Chapter Text
It was 3:15, and he still wasn’t home.
Now, to be fair, you like to think that you were quite lenient with your roommates “nightly activities” around the city of New York, but there are points where you do set up some boundaries. One of which being that if he has to stay out later than one o’clock, he will text you beforehand to give you a warning. Just a quick “I’m still alive!” would honestly work for you right now, because sitting on your bed waiting for the slightest move next to the window he uses to get in every night is not how you wanted to spend your Monday night.
You’ve been attempting to calm yourself down for the past two hours, doing anything and everything you could think of besides staring at your phone waiting for a text that might never come. But eventually you settled to just wait by the window, unable to stop the quiet fear creeping up in your mind from taking hold. He has never done this in the six months you guys have been roommates, he has barely even stayed out after one in the morning in the first place anyways. And to stay out even later than that, with absolutely no text, you’re about ready to call anyone you can think of-
knock knock
You can practically hear your neck crack as you turn to face the window, and see the sheepish face of your roommate, Mark Lee. You’re surprised you managed to successfully jump off your bed to leap over to the window, but then again you suppose it's the same adrenaline that has you slamming the window open with enough force to have Mark wincing.
“Get. In. Now.” The words are forced out of your clenched teeth at a snail’s pace, and you find it a little funny that he appears to find it intimidating enough to leap inside, when maybe just five minutes ago he was up against the city's most dangerous criminals.
“I’m so sorry I was going to text you but there was a robbery and then it turns out that Sandman was attacking halfway across the city,” He is ripping his mask off as he rambles, hair a mess as you see the familiar dark brown color strewn across his forehead, and if he wasn’t apologizing for putting you through three hours of hell, you might’ve raised your hand to lift them off his face. You did always enjoy the flustered look on his face when you did. “I just didn’t have any time left, and by that time I had completely forgotten to text you again-” Your hand shoots up to his mouth to cover it, and his eyes snap up from his shaking hands to look at you, pupils blown wide.
“Listen. I don’t know what world-ending crisis was happening, but I understand if it was a one-time mistake. Just please try your best to let me know next time, okay?” You managed to realize, in the time he was flying off the handle trying to apologize, that you're currently talking to Mark Lee, not Spiderman.
Spiderman swings in, hazel eyes swirling with mirth as he jumps on top of the couch to whisper excitedly to you how today’s patrol went, and how many people he was able to help. Mark Lee, is the one who manages to barely stumble through the window before pulling his mask off to cry for the one person he wasn’t able to save. Mark Lee falls asleep during his chemistry lectures and begs you to help him study for his next exam. And Mark Lee is currently panicking thinking that his roommate-turned-best-friend is going to leave because he made an, although infuriating, honest fuck up that you knew he wouldn’t repeat.
And if the furious nodding was any indication, you knew he’d keep his promise, and you’d break and forgive him as easily as every other time you’ve fought. You almost want to curse your soft spot for him, but it’s hard not to have one when you know he’ll be trying to buy you food for the next week as a further apology.
You sigh, lifting your hand off of his mouth, and go to turn around to close the window. You can feel the familiarity of your routine start to wash away the residual anxiety you felt at the lateness of his arrival. On nights when he was too exhausted to really tell you about patrol, you’d close the window and clean up your room, while he slowly began the process of taking off his suit and web slingers, hanging them in his workshop (which takes up basically his whole room, but you managed to get him to shrink it enough to fit a bed in there as well).
A lot of what you guys share really is just a series of routines. It started with borrowing a pen in your physics course freshman year, and slowly blossomed from weekly study sessions to daily meetups, eventually becoming a nervous question (you still never let him live down the fact he dropped the key before handing it to you) and a shared apartment your junior year. To finally now, after a tense sit down six months ago after you almost called the cops on the man climbing through your window.
Constant routines and structures surrounded your friendship, schedules carefully planned around each other, and it felt… nice. It was nice to know he comes home at six on Wednesday’s, so that’s the day you get takeout. And it's nice when he shows up to school early on Friday’s because he knows you get out of class early that day and wants to hang out. It’s the casual security in your relationship that makes moments where you don’t really know where he is or what he is doing all consuming, even furthered by his superhero status and the danger that comes with it.
You just finish sealing the lock on the window when you hear a hiss from behind, and roll your eyes.
“You got hurt didn’t you?”
“... maybe.”
You were prepared to crack a joke about his carelessness, or maybe that his spidey-sense is wearing off, but the moment you turned around you completely blanked. Mark was practically toppled over your desk, one arm managing to grab the corner before he really collapsed, while the other clutched the side of his stomach in a death grip.
“What the fuck happened?” You don’t remember when you started running across the room but by the time you blinked you were grabbing his arm and lifting it over your opposite shoulder.
“Um, you wouldn’t really believe it if I said it was a scratch would you?”
“No, Mark, I don’t really think I will- ” Your voice strains with effort as you help him get up, before tugging him through the hallway to get to the bathroom.
“I got stabbed. Stupid mistake, it was either me or the lady in between us.” He swallows roughly and tries to take more of his weight off of you so you can open the door. “I couldn’t move fast enough to get both of us out of the way of the knife.” You want to curse him. His stupid kindness and foolish self-sacrificing bullshit, but you also know that he wouldn’t be the same person you care so much about if he didn’t want to save everyone. A genius chem major, café worker by day, crime-fighting idiot by night. You hate the affection curling into your chest, settling there in a familiar spot in between your ribs, but you make no move to get rid of it. You’ve tried before, shredding it apart with your bare hands, but it always comes back, shiny and new and as hopeful as the day it first appeared.
“You are so lucky I took a nursing course so your stupid ass wouldn’t die.” After some shuffling you manage to wrench one arm free from the self-made prison of supporting a superpowered twenty-two year old, and swing the bathroom door open.
“If you bleed on my bathroom floor I’ll kill you before the stab wound does” He turns his head to grin at you, eyes looking the lightest they have been all night, even though you can see them start to glaze from blood loss.
“Don’t you mean our bathroom?” You manage a scoff as you finally get him to rest on the toilet seat, before ducking down to rummage through the bottom cabinet underneath the sink to grab the first aid kit.
“Okay focus on that part of the sentence, and yes my bathroom, I’ll take your name off the lease”
“Oh really?” You can hear his voice strain as he lifts the bottom of his suit to expose the wound in the side of his stomach, “And who would you split rent with?”
“I don’t know,” you shrug, closing the cabinet door with a soft thunk, "maybe I’ll just room with Haechan instead.”
The glare he gives you is downright murderous as you begin to open the first aid kit to find the antiseptic and sutures.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Oh wouldn’t I?” You look up and smile. “Remember. No bloodstains, and you get the honor to continue being my roommate.”
With that you apply the antiseptic, wincing at the slight cry of pain it draws out of him before he bites down on his knuckle, and besides the occasional hiss and muttered curse, the rest of the process is completely silent. It doesn’t unnerve you, again, whenever he gets hurt and you're forced to patch him up (the café pays, but it certainly doesn’t pay well enough for frequent hospital visits) this is usually how it ends up. He sits down on whatever surface you can drag him to, you try and find another seat close enough to reach him (this time you’ve chosen the shower ledge) and you slowly do your best to make sure he doesn’t die of an infection.
A comfortable silence spreading like a blanket is normal as well, the only difference now being that in your panic to get him to the bathroom you forgot your phone. You like playing music on easy nights where all he needs is just a couple of Band-Aids in hard to reach places, even if he complains you never let him pick the songs. You can feel the smile on your face as you finish cleaning the wound as you remember the fight you had when he tried to put Justin Bieber on.
By the time you are finished reminiscing on how basically the last half-year of your life has been spent, you stop the bleeding and manage to finish stitching the wound. As you begin to stand up, the feeling of a hand against your shoulder stops you. When you look up you remember the first time you really saw him in the suit. The day it was revealed he was Spiderman barely counts, he didn’t take off the mask before sprinting into the bathroom to change so he could explain to you why he was coming through the window at twelve o’clock at night.
But the day after, when you opened the window to let him in for the first time, and he couldn’t get the mask off fast enough to tell you how he managed to save an entire train of people from derailing on the Brooklyn Bridge, you got to really see him. He was almost blinding, eyes refracting with light, warm hues leaping out begging for your attention, grinning so hard his cheek had to have been sore the next day, practically buzzing with the energy he had left over from the experience.
That was the day you realized that nobody else gets to see him like this, bouncing off the walls, leaping through your window like your personal shooting star because he couldn’t wait to tell you, and only you, about his day. Mark Lee was one of the hardest working people you’ve ever met in your life, constantly running, never stopping, almost concerning in his determination to keep going, but there are some nights where you wish you were worth enough for him to slow down for. And on good nights like those, you feel like you might be. And for nights like these, you try to make yourself be worth it, to help him fix any mistakes he might’ve made, to let him know just for a moment someone else is there to help if he only took a break.
But the look on his face now is unreadable, and you force yourself to laugh a little to alleviate the tension grasping the sides of your chest. “Ayo? Something you wanna say or…”
“I’m sorry.” Well. That wasn’t really what you were expecting.
“What?”
“I’m sorry for everything. Just, the fact I made you worried tonight, or the fact that you have to help me patch up because I can’t afford to go to the hospital, or just having to deal with the fact that your roommate is fucking Spiderman,” His hand leaves your shoulder to card through his hair, frustration leaking through his movements, "I just… I just feel like you don’t deserve to deal with all of this.”
You paused, letting his words sink in. Did he really think he was a bother? That you didn’t enjoy every second you spent with him? Maybe you haven’t been as obvious as you thought you were, but now is as good of a time as ever to change that. “Hey,” you slowly take your hand and place it on his knee, “if I wasn’t okay with what I signed up for I wouldn’t have stayed after you told me you were Spiderman. I care about you, so much ,” you can feel your voice quake with your nerves, and you want to curse the words refusing to leave your throat, because you care a lot more than you feel like you can even say, but you push through, “and I won’t say it’s not hard sometimes, worrying if you’re okay, or seeing you get hurt just to save other people, but just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.”
You stand up, reaching out your hand for him to take, and you don’t ask about the glassy look in his eyes as he takes it. “Can I hug you?” The question makes you laugh a little, and you smile at him.
“Of course.” He quickly tugs you by the hand into his arms, and even through the smell of iron and sweat you still tighten your arms around him, because it was still him, no matter if he was wearing the suit or not.
You pull back as he lets you go, and he gives you a lopsided smile, gently shoving you towards the door. “Okay, I’m gonna shower, because I’m disgusting, and you’re going to go to sleep. I’ve kept you up long enough.” You nod with a smile, shoving the med kit back underneath the sink and walking towards the door. A call of your name stops you though, and you look back to see pink dusting Mark’s cheeks as he looks at you with a grin painted on his face. “I also wanted to ask if you wanted to grab dinner after classes tomorrow. As the start of my apology.”
That gets a laugh out of you, shutting the door as you see the crinkle in his eyes slowly disappear behind the wood.
“It better be good.”