Debut
The rooftop smelled like tar and pigeon shit and the particular cold that comes off water towers at night. Peter stood on the edge in the terrible costume and looked at Queens from four stories up and thought: this is the dumbest thing I've ever done.
The mask was itchy. The left eye was still higher than the right and it made the whole world sit slightly crooked. The ankles bunched. The spider on his chest was crooked. The web-shooters sat under his gloves and the trigger pads were cold against his palms.
Below him the street went about its business. Cars. A couple walking a dog. A guy on a bike running a red light. The traffic signal on the corner clicked from green to yellow to red and nobody cared. Queens at 11 PM on a Tuesday.
He raised his right hand. Aimed at the cornice on the building across the street, the bit that stuck out and looked solid.
He fired.
The web line shot out with a thwip that was louder than he expected and hit the cornice and stuck. He tugged it. It held. He wrapped his fingers around the line and the line was thin and the building across the street was forty feet away and four stories up and if the web broke or the anchor gave or his grip slipped he was going to hit the pavement at a speed that would hurt even with spider-powers.
He jumped.
The arc hit him in the stomach first. The drop, the sickening freefall, the line going taut and his body swinging forward and down and then up and the street rushing past below him and the wind hitting his mask and his body going UP, actually going up, the momentum carrying him in a curve that brought him level with the third floor of the building across the street and then above it and he let go at the top of the arc and he was in the air, just the air, nothing holding him, nothing under his feet, and the city was below him and the sky was above him and he was flying.
He wasn't flying. He was falling with style. But for about two seconds it was the same thing.
He fired the other shooter. The line caught a water tower on the next building and he swung again and this time the arc was cleaner and longer and he whooped. Out loud. A sound he didn't plan, just a noise that came out of his chest, stupid and happy.
He swung six blocks before he almost hit a fire escape. Pulled up, caught the railing with his feet, hung there upside down with his heart hammering and his breath coming fast and the blood rushing to his head. A woman in the apartment below was watching television. The blue flicker lit the curtains.
He swung on. Over a bodega, a laundromat still open with blue-white light spilling onto the sidewalk. Over a basketball court where two guys were playing horse under a streetlight at 11 PM. One of them looked up. Peter waved. The guy missed his shot.
The carjacking was three blocks south of the Queensboro Bridge.
His spider-sense buzzed before he saw it. Two men, a Honda, a crowbar. One of them was pulling the driver out by his jacket. The other was already in the car with the engine running.
Peter landed on the roof of the car. His feet stuck to the metal. The man with the crowbar looked up.
"Hi," Peter said. "That's not your car."
The man swung the crowbar. Peter leaned back. It missed by about six inches. His spider-sense had given him the trajectory before the arm finished moving. He grabbed the crowbar out of the man's hand and tossed it onto the sidewalk.
"That's also not yours anymore."
The man in the car pulled a gun. Small, black, a revolver. He pointed it at Peter through the windshield. Peter's spider-sense went off like a fire alarm. He jumped sideways before the shot, landed on the hood of a parked car, and fired a web at the gun. The web hit the man's hand and the gun and stuck them both to the steering wheel.
The driver was on the ground, bleeding from a cut on his face. Peter webbed the crowbar guy to a lamppost, ankles and wrists. The gun guy was stuck to the steering wheel and screaming about his hand.
"You should call the cops," Peter said to the driver. The driver was staring at him. Peter was crouching on the hood of a parked car in the terrible costume. He probably looked insane.
"What the hell are you?" the driver said.
Peter didn't have a good answer for that. He fired a web at the building above and swung away. Behind him the gun guy was still yelling. A siren started somewhere.
The quips needed work. He'd always imagined Spider-Man would have better lines. Turns out it was hard to be clever when someone was pointing a gun at you.
His hands were shaking. The adrenaline. The gun had been real. The bullet had been real. His spider-sense had saved his life by less than a second.
He swung north. Then west.
He found her in Chelsea.
He'd swung across the bridge on a high that felt chemical, the wind in his face and the lights of Manhattan spreading out ahead of him. The costume was holding up. His hands were raw from the web lines but the grip was strong and his body knew how to move in the air now, the rhythm of it, the release and the catch and the swing.
Chelsea was quieter than Midtown. Brownstones and galleries and restaurants closed for the night. He was running along a rooftop on Eighth Avenue when his spider-sense pinged. Soft. Different from danger. Someone moving fast on the rooftops two blocks south.
He followed.
She was on a building on Twenty-second Street, silhouetted against the city glow. She was in a black catsuit with white fur trim at the collar and the wrists. White hair, long, caught by the wind. She was crouched by a skylight and she was working something with her hands, a lock pick or a tool, and she was fast. Practiced. Confident in her body.
He landed on the opposite side of the roof. She heard him. Her head came up and she turned and he saw her face for the first time.
Green eyes behind a domino mask. A mouth that was already curling at the corners before she'd decided what to say. The catsuit had a plunging neckline that he tried not to look at and failed immediately.
"Well," she said. She straightened up. Her voice had a purr in it that she was trying on, testing the edges of. "Who are you supposed to be?"
"I was going to ask you the same thing."
"Ladies first is the polite thing."
"Then go ahead."
She smiled. It was a performance. A good one, but new. The confidence was real but the ease wasn't.
"Black Cat," she said. She gave a small bow. Theatrical. The white hair fell forward over one shoulder. "And you're the spider in the terrible costume they're already talking about on the police scanner."
"It's my first night."
"Mine too."
That stopped him. She saw it land and her smile got wider.
"Twins," she said. Then she dropped through the skylight.
He chased her.
The skylight opened into a gallery. Sculptures, paintings, a security system she'd already bypassed. She moved through it fast, grappling hooks deployed from the fur trim at her wrists, swinging from the exposed beams with a gymnast's precision. She grabbed something from a display case, small, he couldn't see what, and was out the back window before he'd crossed half the room.
He followed her across four rooftops. She was good. No powers, just training, but she used the city like she'd been studying the rooftops for months. She vaulted a vent pipe, slid under a clothesline. Used her grappling hooks to cross a gap he had to web-swing. She was fast for a human. Smart-fast, taking angles he didn't anticipate.
He caught up at a water tower on Twenty-fifth Street. She'd stopped, back against the rusted metal, breathing hard. Grinning.
"You're quick," she said. "For someone wearing that."
"You keep mentioning the costume."
"It deserves mentioning."
He was ten feet from her. She was leaning against the water tower with her arms crossed and her weight on one hip and the catsuit caught the light from the street below and the leather creaked when she shifted. New leather, the chemical tang of it, and under that skin and exertion and a perfume he didn't recognize.
"Whatever you took," he said, "you should put it back."
"Should I."
"I'm going to have to take it from you if you don't."
"You can try." She uncrossed her arms. She was standing straight now and almost his height, and the mask made her eyes greener and the smile was gone. Her chin was down and her weight was forward on her toes and she was watching where his hands were.
Then she moved. Fast. Closed the distance between them in two steps and he didn't dodge. She put her hand on his chest, right on the crooked spider, and pressed.
He froze.
Her fingers curled. The claws on her gloves, small and sharp, dug into the fabric. She dragged her hand down. Slow. From the spider on his chest to his stomach. Four lines. The fabric parted and underneath it his skin parted and the pain was bright and thin and her eyes were on his through the masks and her mouth was open and she was breathing hard and so was he.
Four scratches. From his collarbone to his navel. Through the costume. Into the skin.
"Better luck next time, Spider," she said. Quiet. Close enough that the flecks in her green eyes were visible through the domino mask.
She dropped backward off the roof. Her grappling hook caught the fire escape two stories down and she swung into the dark and she was gone.
Peter stood on the roof and pressed his hand against the scratches and his hand came away with blood on the fingers and the leather smell was still in his nose and the spot on his chest where her hand had been was still warm.
Home was quiet. He climbed through his window and peeled off the costume and the scratches were already closing, pink and raised, four parallel lines from his collarbone to his stomach. They'd be gone by morning. Spider healing.
He wadded up the torn costume and shoved it under the mattress. He brushed his teeth. He lay down.
His fingers kept finding the scratches. Four lines. The skin was raised and warm where they crossed his ribs.
Better luck next time, Spider.
She'd called him Spider. Just Spider.
He closed his eyes. The scratches tingled.