Chapter Text
Will let out a curse. He had been working on his thesis for so long it had started looking blurry. Or perhaps it was his eyes. He shut his computer off, after checking three times he had saved his progress, and looked at the time. 03:22. He really had to go to sleep. He had a lecture at eight the next day, one that he couldn't be late to. He had already been late three times in the past weeks and his teacher hated him now, which he understood, but it still annoyed him.
He stood up, yawned as he stretched, and put his computer in his bag before he forgot about it completely and left it there the next day. That would be a serious problem, and he didn't need any other teacher to hate him. One was enough. He dragged his tired body through the flat to get to his bedroom, looking forward to passing out the second his head touched the pillow.
He didn't bother switching on the light when he sat on his bed, blindly looking for the plug so he could charge his phone. His computer would be bad for the lessons, but if he had to go the next day without his phone, it would pain his mental health directly. Unfortunately, Will was too tired for this, and it took him several tries to find his cord, several more to get it to plug in the wall, and before he could plug his phone in, a loud noise made him jump.
The fire escape was directly outside of his bedroom window. He had hated it, ever since he had moved in. He thought it was extremely unsafe, because if anyone really wanted to break in, they could get inside through that window, and he wasn't sure any CCTV pointed towards his building.
However, for the past few months, Will had made his peace with it. Although he was often woken up by one specific fat pigeon who landed on the staircase and made a loud clinking noise, every so often, his neighbour's cat came down to paw at his window and demand pets. Will had no idea who she belonged to, but he was happy to be her go-to head-scratches provider.
Because the noise that had just made him drop his phone was much louder than the ones he had been used to with the pigeons, he knew it had to be the cat. He was already smiling when he turned around, ready to go open the window to let her inside. What he saw behind the glass was not a cat.
He stood up, astonished at the view. A man was standing on his fire escape. Was he about to be held at gunpoint, like in the movies? Was he a witness now? Should he call the police? Before he could get to his phone, the man moved his torso slightly to the left, and the light caught on his outfit. Right away, Will realised two things. One, Spiderman was standing on the platform directly leading to his window. Two, he was bleeding. Heavily.
Will rushed to his window. He must have made a lot of noise in his hurry to get there, because the masked man turned to him in one sharp motion. The wound must have been bad, for as soon as he did so, he slouched ever so slightly over himself, holding onto his side. Will opened the window in a rush, and got a better view of the stranger outside.
"What the hell!"
The stranger tilted his head slightly to the side, the way a perplexed animal would, before he answered. "People go for 'hello' usually, I think."
"You're bleeding!"
"It's nothing."
"It's not nothing, you need to go to the hospital!" Will exclaimed, his eyes fixed on the man's torso, covered in blood. It was too dark to see much, but the amount of blood was significant. He wasn't sure how the man had not yet passed out, or why he didn't sound all that panicked. But that was alright, Will could panic for two.
"Not a huge fan of hospitals actually, they tend to ask questions there, and then I would have to answer.. Can't be bothered really."
"Wha-" Will wasn't sure what to say to that. He supposed people with hidden identities didn't, in fact, like to get patched up in public spaces. But he couldn't just stay there, bleeding out on his fire escape. What if he died? Then not only would Will be a witness, he would also probably become a suspect. And if the city's most beloved hero died because of him, everyone would hate him for it.
"You need to do something!"
"I heal quickly."
"You're bleeding!"
"Yeah I heard you the first time-"
"Bleeding means you didn't even start healing yet!"
"What are you, a doctor?"
"Come in."
"What?"
"I'll patch you up, come in," Will repeated, holding onto the guy's right sleeve. His left arm was covered in blood. He stumbled forward, and took his sweet time climbing inside his room carefully. Will supposed he was trying not to put too much force on the wound, but his slow pace irritated him.
He must have still been under the influence of the adrenaline if he didn't realise how dire his situation was. Or maybe he was used to it. Will surely wasn't. His brain was working at high speed. Once he had successfully landed inside, Will continued to pull on his sleeve to get him to follow him to the bathroom.
"It's really not that bad-"
"Shut up."
Once they made it to the bathroom, Will pushed the other as softly as he could to his sink and frowned when he turned on the light. He was highly aware of the overall state of his bathroom while he looked for his first-aid kit. He had washed all his brushes and utensils earlier today, so it was a bit cramped. He had to open every single one of his cupboard before he finally set his hand on what he was looking for.
Once he had found the first-aid kit, he quickly fished it out and showed it to the stranger like it was a price to be proud of. He set it on his sink before he focused on the man instead. Under the harsh light of his tiny bathroom, the wounds looked even worse. The dark blood had covered the man's uniform almost completely. It was amazing he even knew who it was.
When Will saw the state of his torso, he winced. He was never really good at keeping his reactions to himself. The man had four claw marks stretching his skin from his left shoulder, all the way down to his waist. He was holding himself up with the help of the sink, and with his arms no longer hiding his chest, the wounds looked so much more painful.
"Okay, you need to take your top off."
"Hum," He hesitated, looking at Will only for a second before he turned away. "I might need help. Zipper's in the back."
"Oh really? I thought it wasn't that bad?" Will sneered, looking for the collar of the suit.
"Shut up."
Smooth curly hair tickled his fingers before he found the zipper and slid it down. Then, as slowly and carefully as he could master, he pushed the fabric over the guy's shoulders and down his body. As the damp material peeled off his skin, the man winced. If that much was painful, Will was scared to know how he would hold up with what came next.
He did not notice the black underwear band from where he had stopped pulling the suit and did not hyperfocus on the freckles decorating his shoulders, collarbones and neck. He grabbed a wet hand towel to clean the cuts first. The wounds were still bleeding, but not as much as earlier, when it had looked like gallons gushing out of his body. Will took his time carefully cleaning the four cuts, very aware that the fabric might not be the most comfortable for him.
The man tried to stay as quiet as possible while Will cleaned him up, but he could tell he was in pain. Will could see that his fingers grabbing onto the edge of the sink had turned white, and his breathing sounded ragged.
"Did you fight with a tiger?" Will asked once he had cleaned the first three cuts, in hopes that a conversation might help the other focus on something other than the wounds.
"I would never fight a tiger, I love tigers. It was my highschool's symbol."
Will stopped his movements to look up at the other, frowning. That was, in short, not at all the answer he had expected. He had expected him to explain what it was he had been fighting, or at worse laugh at the obvious joke, but it seemed the stranger was satisfied with his answer, as he stopped talking completely after that.
Will wet gauze with disinfectant, already dreading the man's reaction once he set it on the cuts. They were barely bleeding now, but they still looked entirely too deep and wide. As soon as the gauze touched his shoulder, the stranger winced loudly, raising his head back. If he could see his face, Will was convinced his eyes would be tightly shut.
"Sorry," Will whispered. He had no reason to apologise, if anything he was helping, but he knew how much it must have stung. He tried to work as fast as possible. "So, if it wasn't a tiger, what was it?" He asked, looking up at the man head, but from this angle he could only see his neck and chin.
"Some.. guy in a robot suit, I'm not sure. Made of metal. It had knifes as fingers," he explained, his eyes still facing the ceiling.
"Like Edward Scissorhands?"
"Yeah, kind of."
"Right. So just a normal workday for you, then?"
The man chuckled, dropping his head down so he could look at Will, but immediately winced again, this time dropping his head as low as it would go. Will focused on unrolling the bandage, trying to assess the easiest way to wrap his wounds up.
The simplest way would be to wrap his entire torso, instead of taking the time to cut smaller pieces. Will never had wounded people falling in his window anyway, he might as well go all out. He could then pretend his first-aid kit wasn't a useless purchase. He didn't think the other would complain anyway.
"Is this a normal workday for you?" The man asked back once Will had started mummifying him. He sounded a little less breathless, his voice a little clearer, which Will took as a good sign.
"Yeah. I have superheroes falling on my fire escape every day, actually."
"Oh, really?" The man exclaimed, going along with his very obvious lie. "And here I thought I was special."
"Nop. This is totally mundane for me. Boring even."
Will preened when he heard another chuckle fall out of the man's mouth. He looked up to find the other already looking at him. Or maybe he wasn't really looking at him, just in his general direction. With the mask, Will couldn't be sure. He wondered what his voice sounded like when it wasn't muffled by fabric, or laced with a hint of pain.
"Well, sorry to disappoint," the man slurred once Will turned back to his work in progress.
"You should be sorry, I was going to sleep when you appeared," Will informed the other with a frown, although there was no bite in his words. If anything, he would have been pissed if he were to discover later on that he was meters away from Spiderman and had missed him because he was asleep.
"You didn't have to help, you know."
"Right. I was just supposed to let you bleed out on my fire escape?"
"Okay, first of all I'm pretty sure you don't own the building, so it's not yours. And second, I wasn't bleeding out."
"There is blood getting out of your body. That, in case you didn't know, is called bleeding out."
"You're overreacting, I heal faster than normal, I'll be all good in like... A few hours."
"Yeah you will, thanks to me," Will pointed out to his bandaged torso, making sure the fabric stuck to his skin properly. It looked a little ridiculous if he was being honest, but at least the wounds wouldn't get infected. That was the most important part. He was happy to make note that the bandages didn't immediately become bloody. He had stopped bleeding at last.
"Right, it's all thanks to you, I would have died otherwise."
"I'm glad you're finally seeing the truth, follow me."
Will heard the other snicker, but he had already crossed the corridor and gotten to his kitchen. The man had lost a lot of blood, he needed a drink and something sweet so he wouldn't pass out the second he left. Will didn't want to imagine the aftermath if he fainted while he was flying between buildings.
He fetched a glass of water and a bag of oreos. He didn't know his tastes so he had gone for safe choices. When he turned around to call for him, since the man hadn't followed him, he almost crashed directly into him. He had followed but had done so so silently that Will hadn't heard him. A real life spider.
"Here. Fuel so you can get back home safely."
"Damn. You really know how to take care of your guests."
"You're not a guest. I didn't invite you. You're more like a vermine," Will mused, sliding the sweets and glass to the other, so he would stop talking and start eating already, because Will was still highly panicked at the thought of how much blood he had lost in front of him, and how much he must have lost beforehand.
"A vermine!" The man exclaimed, obviously extremely unhappy with the choice of word. Will rolled his eyes.
"Eat. You need to up your sugar levels."
"You don't even know if-"
"Eat. Now."
"Okay, okay," the man chuckled, raising his hands as a sign of surrender before he grabbed onto his mask, and raised it just enough to rest on his nose as he gulped the water down in one go, and attacked the biscuits.
He had freckles everywhere, Will noticed, and a sharp jawline. How lucky of him. Will didn't know many people with freckles, but he had always been jealous. He wished he could have galaxies naturally painted on his cheeks, too. But it made sense, he supposed. He was an artist, not the art. What he needed wasn't to have freckles, it was to have subjects he could paint with them.
He looked away before the stranger could think he was staring. He wasn't. It's not like he wanted to know what he looked like under the mask anyway. Or, well. Maybe a little. But he didn't care that much. Not really. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity after all, they would never come across each other after this. So really, knowing what was hidden behind the mask was useless at best.
He looked down at the rag hanging from his hips. The suit was as good as gone, now. He wondered if he had a backup. He must have, if he was so used to this type of situations he didn't even want to tend to his wounds anymore. Hopefully, it wasn't so bad all the time. Will was sure he would need a few days to recover.
"You are going home after this, right? Not fighting any more crime?"
The man snorted. He took the time to lower his mask before he spoke. "Looking like this?" He gestured to his pitiful excuse of a suit. "No thank you, I'm going home."
"Good. You need to rest."
"Yes, nurse."
"Nurse? I thought I was a doctor?"
"Nah, you look more like a nurse."
"Yeah okay. Listen, I don't wanna sound like I'm forcing you out but..."
"Subtle hint taken," he nodded, turning away so he could get back to Will's bedroom, where he went straight to the window. Will followed him, his eyes not once falling on his nude shoulders painted in the same freckles all over.
"Well, this has been fun," he said, his hand holding onto the window frame. "I'll know where to go next time I-"
"Next time?" Will exclaimed. He crossed his arms. "I better not find you bleeding out on my fire escape again, I'll finish you off myself."
The masked man chuckled, shaking his head. Will was joking, but he did hope to never find a stranger outside his bedroom on death's doorstep ever again. He watched him get over the window frame with much more ease, but before he left, he turned back to him.
"Do I get to know your name?"
"Do I get to know yours?"
"You know my name. I'm Spiderman."
Will rolled his eyes. This was a once in a lifetime situation. He didn't need to know his name because they would never see each other again. Besides, even though he didn't look nor act like a criminal, one could never be too careful. His mother had taught him about Stranger Danger.
Once it became evident Will wouldn't say his name, the other turned away, and where Will had foolishly assumed he would simply walk down the stairs, chose to get on the handrail, gave him a two-finger salute, and jumped. Will gasped, and all but threw himself outside as quickly as he could.
He caught the man swinging peacefully down the street, until he disappeared behind a building. What the hell. Will stayed frozen on the stairs for a while longer before he finally went back to bed. He chose not to look at the time, knowing very well it was way too late for his liking.