unfamiliar heat rushing to your cheeks that flusters you entirely. It’s nice, and then you realise that even though it’s silly, you haven’t been given anything this nice in a long time. It feels different - you feel different, and it’s an awful realisation that this feeling is actually a kind of warmth towards your job. Peter must be some sort of witch. “This is so sweet, thank you. You put a lot at risk to do this.”

“I had to distract Sal fifteen times and in fifteen different ways, it was the most stressful thing I’ve ever done.” Peter’s following you again, but this time you don’t mind him accompanying you to find your phone in your jacket pocket. You want to take a picture, no matter how much it’s killing you not to absolutely inhale the thing, and no matter how much you want to keep it in a safe forever. “Worth it though, he’s so cute. He’s a bit wonky looking but I think he’s confident.”

“Really, man, thank you. I can’t wait to burn him alive with my stomach acid.” Peter poses as you hold the cannoli next to his face, snapping a photo of the two of them. They look weirdly alike. You’re busy cropping the photo, Peter watching over your shoulder when you feel him freeze beside you.

“Oh.”

“What?”

“Is-“ He trails off, and when you look up at him, he’s got a finger pointed towards the ceiling. Following his gesture, you find yourself looking at a little bundle of greenery, taped to the beam above you and tied with a shoddy bow. “Is that mistletoe?”

“I believe that is just a bundle of twigs that Angela sellotaped together.” Looking around the room for her, you accidentally lock eyes with her, watching the two of you intently from the far booth. She wiggles her eyebrows at you, looks at Peter, then looks back at you. Jesus Christ. “I think she wants to kiss Sal.”

She doesn’t; you just want to get her back for all the Peter stuff.

“Really?” He’s examining it now, reaching one of his long arms up to touch it, tickling the leaves with his fingers and smoothing them between his fingertips. “Looks like mistletoe to me.”

You don’t know why, but your mind is screaming at you that this is too, too close and you need to diffuse the situation - put Peter at arm’s length. He’s standing so near, that faint, sweet smell hitting you again, and it turns your stomach over and over until you think you might throw up from sheer anxiety. It takes everything in you to not suddenly shove him away and run, and when he looks back down at you, his face wrinkles in concern. You say the first thing you can think of to diffuse the situation - only hoping that it’s not too mean.

“Well, learn to look better, dumbass.” Great.

Then Sal is calling through the hatch, elbows deep in dishwater. You instantly dread whatever he’s going to say; he’s got that tone he uses when he tells his kids off. He’s staring at the both of you, bordering on a stern glare, and then points at the leaves. 

“It’s mistletoe.”

When you look back at Peter, he’s all wide-eyed and pink again, scrambling for something to say but instead just making a few stilted noises, beginnings of sentences that trail off. You feel more eyes on you, your coworkers, and your chest feels tight, weighed down by the suddenly thick air. Peter’s chewing at his lips again, and you swear you can feel his heartbeat through the floor, vibrating through the soles of your shoes and shocking you with every raced thump.

For a second, you allow yourself to wonder what it would be like to kiss him, to touch him. How his hair feels at the nape of his neck, the softness of his lips on yours, surrounding you with the warm blend of sugar and his deodorant. You think it would be like honey, like floating, like flying away. For a second, you want to.

Pretty. That’s what he called you. He thought you were pretty. He called you pretty in front of the whole diner, in the staff picture, and now you were standing under ’mistletoe’ with your coworkers all staring at you. Waiting, like you were a show to watch. Something big and awful wells up inside of you.

Naturally, you bolt. 

“I’m going for a smoke.” You announce, loud enough for the others to hear, and the whole party clatters to an uncomfortable stop. Peter finally stills his nervous fidgeting, a heavy, shaky breath rattling through him. You’re still staring at each other, every tiny quirk of his face echoing around your mind like a cymbal, and you lower your voice, cocking your head towards the back door.

“You coming?”

There’s a beat, and then he nods.

Chapter Text

It’s easier to breathe when you’re out on the back step, the cigarette smouldering away in your hand. This was better, more familiar. You knew Smoking Area Peter better than Holiday Party Peter, Smoking Area Peter was familiar, and didn’t do weird shit like saying you look pretty and smiling cannolis and mistletoe ambushes. You’ve been here for about five minutes now in comfortable, safe silence - just you, Peter, and the softly falling snow forming a white fuzz over the paving stones.

 He only moves to tip ash from his cig, and to chew at the inside of his cheeks, his head cocked away from you and watching the embers burn tiny holes in the snow. The city roars on, sirens wailing in the distance, and the subway churning beneath you. Your stomach is twisting in a similar way, kneading and ripping itself to pieces.

Part of you suspects he stood under the ‘mistletoe’ on purpose and is furious about it for some reason, and another, smaller part of you, buried under a pile of loose memories hopes he did. It’s gross, what had you become? You flick ash into the rooster ashtray, imaging that you’re flicking Peter off of you instead, and that when you next look over your shoulder, him and his fake clump of mistletoe and pretty hair will have vanished. It doesn’t work, because the real Peter nudges you with his shoulder, and jostles you back to the unfortunate reality of the situation.

The December air is bitterly cold, and you’re stuffed into your winter coats, noses red and frozen to the touch. Peter brought some stupid scarf - truly, it’s hideous - and it’s wrapped around the two of you, shielding your cheeks from the snow.

He’s still looking at you, you feel the weight of it on your cheek, then your eyes, then your lips. When you glance at him to see what he’s doing, he’s drawn closer to you, the heat of him warming you through the thick puffer coats. You just look in silence, scanning each other’s faces, feeling them out. He’s different this close; there are freckles across his nose and up to his temples, a scar under his lip like it had been split, a slight bump in his nose where it had been broken - he’d told you the story of it a few weeks ago, you think. He’s looking you over with a similar amount of care, and part of you thinks he wouldn’t be too out of place with a cartoonishly large magnifying glass.

Did he get you under the mistletoe on purpose? It’s really bothering you. It tastes sour in your mouth, all vertigoed and spun-up, and you feel like you’ve been betrayed. Why would he do that when he knows you’re so private? It doesn’t make sense, he’s usually so inconsiderate but the whole thing has really rubbed you the wrong way - though you can’t quite put your finger on why. You want to scream. You shouldn’t be doing this couple-y shit with him. He was a coworker, not your boyfriend - barely a friend, at that - and here he was sharing a scarf with you. Like it was nothing to him, even though it was everything to you.

Perhaps you stub your cigarette out too aggressively because he’s looking at you again, watching you smudge the tip on the paving stones and dousing the butt of it in the light smattering of snow that clumps in the weeds. His breath comes out in thick, white puffs as he laughs.

“I think it’s out.”

“Yeah, thanks for the help, dude.” You reply a little too sharply, and he looks almost hurt, jumping back. It’s strange, you’re not sure why you’re pissed at him - he hasn’t done anything wrong from an outside perspective - but you’re angry at him. It feels like he doesn’t get it, like he doesn’t get you, and the idea of him not caring about you feels like the shattering of glass in your chest, reverberating through you. Maybe you can have a little crazy, as a treat; maybe you should lash out at him. You want to.

“You good?” He asks, semi-casually, like this is all just fun and games, and you snap.

“You think I’m pretty? Pretty, Parker? Really?” You’re spitting at him, suddenly, whatever embers of anger that were burning away in your chest being stoked into a fire, going up in an instant and charring your sternum. Peter’s blinking at you, surprised, and watching you unwrap yourself from his scarf.

“What? Where’s this coming from?” He’s all frowns, confused and thrown into the deep end, but you’re already too far in to pump the breaks, mind racing ahead as he fumbles with the now-loose ends of his scarf. “I was just trying to be nice, I’m sorry if-“

“Well, stop trying, cos it’s not gonna get you anywhere.” It’s running away from you now, like a freight train, the anger shooting through your body. Nice, nice, trying to be nice; it’s insane but you hate how comfortable he is, how happy, and now he has the audacity to try and make your life nicer. There’s a sour taste rising on your tongue, frustration that you let him get this close, and that you didn’t push him away earlier. If you’d cut him off sooner, it wouldn’t hurt as much to do it now. “I’m not your friend, dude.”

“You really don’t like me that much?” You can see it in his eyes, how he’s teetering on the verge of heartbreak, and it kills you. You want to shake him, yell, anything to get him to be angry at you, but he keeps quiet. He says your name, softly, like he would scare you away, and the tone of it makes you want to cry. “I really don’t know where this is coming from, I thought you were joking.”

“I can’t stand you.” The buzzing in your head swarms you, thickening the lies that you force through your teeth, viscous and sticking to your skin. “You’re nice, you’re happy - everything’s going just great for you, isn’t it?”

Peter’s frown intensifies, and he’s suddenly up, snow tangled in his hair and eyelashes, cupping his reddened cheeks in its hands. He takes a few steps towards you, and you instinctively shuffle back, slipping a little on the snow. Peter steadies you, and you tear yourself out of his grasp, his touch burning like poison. This is what you wanted, he’s upset now, but he still doesn’t rise to your level; not quite yelling back, because of course he won’t, but it’s certainly the loudest you’ve heard him. You want to keep pushing, make him finally break, so he’ll leave you alone.

“Well, hold on, you don’t know anything about my life, and you refuse to learn!” His words hurt, but his expression hurts more; not anger but something far worse. There’s genuine upset on his face, not far from frustrated tears, and you suddenly feel like you’ve committed some sort of heinous crime. “You can’t just assume shit about me, you barely know me!”

“Yeah, and you don’t know me either, man!”

“Because you won’t let me, you can’t blame me for that!”

“Sorry, I want to keep my life private.” You won’t listen, you won’t, you’ll block your ears up and close your eyes, and maybe then Peter will stop invading your every thought. This is your fault, one hundred per cent, and you know you’re being unreasonable, but you can’t get yourself to stop. You want to hate him more than anything, but it seems he’s refusing to go without a fight; even now he keeps trying to reach out to you, hands twitching at his sides, and you’re pushing him away. “This is a job, not a hang-out spot.”

“I’m sorry, I thought we were friends!”

“Well, we’re not.” Every single word you say, every movement you dare to make, produces some sort of pained reaction from him - an arrow struck into him by your own hands, like you’re some sick, evil Cupid. It’s killing you both, slowly, and you half expect him to start bleeding, staining the snow beneath you red. “We don’t know each other’s numbers, or addresses, or life stories, or secrets, or any of that crap. We’ve never even seen each other outside of the diner; we’re not friends, we work together and that’s it.”

It’s the truth. There are odd things you know, things he’s mentioned that you’ve picked up on - his favourite flavour of ice cream, how he likes his coffee, his major at college - but nothing to build an actual friendship off of. You know nearly nothing about this man, and he knows nearly nothing about you, but Peter is looking at you like you’ve just gutted him.

“There’s no need to yell at me about it.” His voice is small, wavering, nearly cracking, and it eats away at you, sitting in your throat in a knot. You can see his brain whirring away, turning cogs like always, trying to put the pieces together, trying to understand how you feel because of course he is, he’s Peter fucking Parker.

“It’s frustrating, dude, you do all this intimate shit - you call me pretty, and share a scarf with me, and save my life-“

“I’m sorry, what else was I supposed to do?”

“You avoid me for so long, and then all of a sudden you make me a special cannoli like nothing’s happened, and get me under mistletoe, and-“

“I didn’t do it on purpose!”

You hate that. You wanted it to be real, you can admit that now that the possibility of him wanting to kiss you has been robbed from you. If you could go back, you would do it, kiss him over and over and over until he got sick of you, and you can’t stand the fact that it’s taken you this long to accept that you like him like him. So you challenge him, pressing, your veins burning.

“Really, Peter, you just happened to not notice it was there?” That seems to do it, because he’s whirling to you, and there’s a brief flash of something hard and angry in his eyes.

“Yes! Because I wouldn’t kiss you in front of all our coworkers!” You don’t have time to think properly, because there’s the sweet spice of Campari in your blood, and your body is running entirely on instinct, words spitting themselves from you like sparks from a flint before you can process them.

“Oh, but you’d kiss me if we were alone?!”

“I’d want to!”

Even the city seems to fall silent, the whir of traffic falling to a whispered murmur, the snow thickening the footsteps, your breath stolen from you with three little words. He’s closer now than he’s ever been, you think, his features laid out before you like a painting on an easel, but his eyes are frantic, searching yours for something you’re not sure if you want him to find. And your hands are deciding that the only way to get him to stop looking is to grab that ugly scarf, tug him closer.

And you kiss him.

There are a few precious moments, where all you can sense is the feeling of his lips on yours, and then the sound comes back to Manhattan. There’s something powerful and desperate in the way you move against each other, his back falling against the wall and you pin him there, relishing in the small noise that you draw from the back of his throat. God, he’s pretty, how could you possibly have denied it this long? You think you'd be happy never leaving this moment, feeling the drum of his heartbeat, the swell of his breathing.

He kisses you back like he’s drinking you in, hands grabbing and pulling you closer, even though you’re touching every inch of him. There’s his fingers on your hips, then flitting to the back of your head, the other fisted in your coat, getting as much of your body against his that he can manage. He’s sewing himself into you, you think, the way his lips move on yours, like there’s nothing else he could possibly want in the world.

After an eternity, it’s over, the rage sapped from you and replaced by something far worse; the nausea of realising you’re gonna have to deal with consequences. You draw away from each other, slowly, panting with the passion of it, barely able to look each other in the eye. It’s almost grossly cliche, the pressing together of foreheads, the exhale of not-quite-regret but not-quite-pride either, more something akin to relief. When you finally build up the nerve to look at each other, you both cringe, stiff as boards, waiting for the other to say something, anything. A year passes.

“So.” Peter begins.

“So.” You echo, and you realise you can feel the cold again, biting at your cheeks. Then a few more agonising seconds of awkward silence, backlit by the party raging on inside. “Do we, uh, need to like… talk about that?”

“I’d prefer not to.”

“Me neither.”

“But we probably should.”

“We should.”

There’s another beat, accompanied by nervous, shaking laughter from the both of you. Then, Peter says your name, and you take a breath to gather the courage to look at him.

“Listen, I know you don’t want to mix work and your personal life.”

“I don’t.” You’re shaking your head and Peter tries to put his hands on your arms, attempting comfort, before he jerks away, putting distance between the two of you. Already, you miss him.

“I also don’t think it’s the best idea.” He looks oddly vulnerable, you’ve never really talked this intimately before, where there’s no jokes or teasing, just being open with each other. It’s as uncomfortable as you imagined it would be, but there’s no urge to flee. Like you’re safe with him. It’s weird. “I have… reasons to not want to get involved with anyone right now.”

“We have complicated lives, let’s keep it simple and say it was just a kiss. An accident.” It pains you as much to say it as it pains Peter to hear it, though he tries to hide it on his face. It wasn’t just a kiss, it had dredged up feelings from you that you hadn’t felt in years, but how could you possibly go back to work, back to seeing him only a few times a week if it was more than that? Across from you, Peter’s nodding reluctantly.

“It was just a kiss.” There, he’s cemented it now; set in stone for all of eternity, only spoken about between the two of you like some shameful secret. You should be ashamed really, you just lashed out at the guy for having the nerve to enjoy his job instead of joining you in your bitterness parade, only to have him up against the wall not a minute later. He hesitates for a moment, stuffing his hands in his pockets against the chill. “We’re friends, though?”

Weirdly, you don’t have to think before you answer.

“We’re getting there.” The smile that he gives in return is worth all of it, though; you don’t know how you ever thought you’d be fine with never seeing it again - motherfucker smiles like the sun came out for the first time, it was insane. “I don’t want things to be awkward.”

“Then they won’t be. It’ll be just like normal, like nothing happened.” If Peter can say it like it’s a sure thing, then you’re sold on it too - is this what trust is? Holy shit, you’ve been missing out. You realise, with horror, that you’re smiling back at him as he pushes the snow around with the toe of his shoe, drawing patterns. “Believe me, I want to keep this job, it’s way funner than my other one.”

“You have another job?”

“Kinda- see, this is why we need to talk more!”

“Alright, don’t rub it in.” You’re laughing, you just had the most intense kiss of your life and now you’re giggling away like an idiot - what’s next, twirling your hair and kicking your feet at the counter? You’re insufferable.

“How about we ask each other one question? Baby steps.”

“And you won’t lie? Like about your name tag?”

“We have to tell the truth. Promise?”

“Okay, I promise.” It’s good now, you can breathe again, like things are starting to feel back to normal as you lock pinkies and spit into the snow. He’s all excited and giddy, and it’s infecting you, the two of you sharing breathless, shy laughter.

“Me first - who got you this stupid ass scarf?” It really is a hideous thing, a horrid vomit of colours and an awful texture, like it had been washed in needles. Peter chuckles softly, something melting in his expression as he fidgets with the ends of it, fingers raw with the cold. The knit is fraying at the edges, the wool sticking out in odd directions, and there was a faint aroma of old cologne impacted into the fibres, mixing with the melting snowflakes.

“My Uncle Ben.” He says, like it’s a special secret, like it’s some precious pearl he’s presenting to you from an oyster. It makes it feel like you’re opening a Christmas present, as if this reveal of an uncle was the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to you.

“Well, you tell your Uncle Ben that he needs to get you a cuter scarf.” It takes a millisecond, but he laughs, the sound of it warming you through and ringing your bones. It’s softer, but it’s like syrup, like treacle, like Campari at Christmas. You brace, taking a deep breath, and outstretching your arms. “My turn.”

Peter thinks about it for a moment, and the world sludges by as he seemingly runs through a list of questions he wants to ask.

“Why do you keep work separate from the rest of your life?” Goddamn, that’s a doozy; you’d think he’d keep things simple and start out with an easy one, but apparently not. You’re fumbling for an answer almost instantly.

“It’s just- it’s complicated. There was all that shit with the fire, and, uh…” This whole ‘no lying’ thing was the biggest mistake you’ve ever made - bigger than making out with your coworker against the gross wall in the back alley, for sure. You feel like you’re up on your haunches again, fighting the urge to just start running, but you manage to find a happy balance between truth and comfort. “I like my free time being free, that’s all.”

“That’s it?” He’s raising an eyebrow at you, like he doesn’t believe you, and he really shouldn’t; you’ve not entirely given him many reasons to.

“No follow-up questions.” You’re back in this comfort zone again, of snapping at him and making jokes, and it’s a fight to get yourself to tone it down.“You can get one a day, and that’s it.”

“Oh, how generous.” He rolls his eyes, and you’re smiling again, like some silly schoolkid who just got vaguely acknowledged by their crush. It’s disgusting. “You’re mean as hell, sometimes.”

He’s right, you’ve basically spent the last couple of months working with him teasing him and trying to get him to hate your job as much as you do. Your smile falters, and you try not to hate how good-hearted he is, on top of everything else; you suppose he just highlights your own insecurities

“Ah, you’re just better than me and I’m jealous about it - I’ll stop bullying you, I swear. I’m sorry, dude.” This seems to please him enough, and the vice around you lessens. Eventually, you breathe, and you’re able to coax yourself into saying more, even though it feels like you’re Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill, because you owe him that much.

“When the fire happened, all of my coworkers could have been hurt or something, and I guess I’m just trying to protect myself from being upset if they did. It’s… selfish and stupid.”

It’s not the whole story, but it was enough of an answer for Peter, and he seems satisfied. You don’t have to tell him the rest, at least, about you. But you didn’t want to think about that right now, not when you were finally enjoying yourself.

Even though you’re certain you saw your cigarette go out, you still glance at the rooster ashtray, looking for a wisp of smoke - just to make double sure. Peter, thank God, looks you up and down, processing what you said, and then nods.

“It’s not selfish or stupid, I- I get it, I do.”

“Oh, yeah? Why?”

“No follow-up questions.” This Goddamn asshole, this fucking guy; you’ve been thwarted by that classic Parker wit once again. You’d be lying if you weren’t a little impressed.

“You got me, Parker.” He’s doing that smug thing he does again, the same look he gave you when he sussed out your fake smoking breaks. You’re both kicking your shoes against the doorstep, stamping the snow out of the treads in preparation of rejoining the party, having heard Sal calling for the both of you through the door - something about Dirty Dancing. Oh God, not again. Looks like your rooster companion might be gaining some company.

“You’re good at this. You catch your Uncle Ben out like this with that mouth?”

“I’m legally not allowed to answer that.” He has his hand on the door handle, taller than usual on the doorstep, and he’s bathed in the glaring light that overlooks the alleyway. He’s still stupidly pretty. “You should probably go to therapy about the fire, though.”

“Shit’s expensive, dude.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice.”

Chapter Text

Being Peter’s friend isn’t as bad as you thought it was going to be. 

It was oddly tentative and gentle, like you were some sort of rescue animal that he didn’t want to scare, but you didn’t necessarily mind. You liked that you were taking it slow, even though you’d seen Peter typing away on his phone during breaktimes, adding random questions to ask you to a list that was already miles long. The questions he did ask were mercifully vague and simple, beginner stuff like your favourite colour, and your favourite TV show; it was nice and easy, you didn’t have much of ‘nice and easy’ in your life.

The whole ‘one question a day’ thing had turned out to be quite fun, and you were now the proud keeper of Peter’s most precious secrets; such as his birthday, the existence of an Aunt May, and a phone number. You’d initially been reluctant to open things up outside of the diner, but so far it had been nothing but pictures of cats he saw on his walks, and (nearly as) beautiful photographs of the Manhattan skyline, so you supposed it was worth it. It was a lovely little surprise every time, a new stroke of paint on the canvas of Peter Parker, and it had become something to look forward to when you saw you were on shift together.

And sure, maybe he did end up knowing Spider-Man, but he’d promised you that he didn’t tell him any of the stuff you said in the pantry, and that was good enough for you. He’d assured you many times that Spider-Man wouldn’t care about what you’d said - not that you were too bothered about it, but you supposed that if you were to be on any of Spider-Man’s ‘sides’, you may as well be in his good books, just in case. You’d been tempted to ask about Spider-Man himself, as your Question, but you’d given it a good think over and decided that you’re only supposed to be invading Peter’s privacy, not Spider-Man’s.

All in all, it was going quite well. Since Christmas, you’d been promoted to manager, which meant absolutely nothing in terms of pay or responsibility, just that you were now entitled to be even bossier than usual, which was greatly welcomed. It’s great - until the rota comes out for the last week of January, and you’re on the closing shift on Saturday. 

And if it couldn’t get any worse, Peter’s name is printed next to yours in what seems to be the boldest, blackest ink you’ve ever laid eyes on.

Don’t get you wrong, you like Peter, you can admit that now, freely. But it’s all been a bit confusing trying to figure out whether it’s a friend-like or a like-like - a closing shift together would ruin all of the progress you’d made. The last time you were alone together you, well, you remember it well.

That stupid kiss seems to haunt your dreams. Sometimes you wake up in a cold sweat, the ghost of his fingers tangled in your hair, your stomach sinking at the realisation you were no longer in that moment. Sure, it may have been one of your biggest mistakes, but Goddamn if you don’t think about it every day, and wish that it had gone on for just a millisecond longer. One more second, and you’d be happy, even though you wanted to be greedy and keep him there forever. There was an absence of him that you were feeling, through to your core; not all at once, but in waves that ebb and surge against your spine. 

All of a sudden, he’s appeared at your side, like usual, looking at the shift schedule. You’ve learnt to just expect him to be there now, even though he’s as quiet as a fucking mouse and it makes you jump every time. He needs a haircut, you think, but you’d miss the little duck-tail curls at the nape of his neck, tickling the collar of his uniform. They’d been soft when you’d held the back of his head, pulling his lips to yours as you’d held him against the wall in the alley, wanting to grab a fistful and tug. If you’d just had a little bit more time, if you’d been thinking clearly, you would have-

“Well, lookie here.” He says and he snaps you out of whatever Campari-hazed daydream you’d been living in, all self-satisfied, holding a hand across his brow and squinting at the rota board. He’s being annoying as per usual, inching closer towards the sheet and following your name with his finger, sounding it out. “I wonder who that is. I hope I’m not all alone on the closing shift with a stranger.”

“Shut up, man.” The rest of your coworkers are clearing off, grumbling about opening shifts, and people they don’t like working with, but Peter seems to want to keep you from wiping down the tables - not that you’re complaining, that shit was boring as hell. He pokes at you, and you smack him away, watching him pull out his phone to mark the new shifts in his calendar.

“And just after I finally unlocked friendship status. This is devastating.”

“Dude, what?” Sal is staring at you through the service hatch, doused in flour, and points to the spray bottle of table cleaner on the back counter. You roll your eyes, then pick it up and pretend to start cleaning until he disappears again. Peter is still keying in his shift times when you chuck the bottle and rag down in the cleaning kit.

“‘The day I’m on the closing shift with you is the day we’re not friends anymore.’ That’s what you said at the Christmas- I mean, the Multi-faith Festive Coworker Gathering.” Huh. You don’t have much memory of saying it, granted, you’d sacrificed precious memory space for other more important parts of that night, but Peter certainly doesn’t need to know that. Still, you decide to stick to past-you’s guns, and double down on whatever spite was driving you that evening.

“And I stand by it.” He seems to think you’re joking, but you kind of aren’t. It’s been a while since you’d been left alone together; in fact, you’d been trying to avoid it, and there was no telling what would happen. It was stupid really, but there was this odd vibe between you two, humming with tension, and it was almost always worse when you were vaguely alone. Once, you’d bumped into him at the walk-in when you’d been sent to unload the grocer’s delivery, and the atmosphere had been crazy. 

“Is this new?” He’d said, gesturing to your hair, before hooking those stupid, strong hands under the pine slats and lifting the weight from you like it was nothing. It was new, ever so slightly, and you’d been surprised he’d even noticed, considering your hair was stifled by the diner cap for hours at a time. You’d been a little lost for words, distracted by the way his sleeves were pushed up to his elbows and how his hair fell in front of his eyes, a streak of passata across the apple of his cheek and his hands dusted with flour. Sal was shouting him from the kitchen - he must have been in the middle of making pizzas, but he’d come to help you anyway. There’s just no way he was allowed to be that pretty, and you’d still found him pretty when he’d laughed at the dumbfounded look on your face, throwing you a wink.

“Oh, what, you like the kitchen look? Eau de pomodoro?” For fuck’s sake, and now he had the audacity to speak Italian again; he had to want you dead. His accent was getting better, and it was something close to Hell for you to hear him speak it. God must have known you’d be too powerful, that’s why he had to give you a weakness in the form of being attracted to Peter Parker; just to level the field and make it fair.

But current Peter, the Peter he is when he’s around other people, and not the Peter he is when he’s alone with you, has taken up wiping down the counter for you, waiting for you to speak. You haven’t really got anything to say to him, your train of thought clouded by whatever possessed him to have a smile that may as well be illegal.

“You’re not allowed to play any of your stupid indie shit. We will suffer in silence and be done as quickly as possible; do you understand me?”

“I thought you liked my music-”

“Do you understand me?” Peter pulls some odd, sheepish face at the sudden intensity of your voice, tucking his chin to his chest. It takes him a second to answer, and he draws the syllables out reluctantly.

“Ye-e-e-es…” 

“Then we won’t have any problems. It’ll just be a normal closing shift, and everything will be fine.”

Then Saturday comes and it is, most decidedly, not a normal closing shift.

Peter starts blasting his stupid indie shit the second the last of your coworkers walks out of the door. You’re armed with the keys to the diner, ready to come at him with all the force you’ve got in your exhausted, pizza-scented body, watching him use a mop as a fake microphone. Mercifully, it’s only short - some fast-paced sixties sounding thing with a fuzzy quality, though you’re not quite sure if that’s the speakers - so you don’t see much of a performance before it’s over. You like Peter, you really do, but his awful attempts at the high notes start up a twitch in your eye, and it only intensifies watching him whip around his waiter’s cloth, pretending to dab stage sweat from his face. 

“Thank you very much, I’ll be here all night.” 

“I hate you so much.”

“Join in!”

“Die.” He’s barely offering up a fake pout before you’re snatching the mop from him and resting it against the counter. The floor is as mucky and perpetually sticky as ever, but Sal still insists on people wiping it down, even though it makes absolutely no difference. “You have to put this all shit away, and then we have to actually clean the place, dude. I want to be home before midnight.” 

He’s tailing you as you head into the kitchen again, intercepting you by scrambling over the counter and catching you on the other side, a hand on your upper arm. It’s small, a flash of contact with him, but your stomach drops at the sensation of it. Every single thing with this guy feels like a bullet to the chest, and he doesn’t even know.

“You don’t want to eat the leftover fries first?”

Well, now that he mentions it, it would be a waste. 

It was a stupid decision, you knew that the second you made it, because you had now spent entirely too long sat up on the counter, devouring a plate of fries between you. And it was not worth it, those things were gross and soggy, yet neither of you could stop eating them, chewing in near silence save for the distant murmur of Peter’s music. He’s straddling the tabletop of the counter, the aglets of his untied laces clinking against the metal of the stools as he swings his legs. You have your legs crossed, shoes kicked onto the floor to prevent germs transferring to the surface, drenched in the harsh, fluorescent overhead lighting.

“I’ve always wanted to sit on the counter.” He says after a while, muffled by a mouthful of grease and salt and potato; and you nod at him, watching him shovel more of the pathetic things into his mouth. “Like in the movies.”

“I’ve only gotten to do it a few times.” It seems you've reached your endpoint with the fries, because the next one you pick up is barely solid, and you throw it back down to the plate, face wrinkled in disgust. “Blegh, why are fries always gross when they’re cold?”

“Well, they’re starches.”

“Yes, and?”

“Starches need hydration to taste good, which can only really be absorbed when they’re hot. After they cool down, the moisture leaves the starches and goes into the crust, which makes them soggy; also- what? Why are you looking at me like that?”

He’s barely done with his mini science lesson before he notices the way you’re staring at him, practically speechless. It’s entertaining to see him suddenly become bashful, hiding behind the limpest fry you’ve ever seen, used as an example not two seconds prior. He only dares to probe further when you start chuckling to yourself, shaking your head.

“What? What is it? What did I do now?”

“Dude, you need to quit this job.”

“Because I know fry science?”

“No, because you deserve better. You have this crazy genius brain and you’re so nice to everyone even though they yell at you, and you decide you want to work here?”

You’ve been sitting on this for a while, since you found out just how insanely smart he was, and the extent of his college education. You were desperate to know how this man was pulling all As at one of the most prestigious universities in the country, and was still finding time to mess around on the closing shift with you. At first, you were impressed, but that soon gave way to disappointment; not towards him but on his behalf, that he’d been forced into a minimum wage job to afford to live instead of being allowed to just enjoy his time at college and invent robots, or whatever the hell it was he did. He’s frowning at you slightly, but he’s got that moony-eyed expression again, when he gets a compliment he doesn’t know how to accept.

“You’re smart, man, you’re too good for a diner.”

“But this is good!” Peter has always been far too enthusiastic about the diner as a whole, you think, to the extent where his relentlessly positive attitude severely unnerved you for the first few weeks of knowing him. He’s all animated in the body, eyes bright and warm like amberstones, like he’s just seen colour for the first time. “Joe’s is a cultural landmark - best pizza in the country!”

“Bestie, you think the job is worth all this shit because we have good pizza?”

“No- look.” He scrabbles around in his apron pocket for his phone, then scrolls for a moment, eyes scanning over the screen. It takes a second, but then he lights up with recognition, and flips the device so you can see whatever relic he’s unearthed from his camera roll. 

There’s a picture of a young boy, around seven or eight with an older man, sitting in what is unmistakably the corner table by the back wall of Joe’s, the photo wall looking considerably barer behind the two of them. It must have been taken a while ago, even all of the pre-fire decor in the background looked considerably newer than it did when you’d started working there. They’re smiling over a pizza, the child expressively wielding a cutting wheel, and the man trying to subtly prevent him from slicing anyone’s eyes out. It’s only when you look closer that you see a sliver of a familiar, awful scarf among the coats and jackets in the back of the picture, that the kid suddenly bears a striking resemblance to the man sitting in front of you.

“Holy shit, that’s you?”

“That’s me and my Uncle Ben. We used to come here all the time on Fridays after school.”

“Ugly Scarf Uncle Ben?” He lets you take the phone from his hand, and you zoom in on the kid’s face, holding it up next to Peter’s to compare the two. It feels like you’ve been handed something priceless and private, worth more than anything else in the world - your own personal Mona Lisa. He was a cute kid, the same lopsided smile as the bigger version, but his hair was longer and messier now, a thatch of brown curls and fuzz where it’s been slept on funny.
“You were a cute kid, what went wrong?”

“Shut up, I’m trying to give you backstory here.” He’s laughing, and it’s the most beautiful sound in the world, as always. Something about his laugh made you want to drop everything and just breathe it in, to witness and savour it. “It was special. Everyone here was always so happy, I mean, look at the photo wall.”

Sal has, to your very vocal disdain, printed and hung the staff photo from the party, your expression looking even redder and bashful as if out of spite. Peter makes his debut on the wall behind you, grinning away as usual, and strung between you and Sal like he’d always been part of the Joe’s family. It would have been a great picture, if he’d decided to keep his mouth shut for just a millisecond longer. Somehow, though, you still manage to look happier than last year, quite comfortable tucked under Peter’s arm, and the ghost of a smile still hidden behind the wide-eyed surprise on your face. Across from you, Peter is looking at the photo, smiling to himself, completely lost behind the eyes.

“Well, why doesn’t he come anymore? He didn’t like the Great Sauce Change of 2016?”

“He actually passed away a few years ago.” 

Ah, fuck, that really does explain a lot. He’d been talking about his aunt more often these days, and you really should’ve picked up on the absence of an uncle, especially considering how much he’s been toting around that awful scarf all winter. Shit, you were so mean about the scarf - your gut twists in discomfort, fighting the urge to cringe at all the times you'd ragged on him about it. This is why you needed to learn how to hold your tongue.

“Oh, Peter.” You’re doing that tone of voice you know that you’d hate, but it’s almost involuntary at this point, and you’re not really sure what else you can say about it. It’s odd; you feel useless about it, in the mammoth shadow of his grief, but there really isn't anything you can do. There’s nothing to fix. “I’m sorry, man, I know saying that does jack shit, but-“

“No, it’s fine. I get what you’re trying to say.” He’s shrugging and fidgeting with the fries; ripping them in half, peeling the crust, pretending to stub them out on the surface of the plate like cigarettes. “I like this job because I get to give that to other kids, y’know? That time with their family or their friends. It means a lot.”

“I’ve never thought about it like that.” Peter looks up at you, gifts you a small smile, and returns to playing with his food. He’s stacking them now, building an odd-looking, greasy Jenga tower.

“It’s like I owe a lot of people a lot of different things-“

“We’re all in debt to the government, Pete, there’s no need to mince words.”

“No, not government debt it’s… different. Like a people debt.” He’s all soft in the face again, a slight knot in his brow with concentration, the glow of the streetlights casting a warm glow across his cheeks and shining on his eyelashes. The world outside is otherwise dark, but you’re safe in this little, bright cocoon with Peter, watching his hands work, as you usually are. He is, unfortunately, perhaps the prettiest person you’ve ever met, and so very, incredibly interesting to listen to. Something in your stomach turns; you need to put a stop to these thoughts, no matter how nice they might be to indulge, because you’d only just become his friend, and there was no way in hell you were ruining that.

“I get to pay my debt through serving the best pizza in the world, and I get to spend some time with my uncle. It’s a win-win. Also, my other job is stressful as hell, and it’s nice to come in here and have the biggest problem in my life be a mozzarella shortage.” He’s done with his tower, because it falls over for the third time and he seems to give up. He looks up at you, checking you’re done with the fries, then leaves the counter to sweep the rest into the trash. “It’s low risk; sure, I get yelled at, but nobody dies.”

“What the fuck is your other job? It sounds dramatic as shit.” It’s a lame attempt at brightening the mood, but it works, a smile breaking out on his face and laughter rumbling through him. “What are you, Spider-Man?-”

“I’m not having the Spider-Man conversation with you again!” Peter rolls his eyes at you, then nudges you with the rim of the plate, signalling for you to get off of the counter. You dismount, then follow him as he circles the diner, collecting the used plates and crockery. In the far corner, while you’re stacking up glasses, he gets distracted by the staff photo, grinning to himself as he looks it over. He spends a lot of time there, when you think about it, pointing himself out to customers and then pointing you out and laughing, making jokes and people-pleasing like he usually does. Once, you’d interrogated him about what he’d told them, and he just shrugged at you, miming zipping his lips like the first time you’d met him. You’d even asked the customers and apparently he’d sworn them to secrecy or something, because they wouldn’t budge.

“You gonna take advantage of your new managership to break the staff photo and blackmail me to stay quiet?” He says, tapping on the glass, and you frown at him, using your waiter’s napkin to wipe the fingerprints from the glass. Someone should dust these, the newest one is already a bit gross along the top of the frame. You hate the photo, but there’s not really any point in destroying it, because everything was digitised now. Maybe you could have gotten away with it a few years ago, before Sal had gotten his head around how phones work, but knowing him, he probably doesn’t know how to delete stuff, and it would just keep getting reprinted and replaced. Besides, it was the only souvenir you had of the party, aside from the hangover to end all hangovers you’d had to nurse for three days straight.

“Nah, I’m quite fond of it now.” One of the forks is slipping from the stack of plates in your hand, but Peter manages to catch it and put it in his own pile, without even a glance in its direction. He was weird like that, he had these creepily good reflexes, but you supposed it was just a genetic thing. He finishes his examination of the photo, then turns to catch your gaze, the moment quickly softening like syrup. 

“It was a good night.”

“It was a good night.”

There’s a second between you, where you’ve captured each other, and then you break from it, clearing throats and turning away, hiding bashful faces. Your heart is thrumming quick and fast in your chest, and practically rattles the dishes in your grasp, stirring the chipped, patterned ceramic into a frenzied racket. Peter takes them from you into his sturdy grip, and the brush of his fingers against yours sets your mind scrambling for something to change the subject, wiping the sensation of him away on your apron. 

“Right, let’s get the cleaning supplies out before we bump into the morning shift.” You’re turning to leave, and he’s following you, making a detour to dump the dishes in the sink and practically running to catch up to you as you open the door to the pantry, calling your name. It’s odd to keep the cleaning supplies in the same place as the food, but there’s not really much space in the restaurant to do anything else with them - and it’s not like someone’s gonna accidentally put bleach in the pasta sauce. He’s fumbling with his words as you flick the light on, and then he shuts the door behind the two of you, enclosing you.

“Do you ever think about it?” Peter’s on edge, the whole sentence tumbling out of him in a haphazard tangle, and you’re already jumping to wild, inappropriate conclusions about what’s making him so nervous. You want it to be you, but you take a breath, hoping he doesn’t see the shaking in your hands.

“The morning shift? Not really, I try to think about it as little as possible. Law of attraction and all that-” The cleaning box is in your hands, you’re so close to being free of this cursed, cramped space, where all you can smell is him and his detergent and whatever he’s been helping Sal out with, but there’s the clatter of plastic as Peter sets his hands on your upper arms, turning you around to face him. The contact burns, burying into your bones, and festering into a deep ache. When he speaks, your blood runs cold.

“No. The kiss.”

Ah, so you were doing this earlier than you thought. Great.

Chapter Text

Part of you feels stupid for genuinely believing that the kiss wouldn't get brought up again. So, you guess you have to talk about it now - now that he’s throwing The Word around and acknowledging the elephant in the room. Not just the room at this point, this goddamn elephant was everywhere; it followed you home, slept in your bed, lived in your chest. Something cold spreads through you, stabbing in your gut, and you would rather be swallowed by the ground than talk about the fucking kiss right now.

Because what was there to say? That even though you kissed once, a month ago, you hadn’t stopped thinking about him? That you spent every shift watching him while simultaneously pretending you didn't care about him? That he’d single-handedly derailed what felt like your whole life, with what was turning out to be the best and the  worst  kiss you’ve ever had. 

“We agreed it was a mistake.” You shake him off of you, then reach past him to turn off the pantry light so you can leave. Peter doesn’t let you go that easily, though, and he flicks the light back on, blocking you in. You shouldn’t have let him trap you, he’d tried to rope you into talking about it before but you’d always had an out - an escape route disguised as a customer upset that his orange juice was too orange. Now it was just you and him,  alone . 

“I didn’t ask if you thought it was a mistake, I asked if you  thought  about it.”

“Is that your question for the day?” You’re dodging him, but it’s a risky game, despite the fact you’re willing to lie through your teeth. The kiss played in your head on repeat, constantly, but you’re not letting him have that; that’s for you to know, and take to the grave. You try to turn the light back off, but he’s right behind you, fumbling with the switch. You’re in a few, sweet seconds of total darkness, before the harsh bulb sputters back to life, drenching the both of you with the dim, white wash. He’s closer now, eyes wide with something you don’t want to think about, his voice pleading as he says your name.

“Just tell me.” 

“I don’t.” It’s probably the worst lie you’ve ever told. You can’t even put a sliver of your heart into making it believable, and he clearly doesn’t buy it. The hammering in your chest gets louder, spurned on by the proximity of him, the pure anxiety in his eyes. The air feels charged, pumped with a current that would shock either of you if you touched - which you very well might, he’s inches away from you now - and it crackles along the starch in your uniforms. You fight with the switch once more, and he wins out, taking the box from you and leaving your arms useless at your sides. It’s on the floor behind him within seconds, and he comes closer. The sight of him steals your breath from you, and you itch to touch him, before you lose the chance to again.

“Please be honest with me.”

“I can’t, Pete.” There’s one more attempt at the lightswitch, and some fuse somewhere must blow, because the whole diner is plunged into darkness, save for whatever small beams of streetlight can eke their way through the windows. Neither of you seem to notice, because Peter’s all nerves and momentum, his voice taking on a new hardness.

“Fine, question of the day; how do you  really  feel about the kiss?” Your heart leaps to your throat, and you feel as if you’re gonna throw up months and months of feelings, all strung together in a tight, barbed knot. You’re a liar, you’ve been lying to him for months, and you know you can lie now, but you won’t, because you promised you wouldn’t, and Peter was looking at you in a way that made your chest squeeze. It’s slowly paralysing you, and there’s only one way out; so you end up doing what you know you would have to do eventually, you’d just hoped it wouldn’t be so soon. It feels like throwing yourself off of the Empire State Building - like wind whipping past your ears.

You say how you really feel.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you.” 

He exhales, and even though it shakes him, he’s steady and still, the warmth of him filling the tiny little cupboard. You’re eighty percent sure the world has stopped spinning, but you can honestly say that you don’t care, because you can see the emotions flooding through him, the weight on his chest either tightening or loosening - you can’t tell.

“Then do it again.”

“We can’t.”

“Kiss me again.  Please .” 

Peter - beautiful, kind,  merciful  Peter, does what he always does, and lets you take the lead. You know you shouldn’t, but you’re placing your hands on his jaw, feeling the way it tenses under your fingertips, brushing the light stubble there, and pulling him in towards you. Your lips meet, and you’re flooded with the same euphoric rush you had felt that night, at the party, your nerves tingling with the realisation that you’re kissing him -  you’re kissing Peter Parker again.

It’s only when you both remember that you’re both completely alone with no prior commitments, and Peter makes that noise you’ve been wanting to bottle since December, that the weight of the whole thing really sets in. And that weight is hard and warm against your thigh now, as you fall against the pantry shelves, pressed there gently by his hands like a flower between the pages of a book. And that weight makes Peter breathe out this precious little noise when you brush against it, and your head spins with the knowledge that you can get him to do it again and again and again. 

You guess were right, you really aren’t friends anymore, because there’s no coming back from whatever’s about to happen next.

What happens next, it turns out, is that you pull Peter closer, tugging and fumbling with the belt loops of his uniform, hooking your thumbs in and pressing his hips to yours. He hisses, like he’s been burnt, but rasps against you through the sensation of it, his face flushed pink and gasping into the mess that your hair has become. His hands are already roaming, in that panicked, indecisive way they were at the party, not quite sure where they want to sit, until he feels your hands under his shirt, realises that all pretences of pretending not to want each other are off, and then he’s grabbing at your ass, running his palms over the starched fabric of your  Joe’s  trousers.

His skin burns at you - almost as if the heat of him would scorch your fingerprints away - and his roaming hands spur on your own exploring. You’ve never been this close to him, seen this side of him, and the moment rings with newness and novelty, the rush of it pumping through your veins like liquid fire. Your hands shift at his neck, taking the waiter’s cloth from his shoulder and stuffing it on the shelf behind you, then return to his shoulders, feeling the slope of them. Under his uniform, his skin is pliable and soft, but there’s a quiet strongness underneath, his muscles flexing under your touch as his hands map your shape into his mind. His head bows, body curling in on itself, a ragged breath wracking him as he tries to reorientate himself. 

“I’m sorry.” He says, voice crackling, and his forehead presses to your shoulder, trying to hide his face. When you jostle him off of you and get a good look at him, his face is that same beautiful pink flush you’ve seen so many times before, blossoming across his lips. His eyes are darker now, overtaken by his widened pupils, but their usual honeyed brown colour brings you an odd sense of comfort. A hand of yours, the one gripping the back of his shirt, snakes up the back of his neck and rakes through his hair, pushing it back from his face and smoothing it into something semi-presentable. He leans into the feeling of it, sighing, but something clearly isn’t sitting right. 

“For what?” You scratch at his scalp, and the tension in him eases a little as he tips his head back into your touch, exposing his throat and the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows thickly. When he speaks again, his voice is a rambling hum, too absorbed in the scratching of his head to wrestle his voice out of its pleasured slur.

“This all happened pretty suddenly-“

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. We can stop if you want.”

“ No!  Uh-” Peter somehow gets even redder at how embarrassingly fast his answer is, and you see him fight the urge to hide his face again, mumbling into the charged air. “I don’t wanna stop.”

“Then shut up.” You kiss him again, bruisingly, and you sink your teeth right back into the moment, savouring every noise that falls from him, feather-light. Your fingers scramble to your shirt buttons and with some fumbling, your uniform is falling open, further exposing you to him. He hesitates for a second, pulling away from you to stare down at you, and you’re almost instantaneously embarrassed at the way he’s taking you in. 

“It’s rude to stare.” His collar is bundled into your fist, yanking him back to you for another searing kiss, his lips parting in a gasp, and his tongue doing something that makes your head spin. Peter murmurs against you between kisses, pressing himself harder against you, the length of him straining against the polyester. 

“I wanted to look at you properly.” 

“We’re in the dark, dude.”

“Don’t call me that.” He pulls away, and mutters against the shell of your ear, his breaths coming in hot pants as he cants his hips up towards you. Some part of him brushes against you at the perfect angle, and he swallows whatever noise you dare make like a starved man. “Say my name,  please . Call me my name.”

“ Peter! ” You mean for it to come across as scandalised, you really do, but Peter’s too in the zone to notice, and the effects of it wrack through him. There are a few breaths shared between the two of you, then his hands flex on your ass and you both stew in the newfound silence. Something heavy and  dangerous  was in the air, strung between you, and you know exactly what it is. 

The S Word. 

Neither of you wants to bring it up, but neither of you are entirely sure just how far this is going. It’s not like you’re a prude, or shy about this sort of thing, it’s just that it was  Peter . Peter made it different. Being in the cupboard at your job on the Saturday night closing shift made it different. Suddenly, saying  The Word  would open up all of these possibilities that you were certain you would never be able to come back from;  The Word  meant that you would stop being friends. Whether that was through never speaking to each other again from sheer shame, or something far scarier;  that you would like it. 

The worst part is that you  wanted  to, and by the looks of it - as well as the feel of him against you - Peter wanted to. Eventually, he speaks. 

“Are we…doing this?”

“No follow-up questions.” You quip, almost automatically, and you share a few nervous bubbles of breathless laughter, the sensation of him prickling goosebumps along your skin and tickling your nerves like champagne. Your bravado fizzles away quickly, leaving pure curiosity and a soft anxiety in its wake. “Do you want to?”

“Yes.”   Peter spares you from the anticipation any longer, clearly much more interested in something else than trying to keep up the charade of feigned nonchalance with you. His hands are higher now, skimming the flesh of your stomach, and moving up to your waist and rib cage. It’s important work to him, it seems, committing every inch, hair and mark to his memory, nestling you into the fabric of his being. “I don’t bring condoms to work, though. Or lube. We could use Sal’s marinara sauce-“

“Oh my God, shut the fuck up, Parker.” You’re rolling your eyes, and he’s smiling, a chuckle moving through him as he dips his head again, turning his attentions to the delicate skin of your neck, migrating upwards to the sensitive spot nestled under your ear. It prickles along your spine, and sings in the dip of your ribcage. 

“Ah, there’s - um - there’s condoms and lube packets under the shelves somewhere, actually. We got them in for World Sexual Health Day, Sal is  weirdly  passionate about national holidays-”

“Now, that’s just ridiculous.” His voice is muffled in your neck, but it rumbles through him and resonates into you, tingling your spine. 

“I was supposed to move them to the staff room like, three months ago. This is why being lazy is a good thing.”

“I’m not sure about that.” He comes away from you, stooping low to pull out one of the large Tupperware storage boxes that lived under the shelves. He rifled around for a moment, hunting, before resurfacing from the clutter with a string of condoms, the wrappers printed with the Italian flag. 

“Oh, great. They’re Italian.”

“They’re condoms, they work. Get one on.” You’re undoing the button of your pants now, wrestling with the zipper, frustrated with the lack of skin contact currently being used to torture you. Every inch of you seemed to cry out for his attention,  some  definitely more than most - you’d never considered pants to be evil before this moment, but now you’re convinced. In an instant, Peter is in front of you again, condom wrapper caught between the teeth, taking the task from you and you’re practising melting in his presence. His strong hands thumbs over the waistband and your hips, shucking them from you in one smooth movement. 

“I can take my own pants off.” You sputter, but the indignancy of it is only half there, more of an act than anything. He’s shushing you, shelving the condom behind you and kissing you again, shutting you up, dissolving your stubborncies into syrupy noises that coat his tongue. He’s damn skilled with his tongue, just like his hands, and your head whirls with the possibilities now open to you. 

Not that this was going to become a regular thing.  By fuck, though, you hoped it did. 

“I wanted to make you feel special.” He murmurs, a little self-conscious, and when you look down, his pants are unzipped. The fly hangs open, unleashing a whole new host of sights you’d only been accidentally-but-not-really thinking about since December. 

“ Oh .” You, can’t help it, it just sort of slips out, and you clap a hand over your mouth, his eyes widening - somewhere between amusement and offence. 

“' Oh '? Oh, what?” 

“‘ Oh ’ nothing.” 

It all becomes sort of a blur after that, and it’s almost worryingly easy how quickly you settle into the rut of it, the rest of the world falling away and leaving only Peter, and the searing, all-devouring want that festers in the pit of your stomach. He double, triple, quadruple checks that you’re absolutely certain you want to do this, and then he allows himself to enjoy it, grasping at your skin as if you were about to disappear. One of his warm, strong hands reaches the apex of your thigh, teetering there for an agonising second, then shifts between your legs. 

The gasp that comes from you is completely involuntary, and you grab fistfuls of his shirt, kissing him harder to muffle out whatever other noises you would make. He’s as talented as you’d hoped he’d be, his fingers hitting every spot and curve of you, playing you like a damn fiddle. Peter, because he’s actually insane, kisses you and swallows whatever noises slip out of you, unrelenting. 

“Jump,” Peter murmurs through kisses, adjusting his grip on you. His other hand is trailing down now, kneading at the flesh of your ass and his head is sinking to the curve in your neck, burying kisses there like treasure. You’re suddenly hyper-conscious of the sound you’re making when he’s not muffling it, obscenities filling the small pantry and weaving themselves into the rows of seasonings and cheeses. 

“What?” You ask, despite the fact you’ve already registered what he’s said; and the way he’s pulling at your legs is a clear give away as to what he wants. “Pete, you don’t have to pick me up-“

“ Jump .” He repeats, and your body responds automatically to the tone of his voice. He catches you effortlessly - this dude is ridiculously strong, it’s actually kind of weird - and presses you up against the shelves, your legs parting to let his hips rest against yours. You both shudder at the new sensation, a moan catching in Peter’s throat, the length of him pressed against you. 

He props you up on a shelf, and when your weight has been shifted, it’s easier for your own hands to wander, slipping along the front of him and brushing over whatever amount of his underwear is currently shown from behind his unzipped fly. He jolts at the contact, huffing, and when you hook a finger into his waistline, freeing him, he murmurs at the sensation of the cool air against his skin.

You nearly freeze. You knew you weren’t going to be able to come back from this but seeing him -  all of him  - really cemented it. Something in the back of your mind murmurs, the same anxious monster that filled your veins with ice after you’d pinned him against a wall and kissed him; but when you take him into your hand, swiping your thumb across the lubrication that has collected across the tip, he groans and hisses, drowning it out.  Goddamn it , you should have known he would be this noisy - he’s noisy enough the rest of the time. It’s like music to your ears, though, the little hums and pants you pull from him as your hand moves, his own fingers stuttering against you. It’s only when his mouth falls open, his moan echoing on the walls alongside your name, begged like a prayer, that you realise the extent of it.

“You have to be quiet.” The diner is empty, you know that, but some part of you is paranoid anyway. Peter’s body waivers, twitching in your palm, and the tiny movement elicits a thrill in you. He’s heavy and hot in your hand, skin as smooth as a pearl, pre-ejaculate illuminating the shaft in whatever minuscule peals of light fought their way into the pantry.

“Sorry, it-it’s been a while, and it feels really good-” You notice the way he responds to your tone, the way you feel his heartbeat against the heel of your hand, and the great, raging beast of desire within you rejoices at the discovery he likes to be ordered around a little. Looking back, it was obvious from the start; the way he’d turned red whenever you’d grill him a little, the way he’d suddenly got awkward with you following your promotion - you should have known. Maybe then, you could have made fun of him for it, and avoided the absolutely insatiable desire you now had to indulge him in it. Some risky thought pops into your head, and you consider it for a moment, before biting the bullet. He moans again, long and low, as his hips flex and the tip of him bumps at your crotch, slipping over the skin where you need him most.

Reaching behind you, you feel blindly for his waiter’s cloth, patting around where you’d tucked it earlier. Finding it over your right shoulder, you pull from him, watching a desperate, needy spark dance in his dark eyes, and stuff the fabric into his mouth. Almost instantly, he’s melting away, eyebrows crumpling, the fabric stifling the next noise that comes from him - louder than the others. His fingers brush up against some tender spot, and your core shocks you, the slowly mounting pressure within you beginning to crest itself into a wave. Holding his starried gaze, Peter’s chest is heaving with need, his hand squeezing at your thigh, signalling his consent.

You feel around behind you again, grabbing the condom wrapper, and ripping it open, the latex disc nearly slipping from your hands as he changes the rhythm of his movements, your body shuddering. And then, while you’re feeling for the tip of the condom, you hear something that makes you both freeze in your tracks.

Outside the pantry, in the darkness of the diner, something clatters to the floor.

Chapter Text

If it was any other time, the expression on Peter’s face, marred by his waiter’s cloth, would be hilarious. However, your brain is still dealing with the emotional whiplash of the moment, every fuse in your brain simultaneously shorting out and melting the whole thing into a puddle. Your ears ring with panic, the both of you completely still, sprung like a trap ready for prey.

“That was like, a rat, right-?” You whisper, and Peter shushes you, eyes wide, grip tight on your hips. His eyes are on you, but his focus is clearly somewhere else, the hairs on his forearms pricked up, and you can practically see him calculating. It’s semi-ridiculous, the both of you naked from the waist down, but the heartbeat pounding in the back of your throat is making it hard for you to see the comedy.

When you say his name, a soft murmur, he straightens a little, taking in a sharp breath. He seems to have figured out whatever he was deducing in his head, and he helps you down, setting you on the floor and gathering your uniform trousers and underwear.

“Pete, it’s probably nothing-”

“Get dressed.” He whispers, barely audible, a finger over his lips, and you comply almost robotically. It’s odd, the way he’s moving, tiptoeing around all silent, like some sort of cat. He’s always been strong, you knew that, but every step is incredibly controlled as he redresses, limbs tense and firm like a gymnast. You’d have to ask about it later, if he'd had any training. He’s over at the door in an instant, while you’re still struggling with your fly, cracking the door open a sliver and peering through it. You attempt to speak again, fill the awkward, crushing silence, only for him to shush you.

You’d be lying if you weren’t a little disappointed, the anticipation of everything still wound up in your gut like a coiled spring, your flesh still hot and sensitive to the touch. Everything else has been replaced by a sheer, dreadful feeling, though - oscillating wildly between the anxiety of maybe being caught nearly fucking your coworker in the pantry, and the embarrassment of nearly fucking your coworker in the pantry. Maybe this whole thing was a blessing in disguise; nothing good would have come of whatever was about to happen between you two, no matter how bad you really, really wanted it - and still maybe, kinda did. You could brush off a kiss (well, in theory) but you can’t brush off knowing what Peter looks like naked, how he feels in your hand, how he sounds when you find just the right pace. The acrid burn of regret is already charring your tongue, your face burning in the pitch dark.

Oh, God. Peter has seen you naked.

“Uh, so, about the-” You begin, barely at a whisper, deciding to do damage control to avoid as much awkwardness as possible. Trying your best to tiptoe over to the door, Peter shushes you again, clamping a hand down over your mouth. Almost instinctively, he’s pulling your body close to his, tucking you in to his chest and wrapping an arm around you. He’s still staring intently into the crack in the door, pupils moving a mile a minute. If it was any other moment, you'd be melting away into his touch, but the tenseness of him is seeping into you, your heart pounding.

There’s a horrid, weighted moment of silence, waiting for whatever it was to make another noise, or for the coast to be clear, and you can feel Peter’s heartbeat strong and paced against your shoulder blades. The clock in the dining room ticks, ticks, ticks, and what must be a century passes.

And then, another noise.

Peter’s hold on you tightens, and he jolts from the door, shutting it over and pushing you into the furthest corner of the pantry. It’s unmistakable what the noise was, you heard it hundreds of times a shift, and only now do you fully realise just what’s happening. In the front of Joe’s, the till must be about forty years old, the numbers worn away with countless greasy, callused fingers, then drawn anew with a sharpie. It’s sticky and rusted slightly on the drawer, and makes a heavy groaning sound when it’s opened, followed by the rolling of the hinge tracks and the tinkle of quarters rattling in the chipped plastic drawers.

And unless Joe’s has suddenly become haunted, someone is in the front of the diner, and they are opening up the cash register.

“Oh my God.” You’re panicking, eyes wide, voice only just reigned into a hissing whisper-shout, watching Peter root through all of his pockets, then his apron. Then, he starts ransacking the pantry, clearly looking for something.

“Please, you have to be quiet.” He’s almost begging - he was doing something akin to begging not five instants ago, but this was different, more selfless. Whatever moment you had was long gone; replaced by an awful, palpable fear that lingers in the air like smog that burns your lungs. There’s no time to mourn the almost, because Peter’s practically turning the whole pantry upside down, somehow completely silently.

“Oh my God, the diner’s being robbed.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Oh my God.” You can’t help it, your brain is barely working now, sparking and smoking from having to shift gears this quickly, and you can’t really bring yourself to say much else. You’ve been scared before - Sal offered to drive you home once, and you only barely lived to regret it - but that seemed trivial, surface-level. This was something rawer and colder, deeper, a flood of pure fear. Your hormones are all over the place, drowning you, the adrenaline slowly plummeting you from arousal to a pent-up, jumpy sense of terror. Checking your pockets, you notice a distinct lack of your phone.

You’re doing really well at the whole manager thing so far. Good job, idiot.

“I don’t have my phone.”

“Me neither.” Peter’s looking you up and down, frowning, like he’s weighing things up in his head, but you’ve got no idea quite what. He seems to come to a decision though, pulling a folding chair from a gap in the shelves and propping it against the door to wedge it shut.

“We’re, uh, gonna just have to stay put and wait for help.”

You can’t help it, but through the panic, you’re rolling your eyes at him. It’s definitely the safest plan of action, but something irks you about just having to sit there and let some random rob Joe’s dry, twiddling your thumbs. Something irks you even more about who ‘help’ might come from, because if you couldn’t call the police, there was only one other person who ‘help’ could possibly be.

“Oh, from who, Spider-Man?” It perhaps comes out more venomous than you mean it to, and Peter’s alarmed, more panicked by the idea of Spider-Man than an actual, genuine burglar stealing his wages.

“No!” He blurts out, before taking a breath and trying to wrestle his voice back to a whisper. He’s hesitant, trying to style it out, but it’s just sort of awkward and stilted. “I mean, maybe - I don’t know!”

“I was joking, man, why would he help us?” Suffice to say, your opinion on Spider-Man hasn’t improved since you last spoke about him - if anything, Peter’s joined the ranks of your coworkers in poking fun at your Spider-based opinions, elbowing you and bringing you tiny house spiders he finds in the dirty corners of the diner, holding up the glass and coaster he caught it with. The jokes were fine, you could handle them pretty well at this point, but the actual presentation of insects was far too much - they were weirdly attracted to Peter, you think. He never had too much trouble catching them and if anything, he liked being able to set them free outside. He’d always have this funny look on his face, the same expression as when he’d serve a customer a perfectly fried egg, like he’d done a good job and got to be all proud of himself.

Now, though, it seems his patience with you is finally beginning to wear thin. It’s oddly serious, more serious than talking about his Uncle Ben, and even more serious than when he was fully ready to have sex in the diner’s pantry, kissing you hard against the very same shelf that had nearly crushed you a few months prior.

“I don’t want to talk about this right now.” His voice hits a tone you’ve never heard from him before, something lower and straighter than usual, roughed by the hushed volume of it. You feel your stubbornness kicking up for the first time in a while with him, wanting to dig your heels in.

“Neither do I, but Spider-Man’s not gonna be at Joe’s of all places, Peter. Why would he care about us? There’ll be something blowing up across town that’s more important.”

“What is your problem with him?” Your tone ignites something else in him now, and it seems you’ve finally managed to strike a nerve with him. If it was still the summer, the younger, bitterer you would have rejoiced at finally getting a rise out of him - but now, it just produces some sort of sinking feeling in the pit of you.

“He doesn’t rescue people in real life, we’re not special. We’re two normies in a shitty diner on the closing shift - he’s got bank robbers to stop.” You can tell Peter wants to say something, and part of you wants him to argue with you, but he won’t. His face shifts, it's minuscule but you see it anyway, and he swallows whatever he wants to say, taking a breath instead.

“Please, we have to just hide and be quiet, okay? We’ll call the cops when they leave.” He’s trying to save the situation, and even though he turns around, you can tell his brain is computing, calculating how to barricade the door, or lock you in - keep you safe. You’re scowling now, and you grab at his arm, spinning him back towards you again - he doesn’t fight you, just looks alarmed. Guilt twists in your gut.

“What? No way dude, those are our fucking wages - we don’t get paid if they get stolen.” That rings in Peter’s head, you can see it echoing around behind his eyes, and his expression shifts slightly. It sounds dramatic, but it was true - the diner was old school and family-run, there was no ‘upper management’ or well of resources to pay you from. If there was no money in the till, there was no money going into your bank account. This usually meant that your wages were quite high, because the staff was so small, and Joe’s was popular with the city - but getting robbed before you had managed to lock the money in the office was a certain downside.

“So you want to get shot?” Something in you drops.

You didn’t know there was a gun involved. What seemed like pretty moderate danger had now escalated very quickly, and you weren’t quite sure what to do about it.

“They have a gun?”

“I mean, I don’t know!”

“Oh, Peter!”

Somewhere in the past, you’re stuck in the staff room, watching the kitchen slowly fill with smoke and left to wonder if your coworkers even got out of the diner unharmed, unable to help. In the present, you feel like you owe them something, some level of risk, to get even. People need that money, you need that money, but other people have, like, kids and shit - so you’re going to make sure they get it.

Ah, fuck. Goddamn whatever complex you have going on at the moment. Goddamn crime. Goddamn Spider-Man especially.

“Stay here.”

“What? What are you doing?” Peter watches you with a grave look on his face, pale and ragged, as you search through the cupboard clutter for anything that may be of use. You find a large pizza pan - maybe useful as a shield? - stained brown from the oven and heavy in your grasp. It’ll do, and you realise with a biled taste in your mouth that it’s really all you have to defend yourself. Pete grabs at you, tugging at your uniform shirt in an entirely different manner now; you know whatever expression he has on his face will wrench your heart from your chest, so you avoid looking at it despite the comfort it usually brings you. 

“You’re not going out there.”

“I’m the most senior member of staff here, you have to do what I tell you to.”

“No, I don’t!”

“Just stay here, Pete. Please.” He’s trying his best to be defiant, but you’ll get your way - you don’t really have another choice. You’re technically responsible for him, the restaurant, and the wages currently being ripped from the till and stolen from the people you’ve worked with for years. Spurred on by some stupid sense of duty, and what can only be described as a flight response to the intimate moment not a few minutes prior; there’s nothing else to do about it, you have to keep Joe’s safe, and this - apparently - is the only viable way your brain can cook up right now..

“I’m in charge, okay? I’m in charge of you, and the rest of these people, and I have to look after them.”

“Stop it.” Peter’s eyes are wide and oddly shiny, too glossy for you to look at comfortably, and you avoid his gaze as if to give him privacy in whatever moment of emotion he’s experiencing. This just seems to upset him more, and he takes your face in his hands, his palms warm against your cheeks, the skin roughed from labour. “I’ll deal with it, okay? Let me do it.”

“Pete, these people rely on me to look after them and make sure they get paid. I’m their manager.” You’re trying to get away from him, no matter how much his touch quiets the panicked thumping in your chest, and he looks at you like you’ve broken his heart. “And with that role comes responsibility-”

Peter pales almost instantly, his face falling, tears springing to his eyes. Something inside you rips into a deep chasm at the sight of him, his voice intense and desperate.

“Don’t. Don’t finish that sentence. Please.” He’s tugging, grasping, at you now. Fingers scrambling along your skin for anything to hold tight. “You can’t go. Not after you’ve said that.”

The moment is raw, and there’s something underneath his skin that you seem to have pricked, some nerve you’ve accidentally struck. You’re trying to find something to say, to make it better, but you can’t think of anything.

“You can’t. I can’t lose-” Peter cuts himself off, his words dying away on his tongue. He’s looking you up and down, hands flexing at his sides. For a millisecond, you can tell he’s considering something, fingers stretching towards his palms. Then, nothing. “Please.”

And before he can protest any further, you’ve slipped through the pantry door, and slid the metal bolt into the slot on the doorjamb, locking it behind you.

The diner itself is eerily quiet and dark, brief flashes of light coming from the robber’s cellphone light as they illuminate the cash register. The atmosphere is thick, but you can hear the rustle of dollar bills in their hands, even though you’re a good few meters away from them. Crouching, you sneak across the kitchen, to the serving hatch, then dare to take a peek.

You can see a dark figure now, dressed in black, stuffing the day’s earnings into a backpack, backlit by the streetlights. All of a sudden, everything’s very real, and you feel as if your heart fell out of you a good while ago - like you left it with Peter on the pantry floor. This was no longer a hypothetical matter of moral duty, this was happening and it was happening now.

And somehow, the only part of your brain still working (the part that isn’t focused on the way your skin tingles after Peter kissed it) has decided that if the real Spider-Man isn’t coming, you’ll just have to be Spider-Man instead. A lot easier to say than do, probably.

Waiting until the intruder has turned away, you scurry along the floor, crouched low, until you can get yourself pressed flat along the back wall, and under the counter behind them. Your fingers are cramping from holding onto the pizza pan so tight, slippy in your nervously sweaty grasp. You adjust your hold on it, though you’re not quite sure what you’re going to do with it. You really should have thought this through. You probably should have stayed in the pantry with Peter.

Then, on the ceiling, something moves.

You swear for a second, that there’s a big, dark mass, creeping along the ceiling like a cockroach; the sight of it sending a bolt of fear through your spine. It’s something eldritch and awful, all limbs and joints but still vaguely human under the shadows cast over it. The stranger, nearly finished with their ransacking of the cash register, drops the wad of cash they were clutching, gasping at the shape on the ceiling. The bills fall inches from your toes, and the thick, hard hands of a man come scrabbling into view to try and collect them. The back wall is cold and hard against your back as you press yourself into it, tucking your body in on itself to make yourself as small as possible.

You think he’s still looking at whatever’s on the ceiling as he tries to gather the money, because he only hesitates when his fingers accidentally brush one of your undone laces.

Fuck.

Your heartbeat pounds in your ears as he stills, as he turns his head to look down. You can’t see his face, just hear his rattling breath and the rustle of his clothes, watching his hand collect the rest of the bills and then inching towards your foot. Your mind is racing, trying to decide whether or not to attempt to kick him, his dirty fingers outstretching towards your ankle as you push yourself further and further into the back wall.

That is until an odd thumping sound pierces the diner - rubber on tile, and silk shot through the air.

The stranger makes an odd sound, gravelled and rough as his hands, straightening up. Then, there's a strained grunt as some force slams him backwards against the back counter, the cutlery clattering in the trays. You’re scrambling out from behind his legs in an instant, checking the ceiling again for whatever thing you saw. It seems to have disappeared without a trace, but the stranger isn’t bothered about it anymore, because he’s regaining his footing and looking straight at you. You’re not sure if you recognise him or not, he’s just sort of generic-looking, but he’s freaked out, eyes alight like a caged animal. You attempt to gather the momentum to vault the serving counter, but it’s like you’re moving through syrup, your legs weighted and stuck.

He’s wiping some odd, tacky substance from his chest that you can’t make out in the low light, something that clings to his fingers like glue, then he’s reaching into his pocket and grabbing around for something you’re not sure you want to see. There’s movement behind you, in the front of the house, and someone calls your name from miles away, but you’re too focused on whatever’s about to happen in front of you. You blink, and a series of things happen.

One; something sends you stumbling to the side, a firm force planted into your shoulder blades, the warmth of it blossoming on your skin. You manage to catch yourself on the edge of the back counter before you fall into it and hurt yourself.

Two; there’s a gunshot, and the shattering of glass, a hair away from where you were just standing. The sound reverberates within you, turning your bones to puddles, and humming in the pizza pan that has managed to stay in your hand this whole time.

Three; you look up, and you’re greeted with none other than the business end of a pistol, a dark, unblinking eye. In that same moment, something flies into vision - some white streak of fluid - and rips the gun from his hand, sticking it to the back wall.

Four; before you can process anything that’s just happened, your body takes its own initiative, and slams the pizza pan down on his head. Whoever the fuck was in the diner is knocked out cold now, collapsing in a crumpled pile at your feet.

Your hands are still shaking when you come to, looking at the white substance that seems to have stuck the guy’s pistol to the wall. It’s thick and tacky, it forms tendons and limbs, it stretches its fingers out across the wallpaper like a hand, the gun nestled in its palm. It’s stringy, like the stuff you found on the jar in the pantry, all those weeks ago, after you sent everything tumbling to the floor and Peter caught you.

Looking in the direction of the gunshot, you almost want to laugh. On the photo wall, one of the frames has been blown to pieces, the bullet buried deep through the plaster right where your shocked, reindeer-antlered head would have been. You suppose you got your wish after all. Maybe you could get Sal to keep it with the hole instead of replacing it with a new one; make up some bullshit about preserving the history of the diner. You’d have to show Peter.

Peter.

“Peter!” You say his name in a gasp, shocked back to the situation at hand, unsure if he’s safe or not. What if more people came in through the back and ransacked the place? Stabbed him up? Left him for dead on the kitchen floor? Despite this, you still hope that when you look behind you, he won’t be there. You don’t even want to think about what could come after.

You’re turning, hoping you just spoke out loud to an empty diner; you’re turning with no idea what you’re going to do, about Peter or the ceiling monster you apparently now have to deal with.

“Are you okay?”

Great. You’re not sure to be upset or relieved.

Peter says your name about a hundred times, between strings of fervent apologies and other anxious ramblings. His hair is ruffled into a wild thatch from raking his fingers through, his face sparked into a hybrid of focus and panic. The vice on your chest relaxes from sheer relief that he’s close to you and unharmed - then immediately clutches you again when you realise he did the exact opposite of what you asked.

And then there’s that gaping pit in your stomach. The one that’s been growing since you had to lock yourself in the staff room and plug the door with old tablecloths to stop the smoke from getting through.

He’s alert and wound tight, that beautiful brain of his working a mile a minute; his hand is outstretched towards you, his eyebrows furrowed low. He’s still mumbling and you’re not listening, your ears ringing from the gunshot; his voice just adding to the din.

“Peter.” You say again, dumbstruck, and he cringes, screwing his eyes up as he keeps talking, the whole thing coming out in one long sound. Something simmers under your skin and in your gut.

“I’m sorry, I know you told me to stay, I’m sorry, I just kept thinking about Ben, and the gun, and-“

“Peter.”

“And what you said before, I couldn’t just sit there knowing you could get hurt, and after I lost-“

“Peter!” This one cuts through to him, puts a stopper in his mouth. You’re mad, that’s what it is, and the adrenaline pumping through you doesn’t help. It’s confusing, you can’t quite pinpoint what you’re mad at, but it’s got you wound up - so you pick something to vent your frustration at; your hand flung towards the white shit on the wall, glueing down a weapon that could have killed either one of you. “What the fuck is that?!”

Peter flinches. Strong, brave Peter flinches at you. He’s small, tiny even, shrinking under your gaze and betraying his every emotion with his eyes. He’s caught, cornered, backed into something he couldn’t possibly get himself out of.

“Is that your question for the day?” He asks, breathless, and you grow more exasperated.

“What?”

“Is that your question for the day?” When he repeats himself, he’s louder, but his still voice trembles. Usually, he fidgets, but he’s unnaturally still - rigid in what you can only describe as not a fight or flight response, but a freeze. “Because if it is, I have to be honest.”

You don’t want to push him, but it seems like you’ve fallen into your old ways of snark and bitterness, because you’re snapping at him, even though his reaction makes you want to cry.

“Yeah, it is! Does it matter?”

He’s upset - you’ve upset him, you horrid thing. Peter opens, then closes his mouth, and repeats this a good few times before he finally settles on what he wants to say. He’s shaking, you can see it in his hands as he turns to check that the intruder is still out cold on the diner floor.

In that same moment, you realise what all this mysterious tacky stuff has been - what you found on that jar, what’s glueing the gun to the wall. You’ve seen it before, splatters of it on the sidewalk, hanging from streetlights and awnings, trailing in the wind from skyscrapers. It’s not glue, or streamers, or spray paint - it’s a web.

Peter Parker takes a breath, and holds your gaze.

“I’m kind of sort of Spider-Man.”

Chapter Text

There you were, haloed in orange lamplight, the cast of it picking out the flyaways in your mussed hair and the gloss of your lashes. If it had been lit properly, he’d be able to see the flush on your cheeks and chest, the spark in your eyes, despite the fact he was crawling along the popcorn ceiling, dusty under his fingertips, trying his best to be silent. You’d be mad he’d gone against you, he knew that, he just hoped you’d understand why he did it, after the fact.

You hated him. You said it yourself. Granted, you didn’t know that he and Spider-Man were anything more than vague acquaintances, but the distinction between the two was getting smaller and smaller. Spider-Man was eating into his life, Joe’s was supposed to be a low-risk escape from that. A few times, when he was feeling brave, he’d risked not even bringing the suit to work - enjoying the feeling of normal clothes against his skin, being able to roll his sleeves up without exposing anything too telling. It was like being able to breathe again, the knots in his chest loosened to near nothingness. He was just Peter again; he hadn’t been ‘just Peter’ since he was in high school.

He was lucky that this wasn’t one of those days, because as soon as that gun was pointed at you, he was seventeen again; the rain running tracks down his spine and soaking its cold fingers through his hoodie. Warmth spreading over his lap and hands, slippy as he pulls Ben into his lap, then cranes over him to try and shield him from the relentless New York downpour. His jeans had been stained red, stiff and cold in the hospital waiting room. He’d thrown them out when he got home.

It was this sort of thing he was supposed to prevent, and you were the sort of person he was supposed to protect, his responsibility. It was ironic, really, the two of you pulling the same card, but he would have to respect it. You had the ability to protect those in your care, so you had to. It was the same thing he hated in himself.

So he’d bitten the bullet and intervened, he had to suck it up, no matter how much your wrath would cost him. He didn’t want you to know about Spider-Man, and he didn’t want to ruin things between you (already very precarious Things, after Christmas), but he’d decided a while ago that he’d do nearly anything if it meant you lived. It was agony on a good day; being shit on online everyday, having a whole city rely on you for safety, having to walk around like normal with his ribs shattered to pieces - but it hurt him the most to lie to you, to look you in the eye and not be able to defend himself, or apologise for not being there when you needed him most. And yet, you’d seen him - even when he had a mask on, even through a television screen, even when you didn’t know it was him - and you still cared about him.

He’d already held someone he loved after they were shot. He’d already sat there, desperately trying to hold them together with his shaking hands, leaving handprints over their skin and clothes, holding onto their last bit of life. He’d already gone home covered in the blood of someone that would no longer be there to catch him when he fell. He wasn’t going to do it again, he was pretty sure he couldn’t - Ben’s death had taken so much out of him, and he wasn’t really sure there was much of him left.

The look on your face when he tells you is enough to make him wish he’d never been bitten by that fucking spider in the first place.

-

You wish, just once, you could live your life not being wracked by guilt.

You’d left, obviously. After doing the bare minimum, legal requirement for your job, you’d simply gathered your stuff and bolted. Peter would deal with it, considering he’s apparently used to this sort of shit. Goddamn it. Fucking Peter. Fucking Spider-Man. By the time you got out, it was one in the morning - but you’re still storming home through the streets, your phone buzzing in your pocket. It’ll be him, it’s been him every time. You’re ignoring him. He can fuck off.

You don’t really care what he has to say, frankly. Everything after That Bit was just white noise as you got your shit and left. You’d only barely remembered to throw him the keys to the diner. Peter had been trying to talk to you, you remember that much, babbling and trailing after you as he frantically tried to deal with the situation at hand, but there was only roaring in your ears.

Spider-Man had been trying to talk to you, and you’d ignored him.

It wasn’t quite sticking in your head. You almost didn’t believe him, because there was no way in Hell you would ever consider the two of them interchangeable. Peter blindly accepted his fate as ‘Peber’ until you got his name tag fixed up, how were you ever supposed to believe that this was the same guy keeping the city from rack and ruin. That would mean you nearly had sex with Spider-Man. That you’ve seen Spider-Man, not just without the mask, but without most of his clothes. That would also mean that Peter was that poor kid saving lives every day, instead of enjoying the last precious seconds of his teen years, or studying for his exams, or spending time with his friends, as he so desperately deserved.

It would mean that Peter was the one who let you down, back then. Peter didn’t get you out of the diner, didn’t stop the fire, didn’t save the day.

The whole thing made you want to vomit, and the almost incessant buzzing of your phone was certainly not helping. Messages flicker across the screen as you fish it out of your pocket, using the torch to illuminate your apartment door while you scrabble to put your key into the lock. It’s mostly Peter spamming you - though it seems to just be updates on the situation mixed with the odd, panicked message - with a few from Sal. Apparently Spider-Man dealt with the situation, got the guy arrested, and was currently working on dealing with the CCTV footage. Apparently the force of your pizza pan on his head meant the dude forgot most of the robbery entirely. Apparently your phone isn’t quite finished buzzing yet.

New Message from sal joes: What the ever shitting fuck is going on with my restaurant !!!!!!!!!!!

That one you’ll have to reply to. Goddamnit. God-fucking-damn it. Sal would probably wash your mouth out if he knew how much you were taking the Lord’s name in vain. You feel like Peter’s ratted you out to your teacher or something, and now you have more shit to deal with on top of the slew you’re already struggling with. Somehow, you manage to pull yourself together enough to reply - not enough to be polite, but enough to get him off your back for the night.

Reply to sal joes: it’s fine pete’s handling it. i had to go.

Kicking your shoes off in your hallway, you decide you need to say more than that - promise him an explanation when you’re less zombie-like at the very least. It’s not really fair, you like Sal and he hasn’t done anything to deserve a bad attitude from you - it’s not like he’s listened to you rant about a superhero for months on end only to turn around and be the bastard.

Reply to sal joes: ill tell you tomorrow it’s late. sorry. goodnight sal.

He starts typing back almost immediately. Your coat and bag are cast to the floor too, loose change and old, crumpled receipts spilling out across your hallway, followed by your diner cap. You’ll deal with it in the morning, you’re too tired to do anything else.

Glued to your phone, you somehow make it to your bed, cocooning yourself in the sheets and curling into a ball. Your heartbeat hums through the covers, seemingly shaking them with every sluggish pulse, as you watch the three dots under Sal’s name stop, start, then stop again. Eventually, something comes through.

sal joes: OK, as long as your safe. Peter is texting me about it.

sal joes: Sleep well Camino :)

Wrong ‘you’re’, but the sentiment still stood, and flooded you with a weird sense of comfort. Then, even though you were trying not to look, Peter’s name pops up at the top of your screen, your name typed underneath, alongside a plea to respond to him.

The comfort of Sal and your bed quickly stales, spurred on by the still-lingering shaking in your hands, and the emptiness of your apartment - a pitiful place you didn’t really have enough money to decorate, filled with anything you could thrift or get free from the street. Your dining table was missing a leg from where you found it in Brooklyn, but it didn’t matter much because only one person used it anyway - you just had to eat on one side of it.

It’s worse in the dark - the loneliness of it. You spend however many hours a week in some fluorescent-lit kitchen, or sat in the sunspots in the front of the diner, the darkness of your apartment seems like the emptiest place on the planet in comparison. You may as well be in the fucking Arctic circle.

You used to hate your job because it was a stupid job; the parties, the customers, the constant smelling of passata. Now you hate it because of what it’s done to you - you can’t even sit alone in the dark like a normal person, you have to be able to mumble your way through O Sole Mio, and know fifty different types of cheese, and get all attached to your stupid idiot coworker. Who even are you anymore, some capitalist dumbass? Your phone buzzes again, and you catch some more messages from Peter, a few minutes apart.

peber joes: i know u don’t wanna talk but can you please let me know you got home ok?

peber joes: are you alright?

peber joes: if you don’t answer im gonna have to come look for u

Location Request from peber joes.

peber joes: please just answer

The light of it hurts your eyes, the screen trembling in your grasp, your wrist tourniqueted in your bedsheets. You need to do something though, let him know you made it home, even though the thought of talking to him makes your skin crawl. Your phone is buzzing again, Peter barraging you with messages. You don’t have the strength to read them, just let your phone fall to your mattress. The vibrations reverberate through the old springs and stuffing, echoing through the fabric against your ear.

Outside your window, New York murmurs and chatters, small needles of the city coming through your curtains. You’ve left the window open again, but you don’t have the energy to get up and close it, even though the chill is beginning to make you shiver. In the distance, there are horns and sirens, as there always are in New York, the sound washing over you and yanking you under like a riptide.

And you, alone in your room, crumple.

It’s been a while since you’ve had a good cry, you were probably due one, but by fuck does it hurt. You’re not even sure why - though it’s probably something to do with the fact that you nearly had sex with your co-worker, then found out he was the spandex guy you’d harboured a grudge against for months, then nearly died - all in the space of an hour.

You suppose it makes sense in retrospect, as most things do. The reflexes, the abnormal strength, the lateness, the white ‘goo’ that cropped up in odd places, patching leaky pipes or holding rickety furniture together. After the cupboard incident a few months ago, you’d gone to check on the shelving the next day, and found more of it bolting the units to the walls of the pantry. You’d just assumed it was some new construction bullshit, because what the hell else could it have been. It was frustratingly obvious. He’d even told you so many times about his ridiculously stressful ‘other job’ and you hadn’t bothered asked him about it - instead, you’d looked him in the eye and said ‘What are you, Spider-Man?’, like some idiot. Your chest burns with embarrassment. Everything just seems to hurt, the strength sapped out of you and consumed by whatever sinkhole was opening between your lungs.

For the millionth time since you met him, you think ‘fuck this guy’, even though tonight you nearly did. You were tired of being tired of him, he was on your mind near constantly, but it had started to become comforting - he was, if anything, a constant. Whether that was constantly annoying you, or the determination he has towards being your friend, Peter was always just there. Why wasn’t Spider-Man?

It’s now that you notice that your phone has stopped buzzing. Something else has replaced it - some soft knocking on your window.

Your heart leaps to your chest for a split second, before you realise there’s only one person you know that could knock on a window five stories above the street; then, it sinks right back down to the pit of your stomach. When you shrink back into your nest of sheets, trying to stifle those snotty, post-cry sniffles, you can see his silhouette through your curtains, backlit by the lights of the city. It’s not him, you know it isn’t, he’s all spidery and angled, perched on the railing of your balcony. Peter hasn’t come to check on you, Spider-Man has - Spider-Man is at your window and calling your name all soft, in Peter’s voice, turning your stomach. You debate ignoring him, but then your curtains shift in the chilly New York wind, and you remember your window is wide open - ignoring him would just make him try and get in, and then he’d see the pathetic, sad lump you’d become.

“Go away.” Your voice is weak, almost laughably so. He shifts outside, a quick, sharp movement - as if pricking his ears at the sound of you. Your name comes too easily to his mouth, sending stabs through your ribs and lungs, winding you. There are a few painful moments of silence, the metal railing creaking underneath him as he shifts his weight. Eventually, he speaks.

“Please talk to me.”

“For fuck’s sake.” You’re up in an instant, scrubbing tears from your face with the heel of your hand. Everything seems to have fermented into anger, as it usually does for you, festering into some acrid, heavy thing in your throat, a tangle of barbed wire. You rip your curtains open, only to be met with a gloved hand. Spandex-ed hand, even.

It’s not Peter, it’s him, in the suit and everything, his hand outstretched and about to knock again. You must startle him, because he jolts backwards, tipping over the balcony and towards the street far below; instinctively you reach out to grab him, gripping his wrist and stopping the fall, your shoulder jolting with the sudden weight. You yelp, the fabric textured and unnatural under your hand, almost letting go of him from the shock of it.

Spider-Man stares up at you with those big white eyes, reflecting the moonlight and streetlamps, the lenses of his mask adjusting in the dim light. It kills the anger, and festers some odd fear instead. His face, or lack thereof, is distinctly alien and blank, sorely lacking the marks and dimples of Peter’s face - your heart aches with the knowledge that he’s under there, your Peter. If you squint, you can see the rise of his cheekbone, marred by the black webbing that runs over the suit, wrapping around the curves of his arms and ribcage. His free hand comes up, scrabbles around along his collar line for a seam, gets his fingers under it and pulls - exposing his neck, and then his face in a puff of brown curls.

When Peter looks up at you, his eyes are wide, lips parted as if about to say something - but neither of you say a word. You knew it was him, that it had always been him, but seeing him pull the damn mask off - seeing it in person - makes your ribs squeeze your lungs. His chest jumps with a sharp inhale, an anxious pulse thrumming beneath your fingers like a bassline. Every word you’ve ever learnt seems to dissolve on your tongue, your mouth thick with nerves, but your body acts of its own accord and pulls him upright again.

You must overestimate the weight of him, though, because he’s suddenly right there, in front of you, barely an inch or two between you. That feeling floods you again, the one you normally get when Peter’s around, and the one you apparently get when he’s this close. You can smell him, the soft scent of his deodorant, mixed with the cheap laundry detergent you can buy in bulk in the city. There’s dish soap and lemon and coffee, smudged ink from studying on his breaks, and caramels from plating desserts. It’s an odd effect; this is apparently the magic combination that quiets the buzzing in your head. That, and the softness of the flannels he wears before he changes into his uniform. And the way his hands warm your upper arms on particularly cold shifts. And the way he holds cigarettes like a pen, stubs the embers out in little twists on the paving flags. He’s so close that all of it comes rushing back to you, and the suit does nothing to prevent the heat of his skin warming you through, melting you into syrup. If you just leant forward you could -

His nose bumps yours softly, and before he can shy away from you again - before you can get all warm from the proximity of him - you retreat into your apartment. Peter follows, manoeuvring himself in through the window and pulling it closed when he notices the chill in your home. He’s stuck to the wall, and he watches you avoid the sight of it, slowly lowering himself to the floor; mask is wrung between his hands as he watches you pace and clatter around your tiny kitchen, setting a mug and a tea bag next to the kettle before clicking it on. Another mug is in your hand, and you turn to Peter, but your voice dies in your throat when you see him. His name sparks on your tongue like popping candy, but you swallow it back, your head filling with the crackling racket. There’s more silence, each of you waiting for the other to speak - until you both do.

“I got you the day off tomorrow.”

“You want a tea or something?”

You can’t help it, but the iron grip on your chest loosens with relief at not having to go to work tomorrow; you’re not quite sure you could take the interrogation from your coworkers, let alone the fucking police. When you finally force yourself to make eye contact, Peter’s face is all tense and red - not like when he gets embarrassed, but with the wind and rain against his cheeks. It’s odd to see him like this, not dressed as Spider-Man (though you’re not sure you’ve processed that yet, either) but so uncomfortable and stiff. Sure, he had his moments of awkwardness, but not to this extent. He sniffs, pushing his hair away from his face, waiting for you to answer first. The suit must not be waterproof, because his hair is damp, his curls clumping together in a shiny mass. He’ll be getting cold - unless he doesn’t get cold anymore.

“Thank you.” You mouth, afraid to say it any louder than a whisper.

“No problem.” He mouths back, then clears his throat and speaks aloud. “A tea would be nice. It’s fucking cold.”

It’s soft, his voice, barely audible under the rumble of the kettle behind you, like he’s scared of being heard, and you sorely miss the sound of it. There’s a distinct Queens tang to it, the auditory equivalent of fresh newspaper and spearmint. The way Peter’s holding himself, shy, contained, eyes peering around the room and taking it in - you realise you’ve never seen him outside of Joe’s before, let alone your apartment. You’ve not had a friend around to your apartment before, never mind a coworker. Does Peter still count as a friend?

He’s made new, you think, backlit by your lamps, parts of him soaked in their warm glow, like the dappled sun through leaves. He’s softer when he’s not under the diner fluorescents, soft threads of copper picked out in his hair, his bone structure illuminated. It’s the first time you’ve been able to get a good look at him without his uniform or some ratty hoodie - not quite naked, but close enough. He’s toned, the light casting shadows across the curve of his arms, but he’s skinnier than you’d thought; not quite a surprise, though, it wasn’t like he was in the best financial situation at the moment. All that swinging probably didn’t help.

Swinging. Fuck. Spider-Man is in your apartment.

You only notice how quiet it is when the kettle’s boiling comes to an abrupt stop, and it jolts you into action. The tea is poured, steeping the bag, and you watch the rich colour blossom in the water - suspended like ink. He doesn’t come near until you beckon him closer, and you can tell he’s trying not to touch you as you hand the mug over; whether it’s because of the Spider-Man thing, or the sex thing, you’re not quite sure. He can probably tell you’re trying not to look at the suit, focussing on tugging the teabag around by the string, bumping it against the walls of the mug.

You just nearly had sex with Spider-Man. You feel gross for thinking about it so much, but it’s not something you can easily move past.

“I’m sorry for leaving earlier.” You find yourself saying, though you’re not entirely sure you are sorry, it wasn’t like you disappeared for no reason. In fact, it seemed like one of the better reactions - if anything, you were proud you didn’t pass out or get all weird with him. Peter doesn’t even attempt a sip of the tea, just sets the cup down and stands around. If it was any other time, you’d offer him a seat.

“Don’t be. I understand.” He says, his voice raw. There’s a moment as he watches you force the scalding liquid down your throat, barely tasting the tea, refusing to give anything away to him about how awful you feel. You’re fine, look how normal you are, drinking tea and being fine. You gulp, and he clears his throat from whatever’s caught in it. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” You know what, but you want him to tell you. You want to hear it out loud, have him present the whole thing to you, spill it over your floor. You want an evidence board, with pictures and receipts and red thread strung between. Instead, Peter shrugs.

“A lot of stuff. The whole not telling you thing.”

You scoff. “That’s part of the job description, dude. I don’t blame you.”

It’s the right thing to say, so you say it. You don’t mean it, but there’s not really an alternative. It’s unreasonable to expect him to tell you everything about his life, especially after you spent so long ranting about it, but the selfish part of you hoped he would at least spare you the embarrassment. Peter huffs out some dry chuckle, though there’s no humour in it, and your ears burn at the sound of it.

“You blame me for the other thing, though.”

“What?” You know what he’s talking about, you just hope he isn’t. Your eyes are glued to your sink, as you rinse already-clean plates and mugs under the tap, just to give your hands something to do - just so you don’t have to look at him. Peter swallows some tense breath, then bridges the gap between you, resting a comforting hand on your arm. You jump at the touch of him, squirming away and pressing yourself against your cabinets. He takes a few steps back out of the kitchen, hands raised, and your breath rattles in your chest as he builds the courage to speak again. Eventually, it just tumbles out of him.

“The fire. I’m also sorry about the fire.”

Something hurts inside your head, but you swallow it like a crumpled ball of sandpaper, pushing away the fuzzy feeling that was already building in your ears and fingertips. Even the mention of the fire is enough to set your heart racing - you already think you smell smoke.

“The fire was a stupid thing, Peter.” It wasn’t. It lives in your skull like some smoking, lurking thing, sapping away at you. Your rinsing has turned to scrubbing at this point, trying to get the ash and soot out from under your nails, but you’re not quite sure it’s there.

“Yeah, but you were in trouble. If you had been-” Peter cuts himself off, and the millions of paths that sentence could have taken are immediately closed off. He takes a breath, and your heart is still racing under the softness of it. “If I’d known, I would have come, I promise.”

You know it wasn’t his fault, and you know there’s nothing he realistically could have done to stop it, but your heart still twists, still hardens against him.

“But you didn’t.” It comes out before you can stop it, completely forced out between gritted teeth. Peter can tell, he’s creeping closer, pricking your flesh into goosebumps. “It’s done now.”

“I saw it on the news the day after, I felt awful. I took one day off, and next thing I know, Joe’s is-” You interrupt him before he can say anything else, your throat burning, spitting out your words like you were coughing up soot after the fire. They’d sent you home, the NYFD, then interviewed you a few weeks later for the investigation before the new Joe’s opened. Your fingers itch, and when you look down you think you see your fingertips stained yellow with tobacco. When you blink, there’s nothing there. You scrub at them harder.

“It’s not your fault.”

“You kind of seem to be upset with me, though.”

“It’s not like you started it.”

“Well, no, but-”

The buzzing in your ears sends a jolt through your brain, and you slam the tap off - the force of it juddering through your pipes. In the sink, your hands are burning, and you yank them out of the steaming water, suddenly aware of the sensation. There’s something hot and rasped caught in your throat, and you want to cough it up, spit it out, but you’re terrified it’ll come out black.

“Listen, Pete, I’m upset with Spider-Man. Not you.”

He blinks, eyebrows drawn together in that stupid, concerned way they have been for the past couple of hours. You can only last a few painful moments, looking at him, before you can’t stomach it anymore. Peter speaks slowly, shamefully, somewhat regretfully.

“We’re the same person.”

“Really? Really, Peter? Because Spider-Man seems to have a smart ass comment ready twenty-four-seven, and you once told a customer we were out of ‘ordange’ juice.”

Now, that seems to get at him, strikes a nerve somewhere beneath the spandex and knocks the wind out of him with a sucker punch. Already, your tongue stings with something acrid and rotten, your heart sinking into the pit of your gut. It’s like kicking a puppy, the way he looks at you, like you just took every precious thing you’d shared over the past couple of months, and ripped them to shreds in front of him. He breathes, chest heaving, blinks. It is, unfortunately, painfully, human.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Me neither.”

In your apartment, a clock ticks. The pipes rumble. Outside, a distant siren pierces the Manhattan smog. Peter’s hands twitch at the mask twisted between them, pulling the fabric into a thick, tense rope. He sniffs, pushes the wet thatch of hair back from his face, and finally speaks - quietly, delicately.

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

It softens you. Melts you. You want to apologise - not out loud, no, just cup the wishbone of his jaw in your hands and feel the scratch of his stubble against your palms. Hold him. Run your fingernails over his scalp, make his nerves sing and the tension in his shoulders ease. Maybe then, he’d let you kiss him again. You’re awful to him.

“Me too.” You eventually manage. Then, in case it wasn’t obvious, “About you.”

Peter nods. He knows what you mean - and that you’re not saying what you want to say. He knows, because he’s not saying it either.

“I, uh, care about you, y’know?”

“I know. I care about you too.”

Maybe one day you’ll be honest with each other. You keep saying you will, but it never ends up that way. It’s easier to lie - he probably knows that better than anyone. The lenses on his mask look up at you, reflect the lights of your kitchen. You look away from Spider-Man’s eyes, and focus on Peter’s. His nose twitches, an awkwardness strung between his shoulder blades.

“Do you want to talk about what happened tonight?” He murmurs - then, when you pull a face; “Not the burglary part, the part… before. Though we should talk about the burglary too. And-”

There’s a measure of speechless gesturing; a flap of a hand connecting the two of you, binding you into a single, nameless unit. Not quite a relationship, but more than anything else.

“This.”

There’s something at the root of you that wants to invite him to stay, plant him in your bed, and glue yourself in his hair, so he’ll never leave. Something else wants to never see him again. Your soul screams, reaches for him, strains its muscles, and you breathe in the absence of him.

“I think I just want to go to bed, Pete.”

“Okay.” He’s offering some pitiful half-smile, letting you break his heart and sweep the cracked porcelain of it under your kitchen cabinets. In the dim light of your apartment, the rings under his eyes look darker than ever. “It’s been a long day.”

“It has.”

The mask comes back on, though he hesitates before he can slip it over his mouth, then moves closer into the safe bubble of your kitchen. Before you can react, he presses his lips to your forehead, the mask bunched up on the bridge of his nose, and climbs out of your window. He closes it behind him again, because of course he does. You miss him already.

The tea you made for him is untouched, still steaming on your counter.

Chapter Text

The police kick you out of your apartment around noon.

You’re jolted out of some odd, disjointed nightmare by a knock on the door, and then you’re given fifteen minutes to get the shit you need before you’re on your ass on the streets of Manhattan with just your phone and the clothes on your back. It takes a ridiculous amount of needling to get them to explain why - when they eventually cough up some story about how you’ve allegedly assaulted a man with a pizza pan.

You don’t have the energy to get angry or argue or even roll your eyes - you just park yourself on the stoop, and stare blankly out at the street, midday traffic grinding up the tarmac a few blocks over. It takes you a few seconds of sitting there before you remember it’s the first week of February, and you’re fucking freezing, and you can’t possibly sit there all day.

All you want to do is talk to Peter.

But you hate Peter right now. More accurately, you hate Spider-Man, but then that sends you into the same loop you stayed up until five in the morning trying to get out of - of hating Spider-Man, knowing Spider-Man was Peter, and not wanting to hate Peter too. It breaks your heart a little every time, knowing he was putting himself through all of the shit that comes with being Spider-Man, and knowing that he was the one who let you down during the fire. All you want is to talk to him, just a little bit, and then he can work his usual magic and make you feel better about how fucking unfair the world is.

Your chance at an actual day off is dissipated when it sinks in that you’re probably not going to be allowed into your apartment until the evening, and before you know it, you’re walking, knowing you’re going to the diner, but not wanting to accept it. In the subway, you stare at the chewing gum and graffiti-spattered floor, forcing your eyes down before you catch a glimpse of the train schedules and do something you regret, even though the clusterfuck of a headache you have building up in the back of your mind is shoving the thought of getting on a train into Queens and wandering around until you find Peter at you.

The tannoy mumbles, and you swear you hear Peter’s name, before you throw yourself on the next train you see, and it spits you out a few blocks from the diner.

There’s some temptation to run back home, you can’t lie, before you remember that home is currently occupied by someone going through all of your stuff. Someone’s looking at your kitchen cupboards and your laundry and your messy bedsheets because you thought you had to step up and protect Peter - poor, defenceless Peter - like the very same bullshit hero you swore you hated. Somewhere, deep down, in the irrational and volatile part of you, your mind screamed that Peter was a liar, Peter deceived you, Peter put you in danger.

But you like Peter.

You really like Peter.

If anything, you like him too much.

The sight of Joe’s is enough to make your blood run even colder than it already was, your skin prickled and bumpy under the thin jacket you threw on in the rush of getting out of your apartment. For a moment, you hang around outside like some creep, peering through the windows - telling yourself that you’re not looking for anything in particular, but knowing that you were looking for him. The heartbeat that thrums in the dryness of your mouth eases after he fails to make an appearance behind the register or waiting tables, even though you’ve seen him practically every shift since he started. The absence of him seems to make the walls a little darker, the lights a little dimmer - like he was never there at all.

The bell above the door chimes as you eventually force yourself inside, and the sight of Sal by the photo wall, pasting spackle over the gaping hole that the bullet left in the plaster, makes that terrible pit of dread swirling in your gut rear its ugly head.

“What the hell are you doing here, Camino?” He asks, and his voice is so soft and concerned and awful that before you can put on a facade of being fine, your face crumples involuntarily, and he steers you into his office. He wraps you up in a flour-y bear hug, your face smushed into the grey-ish rags he calls a shirt, and, embarrassingly, you start to blubber to him about the apartment and the robbery and everything in between.

Not everything. Obviously.

“Do you want me to get Peter?-”

“No!”

You’re not impressed with your current crying streak, and you make a mental note to try and pull yourself together at some point - for now, you just scrub at the tears and snot and other generic mess with the blue paper towel Sal stuffs into your hands. It’s been pulled from the huge roll you use for anything and everything in the diner, and all of a sudden you’re remembering how you were supposed to clean last night, and the taste of old fries, and the sound of a gunshot, and you’re crying all over again.

“They’ve kicked me out of my apartment.” Your voice is embarrassingly whiny and pathetic as Sal parks you in the single, cracked pleather chair he has in his office. It’s not a very impressive room - a little bigger than the pantry - but small all the same, filled with no more than a desk, a chair, various out-of-date ingredients, and the oldest computer you’ve ever seen, despite the fact you’re pretty certain Sal doesn’t even know how to use one.

“It’s okay.” Sal is so loud and brusque at work that you forget he has kids outside of when he accidentally calls you by their names, and that one time he told you to go to your room. Now, it’s painfully prominent, having him murmur and comfort you as you fall apart in his office in front of him. “It’s going to be okay.”

“I don’t even know why.” The desk is cool against your forehead as you slump down in your chair and bow your head - partly to cool your skin, and partly to hide your face. Shame and discomfort rear up in your lungs, turning every breath into something shallow and sharp. There’s an itch in your muscles that you recognise as the instinct to bolt, to get out of the diner before something bad happens, but it’s swallowed down, scraping along your throat. You can practically hear Sal start to grind his teeth like he usually does when something’s pissed him off, accompanied by the terse kiss of his teeth that haunts all of your Joe’s related nightmares.

“Ah, it’s just some fottuto excuse to waste time.” You can tell he’s making a (somewhat unsuccessful) attempt to keep his anger in check, but his words are dripping in something akin to disgust. “Bastard tries to rob us dry, then turns around and claims he was just some poor customer who got whacked. The police know he’s lying, but they have to investigate anyway.”

This soothes the roaring in your ears somewhat, but does nothing for the maelstrom of frustration that’s been growing in the pit of your stomach for what feels like decades. For years, at the slightest inconvenience, Sal has been saying ‘there’s always something’ - and while you’d originally thought this habit was another product of his dramatic tendencies, it’s only now that you can fully grasp the deep-rooted fatigue behind it. If there wasn’t a problem with the diner, then there were problems with your apartment, or the smoke smell that you can never wash out of your hair, or a silly spandexed superhero that you now have the duty to protect.

When you sigh, it sounds like Sal.

“Shit.”

“Language.” He admonishes, but it’s tinged with amusement. “Either way, I’m sorting it out, so don’t worry about it. I’m about to go through the CCTV footage and send it off now.”

Your heart drops, and all of a sudden your regular problems are forgotten in favour of the bigger, worse problem of your boss potentially seeing his two (alleged) favourite employees commit a number of health and safety violations in his beloved family restaurant.

“CCTV?” It’s a battle to try and hide the panic on your face, and Sal is looking at you quizzically, his eyebrows knitted. “Didn’t… Spider-Man do that?”

“How would Spider-Man know how to get our CCTV footage?”

“Oh, I mean, he just said-”

“He said? You met him?”

You blanch, feeling the colour drain from your face. It dawns on you that no matter how much emotional turmoil you’re currently experiencing, no matter how much Sal presses and prods and coaxes, you have to tread very, very carefully. Instantly, the weight of knowing who Spider-Man is slams down on your already aching shoulders, followed by the punch to the gut of realising you will have to keep his secret. Your skin burns from a combination of guilt and panic, and you wrestle to get it under control before it reaches your eyes and Sal asks you something you won’t be able to lie your way out of.

“A little.” It barely leaves your mouth before his eyes have lit up, and you scramble desperately to reign in his excitement. “Like barely. It’s a bit of a blur.”

It’s not a blur. You remember distinctly how Peter’s chest and stomach stutter when you run your hands across them, and how his lips feel on your neck, and how he twisted the robber’s wrists into a makeshift web-handcuff situation. You nearly sink into a Peter-fuelled daze, the memory of his hands and his fingers and his mouth and his face making your stomach flip so quickly it makes you feel nauseous.

“I’ll look through the CCTV, Sal.”

“No, no, you’re off today.”

“I was meant to be in, but-”

“I’ll handle it, I just need to figure out how to turn this damn thing on-”

“Sal, please.”

He waves his hand at you in a way that you specifically recognise as his ‘end of’ gesture, and you know there’s no amount of wheedling, whining, or convincing you can do to change his mind now. Sal isn’t exactly the most tech-savvy (he once called you into his office to ask where he could find ‘the Hotmail’ on ‘the Bing’), and it might take him the rest of the day to figure out how to turn the computer on, but even he would eventually be able to find the CCTV footage, and then your years of service at Joe’s would come to an awful, humiliating end.

That settles it, then, you think, I won’t have a job by the evening.

Maybe Sal would be merciful enough to keep your pantry tryst from your coworkers, when the prying questions would inevitably come. Maybe now was the perfect time to indulge in the impulses you have to pack up, leave New York, and go completely off-grid in some shack in Alaska, where no one would be able to find you. Maybe you’d go to New Jersey, find some other place to sling pizza and watered-down Coke, and spend the rest of your days in solitude under the grossest boardwalk you could find.

No, even you wouldn’t sink that low.

By the time you’ve gotten out of the office and halfway across the diner, you’ve compiled a mental list of all the places you remember seeing hiring and picked the font for your resume, the restaurant noise merging with the buzzing that’s been ringing in your ears since the Christmas party until it all becomes one big wash of static. You realise you’re staring at the staff photo, obliterated to scraps where your face once was, with only those stupid fucking antlers remaining.

The door at the back of the kitchen opens, and Peter says your name.

There’s always fucking something. He’s all bleary and dark-eyed, and, even if your brain screams that they don’t, they brighten at the sight of you - before his face becomes smudged with concern. His hair is ruffled, growing a little long and forming duck-tail curls around the nape of his neck and ears. He’d stopped dry brushing it a few weeks ago under your suggestion he try scrunching and twisting his curls around his fingers, and it had managed to tame the perpetual fluff that always seemed to surround him like a halo - but now it was a few steps from a bird’s nest. In his hand was a carton of cigarettes.

“You’re here,” Peter says, like he doesn’t quite believe it, like you’re not standing in front of him. He blinks a few times, shuffles awkwardly on the spot, waits for you to say something, anything. Your mouth flaps uselessly, your brain flying into a mad scramble for something cool and casual to say before it spits out:

“That’s a bad habit, Parker.”

He smiles, and it feels like the clouds part.

“This is for your benefit - have to keep the act up, y’know.” He sounds tired, and it makes you hate yourself for doing this to him. If you could, you think, you’d take it all away from him, shoulder it as much as you could until he can get a good night’s sleep, get to walk through the city without the weight of the world on his shoulders. You did this to him, and there’s nothing you can do to make it up to him.

“Wanna join me?” He waves the pack at you, the cigarettes rattling inside, and you’re out on the back step before you can realise how much shit you’re about to get yourself into.

You wanted to avoid this. You’re not entirely sure why you’re taking the cig from him, letting him light it, roping yourself into a conversation you would probably rather die than have. It’s all too close, too casual, too normal, after he nearly fucked you, saved your life, then scaled your apartment building just to talk to you. If you could go back, you like to think that you’d avoid all of this, that you’d ignore him on the first day you met him, because not having him in your life would probably hurt less than watching yourself ruin his life, watching him try his hardest to be your friend.

You sit in silence for a bit. You’re probably both waiting for the other to speak first, but it never comes. It’s only when you begin to shiver that one of you moves.

“Here-” He takes that hideous, beautiful, vomit-coloured scarf and wraps it around you so that the wool fibres tickle your nose and lips, shielding you from the biting cold. Beneath the heaviness of the moment, something lighter begins to bloom, and you fight to not let yourself start to hope that it’ll work out between the two of you, that it’ll all blow over. “How’s that?”

It starts to snow. It reminds you of Christmas, and your chest tightens.

“Itchy.”

“You’re not supposed to be working today.”

“I got kicked out of my apartment.” There’s no use dancing around it, hiding your personal life from him anymore - he already knows where you live, and it feels like his hands are in your chest, holding your heart in his hands, and you don’t know if he’s going to crush it. The city drones in the background, swallowing up your hushed tones and hesitancy, chewing them up and spitting them out at your feet in one wet, tangled lump. The early morning fog that blows in off the river has long dissipated, but the weight of it still hangs in the air, fuelled by the tobacco smoke and clouds of breath that appear with each breath. Peter nods, chewing on the inside of his lips. It’s so awkward that you can barely move. “I’m not working I just…”

You don’t need to say anything else. The implication that you don’t have anywhere else to go is enough for Peter, and you don’t want to deal with the humiliation of verbalising how lonely you are, how little you have. He nods beside you, and you screw your eyes shut before the look of pity on his face can knock you sideways.

“You can stay at my place,” He offers, and you flinch like you’ve been punched. “If you don’t… you know….”

“No.” It’s an instant, unthought reply, but it’s the safest option. Behind your eyelids, you can guess at the face Peter is making - that sad, doe-eyed look that makes you want to cry, or punch a wall, or hold him. You’re hurting him again. You want to twist the knife, sever the connection between the two of you completely, but your selfish, carnal need to be heard, to be seen, overwhelms the urge and drowns you. For the first time, there’s an itch to take a drag on your cigarette, feel a head rush, anything, to quell the tightness in your chest before you ruin what you have with Peter any more than it already is.

If you were drowning, if you were falling, would Peter save you?

If you were in a burning restaurant with all the doors locked, would he break them down just to get to you?

“Sal’s going to look through the CCTV footage.” It’s all you can think to say that isn’t something that will inevitably disgust or consume you with a whirlwind force of self-hatred. Protecting your relations- friendship - with him is your top priority, and it’ll be hard to do that when you both get fired and you’re not contractually obliged to spend time together. It’s a neutral statement, plain - it’s safe.

“I already-” He knits his eyebrows, cutting himself off with a shake of his head. You can see the gears turning, the instinctual drive to protect either himself or you setting off some alarm buried in the synapses of his brain. You’ve heard about his supposed ‘Spider-Sense’, whatever the fuck that means, and you figure some part of that will be picking up on how close Sal is to receiving a front-row seat to the atrocities committed last night - if he can remember his password. “He won’t have gotten far with it, I’ll try and fix it.”

“Thanks.” The vice around your chest that’s been slowly tightening itself since last night has loosened somewhat, making room for all of the newer, just-as-overwhelming floods of regret and embarrassment to stake their claim on you. The months you spent trying to block him out of your life burn in the back of your throat, digging their nails in. It feels stupid now that he’s your friend - now that you realise how you’ve been missing out on the magical way he can fix things with a smile, or how a simple conversation with him dissipated that endless, gnawing feeling of the world ending.

Is this what being friends with Peter is? Is this what you’ve been denying yourself of?

“Here,” He says, and he pulls out one of the tupperwares that Joe’s puts takeout or leftovers in - you have a stack at home of identically stained, scratched-up plastic tubs collecting dust in a cupboard. There’s a note on the top with your name scrawled in Peter’s signature, smudged, blue-biro chicken scratch. “I didn’t think I’d see you for a while, and I was going to drop them off at your place but you’re here now, so…”

The sentence trails off, but he finishes it with a shrug, which you’d probably prefer. There’s a lot about you and Peter that could be finished with a shrug, which simultaneously breaks your heart and calms you. It’s hard to imagine Joe’s without him now, without his tattered jacket and bag cluttering up the break room, or his laughter streaming through the kitchen hatch and weaving its way through the tables. Beneath his Joe’s shirt, beneath the ratty towel slung over his shoulder, it isn’t hard to picture the work of art that lies beneath now that you’ve seen it for yourself. It must have shrunk in the laundry or something, because the once loose sleeves are now snug to the soft strength in his upper arms and shoulders, just loose enough for you to hook a finger beneath, if you wanted to - and by God, you did.

The spandex Spider-Man suit doesn’t leave much to the imagination, but who could imagine the smattering of freckles across his chest and upper arms, the curve of his spine between the broadness of his shoulder blades. Your mind’s eye takes the reins, recreating the soft trail of dark hair that started below his navel and retreated under the waistband of his work trousers. You can still feel the ghost of his nose - slightly crooked from an old break - pushed up against your cheek, though now it’s all reddened and ruddy from the cold. He’s beautiful. You can think he’s beautiful and not ruin your friendship, right?

You’re so, so stupid.

“We’re good, aren’t we?” It tumbles out before you can compose yourself, before you can realise that you’ve just been staring at him in silence as he toys with the smouldering stump of his cigarette.

“Hm?” Peter hums, a delicate little noise at the back of his throat that you want to wear around your neck, followed by his lips and tongue and hands and God knows what else. Your teeth are clenched together, knuckles white around the tupperware in your lap.

“Like, has last night-?”

“Last night hasn’t changed anything.” He flicks the filter into the cockerel statue, which is slowly becoming full. You’ll have to empty it soon, but the idea of dumping out months of old, sodden cigarette butts grosses you out enough to put it off for another month or so. Peter gives you a precious little smile, and while the snow is coming down hard enough to freeze a furnace, you feel your chest get so warm it could be glowing. “You’re still my friend.”

“Good,” You add another filter to the pile, “Cause I’m enjoying it.”

Peter is called inside, and by the time you’ve unwrapped his scarf from your neck, you’ve decided to get out of the diner and spend the rest of the day holed up in some cafe - not only to get your feelings in check, but because hiding away in your apartment was currently out of the question.

On the way out, before you even make it through the kitchen, Sal manages to make eye contact and immediately look away no less than five times. Instead of his usual farewell jeer of telling you not to let the door hit you on the way out, he mumbles, then scurries at lightning speed back into his office and shuts the door.

Fantastic. You’ll have to get started on a CV - it’s a wonder you weren’t fired on the spot. Maybe he feels bad because he’s known you so long, because he watched you grow from an awkward teen with an attitude problem into an awkward adult with a slightly more manageable attitude problem. Or because he needs to talk to Peter before he gives both of you the boot. Or it’s a question of consent - which is ridiculous really, because even though the CCTV has no sound, it would be fairly obvious that the two of you were very, very into it.

You need a drink. Unfortunately, it’s socially unacceptable to camp out in some awful bar and start drinking cheap, shitty liquor in the early afternoon, so a cafe will have to do. You’ve been sat there staring into space, your coffee growing cold, by the time you remember you don’t actually know what’s in the tub that Peter gave you. The note on top is stuck down with a strip of sellotape, written on a pilfered Joe’s-branded napkin, and when you turn it over, there’s more writing on the other side.

‘Let me know when you’re ready to talk :-)’

Of course he draws his smiley faces with noses.

You weren’t supposed to be in this morning, and your brain offers up the image of him leaving it outside your apartment door, respecting his distance while simultaneously putting the ball in your court; letting you reach out to him on your own terms. He’s kind, too kind for the trouble he’s managed to get himself in, and you want more than anything to tell him to get out of New York before either it, or you, can break him any more.

Inside is a row of freshly made cannollis, and when you turn them over, every one has a tiny smile iced onto the bottom.

The realisation dawns on you; that while neither of you were supposed to be in this morning, Peter was, and that it was him who covered your shift so you could recover from last night’s events. Not only that, but he found the time to make you a peace offering, a sugary, ricotta olive branch. Somehow, your phone is in your hands, and before you can figure out what you want to say, you’ve already texted him.

peber joes

lets talk

The milliseconds it takes for him to read the message and begin typing make your hair stand on end, and staring at those stupid little grey dots is something akin to torture. Before you can delete the message and pretend nothing happened, he’s replied.

peber joes

I just clocked out - I can be over in ten??

Those ten minutes must be in swinging time, because it would take thirty on a rough day on the subway to get to your place - which was nearly every day, never mind in Winter when New Yorkers somehow seem to get crazier. Almost on cue, you see someone skateboard past the window with no shirt on, just a Mets beanie and gloves. Your phone buzzes again.

peber joes

Oh shit your apartment um

We can meet for coffee or the park if you like?

Whatever you want

You type a few letters, then delete them. You keep pressing the backspace button in the empty bar, like it would magically conjure the right thing to say, then put your phone down, pick it up, and put it down again.

This is the right choice for you, isn’t it? This will lead to good things, and good times, and good feelings - so why is it so hard to take the first step?

peber joes

am i good to come over?

To my place??

Are you sure?

Do it. Do it.

peber joes

yes

Okay

peber joes Shared their Location.

see you soon :-)

When you bite into the cannolis, they taste of ricotta, Campari, and a kiss in the snow.

Chapter Text

You’ve been stood in front of Peter’s door for five minutes now.

That’s on top of the five minutes you spent working up the courage to go inside the building, and then the other ten minutes you spent pacing the block - just to try and shake some of your nerves out onto the pavement. It’s just knocking, just seeing the same face you’ve been seeing nearly every day for months now, but it feels bigger. 

You hadn’t been to a coworker’s place since the fire; not gone for coffee after a morning shift, or drinks after close, or a Red Bull run before the open. It made things easier to deal with. Sometimes it stung a little more than usual, especially when most of them were particularly inclined to come in all hungover and messy on a Saturday, with a whole new roster of inside jokes - but it felt safer, somehow. You’d been friendly with a few of them at some point, close almost, and even though they kept inviting you out with them, they all eventually stopped asking. Some understood, some didn’t - and once you'd overheard Sal hushedly call you ‘troubled’ to somebody through the gantry hatch, you were basically the point of no return. 

But Peter, as always, is different.

You glance at your phone. Seven minutes. Some awful part of you twists at the idea that maybe he’s wondering where you are, if he’s waiting for you; or if he’s being normal about it, like a normal person. Peter’s more normal than you, he wouldn’t take seven- no, eight minutes to knock on someone’s door, even if his hands were clammy and his heart was thumping so loudly in his ears he thought his eardrums might burst. You’ve still got your earphones on even though you paused whatever you were listening to long ago, the sound of your breath thrumming through your head. When you move to finally take them off, you fumble and swear as they clatter loudly to the floor. 

Immediately, you cringe, wanting the floor to swallow you up as muffled movement stirs behind the door in front of you. You’ve probably got about ten seconds to pull yourself together and appear fine enough for him not to be immediately concerned - a difficult task, considering that you have dark circles the size of plates, and you’re pretty sure you’ve got some sort of stress-related rash breaking out on your hands, but the door is already opening, and life (as it turns out) isn’t merciful.

All of a sudden, Peter is there, and you’re on the floor, frantically chasing your earphones as they scatter across the lino. When you look up at him, you’re suddenly relieved to find that he’s mostly just confused. Lamely, you flap your mouth for a second, and then blurt out the first thing that pops into your head. 

“I was just about to knock.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

Peter’s apartment smells like Peter - which is obvious when you think about it, but it didn’t cross your mind until this moment how painful this might be. There’s his soap, his deodorant, the faint oil fryer smell of any Joe’s uniform, which is currently half hanging out of a laundry basket near the door. It was like you were seeing him properly for the first time; this new, unknown Peter who exists beyond the confines of a kitchen. This isn’t the Peter you know or Spider-Man - this is Peter outside of Joe’s. Peter who does laundry. Peter who has a coffee mug on the drying rack that says ‘World’s Greatest Pop-Pop’, and some complicated calculations splayed out in sheets on the rickety little dining table. 

“It’s a bit of a mess right now, I haven’t had time to clean up, because of the-“ He’s babbling and flitting about, picking up different bits of odd clutter only to put them down again. His hair is damp against the collar of his sweatshirt; shiny and dark and curling up in little spirals around his ears that you had the sudden urge to wrap around your fingers. You step inside, and Peter’s pottering about the kitchen, preparing mugs and rooting through his cupboards. When you make your way into the main space of the apartment, barely a separate room, Peter looks up at you through his hatch and brightly chimes, “Would you like anything to drink?”

You quirk your brow. Suddenly, whatever haze had fallen over his face dissipates, and he blinks, dazed.

“I’m still in Diner Mode.” Peter rubs his eyes, then rakes a hand through his hair, disturbing the wet clumps of curls. No wonder it's always so frizzy, with the amount of times you've seen him tug and ruffle at it. The movement exposes the tips of his ears, shiny from the moisture, and their usual shade of flustered pink. He’s back into the cupboard in an instant, searching through boxes and jars before he finds what he’s looking for. “Okay, so I have coffee and…”

“I’m on the edge of my seat.”

“…Actually, that’s it.”

“Then I guess it’s my lucky day.”

You can’t help it, but your voice comes out dry and flat, and his eyebrows knit, something shifting in his expression. Your fingers go numb, and you remember what you came here to do - you just didn’t think you would get into it so quickly. Peter sets his shitty instant coffee on the side (and you would know it’s shitty, because you buy the same stuff) and just looks at you. You’re not sure what sort of look it is, something between his usual awkwardness, and some entirely new face you’ve never seen before. He’s planting his hands on the counter now, squaring his shoulders, and your breath hitches.

Maybe, you think, this is the face behind the mask. 

“I don’t know what to say.” It sounds awful and croaky, and it’s nowhere near covering the sheer amount of thoughts currently rushing through your head, but it’s all that comes to mind. 

What is there to say? Nothing much had really happened; coworkers hook up with each other all the time (granted, usually not on shift), but even then, you never even had sex. You can’t call him a ‘hook up’, he was somehow both more and less than that - just some guy you’ve kissed a couple times. Whatever the hell the two of you have been doing for months has never been labelled anything past ‘friends’, which you’re now quickly realising is nothing like what you actually are. You’ve been tormenting yourself, tormenting him, all because you couldn’t suck it up enough to admit to yourself that you care about him more than you want to, and because it’s easier to live with the possibility that something could, might happen. 

And now a new, worse feeling is looming over you; the possibility that Peter might not feel the same way about you.

Deep breath. Push it down. Bury it. 

“Then let me say it.” Peter is clearing his throat now, your heart rate spiking like a hummingbird, your teeth clenched shut. It takes one, two, five, seventy drips of the faucet before he speaks again - or maybe he doesn’t hesitate at all. 

“I’ve been thinking about something you said a while ago, before…” He trails off. Before everything. You grimace a little, suddenly feeling nauseous when you remember how rude you were to him, all the times you’d snapped at him when he was just trying to help. He’s the kind of person who helps people, and you’re the kind of person who pushes them away, apparently. All of the hate and grudges you’d held against him, all of the resentment, instantly falls onto your shoulders. You punished him for the crime of being happy and content, when his other job is being beaten to a pulp and worked to the bone, and you were stupid enough to not realise it was only because you hated yourself. 

“You said something about how shit happens, and Spider-Man won’t always be there. How I’m ‘just some guy’.”

“Peter, I-“ Your lungs are burning so hot you think you smell smoke again, and you try to hold your breath, even though you currently feel like you’re suffocating, “I didn’t… I don’t think that anymore. I’m-“

Deep breath. Push it down.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m fucked up.” You’re laughing, but it doesn’t reach your eyes, or Peter’s. 'Fucked up’ is an umbrella term, apparently, for having nightmares about a fire that happened over a year ago, shutting everyone out of your life, smelling smoke in every dark corner or pantry. ‘Fucked up’ covers being so desperately lonely that you have to compulsively hurt the first friend you make after isolating yourself for so long; stringing him along in some ‘will-they-won’t-they’ bullshit and letting him down every step of the way. He probably wants to cut you off. It’s probably better if he does.

“You’re not fucked up,” His face is soft, like ricotta against your tongue. Like the skin across his collarbones. “I just… About the fire-“

He’s not broken eye contact with you until now, but his gaze flicks to the dish rack, the walls - he fiddles with the faucet for a fleeting moment. You wait.

“I want to apologise for everything,” It’s slow to start, but once the dam is broken, it all comes out in a rush and drowns you. “I know we didn’t know each other then, but I want- I need you to know that I’m sorry. It’s my duty to protect people, and I didn’t protect you, and I’m sorry.”

“Peter-“

“Hold on. Last night, when you were talking about how it was your responsibility to-“ His voice wavers. You realise you’re still holding your breath. “How you had, like, a sense of duty towards Joe’s, and you were so brave, and all I could think about was how I let you down. Even before I knew you, it killed me just knowing that there was someone who needed me, and I didn’t come through for them. It- It messed me up.”

There’s a pang where your heart used to be, when you realise he’s not talking about you specifically, but just someone in general. Some poor citizen needing to be saved. There’s nothing else there, just hollowness and cold, stretching back and back into you like an abyss. This must be what heartbreak feels like, you realise; you’re not special to him, you’re just something else on his plate. Maybe, something in the back of your head leers, maybe you’re nothing to him after all.

Spider-Man, your coworker, is staring into you so intently that you can feel the weight of the city on his shoulders. 

“I nearly quit.” His voice hangs like a loose thread - like the ones on the diner tablecloths that if you pull, make the whole thing unravel. You twist your finger around it and tug, even though you know you’ll come apart too.

“Joe’s?”

“Being Spider-Man.”

“Oh.” 

Peter huffs a breath, twirls the faucet knob between his fingers with the same dexterity and fluidity he demonstrated between your legs last night, and your gut churns. The pipes groan to life, and he shuts it off again before any water has the chance to flow through. Then, he’s coming around the corner, out of the kitchen, and all of a sudden you’re in Peter’s living room, with Peter, and that's what he looks like at home. There’s no pretence, no uniform, no employee code of conduct between you. 

“I want to be just some guy. More than anything.” He’s so close to you now that you can smell lime body wash and shampoo, see a drip forming at the tip of that one curl at his left temple that’s more like a ringlet than the rest of them. And you only know it's there because you haven’t stopped thinking about him, looking at him only when his back is turned and no one could catch you staring. You can barely hear him over the shame spinning in your ribs like a catherine wheel.

“But after the fire, I sort of took it as a sign that I was meant to be Spider-Man. You were there, you lived it. It’s my responsibility to stop that from happening.”

You can’t help it, but your eye twitches. It’s the same thing that’s been bothering you about Spider-Man since before; the promise of selflessness and responsibility and duty that Peter is now forever bound to. Before last night, you would have told yourself that you hated Spider-Man because you felt like he abandoned you, because he broke some kind of stupid, city-wide promise - but now that you know it’s Peter behind the mask, blaming him feels too harsh when the world gives him enough shit to begin with.

He doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve the beatings, or the sleepless nights, or the working minimum wage just to go home to an apartment that will only get more expensive to rent. And all it does is make you angry. It’s unfair - everything’s unfair - and now it feels like your life, your near-death, was the event that made him keep giving himself and getting nothing in return. At the end of the day, you’re both just two twenty-somethings, trying to keep their heads above water.

It’s your fault that he’s still here, still hurting.

He’s still staring at you when you realise you’ve been silent for some time now, your mind blank and stuttering as Peter just looks on, almost concerned. The vice that’s been slowly tightening around your chest for months gives one final clench, and some long-buried string in your heart finally, finally snaps. 

You’re so tired. 

You knew it would happen eventually; that you’d run out of steam, or your knees would give out, and you wouldn’t be able to keep this up anymore. You’d always expected it to be while you were alone, or in Sal’s office, when you wouldn’t be able to keep up with all the silly little lies you’d been telling yourself - but not here, not in front of Peter, and not like this. 

And you’re not sure you’ve ever said any of this out loud - but the same tug in the back of your head that wanted to protect him last night is now thrumming away like a rubber band pulled taut. That pull, that itch, that simmers in your lungs and makes you feel like you’re responsible for him, or that he’s responsible for you. 

When you think about it, it’s guilt. Guilt that burns hot and acrid at the back of your tongue - guilt that puts you in debt to him, to everyone at Joe’s. You don’t just owe him an apology for lashing out, and running around the diner like a shithead; you owe him the truth. 

Deep breath. 

“Peter, I have to tell you something.”

Your voice sounds miles away - echoing in his box apartment, or maybe just in your head. You try not to notice the way his face twitches, or the way he stiffens slightly, or his eyes darting over you. His voice is tense, but not quite strained when he speaks. 

“What is it?”

Something scratches at the back of your throat, squeezing, constricting, scratching. This is it, this has to be it. 

Say it. 

Say it. 

“The fire was my fault.”

You weren’t sure what was going to happen. Sure, you’d imagined this scenario multiple times, all of them ending in various, and increasingly wild forms of punishment - losing your job, being arrested, getting cut off from the people who had been your whole life for years - but you’d at least imagined some form of relief. Perhaps the relief was the driving force of this whole confession, laying yourself bare and raw and bleeding in front of Peter in the hopes that he’d do something about it, take it all away, and still like you enough to speak to you afterwards. 

Only now, in practice, the relief never comes, and Peter just keeps staring at you. Instantly, you want to vomit. 

"What?”

You can’t read his voice. You can’t read his face. To compensate for this, your brain cedes all control, and your mouth keeps moving. 

“I was smoking out the back door and Sal called me in for some stupid reason - something about the pans or the sauce, or whatever - and I forgot to stub it out, and-“

That’s done something. Peter holds his hands up, eyes drawn wide, as if you were some sort of wild animal. Maybe you are. Maybe this is all some sort of twisted defence mechanism - spilling out the one thing you swore you would never tell anybody, in one last-ditch attempt at pushing him away. 

“Hey, hey-“

“I didn’t get to see the full report, but I’m not stupid. I know it started near the back door, and that some- some spark, or something, caused it. If I'd just-“ Your voice sticks like glue in your dry throat, like you’re trying to swallow cotton. “I nearly killed people. So much of it was destroyed - stuff that had been there for decades, family pictures, wedding presents.”

You think he says your name. You don’t hear it. 

“That burn on Sal’s arm is only there because of me. Because- Because he tried to get me out of there.”

It’s all too much now - even here, even in Peter’s apartment, you can smell the smoke, feel the heat. Through the hatch into the kitchen, you swear you can see a flame, licking up the walls, swimming in your vision like molten glass. It’s burning in your eyes, curling in your throat and nostrils, burning and burning and 

“Please, look at me.” 

When you finally make eye contact, a breath forces its way past your lips. His hands are steady and warm on your forearms, slipping down to clutch at your palms, as if weighing you down to reality. It’s as if everything else had slipped away, and he’s in the middle of it all, grounding you like a tether. You cling to him. 

“I’m sorry.” It tumbles out like an impulse. Peter shakes his head, soft and smudged in the lamplight. 

“Don’t be.” He says, firmly. Every wet curl shines and shimmers as he shakes his head, and the smell of soap pushes the soot that little bit further away. Maybe if you were to look out of the window, you’d see plumes of dark smoke rising from a building a few blocks away, but your gaze is stuck to Peter’s like a magnet. “You didn’t do anything wrong."

“I did,” The awful creature that’s been churning in your chest rears its ugly head again, “I caused so much hurt. And I’ve been hurting you, too - holding a grudge for something that was my own fault. You- You don’t deserve-”

“No.” Peter hasn’t let up, watching every twitch and flicker on your face. Is this how he speaks to the maniacs he fights in the street? Is this how he handles every catastrophic responsibility that falls into his lap? “You didn’t.”

“Peter, I did-“

“You didn't.” He says again, only this time, something sticks. The look on his face, the sadness in his eyes - it snaps your mouth shut. It’s the way he hovers around it, the unsureness in his face, that almost confuses you. “I… After the fire, I did some investigating.”

Your feet have gone numb. So have your hands, and arms, and legs, and just about everywhere else. When you don’t protest or interrupt, Peter continues tentatively. 

“I got access to the NYPD files, I watched the clean-up like a hawk, I-“ He cuts himself off, clearing his throat. His fingertips worry over your knuckles, back and forth, like a pendulum. “I did some stuff I wasn’t necessarily allowed to, but I needed closure. Joe’s was- It was one of the last things I had left of Ben’s, and…”

“What do you mean?” Your voice comes from another room, another planet. How could he know something you don’t? How could he have answers that you don’t have? Sal never told you anything about the report, about the cause, about any kind of investigation. Something is clawing inside your stomach. How? How? “Peter, what are you saying?”

His voice is softer than anything you’ve ever heard when he finally answers. 

“It was a fault with a fryer. Some electrical issue.” You can barely hear him, but he keeps talking anyway, even though it sounds like he’s on the other side of Manhattan. “Suppose it’s why Sal is so insistent on fryer training now, and- hey-?”

It takes a moment to register what you're doing, but you realise that you’re laughing. You can’t help it, but you’re laughing. Peter's utterly lost, his eyebrows tangled into that familiar furrow, the one you only see when you've completely perplexed him.

All this time, all this energy, spent tying yourself in knots and swallowing bile - and it was all the fault of a fucking fryer. Even now, the relief doesn't come, doesn't take all of the pains and aches of it away. Instead, it melts and morphs into something new - awful, burning, searing shame. And there's Peter in the middle of it all, just waiting for you, wanting the best for you. There's something hot on your cheeks, and it turns out that your laughter has quickly merged into crying.

You're actually crying. In front of him. You'd probably prefer being vaporised into a million pieces by whatever supervillain is calling themselves Spider-Man's arch nemesis these days.

"Oh my God," You blurt out, every cell trembling. It sounded like the beginning of a sentence, but any other words dissolve on your tongue.

Something warm wraps around you, and of course, it's him. He's holding you, and while you've had the odd bit of skin contact with him here and there - hands clapping on your shoulders, fingertips as he passes you ketchup bottles, lips pressed to yours in the snow - you'd never expected it to be like this. This close, you can hear his heart pounding away, the scent of his deodorant drowning out any scrap of smoke or burning oil, and your hands - against your will - fist into the back of his t-shirt.

You stay like that until it subsides, whatever it is, Peter murmuring things you can't quite hear with your ears muffled by his arms. Eventually, though, he pulls back, and fixes you with a look you can't really identify. It's the same one from last night, where he'd stood in the middle of your apartment in his spandex and his mask, wanting something from you that you aren't sure you can give him.

"I know that doesn't... fix it," He says, his voice rumbling through you like a wave - like you were one of his webs, and you can feel his feet tugging at the threads, knowing exactly where he was, and how far away, with one tiny movement. Even if you weren't a web, if you weren't coworkers, if you weren't people (though you suppose, he technically isn't, at least not all the way) you'd probably still be able to find him. "But it's the truth."

Even if you could dredge up something meaningful and coherent to say, you don't think you'd be able to actually say it - not with your tongue feeling so heavy and sluggish in your mouth. You settle on the first thing that comes to mind - the only thing your mouth can remember the shape of.

“I’m sorry.”

Peter shakes his head. “Nothing to be sorry about.”

Your diaphragm is still convulsing with the aftershocks of tears, and your breath trembles in your lungs. It's all coming out now, and you don't think you'd be able to stop it if you wanted to - not now that dam is broken, and Peter hasn't gone running for the hills. Apparently, that's given your brain the go-ahead to spew out pure, babbling nonsense.

“I was awful to you.”

"You really weren't."

"I, I just-" Your breathing hitches again, your face burning hot and bleary, “God, this is pathetic. I’m supposed to be apologising to you.”

You're bowing your head, avoiding eye contact, but you can hear the way his face looks, just from the gentleness in his voice, the concern that soaks the room like gasoline, threatening to be set alight.

“You really think about yourself like this?” 

“I’m- I really am sorry Peter. I was so mean. You don’t deserve that.” 

It’s instant. It's genuine, and it's absolute. “I forgive you.”

There goes that familiar feeling again, the one that claws at you from the inside, and hates how nice he is, how soft he is when the world is so hard to him. You swallow thickly, forcing it down, and choke out a dry laugh, your face scrubbed raw from the heels of your hands. You probably look awful, but he's still looking at you like he always does - whatever that is.

“You know you’re allowed to hate me. You don’t have to be nice to me just because I’m snotting all over your couch.” 

“I could never hate you.”

There's a pang in your chest, and you're bent double, winded, by the gentleness of his tone. It hurts like a knife. 

“Don’t-“ Another shaking breath as you shake your head, “You can’t say things like that.”

“Look, I don't-" He begins, before he reshapes the words in his mouth, shuffling them like a pack of cards. That's how he's better than you, you think, he thinks before he speaks - he approaches things with kindness and care, instead of months of anger and resentment towards nothing in particular. "With the fire, even if we didn’t know each other then, when I think about what could have happened, if, if you-“

There it is, the unspoken part. The part that keeps you up at night with nightmares and the smell of ash in your hair that you can’t scrub out. Peter looks almost pained, his face screwed up as he debates between speaking his mind and holding his tongue - he seems to go on a whole journey in his head that’s plain as day across his face. He’s tense and strung tight, hands wringing themselves over and over and over, like he’s cleaning the countertops at the diner, and all of a sudden he’s your coworker again, and you think you taste bile. Eventually, he makes a decision, and speaks. 

“I guess I'm trying to say that I would miss you."

You’re almost winded by it. He says it so plainly, but it stabs you through the chest like a knife. Whatever emotion you’re experiencing right now is entirely new to you, and hurts like a bitch. 

Peter would miss you. He saves your life, he kisses you at work - and he would miss you. He just says it like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t knock the air out of you. 

It’s stupid - whether it was because he frustrated you, or confused you, or made you get that funny, swooping feeling in your stomach, you haven’t stopped thinking about him since you met him, and you’ve never even stepped foot in his house. And he looks like an angel by lamplight. And he would miss you. 

You don't remember much of the rest of the evening, between mumbles and awkward sips of shitty coffee, and the city growing louder outside as the sun sinks below the horizon.

Perhaps this is why people go to church, or believe in something bigger than themselves - in pure, desperate hopes that despite whatever they've done, there will be someone at the end who will forgive you, and treat you kindly. But Peter isn't one for spite, and his kindness is all the more special to you because of that. His forgiveness, however, is something closer to sacred - washing you over in its totality, its absolution. For the first time in a while, Manhattan's clatter and din isn't overwhelming, or undercutting all the shit going on inside your head, it simply exists; cutting through the wind and rustling the trees, like the pigeons that scavenge the back end of Joe's for pizza crusts and stray fries.

It's been a while, but when you leave Peter's, and take in another deep breath on the steps of his building - it feels clean and new. It's only on the walk home, when his voice is pinging around inside your head, that you realise - and it hits you like a train. 

He’s been more than a co-worker this whole time. 

How could you not have realised that? You used to have your head screwed on, the sensible one, and here you were; only just realising how absolutely, positively stupid you’ve been. Of course everything has felt so frustrating and complicated - you’ve been so blind to your own feelings that the realisation of it practically knocks the air out of you.

You’re not even sure when the world started looking brighter and the city started smelling sweeter, and you’re not even sure when that feeling became so all-encompassing and vast and deep and hot and cold all at the same time - but you know it’s all Peter’s fault. You want to hate him for it, at first, but you’re not sure that hating Peter would even be possible. Not when there’s no one in the world that looks at you like he does, no one who goes out of their way to make you smile. He makes you feel special, special enough for you to wonder why no one else has been looking at you like this all along. It’s not that the job has gotten easier, or the fancy coffee you can afford with your pay rise; it’s just that you’ve been stupid enough to develop stupid fucking feelings for the stupid guy you work with. 

Realising this feels like falling off of the Empire State Building. A familiar feeling, yes, when you tally up all of the emotional turmoil you’ve experienced - except now, there’s a small part of your brain that really, truly believes that Spider-Man would catch you.

Somehow, that was scarier.