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The crisp, winter air of New York fanned against Peter’s mask as he swung through skyscrapers and looped over ledges. Christmas lights were only just being taken off in the streets of New York. Spider-Man swung in Harlem not so long ago, helping some of the workers to reach up and hook fairy lights off street lamposts whilst also sipping a black coffee. Nearly splurging at the bitter taste. He webbed the coffee cup into a bin and swung over to Little Odessa when a couple of crime notifications popped up on the FNSM app.
It took some getting used to with the FNSM app when Miles introduced it to him. But since Yuri and him broke off when she was a fugitive to the police, he did not have easy connections to the police comms. And if anyone found out that he did somehow manage to hack into them, Spider-Man may be the next one in a cell. Ganke coded the app well and made it so that notifications from civilians popped up whenever an app user needed help. It was useful to a point where he praised Miles and Ganke for it whilst belittling himself on why he never thought of the idea before.
Nonetheless, the app was useful. And Peter was swinging to his next crime in Williamsburg when another notification popped on the app- some criminals caught stashing Underground tech.
Since the Tinkerer incident, the police scoured New York for any trace of her programmable matter to make sure it would not get in the wrong hands. Peter and Miles had hoped that they found most of it and the rest was simply inaccessible because of some secure hiding spot Phin Mason implemented, until more reports of Underground stashes being all over the city came through.
Right after he managed to web a glass bottle someone was littering out their car window onto the streets, the familiar sound of his favourite podcast came up from his favourite host.
- Jonah Jameson, as he mostly started his podcasts, began by shouting down the microphone onto property damage in New York. As always, he spoke of how it was ridiculous to web back a building together after an explosion some criminals started, or chase massive supervillains into the city.
“You see this, folks?! More destruction onto our beloved city caused by the infamous wall-crawling MENACES!”
“Mhm,” Peter hummed to himself, webbing around a criminal’s ankles and hooking them up on the wall and then dodging a bullet flying his way.
“Windows shattered, lightposts bent! Taxpayers, you pay for this damage!”
“Mhm.” He kicked a criminal’s stomach back into the wall until they fell onto the floor to then web them up.
“Fire escapes damaged!”
“Yep, that too.”
“Water hydrants toppled over, vigilantes swinging over people’s heads two inches away from crashing into our skulls!”
“Mhm- wait, no,” he responded, kicking someone’s head up from the chin. “That’s way too dramatic-”
“Hey, stop humming!” a criminal with Underground tech stuffed in his shirt called out
“Sorry! Is it distracting?”
“Ye-”
Spider-Man webbed the tech out of his hands and threw it on a wall to be webbed somewhere high before he could deal with the criminal.
“And don’t even get me started on the other one!”
Peter paused mid-web-tie, groaning internally as he perked up to hear what else Jonah would say about Miles.
Since the first sighting of the second Spider-Man, even before the prisoner transport of Rhino, Jonah has been scrutinizing Miles for every mistake. Taking a bit longer to finish a crime, not landing perfectly after all his swings even when he was only just getting used to his new web shooters, property damage. Yet recently, since the Underground, more of his podcasts drifted away from Peter and focused on Miles. Peter never thought he’d live to see the day where J. Jonah Jameson makes a podcast that is not about him and off someone or something else. And now when he finally did, it had to be about a teenager.
“This ‘junior Spider-Man’ swings around like a caffeinated pinball! Do we not remember what happened at Braithwaite Bridge with him and the Tinkerer?!”
“Oh boy,” Peter sighs under his mask.
“This city barely can survive one masked menace, and now we have two?! Whilst the other Spider-Man was off living in his American dream holiday-”
“It was in Symkaria, and I was working-”
“-the other one topples through New York like he owns the damn city! An irresponsible, selfish, reckless kid taking the fate of our city into his wretched hands! Spider-Man and the Tinkerer were both spotted by helicopters up in the now destroyed Roxxon building together, yet the younger Spider-Man was the only one who came out of it.”
Peter lands on a rooftop, exhaling deeply,”What are you saying, Jonah?”
“And I’ll say it right now: that kid shouldn’t even be wearing the mask! One Spider-Man wasn’t satisfied with the terrors he caused in this city, so he brought another one?! Our city needs fewer vigilantes loitering the streets and not letting the police do their job!”
There is an obvious loud crash of something in the background which he could only guess was Jonah slamming the table near the microphone before he continued roaring down it.
“Some day this city, Harlem especially with all the parading it has been doing the past few days, will realise that the Spider-Kid is nothing but even more trouble! Why should the city trust a kid who can’t even control his own powers?! Destroyed power grids, the Roxxon disaster zone.”
Rubbing his temple tiredly with his gloved hand, Peter shakes his head. “Jonah, buddy…”
Of course it was expected for J. Jonah Jameson to have things to say after what happened in Harlem. Miles even brung it up a couple of times but Peter waved off what he said almost immediately, telling him that it was nothing new and he should just ignore what was being said. He told him to keep playing that new podcast Miles recommended to him, the Danikast, and not to worry about Jonah.
Truthfully, even Peter himself wasn’t caught up onto the podcast until today. He missed about four other episodes in the past few days. But since listening to this one, he couldn’t imagine what else was being said about Miles.
Especially when Jonah didn’t know who he was talking about when he said “the Tinkerer.”
“Maybe if the Tinkerer and Spider-man weren’t too busy playing dress up in the middle of Harlem with a reactor explosion about to level the neighborhood, Roxxon could've been shut down in a more sensible way. If anything, that disaster proves my whole point! The new Spider-Man isn’t a hero, just a reckless amateur who got someone killed!”
His entire body chilled, not from the cold, but from remembering the night his flight from Symkaria landed in New York. Immediately, he and MJ got a taxi after hauling their suitcases in her apartment to Miles’ apartment in Harlem. He remembers Miles opening the door and his own arms wrapping around his shoulders instantly, his chest pressed against cold skin underneath bandages and a thin t-shirt. Miles reciprocated the hug, answering Peter's hundreds of questions with a gentle “I’m fine.” Chuckling softly when he saw Peter tenderly lift up his arm to check for injuries before pressing his fingers firmly into his shoulders and sighing in relief. MJ was somewhere in the back greeting Rio before also hugging Miles, who was now taller than she was.
Nearly taller than Peter was as well. He didn’t know when that started happening.
After Rio insisted on making them both dinner and the four of them sitting on the dining table under cosy firelight, he and Miles both sat onto Miles’ examining the gadgets Miles made whilst Peter was gone, looking into the remote mines and gravity wells as well as the cool holo-drones he took inspiration from Peter’s training systems. Eventually, they both leaned back onto the headboard with their shoulders pressed together with a few moments of comfortable silence between them.
Then Peter asked him how he was feeling. They talked about Phin and the Underground, how Krieger got away with Nuform for so long. Peter even learnt about how years ago at the Science Fair, they supposedly bumped into each other when he still worked with Otto and Miles had an exhibit with Phin. About how even when Phin was about to kill him, he still thought of her as his best friend. Bloodied and bruised, he always cared for her.
Even after he lost her.
For most of the night they talked until Miles fell asleep and Peter turned off his lampside, leaving the bedroom in pitch darkness and going home with MJ.
Checking up again with him on patrol the next day.
“And if this kid Spider-Man thinks he deserves praise for being the plague of this city-”
Peter turned off the podcast. The silence returned heavily.
Somewhere in the distance, he can see a black and red figure swinging through the skyline too far for him to reach for, but not too far for him to not notice and smile sadly at.
“Guess we’re making a detour.”
The hallway outside the studio was quiet when Peter crawled out the vents, walking towards the door and letting himself inside. As expected, no one was here.
Yet.
A turned on screen with Jonah’s face lit up his form. He walked over to a large wooden desk covered with recording equipment and holding up the broadcast microphone, which hung on a metal arm over the desk, and multiple monitors turned on to display audio levels and recording software from the last broadcast. In front of him were also scattered notes across the table that he took the polite pleasure into peeking at.
Spider-Men, responsible for 85% of all broken satellites in Manhattan!!
“That seems statistically impossible…” Peter squinted his eyes.
Headline ideas circled in red marker.
SPIDER-MEN: MENACES OR DISTASTERS? OR BOTH?
SPIDER-MEN: ARE THEY CONTAGIOUS?
SPIDER-MAN AND SPIDER-MAN: IS THIS CITY DESTINED FOR DESTRUCTION?
“Subtle.” He dropped the post it note and looked into a pile labeled Daily Bugle Exclusives. Several newspapers including him and Miles swung on the front covers. The photographers got HD shots of them from all different angles, and Jonah seemed to really like them if he kept a whole bunch of them on his desk.
“I knew you thought about me often,” he laughs, shaking his head.
The soundproof foam panels on the walls didn’t block the sound of the door knob twisting open and the footsteps that entered inside the studio. Especially not the loud voice ranting to himself.
“And for tomorrow's episode, I’m telling them exactly how tiny Spider-”
He froze completely still.
Spider-Man lifted up his hand in a small wave. “Hey, Jonah.”
The papers in J. Jonah Jameson’s hands slid to the floor dramatically before he jabbed his finger accusingly at him.
“You- you broke in! This is an established institution!”
“Broke in? Wow, Jonah. I actually happened to use the door this time.”
“I locked that door!”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Well I’ll call the police!”
“Oh, you will?” Spider-Man leaned back on the wall with his arms folded over his chest. “Do they happen to know about unpaid parking tickets on your company van in Queens?”
Jonah hunched his shoulders, a scowl forming on his face and enhancing the wrinkles on his forehead comically. “That’s slander!”
“See, that’s funny,” Peter pushed himself off the wall. “Because that is actually why I’m here.”
“Really? Enlighten me then, what do you have that is so physically important it makes you have to barge into my very private studio-”
“I listened to your episode.”
“Of course you did, it’s the number one voice of reason for a city drowning in masked chaos! Better than that Danikast nonsense!”
Peter ignored that completely.
“You talked about the other Spider-Man.”
“I always talk about you both-”
“You said that he got her killed.”
“Well it wasn’t a damn firework up there, was it?!”
He shook his head and walked towards Jonah, raising a brow when he moved backwards in intimidation.
“I doubt you saw it, the reactor. How one person managed to absorb so much Nuform inside him, it nearly killed him,” Peter hardened his gaze under the mask over his face. Some many years ago he remembers being Miles’ age, being Spider-Man. Coming home to piles of homework and overdue assignments after a whole day of patrol. Beating himself up for every first time mistake or every time he couldn’t stop criminals, biting his own tongue when the police told him to “go away.”
Not having May to talk to about any of the spider stuff specifically because she couldn’t know.
The first time he played Jonah’s podcasts, he tried to take it as constructive criticism. But over time, the more harsh they got the more degraded he felt. And the more degraded he felt, the moe he forced himself to listen to it. Listening to someone speak so horribly about him without knowing the highschooler under the mask agonisingly made him even more desperate to prove him and his listeners wrong. Eventually as Peter became more used to the Spider-Man role and felt like he could finally fit in the shoes, he started ignoring Jonah. Not stop listening to his podcasts, but not taking his words to heart and seeing them as playful ranting from a man too stuck-up in others he couldn’t focus on himself.
Jonah built his career around Spider-Man.
“Well isn’t that what you vigilantes are meant to do, eh? Save the city under cheap masks and tight costumes?”
“They’re not that tight.”
“I can see the outlines of your muscles!”
“And I can’t see yours,” Peter muttered to himself a bit too loud. “You’re missing the point.”
“What point, that our city is constantly under cycles of villainy because you masked menaces cannot bother leaving the job to the professionals?!”
“Swinging through New York may not be so kind on the architecture, but guess what, Jonah? This job is hard and there is a kid under that mask who you run your mouth about every day just to make him feel more low and to make the city see him as the problem, despite him saving Harlem earlier. Why do you think none of the reporters are getting descriptions of Spider-Man’s face despite much of the public seeing him at his lowest?”
“Because…” he paused, as if he was thinking for a moment,“because…he threatened to strangle them and their families if word ever got out about his physical appearance!”
“What? No-”
“Because he threatened to get that same wretched spider to bite half of Harlem?”
“Jonah, that spider is dead-”
“Or perhaps he said he would web them all up in that giant, ridiculous thing-”
“Because he’s their Spider-Man,” Peter cut him off instantly. “Because covered in blood and scars, the mask slipped on his face again and everyone knew he was theirs. That kid cares for his community more than he cares about his own life. He could’ve easily been exposed to the whole city by now, but he wasn’t. People trust him. People are proud of him. Does that not disprove anything you have been saying all this time?”
Jonah visibly flinches, and even just that feels like a small win for Peter. For once, he seemed genuinely speechless in front of Spider-Man.
“The Tinkerer, not like it is any of your business at all, wasn’t easy for him to lose. But he still goes on patrol even when I tell him that he doesn’t have to. In every scenario at any time of the day he puts this city over himself because he believes it was his fault that he nearly lost it. What makes you think you can put someone at such high standards it practically becomes unachievable?”
“He’s…”
“He’s?”
“Still…”
“Still?”
“A menace!”
“Oh for the love of God, Jonah.”
“What?! You can’t just instantly expect me to change my opinion based on one speech! I’m not going to change my entire campaign just because one spider seems like he did something good for the city.”
“So you admit he did something good!”
His cheeks immediately heated and his brows furrowed angrily.
“No-”
Peter chuckles under the mask, walking backwards to where the window was. It made him all the more relieved to see Jonah so frustrated by what he admitted, knowing he was going to force it out of him one day.
“Have to say, Jonah. I kinda hoped that one day you’d say something nice, it would be about me.”
“I’ve not said anything borderline nice!”
“So you just enjoy being cruel?”
“I’m not cruel-”
“Sure you aren’t,” he sat on the edge of the windowsill. “You can call me a menace all you want, Jonah. But maybe don’t talk about him like he’s some reckless joke, especially when all of this is still so fresh to him.”
He watches Jonah’s hands clench at his side and unclench when the silence draws on heavier. An annoyed grunt escaped his lips.
“I don’t want to see you in here again!”
“I know you don’t,” Peter chuckles. “Just try to refrain from saying anything bad about my kid again.” He fell backwards out of the window, dropping down into the city and swinging into the skyline.
Rushing to the window, Jonah bangs his fists onto the windowsill, wincing at the pain but holding one up and shouting loudly.
“The city will hear of this, menace!”
But his voice drowned in the wind rushing past Spider-Man’s ears from his quickened swinging, and the relief pounding pleasantly in his skull.
Later that evening, when the darkness settled into New York, the city that never sleeps finally went somewhat quieter. The loud chaos from the daylight eventually faded away into softer sounds of distant traffic, the occasional chatter from passerbys, and the blinking of traffic lights.
Peter webs the foil that covered both his and Miles’ empanadas into a bin. Leaning back on his hands, he yawns and slips his mask off fully as Miles did. A fresh gust of cold, night wind pricks at his skin. Miles is perched into a crouch next to him, stretching his muscles out after a quite vigorous chase across Midtown.
“I’m beat,” he says.
Peter huffs softly, trying to suppress another yawn. “How was school?”
“Ordinary. But I managed to leave early after one of our subs were fired after picking up a call in the middle of lesson whilst we were all waiting for him to continue teaching. I think he was arguing with his wife about her spending money on his credit card.”
“That’s why it’s always better for couples to have separate, inaccessible cards as well as one joint one,” Peter commented.
“Anyways, the principal came in mid-lesson and he didn’t even notice. She just stood there, like this,” Miles mimicked his principal, folding his arms across his chest and keeping his shoulders high. “He didn’t notice until some girl threw a bottle of nail polish at him.”
“You know if I were a teacher teaching physics, I’d sound like an eager kid teaching kids.”
“You’d absolutely make a commotion in the staff room.”
“What, does no one like each other?”
“Most of them usually just sit on their laptops during lunch with a bowl of salad in front of them. Me and Ganke once had to pick up something from the 3D printer, but we had to send it to the staff room printer because all the other ones in our school weren't working. It was awkward AF.”
“Guess we really should start working on those 3D printers I talked about for our web shooters, huh?”
“I think Ganke’s already five steps ahead of you,” Miles chuckles softly, pulling up a picture on his phone of a bunch of sketches for printer designs on his phone, as well as Ganke smiling very proudly next to them with his hands stretched out like he was presenting an award.
Peter zoomed into the designs and squinted his eyes to get a closer look.
“Woah, those could work!”
“Right?” Miles put his phone away. “It sounds perfect.”
“No wonder you both go to a gifted school,” Peter grinned and pressed his hands back into the ground beneath him.
“You know,” Miles turned his head to face him. “You wouldn’t be that bad of a teacher.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I mean…Mr Parker does sound good.”
“You’ve helped me with my physics assignments before, right? And you practically taught me everything to be Spider-Man. Teaching moody highschoolers will be a breeze for you.”
“Huh,” Peter breathed softly. Curious as to why he didn’t consider thinking about it before. “I’ll think about it.” Having a stable career, even the prospect of it, felt like a fever dream to him. Since he moved out of May’s house and entered the reality of adulthood, balancing Spider-Man life and rent was not easy. On the rare nights where he did come home to sleep after a day of swinging through the city, sometimes he would find his stuff all chucked out with an eviction notice plastered on his door. Sleeping outside until he could find somewhere cheaper to stay was not new for him. Whilst he could go to FEAST, May was bound to find out. He couldn’t put any more stress on her, even when she did offer to pay his rent many times. Knowing that she already had to mortgage her house for FEAST already tugged at his heartstrings.
Miles is a mirror image of him as a teenager, messily balancing school life and Spider-Man life. That also means that because of how similarly stubborn he is, if he ever in the future needed help from Rio for rent, he wouldn’t take it. The day Miles Morales got bit by the spider, Peter felt all sorts of emotions. Selfish relief at not having to have such a great responsibility collapsing on only his shoulders. Then having to take tablets for migraines when he considered how much Miles’ life would change. From thinking about his school life to when he reaches adulthood. Comparing both of their lives intricately.
“Hey…” Miles breaks him out of his haze of thoughts. “Did you notice anything with Jonah?”
“Hm? What about him, bud?” Acting oblivious never worked for Peter. He noticed what he believes Miles noticed in Jonah’s podcasts.
“He doesn’t talk about me, well, not like he did with the Tinkerer. He’s been suspiciously quiet lately. You know him, he’s never quiet.”
“Weird,” Peter acted confused. “Maybe he finally ran out of things to say.”
Slowly, Miles turns his head at him. Angling his eyes at the way his friend fidgeted with his fingers and scratched his neck whilst looking out into the skyline of New York, as if he had never seen it before.
“Pete?”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t think that seems off?”
“I mean, the guy yells for a living. He may have lost his voice.”
Miles stares for a moment before groaning at realisation, smacking his palms at his face.
“You did something.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Silence stretches on for a moment as Miles accusingly looks at Peter. Then the facade breaks.
“Okay, I might’ve done a small something.”
“I knew you did! Pete, did your high school ever give you drama lessons back in the day?”
“Back in the day?!”
“I mean-” Miles pauses, unsure how to rephrase it. “In your time of education.”
“We did have them, for your information. And I passed with flying colours.”
For a moment, Miles laughs gently before shaking his head. “That doesn’t change what you did.”
“And what exactly do you accuse me of doing, Mister Morales?”
“Barging into J.Jonah Jameson’s office and telling him not to trash talk me on his podcast.”
That was exactly what he did.
“I didn’t barge in,” Peter mutters under his breath.
“Pete- what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that my partner in superhero-ing is being insulted by a man on the internet for things that weren't even his fault!” Peter crosses his arms.
“But…” Miles freezes.
Peter softens his gaze, shuffling closer until their shoulders pressed. “But what?”
“You don’t defend yourself when he does it to you. You just…take it.”
“Buddy, that’s because he’s been doing this to me ever since I was your age. And when I was your age, I wished to have someone speak up for me like I did for you.”
“So you’re used to it?”
“Unfortunately.”
Miles snorts softly, bringing his knees under his chin. “That doesn’t sound healthy…”
“Well, it does keep my ego in check.” Peter’s smile fades slightly when he sees how lost Miles looks. “Hey, what's up?”
“I didn’t want it to mean anything,” he finally replied. “I wanted to just listen to it, ignore it, and get on with my day. That’s what I should’ve done. That’s what you did.”
He pauses.
“Didn’t you…?”
The flash of memories pool back to Peter like a tidal wave. The skin of his knuckles red and peeling from punching the wall. The feeling of hot tears rubbing on his fingers from his eyes after a night went wrong and the media had so many comments on how he messed up. An empty whisper in the darkness, begging for someone to see him differently and make him feel like all of this hate didn’t define him.
“The media is destructive, Miles. People like Jonah want it to be,” his hand presses into his friend’s shoulder firmly, making him look. “People like him…they spend their lives making sure that people like us feel like we are failing even when we are simply breathing. Having responsibility means having attention. Attention draws in people who want to harm you.”
He lets his words linger before adding on-
“Jonah’s limo is literally funded by us.”
That earns a small chuckle from Miles, who shakes his head and looks at his partner.
“I don’t want you to be worried for me, Pete. You already have the city to make you worry.”
“But that’s not only my worry now,” Peter says. “It’s ours. Everything that affects you affects me, Miles. You’re my Spider…bro?”
“Companion?” Miles suggests.
“Carbon copy?”
“Yeah, we need to work on that one.”
“Tell me about it,” Peter grins, leaning back on the ground with his hands under his head and feeling Miles do the same. A cool wave of night air blankets over their faces exposed to it from their masks being discarded at their sides.
“He said a lot. About me and Phin.”
Miles clenches his fists.
“He doesn’t know anything about us.”
“And I made sure he realised that,” Peter turns his head to him. “You didn’t deserve anything he said about you. Phin too. You saved a lot of people that night, God, you saved all of Harlem. I know what it cost you, Miles. But you are so brave to handle it by yourself.”
“You don’t need to be by yourself,” he adds. “I’m here now. No more solo-spider work for the both of us.”
Moonlight reflected off the look of relief on Miles’ face, making him seem even more achingly younger.
“I think I like the idea of that.”
“You better,” Peter stretches out his arm for Miles to lay his head over. “Because you have people who care for you, and they aren’t going anywhere.”
A few cars erratically beep from below, but they were used to the sound. And so was New York.
Miles reaches out for his mask, slipping it in between his hand to feel the cool material against the pads of his fingers. Grounding himself in one of the only ways he could.
“Thanks, Pete. I really appreciate that.”
“Anytime, bud. You know the drill.”
“Call, shoot a web, or run into a hug?”
“That’s the one!”
For days Miles felt like he was carrying something too much for him to bear. Like the tight and hollow feeling in his chest was growing so much he wouldn’t be able to breathe eventually. Jonah’s voice had made it worse, not because he believed him, but because he wondered if there was some sort of truth buried in them.
Then, Peter went out to do something Miles never expected. Standing in front of someone loud and impossible, telling him he is wrong. Seeing Miles as someone worth defending.
Miles swallowed silently under the mask, a small sigh of relief leaving his lips.
You’re not doing this alone.
Perhaps that night when he went home, he could fall asleep.