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As it turns out, one hundred and sixty floors is very, very high up.
Especially when you’re upside down, hanging by a single, dainty thread.
“I mean, at least the puke scattered into the air? No harm done, no headline saying YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBOURHOOD SPIDER-MAN DOES THE TECHNICOLOUR YAWN, HERE'S WHAT HE HAD FOR BREAKFAST tomorrow morning,” Joshua says, hunched over the toilet bowl in his bathroom. He wipes the bead of sweat trailing down his nose bridge.
Jeonghan's leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed. “Some poor citizen's probably got bits of your stomach contents in their hot dog. How do you feel about that? What kind of hero are you?”
Joshua's stomach suddenly does a momentous heave, and he sticks his face in the toilet again, the water rippling as he retches. When, unsurprisingly, nothing escapes his mouth, he emerges and pushes himself up onto shaky legs. “They'd be lucky,” Joshua retorts, turning his back to Jeonghan so he can turn on the sink, and splash cold water onto his face. “A sample of my vomit would be worth at least a hundred bucks on the market.”
“I guess even the amazing Spider-Man can experience vertigo. How humbling,” Jeonghan says, voice lilting. He perches himself on the counter beside the sink and massages the nape of Joshua's neck while Joshua brushes his teeth—with so much fervour that his toothbrush snaps in half. “Why'd you get sick anyway?”
Joshua blinks, staring at the splintered end of the toothbrush. Jeonghan coaxes it out his hand and tosses it straight into the bin across the bathroom.
“Show off,” Joshua mutters, rinsing his mouth.
“Says you,” Jeonghan counters. “Might I remind you that you posed for Wonwoo Jeon's camera yesterday. Isn't a peace sign a little, I don't know, flagrant?”
At the mention of Wonwoo’s name, the colour immediately returns to Joshua’s cheeks. His voice goes squeaky as he explains, “Yeah, but I think he liked it. He smiled?”
Jeonghan leans forward. His eyes are narrowed as he scans Joshua’s face. A grin slowly grows on his face. “Why’d you get sick anyway, Jisoo?” he repeats.
Joshua laughs nervously. “I’m, uh, hungover.”
“You’re hungover,” Jeonghan replies drily.
“That’s right,” Joshua says, standing up a little straighter, “I, Joshua Hong, got spectacularly drunk last night.”
“Was it Seungcheol?”
“It was Seungcheol,” Joshua affirms.
“That bastard, he didn’t even invite me.”
“You’ve been giving him the silent treatment for like, two weeks,” Joshua points out.
Jeonghan waves his hand. “That’s beside the point. I would’ve crashed if I’d known it was happening, so obviously he was actively trying to keep it from me. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Joshua pokes at a pimple on his chin, inspecting it in the mirror. “That’s the thing, I was never going to go. But then, you know, Chemical X.” A drop of pus trickles down his chin. “Wonwoo went.”
Jeonghan starts to crack up, and Joshua scowls at him. “You are sooooo gone. Weren’t you just moaning about the two thousand word paper you have due on Tuesday?”
“Jeonghan, he doesn’t go to parties. Ever. I had no choice!”
Jeonghan pretends to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye in mirth. “Point taken. Tell me everything. From the beginning.”
Last night, Joshua had been marathoning Gossip Girl on Netflix when he got word of a high speed car chase involving some duo that’d robbed a bank downtown.
He sighs, hauling himself up out of bed, and shucking off his ketchup-stained sweatpants. When he arrives, the police are already starting to fall back, and for the most part they seem relieved to see Spider-Man on the scene. It’s an easy job; Joshua creates a huge web across the road, then shoots another one at the rear of the vehicle so as to soften the impact. The crooks try to run as soon as the car is trapped in the webbing but by then the cops have caught up.
“Nice work,” someone calls out when Joshua takes his cue to leave, aiming his hand at the railing of a bridge above them. There’s the click of a camera, and while that wouldn’t make him bat an eyelid any other day, he glances down at the voice.
Wonwoo’s standing on the pavement, camera hanging around his neck, his scuffed up Docs turned inwards like he’s feeling nervous.
“Thank you,” Joshua replies, clearing his throat. He hasn’t seen Wonwoo or his camera in a while, at least not as Spider-Man. “Were you just in the area or—?”
“Yeah, I’m following you around,” Wonwoo says as he raises his camera again, his glasses knocking against the view finder. “No shit I was in the area, Spidey, I was having dinner with my dad at the café over there. Good risotto, by the way.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Joshua laughs, holding up a peace sign as Wonwoo snaps away. He flexes his fingers, grimacing at the stick of his sweaty palm. “But I have to go now.” Got a date with Netflix, he doesn’t mention.
“I have to go too,” Wonwoo blurts out. He turns off his camera. “A party, you see, my friend’s dragging me because he’s trying to hit on the football captain’s cousin’s friend. Aaaand I didn’t need to tell you that.”
Wonwoo Jeon’s going to a party? Hosted by a football captain? It’s gotta be Seungcheol. There’s a week old text from him on Joshua’s phone which reads: yo josh, mingyu’s bringing that one brand of vodka so u can get wasted. u gotta come.
Wonwoo waves. “Go then, go save kittens or whatever the hell you’re useful for. I’ll see you around.”
“See you, Wonwoo,” Joshua mumbles inaudibly, wondering how much he’ll regret not finding out if Chuck tells Blair he loves her if he goes to Seungcheol’s place tonight. He zaps across the sky.
“So where is it?”
“Nice to see you too, Joshua,” Seungcheol says, sliding an arm across Joshua’s shoulders. He grins, wrapping his other arm around Joshua, and squeezing. “Booze is in the kitchen. What’s got your panties in a twist?”
“Oh, nothing,” Joshua sing-songs, scanning his immediate area for any signs of a grey dye job and oversized sweater. What he does after he spots Wonwoo—well, if Spider-Man’s notorious for playing everything by ear, this city hasn’t met Joshua Hong yet. “Where’s Jeonghan?”
Seungcheol tosses him a bottle, Joshua deftly catching it inches off the ground. “Don’t know, don’t care.” He eyes Joshua with his why won’t you join the team with reflexes like those? look. Joshua knows it well.
“Not talking again, huh?” Joshua comments before Seungcheol has a chance to voice the thought. His face twitches as he takes a swig of vodka. Then another, and another. Even superheroes need a little liquid courage sometimes, but it’s a shame it takes at least three bottles of high concentrate for his blood cells to stop killing off the alcohol before it can affect him. The stuff’s nasty.
“I stopped talking to him first,” Seungcheol insists. “But I was ready to make amends after sleeping it off, and he wasn’t.”
Joshua hums around the rim of the bottle. “That’s our Jeonghan. Can hold a grudge better than my aunt.” He swallows another mouthful.
“It makes me wanna sympathy puke seeing you down that like it’s fucking apple juice. Still don’t know why you haven’t seen a doctor yet.”
Joshua laughs. His throat’s starting to feel warm. “Yeah, I’m gonna walk into the hospital and say, ‘hey, I can’t get wasted like a normal person’. Who does that?”
“It’s happened before,” someone comments, entering the kitchen. Wonwoo’s haloed by the strobe lights flashing behind him—despite all the commotion, the only sound in Joshua’s hypersensitive ears is his own heartbeat. Wonwoo laughs, bites his lip, shrugs. “Sorry, didn’t mean to butt in. My dad’s a doctor. I’ve heard all kinds of ridiculous stories at the dinner table.”
“You must be close with your father,” Joshua says, recalling how Wonwoo had been at a café with him earlier. Wonwoo frowns. Joshua wants to tape his own mouth.
“Well, trying,” Wonwoo says, mouth quirking. He pours himself a cup of beer, and when he looks up again, his eyes narrow at Joshua. “Have we met before?”
Joshua blanches, any reply he tries to formulate dying on his tongue. Seungcheol is no help, and Joshua has to resist the urge to Spider-Man his ass and drag him back into the kitchen.
Wonwoo edges forward, until Joshua’s backed against the sink. Then, he smiles. “I’m kidding, I know you. Joshua Hong. You do the comic strip in the paper. Butterfly-Baby. It’s cute.”
Joshua expels all the air from his lungs, and nods. “Yup, that’s me.”
Wonwoo pushes himself up onto the kitchen island opposite Joshua. He doesn’t say anything for a while, neither of them do—Joshua because he’s been crushing on this guy since before he even knew his name, and Wonwoo because he’s in excruciatingly awkward company and probably wants to leave?—and he picks at the salmon coloured wool of his sweater, taking periodic sips of his beer. A pair of jocks stumble in, and he and Joshua both stare as they argue over who can carry the most cans in their muscle tees.
Wonwoo turns back to Joshua once they leave, a trail of laughter following them. “Sorry, I haven’t done this in a while,” he says, the statement ending in a sigh. Joshua hasn’t made this much eye contact with someone since he had a military veteran for a 2nd grade teacher. “Parties, I mean. But you’re nice. Mind if we hang for a little longer? If I’m not keeping you from anything, that is.”
Joshua chugs down a cups worth of vodka, before he’s able to answer with something that isn’t an incredulous ME? “Ha ha, sure,” he says. Almost immediately, he wants to smack his forehead with his palm. Or on Seungcheol’s lovely marble countertop.
“Great,” Wonwoo all but chirps.
“I read your piece on Spider-Man last week,” Joshua says, after another moment of thick silence. He uncrosses and crosses his legs. “It was, uh, original?”
“Original,” Wonwoo repeats, slowly. Did his nose always crinkle when he smiled? “That’s an interesting way to say you hated it. So, are you a Spider-Man apologist or a die-hard fan or somewhere in between?”
Joshua blinks, and his vision goes blurry for a moment. “Um, neither? I just think, well, isn’t calling him ‘a skinny twink in cheap spandex’ a little harsh? It’s not like he’s weak. Physically at least.” His mind is, regrettably, the epitome of weak right now.
Wonwoo hums, sloshing the last of his beer around in his cup. “Who said being a skinny twink was an insult? I’m more of a Superman guy myself, anyhow.”
“Soooo,” Joshua starts, after downing the last quarter of the vodka in one go, his eyes already searching for another bottle. “You like muscles then?”
Wonwoo plunges toward him, snatching the bottle out of Joshua’s hand. “Woah, slow down,” he says, face a picture of concern. Joshua freezes. Then he lets his body sway slightly, and sure enough, Wonwoo places a hand on his waist to steady him. “Did you drink this all yourself?”
“It’s fine, I’m totally fine,” Joshua insists, his voice clear as day, “In fact, get me another one.”
“Weird, you’re barely tipsy,” Wonwoo says, his breath on Joshua’s neck. There’s a moment—and then it’s gone. He steps back, returning to his spot on the counter, and leaving a phantom handprint on Joshua’s waist. “And no, I don’t care if you’re ripped or not. If I’m into you, I’m into you. I make fun of Spider-Man ‘cause he’s an easy target.”
“An easy target,” Joshua echoes. “Isn’t that cowardly?”
If Wonwoo’s taken aback, he only lets it show for a split second. By then, Joshua’s already scrambling for something else to say.
“I guess so,” Wonwoo cuts him off. He looks into his cup, and then back up at Joshua’s eyes again. “Never been known for my strength and braveness. I’m not the superhero.”
“Everyone has a little braveness in them,” Joshua points out, “You came to this party, didn’t you?”
“I came because I—I don’t know. It’s silly. I felt like there was a story here tonight.” Wonwoo sets his cup down, and holds out his hand. “Do you wanna dance, Joshua?”
Joshua’s origin story isn’t particularly interesting. He tagged along with Seungcheol to Take Your Son to Work day at Alae Labs. He got lost, searching for a bathroom. Bitten by a radioactive spider that’d gotten loose, had been hanging from the ceiling of the corridor Joshua stumbled down, in search of prey.
Sometimes Joshua wonders if it was meant to happen to someone else, that it was a case of wrong place, wrong time, and he was never meant to be the hero. It could’ve been Seungcheol, it could’ve been anyone.
But there is also a much, much bigger part of Joshua that doesn’t care.
He swoops into a burning building, immediately enveloped in thick smoke. The chief of the fire department assured him the office block had been cleared, but Joshua wants to be sure. There are no screams inside—those usually help him—but his gut feeling tells him that there’s someone here, a someone on the brink of asphyxiation.
“Hello?” he calls out, scaling the wall, the ceiling, his eyes raking over the room. “I’m here to help.” There’s movement in his periphery, barely a flutter. Bingo. He pulls himself to the ground, wresting back a desk at the farthest corner of the room to find a lady huddled there, her clothes covered in soot.
“How did you find me, Spider-Man?” the woman says on the stretcher later, wheezing. Joshua places a palm over her hand, fixing the oxygen mask back on her mouth.
“Guess it was fate,” he answers. She can’t see his smile beneath the mask.
Joshua finds himself, three hours and another two bottles of vodka later, with his head cradled in Wonwoo's lap, serenading him with an off-key rendition of Itsy Bitsy Spider. There's an icy breeze drifting across the ground of the balcony where they're reclined. In the bedroom, Wonwoo's friend Seokmin has been lip-locked with Seungcheol's cousin's friend Jaesung? Jaewon? Jaehyuk? for the last hour. All Joshua knows is that a friend of Yuna Choi's is no friend of his. Not after she and her acappella group wrote a two minute Spider-Man diss into the university's Christmas Show last year and rejected Joshua's audition to join the show in the first place, because apparently his voice was too ‘indistinct’. The whole thing was very much not in the spirit of Christmas, and frankly, an act of sacrilege on Jesus Christ's name. Joshua's certain he did a good deed by unleashing a tarantula in Yuna's dressing room while the whole ensemble was on stage for the encore, even though she fainted, hit her head, and had to get ten stitches. Whatever. Not all villains wear masks.
“Hey, Wonwoo,” Joshua says, reaching up to poke Wonwoo in the chin. He then becomes preoccupied with grazing his fingertips over the prickly beginnings of stubble along Wonwoo's jaw, and forgets the enlightenment he was about to give Wonwoo. He knows it was good.
“Yeah?” Wonwoo's smile is soft, so smudged out Joshua isn't sure it's even there, like the first watery beginnings of sunlight at dawn.
Lightbulb!
“The spider didn't give up. It climbed up the spout again,” Joshua declares in a conspiratorial whisper, “It waited for the sun and used it to its advantage and climbed up the goddamn spout again. See, that's what being a superhero is. Not turning down help when you need it.”
Wonwoo looks bewildered in the face of Joshua's proud, beatific grin, and it's another minute before he replies. “So you're saying that Spider-Man's career is a constant deus ex machina?”
“Exactly!” Joshua exclaims, snapping his fingers, “You're so smart! The cleverest in the world.”
“Thank you,” Wonwoo murmurs, flattening Joshua's fringe down with a warm palm.
After a moment: “You're going to put that in an article, aren't you.”
“You bet I am,” Wonwoo snickers, mimicking Joshua's finger snapping move.
They'd danced earlier, in Seungcheol's living room, swaying side to side like the song was a slow number and not some gritty track that had the people around them gyrating against each other. Joshua leant his weight on Wonwoo, Wonwoo's breath hot on the shell of his ear. A hand had somehow found its way to the small of Wonwoo's back. He watched the neon lights catching on the silver of Wonwoo's hair, the creamy eyeliner along the creases of his closed eyes, his resting pout, how he hummed the lyrics into Joshua's ear like the buzz of a fly, his bottom lip brushing against a piercing, and Joshua wanted, inexplicably, to take a photograph of him.
“Hey, Wonwoo," Joshua says again. He points into the bedroom, when Wonwoo offers him another noncommittal Yeah? "They're not going to get naked, are they?”
“Well, I don't think Seokmin's an exhibitionist,”—Seokmin pulls off his t-shirt, spectacularly struggling for a moment to get it past his head, and then shoves Jaesung? onto the bed—“Nevermind, we should get out of here.”
Joshua goes wide eyed as Wonwoo gently pushes him up. “Like? Like that kind of get out of here?”
Wonwoo fixes him A Look. "You're so fucking drunk, Joshua. I'm taking you home."
“Like?”
“Not like that.”
“That's a shame,” Joshua says solemnly. His statement is punctuated by a waily moan from the bedroom.
“It is,” Wonwoo agrees, tugging Joshua across the room. He pauses to turn back to the bed with a grimace. “For the love of my eyes, Seokmin, wait till we're out of the room to get your dick out.”
Seokmin shoots him a thumbs up, yelling out “Merry Sexmas, Wonwoo!” as they leave.
(“That's a thing? How come I don't celebrate it? I want to celebrate it?” Joshua exclaims in the taxi. He takes a deep breath, and opens his mouth again to sing, “All I want for Se—” before Wonwoo slaps a hand over it.
“I'm not hooking up with you tonight.”
“So you'd hook up with me another night?”
“Shut up. Are you always like this?”
“Nope.”)
“Happy fuckin' Valentine's Day, Seokmin!” Wonwoo retorts, loosening his grip on Joshua a little.
Joshua doesn't remember a great deal after the taxi drive home, and the walk through campus to his dormitory. Jeonghan wasn't in, unsurprisingly, and Wonwoo hadn't stayed long. In those five minutes or so, Joshua distinctly recalls only three moments: first, Wonwoo had hovered by the doorframe, eyes flickering over the room like he was cataloging every minute detail. He picked up a sock, then dropped it. Second, he'd padded over to where Joshua flopped onto his bed, and carefully untied his shoelaces. And third:
“Hey, Wonwoo.”
“Yeah?”
“You're sweeter than you write,” Joshua mumbles into his pillow.
“Goodnight, Joshua Hong.” Wonwoo shut the door behind him with an almost soundless click.
The next morning Joshua hauls himself out of bed, feeling like he’d taken a lightning bolt to the head, and tugs on his suit—a half-asleep Jeonghan tosses a pillow at him as he hops around the room (maybe spandex wasn’t a great idea after all)—to stop the third armed robbery that week. The Sheriff places a hand on Joshua’s shoulder, tells him he looks terrible, and that they’ve got it covered. He’s sent home.
“If you’re going to say that you told me so,” Joshua says when Jeonghan enters the bathroom, “Don’t.”
“But I didn’t tell you so,” Jeonghan replies, raising an eyebrow.
“You would’ve if you weren’t fast asleep at 12PM.” Joshua’s groan echoes off the toilet bowl.
“You know me so well,” Jeonghan says, grinning.
The first Butterfly-Baby comic Joshua ever drew was three years ago during his senior year. It went like this: Butterfly-Baby lost his older brother in a car accident. He’d been picked up by his brother from his part time job at their local record shop, and they were driving home together, talking about how Butterfly-Baby was considering trying out for captain of the ice hockey team. They were T-boned by a drunk driver just outside of McDonalds.
Butterfly-Baby was only a caterpillar then. He couldn’t fully comprehend what his older brother meant when he looked him in the eye, and said, “With great power, comes great responsibility.”
The college paper liked the strip so much that they published it under the condition that Joshua draw them an entire year’s worth of Butterfly-Baby. Joshua liked drawing Butterfly-Baby so much that three years later, he’s still sending them a comic strip every fortnight. Supply and demand, et cetera. He has something of a routine. On Fridays, he makes notes, or a flowchart if he’s extra bored, of all the shit Spider-Man’s gone through that week. Things that he can share, and things he shouldn’t even know about. He’ll slave over his sketchbook on the weekend. By Wednesday, he’ll have a design polished and ready to email to the editor, a bubbly sophomore by the name of Jamie Park.
Going into the office was never part of Joshua’s routine.
He makes his way across campus ten minutes before the deadline, hands in Butterfly-Baby, Whiskers and Love at First Rescue to Jamie, tells her he sent a digital copy too, and then awkwardly loiters around her desk.
“You get quite the draft in here,” Joshua comments, shifting on his feet.
Jamie looks perplexed but goes along with the conversation, “Yeah, I’ve been trying to get the door fixed since the beginning of winter. You can hear poor Wonwoo’s teeth chattering from he—”
“Wonwoo!” Joshua cuts Jamie off, slamming his hands on the desk. She jumps back in her chair. “Wouldn’t happen to be here, would he?”
“He’s in the office down the ha—nice talking to you, Joshua!”
Down the hall, Joshua is met with an exasperated, “Fuck! Fuckfuckfuckfuck!” He timidly pushes open the door to see Wonwoo pacing around the room, pausing to squat down and look under a single sheet of paper that was laying on the carpet.
“Wonwoo,” Joshua calls out, “Are you okay?”
Wonwoo freezes up, then spins around to face the door with a hand on his chest. His face is impassive for a moment, eyes sweeping over Joshua's frame, and then he shakes his head. “My camera's gone.”
“Gone?" Joshua croaks. "For how long?”
Wonwoo drops onto his desk with a deep frown, gazing out of the window into the yellow-lit deserted campus. “Well, I only noticed now. But the last time I remember having it was at noon when I went to the caf.”
“Maybe you left it there?”
“Maybe,” Wonwoo says. His tone is heavy, drowsy. He's still looking outside. Joshua sort of feels like he’s missing something. “I don't do that though, ever.” Before Joshua can pitch in with the sensible explanation (Maybe today was the exception?), Wonwoo continues, “I'm afraid it's been stolen.”
There's a sharp tack of adrenaline in Joshua's chest, and he steps forward. “Okay, so I'll help you find it. By, um, going to security.”
Wonwoo turns then, to regard him. “I don't—” he starts, his eyebrows pinched. Joshua waits for it, the I don't need your help. But Wonwoo, the corner of his mouth twitching in amusement, says, “Fine. Let's go.”
As they pass Jamie’s office on the way out, she pretends to swoon, and tells Joshua she liked the strip, that it was the cutest episode he’s drawn so far. To Wonwoo, she yells, “You’re not allowed to go on a date, you’ve got,”—she pats a stack of papers on her desk—“aaaaaall these copy-edits to do.”
“Got it, boss,” Wonwoo says, giving her a snappy salute. He shrugs on his parka, shaking the sleeves over his hands as they make their way through the building. They’re outside, footfall noisy against the pavement, arms occasionally knocking against each other, when Wonwoo speaks up, “I’m not gonna get it back. It’s gone.”
“You’re quite the pessimist,” Joshua comments, audible enough for Wonwoo to hear.
(There was a girl once, he thinks of her now. When Joshua pulled her out of a five car pile-up, her brother hugged him, and proclaimed he saved his sister’s life. She’d turned to him, and said, very quietly, “You didn’t save my life. You prolonged it.”
Joshua went home, feeling sorry for himself, and marathoned Teen Titans until 4AM in order to believe in heroism again.)
“Eh, I’m just being realistic. Spider-Man’s not the only person I’ve written a scathing piece about.” Wonwoo pauses. “There’s a thought. Imagine Spider-Man stole my camera.”
“That is a thought,” Joshua agrees. A completely absurd thought.
Wonwoo changes the topic, rambling about the latest topic he's writing about, the redemption of Doctor Octopus or whatever. Joshua doesn’t pay much attention. He watches Wonwoo as he speaks, puffs of white escaping his lips, cheeks glowing under the warm light of a lamppost, his nose a shiny red.
“There’s something I—” Joshua starts to say, before he slams into a brick wall, and Wonwoo pushes through the door of the security office. He doubles back, laughing as he inspects the scrape on Joshua’s forehead.
“Sorry,” he hiccups, “Should’ve warned you.”
“No biggie,” Joshua groans, following Wonwoo inside.
The security office ends up being a bust. The man at the front desk regards them drily, standing up—Joshua and Wonwoo’s faces slowly angle upwards as he rises—to tell tham that there’s nothing they can do at this time of day and they can file a report to be looked into tomorrow.
Joshua won’t accept that. “Sir, you don’t get it. This is Wonwoo Jeon we’re talking about. That name ring a bell? He’s only the best reporter in this entire school, and if he can’t tell our stories, who can?”
The man looks him up and down, and barks, “Beat it, kid.” He pushes back his chair and turns to leave. “I’ve got an interview with a doughnut.”
Joshua takes a deep breath, but before he can get a word out, Wonwoo’s dragging him backwards with a resigned, “Leave it, Joshua.”
“Asshole,” Wonwoo mutters outside, his hand still wrapped around Joshua’s wrist. Joshua’s spiderwebs tingle with the urge to shoot out and keep it there.
He grins. “Louder, for the people in the back.”
Wonwoo rolls his eyes, but complies. “That guy was a fucking asshole!”
Joshua had told Wonwoo that being a superhero meant accepting help when you needed it. But it also meant knowing when it’s best to get shit done on your own. The guy was right, though. They can’t get the camera back tonight. But—“Hey, Wonwoo,” Joshua says, “Do you wanna go grab a bite to eat?”
Wonwoo lets go of Joshua’s wrist, giving him a weak smile. “Copy-edits to do, remember?”
“Right. Those. You’ve got at least a hundred.”
“Hey, Joshua,” Wonwoo calls out as he leaves.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t say this often but. Thank you.”
“Wonwoo Jeon is so out of my league it isn’t funny,” Joshua sighs from the ceiling.
Jeonghan flings a hair-tie at him, chuckling. “I don’t know, it’s pretty hilarious.”
For a while, the bite revived this recurring nightmare from Joshua’s childhood: he wakes up to a spider dangling above his bed, it begins to grow in size, Joshua shuffles back, flat against the headboard and unable to scream, like there are cobwebs in his throat, its dozens of eyes are all directed at him, the red stripe across its back menacing, there are tinier spiders creeping up his arms, and—he passes out—he wakes up in a cold sweat, his skin crawling—he really, really wishes radioactive cats were a thing.
The bottom line is Spider-Man doesn’t actually like spiders all that much.
But there is one thing Joshua likes less than spiders, and that is: the rain.
It’s pouring buckets at the game Seungcheol blackmails Joshua into attending (honestly, a video of him streaking through the dorms is subpar blackmail material but Joshua goes because a) he’s sick of playing peacemaker and b) it’s actually pretty fun to antagonise Jeonghan), and Joshua takes the first free seat he can spot. It’s one of at least fifty free seats in the bleachers, and happens to be next to Wonwoo, but Joshua admits nothing.
“‘Sup,” Joshua says, stretching his arm across the back of the bench. He shakes his damp hair, and Wonwoo pulls a face, pretending to shuffle away.
“Nothing much,” Wonwoo answers, his statement punctuated by a sneeze. He’s rugged up from head to toe, a huge scarf coiled around his neck and a beanie pulled over his forehead. He’s holding up his phone, taking the occasional shot of Seungcheol tackling someone or Mingyu tripping face first into the mud or Vernon’s face? “I’ve been sent here against my own will because Soonyoung from the Sports section is sick. Sick! How fucking dare he.”
Joshua nods solemnly. His socks are soaked and the sound of the rain is grating against his eardrums and the clouds make him feel glum, but suddenly sitting here, next to Wonwoo, Joshua doesn't have the heart to whinge about having to attend anymore. Liking someone is about extending an ear over trying to receive one yourself, right? So what if his ex-boyfriend had told him the opposite; that being in a relationship was a mutually beneficial arrangement, and Joshua really needed to stop colour-coding his wardrobe without permission and getting him that shitty coffee from downstairs that he doesn't even like. Joshua isn't a doormat, he's a fucking superhero—and his ex was an ungrateful asshole. Joshua's moral compass might be a little wonky, but the lady who made their coffee always gave him a chocolate brownie on the house, so who's the real winner here?
“Such is the life of reporter scum,” Wonwoo sighs, zooming in on Junhui’s butt. “But I’ve got a headline already, SOME LAME BUT FUNNY PUN: UNETHICAL COACH SENDS TEAM INTO THE JAWS OF PNEUMONIA. Good?”
“I’m sure you can pull it off,” Joshua offers. He gestures at Wonwoo’s phone. “Still no camera, huh?”
Wonwoo shakes his head. “I’m stuck with this thing until I get the camera replaced. But look at this quality.” He shows Joshua the photo he’d just taken. All Joshua can see is rain, but it’s surprisingly HD rain. “Technology is amazing.”
They spend the rest of the game pressed close to each other for warmth, knees only just touching. When Seungcheol’s team loses, Wonwoo scoffs, “It’s obviously because they were too busy being icicles to play properly. This article’s going to be hot.”
“What about the other team?”
Wonwoo waves his hand. “Moot point. The school only cares about their own players.” He shoves his notebook into his backpack, as Joshua gets up.
“Hey, Wonwoo.” He sees a drenched Seungcheol waving zealously at him.
Wonwoo looks up. His eyes glint in the rain, and Joshua’s mind goes blank. “Yeah?”
“That time, at the party. Did you find your story?”
“I did. But first,”—Wonwoo smiles, zipping up his backpack,—“Fieldwork.”
“Do you think he’d appreciate me writing a song for him?”
“I think he’d appreciate me putting a fist through your guitar if you don’t stop strumming it right now.”
“Helpful,” Joshua deadpans, dropping to the floor from where he’d been propped up against the doorframe of the bathroom.
“Seriously though, I think there’s something holding him back? You should find out what it is.”
Joshua hums. “How do I do that?”
Jeonghan shrugs, swivelling back to his desk. Joshua glares at the back of his head, vaguely disappointed he doesn’t have laser vision. When Jeonghan’s done yelling at his Nintendo DS, he says, “You should tell him you’re Spider-Man.”
“And have him tell the entire world? Fat chance.”
“You don’t trust him?”
“It’s not that I—I haven’t even told Seungcheol yet,” Joshua says, fiddling with the tuners of his guitar.
“That’s because Seungcheol can’t keep a secret to save his life—except for that party, fuck that party—but I bet you ten bucks Wonwoo already knows. Face it, tiger, you hit the jackpot with this guy.”
Joshua snorts. “Ten bucks? You’re on.”
By the sixth armed robbery of the month, Joshua has a niggling suspicion that he’s being pranked. Even Looter wasn’t this trigger happy. The guy’s wasting away in some high security prison in DC but if Joshua had to place his bets on who’s behind this elaborate ruse to trap him by holding up a gas station or ooh, the occasional Tiffany & Co store, it’d be Looter. Evil genius, really.
Unexpectedly, Wonwoo finds him, scaling the wall of a shoddy apartment block. It’s the middle of the night, and the university is three subway stations away, so he knows Wonwoo wasn’t just in the area this time. He has his phone out, looking a little pathetic as he snaps away, and Joshua pauses his pursuit of the burglar, giving the poor guy a lead as he struggles to climb a fence at the end of the alley. “You can’t deny you were following me now,” Joshua calls out, shooting a web at the burglar’s torso without looking back. The man falls to the ground, groaning.
“You’re right,” Wonwoo says. His fingers shake around his phone. “Hey, do you think you could do a peace sign for me again? The readers ate it up last time.”
“I don’t know. Why should I?” Joshua teases.
The cops pull up, and Wonwoo has to shout over the sirens. His face lights up, red and blue, like Joshua’s suit. “Because you like me.”
The second one of the policemen cuffs the robber, Joshua bolts, leaping around the block. Wonwoo pushes past the cops to chase after him, shoving his phone deep into his pocket. With the strangely exceptional ability to sniff him out that Joshua has only witnessed a handful of times, Wonwoo stumbles upon him in another alleyway, hanging upside down from a fire escape. They’d make a great team, Joshua thinks. Which only makes him imagine Wonwoo in spandex and subsequently want to cry.
“Do they teach tracking skills in journalism school? How to be a Dog 101?” Joshua says, swinging back and forth in an attempt to look ominous and mysterious. Except, again, his body betrays him and tries to upchuck his dinner, so he stops.
“Funny,” Wonwoo deadpans, “I’ll have to suggest that course name to the department.”
“I don’t like you,” Joshua insists.
Wonwoo steps forward. “You sure?”
“Never been surer about anything in my life.”
Wonwoo cups Joshua’s cheek. His fingers are pale and stiff, the nails lilac from the cold, but his breath is warm even through Joshua’s mask. It’s always warm. And his mouth? Joshua’s been in a burning building too many times to count, and Wonwoo pressing his lips against where Joshua’s are—ten seconds too long to be a peck, but one layer of fabric too many to be a proper kiss—isn’t just a burning building, it’s a burning Earth, it’s a burning in Joshua’s entire body.
“Hey, Joshua,” Wonwoo whispers, leaning back.
“Yeah?” Joshua says. He clears his throat. “I mean, excuse me?!”
Wonwoo grins. “Ask me to dinner tomorrow.”
Joshua sighs as he tucks a folded tenner into Jeonghan’s jean pocket in their bathroom. Jeonghan pulls it out, inspects it, and then beams with entirely too much smugness for someone who never wins bets in good faith.
“So, that story?” Joshua starts, bursting into Wonwoo’s office. Wonwoo holds up a photograph against the sunlight filtering in through the window. “Was it me, you know, being—you know?”
“I know,” Wonwoo says, picking up another photo. From here Joshua can see it’s him, Spider-Man him, rather, handing a little girl a kitten. “I’m not going to publish it, if that’s what you’re worried about. Haven’t even written it.”
“How’d you figure it out?”
“Saw the suit on your floor. Among other hints. You probably shouldn't leave that lying around.”
“Whatever. The fieldwork?” Joshua persists.
“Would you count a kiss as fieldwork, Spidey?” Wonwoo raises an eyebrow.
Joshua slams the door shut, hissing, “Don’t call me that, oh my God.”
“Don’t worry, Joshua, my lips are sealed,” Wonwoo reassures him. He angles a print his way. “How do you feel about this one?”
“It’s my butt,” Joshua says. He makes his way across the room, perching himself on Wonwoo’s desk.
“Have I told you what a great invention spandex is lately?” Wonwoo walks his fingers up Joshua’s thigh.
“Nope.”
“Well, I am now,” Wonwoo says.
“Does that mean no more mean articles about me?” Joshua asks, grabbing Wonwoo’s hand and interlocking their fingers.
Wonwoo seems to find this the joke of the year because he cracks up, and doesn’t stop for a whole two minutes. Joshua stares at him. He was being serious! “Joshua,” Wonwoo starts, taking Joshua’s other hand, “My ex-boyfriend was Deadpool.”
“Hm, that makes sense. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Or whatever they are now.
“I’m actually on pretty good terms with him,” Wonwoo remarks, a leftover chuckle escaping his mouth. He lets go of Joshua’s hand to sift through the photographs again, blushing a little.
“Hey, Wonwoo,” Joshua says, poking him in his ribs.
“Yeah?”
“Do you wanna grab a bite to eat? I know a place that does great risotto.”