Chapter Text
Will can hear the floor thump to the music below him. He squints, barely spotting his sister, El, and their best friend, Max, dancing in the crowd of people. It’s near impossible to see them, but the color-changing lights ever so often hit Max’s red hair, reminding Will of their existence. Every time Will is dragged to a college party, he swears he won’t let it happen again, yet here he finds himself, standing on tired feet in the house of someone he doesn’t even know.
Will’s exhaustion feels as if it might take over, as he is about ready to find the nearest couch for a power nap, probably with a stain whose mystery Will would rather leave unsolved (as most of these party house couches are). His feet are killing him, but he’s not about to let his super-drunk female friends take the train back to their apartment on their own. Max’s boyfriend, Lucas, is allegedly here somewhere, but Will imagines he went outside to smoke a blunt and get some air away from the crowded house. Will doesn’t blame him.
Will glances down at the drink in his hand, which Robin’s girlfriend- Vickie, he thinks- had given him at her pregame. He wishes he had water because he really doesn’t want more alcohol, but he’ll take what he can get. He lets the bitter drink wash down his throat, trying to focus more on the aftertaste of the blue raspberry syrup that was mixed in.
He picks up his phone, of course, with very few notifications to see. He’s not surprised, because all of his friends are at this party somewhere anyway. His mom sent him some sort of Instagram Reel, probably a video of cute dogs or something, and his brother sent him a couple of photos developed from his film camera. Will doesn’t even check either; he’s too tired to even absentmindedly scroll through Instagram stories. His muscles are tired and about ready to shut down on him, but he’s too antsy to fall asleep right now. He still feels bad that he’s drunk in some random house and not out in the street patrolling.
Will can feel his feet digging into the floor, the music thrumming under his skin. He thinks he doesn't really like drinking, but he does it every time they go out and party. Alcohol makes him feel way too existential. He's reminded of his breakup, just three months ago. He can also feel the pain in his right leg, which was damaged by some shrapnel yesterday. He loves his friends, but this is how things usually go when he ends up at parties. El and Max are off talking and dancing with people, and he doesn't really know Lucas and Dustin well enough to hold a conversation with them without the girls present. Then, Will ends up leaning against a wall or a couch and contemplating why he even deserved to get superpowers in the first place. Will has barely attempted to make friends since he became Spider-Man, because he doesn't want to risk losing people. As it is, Will had intended to go as long as he possibly could without anyone in his life finding out, but one day, Max had sat him down and called him out to his face. Will was a shit liar, and immediately folded under the ginger girl's glare. She's scary when she wants to be.
The couch shakes behind Will as some group of friends flop down onto it, which sends Will stumbling forward into the crowd of people. He's sure he brushes against several of them, but nobody acknowledges him. He stands up straight, noticing he spilled a little bit of his drink onto himself, creating a small dark stain on the front of his jacket. Will can barely even let it bother him. He tries to brush off the stupid feelings of being invisible when he knows that worse things have happened. Hell, worse things have happened to him.
Lucas comes running up to Will, knocking him out of his state of dissociation. Will’s not even sure which direction he came from. “Will, we gotta go. Like now.” He gestures to Max, who has her arm slung around what appears to be a very drunk El, escorting her out of the party. Will takes another sip of his drink- because he definitely needs that to get him through this- and follows them toward the door.
Will finds them on the edge of the sidewalk, where Will’s sister is throwing up into a small patch of grass between the sidewalk and the road. Max has a hand on her back, having already tied up her hair. Dustin, Lucas’s best friend, whom Will met last month, is standing behind them with a cup of water in hand. He kneels to try to offer it to El, but she’s way too out of it to accept it.
Behind Dustin is a boy whom Will is fairly confident he’s never seen before. He’s relatively certain he would remember a boy this cute. He’s lanky, with a head of messy brown hair, but Will catches himself staring. In the dim streetlight, Will sees a constellation of freckles on the boy’s face. He has a jawline that, if he were a sculpture, would have been carefully crafted to be shown in museums.
He feels a little bad for staring at this beautiful boy while his sister is blackout drunk and throwing up on the sidewalk, but he’s not really sure how to help anyway. He stops gawking at the boy when his head lifts, and their eyes meet. “Jesus. How much did she have?” Will asks as he watches his sister attempt to take a nap on the pavement.
Max lifts El’s hand, where she usually keeps a tally of how many drinks she’s had. “Uh, five- no, six. But someone may have given her an edible while I was in the bathroom.” Max answers, and El puts her hand back down to steady herself on the pavement, then continues to throw up. Max sighs. “Has anyone been able to get a hold of Robin?” Max is still glancing down at El while she asks, careful not to lose sight of what she asked.
“No. But I can try her again. I’m guessing she and Vickie left a while ago.” Lucas confirms, picking up his phone again just to check.
“It’s okay. We can handle it ourselves.” Max responds, though Will knows her, and he can tell she’s utterly exhausted. “Mike, can you call an Uber?” Max questions, and the mystery boy nods. Mike. That is his name. Mike. Will briefly thinks that Mike was examining him too, but shakes it off as a delusion of alcohol and second-hand weed.
Just then, the hairs on the back of Will’s neck stand up. Of course, he had to sense danger right now. He hears a siren somewhere in the distance. He knows he needs to go as soon as possible. Will taps Max on the shoulder in between El's intervals of emptying her stomach. “Uh- Max. I need to um- I need to go check something.” He says urgently, staring her wide-eyed with a face that means “I need to go be a superhero and nobody else can know.” She raises an eyebrow, then presses her lip into a thin line when she realizes what he means.
Max doesn’t seem pleased. “Will- right now?” She makes a head gesture towards his sister, who almost passes out in the grass.
“Would I really say it if it wasn’t urgent? I’ll text you when I’m-” he pauses, noticing the eyes of the three boys on him. He can see what they may be confused about. A girl’s brother is seemingly leaving her blacked out, drunk on the sidewalk, at least fifteen minutes away from her apartment. It doesn’t appear good for Will. “-Back.” He finishes. Max rolls her eyes, but gestures for him to leave.
As Will leaves, he can hear them interacting because of his super-hearing. “Where is he going?” Lucas challenges, near shouting. Will can sense the mixture of confusion and annoyance in Lucas's voice.
“Just… leave it, Lucas.” Max responds firmly, which seems to shut Lucas up. She doesn't take kindly to people questioning her judgment.
Will waits until he turns the corner of the block to start running, and then finds a nearby alleyway to shed himself of his clothes to reveal his spider-suit. He’s somewhat prepared, so he takes the plastic shopping bag he had tucked in his jacket pocket and shoves his clothes in it, leaving them behind a dumpster. He silently prays they’ll still be there when he gets back. Will takes a deep breath and then pulls the latex mask over his face.
Whenever Will “becomes Spider-Man” (even though he rarely doesn’t have his costume on under his clothes), he kind of blacks out. Not in the blackout drunk way, but he becomes so focused that it pushes everything else away. When he finally gets a moment to take the mask off, his brain leaves all the fighting as a part of the mask. Will knows it’s probably a trauma response, but it feels nice to have a separation.
While Will swings through the streets, his mind clears of El, Max, and the party house, but it lingers on Mike. He’s enamored by the boy, determined to get to know every detail about him. What makes him tick, and admire all those features, not just from afar.
Will feels ridiculous. He just met this boy. What in the world is he thinking about?
Will doesn’t have time to let Mike occupy his mind any longer. He’s met with the sight of Rhino, a villain Will is very ready to be locked away. Rhino is throwing cars through the streets, headed in what Will can only assume is the direction of the large bank situated in the west of downtown. He swings in to situate himself right in the road, where Rhino is terrorizing the streets, knocking over any cop cars that attempt to stop him.
“Well! If it isn’t my favorite Perissodactyla!” Will announces his existence, catching a couple of the cars with his webs, flipping them right side up. “How’s it going, big guy?” Will patronizes him, and Rhino doesn’t seem enthralled by this introduction. It does, however, get him to stop in his very destructive tracks.
“What do you want?” Rhino growls, and Will can see the pavement crumbling below him as he charges up to run at him.
“Well, for starters, a million dollars would be nice, a bar of gold, a chicken tender basket- oh, you meant like with you,” Will responds while swinging between Rhino’s various attacks. Will let go of his webs with his right hand, aiming towards Rhino. The web attaches itself to Rhino’s horn, and Will uses his full force to yank it back. Rhino comes tumbling forward, faceplanting into the pavement. “I want to stop you. I figured that was pretty obvious. I mean, we do this like once a week.” At the same time, Rhino is recovering from his rather embarrassing tumble, Will gravely miscalculates his hold on his webs with his left hand, and he, too, falls forward into the concrete sidewalk of downtown Chicago.
With a pain in his ribs and right side, which he landed on, Will quickly stands up. He sure hopes this particular fight is not seen on the morning news tomorrow; he’s not sure he can handle the embarrassment. Still, he’s up and back in the fight faster than his opponent. With his new vantage point, Will notices Rhino’s right leg is stuck in the hole in the road. Will shoots out a web, attaching his left leg to the ground as well. With Rhino extra stuck, Will swings until he’s above him and kicks down onto his back, shoving Rhino even deeper into the ground. The pavement crackles, and Will takes this opportunity to wrap webs around the Rhino, creating a trap above him, forcing him to stay on the ground.
With Rhino trapped, Will waits from a safe distance until he hears the sirens come close again. The cop cars make it as far as they can on the crackled road, and the rest of the cops come running up with guns out.
Cops have never really liked Will- actually, they’ve never really liked Spider-Man, they’ve got no problem with the sweet boy whose mother ended up marrying a chief of police. Will doesn’t really get it, after all, he’s pretty certain he’s making their job easier. He just shrugs it off. Half the city thinks he’s a menace, half the city thinks he’s a hero. As his mother always said, you can’t get everyone to like you. Before the cops can question him, Will is swinging out of the scene, as per usual. He just hopes his clothes are still in that alleyway.
After a couple of pit-stops (including a Seven-Eleven Slurpee, because Will was thirsty), he finds himself on the fire escape of his sister’s (and Max’s) apartment. He climbs through the bathroom window, and the lights are off. He assumes that everyone must’ve returned by now, but they’re all asleep after the mess Will recalls he left back at the party.
Will grabs whatever mismatched pajamas he can see off the top of the laundry basket to change into. He peers at his bare torso in the mirror, observing the bruise and road rash that developed over his ribs and right side. He pokes at it, but decides that staring at it only makes him more nervous. He pulls the shirt over his head and lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. He sees his phone screen illuminate with one of those “it’s time for bed!” notifications from a self-care app El downloaded onto his phone. It’s like three in the morning, and Will has work at nine. God, Will wished for nothing more than his own bed.
He broke up with his boyfriend two months ago, but their lease was supposed to last another three. Will, however, was too miserable living there and has been living with El and Max until he can find another place to stay. He’s grateful, but he’s certainly excited to find a place and have his own space again. His sister and best friend are great, but exhausting. He’s pretty sure they mostly keep him around because he does all the cooking.
He puts his head down against the sink for a moment, letting the cold surface bring down his body temperature, which was apparently a lot higher than he had realized. He was practically drenched in sweat, but he always is when he drinks. Will grabs the sink handle, turning the water knob as far as it can go. He lets the water fall into his hands and then splashes it onto his face, which feels a lot nicer than he expected. As Will stood up to look in the mirror, he was practically falling over. It seemed as if the adrenaline during the fight was what kept him going; he could barely stay upright. In his personal opinion, he looked like shit. Will can probably claim he’s coming off a three-day bender and has a big project coming up or something, but his friends are nice enough that they probably won’t even say anything.
“Dude. When did you even come in?” A voice in the doorway makes Will jump, and he finds himself staring at Mike, the boy he’d seen outside the party. Now that Will has a moment to reflect without the background noise of a blackout drunk twenty-one-year-old, he realizes that Lucas and Dustin have both mentioned Mike once or twice. Will might’ve even seen him in an Instagram post or two. Mike appears as a shadow in the doorway, his long limbs making him out to be a spider in the dark.
“Ah, just a few minutes ago.” Will replies. He’s not really sure how to read Mike. Will guesses that if he’s here, so are Lucas and Dustin. It’s a good thing he didn’t go through the living room window, which was his typical strategy.
Mike examines him conspiratorially. “You’re like a cat. I didn’t even hear you. That’s terrifying.” Will assumes that Mike is joking, but he’s never met this guy. He could think Will is a freak or something. Will’s not sure why the thought of Mike thinking poorly of him sent him into such a mental panic.
“I’m kidding.” Will nods, still unsure how to respond. “Max had us come back with her, since I live kinda far, and the boys were going to anyway. Dustin is on the airmatress in El’s room, and Lucas is obviously with Max, so I was exiled to the pullout. She told me you’d be sleeping there too when you got back- did you make it back okay?”
Will is basically glitching at this point. He couldn’t fathom a word in response to the infodump that had the tl;dr of: yeah, we just met, but we’re sharing a bed! “Yeah. Yes. I had to go check on something. But I am here now.” Will groans internally at his response. Maybe his little smack into the pavement earlier gave him a concussion that caused him to lose his ability to speak. “I’m Will, by the way. I’m sure they told you.” Mike seems skeptical of Will’s response, but he nods. Will doesn’t know how much Mike had to drink; maybe he’ll forget the conversation entirely. Will certainly wishes he could forget it, but he guesses he wasn’t concussed quite enough for that.
“Mike.” He offers in return. Will already knew this, but it was sweet that Mike was making sure Will knew his name. This was going to be a long night.
Sleeping on the pullout couch with Mike, as it turns out, wasn’t overly awkward. In fact, Will was so bone-tired that he practically passed out the moment his head hit the pillow. He wakes up at eight, to the sound of Max clattering around in the kitchen. It’s for the best, as he forgot entirely to set an alarm for work, and he needs to eat and shower after last night's affairs. Mike seemingly wakes up at the same time, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. Will notices his hair is a total mop. It’s kind of cute, Will thinks.
Max must love Will a lot, because he’s greeted by warm pancakes on the table. He almost cries. “You’re an angel. Do you know that? It is important to me that you know that.” He gushes as he stuffs a couple of pancakes onto his plate. This might have made up for the fact that his ribs still didn’t fully heal after his fall last night.
Dustin and Lucas are sitting at the table, eating cereal and pancakes, respectively. El must still be asleep in her room, which Will understands after last night’s affairs. “Did you guys see the Spider-Man clip from last night? He totally ATE the pavement.” Dustin babbles through a spoonful of cereal, with his other hand being used to hold up his phone. He flips it to show everyone the clip, and everyone gathers around the phone to watch a slow-motion version of Will’s painful fall from the previous night. Of course, someone had to catch it on video.
Max is dying of laughter; she’s practically falling into Will’s shoulder. He glares at her in his periphery. “What a morning treat! Spider-Man is totally eating shit. You love to see it.” She can hardly get the insults out through her giggling. Will elbows her.
“What do you have against Spider-Man? I think he’s pretty cool.” Mike inquires, confused about what Max thinks is so hilarious. Will’s breath catches in his throat. Mike thinks he’s cool. Well, Spider-Man, but they’re both him. Will counts that as a win.
“Oh. Nothing. I just think the fall is funny, is all.” Max brushes off the comment, neglecting to look at Will after Mike’s compliment. She hates to lose any sort of discussion, even if it’s hardly an argument. She’s smugly glaring at Mike, as if to say: your move.
“Hey, Mike! Are you still looking for a roommate?” Lucas abruptly changes the subject; he can tell when Max just wants to egg other people on.
Mike raises a brow. “Yeah. Actually.”
“Well, Will has been looking for a roommate, too! Why don’t you live together?” Lucas suggests, although something tells Will this suggestion probably came from Max’s mind, not Lucas’s.
Will thinks for a moment. He feels bad enough for crashing on Max and El’s couch; he can see why Max is slowly ushering him out of their apartment. However, Will also wouldn’t mind moving in with Mike. If he’s anything like Lucas and Dustin, then they’ll get along just fine. In his periphery, Will can see Mike glancing over at him, waiting for him to say something. A small smile creeps onto Will’s face. “Let’s exchange numbers.”